“An Off-The-Hook Celebration for These Hotties …”

Yeah — that headline’s a direct quote from a press release that has landed in our in-box, something to do with Your Newly Installed City Council Members. Or “SEXIEST BARTENDERS,” one or the other. No, sexy bartenders it is: “Spike’s SEXIEST BARTENDERS is back and thirsty for the world’s most…

MumboJumbo Gets Itself a Russian Bride

Not exactly a threatening title for a video game … MumboJumbo, the Dallas-based maker of “premium casual games,” last month announced it had gotten the go-head to turn NBC’s comedy The Office into a video game. Today the company has a little more news it’d like to share: It has…

The Sounds of Deep Ellum

Over the last 24 hours, “juabeaux” has posted to YouTube an extraordinary cache of local-band performances from the late 1980s through the early ’90s. Among their ranks are Melt, the New Bohemians, The End, Rev. Horton Heat, Billygoat and the Buck Pets; among the venues are places you used to…

About Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s Gym Teacher Wife …

A Friend of Unfair Park just posted the comment that new Texas Ranger Jarrod Saltalamacchia “married one of his high school teachers.” But that’s not accurate — not technically. See, we dug up a March 2006 story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution that says Ashley Saltalamacchia is actually a former…

The Write Advice

Joyce Carol Oates is “tiny” and “soft-spoken”? You don’t say. The controversial flash point of the Mayborn Writers Conference of the Southwest came when Nan Talese, James Frey’s editor, stood up in a full ballroom on Saturday evening and skewered Oprah Winfrey for admonishing the disgraced author because he fabricated…

At Least One Car Was Getting Through Dallas Traffic

Hunh — no wonder it just took me an hour to get from the Angelika Film Center in Mockingbird Station to Unfair Park HQ on Maple and Oak Lawn. This also might explain a Friend of Unfair Park’s voice-mail message a few moments ago about four helicopters and the sound…

Screw It Like Beckham

So, after days of speculation about the state of his poor sore ankle, David Beckham won’t be in Frisco tomorrow night after all, when the Los Angeles Galaxy play FC Dallas in the SuperLiga tournament. “Obviously not going to Dallas with us,” Galaxy coach Frank Yallop said today; so, that’s…

Developer Wasn’t Bluffing About Bluffview Development

In the spring of 2006, Colorado-based real estate developer Archstone-Smith announced its intentions to raze and rebuild the nearly empty Plaza at Bachman Creek on Northwest Highway, just east of Lemmon Avenue. “We are going to try and create a European town square feeling,” Archstone-Smith’s Tom Scaling told The Dallas…

New Conspiracy Theory: JFK Was Not Shot in Dallas

Hey, that’s not us doin’ the speculatin’. That’s Dr. Horace Musashi, author of the new book Outside the Crosshairs, who says that John Kennedy wasn’t shot by Lee Harvey Oswald or anyone else during the president’s trip to Dallas on November 22, 1963. Nope. Turns out: After 11 years of…

A Cowboy and Three Mavs Getting Into the Food Business in Plano

Akin Ayodele’s getting into the eatery biz in Plano, partnering with the very rich Yomi Martin. Yomi Martin, co-founder with Nelly of $100-million-dollar urban apparel line Vokal Clothing outta St. Louis, is getting into the restaurant business — in Dallas. And he’s partnering with a Dallas Cowboy and three Dallas…

Taking the “Tex” Out of the Texas Rangers, Looks Like

This isn’t on DallasNews.com yet, but Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal is reporting that: The Braves are on the verge of acquiring Rangers first baseman Mark Teixeira. The deal is done, pending a review of the medical records of the players involved, according to major-league sources. The Braves will receive Teixeira…

The Source of Love

Look, Los Angeles Times, we read you. Why don’t you read us? From today’s paper, in a story headlined, “Romancing the source: When journalists become involved with newsmakers, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve written their professional obituaries”: • In Dallas, television reporter Sarah Dodd and Police Chief David Kunkle married…

A Blue Day at Blue Mesa Grill

David Shaw, at left, was recently featured in the HBO documentary Funny Old Guys. There are plenty of famous faces populating this morning’s obituaries: filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, talk-show host Tom Snyder, infamous Houston TV newsman Marvin Zindler. No less notable is David Shaw, who wrote more teleplays for such legendary…

Rudy, A Message To You

Brian Harkin Because we’ll be damned if this picture, which goes with this item, isn’t the first thing you see all weekend. We’ve already awarded it a Pulitzer Prize, a Nobel Peace Prize, the Humanitas Prize and, of course, four Katie Awards. See ya tomorrow, or whenever the city secretary…

Arlington-Based Donruss Trading Card Co. Sacks Michael Vick

One day after Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick pleaded not guilty to federal dogfighting charges, he gets the bad news: Nike’s dumping him, and Reebok’s decided not to sell his No. 7 jersey. And closer to home, Arlington-based Donruss Trading Card Company is yanking Vick’s cards from its 2007-’08 football…

A Fate Worse Than Dubya, Live at Wild About Harry’s!

Brian Harkin “My only indulgence, I guess, would be that I eat a lot of frozen yogurt. But it’s non-fat.” While out shopping for a new office chair (speaking of, if you have $900 to spend on a chair, the ones at Design Within Reach feel like you’re sitting on…

This Is Your Last Chance to Get It in the Backdoor

There’s not usually a whole lot of crying at comedy clubs — not while people are actually on stage, anyway. I’ve definitely seen — and possessed — some watery eyes of shame after particularly bad sets. But last night, stand-up comedian and Backdoor Comedy Club owner Linda Stogner was on…

USA Radio Networks is Award-Winning in, Like, Fantasyland

Ginger Allen isn’t the only journalist boasting about a dubious journalism prize. On its Web site, USA Radio Networks still lists the nine Katie Awards the station received from 2004 through 2006 — even though the Dallas Press Club, which hosted the contest, now acknowledges that its former president, Elizabeth…

The Big Heart of Eugene Lockhart

Thanks to Eugene Lockhart, more than 500 kids are off the 1,800-long Big Brothers Big Sisters of North Texas waiting list. That. Is. Amazing. If you listened to KTCK-AM (1310) last week, you no doubt noticed that several of the station’s shows were broadcasting on and off throughout the week…

Ginger Allen Has a New Gig

More news this morning from KTVT-Channel 11. A day after the newsroom there learned that ace reporter-anchor Sarah Dodd had departed 12 days earlier comes word that Ginger Allen has been named the full-time co-anchor of CBS 11 News This Morning — alongside Scott Sams, lucky girl. Allen, of course,…