The Polyphonic Spree to Play the Entire Country Saturday Night

The PSpree opened the tour for its third album, The Fragile Army, last Saturday night at the Granada Theater — a spectacular-spectacular, in a words. But this Saturday night, when the 302-piece band treks up to the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., it’ll teach the world to sing in perfect…

Fried Street

Between midnight and 2 a.m. there landed in our in-box plenty of pics from last night’s blaze in Denton that consumed the beloved Tomato on Fry Street, which shut down a few weeks back in preparation for a wrecking ball that will level the 80-plus-year-old building. No doubt about it…

Rangers Redux

Two words you rarely associate with a billionaire who owns three professional sports teams and a $35 million home: Plastic. Cutlery. Tom Hicks may be unfathomably rich, but today the poor guy’s got a lot on his paper plate. Sure, his 29,000-square-foot spread is the most expansive and expensive in…

Dark Horse

It’s the second race at Lone Star Park, and the trainers are saddling their horses. A jockey dressed in black silks is boosted atop the long shot, a bay filly with a dab of white between her eyes. The horse is fit but looks skinny and fragile: Her ankles are…

The Gut-bucket Gospel

Fifteen years ago while leading a church service for incarcerated women in a dirty room in the Dallas County Jail, Pastor Karen Dudley noticed a familiar face in the crowd. Dudley had first seen the woman a year earlier at another prison. At the time, the woman had been living…

Band Campers

Band campers: Whatever cancer-promoting evils Camel cigarettes may be perpetrating, their most dastardly deed recently was kicking 15 kids out of summer camp. Sure, the ousting was temporary and the kids weren’t exactly singing “Kumbaya”—more like some Zeppelin or Sabbath—but for four hours, the teenage attendees of Rock Camp USA…

Not the Best of Dallas

Boston-based Cheapflights.com is pimping a rather incomplete list of “Where to Wine and Dine in Dallas,” and, uh, they’re kidding, right? Because, turns out, the best barbecue in Dallas is in … Fort Worth. Yup — Angelo’s. Which ain’t bad, but it also ain’t in Dallas, last I looked, which…

“Invisible Sun”? Damn It.

You won’t have difficulty finding ducats to tonight’s Police gig at the American Airlines Center; plenty of ’em can be had here, many at face value or even a touch under. That fact, coupled with the set list from last night’s show at the AAC, has me and the missus…

A Warped Sense of Accomplishment

Mazel tov, In Fair Verona, as you are clearly among God’s favorite pop-punk bands in the Arlington area! Congratulations are in order for four local bands, culled from the never-ending rotation of emo, screamo, hardcore, Christcore, metalcore, toastercore bands that frequent The Door and similarly teen-targeted venues about town. In…

Rockin’ at Interlochen

Yeah, it’s all the way up in Michigan, but them folks up at the Interlochen Arts Camp wanted to remind us to remind you that about 30 “of Dallas’ most talented youngsters” will be attending its prestigious, star-making Summer Arts Camp, joining about 2,500 other kiddos who just wanna sing…

Tarmac Attack!

From Fort Worth’s Robert McKee (via Dallas Morning Views’ Rod Dreher) comes this seven-minute video — a short film, really, to which I give two thumbs up — documenting his seven-hour sit on the the JFK Airport tarmac two days back. Seems Delta just didn’t want to get McKee and…

Dallas’ Other Congressional Gold Medalist

Dr. Norman Borlaug has a Congressional Gold Medal he can now hang around his bust. Though he didn’t live to see it, golf legend Byron Nelson picked up a gold yesterday — that is, a Congressional Gold Medal. But buried 20 paragraphs or so down in this DMN piece –…

Say it Like Seinfeld: Neumann

Though it’s yet to be officially announced, we feel very comfortable saying Dave Neumann will be the chair of the council’s Trinity River Committee. Well, he’ll probably be the chair. Hedge bets much? A very good Friend of Unfair Park sends this morning a report from last night’s Trinity Trust…

Welcome To Hicksville

You know Tom Hicks owns the Texas Rangers, the Dallas Stars, the biggest house in town and yet only a smidgen of sports savvy. What you didn’t know is that he initially intended to short sell the Stars for profit, was one of Mark Cuban’s original Internet investors and thinks…

Yes, But Is She Jewish?

People get arrested at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport all the time. Like, just last Saturday, former Miss USA Shannon Marketic was arrested at DFW on a public intoxication charge. Three years back, a 57-year-old woman was booted out of the airport for flashing anti-war placards. And last summer, you recall,…

Lil’ Nellie All Growed Up

You might not know this, but Donn Nelson was a pretty good college ball player too. Last week, Tom Hicks re-signed wonderboy Jon Daniels to run the Ranger’s sinking (though surprisingly more buoyant of late) ship through 2009, even though the team has one of the worst records in baseball…

C’mon, PC World, No Unfair Park?

Virginia Postrel, PC World loves you — well, your blog, at the very least. PC World has just its list of “100 Blogs We Love,” and included therein is Blog Maverick, the daily musings of Mavs Man Mark Cuban, whose last two posts reveal his wide-ranging interests: Hedge Fund IPOs…

Time For an Erection

For a Cowboys franchise that’s always played under a hole in its roof, Wednesday marks the beginning of the end. At 10:30 a.m. tomorrow, the team’s new Arlington stadium will commence installation of the first piece of the monumental arch truss structure. In numbers that I can’t come close to…

A Terrorstorm‘s A-Comin’

In my mail this morning I found this jes-released “special edition” DVD of the subtly named Terrorstorm, the rocku-shocku-documentary from Dallas-born, Austin-workin’ syndicated radio show host Alex Jones, who never met a September 11 conspiracy he didn’t peddle to the metal. Here’s the trailer — and, yeah, I do think…

Dallas Court Records Reveal That Marion Jones is Broke

Pardon me if I’ve somehow missed this, but after scouring the Interwebs and Lexis-Nexis I’ve found no local mention of this national story with legally binding local ties. On Saturday, The Los Angeles Times reported that sprinter Marion Jones — the darling of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, a breaker…