Magical History Tour

We assume the kids’ll pay tribute to Blind Lemon Jefferson during their local-music trib. If not, at least throw in some Vanilla Ice, ice, baby. I’m pretty sure we thought of this first, but never mind that. We’re thrilled nonetheless by the e-mail we received a few moments ago from…

Coulda Been Worse

Yeah, Your Dallas Cowboys suffered a gut-wrenching loss to the Washington Redskins on Sunday. But look on the bright side: You could’ve drowned your sorrows in 11 pitchers of beer, hopped behind the wheel, sideswiped a guardrail and been issued a DUI prosecuted by none other than the kin of…

Watching Chorizo Getting Made

Criminal District Judge Manny Alvarez is a Republican. But he’d prefer it if you kept politics out it. Back in May, a non-partisan poll showed that two years after Bush won a historic 40 percent of the Hispanic vote, Republicans’ stance on immigration was alienating Latinos at a rapid clip…

Mavs Can’t Win a Damned Thing

If you thought things weren’t going well at Reunion Arena last night, check out how triple poorly they went at the American Airlines Center, where the Maverics unveiled the Western Conference Championship banner. Kind of. Sort of. This was just before Don Nelson’s Golden State Warriors took the Mavs’ lunch…

Perry and the Prez, Not Much of a Draw

Seems a bad time for The Dallas Morning News’ Web site to be buggy, doesn’t it? (It’s up and down, like my mood this election day.) Surely it’ll be fixed momentarily, but I don’t recall this ever being a problem before the redesign. (Update: At 12:08 p.m., the site was…

Re: Getting Polled

If nothing else, this would get you to the polls, wouldn’t it? Promises, promises. A few observations from my polling place: 1) At 9:12 a.m., there was a handful of folks voting, but there was plenty of room, which wasn’t the case at 7 a.m. According to one poll-watcher, there…

Mexico, Mexicos–That Ain’t So Bueno

The latest episode in Farmers Branch’s immigration drama involved the mayor’s home getting defaced by graffiti. Late Thursday or early Friday, someone spray-painted “Viva Mexico” on the side of Mayor Bob Phelps’s house, the vandalism occurring just one week before the city council is set to discuss measures that would…

Getting Polled

Till, oh, two weeks ago folks living in Precinct 1117 had no idea they were supposed to vote at F.P. Caillet Elementary–where I went to school! Wee. Really, God bless the Democratic Party. Even when they do their best, it ends up shooting ’em right in the ass, then they…

More Inconvenient Truths

The New York Times this a.m. has a handful of stories of interest to locals: a rather long piece recounting the suicide of former Kaufman County District Attorney Louis Conradt Jr., who killed himself Sunday when cops tried to arrest him for soliciting sex over the Internet from a person…

Didn’t You Used to Be a Guitar Hero?

Clark Vogeler, closest to the camera, says playing Guitar Hero makes him feel like a virtual guitar hero. Which is odd, since he used to be one in real life. I got to page 112 in the November 16 issue of Rolling Stone–the one with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert…

Heartthrob as Hero

Gary Floyd’s hunky. That he’s also helping find missing persons, well, that just makes him hunkier. As if being the Best Theater Heartthrob isn’t enough, turns out local crooner Gary Floyd is also a do-gooder volunteering his talents and helping spread the word about missing persons. The Stone Street Theater,…

Keeping Up With the Jones

Norah Jones was relatively quiet in 2006. Next year, she’ll release a new album–and star in a new movie. No kiddin’. Haven’t heard from hometown sweetheart Norah Jones in a while–unless you’ve been in a Starbucks in the last 23 minutes. (Oh, and I guess there was The Little Willies,…

School of The Rock

I don’t have to tell you what dens of iniquity and sin our state’s public schools are. You walk into one of those things, and you’re practically guaranteed to get pregnant, screw up your SAT or get shot or knifed or something. It’s really shocking I made it to where…

The Terrell of Peril

This one, for a change, isn’t on Bill Parcells. Oh, sure, there were the idiotic decision to go for a two-point conversion in the second quarter, undisciplined players who committed 11 penalties and the ridiculously transparent ploy of running a draw on second-and-10 every friggin’ time. But, no, the Cowboys’…

Whole Foods By Half, More or Less

Driven past the intersection of Forest Lane and Preston Road recently? If so you’ve seen the mammoth new Whole Foods scheduled to open in about four weeks; really, you can’t miss the thing. Looks like a spaceship landed next to a CVS. It’s supposed to be quite the site when…

Science is So Scientific

Dr. Ray Baughman, center, Dr. Mei Zhang, left, and Dr. Shaoli Fang are the UT-Dallas researchers named to the Scientific American 50 list. Rick Perry just missed making it. Dallas has plenty of rich white men capable of getting on a Forbes list of richest white men in America; see?…

Washington Monument

Ron Washington is the new manager of Your Texas Rangers. He’ll be introduced during a press conference today. Well, not yet. For now, it’s simply Washington, manager. Before we roast the Cowboys for all they do wrong, let’s take a minute to congratulate–surprise!–Your Texas Rangers. Instead of half-assing his way…

Yes, Jesus Loves Him. You, Not So Much.

Rick Perry doesn’t wanna know about your god. Because your god’s gonna get you a one-way ticket to hell. Ya know, as a liberal Democrat and a bar mitzvah boy, I was so gonna vote for Rick Perry till I read this morning’s Dallas Morning News and saw this headline:…

Kinky Pickup

The real amusing thing about the weekend’s Silverado 350 Craftsman Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway wasn’t that rookie trucker chick Erin Crocker blew an engine on the first lap. Or that checker flag-grabber Clint Boyer led for 103 of the race’s 148 laps, dueling ferociously with Nextel Cup…

Emmitt Finds New Cowboys QB

You know, we thought Emmitt Smith being on Dancing with the Stars was gonna be humiliating. Wow, were we so wrong. I am sure there’s other Dallas Cowboys news to discuss this a.m., though, for the life of me, I can’t think of what that might be at present; something…

He Said, She Said and Nobody Said a Damned Thing

The News gave you no news about Rose Renfroe and Ken Mayfield today. But the paper’s story about their campaigns did answer the question: “You’re so awesome, how come you’re so awesome?” Kevin Krause of The Dallas Morning News normally does a very good job covering Dallas County politics, and…

Eye on The Balls

You probably can’t tell, but this is Your Favorite Dallas Maverick. But one bit of advice, Ben and Skin: Remember Ticket TV? No? Just sayin’, fellas. Look sharp. Don Nelson won’t return to the American Airlines Center until Monday. Unfortunately, his style of basketball arrived Thursday night. In a hideous…