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Or, at least, be treated like one. OK, would you settle for just getting hold of the really cool free shit celebs get? For last weekend's Reebok Heroes Celebrity baseball game in Frisco, famed Klein Creative out of New York created one of its trademark swag bags for each of the players. Inside the gift bags is $2,700 worth of stuff you need (like watches and headphones) and stuff you'd never buy yourself (like bullfighting lessons). Here's the really cool part: You can get one of those bags, autographed by all the athletes (such as Mike Modano, Marquis Daniels and Dallas Cowboys safety Roy Williams) and celebs (including Clerks II's Rosario Dawson and Mavs owner Mark Cuban) who played in the game. The bag is available through July 20 via online auction. Something tells my hearty leading current bid of $110 ain't gonna stand up. --Richie Whitt

Concerning my post this a.m. about the fab opening of the W Hotel last night, Lorlee Bartos sends this missive, which is supposed to make all of us hobbing and nobbing last night feel guilty. Me, I just feel a little tired and queasy. (Note to self: Tequila, white wine and Jack Daniel's should never be mixed in one's stomach in the span of three hours.) The subject line of her e-mail reads: "I am with Schutze." I am too, most of the time.

"I am glad you all had a good time at our expense. I am not saying that what is there is bad, [but] consider the amount of money we spent and the lost opportunities. Just think what $150M could have bought that might have been much more beneficial for more people."

I know, I know. It's a bad deal. But have you tried the soft-shell crab at Craft? That's worth, like, $2.4 mil right there. --Robert Wilonsky

Says here that attorney Fred Baron, co-founder of local law firm Baron & Budd, has been included on a list of the nation's 100 most influential attorneys as selected by The National Law Journal. The complete list is available here, but suffice it to say Baron's the only local attorney to make the list, and jut one of four from Texas. Here's what the country's top legal newspaper has to say about the tort master general:

"Founder of the firm, Baron has built it into one of the largest toxic tort firms in the country; lead attorney in cases involving water contaminated by the gasoline additive MTBE, lead contamination, toxic waste and pesticide exposure; has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court twice to decertify class action settlements involving future claims of asbestos-related injuries; represented 1,600 Tucson, Ariz., residents who claimed exposure to water contaminated by trychloroethylene; past president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America; founder and past president of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice."

And if yer interested, this is what the paper version of Unfair Park has had to say about Baron & Budd in the past:

"To hear lawyers at the Dallas law firm of Baron & Budd tell it, they are frontline warriors in a battle against callous corporations whose product, asbestos, claimed the lives and health of thousands of working men.

But the first casualty of war is truth, and at Baron & Budd, one of the city's most successful law firms, the truth, if not killed outright, is sometimes missing in action."

You might wanna check this out too. And this. And this. And this. Just sayin'. --Robert Wilonsky

A year ago tomorrow Charmane Jackson bid her son Chandler farewell as he left their Frisco home early for the family's annual July 4th reunion in Kentucky. Tomorrow night, during the Frisco RoughRiders-San Antonio Missions baseball game, Charmane won't see Chandler, but she will see a vision of his legacy. It was on July 6, 2005, that 12-year-old Chandler died in a freak golf-club accident during a family tournament. After 12 months of struggling with her emotions and grasping for hope, Charmane established a foundation in her son's name, and Saturday night will mark the foundation's official coming-out party, as the RoughRiders host Chandler Jackson Night at the Dr Pepper Ballpark.

Because her son so loved baseball, Charmane was determined to host an event on the diamond. She'll throw out the first pitch, watch Chandler remembered via video tributes on the scoreboard, see his former teammates and coaches get recognized on the field and probably tear up as proceeds from the game benefit her fledgling foundation. Full disclosure: In the past year I worked with Charmane providing media contacts and editorial content for the foundation's web site. The Jacksons are great people and good parents trying to make the best out of a very bad experience. --Richie Whitt

Former mayor Ron Kirk wouldn't engage in a little nyah-nyah-toldya-so last night at the everybody's-a-VIP opening of the W Hotel in Victory Park; said the last thing he wanted to talk about was Mayor Laura Miller and other naysayers who'd insist even at this late date that the W and its attendent surroundings were bad business for our good city. "It's not about the negative," he said, standing poolside on the 16th floor as the lovely and lubricated ogled the half-naked models taking showers and floating in the chlorinated agua overlooking scenic Stemmons. He then took a sip of whatever he was drinking, which didn't look as strong as what I was drinking, and patted me on the shoulder and said, "You guys are gonna have to get over it and just enjoy this." To which I said, "Do I look like I'm having a shitty time?" Note to self: Try to use fewer curse words around former mayors and, Christ, their wives.

I'm all ready to let the man take his victory lap around Victory Park; damned if we'll stand in his way, mostly because we could barely stand when all was said and done and the valet finally brought round the family truckster. (Those who bitched about waiting for their cars last night, and well in to the early morning, really should have thankful for freebie gallons of bottled Voss water, which just might have been the thing that spared many of us the hangovers we so richly deserved this morning.) As the missus said last night, Ron Kirk deserves his shit-eating grin. I believe she said this right before telling me to get her another vodka and soda, pronto, Chachi. Gotcha and gotcha; free booze and gratis foie gras will make anyone forgive a lack of introspection from 16 stories up.

Everybody with a notepad and a blog attended this mother of all shindigs last night; it's barely sun-up and no doubt 34 people have already posted their items about the fabulosity surrounding the soiree attended by the likes of Cuba Gooding Jr. (licked a friend of mine, said said friend), Kevin "Hercules" Sorbo, Ross Perot Jr. (greeting everyone at the front door, along with W Hotels president Ross Klein, like they were working the toniest Wal-Mart in the county) and...uh...well...uh...Rolando Blackman and Don Nelson and the Malouf brothers, owners of the Sac Kings. (I gotta be honest: I began writing this thing at 12:14 a.m., and I was stunned to sit down at the eMachine to find that The Dallas Morning News and FrontBurner weren't live-blogging the event, since every person employed by Dallas' Only Daily and D seemed to be at the party.) What's left to say, really, except that it was the kind of party everyone in Dallas dreams of attending when they visit Hollywood; as an old party pal said from the rooftop, "Welcome to El Lay, bitch."

This morning's Baltimore Sun contains the first interview with former Texas Rangers first baseman Rafael Palmeiro since Congress cleared him of lying under oath. The paper's reporting that a year after failing a test for steroids and denying he ever used performance-enhancing drugs, the guy now "spends his mornings working out, his days playing baseball with his two sons at his suburban Dallas home and his nights watching on TV as his former teammates throughout the majors play the game he still loves." Dan Connolly writes a pretty straightforward piece here: You're left to draw your own conclusion about whether Raffy shot up with the good stuff, or merely got some B-12 laced with stanozol from Baltimore teammate Miguel Tejada. But it's nonetheless a sad portrait of a guy who was on his way to at least Hall of Fame consideration before he became a punch line and punching bag for even putting himself in this position. Your heart kinda, sorta, maybe, not-really breaks for Raffy when he tells Connolly:

"The tragedy of all of this is that it happened to me and it shouldn't have happened. It ruined my life and my career. That's the tragedy of this. Three thousand, it's just a number. It's just a game. The other deals with my life and my livelihood and my family and all that I stand for. All of that is gone."

And some folks still wonder whose fault that really is. In other depressing you-gotta-be-kiddin'-me news related to former Texas Rangers and steroids, the San Diego Union-Tribune's reported yesterday that Jose Canseco has signed with the San Diego Surf Dawgs baseball team of the independent Class A Golden Baseball League. That's like Hunter Thompson working for the Greensheet. --Robert Wilonsky

As promised in this week's And Another Thing, here's the Astronautalis freestyle recorded over the phone on Tuesday morning. After you have a laugh at the fact that I actually beatboxed on this recording, consider how hard it has to be to come up with a freestyle rap off the top of your head, let alone doing so while walking in the middle of a public street on the way home from a post office. If this MP3 doesn't convince you to see one of his three local gigs this weekend (with a live band, no less), well, nothing will. —Sam Machkovech

Today, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he's shut down a housing scam that his office claims defrauded folks "out of tens of thousands of dollars" locally. This permanent injunction stems from an April 2005 lawsuit filed under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), which claimed that Dallas-based FCI Equities, Inc. and others "participated in a scheme that involved the sale of homes without valid property titles." The AG says FCI and other people associated with the "company" told would-be home-owners, most of whom were Hispanic, that they could buy a house in Dallas (usually in Oak Cliff) for between $20,000 and $40,000, and that most of the victims were preyed upon at a Mexican food restaurant owned by one of the men involved in carrying out the scheme, which entailed hastily written notes of ownership and cash up front. According to the AG's press release:

"The court imposed fines of $103,000 toward consumer restitution against the operation and its associates, to be paid by the operation's lead proprietor, Jose Demetrio Murrugarra of Dallas. Jose Menjarez, a Dallas man who posed as an attorney to offer legal services to victims of the housing scam, was charged with $10,900 in civil penalties and restitution for consumers for his part in the deceptive scheme.

'It is a disgrace that these scam artists preyed on consumers' dreams of putting down roots in Texas by exploiting their lack of knowledge about the home-buying process,' Attorney General Abbott said. 'Housing scams like this are a flagrant violation of the law, and I am determined to shut them down.'"

Should you want to see some of the properties involved in the scheme or read the lawsuit and the final order against FCI, go here. The AG's office is nothing if not thorough. --Robert Wilonsky

Katie Couric's coming to town July 11 as part of a six-city exploratory mission, and yer welcome to come meet the former Today show co-host who, on September 5, takes over as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Lori Conrad, director of communications at KTVT-Channel 11, just shot us the note that Couric's got a full day planned, including two fundraisers for the American Cancer Society (breakfast in Fort Worth, lunch in Dallas) that are open to the public, but she will spend the afternoon at an informal town meeting with folks from the community, which, last time I looked, included you. Now, it's less a meeting, really, than a sit-down to find out what kind of pieces Regular Folk wanna see on TV; please, by all means, feel free to tell her you want...whatcallit...hard news. That, or more cooking segments. One or the other's bound to make a dent. But Conrad just told Unfair Park this thing's for Couric's ears only: KTVT isn't even allowed to film it, and no media's allowed inside the meet-and-greet, though some of us will be attending the breakfast or lunch (where, alas, no one-on-one interviews will be allowed, either, suggesting the journalist doesn't like other journalists being, uh, journalists, but whatev). If you want to attend the research-and-development git-together with Katie, all you have to do is go to Channel 11's Web site and fill out the questionnaire, which, oddly, contains the question, "Where in the world is Matt Lauer?" --Robert Wilonsky

You know those old eight-panel leather basketballs you grew up with? Gone. The old, American-dominated game you used to love? Gone too. First the NBA announced it was making a radical change to the sport's ball. Then last night the Toronto Raptors announced they were selecting some Italian named Andrea with the first pick in the 2006 draft. Somewhere, George Mikan weeps.

Your Dallas Mavericks restored some order late in the night by taking Michigan State guard Maurice Ager. He's athletic, has four years' college experience and can slash to the hoop. Give credit to ESPN-FM's (103.3) Chuck Cooperstein, who called the pick at around 5:30 p.m., or four hours early. Also give credit to the Mavs, who took a player that could possibly, conceivably, someday have the athleticism to actually guard Miami's Dwyane Wade without getting called for multiple phantom fouls. For a team with a late pick and a need for so little help, Dallas did better than expected in landing Ager. --Richie Whitt