Blogs

Courtesy XKCD

Oh, sweet baby Jesus. We just received the Best. Press. Release. Ever. Why come? Because it contains the following sentence: "Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes will compete performing a Guitar Hero song to kick off 24-hours of jam sessions on May 16 at 2:30 p.m." Blah blah blah, fund-raiser, blah blah blah, something good for the kids, blah blah blah. Registration form and further info here.

But, really, I still can't get past, "Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes will compete performing a Guitar Hero song to kick off 24-hours of jam sessions on May 16 at 2:30 p.m." Now you know where to find us Friday. Till then, we're trying to figure out which song off GH3 is best suited for Mayor Tom. "Bulls on Parade," maybe? Nah. Lil' help? --Robert Wilonsky

Andrew Breshiers, a.k.a. "Cmndr Tatz," beams as he cradles his new love -- Halo 3.

Introduced as a relatively unknown first-person shooter for the original Xbox in 2001, Halo has exploded into a worldwide multimedia phenomena. Deemed “revolutionary” by fans and critics alike, Halo went on to spawn the No. 1-selling sequel of all time (Halo 2), multiple novels, comics, countless toys and accessories and a movie in development with Peter Jackson.

All of which pale in comparison to the release of the final installment, Halo 3. With a marketing budget of more than $10 million and more than 10,000 retail stores opening for the midnight release, Dallas was standing directly on the front line of the battle.

More

Fine -- so that's overselling it by just a bit. Nonetheless, great filmmakers zoom in on the little details -- beads of sweat, shifty eyes, restless hands and, now, bouncing feet. Over the weekend, whilst waiting for Plano boy Josh Evans to bust out of the 2007 World Series of Poker, which has nearly wrapped in Vegas, our pal Dan Michalski posted to his Pokerati site the following video, which might be better than a peek at the hole cards. OK -- not quite, but awfully close.

From what we can tell, those are Evans' feet at the right -- oh, and the Plano poker player finished in 76th place on Saturday, for which he earned $106,382. Notes Dan of Evans' haul: "Not bad for a guy who was playing $60 tourneys every Tuesday not that long ago. (By the way, Josh is running pretty dern good. He won $49,505 less than a month ago by finishing 2nd in a Venetian Deep Stacks tourney.)" --Robert Wilonsky

Victory Park in action.

Is everything more plastic, planned and painful if it happens at Victory Park?

Hardcore disclaimer: I don't dig Victory Park. I don't dig the faux planning, I don't dig the faux Times Square, and I don't dig the metal 'n glass look-how-made-we-are façade of the whole shebang. I know we need a big, pretty place like the American Airlines Center so we can watch our sports teams -- arguably the best things about Dallas -- fail miserably in the playoffs. But Victory Park is a big, nasty monstrosity stuck on the side of a big, nasty highway and it does nothing to help Dallas rid itself of its pretentious, self-important stereotype. Actually, at this point, I'm reluctant to even call it a stereotype. We may as well call it our full-on identity, considering this recent event:

More

In Dubai, they ski inside. Which seems totally natural.

You can Ski Dubai. Might as well be able to ski Fort Worth. About a year ago, we mentioned that Jeff Green, the chief executive of Bearfire Group, was looking to build somewhere in Dallas the mammoth CoolZone Winterplex, where it'd be winter all year round and you could get your ski and spa on whenever. Last week, the Dallas Business Journal suggested that Green had changed his mind and was looking to move to Fort Worth instead, only none of the folks involved would confirm the move, pending an investor get-together.

Well, today comes word that "after careful consideration," yup, the company's moving from Dallas to "an ideal location in a large piece of property situated midway between the Dallas and Fort Worth airports," says the press release. (It doesn't say whether it's the Intel property at Eagle Parkway and Interstate 35W or elsewhere.) Read the entire release to find out what the "Bearfire Resort" peeps promise, but this is, for whatever reason, my favorite sentence: "Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey is an advisor to the project and assists in identifying equity investors." --Robert Wilonsky

So after six months in Texas, last week I officially had my strangest experience yet. Dallas Observer business took me to the Panhandle, where I got to stay in the lovely little highway town of Dumas. Like nearby Sunray, home to the world's largest grain elevator (holds 7 million bushels, locals proudly told me), Dumas has its own claim fame: According to the Chamber of Commerce, it's the "Home of the Ding Dong Daddy!"

Ring a bell? It didn't for me, but luckily the brochure went on to tell how musician Phil Baxter drove through town in the '20s and later penned a song called, "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas." Phil Harris, band leader for the Jack Benny Radio Show, made it famous. And if that doesn't have you booking your next vacation to Dumas, listen to this: According to Mayor Rowdy Rhoades, "the citizens of Dumas are among the finest in the world!"

More

Is that a light saber in your pocket, or is this your wedding night?

Busy this Saturday? I know it's St. Patrick's Day and all, but who really wants to go run around on Lower Greenville, downing pints in broad daylight with a bunch of other drunks wearing green? You do? OK, fine. I'll probably see you there.

But on the off chance getting hammered in the daytime in the name of Lucky Charms isn't your thing, and on the even offer chance that you've got a Jedi Knight costume hanging around just ready to be whipped out whenever you're feeling the pull of the Force particularly strongly, I've got your Saturday afternoon plans all worked out.

Courtesy of Craigslist: "Two Jedi Knights in full costume for approximately one hour to serve as wedding ushers." Suhweet! The nuptials of Tony and Jeanette start at 4 p.m. in Fort Worth, and you gotta provide the costume as well as "basic Star Wars knowledge." Pay's negotiable! What are you waiting for, young master?

May the force be with the happy couple. --Andrea Grimes

Sandra just doesn't get Bible Girl. We know the feeling.

Seems as if our very own Bible Girl is becoming a celeb's celeb. Well, maybe that's overstating it, but she's on at least one celeb's radar: None other than queer icon Sandra Bernhard brought Bible Girl up during my recent phone interview with her (Bernhard is bringing her show, Everything Bad and Beautiful, to the Majestic Theater tonight, Friday, March 9).

Apparently, Dallas upstart comedian-writer-Bible Girl nemesis Jack E. Jett, who cohosted a gay-themed television talk show called Queeredge with Bernhard for the Q network, recently pointed out Bible Girl's blog to Bernhard. "[Jett] said to bring up Bible Girl, and I didn't want to bring it up until the end of the conversation because I didn't want it to be completely about that," she told me. It should come as no surprise that Bible Girl's stance on sexual orientation don't quite jive with Bernhard's. "I don't understand," Bernhard said, genuinely perplexed. "This is the person who runs your publication? What is the stance of the publication, is it liberal?" (To which I replied, "um...")

Meantime, Jett and Bernhard are resurrecting their Queeredge partnership and producing a new version of the show, produced by the same group responsible for The Man Show (hmm...). Jett tells me "a few cable networks are interested," but it's yet to be decided where the program will land, though it won't be on a gay-oriented network. "It won't be geared exclusively for the gay community," Jett says. "But it'll still have the same wackiness. And Sandra singing." --Jonanna Widner

*Editor's note: Jonanna thinks so anyway, though not everyone here at Unfair Park agrees.

Theresa Nasty

Last week I told you to head out to Buddies for a drag king show that would at least blow your mind, if not your crotch. Girls dressed up as boys, political statements, dancing, etc. But there's only so many duct-tape flattened breasts I can take before I start craving some globular masses. Happily, I think I'll be satiated this weekend with two very different, very sexy shows featuring girls wearing not much clothes doing very much dancing.

Tonight, Buddies comes through yet again. Their "Barely Legal Girls" show starts at 10:30 pm, featuring the hottest pieces of lesbian arse in town doing their damnedest to turn you on, tease-style. When Buddies owner Dawn told me about the show a couple of weeks ago--over the din of some very excellent hip-pop--she really emphasized the "tease" bit.

More

Mike Modano can be all yours this weekend, for a mere 15 bucks. But act fast: There are only 3,000 of him to go around. You can pick him up at NorthPark Center Saturday and Sunday, when the NHL hosts an All-Star Trading Card and Memorabilia show in conjunction with the its All-Star Game taking place at the American Airlines Center. Never you mind that Modano ain't actually playing in the game.

Spawn creator Todd McFarlane nonetheless is coming to town and bringing with him the limited-production Modano action figure, which features him hoisting the Stanley Cup. And here's a trivia nugget sure to tingle the spine of all action-figure collecting dorks: McFarlane says this is his company's first-ever "NHL Event Exclusive." A very big picture of the figure's after the jump.

More

Last night's episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip took a shot at Bill Parcells. It was almost worth the two Sting songs. Almost.

Last night, the missus and I sat down to watch what's fast becoming my least-favorite favorite new TV show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, where they really need to stop showing the "comedy" bits from the show within the show since they're bereft of any comedy whatsoever. Anyway, one of the storylines involved a smarmy British reality-TV-show producer who wanted the fictional National Broadcasting System to buy his new show, a couples-busting scheme called Search and Destroy, which the NBS president played by Amanda Peet thought was too sleazy for the net. But the chairman of the network, played by Steven Weber, wanted the show. Their boss, played by Ed Asner, was brought in to settle the argument, since only he can override Peet.

But Asner chooses to side with Peet's character. The reason, he tells Weber? "You wanted her to cook the dinner, at least you should let her shop for the groceries." As Asner walks out the door, Peet turns to Weber and asks, "Who said that?" Weber, his face balled up into a fist, snarls, "Bill Parcells, a football coach who hasn't won a playoff game in nine years." That even made the missus laugh; she hates Parcells, who first uttered that line 10 years ago, when, as the New England Patriots head coach, he wanted to draft a defensive player in the first round of the draft only to be overruled by team ownership, who instead selected...Terry Glenn, the go-to receiver on Bill Parcells' Dallas Cowboys.

You can watch last night's episode of Studio 60 here; I wouldn't, if I were you, as the site's crap and loads slower than Parcells runs. --Robert Wilonsky

Marlon Brando's signed and personally annotated Godfather script is among the nearly 2,000 items for sale in Heritage's auction this week. Can ya spot me, oh, 40 large?

Last week, Heritage Auction Galleries music memorabilia specialist Garry Shrum was kind enough to cross Oak Lawn Avenue to deliver the 464-page catalog for Heritage's upcoming "Signature Entertainment Memorabilia Auction." It's safe to say I've become obsessed with Heritage's auctions; between this, this and all these, yeah, obsessed, or at least extremely interested. It's hard not to be when you're a pop-culture junkie who offices a couple hundred yards away from the world's most expensive garage sale of items that used to belong to the likes of Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan. Seriously, every day if he wanted to, Shrum could pick up and play Elvis' 1958 Isana Black Pearl acoustic guitar, which Presley got while stationed in Bad Nauheim, Germany, during his stint in the Army. Not that he does; he just could.

Come this weekend, though, that guitar will be sold off--for well more than the initial $150,000 asking price, no doubt. (A Paul McCartney bass went for more than half a mil not long ago. And he's alive.) The auction, which takes place at Heritage's Oak Lawn HQ October 6-7, is easily the company's biggest entertainment auction to date; says so right here, in this Associated Press story making the rounds here and abroad. The auction's getting considerable attention this time around because it includes hundreds of items that came from the James Dean Gallery in the actor's hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. As I wrote in April, Heritage's Doug Norwine read on the Internet that the museum, which was operated by David Loehr, was shutting down because of financial difficulties, and Norwine flew to Indiana to convince Loehr to sell the collection through Heritage. As a result, Heritage is offering in this auction everything from Dean's sketches and paintings (each of which will go for thousands) to the Rebel Without a Cause photo archive to his Rebel-worn T-shirt to a small piece of the Porsche 500 Spyder in which Dean was killed almost 51 years ago to the day.

You can preview the entirety of the auction here, but another major part of this auction is the inclusion of dozens of items that used to belong to Marlon Brando--including his personally marked-up script for The Godfather, on which Brando jotted down comments and changes to Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's writing. Another nifty Godfather souvenier is Brando's fedora from the film; that'll go for five figures, easy. Other Brando items you can grab for the right price: letters he wrote to and received from Tennessee Williams, his British "Oscar" for Viva Zapata!, slides of deleted scenes from Superman II...and Brando's harmonica. Seriously.

Norwine, Heritage's director of music and entertainment memorabilia (and the man who provides the saxy sounds of Lisa Simpson), says the Brando material came from a consigner who got it from Brando himself and from Brando's personal assstant. "So it came from when he was alive," Norwine says, adding that the consigner doesn't want to be identified. "He was a friend of his assistant and knew Marlon himself. They just wanted to make some money. They had it for a long time and wanted to parlay it. It's an amazing collection too. The Godfather script alone is special, because it was such an epic movie. Brando was like the Greta Garbo of the second half of the 20th century--so reclusive, such a private person, and this is his most memorable role, arguably. To have the script signed by him and to know it's the script he went over, that's amazing."

Norwine also mentions something else for sale he considers "real sexy": letters from Martin Luther King Jr. to Sammy Davis Jr., one written on Ebenezer Baptist Church stationary in December 1960, another from April 1965 that references the march from Selma to Montgomery ("it is a symbol that those who have suffered deprivation and brutality can make their voices heard..."). The content, Norwine says, "is astounding." You could say the same thing about the entire auction, some highlights form which we'll, uh, highlight every day till Friday. Like that Harry Truman hat. Or Kurt Cobain's guitar. Or Steve McQueen's hat... --Robert Wilonsky

Pops Carter will be at the Dallas Musem of Art tonight as part of its--and our, really--late-night extravaganza.

As you (should) know, each month on the third Friday the Dallas Museum of Art has a stellar late-night event (from 6 p.m. to midnight). And each month the theme varies. Well, we're just a little more than a bit excited about tonight's shindig because, well, the DMA's featuring a "Best Of" theme with nominees and winners from our Dallas Observer Music Awards and Best of Dallas issues. What does that mean, really? Well, one, obviously we're totally awesome, and two, for the price of museum admission you can experience all this extra stuff we think is super sweet, such as:

A happy hour with DJ Wild in the Streets< (nominee, Best DJ)

A main stage performance by Pops Carter & the funkmonsters (winner, Best Blues)

Highlights from Laundry and Bourbon by Contemporary Theater of Dallas (winner, Best Place to See a Play)

A performance by I Love Math (winner, John Dufilho, Best Male Singer)

A DJ set in the Sculpture Garden from DJ Merritt (winner, Best DJ)

And, of course, more.

See, sweet, right? Yeah, told you so. Now pick up the phone and change those plans. Go ahead. We'll wait. --Merritt Martin

Dear Press Release I received Last Week From Some Girl At Ketchum Communications Concerning The Weight Watchers Account,

I don't think we should see each other any more. I knew our relationship was a sham from the very beginning.

I know, at first you were very attracted to me. Or at least as attracted as you could be to any random email address in that giant database of people you throw yourself at every day with complete abandon.

But I looked past that loose reputation. When your little ding-a-ling appeared in my inbox, you were just what I needed. The mildly sappy story of loss (both weight and personal) you proffered in an attempt to gain my love hit me at just the right time, like a last-call lemondrop at 1:45 and when you're staring a long night alone right in the face. I was lonely. I needed a blog-worthy item to do with Dallas, and you were there.

It was a one time thing, and I'm sorry you seem to have gotten the wrong idea.

Nothing's ever good enough for you, is it? No, you had your publicist call me five days after our glorious one night stand and accuse me of being mean to you. That is, like, so kindergarten playground. Then, you ask me me remove the blog item from the blogosphere. Oh, but, my dear, I gave you just what you wanted: sweet, sweet publicity.

I thought I was throwing out all the right signals.

I was wearing my big alternative weekly hat when we met. You could have asked our mutual friend Google about me, and you'd have known what you were getting into. But, sadly, little press release, if you're not going to be discreet about who you jump in the sack with, you can't complain when you wake up with a burning sensation.

Despite that, think of what we made together: semi-sarcastic blog goodness throwing mockery willy-nilly upon the British royal family!

--Used, then abused in Dallas, TX --Andrea Grimes

PS: I'm not really sterile

For this, you traveled to Africa?

So what has ex-Observer music editor Sam Machkovech been up to since he and the paper parted ways? Rafting down the Nile River. Judging by that hand signal he's throwing, I'd say that Sam may have left the Observer, but some of that Observer spirit hasn't yet left him. --Merritt Martin