Dallas Blog

Late last fall, Glenna Whitley and I were interviewed for the We Channel documentary Women On Death Row 3. The producers were featuring Tarrant County's first woman to be sentenced to death, Chelsea Richardson, about whom Glenna and I wrote for the paper version of Unfair Park back in 2004. Richardson has been convicted of helping her boyfriend, Andrew Wamsley, murder his parents for their -- meager, once you divide it up among the four people involved in the crime and, oh, plus those pesky other family members -- insurance money.

Tune in at 8 p.m. on the We channel. I haven't seen the documentary yet, though some girl did friend me on MySpace after seeing it during its first airing earlier this month. Ladies and gentlemen, We have arrived. --Andrea Grimes

Well, Austin is south of Dallas. And, don’t lie. Even though you can still find a certain Andrea Grimes in the Night & Day pages of the paper version of Unfair Park, you miss Girl on Top. Well, stop whining and pouring out 40s in her honor already. She’s right here and here … besides, she’d be pissed at you for wasting the hooch. --Merritt Martin

I've packed up my carnivorous plant and my reporter's notebook-sized marker drawing by Tony Bones. The mini-cassette of my brief interview with Gavin Rossdale is carefully tucked away in Ziploc. The Hornbuckle research practically needed its own box, but I managed to get what's left of every unused promotional item ever sent to me by Bliss Spa in one tiny corner of cardboard with the Lieutenant Blender's Hurricane In A Bag.

As of the end of the day, I will have no longer have a home next to the thundering voice of Fingers of Fury on the seventh floor of 2501 Oak Lawn Ave. I won't depart for Austin for another week, but there's a lot to be done in the meantime. And by that, I mainly mean boozing and mislabeling boxes before I speed south on I-35 with two meowing cats in crates to make my new home in Austin.

Not the Schubert she's looking for, but he'll do in a pinch, most likely.

On our way to the Granada Theater holiday party last Thursday, my Man 'o The Hour and I noticed a big green sign taped to a pole on the corner of Greenville and McCommas: "SCHUBERT?" it read, with an e-mail address beneath. So, clever piano teacher marketing or something more?

A couple of e-mails later, a story of lost love and destiny emerged: Lori is looking for a guy named Michael who plays piano and has a cat named Schubert. They met on Greenville Avenue. She wrote to Unfair Park, "We did exchange a decent amount of information, but just little enough for it to be difficult to find each other without a little help from God or the Universe."

So, Michael and Schubert (or if you know Michael and Schubert, or if you're Michael and Schubert's girlfriend and you need to cut someone), e-mail me and I'll pass along Lori's contact info. Or maybe you've already got it and just needed a little push. --Andrea Grimes

I note for the record that I did finally speak with the Park Cities Volkswagen folks after e-mailing them. They had the unfortunate experience of hearing the bitchiest side of me (as did the very nice, slightly terrified man 'o the hour waiting quietly in the other room to take me to the holiday shindig at the Granada last night, which was awesome, BTW). But they did refund the cost of my oil change nonetheless. Thanks, guys. --Andrea Grimes

Got a couple of e-mails this morning asking about the words to "Booty Juice," the poem by Militant X Amerikkan that I reference in this week's column on local poetry slammers. I didn't quote the piece in my article, since I don't really know how to handle the phrase, "There is nothing better on this green earth than having a woman's ass for your dinner." Unfortunately, we have a very strict separation of church and state policy here at the paper, or I'd be hanging out at the cash window on ad payment day for some advice on the subject.

I asked Militant X if I could reprint "Booty Juice," and he gave me an enthusiastic affirmative: "I am tickled pink!" After the jump, at your own risk. Warning: It's not work-friendly, not spell-check-friendly and, ya know, probably a little too friendly all things considered. Happy holidays! --Andrea Grimes

Dear Someone Who Has Access To A Phone At Park Cities Volkswagen, Dallas' No. 1 Volkswagen Dealer,

Pick up the phone. Call me. Reassure me that I am not currently on the receiving end of some of the worst customer service in the history of the planet. If you can't do it for me, do it for Alexander Graham Bell, who never wanted to see the apparatus he worked so diligently to invent ignored like this. We are now on Day 11 of "When's Volkswagen Gonna Call? Watch."

Because, see, it's not just one thing. It's not just the waiting by the phone. It's not just the broken promises. I'm used to all that. It's your utter silence, the way you've used me and tossed me to the curb with all the other cheap imports. And I won't take it, Park Cities Volkswagen. Hell hath no fury like a woman fahrvegnugened.

I have so thoroughly enjoyed the barrage of mail and comments received about my $30,000 millionaire expose in last week's paper version of Unfair Park. Even (or especially) the part when a guy wrote in calling me a "jaded, man-hating cunt." I just wish he hadn't held back, you know? Oh, well. I needed a catchy name for my next blog, anyway.

The best part was hearing the first-person accounts of homo sapiens douchebagus interactions from across North Texas. You, brave readers, are to be commended for your courage and valor in dealing with douchebagus, who, as we all know, can be a difficult creature. But in reading these letters, I have gained a fair amount of sympathy (or maybe, empathy) for the $30k millionaire, which perhaps I didn't express enough of in the article. Are we not all victims of a consumeristic, materialistic society of judgmental pricks, striving to cover ourselves in whatever pre-packaged façade we find most appealing? If anybody wants to write 5,000 words on narcissistic functional alcoholic wannabe-hipster writers with inferiority complexes who still haven't gotten over the fact that they weren't even C-list popular in high school, I can totally hook you up with a good lead.

Nevertheless, I've hand-picked a few of the very best first-person accounts to post here that we may all further our education with regard to douchebagus. Knowledge is power, people.

Fred Holston

Grimes' suggested headline for this farewell: "Wherein The Girl On Top Announces Her Plans To Go Down."

It is with both sadness and excitement that I announce to you, dear Friends, my impending departure from this fair city I have called home for the past two and a half years. This means also that my beloved/hated/apathetically regarded Girl On Top column will no longer grace the pages of the paper version of Unfair Park.

In January, I will be making the trek south to Austin, where I'm applying for graduate studies in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Texas, so that my father can finally have tickets to the football games. In the meantime, tentative plans are to freelance, do a lot of stand-up comedy and drink copious amounts of Lone Star beer.

Don't feel bad, Dallas. I go through cities like I go through bottles of Yellow Tail. Let's go hard for the next month and kiss goodbye on January 5th at Club Dada, where I invite you all to join me in saying au revoir and getting real drunk. --Andrea Grimes

A 9-year-old from Richardson came up with this invention. Oh, like you could do better.

Most of the time, when I tell people what I do -- which is, make fun of myself and my peers for a living -- people respond with a hearty, "That's so cool! You must love it!" And I do. Oh, yes, I do. But I have a confession to make. Being the Girl On Top is pretty awesome, but it is nothing compared to the three sweet months I spent as a sales associate at MailBoxes, Etc. in high school.

This was before UPS took over, turned every storefront brown and made us wear earth tones to work. No, this was in the MailBoxes, Etc. heyday, and I was free -- free to pop as much used Bubble Wrap® as I wanted. Ben Franklin once said that beer is proof that God loves us. I weep for him. If only our illustrious forefather had been around for plastic Bubble Wrap®, I feel sure he would have changed his tune. There is nothing more satisfying than the airy POP! of burst Bubble Wrap.

So, while I admire 9-year-old Andy Boler of Richardson for becoming a semi-finalist in the Sealed Air Bubble Wrap® Competition for Young Inventors, all I really want to do is get my hands on his "Bubble Wrap Plant Shelters" and squeeze the protective air pockets right out of them. As a recently received press release gushes, these contraptions "create a light-weight, collapse-able (sic) shelter that protects outdoor plants from the winter cold."

Attention, Bubble Wrap® publicist: Feel free to send me a sample of the plant shelters. There are a lot of outdoor plants I don't own in the yard I don't have that need to be protected from the cold, winter air that's never going to get here. --Andrea Grimes