Image via.

Not a congressman.

The first tweet hurt Steve Stockman's feelings a little. It read, in full: "YOU ARE A STUPID FAT FUCK."

"I haven't actually put on any weight lately," Stockman writes in an email. "And though I'm not thin, I think 'fat' would be an overstatement."

The next few tweets, all similarly furious, were also rather upsetting until, his ego bruised and his @-replies blowing up, the L.A.-based writer, director and producer realized that he was getting tweets meant for Texas congressman, Ted Nugent BFF and masterful Twitter troll who happens to share his name.

"I get a lot of invitations to prayer breakfasts that I probably wouldn't have before," L.A. Stockman writes. That, he says, and dozens of tweets calling him some iteration of "fat bastard." "Come to think of it, there may be a connection there ..."

More »

Pro wrestling and Glenn Beck are in a fight. Apparently this has been news for a few weeks, but we've only just learned about it, courtesy of Mediaite, who bring us the delightful video clip you see above, of WWE commentator Michael Cole trying his hardest to storm Glenn Beck's Las Colinas studio for an interview. Spoiler: he does not succeed.

The very important, deeply serious back story: WWE has invented two "Tea Party" villain characters named Zeb Coulter and Jack Swagger. They wear safari vests, hate illegal immigrants, and are real bullish on President's Day. In the video promo for WWE at the link, they fulminate about "hard-working English speaking folk" losing their jobs to shadowy illegals, against a backdrop of a "Don't Tread on Me" flag.

It's all very subtle. Slate pretty much calls this one, terming it a blatant publicity stunt. As opposed to the stuff WWE does to promote literacy and fight world hunger.

Several people, probably the ones you'd expect, have taken the bait. Alex Jones and his InfoWars folks got pissed off about it first. Beck leapt on the bandwagon shortly thereafter, asking "Did George Soros buy the WWE?"

More »

When last we heard from Southlake resident, event planner and patriotic pants designer Glenn Beck, he had just announced his plans for a $2 billion libertarian community, which he's dubbed Independence, USA. Will Independence be located in Texas? Can a theme park designed by Beck and David Barton possibly be any fun? Is this what happens when you persistently roll up and smoke pages torn from Atlas Shrugged? We don't know the answers to any of those questions just yet. Except the last one, which: yes.

As Right Wing Watch points out this morning, Beck made one other announcement while outlining his plans for Independence, an announcement which we really didn't give the rapt attention it deserved at the time. Namely, Beck plans to produce a live Fourth of July show, told from the perspective of the man in the moon. The man in the moon, as you may have guessed, loves America.

More »

Next up for Abbott: a blackbuck shooting contest with the entire United Nations.

Last week, in an interview with the New Republic, President Obama said something about his love for skeet shooting, the subtle art of throwing a clay disk up in the air and shooting the hell out of it.

"Up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time," the president told the magazine. He was trying to make a point about not being completely anti-gun, following up the skeet shooting anecdote with one about hunting, saying, "And I have profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake."

Fine. The president is clearly trying to counteract his reputation among conservatives as a big ol' gun-hating, Commie-loving, secret-Muslim-being -- never mind. You get the idea. Instead, that interview has led to a wave of skeet skepticism from right-wing politicians and pundits, including a Tennessee congresswoman who's demanding photos of said skeet shooting and challenging Obama to a shooting contest.

More »

From the Texas Nationalist Movement's webpage

Everyone has their own way of coping with or celebrating the results of last night's election. For his part, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott doesn't appear to have made good on his threat to arrest any European election monitors (who are, by the way, due to give a news conference in Washington tomorrow detailing their findings). Instead, Abbott responded to President Obama's re-election by releasing a brief statement this morning via Facebook. It reads, in full:

Texas remains one of the reddest states in the country and is the last bastion of conservatism. Now more than ever Texas must lead the nation! I'll continue to fight every day against an overreaching federal government to protect the liberties that Texans hold so dearly.

In response, more than 100 of Abbott's Facebook fans all have roughly the same suggestion. In the words of one guy: "Secede. I'm done with the Republic as a whole. They're going to he'll [sic], we don't need to go with them."

More »

Karen Handel

Karen Handel is back, and she's bringing 304 pages with her. Susan G. Komen For The Cure's ex-vice president of public policy, who resigned in February after an enormous flap over Komen's attempt to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood, is writing a tell-all, to be published in September by Howard Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Its full title: Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

Now-departing Komen CEO Nancy Brinker and Handel herself both insisted at the time that the Planned Parenthood decision wasn't engineered by Handel. In a voluminous public resignation letter, Handel wrote: >

More »

​Perhaps you've heard: A spider monkey got loose at the Dallas Zoo this morning. It's back in its cage now, say zoo officials, who didn't have to tranq or Jabari the monkey to get it back behind bars. But the zoo also can't get the monkey to stop tweeting.

Almost "as soon as the call went out," says Dallas Zoo spokesperson Susan Eckert, someone created today's must-follow: the amusing Dallas Zoo Monkey Twitter account, which is still very much on the loose. ("I'll keep on tweeting until they take my iPhone away!"). Zoo officials almost immediately sent word that the account was not affiliated with, you know, the zoo. (You've been warned, Red Cross.) So, why the heads-up?

Well, as Eckert tells Unfair Park in an early front-runner for Quote of the Year™, "We'd rather not have somebody speaking as our monkey." I read that back to her to make sure I'd typed that correctly. I could hear her shaking her head. "It's a rogue monkey," she said. "A rogue monkey."

Via.

​Sam's World Series Game 1 preview-open thread's upcoming any minute now; start polishing your bats. Till then, this: The governor's office sends word that Rick Perry has, but of course, made a wager with Missouri Governor Jay Nixon concerning the outcome of Rangers-Cardinals. And it's not a terribly thrilling wager -- nothing involving the exchange of death-row inmates or illegal immigrants. Just a food thing:

"With all due respect to the Cardinals and their legendary fan base, it's really their bad luck that they're running up against the Texas Rangers, a team of destiny poised to win the World Series," Gov. Perry said. "The Cardinals have had a great run, but this is about the here and now, and as Gov. Nixon and his fellow Missourians are about to discover, you simply can't mess with Texas."

In the spirit of friendly competition, Gov. Perry has wagered world class Texas barbeque from the Salt Lick in Driftwood and Dr. Pepper. Gov. Nixon has wagered an order of St. Louis toasted ravioli, gourmet prosciutto salami and other meats, frozen custard, and a six-pack of Budweiser from Anheuser-Busch, which is headquartered in St. Louis.

"It will be a great day for the state of Missouri when the Redbirds wrap up the 11th World Championship in the team's storied history, the second most world championships of any major league baseball franchise," Gov. Nixon said. "I appreciate Gov. Perry's willingness to take on this wager, and I look forward to watching the Show-Me State win another historic series."

The Salt Lick? They have one of those in the Austin airport, ya know. (No Smitty's? Louie Mueller's? Mac's, even?) For Nixon's sake, I hope it's at least Dublin Dr Pepper.

​Been watching Gawker's mini-series The Worst 50 States in America solely to see where The Great State of Texas landed up -- figured surely it would rate Top 10, if only because of a certain presidential candidate who's now the GOP's front-runner. But, no. Texas comes in today at No. 13, sandwiched between Arkansas and Florida. So, let's see ... what's good about our state? Well ... the food, the music and Dazed and Confused. All right, all right, all right. And the bad?

Welp, let's see here: Rick Perry, George W. Bush, the board of education, Cameron Todd Willingham, the culture of capital punishment as a whole, guns, religious zealotry both inane and dangerous, smog-filled Houston, airless Dallas, scorched wasteland El Paso, and the way they treat their immigrants, their blacks, their gays, and their women. But mostly Texas is awful because despite all the miseries it inflicts upon the rest of the country (and its own citizenry), Texans rarely stop loudly and aggressively stating what a great, awesome, perfect place Texas is. The Texan ego is as big as the state, and no matter how much you point out to them that, uh, hey what about all this extremely terrible stuff, they will not listen. If you guys would just shut up about if for a while, the rest of us might like you a little more.

ReplicaBuildings/InFocusTech

​A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to Boing Boing, which yesterday pointed out that you can buy a replica of the Texas School Book Depository made of pewter courtesy something called InFocusTech. (Which prompted this comment: "It's a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, and handsomely electroplated in antique pewter.") Turns out, though, that isn't the only local landmark available. Far from it. You can also get the Adolphus, the Merc, Old Red, Reunion Tower, the Kirby Building, the Magnolia Hotel and Fountain Place, among others. Sadly, there's still very little retail.

But this reminds me: This morning something called Second Act ran a piece about how folks are moving from the suburbs back into the city, and it includes a local couple who adiosed Frisco for downtown Dallas:

Kandice Bridges and her husband moved back to Dallas with their two children after spending two and a half years in suburban Frisco, Texas because "it didn't feel cozy, like our established, older Dallas neighborhood," she says. "I know my neighbors in my Dallas neighborhood better than I ever knew my neighbors in Frisco. I like the hustle and bustle of downtown, and having the Arts District close by. I take advantage of local organic produce co-ops and the vibrant farmers market downtown."

Bridges acknowledges that there are trade-offs, such as less house for more money and the expense of private school, but says, "I wouldn't want it any other way."