Dallas News Blog

​I sent Hank Stuever, author of Tinsel, an e-mail this morning to see how his trip back to Frisco had gone this week (he wraps up a three-day stay with a signing in Fort Worth tonight before he heads down to Austin). He responded thusly: "It was great -- no effigy-burning or anything. People came very curious, ready with questions, and bought books. Sort of anti-climatic in a way, but also nicely crowded, esp Legacy Books." He said he'd try to put something longer on his blog today. He then sent word just a little while ago: Bingo.

The item's a long'un. So, an excerpt to go along with this photo Stuever took during his three years, on and off, living in Frisco in search of the American Dream ... or, at least, the Perfect Christmas:

I went to Stonebriar Centre (one last time?) Wednesday afternoon to catch up on some work and answer all sorts of e-mails. (Being on tour is mostly about answering e-mails and voice mails.) I ate at the California Pizza Kitchen and got a Chinese chair massage (my last?). In the food court, while I bought my Route 44 diet cherry limeade at the Sonic, I saw Santa Claus sitting there by himself, eating a Charlie's sub. This is the "new" Santa, who replaced the Santa everyone loved. There are a lot of reasons not to like this new Santa (customers say he's grumpy, has a weird hairdo, etc.) but I think his biggest mistake is sitting in the MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING FOOD COURT eating lunch like he works at a cell-phone kiosk or something. Dude, respect the fourth wall, y' know? Of course, it's exactly the sort of thing I would have put in Tinsel. I thought about joining him, but guess what -- I don't care anymore.

That's a strange feeling.

Washington Post writer Hank Stuever begins a three-day sign-and-speak stint in North Texas tomorrow -- a sprint compared to the marathon of spending three years, on and off, living in Frisco in order to document how folks spend Christmas up thataways for his book Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present. Tomorrow night he's got a signing at the Barnes & Noble in Stonebriar Centre; on Wednesday, he'll be at Legacy Books in Plano; the day after, at Barnes & Noble near the TCU campus. So happens I've got two spare, unread copies of the tome (one was Schutze's!), which'll go to the first two Friends of Unfair Park who can make a convincing case for living in Frisco want them.

Update:  Both copies are gone. Thanks for playing -- and for all the e-mails that read like this one from a good Friend of Unfair Park who passed on a gratis copy: "Looks like an interesting book, but it's so contrary to anything I attach to Christmas."

​A Friend of Unfair Park asked if I wouldn't mind mentioning Bill Minutaglio's appearance at Legacy Books in Plano this Saturday, when the ex-DMN'er heads up north to sign copies of Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life, which he co-wrote with W. Michael Smith. Sure; happy to. Which reminds me: The book's in stores tomorrow, but till then there's this excerpt courtesy The Texas Observer; not to mention this fond farewell from her former colleague at the Dallas Times Herald, one Jim Schutze, penned upon news of her death on January 31, 2007. The publisher, PublicAffairs, also offers this gratis sneak peak concerning Ivins's move to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram following the demise of the Herald. An excerpt from the excerpt:

She wrote her first column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in February 1992 and faxed it to the paper at around 5 p.m. After the fax went through, she called the newsroom.

"Hon, this is Molly Ivins. I'm making sure my column is there. And hon? Can you talk to Ken Bunting? I'm not sure he wants me to say dildo."

She had written about archaic Texas laws involving "lifestyle accessories" and whether or not you should be charged with a crime for owning a certain number of dildos. Bunting, the managing editor, brought the column to editor Mike Blackman. Blackman told people that he felt his newspaper career flashing before his eyes.

"This is crazy, this can't run this way," he said.

​A Friend of Unfair Park sends word: Borders Group is removing from its shelf 200 Waldenbooks locations across the U.S. -- including, as you can tell from the headline, the longstanding Valley View Center location, which opened in October 1999. Employees there only found out about the closure, scheduled for January, yesterday. Per the list of closings, the Borders Express in Collin Creek Mall will also vanish after the holidays, as will the Waldenbooks in Ridgmar Mall in Fort Worth.

The closings are what Borders Group CEO Ron Marshall calls "right-sizing," as in: "Through this right-sizing, we will reduce the number of stores with operating losses, reduce our overall rent expense and lease-adjusted leverage and generate cash flow through sales and working capital reductions." The release does say the list is subject to change, but Borders has been closing Waldenbooks by the dozens in recent years. This leaves 130 Waldenbooks and Borders Express locations after January, none in the DFW.

Bonnie Schmick, spokesperson for Borders, says "we're going to make every effort to place employees in open positions within other Waldenbooks and Borders Express, as well the Borders superstores. And those we are not able to place will receive severance."

​Speaking of great books about Dallas architecture ...

On Monday, shortly after I mentioned that the Dallas Historical Society has reissuing Dallas Rediscovered on its to-do list, a Friend of Unfair Park sent word that the American Institute of Architects-Dallas is planning on updating The American Institute of Architects Guide to Dallas Architecture. After all, it's been precisely a decade since its original publication, and in that time the landscape of the city has changed considerably. Like Bruce Banner into The Hulk.

"We have begun talking about it," says Greg Brown, program director for the Dallas Center for Architecture. "When I started, it was one of the first things that came up: 'We need to republish it.' And so it's on our list of to-dos." Mind you, unlike Rediscovered Dallas -- or several other AIA-Dallas books, among them The Prairie's Yield: Forces Shaping Dallas Architecture From 1840 to 1962 and 1978's Dallasights -- the Guide to Dallas Architecture has never gone out of print.

"It's just that we've lost some of the buildings in there, and others have gone up, and it's time for an update," Brown says. "So we are forming some new committees at the beginning of the year, and one will be a program committee devoted to revisiting the guide. We'll get started on it in 2010. I don't know when the final product will be available." (Note to Greg Brown: Call Justin Terveen.)

Till then, this bonus: Over the weekend, I found in the stacks at Half-Price a copy of Dallasights. (Unlike some historic Dallas tomes, copies aren't expensive. At all.) And so, after the jump you'll find a few pages from the "Downtown Dallas" section -- including essays from Walter Dahlberg and Vincent Carrozza. Jump, but mind the dust.

​A few weeks ago, a good Friend of Unfair Park asked to borrow my copy of Dallas Rediscovered: A Photographic Chronicle of Urban Expansion 1870-1925. Needed it for a research project. Half-Price didn't have a copy; dunno 'bout the library. But, sure, I said. Go ahead; just don't lose it. Because copies of the invaluable tome filled with page after page of buildings long ago vanished for progress and parking lots aren't cheap. Amazon has a few hardbacks available, starting at $58.92; a few cheaper copies are available on eBay; Albris's handful of copies go for between $15 and $201.

Published by the Dallas Historical Society in 1978, it went out of print shortly thereafter -- around '80 or '81, says DHS executive director Jack Bunning. I'd called Bunning a few weeks ago to see if DHS ever had plans to reissue the book; he called back only this afternoon and explained that, sorry, he was delayed by the fact the society just this week is moving back into its renovated digs at the Hall of State after a year away and needs to reassess its exhibits accordingly. But, yes, he says, the DHS does indeed have plays to reissue the book -- as well as 1982's When Dallas Became a City: Letters of John Milton McCoy, 1870-1881.

"They are on what I call our big to-do list," Bunning tells Unfair Park. "But we need to review the copy in the book, and I can't give you any time frame. Both those books are on the big hit list of updating the copy and getting them reprinted. Both were very popular, as I understand it." He's thinking next year. Good enough.

William Kamkwamba will be at SMU tomorrow.

​Perhaps you saw William Kamkwamba on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Wednesday night and thought the co-author and subject of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope just might be The Most Interesting 23-Year-Old in the World. And maybe you said to yourself, "I'd sure like to meet him some day." In which case, your some day is tomorrow: Kamkwamba is among those scheduled to speak on the SMU campus during the TEDxSMU event -- "TED" meaning, of course, "Technology, Entertainment, Design." Of course. Registration's closed for the shindig, but he'll be around campus most of the day speaking and signing his book, and he'll be joined by a roster of deep-thinkers that'll include the several musicians, among them Jill Sobule, Sara Hickman and the Polyphonic Spree. Not that I am advocating crashing the party. Not at all.

Stewart Copeland

​Maybe you missed this when we posted it the first time around -- back in, um, June 2007, when the Police played the American Airlines Center. So, from March '79, here's the band performing (kind of) "The Yellow Rose of Texas" at the original Palladium. (Can't believe that link's still working, to be honest.) Anyway. The reason I mention it is because till this week I had no idea Police drummer Stewart Copeland had a book on shelves about his tenure in that on-and-off band that was, once upon a very long time ago, my favorite in the whole wide world -- well, it was either the Police or Talking Heads. (Or XTC. Or the Clash. Or the Jam. Adam and the Ants, maybe.) Anyway. I also had no idea, even though it says so right there on his Web site, that Copeland was hard at work on a concerto for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

This is what he told The Wall Street Journal a few days ago:

What's up next for you?

Right now, I'm writing a concerto for gamelan for the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. It's the magic music of Bali. The whole island is about art and the music really stands out. The gamelan is a row of bells that are pitched. They create beautiful music, but many of the notes don't exist on western keyboards. The Dallas Symphony has a bunch of Bali heads; D'Drum, they call themselves. I have to figure out something for the orchestra to do.

The piece is set to premiere next year. At which point Sting and Stewart may or may not be speaking again.

​A colleague in Miami thought we might find this interesting: "The Consummation of Dirk," penned by one Jonathan Callahan. It comes from the latest issue of something called The Collagist, an online literary journal. Right. You know the drill.

At first, I thought maybe it was a chopped-and-screwed variation on Jesse Hyde's cover story from 2007, about the time Dirk Nowitzki hightailed it to Australia to find hisself, dig? ("Then came the summer of Dirk's retreat--into the mountains? The desert? On a single-sailed raft, adrift in uncharted seas?") Then I thought it might be just an artfully crafted scouting report ("Dirk drains the first one, all net, and starts screaming and beating his chest like a fucking insane person, stares down the closest Piston or Sixer, who won't meet his fucking eyes, okay?"). Then I thought it could be some overwrought Esquire celebrity profile ("As my stature in the Association swelled, I grew accustomed to hearing the assembled American thousands thunderously chanting my name, causing it to reverberate from the rafters and shake the foundations of the arenas in which we would compete --"). Then I realized, nope, it's just fan fiction ("Well, for a guy who's seven-foot tall, his cock was actually surprisingly average").

Compelling.

​Former Dallas Morning News Cowboys beat writer Gary Myers's new book doesn't look like the easiest read for longtime fans of the home team: The Catch: One Play, Two Dynasties, and the Game That Changed the NFL. (And, with a foreword by Joe Montana!) Early word is good: Publishers Weekly calls it "a resonant look back at a defining moment for fans of both teams ('Montana always heard from Cowboys fans how he broke their hearts with that pass'), this is also an involving story of the characters and traditions upon which the NFL is built." And, yes, it's more than 304 pages about what happened at Candlestick Park on January 10, 1982. Still. Perhaps, then, a warm-up with this excerpt from the excerpt:

This was not a true blood-and-guts, down-and-dirty NFL rivalry. The 49ers played in the NFC West, and the Rams were the team they went into overdrive working themselves up to play twice a year. Dallas showed up on their schedule every now and then, but when one team is good and the other is bad, the game doesn't generate much passion. The Cowboys played in the NFC East. They faced snowballs in Philly. In Washington, the two most popular souvenirs were "Fuck Dallas" pins and T-shirts that said, "I Root for Two Teams: the Redskins and Whoever Is Playing Dallas." In New York, the fans would drop an f-bomb or two, but a noticeable chunk of Cowboys fans still managed to scoop up tickets every year when Dallas played at Giants Stadium.

The Cowboys were more insulted than impressed when Montana and the 49ers tarnished the glitzy star on their helmets with a 45-14 beating in the sixth game of the 1981 season. It was 21-0 after the first quarter. The 49ers had 440 yards offense and held the Cowboys to 192. The 49ers ran 80 plays. The Cowboys just 53. It was a complete butt-kicking. That didn't make the Cowboys respect the 49ers or even hate them, which infuriated the Niners. All Dallas did was rationalize the loss by saying the real 'Boys didn't show up. From that point forward, the 49ers had one wish for January: We want Dallas.

Back in July we noted that current Dallas Morning News photographer David Woo and former News photographer Richard Pruitt collaborated on a side project due on coffee tables in November: a tome titled Top Dogs and Their Pets, proceeds from which toward rescuing, rehabbing and re-housing abused puppies. This week the book's publisher, Pediment Publishing, has posted more making-ofs; after the jump, Pat Green, Lisa Loeb and a former president named Bush. But here, of course, is Sully Sullenberger, the pride of Denison, and just when you thought he couldn't get more awwwww.

​So many pages of Mary Suhm's FY2009-2010 budget left to sort through, and so little time left till tomorrow's council budget briefing. But several Friends of Unfair Park worry about an item they found at the very bottom of the page devoted to the Central Library's line-item breakdown: the amount of money being spent on, ya know, books for the bookshelves. Because in the current budget, the council OK'd spending $1,719,121 on new books -- though only $1,670,852 appears to have been spent. But in the new budget, Suhm's allocated a mere $470,095 -- which is quite the cut, given the reported rise in library use 'round the country (and locally), as folks figure it's cheaper to borrow than to buy.

Neighborhood libraries will also endure substantive cuts: $1,768,366 allocated this year to $872,823 proposed for next year. (Suhm's budget says that only $355,384 was guesstimated spent.) But noted The Boston Globe in March, library budgets are often the first to go in these tough times.

Julie Powell

​Word is the Dallas Museum of Art still has overflow-simulcast tickets left for tonight's appearance by Julie Powell, the former blogger-turned-book author whose moniker makes up one half of the movie title Julie & Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as the Austin native who spent a year cooking her way through Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My review of Nora Ephron's adaptation of both Powell's book and Child's sparkling memoir My Life in France will appear in next week's paper version of Unfair Park, as the movie opens August 7.

But Powell's in town today -- hey, look, she had tacos for lunch -- and about an hour ago we sat down at her hotel to talk about having one's life story merged, at times rather uncomfortably, with that of a cultural icon who taught the world to cook and taught a self-proclaimed government drone "what it takes to find your way in the world," as Powell writes in the book. Below is our interview, fresh out of the oven. And for those playing along at home, you can still find her blog -- The Julie/Julia Project -- resting comfortably right here.

Owen Wilson, from the forthcoming book Top Dogs and Their Pets

​Current Dallas Morning News photographer David Woo and former Dallas Morning News photographer Richard Pruitt have been moonlighting on a side project: a coffee-table book titled Top Dogs and Their Pets, proceeds from which toward rescuing, rehabbing and re-housing abused puppies. The book's not out till November, but I discovered the site through a series of making-of videos being posted by Pediment Publishing (which, right, sounds like where Elaine Benes used to work) featuring the likes of Kinky Friedman, Sara Hickman, Dr. Phil and Steve Miller and their pets. (Miller's video is now after the jump.)

They're just a tip of the bold-faced iceberg: The book's site features copious photos of Owen Wilson and Jimmy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, Byron Nelson, Sully Sullenberger, Lisa Loeb, Isaac Mizrahi, Robert Decherd (!), Tony Dorsett and George W. Bush. Like to see that video. Till then, then, how 'bout a classic rocker from St. Mark's and Woodrow?

 This is probably a way-too-early heads-up, but I just opened the afternoon mail to find a copy of Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present, due on bookshelves 'round November 12 -- just in time for all your gift-giving needs. And, trust me, those living up in Collin and Denton counties will want to take particular note of the tome, penned by Washington Post Style section writer Hank Stuever -- because, see, the whole thing's set in Frisco, where the Oklahoma City native lived on and off in 2006, '07 and '08 whilst documenting the the lives of Friscoans as they guzzled some holiday spirit.

And who might those families be? From Stuever's Web site, we find this sneak peek at Tinsel:

• Tammie Parnell, a gated-community wife and supermom who runs her own Christmas decorating business. She charges her clients up to $1,000 a day to put up their artificial trees, garland and other trinkets, even as it distracts her from the cozy, perfect, family holiday she envisions.
• Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski, who own that house every community has, the one with cars lined up around the block to see the lights display, which, at Jeff and Bridgette's place, dance in time to music. Now Jeff has been hired to create a display three times as big at Frisco's newly developed town square. But what's life like inside the brightest house in town?
• Caroll Cavazos, a hardworking single mom who struggles stay upbeat during the production of her megachurch's Christmas pageant, focusing on the "reason for the season" even as she finds herself navigating the throngs at Best Buy at the Black Friday sales.

I never knew I wanted to know so much about the Centre at Preston Ridge and Fetal Fotos.

We're awaiting our very copy of John F. Wasik's new book Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream, due to arrive shortly, in which he documents how the housing boom went bust and how walkable cities died a slow death, surprise surprise. And while Dallas and the surrounding suburbs don't get much mention in the tome, the city does show up on a surprising list called, ahem, "Surprise Cities," which are identified as metropolises that are "primed for some growth and offer multiple amenties." Also on the list: Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City-St. Louis, Birmingham and Des Moines, so we've got that going for us, which is nice. Wasik also references "the ring of overdeveloped towns surrounding Dallas" in this just-posted essay about how we need to kill the "spurbs," damn right.

Still not sure who gets the copy of Holy Roller (though the Monty Python fan's a real player), but today is the official publication date of former Dallas Observer editor Julie Lyons's tome that bears the subtitle "Finding Redemption and the Holy Ghost in a Forgotten Texas Church." That church is The Body of Christ Assembly in South Dallas, where Julie says that in April of 1990 she found crack addicts being healed through prayer -- "a news tip from God," as she describes it, since, back then, she was a crime reporter for the Dallas Times Herald looking for both a fresh angle on a worn-out news story and an honest-to-God miracle. Turned out to be quite the two-fer.

Friends of Unfair Park, of course, will take particular interest in Chapter 15 -- the one titled "Bible Girl," in which Julie writes about the genesis of her Unfair Park column. She writes of readers' reactions to the one dealing with her "struggle with same-sex attraction"; she says she "got a kick out of my critics' seemingly desperate need to discredit what God had done for me" as they wrote comments that took "digs at my church and family, and crude speculation regarding which sex toys I might've preferred in my supposed previous life as a lesbian."

Today, Rod Dreher has posted to his BeliefNet blog, Crunchy Con, an interview with our former leader in which they get religion. He also finds out what she's been up to since Bible Girl left Unfair Park to the heathens.

A Friend of Unfair Park who read my Memorial Day item points our direction toward Monday's episode of Fresh Air, during which Terry Gross spoke with former Marine Donovan Campbell about new book Joker One, his recently published (and well-received) memoir about his tours of duty in Iraq. (The interview was a rebroadcast of a March 5 Fresh Air.) A Princeton grad, Campbell and his family now live in Dallas; he's a manager at PepsiCo and had been during his time in the service.

At left you'll find a good chunk of the book available for preview. Last month, Random House also made a trailer for the book, and Grapevine-based Caffeinated Studios is responsible for the book's Web site. Dispatches and A Rumor of War never had one of those.

Edwin "Bud" Shrake, the Fort Worth native and former Dallas Times Herald and Dallas Morning News sportswriter, died this morning in Austin at the age of 77. He wrote a lot of essential books, including the best-selling sports tome of all time, but longtime fans will fondly recall his Willie Nelson and Barry Switzer bios and Songwriter screenplay his Fort Worth Press writing, some of which is collected in this must-read. Here, he spoke with Texas Monthly bossman Evan Smith about his life and career, envied by most every Texas-born writer I've ever known or been.

Hey now, what's this?

Remember that headline back in March, "The First Christian Book Expo May Wind Up Being the Last Christian Book Expo"? At least one Friend of Unfair Park remembers it well, because that Friend -- who had a wonderful bar mitzvah long, long ago -- sends along this Christian Retailing item that says the event's a goner. "Failed debut" is the phrase you're looking for, which is a shame; no doubt a certain Bible Girl with a book due next month might have made a cameo at next year's wingding. Also noted in the story:

[The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association] is also going to ask members to help it meet an estimated $250,000 shortfall on the three-day event at the Dallas Convention Center, where total attendance was a tenth of the 15,000 that had been projected. More than 60 publishers and suppliers took part in the March 19-22 program that included workshops, debates and opportunities for visitors -- who paid admission -- to buy books.

When reached for comment, God blamed the poor turnout on "the lack of a convention center hotel."

The duo behind the bestselling weight-loss how-to Skinny Bitch are back with a follow-up: Skinny Bastard, due to hit stores Monday. And it features among its famous faces several vegan athletes, including them a certain hobbled Dallas Maverick who's been sidelined during the playoffs. Alas, The New York Times has done its due diligence:

The authors added a section on professional athletes who follow a vegan or vegetarian diet (although not necessarily the one presented in Skinny Bitch), including Ricky Williams, a running back for the Miami Dolphins, and Jerry Stackhouse, a shooting guard for the Dallas Mavericks. (A spokeswoman for the Mavericks said Mr. Stackhouse was now back to eating meat.)

Jenny the Elephant, as drawn by a certain humorist of note

Hoards of lit fans -- which is to say, people who still read actual books -- filled in the tapestried seats of McFarlin Auditorium last night and listened to humorist, essayist and This American Life favorite David Sedaris regale us with tales of pompous, affected accents; kookaburras and what it's like to live in France while the United States has a black president. Oh, and he also mentioned a certain elephant in the room -- or Dallas Zoo, to be more precise.

Sedaris mentioned that usually, personal requests -- like an appearance with a dying kid or his speaking out on behalf of a particular cause -- are usually turned down by his agent well before they ever make it to him. But then he got a letter from Lily Tomlin, so, yes, you can see where this is going. And though he said he'd "be more inclined to talk about a supermarket attendant everyone made fun of" before getting around to elephants living in captivity, Sedaris said, "I like Lily Tomlin. I really like Lily Tomlin." He explained a bit about Jenny the Elephant's situation -- though not too much, because, look, this clearly isn't his thing.

He said, "There's something called Citizens for Jenny ... so ... you ... call them. You can't beat Lily. I don't know if she's got a zebra in Cincinnati she's [taken an interest in]. Bea Arthur seems to care too, and they're both great." Then he moved on to other topics, one being that during this recession we all should really try to get a deal on a room at the Adolphus because "the Adolphus is fantastic. I think. You won't find shit on your shower curtains there." (Don't worry -- that isn't Sedaris's sole guideline for good hotel rooms, just an observation hanging around from an earlier anecdote.)

If you really need a copy of this book, it's available for 99 cents right here. Word is, it's awesome.

Long story short: I'm a sucker for old kids' books for the 5-year-old who lives in my house. Probably buy a handful every month at Half Price Books, and 'bout a month ago, via BoingBoing, I discovered Vintage Kids' Books My Kid Loves, which became the reason I spent the better part of a Saturday searching shelves in vain for a copy of the 1986 book The Dallas Titans Get Ready for Bed.

Anyway.

Today I noticed that shortly after the BB item was posted, someone had posted in the comments a note that the Dallas-based re-seller had yanked from its bookshelves all of its pre-1986 kids' books due to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which, right, was all about keeping lead toys made in China out of wee ones' hands (and mouths) but also dealt with kids' books published  before stricter printing regulations went into effect in '86. A brisk Google search later, and, yup, the Star-Telegram on March 5 made mention of Half Price's efforts -- voluntary, it should be noted even if the story didn't note it -- to pull and test those golden-oldies.

So, a month later, I figured it was time to check in with Half Price's Steve Leach, the chain's so-called "buy guy," for an update, lest I place a lead-tainted tome in the boy's grubby mitts.

Had totally intended to attend this weekend's Christian Book Expo at the Dallas Convention Center, if only for the cameo appearance by the godless Christopher Hitchens. Alas, my weekend got away from me, and, sadly, no expo for me. Or for most folks, as it turns out: Publishers Weekly today reports that only 1,500 consumer attendees showed up, which was way below organizers' prayed-for 20,000. And it wasn't for lack of advance (good) word: The show's been in the works for two years. Notes PW:

Stacks of unsold books and glum publishers stood for three days inside the cavernous Dallas Convention Center this past weekend at the Christian Book Expo, a first-of-its-kind event designed to connect publishers and authors directly with readers in the evangelical Christian market. Only problem was there were few readers to connect with, despite the show's location in Dallas, the buckle of the Bible Belt and a top market for Christian publishers. ... Off the record, exhibitor publishers rolled their eyes heavenward, but spoke with circumspection on the record. "Every new experience has a few nicks and bruises, but things can be worked out," said Greg Petree, v-p of marketing at Howard Books. A few were more blunt. "We can't afford these kinds of risks," said Dennis R. Hillman, publisher at Kregel Publications. "In a year like this the last thing we want to do is something that has no payoff."

I, of course, blame the lack of a proper convention center hotel. After the jump, Hitchens's introductory remarks.

Allison V. Smith

Quincy Jones signs a copy of his book for his old friend (and my pediatrician), Dr. Bob.

Last night, Quincy Jones got a jump on signing copies of his coffee-table history-of The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions, which he'll do for you starting at 6 p.m. at the Barnes & Noble at Lincoln Park. With his good pal Allison V. Smith in tow, Q stopped by UT Southwestern's Zale Lipshy to see his dear pal and Quincy Jones Foundation board member Robert Kramer, the beloved pediatrician who's currently a patient following a dissected aortic aneurysm one month ago.

Says Allison, Q was a big hit at the hospital as he signed autographs and took pictures with anyone who asked. Told you the man was a sweetheart. So, see you tonight, right? Right.

Andrea Buchanan

Andrea Buchanan didn't know when she began writing Note to Self two years ago that the book would be released during the country's darkest hour in decades. Not bad timing for a compilation of tales about women transcending tough times.

The award-winning writer, producer and director -- best known for her work on VH1's Behind the Music -- was raised in Lewisville, and she visited Dallas this week to promote the book with one of its local contributors.

If you've forgotten the story of Sue Sandford, she's the University Park woman who, in 2005, took in not three, not five, but 20 -- yes, 20 -- Hurricane Katrina survivors. Some 30 people -- including Linda and James McCray, who'd flown in from New Orleans for the occasion -- gathered at the Uptown Borders Tuesday night to hear Buchanan and Sandford read.

Buchanan began with the introduction. Since the book includes personal and revealing stories from 30 women (including internationally acclaimed ones like Sheryl Crow, Marianne Williamson and Jenny Bicks), Buchanan felt it only fair that she too spill her guts about the "Big Three:" humiliation, heartbreak and hardship. The anecdote she read details what it was like to be a would-be '80s homecoming queen and aspiring model in Lewisville who was suddenly blindsided by a rare illness.

What you see above is the cover to a slim 1962 tome published by Reinhold in conjunction with the Dallas chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Clearly, the copy I picked up this week at the Forestwood Antique Mall was a downright steal: $25, or $100 less than the copy you can purchase from these fine booksellers.

The whole book, all 80 pages, is a fascinating read -- a trip through the Dallas that is, was and could have been. After the jump, you'll find a scanned excerpt from the chapter titled, simply, "NOW."

My favorite sports book of all time is Mike Shropshire's Seasons in Hell: With Billy Martin, Whitey Herzog and The Worst Baseball Team in History -- The 1973-1975 Texas Rangers. We excerpted the book in 1996, and Michael Hogue's original artwork accompanying the piece still hangs in my office -- that's it at right. (Michael gave me a sweet deal.) Anyway, long story short, a Friend of Unfair Park sends word that the former Fort Worth Star-Telegram-er is still writing about the Strangers -- this time for Slate, which is blessed this afternoon with a story that asks and (kinda, sorta?) answers the question, "How did A-Rod's Rangers become ground zero for baseball's steroids scandal?" A sampling of the man's greatness, required reading for all who love and loathe our team in equal amounts.

While I wouldn't wish a stint with the Rangers on any man, my patience with A-Rod vanishes when he drags the weatherman into the equation. "You know, it was hot in Texas every day," Rodriguez said to [Peter] Gammons by way of explanation for his doping. "It was over 100 degrees. You know, you felt like -- without trying to over-investigate what you're taking -- can I have an edge, just to get out there and play every day?"

If A-Rod had bothered to ask around, he would have learned a local folk remedy to defeat the heat. It's called a Fort Worth Air Conditioner, and it consists of a large plastic cup filled with tequila on the rocks, colored by a couple of tablespoons of orange juice. Rangers players had relied on that concoction for three decades, and nobody ever heard a single one of them carp about life within the world's largest sauna. That was the old Arlington Stadium, with its shadeless metal stands configured like a gravel pit, where the scoreboard thermometer once hit 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the first inning of a night game.

Bryan Burrough was in town earlier this week to sell a few copies of his must-read tome The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes. Been looking forward to the book ever since September, matter of fact, when Vanity Fair excerpted a chapter that made mention of H.L. Hunt strolling through downtown Dallas in 1948. You can read another excerpt on Tina Brown's Daily Beast, where Burrough has also posted a piece titled "The Death of Texas Power," in which he insists that "the power of Texas oilmen and politicians has sunk to prewar levels," with prewar referring to, ya know, World War II. He writes:

George W. is gone, as is his father, as is Tom Delay, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm and a dozen other Texas troublemakers. Now, with Bush out of office, all that's left of Texas political power is a sullen Boone Pickens and fifty-odd Congressmen no one's ever heard of. Here's how bad it's gotten. The most visible Texas politician in America right now is Ron Paul. Ron. Frickin. Paul. Jesus.

Poor Kay Bailey.

Courtesy the Nasher Sculpture Center

John Updike signing a copy of The Early Stories: 1953-1975 following his NasherSalon appearance on January 10, 2008

As mentioned earlier, John Updike's last visit to Dallas was exactly one year ago, when he visited with WFAA-Channel 8's John McCaa at the NasherSalon 2008 Lecture Series. After the jump, a wonderful photo of the two men on the Nasher stage courtesy Kristen Gibbins, communications manager at the Nasher Sculpture Center; if nothing else, McCaa now has a terrific keepsake of his visit with the author, who died this morning at the age of 76. But I do love this close-up, which Gibbins also sent. As Literary Kicks' founder Levi Asher wrote three years ago following Updike's appearance at the New York Public Library, "Updike has a mild manner and a great smile, a smile so big that at times there seem to be three people on stage: [moderator] Jeffrey Goldberg, John Updike and John Updike's smile."