Buzz

How 'bout the "Greyhound?"
As any expectant couple can tell you, it's a big, big decision: What to name the new baby.

Dallas Area Rapid Transit Authority apparently didn't realize just how big a decision. When DART's bouncing baby, the gleaming train service between Dallas and Irving, was belatedly born last month, the proud parents, unfortunately, didn't name it the "Esther Express" after a favorite great-aunt or the "Brittany Bullet" because they live in a trailer park. No, the creative minds at DART named the new rail service the "Trinity Railway Express" and refer to it in much of their information by the catchy diminutive "Trinity Express."

Problem is, there's already a company with that name, and--if you think it's confusing to have two little Austins in first grade--businesses see duplicating their name as a financial disaster.

So, faster than you can say, "Who wants to go to Irving anyway?" lawyers for Trinity Express, Inc., a Lewisville transportation brokering company, filed a lawsuit to force DART to find a new name for the rail line.

Donna Morris, lawyer for the non-DART Trinity Express, doesn't buy DART's arguments that forcing it to pick a new name and reprint and repaint everything would be financially unthinkable. "DART called in September and asked permission to use the name," she says, but Trinity Express refused to give it for a name that was substantially similar to theirs. But, she says, "DART went ahead and painted logos, knowing my client would object." DART isn't saying anything.

So, depending on what happens at a court hearing later this month, Irving commuters may find themselves riding, the Train Formerly Known as Trinity Railway Express.

A little late for nostalgia
Lavon Pagan of Dallas' Pagan Rhythms has expanded his business from secondhand CDs to nostalgia-construction materials. Specifically, Pagan (you gotta love that name) has salvaged somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 art deco glass blocks from the sad rubble pile on Mockingbird that once was the very cool Dr Pepper building. Pagan is gambling that Dallasites, who apparently didn't care enough to save the building, will be thrilled to own a chunk of its carcass.

The foot-by-foot-sized blocks, which Pagan is selling at $7 a piece, are disappearing faster than architecturally significant buildings in a city full of vulgarians. Pagan figures he'll sell about half as mementos to folks who loved the building, and the other half in bulk (at a bulk discount) to creative remodelers.

Pagan, who has a special affinity for artistic uses for glass, laments the passing of the old building and doesn't feel like an architectural vulture. "I prefer to see myself as a preservationist; I like to think of all the places in Dallas that a small part of the Dr Pepper building will live on."

Discovering Cowtown
The Dallas Adventure Club--sometimes known as the Dallas Citizens Council--has been enjoying more hijinks. The DCC board recently took a road trip to exotic Fort Worth: you know--the rustic burg on the other side of the slash in D/FW. The Fort Worth tour gave the DCCers an opportunity to gather intelligence on Sundance Square. (Note for emigres and, apparently, DCC members: Sundance Square affords Cowtown's downtown something approximating vibrant nightlife--as opposed to Dallas' downtown, which basically offers terrifying solitude amid acres of ground-level parking.)

It never ceases to amuse Buzz that Sundance Square is named after the Sundance Kid of Butch Cassidy fame. How apt: a real estate development named after a thief--a murderous one at that.

If the DCC board was shamed by upstart Fort Worth's success at the very thing that has eluded Dallas for decades, you'd never know it from their newsletter, which quotes one member saying: "Fort Worth is a wonderful example of what individuals and corporations can do to revitalize their city centers. Dallas and its leaders should be inspired by our neighbor's example."

And they haven't even seen Fort Worth's art district yet.

Infanticide as an Olympic event?
Unless you've been living in the old SuperCollider pit, you can't help but notice that the media is slobbering all over the Darlie Routier murder trial. Just reporting the most basic facts makes the most sedate, boring, old-fart daily newspaper (Who could Buzz be referring to?) sound like a sleazy tabloid (And you better believe Buzz knows from sleazy tabloids.): Double infanticide. Allegedly self-mutilating momma. Not to mention an extremely spooky extended family. In short, the media from Kerrville to Kyrgyzstan wants a piece of this Mega Mommy Dearest media circus.

For one brief moment, it all must have overwhelmed WBAP-AM's Jim Ryan last week when he signed off one of his reports: "This is Jim Ryan, reporting from Kerrville, the host city of the Darlie Routier trial."

Wide-open at the News
Buzz figures the decency editor at the Dallas Morning News must have been lulled to sleep by the time a Chris Vognar film review went through the editing process last week. In critiquing The People vs. Larry Flynt, Vognar wrote: "Mr. Flynt's transformation from ambitious porn mogul to colorful First Amendment martyr is simply not believable, and the dramatic holes are as in-your-face as one of his spread-eagle centerfolds."

Wink, wink, way to pussyfoot one by the copy desk slot man, Chris.

--Glen Warchol