Arts & Entertainment

KXT started out strong with a good mix of indie rock, folk and roots, playing a mix of local and non-local — what radio folk call "Adult Album Alternative." In 2011, it expanded its playlist to be more "inclusive," as they put it at the time. Apparently, "inclusive" meant "shitty." Matchbox 20, Santana, Everlast and other groan-inducing crap that anyone could hear on other generic stations were such a shock that the Twitter hashtag #kxtfail quickly caught on. But in recent months, the station seems to have reached a middle ground. The occasional Gin Blossoms song has us lunging for the mute button, but overall, program director Mark Abuzzahab has found a balance between enjoyable for the snobs and the slobs. Instead of about two bad songs to every good one, it seems to be the other way around. Hey, no station's perfect. And with events like Summer Cut, the Flaming Lips and St. Vincent concert, KXT is improving its cachet among Dallas' hard-to-please music cognoscenti.

At first glance, this might seem an unconventional choice. In between shows, Oliver Francis Gallery looks more like a cross-fit workout facility than a high-gloss showcase arena. But that's the thing. With so many Dallas spaces representing the biggest names in art, we've come to look to OFG for something else: difficult to market but important to see contemporary work. Owner and curator Kevin Rubén Jacobs balances the scales by presenting art he loves made by people he finds interesting. It's that simple. Whether he's passionate about an international sculptor like Rachel de Joode, whose exploration of art as documentation is still lodged deeply in our robotic hearts, or he's interested in emerging local talents hiking their way up, Jacobs offers their collections a temporary home. At Oliver Francis Gallery, you won't see art as décor. You will find things that make you feel uneasy. Frustrated, even. But that's the kicker: You will feel. You will think. And a couple of years down the road, it's these exhibitions that you'll remember.

Mind Spiders started out as a solo project for former Marked Men singer/guitarist Mark Ryan. Fast forward a few years, and it's now expanded to a six-person wrecking ball with two drummers. Last year's self-titled was an impressive amalgam of all Ryan's influences: punk, soul, new wave, pop. Meltdown, released in February, is more focused in its attack, and finds Ryan sharpening his ax. One of the best North Texas albums this year. Maybe even all of Texas.

It's sort of become a running joke for Black Dotz frontman Wanz Dover to take to Facebook and declare that the quartet's next show will be their last in a while. Inevitably it's not, but they always keep us on our toes, which is what a good rock and roll band should do. If you've caught them live, you understand: All four members are accomplished musicians in their own right, but together, they pull up their soul, R&B and punk roots and claw out your eyes in a white-hot blast. If you haven't seen them, what are you waiting for? This could be your last chance.

Ah, the much maligned "special guest" is the scourge of fliers and Facebook invites everywhere. This Fort Worth punk group decided to cut out the middle man and just own the name, and we support this kind of script-flipping and mischief-making.

Jeff Siegel is funny and all that, but he also has an incredible talent for getting stuff first, which makes him not only a fun read but a must. He writes a regular column that is called, as best we can tell, "Jeff Siegel" (catchy, what?) in the Lakewood and Lake Highlands Advocate magazines, free-distribution monthlies. If they already hang the magazine on your doorknob, you know Siegel. If they don't, you need to go find him in a rack, or you will miss a steady diet of insider scoops: He was way out front on the Trader Joe/Greenville Avenue story, first to tell the tale of Lincoln Properties wanting to re-name Gaston Avenue "Arboretum Way" or some such nonsense and first to hear the Andres brothers had put most of Henderson Avenue up for sale. Siegel is also author of a blog called "Wine Curmudgeon," which often is the only place to go for plain talk about wine in Dallas — a topic that cries out for plain talk. Beneath all that writing and attitude beats the heart of an old-fashioned newspaper reporter. Siegel's got good ears, good sources, and if a really good story walks up and bites him in the ass, he gets it on the page or up on the web faster and better than anybody else in Dallas. If it bites him anywhere else, we're not sure what happens.

Southfork's own Jock Ewing haunts Texas Theatre, looking just a tad rough around the edges. Moviegoers at the historic Oak Cliff cinema palace are always treated to a special pre-flick spot from Ewing (played by local musician and lovable cable-access weirdo George Quartz). The ghost of the great man is shown lurching unsteadily toward the bar, tipping his 10-gallon back on his head, boring the bartender shitless with a semi-intelligible story about a giant catfish. "Whence using the powder room, I like to sneak a cigarette and get myself a bourbon," he advises the audience. We can do the same, he adds, or go over to the concession stand and get a snack. But Ewing has a few words of warning, ones that never seem to get less funny: "If you want to bring your own car phone in, you best turn it off," he glowers. "Last thing I want to do when I'm watching a movie is kick your ass."

It's been almost a year since Martin Creed's exhibit at the Nasher closed, but we're still talking about it, because we miss it so. It was a giant room filled from floor to ceiling with some 9,000 yellow balloons, and you could run around through them. Technically, the piece was called "Work No. 1190: Half the air in a given space." What did it mean? Damned if Martin Creed knew. "I'm not a conceptual artist," he told an interviewer just before the show opened. "I don't believe in conceptual art." The balloon room was nothing less than a giddy, transcendent experience: the noise of the balloons like waves, the sensation of kicking them aside to walk, the gold color filling your field of vision as you tried to find your way forward. Please come back, Mr. Creed. Bring more balloons.

Dallas has a wealth of plaster bulls scattered around town, by which we mean two. One is pretty good; it sits proudly atop a steak joint on Oak Cliff's Jefferson Avenue. It's cute, you know? But the longhorn outside Raul's Corral Mexican Food is absurdly, gloriously excessive, a larger-than-life testament to the noble cow, sitting atop a stone platform and surrounded by a low iron fence. It has enormous, slightly dingy white horns and an "RR" brand on the left flank, a tribute to restaurant owner Raul Ramirez. We also feel compelled to mention that it's (sort of) anatomically correct. Visit the bull, honk at the bull on your way home from work, but for God's sake, don't try to steal the bull. We've thought about it. Can't be done. Besides: Raul's longhorn deserves to reign on his throne of rocks forever.

Anime lovers from all over the country flock to Dallas each year for the A-Kon convention. The three-day event is jam-packed with events in which folks get to live out their anime fantasies and participate in everything from art shows and costume contests to role playing. This year, during the 23rd annual A-Kon, tens of thousands of costumed fans took over the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Dallas. But since the convention has gotten so large, it'll move to the massive Hilton Anatole in 2013. Not a fan of dressing up? We recommend grabbing a seat at the hotel bar and spectating.

When Wanz Dover first made a splash in the Dallas music community with his band Mazinga Phaser, he wasn't a DJ at all. At least that's not what he was known for. Nowadays, he has several DJ projects going, and with his German techno moniker Blixaboy as the flagship, Dover has made a bigger splash in Europe than he has stateside. But typically, when you catch a DJ set from him these days, you're going to be hit over the head with his incredible collection of punk garage soul. He's passionate about the music he spins. A simple request while he's behind the ones and twos can lead to a long conversation about music, a subject in which Dover is an expert.

Erykah Badu contributed vocals to a cover of Ewan MacColl's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" on the Flaming Lips' recent album of collaborations, The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends, and also took part in the video. The latter is where things went awry. Badu and her sister Nayrok were both nude in the video, which includes self-indulgent slow-mo shots of Lips members and a tub full of glitter and a white creamy substance meant to look like jizz. Badu balked at getting in the tub, but her sister didn't, yet the final cut of the video suggests it was all Badu. She then took to Twitter to ream Coyne, telling him to "Kiss my glittery ass." Coyne responded with apologetic tweets interspersed with jokes that suggested he wasn't so repentant after all. It was hard to tell whether the feud was real, a publicity stunt or perhaps some mix of both, but it was the most amusing musician Twitter exchange this side of Courtney Love's stoned ramblings.

It's been a year of turbulence for the Nasher, which has found itself the unfortunate target of a neighboring U.V. ray gun. Sure, some art work has been jeopardized on account of the conflict, and we've lost some dear friends, including the Turrell, because of the encroachment. What has not eroded during that time is the Nasher's curation and execution of remarkably spectacular exhibitions, which are the cornerstone of its fame. We loved every tactile interaction we shared with Ernesto Neto's woven, walk-through installation Cuddle On The Tightrope. And the hauntingly narrative tales spun by North Texas artist Erick Swenson — where acrylic deer were seen in a state of decomposition and plastic snails faced beer-stein demise — left us chuckling darkly, and then immediately contemplating why. Sure, you might fry like untrimmed bacon if you visit the famous sculpture garden during peak sun hours, but that will not deter you. It's a place of respite in a cacophony of downtown bustle, and it's a proven haven for award-winning art. Nothing will stop the Nasher, and we're thankful for that.

In a neighborhood where nearly every tag is gang-related or the work of one particular ubiquitous tool who has written the same three initials on just about every bare surface available, it's refreshing to see some genuinely clever, whimsical street art. In between white road buttons at Kiest Boulevard and Polk Street, and on another street or two we've noticed, someone has stenciled Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man and colorful ghosts from the arcade game. They're just the right size to be in the right proportion to make the road buttons look like power pellets. They're starting to fade, though, so hopefully the artist will come back and insert another quarter with his or her spray paint.

Whatever we may think of this Swift Boat-funding old rich dude, we have to admit he just got a little more cred. How these two worlds collided is a mystery to us, but we're glad they did. The following is an actual transcript of a May 30 Twitter exchange.

@Drake (Drake, rapper and Degrassi: The Next Generation's Wheelchair Jimmy): The first million is the hardest.

@BoonePickens (T. Boone Pickens, Texas tycoon): The first billion is a helluva lot harder.

@Drake: @boonepickens just stunted on me heavy

His story of leaving his lawyer career to pursue full-time fiction writing is inspiring enough to make us consider walking away from our own day job. The New Yorker "late bloomer" write-up by Malcolm Gladwell — about how contrary to popular belief, genius can emerge later in life — reinforced the notion that maybe it's not too late to do so. But then we just have to read a beautiful description from his short story collection Brief Encounters With Che Guevara or a wonderfully original simile in his 2012 novel Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and we realize we have a long way to go before we can give up that paycheck.

Artisan's Collective has plenty of compelling artworks for sale, but our favorites are the creations of Barry Kooda. There's a series of little spear-wielding warriors made from the rearranged parts of rodent and bird skeletons, along with a few tamer pieces. Those skeletal combatants are what haunt our dreams, though, and yet we can't look away. That's why they're what our kids head straight for whenever we take them inside (and have to pry them away). No wonder collectors of the former Nervebreakers singer include Ministry's Al Jourgensen.

When University of North Texas MFA student Irby Pace first saw her in that Mac store, he knew he had to have her. From the way her earphones balanced out her pouty expression, to the threadbare nature of her thrift-store T-shirt, her composition was irresistible. The problem was, she didn't belong to him. The photograph was one of eventually thousands that Pace downloaded from sample devices such as iPads and iPods used in the retailer's local stores. He hijacked the images, all snapped by individuals who were playing with the camera features while shopping. Those folks who didn't delete their digital portraits wound up as muses for Pace's MFA show. The collection became an investigation of the fusion between modern technology and photography and toyed dangerously with the concept of ownership. Soon, Pace's little act of expression sparked a fire of debate. And once Wired picked up the story, it became a global conversation.

Summer 2012 marked Dallas' first installment of zine camp, a week-long exploration of self-published literature. Those inventive programming brains at Oil and Cotton collaborated with local literary booster The Writer's Garret to make it happen. As local artists heard about the project, they pitched in too, donating supplies and time to help make the camp run smoothly. It worked. The class spaces filled up almost immediately. Then, for two sessions in the summer, the shop's back studio space turned into a youth think tank where kids from late elementary school up to early high school learned the ins and outs of zine culture. Then, they each chose a personal emblem (which ranged anywhere from "Dubstep" to "Wormholes") and created small, hand-bound books on their topic. Each zine was filled with original artwork, short stories and poems. Then, when it seemed they couldn't get cooler, they silkscreened their own covers. It was a celebration of youth creativity at its best, and when camp was over, each student left knowing that their stories were important and worth publishing.

Not all romances fit the conventional confines of a mall's megaplex. Some need booze. Recycled junk yard cinema. And reanimated corpses, having threesomes. For those modern age Romeos and Juliets, there is Tuesday Night Trash, a free weekly Texas Theatre series organized by crap's curator, Travis Box. Looking at TNT's monthly calendar is a little like digging through the VHS junk drawer in a dilapidated haunted house. Will you wind up with 80 minutes of demonic blobs, hungry for human brains? A homoerotic prison boxing flick with an evil midget ringer? How about Eric Estrada as a crime-fighting priest? If you can imagineer it, Box can summon it, pat it on the head and present it for show and tell every Tuesday night. The best part? It doesn't cost a penny.

There are weird, artsy things happening between Dallas and Waco, and they're made possible by outsider collectors Bruce Lee and Julie Webb. The pair split their time between road-trip junking adventures through the South and selling the resurrected peculiarities at their historic store front, Webb Gallery. It's a temple to art's unsung heroes and renegade thinkers, and a shrine to the beauty that occurs in convention's absence. Cut paper skeletons? Glittery retellings of alien encounters? An entire collection of vintage sideshow banners, hung with the same respect given to traditional high art in a museum setting? Yes. That's how Webb Gallery rolls. It's a needed splash of psychedelic paint for a region more accustomed to beige walls, and it's improving our art world, one baboon skull at a time.

In the ever-competitive local TV news market, it's hard for one station to distinguish itself, but as much as we hate to admit it, Belo-owned WFAA does just that. The station's stable of veteran reporters — Brad Watson, Brett Shipp, and Byron Harris foremost among them — is unmatched. Certainly they also get kudos for lasting as long as they have in their studios at Victory Park.

At first, we couldn't imagine why we needed another one. We already have the panache of the Dallas International Film Festival, the experimental lean of the Dallas Video Fest and the cinematic halitosis, grandpa wisdom of the USA Film Festival, but the Oak Cliff Film Fest found its own niche: balls-out fun. They brought in the strange, oozing flicks we couldn't see anywhere else, like the singing, dancing delinquents from outer space in The Ghastly Love of Johnny X. They took over historic buildings to hold music video competitions, cult movie screenings and Q&As with directors. They brought Austin band My Education up to perform their haunting backtrack live while the Murnau silent film Sunrise played behind them. And just when you thought it couldn't get better, they took us to the zoo to watch The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Absent was all the corporate hoopla that entrenches bigger fests. Instead, Dallas' film lovers just came together and shared amazing memories and that special feeling that comes from knowing they were there in the beginning of something great.

Produced by Julie McCullough Kim and directed by Bryan Embry, this fashion marathon let us see Dallas' best local up-and-coming designers as well as the bigger, more established industry names. They tackled a mountain of applicants and curated a multi-hour runway immersion with looks by 35 different labels. From model selection to accessorizing, each outfit sent down the catwalk was given hands-on care, producing a refined, detail-rich army of walking art. In addition to being a spectacular display, The Pin Show brought well-deserved national attention to our local burgeoning fashion scene. How they pulled it off, we'll never know, but damned if we aren't thankful that they did.

When we first heard that two guys were dressed like video game characters and painting a giant Nintendo mural in Deep Ellum, we didn't grasp the depth of the spectacle. A quick site visit revealed all: A graffiti artist named Kid NES and a graffiti writer named Eder had joined forces over their shared love of eight-bit gaming. Dressed up as WaLuigi and Wario, the arch nemeses of our favorite princess-seeking plumbers, the pair created a temporary mural. It looked like a screenshot from an early-model Mario Bros. edition, recreated on the side of Quixotic World. Only in this life-size version of the old school game, Mario was being painted into a trap where every possible joystick maneuver would end in his peril. Spinys, piranha plants, turtles and other-world-depositing green tubes all filled out the image. People went nuts. Women screamed from passing cars, professing their undying love of Nintendo through open windows. Vehicles flipped U-turns repeatedly so that the drivers could snag photographic evidence of the situation. Basically, it was awesome. And when the whole thing was done, they left us with a memento: a video of the mural being made, set to music.

From In Cooperation With Muscle Nation to Homecoming!, pockets of artists across the region have started joining forces as collectives. It's making everything a bit more interesting. By forming these tiny unions, artists have started turning unconventional spaces into makeshift galleries. From Muscle's takeover of the Goodyear Retread Plant, to Homecoming!'s invasion of The Trinity Railway Express line, these collectives have proven that you don't need gallery sponsorship to show your work. A little groupthink, an idea worth acting out and pals to help with the planning and execution are all that's required. While some are more temporary than others, a handful of tribes have begun putting on interactive events that infuse our viewing experience with a sense of spontaneity and immediacy, while proving that art's working class has its own message to get out. And it won't wait around for the older institutions to catch up.

The Oak Cliff artist designed her solitary confinement in the form of a Plexiglas box. Felicella was on a mission to explore the full range of human emotions that comes from self-imposed isolation, done in plain view. Constructed in her studio and erected in an empty lot behind the Kessler, the box wasn't much larger than a phone booth and it became her dwelling for 48 hours. She even wore a catheter. We only saw movements from the artist as she worked, scribbling a mantra repeatedly onto sheets of colored paper, which when finished were crumpled and dropped to the floor. As they fell, they filled in the limited space around her, until they reached her waist, like water in a dunk tank. Hundreds of curious neighbors gathered to watch and lend support of her mission, but Felicella did not engage with them. Instead, she quietly observed and absorbed their presence. Those who couldn't sit vigil watched her confinement remotely through a live feed that the artist set up before she started her adventure. And when she emerged, wobbly, tired and hungry, we felt whole again. We had gotten one of our own back. So while Felicella's project was meant to research her personal psychological inner workings, we found that it made us take a look at our own emotions and ties to one another.

Cable's Bravo channel came to Dallas and found Courtney Kerr, Matt Nordgren, Tara Harper, Neill Skylar, Drew Ginsburg and Glenn Pakulak, attractive, chatty "socialites" (emphasis on "lite") willing to let cameras follow them around (with producers telling them what to do) for a "docuseries." The show made our city look twinkly by night and sunny by day. It made Dallas singles in their 20s and 30s, like this sextet, look both vapid and voracious in their quests for love with the right paycheck, er, person. Quoth Drew Ginsburg, the formerly fat gay car salesman, about his rocky search for romance: "I do hope to find Mr. Right, but it's super hard because everyone in Dallas tends to be self-centered and shallow." Almost as self-centered and shallow as people on a reality TV show.

He's a wizard with scenery, putting the twinkle and fog in Dallas Theater Center's annual A Christmas Carol. Bob Lavallee also made the boxy Wyly Theatre into a hot box of writhing bodies for Cabaret and this summer painted that stage with whirling pyramids and psychedelic images from the Old Testament for the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. As a production and scenery designer, Lavallee illuminates and expands on the intention of the playwrights' work. When the lights go up on one of his shows, the first thing you hear is the audience saying, "Wow."

Years from now, we'll look back at the work now being produced at the tiny Ochre House theater and marvel that such avant garde brilliance could have come from such a modest company. At the center of it all is Ochre House founder Matthew Posey. He writes, directs and stars in almost everything they do on the 8-by-12-foot stage in his storefront playhouse by Fair Park. Shows like Mean, Posey's dark musical about Charlie Manson (with Posey chillingly good playing Tex Watson to Mitchell Parrack's Charlie). And Ex Voto: The Immaculate Conception of Frida Kahlo starring Elizabeth Evans. And Morphing, a dreamlike cartoon based on Long Day's Journey into Night starring Justin Locklear. With his creative troupe of "Ochre House Boys" (which includes several women), Posey is taking live theater in bold new directions with every new show.

With its devotion to producing American musicals the way their writers and composers intended — full orchestra, full dance numbers, big chorus and big voices — Steven Jones' Lyric Stage in Irving is starting to get the national attention it deserves. Composer Charles Strouse, in his 80s, came to see Lyric's versions of his shows Bye Bye Birdie and Rags (and he loved them). The Rodgers and Hammerstein estate helped with research for this year's magnificent staging of Oklahoma!, which used original orchestrations and added back several numbers usually cut for time. The lavishly produced three-hour show was directed by Dallas' Cheryl Denson, with the 40-piece pit orchestra directed by Jay Dias. Nobody's done an Oklahoma! this size for decades, including the recent revivals in London and New York. Lyric's cast was young and sexy; the singing and dancing sublime. Oh, what a beautiful evening.

Dallas actor and director Jeff Swearingen has created a small but exciting theater company for kids up in Plano. They do plays, musicals and short films, sometimes all in one production, on shoestring budgets. Best of all, he isn't teaching his young thesps the hammy habits some kiddie theaters inflict. Swearingen's actually getting subtle, intensely interesting performances out of very young beginners. His production of Matt Lyle's comedy The Chicken Who Wasn't Chicken made brilliant use of simple props and costumes, but also included impressively done film sequences placing barnyard characters into famous movie scenes. Cute kids dressed as chickens doing dialogue from Gone with the Wind and The Godfather is just downright genius. His adaptation of The Little Prince was another multimedia triumph. This company's latest is an all child-and-teen production of the musical Man of La Mancha. Keep dreaming impossible dreams, Mr. Swearingen. You're doing amazing work.

First, let's get one thing out of the way: Follow Brett Shipp on Twitter and you'll find him to be whiny, self-righteous and enamored with Brett Shipp. That said, the man — not to mention his amusingly large eyebrows — makes great television. In 17 years as an investigative reporter at WFAA, he's broken a ridiculously impressive list of stories and won a slew of awards for his reporting. What makes him truly great, though, is his uncanny knack for provocation. No one else in local journalism could get punched by County Commissioner John Wiley Price, chased across several lanes of traffic by Deion Sanders' football team and get it all on tape for the nightly newscast. The man is an institution.

It had us at the opening theme music. As the camera swooped in for its first shot of Southfork Ranch and then the rising towers of downtown Dallas, we were happy to go along for the ride — again — with the feuding Ewings. The new Dallas series on cable's TNT has sucked us right back into its vortex of sex and villainy with its next generation of young millionaires: John Ross (played by Josh Henderson) and Christopher (Jesse Metcalf). They're still fighting about fossil fuels. Only this time, the hero, Christopher, is the environmental crusader; John Ross is the fracking evildoer. Looming over all the plot twists, as usual, is Dallas' eyebrow-twitching Lord Voldemort, J.R., played as ever by Larry Hagman, who grows younger and more amusingly maniacal each week. Brother Bobby (Patrick Duffy, television's greatest whisper-actor) is still trying to save Southfork from developers. J.R.'s ex-wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray) is off the sauce and into politics. She may be the next governor of Texas. That's all fine by us. After a 21-year break, Dallas has roared back to life and we approve. New episodes start up again in January.

Dad Barry and daughter Barrett Nash have each accomplished something special as actors: They've both starred in one-person shows on Dallas stages, giving gripping performances all by themselves. Barry Nash played the title role in Bob Birdnow's Remarkable Tale of Human Survival and the Transcendence of Self at Second Thought Theatre (after debuting the piece by Eric Steele at the 2011 Festival of Independent Theatres). He's repeated the role, about a pilot who survives a crash that kills his best friends, in Steele's film version, now in production. Barry's daughter Barrett wowed FIT audiences this summer in the one-woman play My Name Is Rachel Corrie, playing an idealistic peace activist who loses her life in a protest in Gaza. Holding an audience's gaze for an hour of live theater is no easy feat. Making them love you is a gift. And there's something about the acting Nashes that simply commands your attention and welcomes your embrace.

Matthew Posey's tiny storefront by Fair Park showcases his brilliant, always shockingly original productions of plays and musicals. This year audiences laughed at The Butcher, a play starring the puppet-corpse of a dead pig, and they shuddered at the musical Mean, about the meeting of Charlie Manson and Tex Watson. You could laugh and cry at Morphing, Posey's multimedia reconstruction of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. He also wrote bio-plays about Frida Kahlo and Henry Miller. You never know what Posey and his "Ochre House Boys" will come up with next, but it's a good bet it'll be something you've never seen before but won't soon forget.

The art of the album has largely been lost as attention spans dwindle and quantity trumps quality, at least in terms of how we absorb music these days. Dallas tape and vinyl label Pour le Corps is letting their aesthetic flag fly, however. Marjorie Owens and Sean French have an eye for detail and theme within each of their limited-run experimental and psych releases. Remember when you could tell it was an SST album by just looking at the cover? That applies here, too.

The Flaming Lips and Erykah Badu used Yes Go's Oak Cliff space to film their controversial video earlier this year, but the production company has been heeding their eponymous mantra to create music videos, ads and short films way before that minor dustup. Its attendant space, El Sibil, has also been known to throw some killer late-night parties.

Bands come and go, but this Denton noise-rock quartet seemed to embody a period in Denton music that was muscular, primitive and raw. For close to a decade, the group put forth an almost perfect catalog, and the live shows reflected that muscle. Record Hop singer-guitarist Ashley Cromeens went on to co-front hip-hop collective Neeks, though, so all is not lost.

We didn't get an Electric Daisy Carnival this year, but we had a slew of smaller-scale electronic music festivals come through Dallas. Meltdown, held out in Grand Prairie at QuikTrip Park, was sort of the unofficial start of summer, with a nice mix of local and national DJs. They even had noise complaints from the neighbors, because their bass was just too damn loud. That's the spirit.

From early spring to late summer, KXT's Barefoot at the Belmont series drops local and national acts onto the beautiful grounds of Oak Cliff's Belmont Hotel and demands your attention. The shows are always sellouts, which points to KKXT-FM 91.7 knowing its crowd. Will Johnson, Gary Clark Jr., Tim DeLaughter? Check. Demand was so high this year, the station might need to find another place to get barefoot in 2013.

More than any traditional local radio station, the shows on CBS-owned Internet station Indie-Verse (klli.radio.com) are a reflection of the divergent tastes of the community. The playlists are a bit looser, the dialogue a bit more casual. You might hear a 10-minute death metal song or the theme song to Roseanne. We need more of this in Dallas, radio-heads.

The Dallas Theater Center acting company member performed this year's best scene-stealing bit onstage. In God of Carnage, the Tony-winning play DTC produced at Kalita Humphreys Theater, Sally Nystuen Vahle played a high-strung, tightly wrapped urban mommy. The play is about civilized adults who, as alcohol flows and conversations grow heated, turn into furious savages. Vahle's character was one of the calmest until fwaaaaaaaak, she suddenly stood up and vomited. Not just a little upchuck. No, a torrent of barf that sprayed over the furniture, other actors, even the first rows at some performances. It was a perfectly wonderful/horrible moment of live theater, which Vahle carried off with great flourish (the trick was accomplished with a tube, a throw pillow and liquid chunked with tiny pieces of foam rubber). As special effects go, it was a doozy. And for Ms. Vahle, who typically plays straitlaced, well-behaved ladies, it allowed her to let loose with some truly gutsy acting.

In a town flush with quality sports TV types, nobody cooks a vocabulary stew quite like Daryl "Razor" Reaugh. Using words like "mastadonic" and "pulchritudinous" as effortlessly as "skate" or "puck," Reaugh brings an auditory flavor to the local hockey broadcast that can't be matched. Alongside excellent play-by-play man Ralph Strangis, Razor has been in the booth for the Stars for 16 seasons. The secret of HIS greatness isn't lost on the broader audience, as last season he made multiple guest appearances on Canada's popular Hockey Night in Canada. This fall, whip out your dictionary and be by the channel, as Razor will surely be slinging many more of his trademark "mind vitamins."

As one of the creative troupe of actors, artists and musicians known as "The Ochre House Boys," Elizabeth Evans has proven she's able to mix it up in company founder Matthew Posey's avant garde comedies and dramas. As the bedridden Mexican artist Frida Kahlo in Posey's biographical play Ex Voto: The Immaculate Conceptions of Frida Kahlo, she gave her best performance yet, memorable for the fire in her eyes and her willingness to bare her soul (and everything else) to express the artist's passions and fears. That Evans could then turn around and play the comedy relief character in Posey's dark musical about Charlie Manson, Mean, is just more evidence of how many colors this actress paints with.

His appearances in recent years at African American Repertory Theatre, WaterTower, Upstart and Undermain now seem like mere warm-ups for Christopher Dontrell Piper's explosive performance this season in Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts at Theatre Too. As a young man full of ideas about how to boost business at a failing Chicago bakery, Piper formed a perfectly balanced acting partnership with co-star Van Quattro. The most natural actor on any Dallas stage — he wears every character as if he were born to play him — Piper has only just begun to show directors and audiences what he's capable of.

With her stunning two-act drama Ruth, Dallas playwright Vicki Caroline Cheatwood put something truly important on the stage at Kitchen Dog Theater. Based on the Old Testament story of Ruth and Naomi, the play featured parallel sagas of women in the 1930s Dust Bowl and in present-day Oklahoma. In each time period, newly widowed friends must deal with being displaced, always haunted by the ghosts of their dead husbands. Dreamlike, emotionally charged and at times sexy and funny, Kitchen Dog's beautifully cast world premiere production, directed by Tim Johnson for the New Works Festival, was this company's best of the season. With Ruth, Cheatwood should get national attention as a strong voice in American theater.

First of all, this festival is batshit. Every year, the Irving Convention center is sardine-packed with vendors selling slivers of the most magma-spicy, butt-churning peppers on the planet. At ZestFest, you'll find "foods" like extract of the ghost pepper, "Volcano Dust," habanero wings and the Trinidad Scorpion (OMG, beware). So, we come to our new favorite pastime. Watching other humans' faces as they "experience" the hottest peppers in the world is something deeply special and American. Imagine watching someone be stabbed all over with invisible needles. ZestFest 2013 is January 25 through January 27. Go and watch humans wince and squirm as their insides sublimate. You won't regret it.

On Friday, June 1, at Gexa Energy, local station KKXT-FM 91.7 brought out the big guns for their first festival: St. Vincent, Flaming Lips, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and more. It was an exuberant and bright summer festival with both national and local hooks. It was also a clarion trumpet blast against KXT's growing naysayers. Dallas, with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies, is not bereft of damn good music festivals. Look for this one to grow, but KXT's kickoff music festival was a doozy.

You have to hand it to 35 Denton. Following artist payment controversy, name changes, cancelations and droves of mustachioed artists, the festival continues without missing a beat. Hell, the Jesus and Mary Chain outright couldn't make it to this year's fest (they rescheduled for later that week). Then there was the rain. The Friday of 2012's 35 fest was rainy, cold and ash gray. The festival marched on. Local restaurants offered hot coffee. There were plenty of tacos and beer. A cameraman hunkered under a massive poncho and shot on. To put it simply, the festival was a bigger force of nature than the weather. Updates on next year's fest, and coverage from last year's are right here: 35denton.com

It happens the same time every year. On the last day of SXSW — when feet are blood balloons and brain is mush, when you're hovering between death and exhilaration — comes the lifesaving hair of the dog. It's Bro Fest. Parade of Flesh's John Iskander grabs a handful of bands coming through Austin, shakes them in a bag and dumps them madly upon Dallas. It's messy, loud and fantastic. It's raw fun, whether you go to SXSW or not. If you are on the way up from Austin, however, it's the musical equivalent of a bloody mary. Last year's event was at Club Dada, so head over to paradeofflesh.com/brofest/ and let them know we want our SXSW hangover cure again in 2013.

JCPenney is the somewhere you associate with toxic concentrations of toxic perfume or your grandmother's 90th birthday sweater, not progressive social causes. In June, however, the Plano-based department store chain waded neck-deep into the culture war, running a touching Father's Day ad featuring all-American dads Cooper Smith and Todd Koch, who love their kids. And each other. The gay-dad ad sparked a predictable outcry from social conservatives and bewildered applause from proponents of marriage equality. It convinced few on either side to open their wallets. In August, the company announced its same store sales were down nearly a quarter over the previous year. Not that JCPenney's death spiral is the fault of two gay dads. That, at least, shows evidence of forward thinking.

Brandy Simington has never had trouble expressing herself. Through poetry or music, the words have always been there. But as Lady BSmoove, she's onto something. Her delivery is a mixture of poetry and hip-hop that melds anger, pain and hope into something primal, original and moving. At this year's LGBT Pride kickoff at City Hall, she stole the spotlight from Mayor Mike Rawlings and the Turtle Creek Chorale. Getting people to open their ears isn't always easy, but once they do, they understand (sometimes, anyway). Don't let the "lesbian slam poet" fool you. Lady B Smoove is an artist.

The conversation between Danny Balis and Dave Lane and the occasional caller on their Saturday morning talk show on The Ticket can range from somewhat-informed sports talk to snippets of music Lane's been excited about lately to bizarre hypothetical dilemmas to nothing at all. Even if you stop paying attention as they waste air time reading "Hints from Heloise," it at least beats the pounding in your hungover head as you make breakfast, clean the kitchen, refuse to get out of bed or run morning errands. And it's all in a low-key, almost soothing delivery because they're usually just as hungover and tired as you.

Depending on the hour, you could stumble on 1310 The Ticket and go minutes, a segment or even two, without hearing a word about sports. The Hot Sports Opinions promised by the station's promos often get buried by pop culture, old music, new music, race, sex — anything, really, to keep the routine of sports at bay. (These guys are getting older, and sports, God love them, get boring after a while.) But whatever the content, they manage to turn it into good radio, relying on smarts, jokes and, above it all, radio's No. 1 ingredient: honesty. Punches are never pulled, even if they are thrown at the station's annual Fight Night, an ode to their heavily male audience's heavily male attitudes. And when those HSOs do start flying? They're just as smart, and just as honest, as the Breaking Bad breakdowns and the always-uncomfortable man-on-the-street interviews.

Texas suffered through one of its worst-ever droughts last year, and it took a toll on water supplies. Dallas never came close to running out, but plummeting reservoir levels did prompt the City Council to take action and implement mandatory watering restrictions. Under the rules, homes and businesses can water lawns only twice per week. More than that means a possible fine from the city. Enforcement has been lax as drought conditions have eased, but the decision hopefully signals a turning point when politicians and the people who elect them recognize that maintaining water-thirsty swaths of St. Augustine and Bermuda grasses in Texas is unsustainable and, with a booming population and water resources that are more or less fixed, is a practice that will have to end.

We've got to hand this one to our favorite listener-supported station playing a wide variety of independent artists, and no, we don't mean KXT. Dallas' community station has an eccentric cast of DJs — who are clearly not radio pros, as the occasional technical gaffe proves. Much of the fun of listening comes from catching CDs skipping, bungled guest call-ins and stretches of dead air. The lovably shaggy presentation, though, doesn't mean they don't play an impressively diverse array of music. Along with far-from-the-mainstream rock, hip-hop and country, the schedule includes all kinds of niche music you won't hear anywhere else including zydeco, blues, polka, Jewish music, Native American chants and rockabilly. Keep that in mind around pledge-drive time, will ya?

It's difficult to single out the best talk radio show in Dallas, let alone on The Ticket. Each of the station's shows has its own appeal, avoiding sports-talk-at-all-costs for funny bits and raunchy laughs. The show in the mid-afternoon slot, BaD Radio, takes the most high-brow approach to its humor. The complex dynamic between Bob "The Sturminator" Sturm (a highly moral, Sunday school-attending sports super-genius), his foil Dan McDowell (a porn-loving vegetarian) and Donovan Lewis (the guy who introduced most of Dallas to "The Upper Decker") yields brilliant results every afternoon. OK, so maybe it's not all that high-brow. But, they do occasionally talk sports. After all, Sturm wrote a book about Dirk Nowitzki in a week.

It is when Corby Davidson goes traipsing into the wild, microphone in hand, that The Ticket's afternoon-drive show, The Hardline, earns its stripes. Things get raw and sometimes awkward, like a recent escapade when he asked an interracial couple about the challenges of their relationship, or a group of teenagers about various teenage exploits. Like the show he co-hosts with Mike Rhyner, Davidson's segments — roving interviews, local news, entertainment news — go where the material takes him, and he never holds back. That's the mark of a man devoted to producing entertaining radio at any cost. He also yells a lot, often for no reason, and it's funny.

Do we need to add to what we said in previous Best of Dallas write-ups, or the People Issue love we showed for the guys behind The Texas Theatre's revival? A refresher: the so-bad-they're-good genre flicks at Tuesday Night Trash; the bar; the arthouse films you won't see anywhere else; the bar; the revival of past classics; the bar; the Oak Cliff Film Festival; the bar. For us, seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark on 35mm was enough to seal a repeat victory.

The Mavs may have had a disappointing 2011-2012 season, but Delonte West's toughness and dogged defensive play were a highlight, and we're glad to hear he'll be returning for basketball reasons alone. But his unique personality has made his off-the-court presence especially refreshing. His Twitter account is always entertaining, whether he's tweeting pictures of his own vomit or urging Deron Williams to come help bring another championship title to Dallas. He teaches young ballers in charity basketball clinics, despite coming to the team so broke that he had to sleep in the locker room and had to work for a furniture-moving company during the lockout — very humbling, considering he's made millions over his career. Yet he kept his head up despite the troubling circumstances and has proved to be a great example of how to live with bipolar disorder even under the media spotlight.

Jason Kidd, the 39-year-old point guard who helped lead the Mavericks to their championship in 2011, shocked Dallas July 5 when he signed a three-year contract with the New York Knicks for $9.5 million — just half a million more than what the Mavs reportedly offered. Ten days later, at about 2 a.m. on July 15, he crashed his Cadillac Escalade into a utility pole and was subsequently arrested on drunken-driving charges after he refused a blood-alcohol test. Even more delicious, the wreck knocked out cable in the neighborhood — cable that was supplied by a company of which Knicks owner James Dolan is president and CEO. We're glad he wasn't seriously injured, of course, but will have to admit to enjoying a bit of schadenfreude over the incident.

In the days leading up to the NFL opener, it was said, somewhere on the AM dial, that the Cowboys would struggle to contain the Giants' offense because the Cowboys had "no pass rush." It was an understandable assessment, given their inability to so much as breathe on Eli Manning last season. But then the season opener came, and we all remembered: DeMarcus Ware. He bull-rushed his way to 19.5 sacks last season, helping the Cowboys amass the seventh-most sacks in the league — as many as the vaunted San Francisco 49ers — and he racked up two in this season's opener. He is the best in the league at one of its most important positions, especially in the era of 40 pass attempts a game. If the quarterback is back there throwing — and he so often is nowadays — Ware will be back there with him, right where the Cowboys need him.

After just three seasons with the Dallas Stars, Jamie Benn has already flown up the ranks to become the face of the franchise. Not since Mike Modano rode his feathered mullet into town have we seen a player with such skill lace up for the celestial skaters. Benn has seen his point totals increase with each season, and with another year of experience and salty vets Ray Whitney and Jaromir Jagr coming aboard this year, "Benner" could be poised for a true breakout. His combination of finesse and brute strength are not often found on the rink, making him a lethal force and the embodiment of the team's pesky attitude. Speaking of pesky, Benn had an appendectomy last season, so now there is nothing holding the British Columbian back from ultimate hockey glory.

Don't let Adrian Beltre's recent onslaught confuse the issue: Josh Hamilton is the Rangers' star. And don't let Hamilton's expiring contract cloud your judgment: You want him, you need him, you have to have him. Maybe not for what the market will demand — he'll be asking for roughly all the money ever, with a player option for the change in your couch. But still. He and Beltre produced roughly the same last year, right around .300 with 100 RBIs and an OPS nearing .900. Trust us, neophytes, those are gargantuan numbers, and Hamilton's have only grown in 2012. Together with that style, that swagger, that story, you can't help but admit: This dude's got it all. How 'bout we wait till November to get all depressed about it?

Josh Hamilton was terrible during June and July, hitting a pathetic .190 during an eight-week stretch. In media interviews, he made ominous allusions to private struggles, leading to worries that he was relapsing on his crack-smoking habit. Turns out, he was just trying to quit chewing tobacco. Before and since, however, Hamilton has had a typically outstanding season, at the top of the American league in RBIs and home runs. He also happened to turn in one of the signature performances of his career. On May 8 in Baltimore, he hit four home runs in a game, only the 16th time in history that's happened. It was Hamilton's return to form in the fall that's provided comfort to fans, but it was that one magic night in May that propelled his bat to the place Hamilton will be one day: Cooperstown.

It's easy to confuse this gym for a prison yard: The stripped-down interior and bare-bones furnishings don't imply a cushy afternoon, sipping lemonade post-sauna. But that minimalist approach to fitness is the Ross Avenue location's source of strength. There are no distractions here. Instead, there's a revolving workout program that changes daily, so you can't rest on your lumpy, unchiseled laurels. The center's intense approach to exercise winds up working out your entire body, not just the areas that you're most comfortable flexing in public. Soon, your frame slims down while your muscle mass builds, and you can't help but notice a feline touch of agility in your previously uncoordinated gait. The demanding nature of each class combined with the supportive mentality of your fellow sufferers is a 180 from traditional gyms, where folks wander aimlessly, lifting things without intention. But maybe most important is this: When you leave a rigorous session that you initially couldn't believe you would finish, you realize your limitations are strictly mental. If you can do this, you can do anything.

This town's greatest sideshow of late-night humanity is situated at the swirling nexus in Serious Pizza and the area between the shop and its two next-door neighbors: July Alley (bar) and Elm Street Tattoo (inkery). Deep Ellum's rock 'n' roll finery is all on display, as hungry, sweaty, drunk, music-buzzed people wait patiently in line to put ludicrously large slices of pie in their faces. The tattoos, the piercings, the ill-advised leather trousers, the incredible awkwardness of standing 6 inches from a be-mohawked couple fighting furiously over toppings! It's a glorious scene, and it's available every weekend and a fair number of weeknights too. Watch too for the ever-present row of dudes looking on enviously as the pizza guys twirl and toss dough high above them. "Does that get chicks?" one sodden young patron asked us earnestly not long ago. We told him the obvious answer and turned back to the show.

"Fuck with me and you will have a huge asshole," Sweeney memorably promised his opposing council, a guy named Chad Arnette from Kelley, Hart & Hallman. It was an email conversation about scheduling conflicts that somehow went completely, wonderfully off the rails, landing on legal blog Above the Law as well as our own Unfair Park. The two sides couldn't agree on a date for a deposition, you see, leading Sweeney to eventually let Arnette know that he felt the other lawyer to be a "pansy," an "ignorant slut" and a "gutless attorney." There was also something in there about Sweeney shoving his boot so far up Arnette's ass "he'll be talkin' out of it." Arnette's firm promptly filed a complaint with the court, and Sweeney seems to have been sacked from Cozen O'Connor soon after. Worth it, we say.

Scott Griggs was elected last summer, ousting the wildly unpopular, frequently absent Dave Neumann. Honestly, they probably could have run a reasonably charming sock monkey against him and still shown Neumann the door. But Griggs has quickly joined fellow council members Angela Hunt and Sandy Greyson in what we can only term the Axis of Making Sense. He's fought against gas drilling within city limits, almost single-handedly pushed for better regulation and higher standards in the city's boarding homes and questioned the fuzzy math that's led other city officials (including Mayor Mike Rawlings) to advocate for a toll road in a floodplain. He has a bizarre tendency to show up at council meetings giving off the distinct impression that he's done the reading and knows something about the issues he's supposed to decide. Despite this dangerous eccentricity, we're still grateful to have Griggs sitting at the horseshoe.

Only three miles from downtown but a world unto itself, the North Wynnewood neighborhood in Oak Cliff is proof the 1950s weren't just about insanely grinning pipe-smoking dad figures in beltless trousers next to coral-green cars with cartoon tail fins. North Wynnewood is the best of '50s cool architecture, beautifully maintained for decades by families who never moved, occupied now by a crowd that's younger and more diverse but just as loyal to the neighborhood. Wynnewood sits on 150 acres of gently sloping hills loosely bounded by Interstate 35 South, 12th Street, Vernon Avenue and Illinois Avenue. Low-slung mid-century modern houses were built to standards we can only dream of today, several designed by the architects DeWitt & Swank. Many still look new. The houses, one to one-and-a-half-story brick in the 2,000- to 3,500-square-foot range, occupy large lush lots on artfully meandering streets, with huge backyards, many of them still dominated by those brick and stone '50s barbecue pits the size of small chapels. Crime is low for Oak Cliff. Values are up almost 60 percent in the last 10 years. An active neighborhood group guards against trouble and thinks up easygoing social activities. North Wynnewood manages to be both deeply staid and really interesting without going quite David Lynch — a rare trick in a rare jewel of a neighborhood.

For more than five years, City Council member and former Mayor Dwaine Caraway has been the city's loudest voice against the unchecked menace of dudes who don't belt their pants at the waist. In mid-June, to our inexpressible joy, Caraway announced that he's relaunching his anti-sagging crusade. It's about deference for ladies, he told a packed house at a press conference in City Hall. It's about self-respect. And now, suddenly, it's about health. "Underwear is meant to protect your inner self from your exterior clothing," he boomed confidently. He cited one of the great dangers of saggers who ride DART. "The germs immediately exposed from the body are waiting on the next passenger." Sadly, a planned "Saggin' Summit" was canceled in late June. Caraway said he'd received such an overwhelming positive response, more time was needed to accommodate everyone who wished to participate.

Thanks-Giving Square is a little enigma in the heart of downtown, a tiny, roughly triangular slab of land given over to a sort of park. There are murals there, and a fountain, and best of all a gorgeous, spiral-shaped chapel, featuring a stunning ceiling inlaid with stained-glass. It opened in 1973, with its stated mission is "to offer a place for all people to give thanks to our Creator." It has hosted any number of interfaith events over the years, emphasizing the way gratitude can unite us across religions and cultures. But you don't have to care about any of that to enjoy it. Just sit near the cascading rock fountain and listen to the water rushing gently downhill or stand in the center of the chapel and look up. In a downtown that often lacks beauty, Thanks-Giving Square is a moment of pure poetry.

Two years ago, local skateboarders got a 20,000-square-foot gift: a free, well-lit, professionally designed skate park, one with the very first cradle in Texas. It came courtesy of the city of Irving and SITE Design Group, a company that makes "action sports" parks all over the world. Lively Pointe has since become a center for skateboarders and BMXers of all ages, with all the curbs, verts, hubbas and ledges their grinding, kick-flipping little hearts could possibly desire. Don't worry, parents: As it's a city facility, skaters and riders must always wear pads and helmets. Sweet, dude.

This 35-acre village in Waxahachie makes for the perfect escape from modern society. The Scarborough Renaissance Festival started in 1981 and portrays the year 1533 during the reign of England's King Henry VIII. Festival goers delve into a world of make-believe, encouraged to dress the part of a Renaissance warlock or beer wench and meander through the village where they can engage in everything from jousting matches to "wildly inappropriate poetry," all the while chugging a beer and gnawing on a giant turkey leg.

Why play tennis at Lake Cliff? Because as you approach the courts you pass County Commissioner John Wiley Price's house and that ridiculous Suburban with his grinning face plastered on the side. Because, aside from the spirited pickup game thumping up and down the adjacent basketball courts, it's usually empty. Because if anyone ever is out there, they suck just as hard as we do. Because there are huge, veiny penises spray-painted crudely on the court. Because the net is actually made of chain-link fencing so nobody will steal it. Because very young, unattended urchins ask you if they can borrow your racket, and you basically tell them to piss off. Tennis anyone?

Gone are the days when musician kids sweat it for days leading up to a recital. Recitals are boring anyway. Zounds Sounds founder Marc Solomon knows this well, so he did away with them. At Zounds Sounds, a school of rock for kids, Solomon puts the students up on a real club stage, where actual touring acts perform, and invites them to go crazy. Actually, it's quite a bit more organized than that sounds. Solomon has enlisted the help of Dallas' top musicians who use proper curricula to teach the kids their instruments. The teachers use kids' budding musical preferences to steer them, and eventually they emerge as rock stars.

We all fight through the oppressive summer months each year and when we hit that short span of time when the weather is actually nice, who wants to be inside? Thankfully, the AT&T Performing Arts Center makes great use of the nice weather with its outdoor live music series, Patio Sessions. The shows are expertly curated with top local acts like Daniel Hart, Ryan Thomas Becker and many others performing in front of the huge reflecting pool located on the center's lawn. The series invites you to bring the kids, a blanket, a bottle of wine or two and enjoy the the agreeable weather even if it only lasts for a few weeks.

There are other homebrew events, such as the Bluebonnet Brew-off and various North Texas Homebrewers Association gatherings. But Brew Riot appeals to casual beer drinkers, not just dedicated homebrewers and their understanding companions, with a daylong party in the Bishop Arts District. This past May was the fourth iteration of the annual festival, which has grown year by year. Current homebrewers rubbed elbows with homebrewers-turned-pro-brewers such as Peticolas, Deep Ellum and Lakewood brewing companies and competed head to head in various categories. Credit Go Oak Cliff with fomenting (or fermenting) interest in the work of up-and-coming beer-makers.

It's impossible to top Dallas BrewFest or last year's Brew at the Zoo, though we may be a tad biased. So as far as beer events in which we don't have an interest, the April 14 Big Texas Beer Fest was our favorite by a long shot. It brought dozens of breweries and thousands of happy beer drinkers to Fair Park at a very reasonable price. Especially heartening was the sight of long lines for the great Texas beers (many of which are otherwise unavailable in Dallas) and that the Blue Moon booth and those of other faux craft brewers were all but ignored. Rowdy drinkin' music from The O's and Fish Fry Bingo added to the festivities. There were a few hiccups (aside from the hiccups caused by overindulgence), such as the waiting time to get in and too few food trucks to sate the huge crowd's hunger. But overall, organizers Chad and Nellie Montgomery did a fantastic job and likely will smooth over whatever is in their power to correct. The next one should be even better.

Talk to Kessler Theater artistic director (basically, a booker with style) Jeff Liles for a few minutes and the conversation will likely turn to a strange encounter with a rock star, relationship with a famous rapper or some momentous musical event in Dallas history. Whether it's his role in the infamous Nirvana show at Trees, how he was the first DJ to ever play NWA on the radio or the time the Red Hot Chili Peppers stole his parents' towels, he has an interesting anecdote about a pretty wide swath of culture. It doesn't necessarily sound like bragging, more like the excitement of a fan and participant who truly loves and supports music local and otherwise. Someone who's been around for a long time, but still has the enthusiasm and passion of a teenager.

Food porn is not easy. Any photographer who's accidentally flashed their ground meat, or viewer who's been subject to the nasty, fluorescent hue given to a dish under poor light knows bad food photography. Which is why it was impressive when YouPlus Dallas, which we gave Best Dallas Website last year as well, managed to put together a sexy, slow-mo Food Trucks of Dallas earlier in 2012. The video's a perfect summary of how they're tapped into Dallas: the growing food scene, egregiously sexy sandwich photos and long shots up the shafts of Dallas buildings. It's all so hot. You're sexy, YouPlusDallas, and you're constantly finding ways to represent the best cultural nuggets of our city. Keep making us all sweaty, YPD.

We're pretty certain that the gaudy color-changing neon curves of the new Omni Hotel and the sparkling, newly colorful lights of the city's One Big Ball are eventually going to distract some poor driver enough to cause a vehicular accident on northbound Interstate 35, if they haven't already. Hopefully that won't precipitate any cries to tone it down a bit. The city has long had a reputation for big, oversized glitz and glamour, and yet beige seems to be the dominant color of its skyline. It's refreshing to see a couple of architectural accessories that match the gleaming pretty people.

When a Dallas comedy show calls for edgy, dirty and shocking, Clint "Paco" Werth is one of the go-to comics. His Twitter ruminations are consistently funny, and in the past year, he opened for two of the most cringe-inducing, line-crossing comedians working today, Neil Hamburger at the Texas Theatre and Doug Stanhope at Trees. And Werth held his own with jokes that included reflecting on how sad it was when a mother killed her baby in a microwave — though it wasn't sad for the reasons that anyone else would lament. Edgy, dirty and shocking are our three favorite adjectives in describing the work of a stand-up artist, so we're always glad to see his name on a bill.

You can't get work done at your house. Your dog and Netflix subscription are constantly jockeying for your attention, luring you into a state of nap-time entropy. You have to venture out. At Murray Street you get what you need and more: an abundance of surge protectors for your electronics, good music played at not overly aggressive volumes, great coffee, delicious healthy food and an impossibly friendly staff. It wouldn't occur to them to give you the stink eye for staying all afternoon; they like it when you better yourself. With three tiers of naturally lit chill zones, peppered with modular furniture, you can choose whether to sit in a more communal, chatty space or a quiet remote corner. The best part? It's rare that you'll walk into a distracting night of singer/songwriter mayhem, which all remote workers know is like someone holding a drill to your head as you try to concentrate.

There's something sexy about a man launching a child off his shoulders in a swimming pool. If that child is dressed like a superhero or princess, your womb will actually quiver. The scientific phenomenon is one that even women who don't want kids are unable to resist. It's primal: You see the man as someone who can accept responsibility, probably has a job and can almost certainly make you a grilled cheese sandwich or pancakes with smiley faces on them. Hot. To find single dads in the wild, it's best to go to their natural environment, the watering hole. Every weekend the F.O.E. becomes the best of joint custody. Here you'll see tattooed papa types playing "shark in the pool" and floating children around on inflated rafts shaped like fish. You sit poolside, sipping a bevie, watching lady porn at its finest. Ain't life grand?

Thank you, Civilian Conservation Corps, for creating this lake from farmland in the 1930s. Thank you, members of For the Love of the Lake, for keeping it clean and pretty with your monthly spruce-up crews. Thank you, dog park (Dallas' first), for giving our fur families places to romp and splash with their fur friends. Thank you, squirrels, rabbits, possums, foxes, bobcats, minks and even you, skunks, for giving us cuteness to photograph on the trails and among the flora. Thank you, turtles, big and small, salamanders, lizards, horned toads — but not you, rattlesnakes — for giving our kids nature lessons as you sun yourselves on rocks and logs. Thank you, 217 species of birds, including swans and loons, for using White Rock as your stopover on migration. Thank you, bass, crappie and catfish, for giving city anglers something to hook. Thank you, oaks, pecans, sweet gums, cottonwoods and pear trees for shading the banks and scenting the trails. Thank you, 11 miles of trails, for helping us walk, run and bike off the pounds. Thank you, Lady of the Lake, for the best ghost story in town. Most of all, thank you, 1,088 acres of White Rock Lake, for keeping the sailboats afloat, and for giving us a huge patch of beautiful water in the middle of our hard, hot concrete city.

Back in the 1980s, a local trickster used to pull the same stunt every November. Around the anniversary of the JFK assassination, November 22, he'd sprinkle a few shell casings around the Grassy Knoll, that hillock just below the Texas School Book Depository and across the street from Dealey Plaza. He just wanted to watch the tourists when they thought they'd found new evidence. The place was picked clean long ago, of course, but it's still a primo observation spot to see crowds of out-of-towners — more than 325,000 visit the Sixth Floor Museum every year — getting their first looks at the historic "triple underpass," the "sniper's perch" window and the railroad tracks where the mysterious "hobos" may or may not have been aiming their own weapons at the president that day in 1963. Wanna really thrill the lookie-loos? Sit on the knoll under an unfurled red umbrella. You'll end up in everybody's vacation pictures.

It's almost ridiculously easy to trespass into this downtown luxury hotel's gorgeous swimming pool. Stroll over to the north elevators, push "T" for terrace level and exit onto the massive pool deck. No card key necessary (yet) and nobody bird-dogging interlopers. We've done it. More than once. There are comfy lounge chairs, free towels, shady areas with tables and lots of greenery. It's like SoHo House without the attitude, right in our own Arts District. Just be subtle when you go, OK? Don't ruin it for the rest of us.

It's right there on the wall above the urinal, staring back at you mid-pee. Amid the gibberish and wild-scrawled drawings: "Ayn Rand had some big ass titties." Mid expel, you find yourself questioning the veracity of this bold statement. It's nearly too descriptive to be false, right? And let's not discount the talent it takes to pen this during urination, which is the only way we can imagine it happening. Anyway, welcome to the Lakewood Landing, where cold beer, a jukebox playing Sam Cooke, and vexing wall graffiti lives. Enjoy yourself. We always do.

You don't know who he is, but he's been pushing movies in front of your face through Dallas' Angelika Theatre on Mockingbird for the past few years. A die-hard film nerd (Conway spawned from SMU's Cinema program), he has been wrangling themed screenings, TV premiere parties and Q&As as Angelika's events and marketing manager. This year, Conway has been everywhere, from handing out Hulk-themed 3-D glasses to setting up a series with the Texas Independent Film Network to bring Texas-made films to the theater. In the meantime, he's organizing screenings of shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men with prizes and specialty drinks. A man behind the curtain, indeed. Keep an eye on angelikafilmcenter.com and follow @angelikatexas for more updates on Adam's screenings.

Dude. Duuuude. Remember when Cubes saved the parade? Back in February, there was a minor earthquake in North Texas. Not the geological kind, the emotional one: The Greenville Avenue St. Patrick's Day parade was on life support. Preparing livers quivered with fear as the news spread, and reporters (like us) were dispatched to follow up. Then came Mark Cuban: He flew in on a golden Pegasus leaving behind a forest-green trail of gorgeous cash. OK, so what he actually did was cut a $40,000 check to the Greenville Avenue Area Business Association to save the parade, while pledging another $25,000 to the parade's scholarship fund. And the parade and our booze-soaked livers miraculously lived on. That was awesome, bro.

What is it about Texas pride? It's a feeling that pumps around with your blood. That bath-like heat in Austin, the cold Lone Star beer and spicy barbecue. It's taking photos of Luckenbach, your Whataburger or ice on a bottle of real Dr Pepper. Fortunately, there's a Tumblr that has no problem visualizing it for you. It'll get you through your day — under a big, blue banner that reads "FUCK YEAH TEXAS" is the subtitle for the most entertaining Texas Tumblr out there: "a collection of what makes this state great." Damn right.

Just after midnight on Sunday, January 15, Erykah Badu pulled up in a black Stingray to lead a funeral procession down Main Street. Only it wasn't for a body. No, this processional was the New Orleans-style jazz-funk Rebirth Brass Band trailing behind Badu playing melancholy, sometimes whimsical tunes to signal the last breath of the PM Nightlife Lounge in the basement of the Joule. Badu, topped in a tall hat and wearing a trench coat, danced with the band and gatherers who jumped in after Main Street was closed. Then, she went inside and DJed into the tiny hours of the night. Take that, Dealey Plaza strip session.

A little more than three years ago, Nicole Stewart was in Venice Beach, California, and she was heartbroken. She'd been pursuing acting since she was 14 and was looking to be in a sitcom. Then her agent dropped her. Fast forward to 2012, when Stewart, minted in a city she knows well (her grandparents are legends in the art scene in Dallas) kicked off a non-fiction storytelling series known as Oral Fixation. Oral Fixation is a curated night of real-life stories, but it's no open mic. It is raw, emotional, often funny performances of true tales. But Stewart wants more. She wants to be a leader in the arts community, and, if the innovation behind Oral Fixation is any indication, Dallas is certain to see exciting moves from her chess board. You can follow Oral Fixation on Facebook at facebook.com/oralfixationshow for upcoming shows.

The best thing about community gardens in older urban areas is their sheer obduracy — the grit and patience, the sweat equity involved in digging down through rubble to find real dirt again and bring it back to green abundance. A great example is this garden, four-tenths of an acre of serenity just off a noisy intersection in Old East Dallas. In the early '90s it was an overflow garden for Cambodian refugees not able to find plots in the busy Southeast Asian refugee garden a few blocks away. Later abandoned and neglected, it has been adopted again by families fleeing turmoil in Bhutan, a Himalayan nation sandwiched between China and India. You can wander in and watch them work their beds in rhythms and tones of ancient practice, their garden a soft prayer to our city's roaring heart.

It's not even one of the official canoe trails designated by the state, but some of those you're not allowed to use anyway, like the one downtown on the Trinity River. White Rock Creek north (upstream) from White Rock Lake has the appeal of some bushwhacking, getting out where you don't need no stinkin' official canoe trail, thank you. Half a mile up White Rock Creek, after you paddle under Northwest Highway, it splits. Jackson Branch comes in on your right, flowing down from northeast, and White Rock Creek, which is bigger, continues on up northwest. Unless it's right after a big rain, paddling upstream is easy. Is there trash? Oh, yeah. But there are wonderful little oxbows and side channels, too, where there is very little trash and where you're surrounded by verdure and bird song, with the sounds of the city far, far away. This is a place where you can go explore, right in the heart of the city. How can you beat that?

Every year on the first Saturday in June the city of Dallas teams up with Addison, the Texas Agrilife Extension Service and the Master Gardeners of Dallas County to present a tour of gardens and landscaping that demonstrate sound water conservation techniques. The gardens and landscape installations on the tour always present a delightful and surprisingly broad spectrum of possibilities, from true xeriscaping with lots of gravel and cactus to more verdant transitional gardens. In the verdant examples, gardeners have marshaled combinations of drip irrigation with native species to show that a luxuriously green garden can be water-wise at the same time, even in Dallas. Every year there's a new, better way to do it. The tour presents 30-minute talks on water-wise techniques at the various headquarters.

Arcades are officially on the endangered species list of entertainment venues. Blame the cost of coin-op upkeep or those whippersnappers with their fancy schmancy home systems, but these watering holes for nerds are few and far between. That's why finding one that's not only survived, but also maintained its eccentricity as Nickelrama has, feels like a bizarro throwback to an earlier era. Or a pit stop on the drive to Atlantic City. Either way, it's beautiful, strange and infectious (literally, hand sanitizer is positioned everywhere). The business' slogan, "Worth Every Nickel," sums up the experience perfectly. Sure, roughly half of the games you play will gobble up your Jeffersons without apology, but the other half will work in 5-cent denominations. When's the last time you played pinball for 15 cents? Never, that's when. Also, Nickelrama has great knock-off versions of games you kinda know, as well as a whole mess of others that act mostly as a nickel-for-tickets exchange, like Shoot The Quarter In The Gorilla's Mouth. You'll feel so wealthy at this Garland hideaway, playing for hours on five dollars, that you won't even mind when swarms of dirty children steal the redemption tickets from your games, like tiny pickpocketing gypsies.

As any apartment dweller can attest, bathing your pooch at home is a messy task, one that inevitably ends in an emergency call to a plumber. Add on that your fur child requires several hours of cross-fit daily just so he doesn't destroy your home, and you have yourself a dog park challenge. Central Dog Park is a lovely secluded hideaway tucked behind Central Christian Church that anyone is welcome to visit. It's inviting, with a shady, hilly stretch of fenced-in play space for the pups and dozens of lawn chairs scattered around for human socializing. But wait, it gets better. Those chairs are positioned under rows of misters and in front of two industrial box fans: You'll unapologetically pose like that fella from the Maxell cassette ads. The real deal-sealer is the dog washing station. This park knows that your dog is a filthy, disgusting creature, so it's taken mercy on you. A wooden ramped platform constructed at the park's entrance, lined with soaps and towels, acts as your safety net. What's that? Your dog just rolled in crap? Dog washing station. Ooh, he found something dead in a bush? Dog washing station. He was distracted by excitement at the park and pissed all over himself? Dog washing station. Peace will return to your household, as well as your shower drains. Praise be.

Pro Wrestling Onslaught has everything the WWE offers and more, and also less. More great characters, more humor, more originality, more fun. Less in the way of 'roided-up muscleheads, less cost to enjoy the bouts live, less distance between spectators and the action. The characters include skinny everyday-looking guys, a longhaired chubby burnout who runs in terror from a more muscular fighter, and masked behemoths sporting enviable but not chemically created muscle tone. The first time we caught a match, we went in expecting amateurish, poorly acted second-rate stunts. By the end we were screaming for our favorites as they pulled off impressive acrobatics, aerial stunts and painful-looking takedowns.

So you don't consider yourself the NorthPark type. It's too close to the Park Cities, and it is filled with places in which every item is worth more than your car. All true enough, but there's also a little place called Bookmarks. It's a public library, but without the homeless people. Plus, it's just for kids. There are children's books and DVDs, educational programs and colorful nooks that, depending on the child, serve as a great spot to curl up with a book or re-enact all 24 Tarzan novels. Better yet, there are several eating establishments within walking distance that also serve liquor. The best strategy is sit with your kid on the periphery during story times and then, when the librarian is looking the other way, tiptoe into the mall and go have a drink or three. If you keep track of time, they'll never miss you. If you don't, just remember that your tax money is paying the librarians' salaries, so it's kind of like you're their boss anyway.

It's been a century since William Howard Taft rocked a mustache in the Oval Office. That 'stache, while admittedly righteous, is also sad, marking as it does the death knell of facial hair in American politics. Every president since has been clean-shaven. In lower office, facial hair has hardly been prevalent. That's why Domingo Garcia's run for a U.S. House seat was so refreshing. The man has a mustache best described as, depending on the day, belonging to a '70s major league pitcher or a '70s porn star, and he owned it. It's something you can't help but respect. In the end, the electorate was not quite ready for such an onslaught of facial hair, and Garcia was defeated by opponent Marc Veasey in a runoff. Garcia's campaign, however, wasn't for naught, as it made facial hair, scorned for so long in American politics, relevant again.

Maybe we sound like a Travel Channel show host here, but sometimes the best way to get to know a city's culture is through the food. So, if some wayward alien named Glorbers crashed his disc-shaped spacecraft into White Rock Lake and decided to live amongst us in secret, how would he get to know the iconic food behind our fine little city? Glorbers should follow Dallas' best meat twitter: @BBQSnob, aka Daniel Vaughn. He's one of Dallas' best chroniclers of the slow cook. He's like the old prospector waist-deep in the river, panning for treasure. Every week, his feed unveils nuggets (yes, there are always porny food photos) of where to get the best meat treasures, in Dallas and beyond. Follow Daniel and you're sure to get to know Dallas through its barbecue.

First Baptist's Robert Jeffress may be the marquee name among Dallas evangelicals, but Jeffress has never brought a live lion to his Easter service, spent 24 hours with his wife in a bed on the roof of his megachurch, launched a blog doling out fashion tips to his fellow clergy or written a book titled Sexperiment. That was Ed Young, founding pastor of Grapevine's Fellowship Church, who did all of the above in the course of about four months this year. If such antics strike you as a desperate, toddler-like ploy for the attention, your understanding of scripture is woefully unsophisticated, because Young has the evangelical chops to back it up. He has a master's in divinity from Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, and his father helms Second Baptist Church in Houston, one of the country's largest. Besides, he's entertaining as hell.

You might have noticed that the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge opened earlier this year, offering the newest, shiniest, most signature-y way to get across the Trinity River. No matter how high the arch or how famous the architect, no bridge can match the humble charm of the Houston Street Viaduct, best appreciated from a bicycle saddle. Embark from Oak Cliff over the arches of weathered concrete, the downtown skyline looming ahead. Nod to the gentleman with the tweed pageboy cap pedaling past. Puzzle at the eerily deserted Reunion Arena parking garage before finding yourself downtown, right next to Dealey Plaza. It feels like you've traveled a few decades back in time. Soon, it'll feel even more so; DART is planning for its Oak Cliff street car line to pass over the historic span.

Some day, Dallas will boast an extensive network of dedicated bike lanes that will allow riders to get anywhere in the city without so much fear that the side mirror of a speeding F-350 will send them to an early grave. That day is far, far away. The city has a plan for such a system but has been dragging its feet and has done exceedingly little to see it through. The only sign of progress came earlier this year when the city unexpectedly laid down its first shared bike lane on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between Fair Park and Julius Schepps Freeway. The person, if he or she exists, who commutes between those two places on a bike is no doubt thrilled. For the rest of us, it's a sign that the city might eventually become bike-friendly. Someday.

It's been nearly 30 years since Gloria Campos first filled an anchor chair at WFAA. Back then, she was one of the young up-and-comers, of the type now forcing veterans like her out of the business. But though she recently stopped doing the 6 p.m. newscast for Channel 8, she's holding strong at 10 and seeming more and more like your mother every day. Only more adorable. She's a lifetime member of the Texas PTA. She enjoys "junk-tiquing." She has an extensive collection of butterfly pins. Everything about Campos, from her warm yet authoritative demeanor on-air to the way she capitalizes random words on Twitter, screams "Mom." So if you're feeling homesick and crave the maternal touch, delightfully free of nagging about how you're wasting your life, turn to Campos.

Man, what a tool. That's what everyone was thinking, or at least that's what it seemed like on Twitter for the few hours the author of Friday Night Lights trolled Dallas with "Based on book tour, if Dallas slid into sinkhole, nation's IQ would rise by 50 points." The punking of Dallas continued in the dusky eve, as Bissinger imploded from the sheer weight of thrashing responses. Turns out, thanks to a long, sighing message to our very own Unfair Park, the author regretted his tirade. Not sure what the takeaway is, other than Don't Mess with Texas, and maybe Buzz should count to 10 before hurling all over Twitter.

That's the way baseball go, sure. But baseball go where baseball players take it, and only with a manager they trust and respect can they take it to the heights the Rangers have in recent years. Ron Washington is that manager. He's the consummate players' coach, rarely uttering a word in public that doesn't support his guys, and resisting the urge to tinker, whether with lineups or the flow of the game. With a roster like the one he's armed with, this is the only viable strategy, and he sticks by it through thick and thin. Which is why, with the Rangers, there's been a lot of thick for three years running.

This one was the Mavericks' to lose after their improbable title run last year, and lose it they did. Owner Mark Cuban dismantled key elements of the team's championship roster, bidding farewell to center Tyson Chandler and winding up with a team that barely limped into the playoffs. Give credit, though, where credit is due. The Rangers, after reaching the World Series in consecutive years, are still in close-to-championship form. Manager Ron Washington, general manager Jon Daniels and owner/baseball god Nolan Ryan have proven themselves as a deft management team. There's no reason to think the team won't go deep into the postseason. All this just two years after Tom Hicks ran the team into bankruptcy. Go figure.

It wasn't supposed to be this way, but it is: Dirk Nowitzki is, and may be for the foreseeable future, the best basketball player in town. It's not always pretty. He's lumbering, he's falling away, he's in desperate need of a haircut. But it works — especially the falling away and the jump shot it enables — and it will work even better if his bosses' off-season moves prove more successful than they look on paper.