Usually around this time of year Unfair Park offers up some New Year's resolutions -- but really, who are we kidding? Do we seem like the sort of people who will keep a promise to do better? We're perfect just as we are, so this year we're offering predictions for the coming year ahead.
How accurate are they? Let's put it this way: Everything on this list is at least 728 percent more likely than our actually losing weight, cutting back on the boozing, throwing away our bongs, etc. So that's a step up, anyway. Happy 2015, and see you next year.
- Anonymous City Hall gadfly Wylie H. will be unmasked, but before his identity can be publicly revealed, his discoverer will be mysteriously felled by a poison blow dart.
- City Hall abandons all pretense of giving a shit about nature, unveils J.R. Ewing's World Class Amusement Park/Parking Lot at the Great Trinity Forest.
- And so it will be written: "And after six days Dirk taketh Monta, Rajon, and Tyson and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Dirk, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces, and were sore afraid. And Dirk came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid."
- After years of talking about making Dallas more "walkable," the city finally get its first pedestrian in late March. Tragically, he dies two blocks into his first trek to his neighborhood coffee shop, struck down in a bizarre collision involving a bicyclist and trolley.
- Armed members of Texas' citizen border militias abandon their patrols in South Texas' brush country to answer the call of another group of natives besieged by the impoverished, huddled masses. The militiamen come north to the Park Cities to set up roadblocks on Preston Road and its cross-streets.
- Beef prices nationwide collapse and thousands of Dallas food service workers struggle to find new jobs when, in August, a local man realizes he just paid $14 for a hamburger. His "It's Just a Fucking Burger, You Idiots" social media campaign goes viral, leading to the shuttering of hundreds of Dallas restaurants.
- The Trinity toll road will be declared dead, once and for all. There will be another funeral, only this time we will wisely require proof, in the form of exurb fetishist Michael Morris producing, and then cremating for all to see, all 1,764 designs that have ever existed for the everlasting road. We will drink whiskey and sing "The Strife is O'er" and sway here and there, and our hands will stretch for each others' shoulders, and our eyes will fall gently closed, and when they do Mary Suhm will sneak into the forest and lay that Goddamn pavement herself.
- The Morning News, under the guidance of a new editor seemingly not cut from the same monochromatic pocket square as the paper's current leadership, will get more interesting. Thin-journalist-skin will be punctured, feelings hurt, bitter Tweets sent and deleted, but by the end of the year the paper will be 7 percent less boring.
- The Cowboys will lose this week or next, Tony Romo will not be at fault but will be blamed anyway, so hard, in fact, that he will have to go into hiding, probably in Dez Bryant's house. He will have to sleep on a blow-up mattress -- all the beds are taken! -- and amid his restlessness he will roll onto the floor, causing a career-ending injury to his back. He will slowly overcome his back pain and win three senior-tour majors by age 54, all with Jason Witten as his caddy.
- With 2014's success of rebranding the "safe" section of Oak Cliff by labeling it "North," developers will break down the section into "West Oak Cliff" for the expensive shopping district and "East Oak Cliff" for the new hippie neighborhood. Future plans? Turn Oak Cliff into the suburb people already think it is.
- Finally, someone outside of Dallas will refer to us unironically as "world-class." Unfortunately, it will be a 7-year-old from Lufkin who didn't realize Six Flags and Jerryworld are actually in Arlington.
- Bored by 2013's restrained and unimaginative commemoration of "The 50th," Dallas will mark the 52nd anniversary of the Kennedy assassination by staging a tasteful but action-packed reenactment.
- Mark Cuban will purchase the Kalachandji's Hare Krishna Temple in Dallas and introduce meat to the restaurant menu.
- All of the houses in Old East Dallas will be razed so that developers can put in "Brooklyn," an outdoor, walkable shopping development from the creators of the West Village, similar in structure but meant to appeal to east Dallas' cooler, more artsy crowd. The stores will include a coffee-table bookstore that also sells tequila and expensive cheese, an art gallery that also sells hamburgers and a music shop that also sells pizza and beer.
- Guests at a major public function will be aghast when a tiny coiled spring, two light emitting diodes, a lens and a miniature circuit board suddenly pop out of former Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm's right eyeball, exposing her as an animatronic android controlled by powerful oilman Ray Hunt, who sees everything she sees with tiny TV cameras in her eyeballs and actually speaks for her through a wireless microphone using a fake high voice.
- In a rare display of grassroots power, the people of southern Dallas secede from the city and elect Dwaine Caraway as their pants czar. Enforcement committees take to the streets, making many unfortunate mistakes.
- Former City Council member Vonciel Hill is given her own radio talk show on The Ticket -- Bible Smack-Downs -- in which she and guests shout Biblical insults at each other. Guests must then complete hilarious obstacle courses modeled on the Old Testament.
- With the future of the Trinity toll road on the line, the 2015 Dallas City Council and mayoral races will become a political free-for-all. Intense, serious debate on the city's course is seasoned with episodes of mud-slinging, vitriol, humor and, of course, lies. The campaigns stir up Dallas' sleeping electorate, resulting in a tremendous 11 percent voter turnout on election day.
- In March, after the sixth late-winter icepolcalypse of the season, WFAA meteorologist/weather god Pete Delkus will make a surprise appearance on all local channels. His head shaven, he will stroke a white Persian cat as he demands the city pay him $1 million to avoid more attacks of the dreaded wintry mix.
- Reunion Tower will continue to invest money in creative light displays. On Valentine's Day, a hyper-realistic Cupid will cause a massive traffic snarl on downtown freeways as drivers crane their necks, saying, "Hey, I think I see Cupid's dick!"
- The normcore trend peaks. Millennials vacate East Dallas and Oak Cliff for Frisco.
- A new fitness chain, Walk It Out, will take off in the Park Cities. For $40 a class, you can march in place while a ruthless instructor -- hyped up on coconut water and prescription pills -- weakens your resolve to live with back-to-back Ariana Grande songs.
- Chef and restaurateur John Tesar will take his social media campaign against food journalists and Yelpers to a new, disturbing level that ends when a Dallas police SWAT team frees Morning News critic Leslie Brenner from the walk-in freezer at Knife.
- Avocado toast will be served at every restaurant in the Park Cities
- The Dallas Farmers Market will open a stall selling Sarah Jaffe CDs to prove once and for all that it's local. (And dated.)
