Spoiler alert: Charlotte Brown did not win the state pole vaulting championship over the weekend. The sophomore at Emory Rains High School, 70 miles east of here, cleared 10'6" on Saturday, putting her eighth out of nine contestants and more than two feet shy of victory. Still, her performance was ... More >>
Shame on us for not seeing this sooner. A Waco distillery whooped up on the Scots in the whiskey distillin' business a month ago. They won Best in Glass, a recent whiskey competition, beating names I'm sure you'll recognize like Macallan and Glenmorangie, just to name two. See also: - Texas Distill ... More >>
1. Channeling Sam Sifton. The former New York Times restaurant critic is on a roll. In addition to a career in food writing and 25 years of cooking holiday dinners, he twice manned the Thanksgiving Help Line at the Times, where he guided overwhelmed (drunk) hosts through frozen birds and flambé dis ... More >>
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg has a new column out saying the presidential election was about our desire as a nation to become more European and by sad inference less American. Do you remember voting on that? I'm trying to think what the ballot language might have been. Proposition One (ink ... More >>
This Friday at Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert will deliver an interactive performance discussing the industry that has granted them stardom. Most of the press coverage about the show has focused on Bourdain, but while Ripert takes a quieter approach to life his story is no ... More >>
Just want to make sure you know what you're getting into if you count on The Dallas Morning News to tell you what's up. It's not that they won't. But you do have to deal with the social local filter. The New York Times this morning carries a story by Times staffer Natasha Singer under a headline, " ... More >>
Tale of two cities on today's front pages: Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic at The New York Times, presents a big-canvas panoramic of Rio Park in Madrid, Spain, where they entombed a highway to bring a river back to life. Linking Madrid's vast and wonderful new park to trends in Europe and Am ... More >>
Back in late August we mentioned that the city had hired a search firm to find a permanent (well, you know what I mean) director of the Dallas Public Library System. Corinne Hill's been serving as interim director since Laurie Evans retired in June 2010, and by all accounts she's done a bang-up j ... More >>
Today 36 clergy affixed their names to a paid ad and open letter to the Village Voice, the Observer's New York sister paper, and the classified ad site Backpage.com. The full page ad was published in the New York Times. The religious coalition demanded that we close down our legal, adult cla ... More >>
Anthony Bourdain comes to Dallas this Thursday, visiting the Majestic Theater to share what will no doubt be candid and curse-filled insights into his life's work, travels and food. Since City of Ate is sponsoring the event, I spoke to Bourdain recently, asking about his new show, the food sc ... More >>
The battle over Yvonne A. Ewell Townview Center -- which Dallas Independent School District Michael Hinojosa is splitting up in order to excise five of its seven principals next school year, over parents and Carla Ranger's objections -- has reached The New York Times, via its relationship with th ... More >>
The New York Times this morning revealed its long-expected plans to erect a pay wall (again) around some of its content: Starting March 28, visitors to the paper's website will be able to access 20 articles every month without paying. After that, it'll cost $15 a month to keep reading. But there ... More >>
While visiting my parents in Detroit this weekend, I'd planned to dine at Slows BBQ, a trendy smokehouse that's earned praise from Bon Appetit and been credited by The New York Times with spearheading the city's cultural resurgence. But since my planning consisted entirely of checking the address an ... More >>
Jason JanikThese guys are naked for a reason: They have a new record coming soon. Some quick hits on the album release front to pass along this afternoon...
Sunday, March 6, at The Loft
Sam MertenWhat Gov. Rick Perry thinks of the Environmental Protection AgencySurely you're aware of the ongoing battle between the Environmental Protection Agency and Governor Rick Perry over the state's enforcement (cough) of the Clean Air Act. Long story short: The governor says the feds don't h ... More >>
The Trinity Parkway Toll Road, looking south from Hampton Road, from the master planNot to be cranky or anything, but it's really irritating to read all this crap about congressional earmarks and realize nobody knows what the hell they're talking about. Stories in both The Dallas Morning News and ... More >>
Speaking of the Dallas Independent School District ...This morning, The New York Times -- or, more to the point, The Times via its new-found relationship with the Texas Tribune and, in this instance, a partnership with the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Columbia University -- l ... More >>
Patrick MichelsTom Leppert Fact: He pitched a few innings of junior varsity at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. So notes The New York Times this morning, in a pitching duel between the Dallas mayor and San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom, a former first baseman for Redwood High Sc ... More >>
Sam MertenFor a long while during the auction of Your Texas Rangers on August 4 -- and into the wee small hours of August 5 -- it looked as though Mark Cuban and Jim Crane's Radical Pitch LLC might indeed take possession of the team. Every time Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan's Rangers Baseball Ex ... More >>
John RobertsonIt takes all of this long to find someone insisting that Emmitt Smith ain't all that. "Smith's record is overrated." See, that did not take long. And. And. And. The common knock on the Dallas Cowboy: "Had the best offensive line of all time in front of him." Imagine if Barry Sanders ... More >>
A chef could always tell a critic to lick his chocolate salty balls.BRC, the gastropub with the naughty name that's been a sensation in Houston this summer, failed to impress Houston Chronicle critic Alison Cook. In her review this week, Cook declined to give Big Red Cock a single star. But ... More >>
Food isn't much fun when it's unaffordable. Today, cash-strapped Americans tell survey takers they're planning to eat out less and use more coupons. But eaters haven't always taken such a passive approach: There's a centuries-old tradition of demanding lower prices. Here, City of Ate presents five m ... More >>
I recently traveled with a contingent of Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference attendees to Archer City, where we were supposed to meet with Larry McMurtry and tour his family's ranch before speeding back to cocktail hour in Grapevine. But McMurtry was laid up with an aching eye, and our bus ... More >>
U.S. Census BureauA little light lunchtime reading ...To begin with, the U.S. Census Bureau released its population estimates today, and, as usual, Texas -- and the DFWA (as in, Arlington) -- fared bestest in all the land. "Star of the Sun Belt," says here. And that means you, Frisco and McKinney ... More >>
Woodall Rodgers Park FoundationWhenever we bring up the Woodall Rodgers Deck Park, as we did yesterday, it sparks quite the contentious debate amongst those who think it the proverbial game-changer and those who think it nothing short of folly doomed inevitably to failure. Which is where Patrick ... More >>
View Larger MapThe New York Times' Great Homes and Destinations blog wonders what kind of pad you can get for $250,000 and comes up with a few options: a three-bedroom, three-bath 179-year-old house near the Fore River in Portland, Maine; a five-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath house in Athens, Georgi ... More >>
He's a former professional triathlete and current Austin firefighter. But Esselstyn is also the author of a vegan cookbook. The Engine 2 DietBut he doesn't call it vegan. He's eating "plant strong"--and has been for more than a decade. Then, when a fellow firefighter found out his cholesterol was d ... More >>
"The straw and orange have been there for a long time, but people have not necessarily had a huge connection to them." (Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America, announcing a design change on boxes of the company's orange juice last month.) "What we didn't get was the passion this very ... More >>
U.S. Drought MonitorThe most recent drought report for Texas, posted TuesdayIn his January Climatic Bulletin, published earlier this month, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon documented Texas's "extraordinarily dry" and "unseasonably warm" January -- and warned of more months just like it to co ... More >>
Mobil Travel GuideMid-week date nights are a staple in our romantic relationships. The dates themselves don't necessarily have to be romantic, but it's a happy occasion when date night and romance actually do intersect. Starting tonight and continuing on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays through F ... More >>
Congress gets back to business on Tuesday, and if Texas Republican John Cornyn has anything to say about it, Minnesota will only have one senator seated. That's because Cornyn, about to be installed as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, vowed today to keep Al Franken out of th ... More >>
Comeback kids, rhymin' Limeys and songs about partying defined Hip-Hop Nation in 2006
Restaurants and reviewers square off in an often acrimonious battle
Republicans are aiding and abetting denial of the worldwide shift in climate
