Arts & Entertainment

Most honest answer? Only your ears, unless, of course, you wanna break your mother's already fragile heart. What, she's made out of stone all of a sudden? No, no, we kid because we love. If you have to do it, head to Obscurities (conveniently located next door to Trilogy Tattoo), and Pat Tidwell and the rest of the gang will spear you wherever you want.

You're taking your early-morning jog with your pet dog Old Blue and desperately searching your headset for some music to run by. Frustrated, you are willing to settle for anything other than the mindless prattle of two self-absorbed DJs who laugh at their own canned jokes as if they were entertaining someone other than themselves. You stumble onto WRR, the sole classical music station in town, and listen to Road Rage Remedy or the March of the Day and suddenly believe there is a God. Even the news becomes more tolerable, particularly as the cool, smooth voice of Valerie Moore hits the airwaves, her news stylings taking on a peculiarly sexy quality. It's just the news, you remind yourself, but with Valerie it's so much more. She knows just when to pause before she anoints the last word of a sentence, when to drop her voice an octave for just the right amount of primal ooziness before going to a commercial break. She seduces you to keep listening, just so you can hear her deliver the weather and traffic..."next."

OK, we've got bronzed cattle-drive re-creations, statues of hard-throwing Nolan Ryan, Texas Rangers, mustangs, et al. around town, but if it's real art by master craftsmen you want to see, the Oakland Cemetery, established in 1891, will blow you away. Elaborate memorial sculptures in granite and marble, some done as far away as Florence, Italy, are shipped here to stand guard over Dallas' Who's Who of yesteryear. The cemetery is open until sundown daily and offers not only a magnificent art exhibit but a fascinating visit to the city's history. Don't forget to take a camera.

With Dallas being home to more than 200 ethnic communities, Dallas International sees its mission as attempting to harness their cultural diversity by providing a forum to express the richness of their heritage and thereby create a better understanding of each group to the rest of the city. We think. Each year (generally in June) the organization produces the Dallas International Festival, spearheaded by Anne Marie Weiss-Armush. Regrettably, the festival had to make do this year as funding cuts forced it out of its digs at Fair Park and cramped it into the Majestic Theatre, where Dallas' finest global arts groups performed. The festival's International Bazaar has been rescheduled for November and relocated to the St. Mark's School of Texas at 10600 Preston Road. The food court alone will be worth the price of admission, which is free. Honorable mention: the martinis at Terilli's. Drink three of these and everyone will be your friend.

Too bad we don't have a category for Best-looking City Council Member so she could win twice. Dr. Elba, a dentist, wins this one because we have a very simple criterion: Does the council member do more or less what her constituents want? Garcia attacks her job obsessively as if every single constituent complaint were a dental cavity. She parked on the desk of the director of animal control until he agreed to go catch more dogs. Then she rode in the vans with the dog catchers to make sure they got it done. The Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce loves her because she fixed the huge mess with the Texas Theatre restoration. She got all the city's myriad Cinco de Mayo and Diez y Seis parades combined into one. And when the council shot down her idea of having the new Latino Cultural Center named for a brand of tequila (bad idea), she got funding instead from a dairy (good idea). So if she's so smart, what's she doing on the city council? District 1 just lucked out, we guess.

Just as the stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s was fizzling out, comedian Rob Becker began his research into the oddities of human behavior. Do women carry a shopping gene? Do men have a territorial imperative when it comes to the remote? Becker took what he learned and wrote Defending the Caveman, an insightful, enlightening and hilarious two-hour monologue explaining the anthropological reasons for the quirks that occur in the male-female dynamic. He tried out the show on the road in the early '90s, including a long stint at the Addison Improv, and ended up taking Caveman to Broadway. He's now performed it for more than 2 million people in the United States and Canada, and there are offshoot productions on the boards in Iceland and South Africa. Clearly, he's on to something with a universal message. With every syllable polished, Becker's show returned to Dallas this spring for a double run at the Majestic, where it played to sold-out houses of couples (mostly) who laughed till they cried and repeatedly jabbed each other in the rib cage, whispering, "He's talking about yewwwww!"

Besides the free parking and free admission, the African American Museum in Fair Park contains some really cool stuff about African American history in Dallas that you are unlikely to find elsewhere. One of the current displays contains artifacts from Freedman's Town, a black enclave in old Dallas that was buried under a freeway until some local black-history buffs banded together to keep the memory and the history alive. Artifacts include parts of caskets and children's toys. Besides that exhibit, which is ongoing, the nearly 30-year-old museum claims to have "one of the largest African-American folk art collections in the United States." The Fair Park building has four galleries, a research library and a theater.

It doesn't matter where you are, Sekt has been there. Street corners, drains, rain gutters and brick walls. Our very own building has been graced with the tag of the elusive being. We have to wonder, is that a name, a statement, some sort of slang or just a favorite word-cum-identity? We counted 100 "Sekts" in a quarter-mile walk to lunch and back. When does the tagging happen? Late nights we endured here and no sign of a person, yet in the morning new tags appear. One person we mentioned the urban phenomenon to saw a tag on an overpass coming from Fort Worth--now that's dedication, not to mention spare time. Dallas begs to know who is behind Sekt, group or person, fish or fowl. For the love of Mike, who the hell are you?! Even if we never know, we acknowledge Sekt for the stamina and misspelling that drove the short tag to conversation status.

Talk about commitment to one's art. For the title role in Barbette, a new biographical play by Bill Lengfelder and David Goodwin performed at Kitchen Dog Theater in June, Joey Steakley spent nearly a year learning the art of the trapeze and perfecting the moves of the "Spanish web," a balletic circus act on a rope 30 feet in the air. His performance as the Texas-born transvestite circus star involved not just perfecting aerial stunts but delicately depicting the young "Barbette" (real name Vander Clyde) as a dreamy farm boy in Round Rock, Texas, and his subsequent journey to musical hall stardom in drag and his stormy affair with a great poet in Paris in the 1920s. Steakley's fine, subtle acting in the physically demanding role--he did that rope ballet wearing little more than satin shorts, pasties and a blond wig--made the stuntwork even more breathtaking and affecting. For a young actor (he earned his degree in drama in May), fearlessness is as important as talent. Steakley has more of both than most actors of any age.

Owen and Luke Wilson, this year's Hollywood It-Boys, make it back home to Dallas pretty often, and when they do, they inevitably drop in (with their handsome 'rents) at this pricey but delish Park Cities Mexican spot. The country-club crowd this restaurant attracts (need the valet parkers for the Rollses, doncha know) generally ignores the Wilson clan and lets them eat their Barra de Navidad and Filete Cantinflas (two Javier's specialties) in peace. Some of us just enjoy feasting on the sight of the Wilsons in the flesh.

Unlike its crosstown cousin, not much of Dallas resembles the days of cattle drives or cowboys, and maybe that was the idea behind this popular public sculpture. The large herd of longhorns and cowboys, which promoters say is the "biggest outdoor sculpture of longhorns and cowboys in the world," is a most impressive sight. Plopped down in the middle of a bustling city near the convention center, the longhorns are gaudy and cool, like the city they represent.

Let's admit something to each other. For the most part, they're all the same. Sure, there's a difference in the personnel, in the tone, of each station. Channel 8 has a bunch of vets and an air of superiority, which works if you don't watch 'em every night. Channel 5 HAS THIS LATE-BREAKING NEWS DA DA DA DAAAAA. Channel 4 tries hard and actually does a better job than most think with limited resources. And WB33 has Friends reruns following it, which is nice. But, you know, try what we do some nights and flip between all five at 10 p.m. For the most part, on most nights, they're all doing the same stuff, often in the same order. Which means it comes down to a question of which tone you prefer. We like Channel 11. They keep the happy talk to a minimum, which is no small thing. They put the big stories first--national news, international news, then local everyday stuff. They have Kristine Kahanek delivering the weather forecast, which is nice for obvious reasons. And Babe Laufenberg has grown into a fun-to-watch sportscaster. All in all, as solid as TV news can be.

For their first theatrical production, an update of Rick Najera's comic collection of sketches about Latino life, this group of young theater tyros had to hold opening night in a cramped conference room at the Ice House Cultural Center off Swiss Avenue. With only a tiny platform, minimal lighting and a sweaty audience sitting an arm's length away, actors Otis Gray and Marco Rodriguez turned in firecracker performances, playing dozens of characters in a wild array of wigs and costumes. For the level of energy and skill they exhibited, they could just as well have been onstage at Carnegie Hall. It was the kind of show that left theatergoers looking at their programs going, "Who are these guys?" They are that good. Under executive producer Miranda Martinez, by day a worker bee in the corporate world, this company of talented Hispanic actors, designers and writers is looking ahead to ambitious theatrical events. Early next year they'll mount the world premiere of a new Najera play, Buford Gomez: Tales of a Rightwing Border Patrol Officer. Watch for this creative bunch to make their mark on the Dallas theater scene in years to come.

It is hard to miss the eye-catching work of famed sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp as you make the walk through the pedestrian tunnel connecting the transit center and the light-rail station. The 8-foot red aluminum free-form structure in the shape of an "O" appears to be alive, undulating, seeming to change shapes as the sun hits it from different angles during the day. The sculpture is a variation on a theme called "Gateway" that was erected in Oklahoma City's Myriad Gardens in 1993. Just because it is in the hellhole that is Oklahoma City, don't hold that against ol' Hans.

Much to the joy of most Dallas-area media, the former Dallas city councilman took off the electronic shackles 27 months into his 41-month sentence of house arrest (watching television). Just about everybody seemed downright giddy at the announcement that an appeals court overturned his sentence, not because Lipscomb was wrongly convicted but because of a legal technicality. Dallas Morning News columnist James Ragland gleefully fawned over Lipscomb and defended him, actually going so far as to say, "He was charming and charismatic. He was circumspect. More important, he was contrite, acknowledging that he erred by not reporting he was taking money from a cab company owner doing business with the city." Guess Ragland could overlook the fact that Lipscomb started pushing the cab company's agenda after monthly cash payments started. Maybe the voters could forget it, too. Welcome back, Al!

TV news is suddenly crowded with 20-something models who stumble on words with more than three syllables and are never quite sure if famine in Bangladesh is happy news or sad. Tracy Rowlett reassures precisely because the years have bequested him with the opposite set of traits--some wrinkles, some schnozz, a bit of jowl and a dead-on news sense. When Rowlett relates a major story, we can tell that he himself knows what the story is about. We trust him never to announce with an engaging smile that Washington is under attack.

With most theaters jobbing in actors (Dallas Theater Center gets 'em from New Yawk City, no less), a good old-fashioned repertory company is getting hard to find 'round these parts. Now in its second decade, the Kitchen Dog Theater's resident acting company still is composed mostly of SMU acting and directing grads (and professors) who created this theater for themselves 12 years ago (and named it after a reference in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot). In two acting spaces at McKinney Avenue Contemporary, artistic director Dan Day and his small band of gifted thespians--Tina Parker, Christopher Carlos, Tim Johnson, Bill Lengfelder--continue to create remarkably edgy and ambitious work in a nearly year-round schedule of full-length plays and cabaret shows. Always looking to shake up theatergoers' expectations, KDT has lined up a bold new season that includes Beckett's Happy Days (now playing), King Lear, George F. Walker's Heaven, the controversial prison play In the Belly of the Beast by Jack Henry Abbott and the Fifth Annual New Works Festival, including one main-stage production and seven staged readings.

If you're a fan of independent cinema--movies that don't suck, usually--here's the best deal in town, in the country...OK, in the world, whatever. Pay a small fee, and every other Sunday or so you can wake up a little early and be greeted by a sneak preview of a would-be art-house hit. Now, you won't know the name of the movie until you arrive at the theater, but the odds are good in this game of Reel Russian Roulette: Among the movies that have been part of Harlan Jacobson's Talk Cinema series are Gods and Monsters, Gosford Park, Sunshine State, No Man's Land, Pulp Fiction, L.A. Confidential and Breaking the Waves. The only downside is after the screening you have to listen to some local film critic, including on occasion some schmuck from the Dallas Observer, pontificate on the movie's meaning and the filmmaker's intentions before opening up the room for discussion. But, hey, that's the small price of being so danged special. For more information about Talk Cinema, which begins its new series September 29, go to www.talkcinema.com.

Published this year by the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, quite pricey at $89.95, this book is it, the authority, the comprehensive catalog of anything and everything that grows in this part of Texas. Years in the making, one of a series of books that will one day cover the entire state, this book is written so that lay people can understand it. But it is also a serious scientific resource, replete with beautiful illustrations. If you own this book, you are the ultimate authority, until somebody else you know gets it. The editors are George M. Diggs Jr., Barney L. Lipscomb and Robert J. O'Kennon. You can order it from Yonie Hudson, Publications Assistant, Botanical Research Institute of Texas, 509 Pecan St., [email protected].

This theater space, like a good actor, never does it the same way twice. For every play, the 32,000-square-foot interior of this glass and concrete space is reconfigured. Sometimes it's arena-style, sometimes thrust. For Book of Days, the Lanford Wilson drama performed this summer, actors trod a long runway that ran nearly the full length of the theater. For Always...Patsy Cline, the 200 seats and stage were shifted into an intimate, clublike setting. But aside from the aesthetic aspects of the space itself, what WaterTower offers is a remarkably high-quality approach to its productions. Artistic director Terry L. Martin mixes it up with the choices of plays each season, with even the tried-and-true titles getting a fresh twist. This year offered theatergoers the classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but with a new emphasis on the men in the play instead of the bitchy gal in the slip. Wilson's serious Book of Days was a modern, dour take on Our Town, followed by the unapologetically sentimental twang of Always... Patsy Cline. Their 2002-'03 season begins in October with the old standard You Can't Take It With You, followed in January by the area premiere of The Laramie Project, Moises Kaufman's portrait of America inspired by the murder of Matthew Shepard. And forget the Dickens-style Christmas show. Out in Addison, you'll get David Sedaris' bitterly funny account of life in Macy's elf hell in The Santaland Diaries again this year. With other local theaters struggling to stay afloat, WaterTower has seen attendance increase more than 50 percent over the 2001 season. Good actors, good directing, good plays, good time. Simple as that. Oh, and let's not forget the cushy new theater seats they've recently installed. Audience appreciation is always appreciated.

We're going to take credit for her success, so deal; we've been singing this gal's praises for years and years...a couple, at least. We'll just say this: Erykah Badu's longtime backup singer should never have to stand in the shadows again. N'Dambi's second album, last year's Tunin Up & Cosignin, contains two dozen of the groovinest and moovinest tracks ever cut by someone from the 214; she's Nina by way of Dinah, Aretha by way of Dusty, whoever by way of whatever. That she ain't yet a star may have less to do with ambition and talent, however, than our town's nasty habit of letting its best and brightest burn out or move out; hell, it took a Florida station to make stars of the Toadies, and look what happened there. Word is she's contemplating a move up north, where they appreciate ladies of soul. So, Dallas, have a heart: Make yours N'Dambi. Damb it.

Arthur Eisenberg took a lot of crap, literally, from some of his neighbors when he built this house in 2000, but it is an excellent example of tasteful contemporary design. The home, built on a stout but eloquent stucco and steel frame, consists of two "cottages" that are separate and accessible by their own stairwells. On the outside, the house steps back onto the lot so it doesn't overpower its neighbors. On the inside, the design has the opposite effect: The main living area, built around a massive exposed fireplace, offers 30 feet of head room and is overlooked by two indoor balconies--one for each of the cottages. In order to bring warmth to the home's otherwise steel feel, Eisenberg and local artist Otis Jones collaborated on a soothing color scheme of muted greens and a blue accent. "This is the house I'll probably die in," Eisenberg says. "So I didn't do a lot of compromising."

Since we have trashed most of The Dallas Morning News columnists at some time or another during the year, it would be damn inconsistent, if not bordering on hypocritical, to celebrate them now. But what the heck. Crow is an acquired taste and one that we don't mind indulging, particularly when we see talent within the otherwise banal and gutless op-ed pages of the News. Unlike many of his colleagues, columnist Ruben Navarrette is not afraid to take on the establishment, be it business or political. He chastises the Bush Administration for using the war as an excuse to deprive individuals of their civil rights. He chastises Republican senatorial candidate John Cornyn for playing politics by demanding a too-little-too-late investigation into the Tulia, Texas, mass drug arrests. He chastises the school board for denying Hispanics representation consistent with their demographics. Yet make no mistake: His politics are often conservative, though witnessed through the refreshing lens of cultural diversity. His voice is clear, his opinions clearer, and unlike many at the DMN, you don't come away from his writing questioning where he is coming from and which interest group he is trying not to offend.

Yes, yes, we know Norah Jones used to play piano at an Italian restaurant in North Dallas before she moved to NYC and sold a million or so copies of her debut album, Come Away With Me. But you did not see her there. No, really, you didn't.

Addison? Theater mecca? Whodathunk that a few years ago? Then along came an Alabama grad named Terry Martin, determined to turn a small but well-loved community theater company into a major force in Dallas-area arts. He's done that by consistently raising the bar in the choices of plays, casting the best-trained professional actors and overseeing the redesign of the interior of the WaterTower space in a compelling way for every new production. As a director, Martin, 45, recently reinterpreted Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as a battle royal between nouveau riche Southern social climbers, with the usually cantankerous Big Daddy (perfectly cast with actor R Bruce Elliott) almost welcoming the "outing" of gay son Brick as a way of reclaiming their relationship. Martin has spent 10 years at WaterTower. Only problem with all the directing is it leaves him little time to get onstage himself. His performance in Neil LaBute's Bash during the WaterTower's spring "Out of the Loop" festival was one of the best by an actor on any Dallas stage this year.

Since 9-11, most right-thinking Amurkins have had lumps in their throats when it comes to the sacrifices made by dutiful police and firefighters. But the throat bone doesn't connect to the wallet bone, and sentimentality will only get you so far (not very) when you ask Dallas taxpayers for a 17 percent raise, especially when times are hard for everyone's budget, particularly the city's. What were Dallas' police and firefighters thinking, putting this issue on the ballot now? Oh, that's right; they thought all that "honoring our heroes in blue" stuff was sincere. Suckers.

Judging by how often he's cast in local productions, Bill Jenkins appears to be a director's darling. In the three leading roles he's had at three theaters here this year, he's proven versatile, likable and dependable as a performer, expertly tackling a wide range of accents and acting styles. For Addison's WaterTower Theatre, he roared as the ghost of John Barrymore in the high-spirited I Hate Hamlet. At Theatre Three (where he was voted "Patrons' Favorite") he raised the roof as an ambitious young Baptist minister in God's Man in Texas. For Theatre Britain at the Trinity River Arts Center, he oozed cockney charm as The Mysterious Mr. Love. He's also performed major comedic and dramatic roles at Kitchen Dog, Stage West, Casa Maana and Circle Theatre. Watching Jenkins onstage is a lesson in acting technique. His diction is crisp, his physicality well-tuned. His handsome face, with its deeply dimpled smile, can shift from utterly beguiling one moment to dangerously brooding the next. There's something old-fashioned about Jenkins' approach to stage work. He doesn't just say the words and strike the poses; he inhabits the characters and disappears into the roles. When his name is in the program, you know you're in for something good. Applause, applause.

Quite a fuss was made when the Angelika Film Center & Café opened at Mockingbird Station, but here's the dirty truth: Parking is impossible, and once you actually get inside the theater (if you do; shows sell out quicker than most business majors), you're surrounded by every North Dallas soccer mom who still thinks going to see independent (or--gasp!--foreign) films is edgy. Quietly, the Magnolia was up and running a few months later, and since then, it's beaten the Angelika at its own game--finding the sweet spot between the art house and the cineplex--even if the scoreboard doesn't always reflect it. You can grab an adult beverage at Fuel (the cozy and classy bar upstairs) and a Hebrew National hot dog from the concession stand, then sit back and relax with some of the finest films coming through town. And you can do it all in an atmosphere that feels more like you're in your living room with friends instead of the odd man out at a Jewish singles function. Bonus: The Magnolia houses one of the only digital projectors in Texas.

Grand Prairie's Nikki McKibbin was one of the final three contestants, and Burleson's Kelly Clarkson won the whole shooting match. Maybe A&R reps will start paying a little more attention. Then again, what good did winning a televised battle of the bands do for Flickerstick (since bought out of its contract with Epic Records) or D-FW as a whole? Discuss.

Fourteen months ago, Dallas was home to but a single art-house movie theater: the Inwood, as rundown as an Industrial Boulevard "masseuse." Then the Angelika pulled into Mockingbird Station, and where once there were three screens, suddenly there were almost a dozen. Then, earlier this year, the Magnolia opened in the West Village, adding five more screens to the mix, and the stagnant had suddenly become vibrant--exciting, even, as the three theaters began vying for titles in what has turned into an all-out bidding war. The Magnolia's been forced to suffer the most: Film distributors would prefer giving their movies to the Inwood, owned by the once-and-could-be-mighty-again Landmark chain, and the Angelika, which has a handful of theaters, simply because they have more screens nationwide; to dis them would be bad for business. Yet the Magnolia's proved this town's big enough for all comers by taking the Angelika's--and, for that matter, everyone else's--quality cast-offs (including, oh, About a Boy and Tadpole) and wringing more money out of them than anyone expected; indeed, the Magnolia actually ups grosses, making it not only this town's best first-run theater but also its best second-run venue. And the audience wins all around, because not only do we get titles that were long forced to skip Dallas, but they also last longer; we don't miss the good stuff anymore.

Whew. Talk about a way to make enemies. They've all got their niches, as well as their weaknesses--oops, we mean quirks. Here, then, a few peeves and observations. Some of the "top" galleries in this town (no names here) are way too tuned in to the biennials for our tastes. Others (no names) try way too hard to be hip. And of the few good galleries in this town, only a handful--we're talking three, maybe four--fundamentally get what art is about. Too many get caught up in marketing and PR and society columns and party pix and Who Attended What Opening and all that folderol that, in the end, undermine art's only legitimate purpose: the promotion of ideas and honest debate. We know we're sounding a bit puritan here. And we've got nothing against a good party. But we should never forget that making, selling and writing about art are silly and frivolous occupations that mask very serious purposes. In the words of one theoretician, they are "wasteful, privileged endeavor[s] through which very serious ideas are sorted out." Oh, sure, artists have gotta eat, and gallery owners have to pay rent, and it helps to move a canvas here and there. But way too many galleries in this town are more concerned about selling than about serving as good, old-fashioned marketplaces of ideas. And so, with reservations, we're going to have to pick Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art. Yeah, we know. They don't do emerging artists; they don't take big chances. And in a recent, rather unpleasant instance, they seemed to be unable to understand the difference between art criticism and promotion. But the folks at the top, particularly Ted Pillsbury, get the marketplace-of-ideas thing. And it's the one place in town where you can always see something worthwhile. Honorable mentions go to Mulcahy Modern and Photographs Do Not Bend, two places run by folks who are in it for all the right reasons. If they had the space and resources of Pillsbury and Peters, they'd be vying for the top spot.

Is there anything this woman can't do? When she's not producing, directing or designing some wild and woolly experimental thing for Kitchen Dog Theater, her home company down at McKinney Avenue Contemporary, this Texas native and SMU theater grad can take center stage and act up a storm. As "Sister Woman" in WaterTower Theatre's spring production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, she waddled around looking 14 months' pregnant (thanks to heavy padding) and drenched her pit-viper dialogue with Southern Comfort, outright heisting the show from Maggie the Cat. In the summer's Henry IV at Shakespeare in the Park, Parker bounded onstage in punk gear as Poins, a role traditionally cast as a man. Parker possesses that elusive element of stardom, the "It Factor." Her eyes sparkle, her smile beckons. Her technique is awesome, too. Great voice, unbridled energy. She may never play the ingenue, but who cares? She's a talent of consequence, best compared to fellow SMU alum Kathy Bates. Parker's also just a real nice down-home gal. Witness her funny preshow speeches to the audiences at Kitchen Dog, where she greets the crowd with a hearty "Howdeeeee!" and then warns theatergoers to switch off their cell phones and pagers...and deactivate any house-arrest prison ankle bracelets.

You might as well give up on radio, because we can assure you, radio has given up on you. At least the people who run it have. It's all about making the numbers instead of making the listeners happy. Not so at The Bone, where they give the people what they want. Which, as it turns out, is pretty much the same thing Q102 and The Zoo gave them 15, 20 years ago. Sure, there are some "new" tunes (Nirvana, Soundgarden, U2, Pearl Jam and such), but those are just side dishes. The meat on The Bone comes courtesy of Jimi and Journey, Led Zep and ZZ Top, Van Halen (both Dave and Sammy incarnations)--just about anything you'd find on a bumper sticker on the back of a sweet-ass Camaro. And the strategy has paid off, both for the station and the long-neglected Dallas rock-radio fan.

Every year, we make the three-hour trip to the, ahem, Live Music Capital of the World for SXSW, and what we find is a city that pales in comparison to our own (entertainment-wise, at any rate), a place that's been coasting on its rep since before Willie Nelson got in trouble with the IRS. We know moving the yearly music fest north means someone will lose money for a few years. And you know what? We don't care. It's not our money. We just wanna sleep in our own beds after drinking from noon to 2 a.m. Is that too much to ask?

Without a doubt, the Kimbell Art Museum's show tracking Piet Mondrian's long, slow evolution into a 20th-century icon. A gloriously middlebrow effort, the show--organized by the Musée d'Orsay and on display through December 8--sets out to "analyze...the disparate influences upon [Mondrian]--aesthetic, historical, intellectual and spiritual." In other words, museumgoers are treated to that guiltiest of pleasures, a narrative of historical progression, a tale of artistic development in all its outré, Hegelian glory. By consigning formalist analysis to the trash heap of jargon whence it belongs, the organizers manage to telescope much of the story of modernism into the tale of Mondrian. Best of all, they also produced a readable, 100 percent jargon-free catalog.

Used to be there was one and only one: the venerable USA Film Festival, co-founded in 1970 by filmmaker L.M. Kit Carson. Now you can't shake a reel of film without hitting someone putting together a lineup of films making the fest-circuit rounds--that is, movies without distribution, and only a few worthy of it (for instance, the brilliant Tribute, a Soderbergh-exec-produced doc that played the USA Film Fest and the Dallas Video Fest this year but can't find a taker because of costly music licensing issues). Forthcoming in the days ahead are the Latino-centric Vistas Film Festival in October and the Deep Ellum Film Festival the next month; and in the mix are fests geared toward fans of gay and lesbian offerings and Asian imports.

To get Clintonian for a moment, what, exactly, is a "visual" artist? One can argue that this must mean movies or video or even performance, since the other folks--your painters and your sculptors and your bits-of-confetti-on-the-museum-floor types--work with physical materials and thus should be labeled plastic artists. But movies and video aren't "art" forms at all, not 95 percent of the time, anyway. But where does that leave photography, which is a "visual" art? And what about actors, and dancers, and their art-world cousins, the "happenings" folks? You can argue that the poor lost souls who never got over Fluxus are the only true "visual" artists, again to the extent that they are artists at all. Don't even get us started on the possible meanings of "best." So here's what we're going to do. We're going to define "best" to mean the critic's favorite, and "visual" to mean "plastic" (also the critic's favorite), and we're going to read "contemporary Texas" into the specs. We're not going to limit the candidates to folks who have had a show in the last year. And now that we've defined things just so, the choice is David Bates, the Dallas painter and sculptor who is far and away the best living Texas artist. Honorable mention goes to an up-and-comer, Longview's delightfully off-plumb Celia Eberle.

Did anyone really think a decade ago that K104 would survive when "flyjock" Tom Joyner left? The station has not only survived but thrived, and the Morning Team, led by Skip Murphy, is the reason. He is the perfect complement to his team--Sam Putney, Chris Arnold, the Wig and the wonderful Nannette Lee. Each morning is at once an intimate hour before work and a freewheeling jazz-comedy session on the day's news and events. And the music is, ah, off the hizzle, fo' shizzle. Or something. But you already know this: The station is consistently No. 1 or 2 in the Arbitron ratings. Wow. We do something right, after all.

In some ways, this is the easiest pick. So many of the gallery shows we've reviewed were so weak that the images left our memory banks before the next week's paper hit the streets. Indeed, looking back on the last year, there's only one show from which we remember every single work: Modern Appalachia, Photographs Do Not Bend's show of the photographs of Shelby Lee Adams. There are plenty of photography buffs who believe Adams' work, which focuses on the mountain folk of Appalachia, is too predictable, even clichéd. And his lens does catch its share of 15-year-old mothers and dirty urchins. But Adams' real fascination lies with the old folk, fossilized remnants of a centuries-old way of life. The results are spellbinding little pockets of 19th- and even 18th-century Americana that have survived to this day. The subjects themselves, though simple folk, display a startling range of awareness, appearing at once romantic and emotionally naked, playful and utterly serious, vulnerable and shrewd. Despite being taken in difficult circumstances--on tiny farms or shotgun houses or plots of land that ascend straight up the mountainside--the majority of photographs were beautifully composed and lit. This is explosive subject matter, potentially lurid, ethically loaded. Yet Adams didn't go for the cheap or sensational, didn't aim to shock. There were no Goldin-style portraits in the outhouse, no Sturges-style naked backwoods Lolitas, no Mapplethorpesque exploration of the more exotic customs of the "confirmed bachelors" who populate his photos, no suggestion the sheep are scared. But Adams didn't exactly sanitize, either. There was poverty, buffoonery and ignorance aplenty in the resulting silver gelatin prints, along with dignity and tenderness. Adams' photos are affectionate glimpses of human folly.

Besides being geographically miles away from the Dallas Art Dealers Association galleries along Cedar Springs, Fairmount and Routh, Forbidden Gallery and Emporium is miles away from them in its choice of art. Group and solo exhibits highlight artwork shown and collected on both coasts, but rarely seen anywhere else, including Tiki-themed art, Shag's space-age and retro-stylin' illustrations and works by avant-garde and young-buck artists Mark Ryden, Steven Cerio and Frank Kozik. Owner Jason Cohen, who once owned the gallery's Expo Park neighbor Forbidden Books, has established connections in the two and a half years the gallery's been in business and continues to bring in artists pop-culture fans have heard of, but few curators will take a chance on. At Forbidden Gallery and Emporium, "blue hairs" doesn't mean the old lady art collectors seen uptown; there it means punks taking in art you won't find anywhere else in Big D.

Every weekday from noon to 2 p.m., Mitchell entertains a variety of guests--anyone from, say, Alan Dershowitz to Kinky Friedman--and the resulting conversations (they're more than mere interviews) never fail to entertain. Mitchell can hold his own no matter who's on the other side of his microphone, and his show will keep you in your car for a few extra minutes, or maybe make you postpone lunch a half-hour so you won't miss a word. That said, Mitchell wins (again) simply for Anything You Ever Wanted to Know, his every-Friday chance for listeners to find out, um, anything they ever wanted to know. And, no offense, but this is almost a forfeit: Apart from Mitchell and the fine fellas over at The Ticket, when it comes to talk radio in Dallas, you either get bad impersonations of Howard Stern (KYNG-FM, which also happens to have the real Stern) or very good impersonations of corpses (hello, KLIF).

Photographs Do Not Bend offers rotating exhibits of both black-and-white and color photography, pulling from its stable of contemporary, still-producing artists and its extensive and varied archive and creating some of the best examples of the medium through themed or spontaneous exhibits. And, besides exhibiting some of the most intriguing modern and archive photography, PDNB also has a charm most galleries don't. Instead of bare rooms with sterile walls, this gallery is in a little house tucked back on Routh Street with creaky hardwood floors and occasionally a house pet running around.

It sounds a bit oxymoronic, but there really is such a thing as a competent bureaucrat, and he comes in the form of Stan Tungate, who supervises the public access area to the civil and family court records of the district clerk's office. Tungate is not only extremely knowledgeable but remarkably affable--a rare quality in civil servants these days. If a court file or record exists--some go back to 1939--he will find it for you, approaching the task with the determination of a private sleuth. Certainly it's not easy dealing with people who have a limited understanding of what they want (those are just the lawyers), but Tungate handles himself admirably in all situations. Although he dabbled in politics, running unsuccessfully for district clerk a few election cycles ago, his presence as a line supervisor would have been sorely missed.

Don't need much to be a great radio DJ, and Cindy Scull has the most important thing on the list: a voice that sounds like butter and whiskey, and the ability to use it. She's naughty and nice and the only reason to tune in to KEGL; God knows it's not the music. Give her the afternoon-drive slot at The Bone (sorry, Jeff K) and it gets no better.

They call it "The Joy of Learning After 55," and there's proof in the packaging. Seniors who never thought they would darken another classroom door are registering for lecture series on everything from "Opera for Dummies" to computer classes, "Shakespeare on Film" to pottery, photography and estate preservation. For fees that range from $10 to $20, there's something for everyone. And for those 65 and over, the fees are waived. For up-to-date information on the program's offerings, access www.rlc.dcccd.edu/emeritus.htm.

To be a truly innovative judge is a rare thing. It's so much easier just to follow the law, to mete out punishment because it's your job, to have a cuff-'em-and-stuff-'em mentality in order to get re-elected for life. But the drug addict cries out to be treated differently; he is destined to reoffend because he is an addict, sick, committing all manner of crimes to feed his habit. Most judges realize this; Judge John Creuzot was willing to do something about it. He organized what is known locally as DIVERT court, which attempts to deal with the problems of drug offenders through treatment rather than just punishment. Creuzot's street-savvy demeanor made the program work, although he has now turned over the reins to Judge Janice Warder. But with the Legislature finally exploring drug treatment courts in major Texas cities, Judge Creuzot is still working behind the scenes to see this come to pass. Damn refreshing.

From Memorial Day to Labor Day, we gather defenses, pool resources and try our damnedest to beat the heat. And, though we may win a few battles along the way, the heat always wins the war. You can't beat it, so why not--as the cliché goes--join it. Revel in it. Bake in it. And the best place to do it is Hurricane Harbor, which opens just as the heat kicks into gear and closes as it begins to peter out into fall. The water park offers respite in the form of dozens of slides for the novice and the cowardly to the experienced and the brave, along with a lazy river for floating, pools and a pirate's ship play area for the kids. Though the lines twist up and up for popular rides such as the Black Hole, most of the waiting area is shaded and, with a 500-foot drop into a pool, the payoff is worth the wait.

The large, renovated ballroom upstairs at Sons of Hermann Hall is the perfect venue for swing-dance nights, which it hosts every Wednesday. There's a refinished hardwood floor, smooth enough for twirling without friction but with enough traction that you can stay on your feet. There are tables and chairs for those who need to take a breather, and a bar for those who need some liquid incentive to strut their stuff. With the air conditioner cranked and music blaring from the sound booth or from the bandstand, it's easy to feel as if you've stepped back in time, since Sons was around decades before swing was popular the first time.

On the weekends you can't stir the bicycles with a stick. Mom and Dad are there with their trail bikes, and the kiddies, some still maneuvering with training wheels, tag right along. There's a maze of off-road cycling for all ages and all levels of expertise. The park's most popular trail is a collection of three single-track routes that wind through woods and a tall grass prairie with a nice, cooling view of Joe Pool Lake. If it has rained recently, you might want to call and check on trail conditions before loading up and heading out.

Little kids who like airplanes, trucks and other big stuff (which means all of them, natch) will truly be thrilled to spend an hour watching the jets come and go from this busy airport. The plaza overlooks main runways and provides a clear view of takeoffs and landings. Voices of air-traffic controllers and pilots can be heard over a speaker on the plaza. There is room to walk around on grass around the plaza, but parking is also plentiful from places where you can see the big beasts soar.

A true hidden paradise for local anglers, this Turtle Creek estuary is home to 1- to 2-pound bass. On a recent summer day, a single fisherman was casting his line (a light-action pole with an open cast reel), relishing the solitude away from the city traffic just a few yards away. Besides the bass, there are also some nice-sized bluegills and carp around here, according to the University Park Wildlife Department. All are edible, say the park officials. Ready to be fried up on one of those $5,000 Viking stoves in the mansions nearby.

Along with its sister club, Escapade 2009, Escapade 2001 is the No. 1 destination for Dallas' swelling Latino population (the people who've made KNOL-FM one of the highest-rated radio stations in the area) every weekend, the place to go for people looking to blow off steam by dancing to ranchera and cumbia music. And there are quite a few of them: Every Friday through Sunday--the only nights Escapade 2001 is open--the parking lot outside rivals that of a Mavericks game, and the bar receipts routinely top the list of drinking establishments in the city. With that many people voting yes, who are we to say no?

When you enter Fossil Rim, it's hard to figure who is really in the zoo: you and the wife and kids, locked up in your SUV, air conditioner running, carbon monoxide emitting, or the 50 species of well-attended animals languishing over 1,500 gently rolling, beautifully wooded acres in the North Texas Hill Country. Located 75 miles southwest of Dallas, no zoo could offer the contact, the closeness, the natural setting that is afforded over 1,000 animals that are free to roam its savannas and juniper-oak woodlands save only the carnivores and rhinos. Humans remain in their vehicles during the two hours that cover the scenic tour. The Fossil Rim mission is one of conservation rather than conquest; its intention is to better establish the balance between man and nature. What better way is there for your screaming 4-year-old to get up close and personal with an ocelot? Just make sure you keep things in balance and take your little creature home.

You might think you're just not old enough to visit Granbury, Texas; that it's a place for bus tours and blue hairs and history buffs. But that's precisely the reason to visit: The trip is a trip, a Victorian town that is remarkably well-preserved and riddled with legend and myth and memory--from Jesse James and John Wilkes Booth to the ghost-haunted Opera House. There is a fully functioning drive-in movie house, boat tours on Lake Granbury, and the town, located 65 miles southwest of Dallas, is damn near close to an antique shopping mecca, with more than 50 stores at your disposal. But if quaint you ain't, then Dinosaur Valley State Park (best-preserved dinosaur tracks in Texas) and Eagle Flight Skydiving (lessons available) are within jumping-off distance.

If you are willing to get wet and spend a little money for the privilege, the best water playground in the Dallas area is in North Richland Hills. NRH20 has something for everyone, priding itself on a safety rating system that identifies which rides are appropriate for which age category. Low speed is for shallow-water attractions and shallow-water kids. High speed is for the more skillful swimmer, someone who can navigate the new Green Extreme, a seven-story-tall water slide with 1,161 feet of twists and turns. The thoroughly modern water park has one holdover from days gone by: an outdoor "dive in" movie on Friday nights throughout the summer, where kid flicks like Shrek and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone can be seen while floating in the wave pool or relaxing in a lounge chair on the beach. Well, a simulated beach anyway.

You've done your Chuck E. Cheese's, your Fun Fest, your rain-soaked birthday party at the neighborhood park. And there's no way you are going to subject your own home to the kind of abuse 30 5-year-olds can cause after the giant Jaws bounce house you promised doesn't arrive on time. What you need is a seamless, low-maintenance, high-energy, modestly priced, kid-tested alternative to the mind-numbing childhood ritual known as the birthday party. You can find it at ASI Gymnastics, with its seven ground-level trampolines, its carpet-bonded tumble floors and its giant foam pit. Curb service for your store-bought cake and decorations, which can be any theme you bring in, from Sesame Street to Harry Potter. The first 60 minutes will be spent jumping and running and swinging and tumbling with coaches who are both cool and safety-conscious. The next 30 are spent in a private room with cake and pizza or whatever you decide to import. The best part is, ASI provides the cleanup. If they could only dispose of the 30 gifts that your child is dying to get his hands on and doesn't really need.

Some pools are just chlorine and water, a liquid playpen that, when combined with the intense summer sun, will cause the most exuberant of children to grow tired enough to take a nap. But then there are other pools that soak you in luxury, acting as therapy for the mind, a spa for the body. One of these is the pool at the Four Seasons Hotel in Las Colinas: lagoon-shaped, waterfalls cascading, attractive attendants who not only serve you frozen drinks to relax your spirit, but also frozen face cloths and ice water to brace yourself against the hot Texas summer. Of course, it comes at a price: You have to stay at the hotel, but the Four Seasons offers weekend packages for those who need to get away from home without ever leaving it. Parents of young children understand this need. Parents of young children are willing to pay this price. Parents of young children can be found poolside at the Four Seasons Hotel, without their young children.

If hair were a religion, Kirsten would be a guru, a prophet, a goddess. But since it's not, she's a very talented angel. The ideal hair appointment is going to the same person to get a haircut, color and a huge boost to the self-esteem at the same time. Kirsten (and to be fair, the whole salon) delivers one damn fine product. It doesn't matter if you're thick and curly or straight and limp; you'll feel fine as hell after she works her magic. A thorough stylist, Kirsten even researches hair and compiles a photo album for her clients to peruse when their ideal hair goal is hazy. Book ahead 'cause she's busy, but it's worth the wait. You know we're for true when we risk our own appointments to laud her talent. And talent it is, maybe even art, a scene worth seeing to believe.

Bar of Soap is the only place we know of where you can buy a box of Tide along with a bourbon and soda and get change for both the dryers and the pinball machine. Besides being a bar, a laundry and an arcade, it also serves as a live music venue on weekends and has a patio for lounging and televisions over the bar. And, as if that's not enough to keep one occupied during the spin cycle, check out the Fair Park and Dallas-themed mural painted above the shelves of liquor. There's nothing like seeing a guy with a basket full of tighty-whities squeezing through a packed crowd, watching a band on his way to the laundry room in the back. Some people find it so cozy, we've even seen pizza delivered there.

Dallas does not suffer from a lack of good, traditional neighborhoods stocked with sturdy homes planted atop shaded lots, but what we like about Uptown is its departure from the city's past. The housing, primarily condos and apartments, may not be everyone's idea of an ideal nesting ground, but the neighborhood is the best indication that our city is, at last, growing up. A prime example of "New Urban" development, an architectural revolt against suburbia, Uptown is more like New York than Dallas. It offers pedestrian-friendly streets packed with an eclectic collection of fine restaurants and retail shops. Of course, the best thing about any neighborhood is its people, and that's Uptown's real charm: You can strike up a conversation in French, for example, as easy as you can order a cappuccino.

Yeah, yeah. We know. Aren't there any other outdoor havens besides White Rock, you ask? Unless you play golf, the answer is no. After all, Dallas is not a city known for its fabulous green spaces. White Rock Lake, which was built to provide the city's residents with drinking water, may be an accidental green space, but it is nonetheless the only place in Dallas (besides NorthPark) where one can spy turtles sunning on rocks or mama ducks teaching their babies the finer points of survival. The place is also home to wild parakeets, snakes and owls, among other furred and feathered ones. We have only one request: When you go to the lake, would you please stop throwing your trash, beer cans especially, all over the place? Thank you. Now keep to the right.

Four hot piano players at two baby grands play a mix of Beatles, Stones, Aretha, KC, Culture Club, Billy Joel, Elton John, Dave Matthews and more in a high-energy blast that runs straight through from 8 p.m. until the joint closes at 2 a.m. Cloned from the original in Austin, the Addison Pete's holds 350 people, offers a fare of hot dogs, sandwiches and appetizers and is a big bunch of raucous fun. Call for show times.

Hard to find, but worth the hunt if you have a sudden hunger for hot dogs, pompoms and the blood and grit of small-town football in the shadow of the big city. Seagoville High is part of the Dallas school system and plays some tough big-city football schools such as Lincoln, but the spirit on Friday nights is strictly East Texas. Call the school for the fall schedule. To get to the stadium go south on 175 and exit Hall Street. Turn left under the bridge to continue on Hall Street. Take a left on Shady Lane, and the stadium is a few blocks ahead behind Central Elementary.

If you have a sudden urgent need to talk to every egghead film-buff Boho in Dallas, what you do is bring a folding chair and park in front of Premiere Video on a Friday night. In the course of a few hours, they'll all come through. In fact, there are entire multigenerational families of film-buff Bohos who gather here on Friday nights--little skaties with their beatnik grandparents. And why? Try 20,000 foreign and domestic titles, a knowledgeable staff and...the scene. Some people believe they need to be seen here on Fridays whether they rent a movie or not. Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday noon to 10 p.m.

The steps outside the Angelika Film Center, not the ones that go down to the DART rail line. (Not many folks down there.) If you want confirmation that Dallas has its hip, cool side--as opposed to a place where the predominant fashion trend is the golf shirt--hang out for a while and see who comes cascading down the steps at Mockingbird Station. Last winter, the black-leather-jacket set was so thick, we thought someone was giving them away at the theater. This summer, it dawned on us that we were living in a real city when we saw a bare-chested kid make his way down the steep incline on a beat-up skateboard.

Our high school principals were smart enough to ask for a note to explain any absence from school. Fortunately, our bosses consider such tactics childish, which opens the door for the occasional "dental appointment." On any day at Sevy's, you'll find well-heeled, conversant folks suffering from fanciful ailments camped along the extensive bar. In fact, the establishment even inscribes the names of chronic attendees on bronze plates. The food is great, the people interesting, and the bartender--James Pintello--one of the best in the business. Admit it, there's something spectacular about a good martini buzz on a Wednesday afternoon, about stumbling out of a bar soused to the gills into piercing daylight, about ditching responsibility. Until you lose those responsibilities for good. But then, your principal warned you about the dangers of truancy.

C-Shiz is basically a Juvenile video shoot, only with no cameras and no Juvenile. Basically, we're talking lots of Fubu and even more rump shaking. The last time we were there, a DJ was spinning music we weren't terribly familiar with, and, as we were standing by the bar, trying unsuccessfully not to look out of place, a fine young lady backed that thang up, unbidden, right into our crotch and then proceeded to shake that thang in such a manner as to make us think that love really is colorblind.

As one local musician put it, "You get the best show in town, and it only costs you five bucks in the collection plate." You won't find any of these players with more profitable gigs (though, one could make the argument, what pays better than being in the Lord's house band?), since they play all day Sunday, and choir practice is every Thursday night. Word of warning: If you're less spiritually inclined, services at many of these churches can run up to four hours. Develop a bulletproof fake cough and park close to the door.

Now almost 20 years old, the Asian gardens sprang up spontaneously in the early '80s on scuzzy vacant lots in East Dallas at a time when the federal government was dumping tens of thousands of bewildered Southeast Asian refugees into Dallas slums. The gardens were a place of refuge and peace for people who had seen too much war and chaos. Now the refugees are no longer bewildered; most have moved north into the suburbs and are very upwardly mobile. But they still come back and maintain the gardens as a kind of informal shrine to their arrival in a tough new world. Visitors are always welcome, and hours are informal, mainly from early morning to late afternoon. A little piece of a far-away world.

We're not sure about the other Good Eats locations in the area, but if you want a side of people-watching with your chicken-fried steak, look no further than this Oak Lawn staple, where the clientele is always gaily attired. (Simmer down: We meant cheerfully.) If you want the real deal, opt for the smoking section near the bar. That's where we were when a young gentleman clad in a skin-tight T (helpfully inscribed "Daddy"), black leather short-shorts and matching captain's hat sat at the booth opposite us, effectively distracting us from the entirety of our meal. So maybe you should eat at home first.

So you've had an argument with your significant other. For example: It's the anniversary of the first time she ever called you her "little sugar pants" or whatever, and she wanted to have a nice candlelight dinner to mark the occasion. You, on the other hand, came home drunker than an American Eagle pilot about three hours after she put the food in the fridge and cried herself to sleep. You're in a fix, my friend. So pack a picnic basket and head to the Arboretum's lushly landscaped setup on White Rock Lake, and don't forget to bring an extra helping of Jesus-Christ-I-can't-believe-I'm-such-a-moron-and-you-probably-never-should've-married-me-but-I'll-try-to-be-better. All will be forgotten. Probably never forgiven, but that's the best we can do.

You've already got the dodgy ponytail and questionable facial hair required for enlistment in Medieval Times' Renaissance army, and Mars Music isn't hiring. And you need the extra scratch to move out of Mom's basement. Bonus: You get to call the ladies "wenches." Or, you could always work the merch booth for ASKA. Your call.

You know, there's really no such thing as a bad happy hour. Any working stiff who knows the agony of counting down the seconds till that 5 o'clock whistle blows can tell you that. A drink special's a drink special, right? But some happy hours are better than others, and one is the best. Happy hour at Blue Mesa Grill in the Lincoln Park Shopping Center goes above and beyond the typical happy-hour offerings. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, bar patrons can partake of complimentary quesadillas as well as chips and salsa. And besides the usual tortilla chips many restaurants offer, Blue Mesa's signature sweet potato chips are also available--and with two kinds of salsa, too. But don't forget the drink specials. After working up a thirst at the quesadilla bar, mosey on over to that other bar and take advantage of reduced prices on bottled beer and margaritas from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Blue Mesa's house margarita is a tasty blue concoction that could wash away any workplace blues.

Clarification: The Cockpit is not a gay bar. We repeat: The Cockpit, a neighborhood bar on Marsh Lane, is not a gay bar. Our writer was cracking a joke about The Cockpit's name when he selected it as critic's choice for Best Gay Bar in the September 26 Best of Dallas issue. Apparently, not everyone got the joke. We apologize to all--employees, proprietors, and patrons--for any unpleasant consequences we may have caused.

We could have picked some country road where the traffic is slow and the scenery is beautiful. But this is Dallas and, well, call us sentimental, but nothing warms our hearts like progress. We had this same feeling when Central Expressway was under construction, and we have it again, watching the new merger of Central and LBJ crawl out of the starting blocks, trotting toward a finish line that will undoubtedly get farther away as the years go by. (Check www.dallashighfive.org for updates.) We longingly gaze at the concrete columns (because that's pretty much all you can do around there, given the stop-and-stop traffic situation), dreaming of the day when it's complete.

The space that once held Baby Routh now houses two sister restaurants, Arcodoro and Pomodoro, joined at the hip to form a faux Sardinian village. The patio is especially appealing in good weather and provides a kind of village square where the young cool people, usually from the Arcodoro side, may mingle with old rich people, who tend to hang on the tighter, tonier Pomodoro side. It's just one big Euro-bar community, brought together by great Italian food and credit cards.

Because they have all that a good bar needs: a pool table, a jukebox worth your quarters and cheap beer. Because it's much more comfortable than sitting on the tailgate of your truck, and the cops come by far less often. Because it feels like home within five minutes, and you never wanna leave after 10. Because you'd buy this place if you had the money. Because just talking about Ship's is making us thirsty.

What they do is called "volkssport," taken from the long-standing German tradition of doing leisurely 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) walks through interesting and attractive venues. This is a family affair, not a competition, despite the fact all finishers receive custom-designed medals or patches for their efforts. The idea is to make the walk at your own pace, even stopping to picnic if you choose. Such events are scheduled year-round in the Dallas area and throughout the state. For a fee of just $12, you can join the group--but there's no rule that says you have to be a card-carrying member to participate in their events. You can even bring the dog along if you've got a leash.

Need a little illegal excitement that doesn't involve sex? This street is an ever-popular location for the city's mostly younger crowd to gather and ruin the tires and expensive souped-up engines they bought by waiting tables. On a typical summer night, you need only to show up at about 10 p.m. and wait around. Soon, the parking lots of nearby businesses will fill with youths who are either planning to watch the illegal drag races or those who will actually take part. Take a spot near the entrance of the road, sit on your hood and wait. It takes only about five minutes from the time the first racers arrive until the place is crowded with cars and people and the air is filled with the noise of screaming tires and exhaust smoke. Take care, though; it will only be going on for a little while before the Arlington police arrive and bust anybody they can catch.

Went to a friend's birthday party here recently, and we were sorely disappointed. Not because the service wasn't friendly and efficient, because it was. Not because the outside deck wasn't shaded and comfortable, because it was. And not because the people-watching wasn't entertaining, because it was. ("Hey there. What school you go to?") It was upsetting because the table kept ordering one type of beer. One does not travel to the Ginger Man for a one-flavor experience. This pub with wood décor and many taps behind the bar boasts 70-some brands of brew coursing from said spigots, as well as about a hunnerd different types of bottled beverages. Next time, we're going to be responsible Ginger Man-goers and order at least 13 types of beer on our way to an evening of overbelching and yelling, "Beer ye, beer ye!" from some dark corner of this lovely establishment. And, sure, designated driver, we'll call a cab, yada yada.

Take it from someone who has shot 21-under on Buckhorn: This is the best place in town to Tee it up. (For those who don't know, Golden Tee is the No. 1 bar game in the country; it's that arcade golf game with the big round ball you see guys smashing as hard as their beer-addled brains will allow.) Granted, some sports bars have more GT machines, but Golden Tee isn't about high numbers. It's about lowest score, best environment and assorted other criteria we just made up. The three GT machines at Frankie's are separated from the bar and most of the diners who would rather nosh on the tasty fare provided (including a top-notch club sandwich and the biggest-ass baked potato you've ever seen) than listen to people yell about misjudged A-1 shots. As well, the Golden Tee dorks can congregate away from normal people when they imitate the game's announcers. ("Get up, get up, get up, get there!") Now, maybe Frankie's will help us market the Golden Tee bumper sticker we want to produce: "My son is Golfer 3, and he has honors!"

Great jukebox, even better shows, and if you want to talk to a local musician, just tap the guy next to you on the shoulder. OK, maybe it would be more accurate to call this the Best Roots Rock Bar, but let's not split hairs. Rock is rock is rock, and the Barley House has more than a quarry. Stop by on a Sunday night when Deathray Davies offshoot I Love Math is onstage and members of Slobberbone, Chomsky, the Old 97's, Slowride, Sorta, Sparrows and a dozen other bands are knocking back a few cold ones around the bar.

Not too long ago, we finally conquered our fear of singing in public (aided and abetted by our friends Jack D. and Jim B.), and we couldn't have picked a better place than XPO Lounge, easily the finest (and hippest) karaoke night in Dallas. The tunes are spun by DJ Mr. Rid (who's been involved in the local music scene longer than guitar strings) and sung by a who's-who of Dallas musicians and scenesters. Don't go if you're expecting to trot out your sub-American Idol impersonations of Mariah and Whitney, because a usual night revolves around Cheap Trick, KISS and so on. Do go if you want to buy us a drink, because we'd be much obliged. We need all the liquid courage we can get.

Those who know only of yoga from watching Gomez stand on his head during reruns of The Addams Family can learn the art of the downward-facing dog and the proud warrior five days a week in the quiet, comfortable community room upstairs at Cosmic Café. The classes are taught by instructors who practice or teach at other locations and who offer a variety of different styles in an anxiety-free setting. It's a mix of regulars and newcomers, so that those new to the poses can learn without intimidation. The classes are free, which means you don't have to shell out $100 a month before you know whether you want to learn to bend like a pretzel. Donations are accepted, though. Call for class days and times.

Sadly, Dallas doesn't have many blues clubs these days, and most of the ones it does have traffic in the same kind of "blues" that made Steve Buscemi get queasy in Ghost World. Not R.L. Griffin's Blues Palace #2, owned and operated by The Right Reverend of Dallas Blues, R.L. Griffin. (Just in case you thought it was nothing more than a clever name.) If you've got the stones to stop thinking about what's happening to your late-model sedan out in the parking lot for an hour or three, it's well worth a trip, especially on Friday and Saturday, when you'll get a chance to witness Griffin's Show and Revue with Hal Harris and the Lo Lifers, the joint's house band. Testify!

Still can't beat this Deep Ellum institution, and not many people try. Yeah, there's the Elbow Room or Red Blood Club, at least whenever one of the groups in the Dallas Creative Music Alliance is onstage. But Sambuca doesn't just get this by default: They deserve it, doing everything a good jazz club should and then some. The sound is top-notch and so is the talent, and they even have the courage to challenge their clientele, booking acts such as a combo featuring drummer Earl Harvin, guitarist Bill Longhorse and laptop jockey Wanz Dover. That might not be Ken Burns' idea of jazz, but you can bet Miles Davis would be proud. And so are we.

Thinking about slipping out of the office early to get in a quick 18 holes before dark? There's no better place than this historic old course that has been in business since 1924. Located in the picturesque Kessler Park area, just two miles from downtown Dallas, the short (6,005 yards from the blue tees) but demanding layout is ideal for the golfer who likes a challenge but also hopes to score well. The narrow fairways are lined with native oaks, there's not a lot of water to worry about and there are 11 par 4s and four par 3s. And everyone goes home talking about the two-tiered 18th green. Open daily except for Christmas, weekday and weekend fees (including a cart) are less than $30. And juniors (18 and under) can play for about five bucks, or the cost of one bet you lost because you three-putted.

Like an eclipse, you will see this rarely, but we have seen it, and it is a strange, wondrous site. It would be indecorous of us to mention the young woman's name, but let's just say when we first saw this phenomenon occur, we were misty-eyed. We walked into this bar near closing time on a Saturday night/Sunday morning, and we were taken aback by how jam-packed with collegiate drunkards this place was. (Note to selves: We are too old to go college-bar hopping...very often.) It was wall-to-wall hipsters and frat rats. But just when we were about to leave, because we were afraid it would be too difficult to quaff a beverage in peace, the sea of tight bellies parted and toward us came the bartendress, not only doing a handstand but walking on said hands, in her trademark belly shirt. Then, like Spider-Man's younger, hotter sister, she sprang to her feet and let out a wild-eyed "Woooo!" Needless to say, we stayed. You should, too. Never know when it will happen again.

Not only does Lizard Lounge routinely feature some of the best DJs in the country (and some of the best in town, including Edgeclub host DJ Merritt), it's just about the sexiest club in town, and we don't mean just because there's a good chance some off-duty stripper might whip her top off at any given moment. Of course, that doesn't hurt. Whether you're looking to dance, hook up or both, this is your best bet. And, if we didn't stress this point earlier, there's a good chance some off-duty stripper might whip her top off at any given moment. Just saying.

Though Gypsy Tea Room books many of the same acts, Sons has one big advantage: room enough to dance. That, and it reminds us of the dance halls we grew up in, sneaking a sip from a can of Lone Star when our grandpa wasn't looking, dodging the two-stepping couples scooting their boots on the hardwood floor. It's a comfortable piece of home, even more comfortable after, oh, a dozen longnecks. You know, to get into the spirit of things.

Ash, Super Furry Animals, Spoon, Dieselboy, Deepsky, The Weakerthans, ALL, Pinback, Guided by Voices, Superdrag, South, James Hall, Supersuckers, Remy Zero, Chomsky, Clinic, The Apples in Stereo, The Vines, The Breeders, X-Ecutioners, The Coup, Blackalicious, Beulah, Sparta, Cranes, The Promise Ring, The Deathray Davies, My Morning Jacket, Nashville Pussy, Hank III, Dixie Witch, Bowling for Soup, Speedealer, The White Stripes, Trans Am, AK1200, DJ Dara, Bare Jr., Old 97's, Pleasant Grove, Bushwick Bill, Tomahawk, North Mississippi All-Stars, Reverend Horton Heat, Baboon. That's just naming a few, and that's just in the past year. Think that speaks for itself.

Yeah, we've given it to these guys before, but hey, this isn't your son's Little League team. We don't have to make sure everyone gets some playing time. If you suck, you ride the bench. Simple as that. So until someone comes along and does it better, we ain't changing the starting lineup. Look, we know there are plenty of other fine places to see live music--Muddy Waters, Trees, Liquid Lounge, Club Clearview, Barley House, Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, Bar of Soap, even Curtain Club, Galaxy Club or Club Indigo if you catch 'em on the right nights--but none of them is as consistent as the Tea Room. You could never even go to another club in Deep Ellum or anywhere else and see the best in hip-hop (Jurassic 5, Common), rock (Wilco, Doves), soul (Erykah Badu, Musiq), country (Eleven Hundred Springs) or whatever (Earl Harvin Trio). We could go on, but I think you get the point. We'll just finish our thoughts next year at this time.

A well-known author whose name we cannot recall at the moment wrote something in one of those college anthologies--can't remember which--about the anonymity of a crowd. Or perhaps it was loneliness. Anyway, it was quite appropriate to the topic and would have conveyed the message in words far more powerful than those without which the entire meaning of this paragraph would be lost. There was also something in the book regarding form and function, another point of great significance in this context. To grope someone in an apparently inadvertent manner requires close quarters and the cloak of innocence. The uncomfortably tight maze of Central Market's aisles provides both, thanks to a combination of poor design and incredible popularity. It's impossible on a weekend to maneuver through Central Market without pressing flesh with dozens of strangers. Shoppers collide with great regularity, and foot traffic often crashes to a halt. A simple swing of the hips or twitch of the arm--tempered by a quick apology--provides hours of illicit adult fun.

Admit it, you and every other sports fan in this part of the world want to see tons of scoring. And not just with the cheerleaders. (Rim shot!) The bigger the blowout, the better. And not just with the cheerleaders. (Thank you, Dallas, goodnight!) Forget pitchers' duels and 1-0 hockey finals. Which is why the high-octane, indoor pinball game of Arena League Football has every chance of succeeding in Big D. Played on a 50-yard field in the American Airlines Center, the game produces long ball touchdowns faster than you can count 'em. It doesn't hurt that the new Dallas Desperados have record-setting veteran Andy Kelly at quarterback. Or that the once high-scoring Texas Rangers are staggering through the kind of nightmarish summer that makes everyone long for football of any kind. Fact is, we pay this much to watch such good-looking men score any time.

Really can't say much more than that...except that it failed. Obviously.

Let's put it this way: Most of the musicians in town swear by the steady hands of Mark Thompson and the rest of the artists at Trilogy. If it's good enough for rock and roll, it's good enough for you.

Well, yes, a 12-hour drive is as close as it gets, but Taos Ski Valley is well worth it, and far more interesting than a lot of places you can reach by plane. Taos is a family-owned, family-run, world-class ski mountain for serious skiers. The local lore is that Taos was initially thought to be too steep for most recreational skiers when it was built in the late 1950s, yet bull-headed Texans short on skill, but long on nerve, flocked there and said, "To hell with it, I'm going to the top." We've been rewarded with runs named Longhorn, a double-black diamond bump run that just doesn't quit and Lone Star, a more gentle intermediate run. On the "ridge," where one must hike, at more than 12,000 feet elevation, to catch the serious steeps and untracked powder, the runs are named after some of the German generals who schemed to assassinate Hitler. This blend of European ski traditions and the desert Southwest means great skiing by day and great dining by night. From the looks of things, the wet El Nino weather pattern, which produced bases of more than 100 inches last time it came through, should mean a helluva season this year.

For countless centuries, humans performed every personal activity--No. 1, No. 2, No. 69--in full view of their neighbors. Nowadays, the undeniable pleasure of relieving your bladder when and where it demands is circumscribed and carries considerable risk. If you insist on establishing some sort of kinship with humans past and wish to lessen the risk of prosecution, the aforementioned area offers relative safety and anonymity. It's an area of dark parking lots trapped behind restaurants and office buildings, with patches of foliage for extra protection. First, of course, you must douse your kidneys with beer, and Duke's Original Roadhouse and The Londoner will oblige in this. And the legendary rusticity of The Londoner's johns makes outdoor urination a necessity.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then needing a cold beer must be the mother of all necessities. Because that was essentially the spark behind the Entertainment Collaborative, a klatch of successful formula-repellent entertainment and hospitality concepts hunkered down in Deep Ellum and downtown. The thirsty parent of this collaboration is 34-year-old Brady Wood, who as an SMU student back in 1988 was flustered that he couldn't hip-check his way through the hordes stacked 10 deep at the bar in the Rhythm Room to get a beer. He complained. The owner snapped back that he should buy the place if he didn't like it. "Within two weeks we sold our cars," says Brady's brother Brandt, 36, who directs marketing and concept development for the EC. "I think there were some neckties in the transaction, too."

But it would take a lot more than just the Rhythm Room to yank Brandt Wood from his New Orleans home to join his brother's bar venture. Brandt was set to join the family business, a marine contracting venture that builds levees, deepens waterways and assembles docks. "I grew up with the idea that Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest and all this great food in New Orleans was the way life was supposed to be," he admits. "I came to Dallas to visit Brady...and as I got to know the city more, I realized there was really something different about Dallas." Most notably Brandt realized that New Orleans is long on culture but has no money, while Dallas is long on capital but has a cultural depth of windshield dew. "So you have this contrast," he explains.

This chasm became a mission for the Wood brothers, and they sought to close it in perhaps the only way college-bar entrepreneurs could: by creating really cool places to drink. In 1990, they opened the Green Elephant, a "'60s hippie concept" bar and restaurant that took its name from an EZ Haul travel-trailer logo featuring a family of elephants (the Green Elephant was sold to its managers in 1996). In 1991, the brothers picked up Trees, a Deep Ellum live music venue, through some fancy legal footwork by assuming the befuddled owner's debts and tax obligations.

Trees was a success. And soon the brothers noticed their Trees patrons and performers were scooting off to Deep Ellum Café to eat before and after shows. So they decided to vie for a share of that belly space by formulating a restaurant that was both street-smart and refined. And a little daffy. "I lived on one of the banquettes there for two months, decorating it at night," Brandt says. "If you ever wonder why it's such a strange mix of décor...it's because it all made a lot of sense in the middle of the night." Brandt says he thought Green Room represented one thing Dallas didn't have, but needed: a gourmet restaurant in a funky neighborhood that didn't take itself too seriously. "We never planned a menu, much less a wine list," he admits. "But we knew how to make a place look cool." People told the Woods they were nuts, that no self-respecting "foodie" would trek down to Deep Ellum to nosh. But the Woods saw a mode of convergence in their little Green gourmet adventure: an opportunity to drive a generational transition; to take their bar crowds and bump them up to the next step in culture, all without their even knowing it. It worked.

They parlayed this intuitive know-how into the husks of downtown. Brandt Wood long had his eye on the ground floor of the Kirby building for a downtown brasserie. But the landlord was keen on pursuing some of the city's better-known, more established operators to create a street restaurant. "The response was, 'I think these guys are too young,'" Brandt says. Turned out those more established operators were too skittish to take a downtown fine-dining plunge.

Through Brady's negotiating footwork, the space was secured and Jeroboam was born. And Jeroboam boomed. "Jeroboam was a vision that conceptually we knew Dallas needed," Brandt says. "We saw downtown progressing before it was a news item." This insight was accrued through EC's efforts to cobble together participants and backers for Dallas 2000 and Dallas 2001, a pair of downtown New Year's Eve events. This work also inadvertently led to Umlaut, a subterranean New York-London modern lounge the EC opened in 2001 after discovering the space during the production of these parties.

Now the EC is gambling on an even further divergence from its club core: retailing. Armed with a portfolio of Deep Ellum real estate gathered over the years, the EC is banking that Deep Ellum can be successfully morphed into a gritty urban shopping mecca, with both national nameplates and local upstarts. But nobody wants to be first out of the chute. So the EC will chop the shopping path through the Deep Ellum weeds.

It's a small boutique called Star Cat, set to open in early October in the space across from Trees. This hip grit shop will sell apparel, shoes, handbags and concert tickets. Brandt Wood admits he's no retail wizard (he was no food and wine wizard either, he says). But he insists he's never been afraid to pull the trigger, adding that the only concepts the EC has ever lost money on are the ones that never made it off the drawing board. The Woods prove that it is perhaps best to reconquer established ground with ideas that seem daffy at first blush. Then again, nothing seems daffy after a cold beer.

It wasn't much of a party to begin with, but it looked as if the Barley House had gotten there when the last guests were putting on their coats and saying their goodbyes. When the Barley House opened almost 10 years ago, there weren't many other bars or restaurants in the Knox-Henderson area, and the ones that were there wouldn't be for much longer. Then, if Knox-Henderson was known for anything, it was the antique stores hanging around like a cobweb in the corner. It was a gamble, but to Joe Tillotson and his investors (including Richard Winfield and Scott Cecil), anything would be better than what they were doing before: They were stuck in boring grown-up jobs, working at a consulting firm, practicing law, actually using their degrees. They figured if they hung in there long enough, bluffed a little bit, they'd take home the pot.

They were right. Ten years later, the Barley House is a success, and so is Knox-Henderson, bars, restaurants and upscale retail crowded shoulder to shoulder on each block. While Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil (the latter two bought out the other investors long ago) aren't responsible for all of that growth, of course, they still deserve a thank-you note or two. Especially from the musicians who have played at Barley House (and Muddy Waters, the bar on Lowest Greenville they also own and operate); in the decade it's been around, a separate local music community has come to life at Barley and Muddy Waters, one that's much different from the one in Deep Ellum. Bands play there once and never leave.

"The Old 97's, the Cartwrights, Lone Star Trio--even back then, those kind of bands liked to hang out there and also play there," says Winfield, whose main role in the partnership is working with the bands. "You'll see guys from Slobberbone, Sorta and Sparrows, Little Grizzly, Pleasant Grove, Chomsky, Deathray Davies; they'll come in there to drink as much as to play. It sorta just happened, but it sorta keeps happening, as old bands go away or move on."

Despite their prosperity, Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil haven't worn themselves out patting each other on the back. They're staying in the game, still gambling. The trio dealt themselves another hand a couple of months ago when they opened the Metropolitan, a classy eatery situated in Stone Street Gardens, a downtown pedestrian mall on Main Street. Since the partners are trying to grow a garden among a patch of weeds, it's pretty much the same situation as it was a decade ago, only this time it's on a much grander scale; developers have tried and failed to revitalize downtown Dallas a dozen times over. But just as they did with the Barley House, Tillotson and his partners are willing to wait.

"When we signed a lease down there, we wanted a long lease, not because we were trying to lock ourselves in at a low rate for a long time, but really, we knew we needed to be there for a long time to really reap the benefits of being downtown," Tillotson says. "I think downtown won't be fully mature, even in our little two-block area, for about five years."

Downtown may have a ways to go, but the Metropolitan has already paid off for Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil--much better than they thought it would at this point. "When we first opened, we didn't advertise," Winfield says. "We just kinda opened the doors, see what's gonna happen. We've been pretty busy every night, getting a pretty good reaction as far as the food, the décor, whatever. People, they're in downtown, they expect for there to be places downtown. If you're from pretty much any other major metropolitan area besides Dallas"--he laughs--"there's something to do downtown. These guys will be walking down the street and they'll find us."

And they're raising the stakes: In the fairly near future, they may also find another bar-restaurant the trio is talking about opening farther down Main Street, a casual place that will be more along the lines of the Barley House. They know it would be easier to stake out a new spot in a more happening part of town or expand into safer markets--they've had opportunities to open a Barley House in Denton and Addison--but that's not the point.

"We're all from Dallas," Tillotson says. "We grew up here. Our families are from here. It's a lot more interesting and exciting for us to be in an area like downtown, to see that revitalizing. We didn't conceive of the Metropolitan and say, 'Where are we gonna put this?' We put what we thought was needed at that location. We think that fits that corner, fits downtown, fits what downtown is supposed to be like. We wanted to create a place that, you know, people thought, if it hadn't already been in downtown Dallas for 10 years or 20 years or 40 years, it deserved to be there."

Tillotson, Winfield and Cecil deserve to be there, too.

"It seems I will never sell these She-Hulk vs. Leon Spinks comics. Worst crossover ever!"

--Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons, "Days of Wine and D'oh'ses"

Guys who own record stores are cool. Just look at John Cusack in High Fidelity, the big-screen adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel; he's young, hip, able to score with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Lisa Bonet. Guys who own comic-book stores are, well, not cool. At all. Ever. They are punch lines and punching bags, dudes without dates--save for a copy of Batgirl. Look no further than The Simpsons, which is populated by Comic Book Guy--his gut dangling over his shorts, his limp ponytail poorly masquerading a bald head, his insults shooting blanks at kids too young to fight back. Comic Book Guy lives on the Internet, surfing his newsgroups--"alt.nerd.obsessive" being a prime fave. Actually, he lives in his mother's basement.

Jeremy Shorr, proprietor of Titan Comics near Bachman Lake, does not. Actually, he lives with his wife, Cecilia, and their two young children in their own home, thanks very much. He did not even pick up a comic till he was 18, primarily because he grew up overseas: His father was a civil engineer, a builder of oil wells, and moved the family from Finland to India to Venezuela before returning to the States in 1976. Though he will cop to looking the part--"I'll be the last to say I'm svelte and muscular, and I am balding in all the right places"--his entire existence seems geared toward demolishing the pale, pudgy stereotype.

"The wife and I have a conversation about this on a regular basis: 'What image do we want to project?'" Shorr says. "I wanted to make sure I didn't present the standard Comic Book Guy image--the ponytail, the beard, the T-shirt that was washed, oh, last month sometime. I bathed recently; I cut my hair on a regular basis. I do what I can given my body's archetype. I'm sorry, I've tried to lose weight--short of having amputations. On The Simpsons, the only thing he's interested in is whatever comic book you're talking about. My wife calls me the comic-book bartender. I know most of my customers by name, I know their favorite football team, take the time to find out what's going on with them."

Twenty-six years after his introduction to comics, Shorr runs the coolest comics shop in town--a fanboy's paradise, and not because fangirls have been known to work behind the counter. In June, Titan celebrated its 11th anniversary, though Cecilia Shorr's been in the comics biz since December 1985, when she opened Houston's Phoenix Comics, then the largest store of its kind in the 713. Jeremy was one of her first, and best, customers; he was spending $100 a week--a "ton of money back then," Jeremy says. "They were happy to see me."

So, too, was Cecilia: One night in 1987, Jeremy came in after a date stood him up, and Cecilia asked him out. Within two years they were married. Fifteen years and a move back to Dallas later--Cecilia's dad worked for EDS, where Jeremy collected a paycheck for a while as a systems engineer--they're still together and selling comics. This, despite the fact most comic-book retailers have long gone the way of Jack Kirby and Joe Shuster. (Those are comics references, and if you don't get them, dude, why are you still reading?)

When Titan opened in June 1991, there were 25 to 35 comics-related stores in the area--"from Rockwall to Weatherford," as Shorr defines it. Today, Shorr estimates there are probably 15, including the eight stores in the Lone Star Comics chain, two Keith's Comics locations and the mighty Zeus outlet in Oak Lawn. But most of these retailers carry baseball cards, Dungeons & Dragons dreck, stuffed dolls and other non-comics effluvia--junk food, in other words, intended to appeal to the dilettante and their fad-grabbing kids for whom Yugio's the hottest thing since Pokémon. Titan is for the fetishist who knows his (or her) Golden Age Green Lantern from his Silver Age counterpart. Shorr's the fanboy's pusherman, the guy you turn to for a quick fix of superhero kicks.

His store's overrun with old issues--some from the 1950s--long the bane of the comics retailer's existence. Though he still peddles T-shirts and collectible statues, usually handcrafted and hand-painted, Titan's packed with only the good stuff. Need an early Justice League of America, when Green Arrow didn't have the beard? An X-Men from the '60s? He will hook a brutha up.

"I have people come visit me every four, six months from out of town strictly because they know I have the books they want," Shorr says. "And now back-issue sales account for approximately 30 percent of my sales--and in the comic-book world, if you can break 5 percent, that's amazing. There's just a need for my kind of store. So many people come in here and the first words out of their mouths are, 'Thank God, I found a place that sells comic books.'" Count us among them.

If you're to be the best, preaches Dallas Lincoln High basketball coach Leonard Bishop, you must stand ready to prove it. Which is exactly what his undefeated state Class AAAA champions did last season. En route to a 40-0 record and the No. 1 spot in the nation in schoolboy rankings conducted by USA Today and Prep Sports, his Tigers defeated five schools that were judged among the nation's premier teams.

Invited to a tournament in St. Louis, they won the championship by defeating No. 6-ranked Midwest City High. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, they knocked off No. 23 Westbury Christian. Closer to home they scored wins over No. 6 Beaumont Ozen, No. 9 Cedar Hill (before a crowd of 17,995 in Reunion Arena at The Dallas Morning News Shootout ) and The Colony, which was ranked No. 14 in the country.

"I think the fact we were willing to go up against so many outstanding teams in non-district play," the 52-year-old Bishop says, "was the reason we were ultimately picked as the national champion."

Which is a pretty daring act for a man who looks more like a businessman at courtside, rarely displaying the emotional rants of many in his line of work; a coach who insists his primary job is to make sure his kids excel academically.

"Basically," says the former all-state guard who grew up in little Sexton, Missouri, "my job is that of a teacher. I spend most of my time trying to help students learn life skills that will be important to them long after they've played their last basketball game."

He says with pride that all 10 seniors who made the recent season so memorable are now on college campuses.

"Every player on our team," he says, "grasped the fact that playing basketball wasn't the only reason they were coming to school every day. They were a group that recognized that hard work--in the classroom, at home, at practice and on game day--was essential to reaching the goals we had set before the season began. They realized that to be successful you have to apply yourself fully every day.

"What these kids accomplished," Bishop continues, "is something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. I've done some research in an attempt to see if there has ever been any other high school basketball team that has gone undefeated, won state and been ranked No. 1 in the same year and haven't found one."

For the Southeast Missouri graduate who entered his 30th year of coaching when practice for the new season opened in October, the magical 2001-'02 season was not something he'd foreseen. Even getting a job at a school with a celebrated athletic history like that of Lincoln's seemed out of reach when he launched his career back in New Madrid, Missouri. From there he came to Seagoville, where he served three years as coach of middle school basketball before working his way up to the high school job he held from 1984 to 1999.

Then, three years ago, Lincoln High came calling. In his first season as head coach of the Tigers, his team made it to the regional finals. In the second year, they advanced to the state tournament. Then last year, Bishop and his team rang all the bells, turning away all opposition with a controlled fast break offense that averaged 78 points per game and an aggressive defense.

Where does one go from perfection? Despite the fact only two players return from last year's varsity, there are great expectations. Last year's junior varsity went 16-2, and the freshman team lost only one game, in overtime. Back from last year's championship team are junior forward Cedric Griffin and the coach's son, Leonard Bishop Jr., a senior guard. A 5-foot-10 sophomore, Byron Eaton, has already been ranked by one preseason publication as the No. 2 point guard in the United States. "One of the things we try to do," Bishop says, "is develop talent on our lower-level teams. We had kids playing jayvee ball who were good enough to be on the varsity had we not had so many good seniors. Now, it's their turn."

Not only to add to the school's string of victories but to benefit from the lessons coach Bishop will teach.

Local wine publications haven't shown much resilience in Dallas. At least two upstart carcasses litter the landscape, testaments to the absurdity of attempting to translate Big D's thirst for cork-finished juice into an urge to read about it through a local lens. The Dallas Food & Wine Journal, a food-and-wine rag launched by entrepreneur Harvey Jury in 1995, lasted just two issues. Even the considerable heft of Belo couldn't get Dallas' sipper denizens to think local. The Dallas Morning News' quarterly insert magazine Wine and Food, launched in 1998, was scuttled after just a couple of issues.

So what makes former computer parts broker Paul Evans think he can conquer a market that has bloodied others with better armaments? Mental instability. "You have to be a crazy person to do this," says the 30-year old publisher of Vine Texas. "But you also have to be very passionate."

It's that passion--a term so often tossed around with respect to wine it has become as tiresome as road tar metaphors in tasting notes--Evans thinks will drive him to publishing success with Vine Texas, an upstart four-color glossy with wine personality profiles, reviews, beer and cigar jabber, as well as tips on wine acquisition.

So what? Aren't there enough glossies from New York packed with cherry-berry-leather-tar-tropical fruit-cream-grass-gooseberry notes of the latest bottlings? Sure. But Evans says Vine Texas is different. It's dedicated to the whims of the Texas wine enthusiast (the July/August issue even argues that those tasting descriptors are obsolete, as much of young America has never tasted raw fruit or unprocessed veggies--are Fruit Roll-Ups that pervasive?). "You're not going to see articles about wines that are hard to find in Texas," Evans insists. "We're not going to stick our noses in the air and brag about how we tasted this 1989 bottle of Petrus that you can't find except in some restaurant for $2,000."

Not that Vine Texas has a nose-in-the-air pedigree. Originally launched as Vine Dallas earlier this year, Vine Texas was dreamed up by Evans and entrepreneur Mike Whitaker after Evans lost his job as a sales manager at The Met following its purchase and erasure by Dallas Observer parent New Times in late 2000. Whitaker, publisher of the free Dallas nightlife/lifestyle magazine called The Link, brought Evans on to breathe some life into the rag.

But Evans says it was quickly obvious The Link was not long for this world. "The Link was very stressful, near the end, money-wise," he laments. "To tell you the truth, Mike and I both, we got sick of club and bar owners. They never pay on time, and when you're running a company off revenue from advertising, you have to rely on being paid."

So the pair sought to unearth a niche stocked not only with a panting audience, but also a cache of vendors willing to open their checkbooks. They decided to focus on wine because it was the preoccupation of several Link staffers. Evans and his cronies met with jeers. But they also had some cheerleaders among Dallas' restaurant heavies, including Al Biernat of Al Biernat's, Judd Fruia of Pappas Bros., Alessio Franceschetti (formerly of eccolo) and Efisio Farris of Arcodoro Pomodoro.

With virtually no seed money, Evans assembled a magazine prototype on the cheap and printed 1,000 copies, dispersing them to potential advertisers. "Next thing you know, I have people all over the place calling me," he boasts. "It was passed around like the plague."

Smitten by the interest the prototype generated, Evans and Whitaker shut down The Link last January after a two-year run and flushed all their energy into Vine Dallas, which turned out a January and a March issue. The original plan was to secure the Dallas market and then customize the magazine for other Texas markets, distributing titles such as Vine Houston and Vine Austin. But national advertisers balked at the move.

Vine Texas was the upshot. Evans and Whitaker pumped 80,000 copies of the first bimonthly (July/August) issue through a number of outlets, including Barnes & Noble, Winn-Dixie, Albertson's and selected fine wine shops. They hope to publish monthly by next summer.

Evans snickers when he thinks about all the people who told him he was crazy--or worse--for launching a Dallas wine magazine. "They said, 'If you have a third issue, I'll pat you on the back.' Well, pat me on the back. Number three has arrived."