Of course, we have no harbor for the tall ships to float into. No signature bridges to decorate. No peaks or buttes to illuminate with fireworks. We are a seat of commerce, a maze of office buildings and malls stitched together by roads. So why not celebrate the reopening of our own Mother Road with a parade? What could be more fitting in a city where there are more cars than people? So make your own parade and drive it while it's congestion-free. We hear 2.5 million more people are on the way, and at least 1.25 million of them drive fat-assed Suburbans.

The governor of New Jersey got more national pub with his Gayo-American speech, but in local terms Laura Miller's public coming-out confessional before the North Dallas Chamber in June was every bit as riveting. The feisty former journalist who ran for office on a pledge of back-to-basics--she waged red-meat political campaigns against "the boys downtown" and their "big-ticket projects"--told the Chamber her husband had called her "stupid" and she was switching over to the boys' team. Yup. Just that simple. Miller said her husband, state representative and asbestos lawyer Steve Wolens, "is a lot more mature than me." Apparently Wolens had told the little lady to ditch that populist thing, put on some big fat pearls and cozy up to the downtown dogs. So now that's her plan. Instead of the streets and gutters she promised the voters when she ran, she told the Chamber she is now focused on the dogs' main deals, like the Trinity River project and redeveloping downtown. One of the most exciting things about Miller's personality makeover is that it comes barely a third of the way through her first full term as mayor. At this rate, we'll get to see at least three more totally new mayors before her term is up.

In these highly litigious times when frivolous lawsuits are filed by too many lawyers clogging up too few courts, it's a rare judge that can remain even-handed as well as even-tempered. Hartman is part of that rare breed. Believing that talk is cheap and mediation is even cheaper, he is the most ardent proponent of alternative dispute resolution. His views on its propriety as a prelude to legal warfare have been adopted throughout the county. In recent years, he has been plagued by illness (Parkinson's disease). Lesser men would have succumbed to its ravages with growing impatience, but you can still get a fair hearing in his court, as well as a helping hand and a kind word. Judge Hartman still rides high in the Dallas Bar Association popularity contest known as the Bar poll, scoring in the 90 percentile range ever since he was a baby judge.

If you like your reading fast and gritty, with lots of bad-guy chasing and a liberal sprinkling of sex with the scams and body count, Dallas' A.W. Gray is your man. He's been spinning best-selling mystery tales for years, beginning with his popular series about local private eye Bino Phillips (Bino, Bino's Blues, etc.). And here's a little secret: When you think you've read his complete body of work, there's plenty more. The prolific writer has several pen names. Want horror? Try Crossland Brown's Tombley's Walk. Jeffrey Ames (Lethal City, etc.) is a Gray crime fiction nom de plume. For his legal thrillers, look for the name Sarah Gregory (In Self Defense, etc.). He/she can be found in better bookstores everywhere.

Ayo doesn't sound like a DJ, and we mean that as a compliment. He's funny without being shecky; personable but not self-obsessed; and enthusiastic but never phony. He sounds like a guy who loves music, and that's endearing, since the dial's full of slick-voiced, self-promoting, station-hopping sycophants. He wears Converse and band shirts, laughs at his own goofy jokes and plays drums in the KDGE cover band, The Ronnie Dobbs Band. And now more people will get to know Alan Ayo. He recently moved from the midday shift to the Edge of Night position from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Readers' Pick

Kidd Kraddick

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."

At intermission during this remarkable, semi-autobiographical world premiere from resident playwright Linda Daugherty, a DCT official commented that Webb's unnerving submersion into the role of a Down's Syndrome teenager was especially striking, because "he's the pretty boy in the company." Generally speaking, we don't shower accolades on pretty performers just because they've decided to black out a tooth or revel in a disability just to prove their "range." Yet we were so startled by Webb's wet, gaping mouth, his half-sensical spray of speech, and the cursiveness with which he went from temper tantrums to eager hugs, that we attributed facial prosthetics that weren't there to the performance. This production was a difficult, even dangerous step for Webb and Dallas Children's Theatre as a whole. It was important that the kids in the audience be able to stare at his character and ask questions so they could be educated, yet similar cruel curiosity helps make life with a Down's person so arduous. How to indulge drama without encouraging a freak show atmosphere? All parties acquitted themselves beautifully, mostly because they were so honest about painful emotions. Webb reported some personal flinch-worthy moments when older children would laugh, but for the most part, the theater was silent as a graveyard when he shuffled onstage, fearlessly authentic.

Like Riverdance performed underwater by fat people, clogging has its own strange appeal...or not. If you just can't get your fill of mature ladies in sensible shoes making their skirts fly up over their panties, you could see a psychiatrist, or you could call the number above for the Texas Clogging Council and get specifics on next year's Texas Clogger's Rally, to be held March 5 and March 6. There's always a big audience. Maybe you know why.

The guy writes three times a week; he doesn't have Mike Royko's research staff; he's not going to be Mike Royko, OK? Besides, look what happened to Royko. He's dead. Steve Blow is alive, if not edgy. With a laid-back, easygoing, yarn-spinning style, he can also be a darned good reporter when he feels like it. And if he had done not one other good column all year, he would have earned a Best of Dallas award just for the one he did on the Muslim couple who got jeered on the Jumbotron at Cowboy Stadium. In one short piece, Blow weaved together a tapestry of themes about bigotry, football, the hopes and fears of immigrants, and the newly diverse nature of the region. Not many scribblers can do all that in an 800-word column. Blow provides Dallas with something it sorely needs--a familiar and authentic voice. And by the way, in case you never noticed, this ain't Chicago.

If you want columns about the latest b.s. fads in corporate-speak or the 118th column about how a North Texas CEO is putting his company on the right track, you read The Dallas Morning News. If you want to find out the real reason the CEO of Southwest Airlines stepped down (he'd lost face in labor negotiations because of his "meddling chairman," Herb Kelleher) or if you want to know one of the unspoken reasons Arlington will overpay for the dubious promise of development around a new Cowboys stadium (because "among the nine biggest cities in the metroplex, Arlington had the largest increase in poverty in the 1990s"--and it has no other way to revitalize itself), then you read biz columnist Mitch Schnurman in the Star-T. Schnurman is a rarity--a smart, tough reporter who understands business and can explain how boardroom decisions affect a city and its citizens. You'd say that it would be great if he were a city columnist, but he already offers more insight into the way Fort Worth works than any columnist at the DMN has ever done with Big D.

Readers' Pick

Steve Blow

The Dallas Morning News

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.