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.

Say you're a lonely Howard Dean supporter, a witch, a native speaker of French or a pagan (same thing), a John Kerry supporter, Web logger or Goth, and you want to meet others of your tribe. Meetups is the place to go. Operating by Web and all over the world, Meetups arranges get-togethers in local venues for people seeking their ilk, whatever that may be. Plans are still in flux, for example, for the next Dallas-area meet-up of people who are Elvis. But there are already 53 of him signed up. Hey, even if you're not Elvis, how could you miss? There's a movie in here somewhere.

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.

As the promise of the Morning News' "revolution" fades, it becomes more and more apparent that you can't change a corporate culture unless you (warning: bizspeak coming) hire peak performers and empower them. When the paper hired Keven Ann Willey to be its editorial page editor, it did just that. The editorials under Willey continue to be sharp and sensible. Even when we disagree with their conclusion, at least we know what the conclusion is--a marked improvement from the past 85 years or so. She has a vibrant, ideologically diverse staff that she allows to take the page in many different directions. It means that for the first time perhaps ever, you can open the editorial and op-ed pages of the DMN and be surprised.

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.

If we were up for drinking games at 8 a.m., this would be the quickest way to get shit-faced. The rules would be as follows: One drink every time Scott Sams mispronounces and/or gives the incorrect name for a local charity, council member or day of the week. Two drinks every time he makes a blatant pass at the eternally uncomfortable Grecian Goddess of Mixmaster Traffic, Alexa Conomos. One drink every time weatherman Greg Field's voice cracks, and another swig any time any one of them tries unsuccessfully to create "colorful banter" after underestimating how much time they have left on the air before the signal mercifully switches back to Good Morning America. We've formed an addiction to Daybreak and watch it religiously before heading off to work. It's funny and gets us going. Don't believe us? Just watch. It's like Laugh-In with extended forecasts.

Set in a trailer park on the outskirts of Dallas, this dark little play that won awards and rave reviews off-Broadway revolves around a dysfunctional family determined to have Momma bumped off so Worthless Son can get together some quick insurance money to pay off a drug debt. When you need a job like that done fast and efficiently, whom do you call? A Dallas cop (played in the original New York production by Scott Glenn) with a busy off-the-clock sideline that has earned him the nickname "Killer Joe." The author's mom, successful novelist Billie Letts (Where the Heart Is), says of her boy, "Everybody in Tracy's stories gets naked or dead." A fascinating evening in the theater unless you work for the Dallas police or the Chamber of Commerce.

Before anti-abortion senators helped pass legislation that mandated a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking abortions so they could have a period of reflection and read literature about abortion's possible hazards, pro-choice senators made a fevered pitch to exempt those women who want abortions because of rape, incest or their own health. Senator Robert Deuell, who lives in Greenville and plays a doctor in real life, rose to speak against these exemptions. "There are many hundreds, if not thousands, of women who have been raped and carried that pregnancy and had the baby and have been very happy that they have done that...I still feel strongly that even as tragic as some of those circumstances are, they have been a blessing to many, many people." Rape as a blessing bestowed upon the victim? What's next? Armed robbery as an expression of God's will?

The library system definitely deserves its due from the citizenry, especially the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library. While good ol' J. Erik doesn't have all that he needs (and deserves), the catalog is deep enough that you are sure to find most of what you are looking for, and the staff is helpful in aiding your search through the stacks. If a book is available at another branch, they'll transport it to a branch nearest you, and if the book you want is checked out, they'll send you a friendly postcard when it returns. The library is also a great place to check out children's books, and many libraries offer story-time hours for families. The genealogy section is always crammed with silver foxes, and there are excellent Texas history collections. You can find socialist newspapers in the lobby of the parking garage. And many homeless people quietly use the Internet, reading sports sites and sending e-mail to fellow homeless. With all these unheralded pluses, why not direct some resources to fill the minuses?

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!"