Red fire ants are good for Texas wines. Even better for Texans’ whines. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front-page piece describing how a double-barreled pesticide assault, in tandem with a series of Texas droughts, has decimated the Lone Star fire ant population. Who cares? Certainly not Montgomery rancher Robert…
Memo to Shaq: Tossing kids is not how you’re supposed to practice free throws. Then again, whatever doesn’t work… It’s almost to the point of sympathy–pity, really. With the way your Dallas Mavericks have dismantled the Miami Heat in taking a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals, it’s like watching…
Last November, VH1 reported–good Lord, how silly that phrase looks–that Polyphonic Spree had gone into the studio with producer and pal Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Kanye West, Rhett Miller) earlier in 2005 to record a handful of songs for an all-covers EP. Among the selections the band recorded: the Psychedelic…
Was Jim Bowles defending Lupe Valdez when he sent The Dallas Morning News a letter this weekend, or was he covering his own behind? On Friday, The Dallas Morning News ran an editorial regarding the poor job performance of Sheriff Lupe Valdez–or, as the paper version of Unfair Park put…
Is that a pistol in your pocket, Helio, or are you just going to a 6-year-old’s birthday party? “Yaweee Bebe! Yawee Bebe!” Such is the victory cry of the Indy Racing League, or at least it is out of the mouth of Brazilian Helio Castroneves (hobbies: tennis, being one of…
Wishful thinking of wish fulfillment? The Sporting News is reporting this morning that Jason Terry’s going to stay in Dallas next season. Looks like the NBA Finals ain’t going past Thursday night’s Game 4 in Miami; least, that’s what it says in damned near every paper Unfair Park’s been perusing…
Charles Attal Presents, the Austin-based booking company that attracts all those quality bands to the Gypsy Tea Room, is also responsible for Chicago’s Lollapalooza Music Festival. Yeah, that’s too far of a drive for most of us, but we got a note from CAP today about a promotion that should…
Two hours north of Sacramento, California, is a town called Redding, which bills itself as “California’s Natural Getaway.” Among its points of interest are the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, the Lake Shasta Caverns, Lassen Volcanic National Park and other man-made attractions. Chief among the latter is Sundial Bridge at Turtle…
Word is this guy’s supposed to show at the Mavs-Heat game Sunday. So in Game 1 of Dallas-Miami we got some Jerry Bruckheimer, some Jack Ingram, some Terrell Owens–some so-so celebrities. But for Game 2, I hear we’re going to–you knew it was coming–turn up the Heat. In addition to…
Last night’s first (and probably last) Shellac performance in Dallas was definitely met with excitement. The New Year, fronted by Bedhead bros. Matt and Bubba Kadane, and Shellac die-hards wrapped a line around the Sons of Herman Hall on what felt like the first official night of a long, hot…
A mundane, yet oddly haunting image from Dean Terry’s doc Subdivided Two months ago, we posted an item about how Little Forest Hills–“the quaint, quirky White Rock Lake neighborhood”–was being swallowed by the McMansions sprouting up like weeds in Eden. A litle digging revealed that University of Texas-Dallas new media…
This wonderful old Kip’s Big Boy stood at Northwest Highway and Hillcrest Road till 7-Eleven tore it down to make way for…a strip mall. Awesome. Yesterday I drove by the empty corner at Northwest Highway and Hillcrest Road, where EZ Burger stood till 7-Eleven tore down the landmark former home…
See, I toldja the Heat sucked. That and other revelations from the Mavs’ Game 1 victory over Miami last night at American Airlines Center: Nothing says cool like glowing blue pom-poms. Made the American Airlines Center look more like a U2 concert instead of The NBA Finals. After forcing our…
This is what Mayor Laura sees when she closes her eyes, squeezes real tight and pretends it’s all going to be OK. How, exactly, did the escalating price of the Calatrava bridges sneak up on Mayor Laura and the council? From the originally announced $57 million to $113 mil, the…
The morning-after round-up won’t be as much fun should the Dallas Mavericks drop a game or four to the Miami Heat; who wants to search thousands of articles detailing your home team’s butt-whooping, when it’s bad enough to read just one? Thankfully, this morning’s newsstand is filled with good news–and…
I told the Miami-born missus last night (or about an hour ago, give or take) the story of the first game in the NBA Finals would be: Dirk scores nada, Mavs still win, Miami’s screwed. Turns out at this early hour (it’s now 1:19 a.m., just maybe not where you…
Arguments in the House of Representatives are heating up this week about the future of Internet neutrality. Um…wuzzat mean? You won’t get easy answers in recent reports on tech sites, and much of the major media is ignoring the Congressional goodness at a moment when things are really cooking up,…
Why any good concert would start tonight before 11 p.m. is beyond me, but hey, booking concerts weeks/months in advances can backfire on occasion. One of Dallas’ most legendary bands (The New Year) will perform at one of Dallas’ most legendary venues (Sons of Hermann Hall), and I can only…
There is no disputing that the NBA Finals are huge, colossal, epic—in the United States. It’s equally true that for the rest of the world, the end of this year’s NBA playoffs is just a footnote to the finals that really matter: the World Cup. But there’s no need to…
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has picked up a nice piece about Mark Cuban and Shaq–the “oddball couple,” ugh–written for the Associated Press by my old pal Jaime Aron. But I warn you: It contains the worst picture ever taken of the Cubes. And I think scout Reggie Johnson agrees, from…
Dwyane Wade looks really neat in NBA Live 06. Too bad even the videogame version’s gonna get spanked. Screw Vegas. Put your money on the $7-plus billion per annum videogame industry. EA Sports, publishers of NBA LIVE 06, ran a videogame simulation of the NBA Finals and concluded that Dallas…
BenBella’s got a Star Trek book coming out, and it’s awesome. Wait, did I say that out loud? Three years ago, I wrote in the paper version of Unfair Park about Glenn Yeffeth, a business consultant of some 15 years who one day chucked his profitable career to begin a…
