Gosh, I've been reading about the secret negotiations between the two groups of fancy people downtown over how to control the light, and I can't help thinking of the Paris Peace Talks to end the Vietnam War between 1968 and 1973.
I don't know how much you may remember or maybe studied in school about those long and difficult negotiations, but the way they talked about them at the time was so much like the way the fancy people are talking about the fight-the-light talks downtown when they come out of their meetings.
The Dallas Morning News has a story today about some more talks yesterday. After the talks, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said, "I think it was a good meeting." Then he added, "They're getting together, and we're going to talk about next steps."
One of the fancy people involved also said, "It was a productive meeting."
See. That's like high diplomacy talk, where they have to say something, but whatever they say, it's like a really cool calm and collected version of, "Butt out."
You know what this is about, right? One group of fancy people, called the "Nashers," want the light from the sun to go away from their building, the Nasher Sculpture Center in the Dallas Artistic District. The other group, called the "Museum Towers," want the light from the sun to go away from them, too. But the light has to go somewhere. So they're having secret negotiations.
You never thought of this, right? You just let the sun go wherever it wants to go including right on top of you. Well, sure. You're not very fancy, are you?
The most important thing in all of this -- and I think we need to keep this in mind -- is that Dallas needs to be more fancy. It needs to be more like Paris, France. That's like the most important thing. You could almost say the whole purpose for even having a Dallas in the first place is to try to create a thing that's as fancy as Paris, France.
That's why I was so excited to hear about one of the secret ideas they're talking about -- it leaked out -- for how to make the light do what the fancy people want it to do. They are thinking of covering the Museum Tower building with louvers.
So cool! In fact, I had this thought, which, in all modesty, I will put forward now. What if they changed the name of the building to "The Louver?" It would be just like that one in Paris, France.
In fact, I have been looking on Google images and eBay and stuff like that, and I found just a ton of antique louvers.
So what about this? I'm just tossing it out there to see what you think. What if they took like the first floor of Museum Tower and created an exhibit of antique louvers? Then we could actually call the building, "The Louver Museum."
Hey, I don't want to bad-mouth the Nasher, but it would be interesting to see which one drew bigger crowds. I think a lot more people might be interested in seeing really cool old-fashioned louvers than a bunch of statues of fat guys trying to eat their toes. Just sayin'.
If this works, it's an idea that could fan out all over the artistic district. We could rename the deck park over the Woodall Rodgers Expressway, like the famous one in Paris, France, and call it "The Toiletries."
It might even be kind of neat to rename our art museum -- give it a Paris-like flair but with more of a Dallas accent -- and call it "The Pompidon't." But that's not a high priority item. Anyway, the longer these peace talks proceed on how to rope down the light in the artistic district, the more inspired I feel about the whole thing. If we ever do figure out to boss the sun in Dallas, we might just wind up being the fanciest place there is.
