FrontBurner

The newest Big Brother cast was announced today, and the only cast member remotely near Dallas is this guy, Lane Elenburg, an oil rig salesman from Decatur. Anybody know him? Deets. Or not. Whatever.

D Magazine online editorial intern Ryan Jones continues his suburban safari, exploring the best Dallas suburbs on an extremely limited budget. Today we find him in Highland Village, that small Denton County place crammed between Lewisville, Flower Mound, and Lewisville Lake. It’s No. 2 on our 2010 rankings.

Unfortunately Ryan couldn’t afford the entrance fee for most of the city’s lakefront parks. So he had to improvise.

Barry Schlachter over at the Star-Telegram breaks down some the revelations that came from opening up the books for the Texas Rangers.

Tom Hicks was drawing a salary. A low six-digit salary, and one that would finish paying off a nice 1950s bungalow in North Dallas, but relatively low as far as salaries go, I suppose. Nolan Ryan was getting about $1.5 million , but I don’t think I have a problem with that, either – the team’s been relatively stable and successful under Ryan and GM Jon Daniels (whose salary was not mentioned in the story).  This is a bargain compared to the $9M per year salary the New York Daily News claimed he was getting.

But the interesting part? Jamey Newburg, of the blog The Newberg Report, is listed as having gotten more than $27,000 from the Rangers from February to April. Newberg and his family was also flown by the team to Surprise, Ariz., for spring training this year.

As Schlachter pointed out, Newberg’s site lacks a disclaimer. Maybe the Rangers pay for all sportswriters and their families to attend spring training. Newberg says the money is from books he sold to the club, and not for his website.

But in the day and age where the FTC now requires mommy bloggers to say up front that the car seat they just reviewed was provided gratis by the company, wouldn’t a whole trip also require a legal disclaimer?

Sorry to report that the lovely and talented Kristiana Heap is leaving us after four years with the D Empire–first at People Newspapers, then with D CEO magazine. While Kristiana of course is irreplaceable, someone has to carry on in her absence as the whip-cracking managing editor of D‘s award-winning business title. If you think you might qualify for the position, drop me a line at [email protected].

And the Statler Hilton is still on it, as is 508 Park, where Robert Johnson laid down some of his last recordings. DISD also gets some attention

Any buildings missing? And another question: Why can’t I find the list on Preservation Dallas’ website?

It’s the last day of June. What will you do to make it special? Google “Landon Donovon shirtless?” Throw darts at a picture of Steve Blow? Weird, me too. But all that arm usage is sure to make me hungry. Since I’m still working downtown (until Friday), I am going to check out the Lily Pad Cafe in the Main Street Garden. After a delay due to vandalism, The Pad (hmm, maybe not the best nickname), has finally opened. The restaurant has everything from breakfast tacos to Niman Ranch hot dogs to organic fat-free yogurt, and the prices are right (read: many items under $5). Or I might just wait until happy hour to head over there. They are pouring $3 sangria and serving Shiner and other beers in a can (yessss) for $2.

If I’m feeling really ambitious, I might sneak over to Fair Park to see Dreamgirls. I love love loved the movie, and judge if you want, I’m excited for the musical, which opens tonight. And not just because “One Night Only” was a theme song for my dating life until recently. The cast is full of Broadway veterans, and there’s even a dude who appeared on Diddy’s Making the Band. If you know me you know how special that is.

More events can be found here.

Marie Gottschalk at The New Republic reviews Robert Perkinson’s Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire. And an empire it seems to be:

Perkinson draws much needed attention to Texas, which operates the country’s largest state prison system, and holds more people today than the prison systems of Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands combined. If you add in parolees and probationers, over 700,000 people are under the control of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, a population approximately equivalent to the size of Austin, the state’s booming capital.

We operate under the “let-em-rot” theory of crime control. I wonder if there is a correlation between our theory of punishment and the fact that until only three years ago, Dallas had the highest murder rate among major cities in America. There is a evidence, after all,  that prisons are the breeding grounds of the very thing they are designed to control.

1. It’s too much for me to handle. First the Stars give Mike Modano the boot. Then Mike Snyder signs off from Channel 5 after 30 years. It’s too much change. Next I suppose you’re going to tell me that Tom Hicks will get out of the sports business.

2. Funeral-gate continues. Now the city has hired an independent investigator to figure out who’ll pay for the decision to provide police escorts for the funeral procession of Chief David Brown’s son (who, of course, had killed a cop). James Ragland makes the observation that the city manager and the police chief have a big mess on their hands. Indeed.

3. Speaking of cops in trouble, Officer Jeffrey Thorn was accused of sexually assaulting a woman while he was on duty. Now he’s no longer a cop.

4. You’ll recall that Rep. Linda Harper-Brown has been taking heat for driving a car owned by a company that does business with the state on issues Harper-Brown has worked on. Well, now she says she is no longer driving the car. I like Democratic Party spokesman Russell Langley’s take: “She can’t undrive the car and think that the taking of it in the first place was ethical or legal. She can’t unring the bell, undrive the Mercedes, or unaccept a bribe.”

In contrast to the nirvana that is Honolulu, Dallas is a city of business suits, long nights of work and endless meetings. That’s according to Kevin Bumgarner, the deposed editor of the Dallas Business Journal who surprised some by landing on his feet at another business journal in Hawaii.

Earlier, I questioned Steve Blow’s word usage in a blog post about molestation. At first, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, that maybe he hadn’t really thought out what he was going to say, and just dashed off a blog post.

But then more and more commenters began telling him how wrong he was. How using words like “mainstream” and “refreshing” to talk about female molestation made it sound like there was a group of people it would be OK to molest.

Remember that dustup that Laura Kostelny caused when she wrote about some of the offensive items in the Gift Shop at the Women’s Museum — like the napkins that said B.R.A.T. (Beautiful, Rich, and Thin)? They’re gone. Some of the items actually sold out. (I choose to believe they were purchased by women who were so offended by them that they bought out the supply simply to save the museum from itself.) And those that didn’t sell out were removed by management.

Progress.