Heroes

If you'd only kept that vuvuzela.

A news conference at Parkland yesterday eschewed a typical narrative of events and instead engaged red-eyed, emotional talks on American race relations.

Dr. Brian Williams says he himself has angst when cops approach him. But he supports them.

Robert Wilonsky has a great story in today's paper that you should take the time to read. It's about a private citizen named Ben Sandifer who is dealing with the city's shit -- literally. In this case, a city worker drove a massive excavator onto sensitive parkland so that he could take a dump. The excavator got stuck in the mud, and a front-end loader had to go in after it to pull it out. A whole bunch of Norbuck Park, off Buckner Boulevard, got torn up in the process. Sandifer saw it happen. He took video. He asked questions. If it weren't for him, people who use the park would have wondered why it had been torn up, and the crappy city worker would never have been held accountable. (A city official told Wilonsky Wednesday that he wasn't sure if the city employee would be punished, which is difficult to understand. Here's how it should be handled. Supervisor: "Did you drive your excavator into a park so that you could take a shit?" Worker: "Yes." Supervisor: "You're fired.") Anyway, that's all a preamble for what I really want to tell you. Hopefully you know about Big Spring and the effort to give it a historic designation. The Dallas City Council is scheduled to vote on the matter April 27.

Amidst the many obituaries and tributes that are surely to come pouring out over the coming days and weeks, I thought I'd pass along 90 minutes of bootleg Bowie recorded at the Las Colinas Studios on April 27, 1983.