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She’ll be at the Fairmont on April 30, says Rudy Bush.

Palin4Life, though, screams Blingee contest, IJS.

UPDATE: Uh, what?

Well, looks like I might have been wrong this morning when I said Terry Dorsey wouldn’t take Eddie Gossage’s offer to change his name TexasMotorSpeedway.com for one year for $100,000. According to this Facebook page, Dorsey is taking the cash. The Dallas Morning News (via Channel 5) is reporting it as fact. As ESPN notes, however: “The possibility exists that this could be an April Fool’s Day stunt. Both Texas Motor Speedway and the radio show have pulled off separate stunts in the past.” I’ll believe it when I see it.

Update: In the comments, JR points us to the news that Gossage has admitted it was an April Fool’s joke. Question: when did they move April Fool’s Day to March 31?

I was looking at what our neighbors, the folks at First Baptist, are planning to build down here, and it reminded me of Tiger Woods.

Huge. Quickly.

Excuse me, George W. Bush Presidential Center. The Washington Times Happy Fun Times Jamboree Marketing Hootenanny Showcase is blitzing everyone today with an e-mail offering you, yes you, the opportunity to have your name forever entwined with No. 43 hisself.

Donations can be made for as low as $25, but for just $25 more, “your name will also be included in the Freedom Registry on permanent display at the Center” as a charter member.

As Tim mentioned in Leading Off, Dallas County is facing a ginormous shortfall — $56 million, to be exact. And he joked that the constables would be out in force, writing tickets.

Only it isn’t so much a joke. Lemme explain my commute to Plano for work. I drive up Walnut Hill a piece, then turn left on Midway, up Midway to LBJ, LBJ to Central, and so on. Only today, I turn onto Midway, drive a few feet, and there’s a constable. At first, I think he’s just waving at me. Friendly. I wave back. He waves again. I wave back, hoping he’ll get out of my lane soon because, dude, I’m late for work.

Then I realize he’s not so much waving as motioning. Toward this side street. So I pull in. And he informs me I was going 29 miles per hour in a school zone. Which seems a little unfathomable since I had just come from a dead stop, but whatevs. He asks for my driver’s license and proof of insurance. License, I had. But insurance, well, I had, but the proof was tucked in a cute Kate Spade purse about a half mile from where we were sitting. But didn’t this whole driver responsibility whatsit mean he already could tell if I had insurance because of special genie magic Texas Chuck Norris ninja powers?

Apparently not. I got a warning for the speeding, because I haven’t had a ticket since 2005. I got a ticket for not having proof of insurance. I can take a little trip to some JP’s office in Richardson and wave my insurance card around and get that dismissed though, so it’s almost like it never happened.

But fair warning: Radar gun-wielding constables are out there, and evidently even economy cars can indeed hit redonkulous speeds rather quickly.

A local charity called the Mercy Project (which rescues children from around the world from slavery) is hooking up with the World Adult Kickball Association to try to play kickball for 50 hours straight in Rowlett. If they succeed, it’ll be a new Guinness record. The event, called Kickin’ It 4 Captives, starts at midnight on April 9. I feel sorry for the teams that have to play around 4 a.m. Fuller details after the jump.

[Warning: this post is well out of the strikezone for this blog, but occasionally I include random musings and other eccentri in this space such as this particular diversion into New Age Philosophy, Generational Studies, and Techno. Weird huh?]

Straight forward comments and details first, followed by the rabbit hole of the mind.

Last night, I had the chance to have dinner in the Arts District at Screen Door in One Arts Plaza, which was ok, but given the similar price without achieving similar flavors I would call it a poor man’s Bar Americain. Afterwards, we went to the Winspear Opera House to catch the local swing of the Broadway production of Spring Awakening.

First, I would like to say that I found it impressive how many people we ran into that we knew. Also, how lifeless and almost awkward the landscape and the entry/exit experience is in general in the Arts District. The landscape is incredibly arbitrary and haphazard at best and a general nuisance at worst. It was almost surreal after the show to watch as everybody blocked the exits to wait for the elevator/escalator to take them into the subterranean garage where the mole people could finally be happy once again. I know it is pretty much common knowledge by now, and these were mistakes sewn decades ago, but the clustering of these facilities (and its associated parking) really dilutes the power and life-giving properties of any one of them.

As for the actual musical which the majority of this post will be about, you can find a more seasoned and expert review of it here at Pegasus News:

Spring Awakening is not the musical for the closed-minded, stuffy, old, stiff generations that cannot handle nudity and profanity. This is a musical that displays graphic honesty in showing how we all reacted when we were teens and dealing with sexuality, sex, love, religion, parents, and the restrictions that society imposed on us. Those are all the elements in Spring Awakening that make it such a preeminent piece of musical theater.

Now I wouldn’t go so far as to give it an A+ as the writer above did, but I don’t have the musical background suitable for comparison. However, if I were to rate it within my own canonical criteria, I would give it a 2 out of 3 on the following scale:

3 out of 3 – Life Altering. You may come across a handful of movies, literature, music or other canon throughout the course of your life that truly and profoundly alters the way you think.

2 out of 3 – Worth Experiencing. Good but not profound. This is where I slot the majority of the DVD’s, books, itunes library that I own. As I stated, this is also where I put Spring Awakening.

1 out of 3 – These are things that might be guilty pleasures, are overtly simple in their construct, or chick flicks that your girlfriend dragged you to see (which in some cases could be all of the above), but all have elements or are constructed expertly enough to find something worthwhile.

0 out of 3 – Not on your life. If you happened to have seen them, you are worse off for it and you are forgiven for walking out of the theater, shutting off the dvd player, and scolding whoever provided the suggestion in the first place. Michael Bay and Zack Snyder movies go here [still can’t get the stench of 300 out of my mind].

What I did find incredibly interesting about the musical and the play it was based on, was that it was originally written (and subsequently set) in 1891 Germany, which is what I plan on exploring further. The review mentioned above alludes to the historical perspective I’m getting at:

Now, I will admit I did miss the foreshadowing that resulted in the New York casting of “Hanschen.” In the original, the actor was blonde and blue-eyed, giving him an aura of the future German “Aryan” race. This being 1890, and the boy who played “Ernst” looked slightly Jewish, it was harrowing foreshadowing of what was to come. Nonetheless Hager and Fankhauser were both outstanding in their performances here.

I would like to use the serious statement above to outline my biggest annoyance with the production. Given the context of the play and its setting as well as the character names, I found it profoundly distracting when the production instantly jumped into time into a more contemporary forum.

The most egregious of which, is the song around the middle of the second act, where the full cast is involved, many on the stairs at the front of the stage performing a hyperactive en vogue-ish dance on a red bull and ritalin cocktail to happy hipster punk-like (or -light?) music. The reviewer above even paid special attention to the ballads which were quite moving and revelatory in terms of characterization.

It was so out of place that I couldn’t help but have a Hot Fuzz “Love You, Love You” moment. Of course, this wasn’t such an affront as to find it acceptable to behead those at fault and stage the most horrific traffic collision ever seen for the greater good.

In short, I think I would have preferred either a fully modernized/Americanized version or to remain more true to the source material. The hybridization was unnecessary for us to understand the potential parallels in history. In the end, the time warp was jarring, unnecessary, and distracting. We are smart people. We have read Twain and understand that history never repeats but often rhymes.

I think I find this one instance so irritable because of the historic background and time in which the play was written and set. 19th century Germany was a veritable cauldron of intellectual foment, but (and perhaps in reaction) it was also the protean stage of Nazism in Germany. It was written shortly after Wagner had died and Nietzsche had gone mad. While Neitzsche may have castigated Wagner’s own bigotry, I’m the same guy who wrote a college paper blaming Neitzsche and his uber-man for the widespread belief in arian superiority.

I found the importance of the musical wasn’t so much in the overt sexuality, but in the censorship and refutation by those incapable or uncomfortable with ‘that of the other,’ of individual expression and exploration, and essentially its documentation of the formative years of eventual Nazi party members. In the first act, before I knew any better it struck me as unhappy hipster tale as written and perceived by a GenX playwright. The fact that it wasn’t, its setting, was the most fascinating element to me. The irony of the play itself being censored is enough for martyrdom.

Next time we think about what the wacko Texas School Board does or superficially attempt to build a City for the “Creative Class,” we should keep in mind every little piece of minutiae we legislate, adding to the Rube Goldberg machine of Bureaucracy. See the Build a Better Block project and its subsequent shutting down by police. They knew what was going to happen, but they did it anyway in order to point out some of the unnecessary, antiquated, and suppressive nature of the current Dallas zoning code. The quote by cops that “roads are for cars” is telling about the inner conflict of a city that wants a creative city, but undermines it by constructing the entire city’s genetic code around car movement.

But, back to Spring Awakening and censorship. In the age of the internet, an outlet for democratic expression, the best and only censorship is unpopularity. Fortunately, despite my personal annoyances, this musical had enough going for it (particularly the voice of whoever played Ilse) to make it quite popular and relevant. And worth seeing. 2/3.

Let’s get past the badukadonk, as Erykah Badu’s nude derriere was termed by DGirl in our comments section (if you don’t get the joke, chances are you’re white). Let’s talk about the new album, New Amerykah, Part Two: Return of the Ankh. Because the thing is, this stunt of hers wouldn’t have caused such a ruckus if Badu weren’t an immensely talented recording artist. Chris Richards in the Washington Post starts his review by saying the album title “might sound like some C-grade mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser.” Which is pretty funny. But then he goes on to heap much praise on it. The stunt will be a minor note on the Wiki page in the years to come. The music will make a bigger impact. (Okay, just a little more badukadonk. Here’s Robert Wilonsky talking about it on NPR yesterday. Two things I enjoyed about the interview: 1) Robert said he was the first person ever to interview Badu. I don’t care whether that’s a fact or not. I just love that Robert worked it into the interview. And 2) Robert seems to be doing his impression of Eric Celeste doing his Robert Wilonsky impression. Very meta.)

According to just about everybody, Kay Bailey will announce this morning that she is staying. The mayor’s only chance of getting her Senate seat was a special election, which would be, in effect, a bi-partisan free-for-all (there is no party identification on the ballot). In a pure Republican primary, a reasonable, get-it-done guy like our mayor would not stand a chance. So it is time to stuff all those polls and county-by-county voting charts into a manila folder and file it away for  another day.

1. The New York Times today runs its obit of Ted Pillsbury. I knew, of course, that he was from the family responsible for the Pillsbury Doughboy. It was a surprise to learn, however, that he was also related to John Deere, of farming equipment fame.

2. Today we’ll find out whether KSCS jockey Terry Dorsey will change his name to TexasMotorSpeedway.com (and get a tat) for $100,000. The offer comes from TMS president Eddie Gossage. (Spoiler alert: Dorsey ain’t gonna do it.) Question: who is the savvier promoter? Eddie Gossage or Erykah Badu?

3. Remember that insider trading case involving Mark Cuban and Mamma.com that was dismissed by a federal judge (and which the SEC is appealing)? Cuban is now accusing the SEC of witness tampering and acting in bad faith. Given the way the case has gone so far, my money’s on Cubes.

4. Dallas County is facing a $56 million shortfall. You know what that means: those pesky constables will be out in force, looking to write about $56 million worth of traffic tickets.

5. Diodes Incorporated announced the release of its AP5100 step-down converter. Not sure how that escaped me yesterday. I was busy, but that’s no excuse.

Like Tim hinted, the ridiculously talented author/journalist Michael Lewis doesn’t blame the financial meltdown on Washington’s rules pushing homeownership, as many conservatives (ahem) have been inclined to do. At a luncheon in Dallas today Lewis (pictured) called that explanation a red herring, saying what D.C. didn’t do about subprime mortgage loans was more to blame.

“The brief for [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] was expanded, but there’s a lot of telling numbers that suggest it wasn’t the explanation for the crisis. In fact, [Fannie and Freddie’s] percentage of the market went down between 2003 and ’06,” said Lewis, author of a new book about the meltdown called The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. “Private capital markets were so hungry for raw material, they replicated synthetically the worst” of the subprime loans to make more loans–and more money.

If you’re going to fault Washington, he added, fault it for not looking closely enough at credit default swaps–and for allowing the credit-rating agencies to run amok. “The [financial] machine had a life of its own,” Lewis said, “apart from Washington.”