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Robert “Don’t Give Me That ‘Happy Holidays’ Crap” Jeffress and his First Baptist Saints continue their total domination of that downtown Dallas parking garage. (The underwater-looking light cast on the demolition site comes from a reflection off of our building.)

1. With today’s opening of the new DART Green Line, Dallas now offers the largest light-rail system in the United States, but ridership levels are still below places like Atlanta and Houston. There are a myriad of explanations for why Dallas-area residents don’t take public transit, but one of them wasn’t mentioned in the DMN article, only implied. In the piece, Mockingbird Station is cited as the “only station where significant mixed-use development has taken place.” My question: what about the Cityplace Station, which sits mere steps from the continually expanding West Village development? Or the Park Lane development which sits across the street from Park Lane Station? The omission, I believe, is indicative of a transit culture that doesn’t know how to see pedestrian connections between stations and services, and therefore considers public transit not useful (this is not aided, it must be said, by the fact that connections are often not architecturally obvious).

2. When discussing education, students often don’t have the chance to the take the floor in the public debate, which is why I found this forum on improving African-American students’ performance interesting. Some of the student feedback:

“Unfortunately, our kids feel that it’s wrong to be smart in class and do their work,” said Monterrio Jones, a Samuell High School senior. “Let go of the act of racism or saying, ‘She’s not teaching me because I’m black.’ No, we need to stand on our own two feet like our ancestors who did it with all odds against them.”

[Devaughdric] Ross said he’s a straight-A student, despite being raised by a single mother who died last year.

“Will I stop here? Will I let these battles, these heartaches, these struggles keep me down? Which I refuse to,” Ross said.

3. The Cowboys won again, finishing off the Colts in an exciting overtime victory that meant nothing.

I was there last night for the event, and I have to admit that I was a little underwhelmed. First, I was told Main Street was going to be shut down. One lane was blocked off. DART buses and cars kept driving past. As we stood waiting for the show to begin, a man told us that the speakers in front of us would flood the street with music. I could hear my husband’s snarky whispers the entire time. And I thought it was going to last an hour. As you see from the video, it lasted nine minutes. I will admit this video looks pretty impressive. But while I was standing there, I couldn’t help but think some of it looked like a screensaver.

I do think it’s great that new things are being tried out downtown and people are coming out for it. The interactive touch-board wall screen is pretty sweet. And, I learned that in 1909, people paid 50 cents to ride an elevator to the top of the Praetorian Building (which the trailer was projected on to). So there’s that.

This is NSFW if you can’t stop yourself from muttering “holy s–t” when you see something awesome and your job frowns on that behavior. Or, “wow, this looks sh—y” when you see the trailer for that dumb Johnny Depp/Angelina Jolie movie. Video was shot by Corey Rawdon.