FrontBurner

Unless I’ve overlooked one, I see two local companies on the Forbes list of “America’s Most Promising Companies“: J. Hilburn, a clothier from which I have purchased shirts and highly recommend, and Cinsay, which makes an online video player with a shopping interface. I also couldn’t help but notice that Texas, the job-creating machine run by Rick Perry, doesn’t have nearly as many of these companies as California.

It’s a funny coincidence in light of Krista’s Leading Off, but I was contemplating my favorite quote on my chilly little trek into the office this morning. It’s from a Tom Stoppard play called The Real Thing (which Stage West plans to stage in the spring, actually). A daughter asks her father what happiness is, and he replies, “Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.” In the context of the play, you can’t be entirely sure that’s true or very real at all. But I’ve always found the statement comforting, mostly for the way Stoppard makes a difficult task sound so simple.

As promised, I did not coerce any poor soul into growing facial hair for my own amusement/Movember. Let’s all take a  moment to remember Ryan’s sacrifice last year. Now. For the love of everything holy, please shave. Especially you, Anthony Weiner. You could undertake this task at home, or you could accompany your upper lip party caterpillar to the Dallas Moustache’s End of Movember Stache Bash for one last hurrah. Head to Hotel ZaZa and celebrate all the men (and their long-suffering significant others, I’m sure) who donated their faces to raise money for prostate and testicular cancer research and treatment. The evening is complete with a DJ, a live raffle, light bites, and a shave station provided by The Gent’s Place. It’s cocktail attire, so dress dapper.

As most of us have heard, Dallas ISD is looking to close some campuses in a bid to address a sizable shortfall in next year’s budget. The list consists of mostly elementary schools, with a couple or so middle schools thrown in the mix as well. One of those, as Robert Wilonsky points out, is Bonham Elementary.

Now, I’m sure just about every school on the list has parents, teachers and students who are ready to fight to keep their doors open. But let me tell you – I went to elementary school (swear) and never once have I been asked to join an alumni group with an eye toward helping out the school where funding falls short. But Bonham Elementary has such a group. A couple of years ago, in fact, I attended a fundraiser hosted by that group that featured one of it’s most familiar graduates – Rawlins Gilliland. And the group is rightly proud of their neighborhood elementary school (located just down the street from The Old Monk, The Porch, etc.),which was awarded a National Excellence in Urban Education award and was named a Presidential Blue Ribbon school.

I bring this up because someone has now started a petition to save Bonham Elementary.   There is also one here. But do online petitions actually do anything?

Seeing that Businessweek quoted Ray Hutchison about how “very, very disappointing and sad” is the American Airlines bankruptcy reminded me of the story that the Vinson & Elkins lawyer (and husband of U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison) told us for our 35 Biggest Moments in Modern Dallas History issue last year about an attempt to prevent the air carrier from moving its corporate headquarters in 1979:

It was essential to the move that tax-exempt DFW Airport revenue bonds be issued to finance the costs of a new national corporate headquarters for American. Though such financings had been closed at airports all across the country, suddenly, the IRS, behind the scenes, prepared a proposed ruling that would have declared retroactively that bonds issued for the offices of an airline would not be tax exempt. It quickly became obvious that New York had put its political clout to work in the Congress in Washington and in the IRS, and that all political muscle had been flexed to stop American from moving its headquarters.

North Texas leaders won that fight. You can read Hutchison’s whole article (scroll down the page a bit, or read Jim Wright’s account of the birth of the Wright Amendment too) as a reminder of what American has meant to the region.

The WSJ today runs a story about luxury hotels courting extended-stay guests. Naturally, Rosewood is all over the story. Here’s my favorite tidbit: “At the Rosewood Crescent, housekeepers take pictures of long-term guests’ vanities to record and replicate the preferred placement of toothbrushes and cologne bottles.” I’d like to see a photo essay composed of those pics. And speaking of pics, the great Allison V. Smith shot the story for the WSJ.

People in 47 Other Cities Are Happier Than You. Men’s Health ranked how happy cities are based on the following: suicide, antidepressant use, and depression. Dallas came in at 48, after Austin (19), Lubbock (29, really?), Fort Worth (43), and Plano (10). Though I’m sure that list is super interesting, what really drew me to this story was the art that accompanied it on the Fox page. I mean, that’s good stuff.

The Biebs Grants Highland Village Girl’s Wish. The 10-year-old got to meet the “hot” Justin Bieber in New York recently. She’s been battling cancer and is currently in remission. It looks like she got a lot of stuff during her visit. I bet when she got back to school on Monday and had all her Bieber gear, she was the coolest girl on campus. Though, judging from the video, it’s obvious she’s already a pretty cool girl.

Arrows Could Fly in Urban Areas Soon. There are a lot of deer in the area. Many of these deer are finding their way onto car hoods. So some people in Collin, Dallas, and Rockwall Counties have a solution: allow bow-hunting in these urban areas. The proposal will be considered in 2012. Don’t worry about it, though. Arrows only travel about 30 yards. You should be pretty much safe.

I’m so tired of watching television shows that are only decent by comparison. I could just not watch anything, but that’s not necessarily an option for me. I feel the same way about flying. I hate it. I’ve spent long nights on cold airport floors and bled money for arbitrary cancellations. But after five years of going back and forth between New York and Texas, American Airlines has been the only airline that didn’t routinely leave me stranded (usually in Atlanta– good riddance, AirTran), fuming, and furious. Thus, I’m choosing to be optimistic about this bankruptcy filing.

And tonight, in things we can file under “a good time,” Swig hosts a grand opening party. The restaurant has actually be open for awhile, as has the Gin Mill in the former Bar Celine space, but they’d like to remind everyone that they are not the restaurant formerly known as Park, but a separate entity entirely. Thus: the party that starts at 4 p.m. and continues all night. Drop by for cocktail and draught beer specials and discounts on appetizers. Local country-western artist Mo Robson will play around 8 p.m. if you can’t quite manage to make it during happy hour.

Over at the Fair Park Music Hall, Wilco performs. The band’s popular enough now, but once upon a time, no one wanted them. The album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was so ill-received by Reprise Records that it was rejected and the band kicked off the label. Frontman Jeff Tweedy streamed the album on Wilco’s website, sold almost 600,000 copies of it, and found a new label. Smart guy. Tweedy’s led the band through numerous incarnations (he and bassist John Stirratt have been the only constant members since 1994), but their alt-rock sound has remained consistent. And don’t be put off by the music hall’s truly heinous website. You can still get tickets to tonight’s concert via Ticketmaster.

For more to do in Dallas this evening, go here.

There was news yesterday that the Texas Rangers have selected artist Bruce Greene to create a sculpture of the fan who fell to his death at a game earlier this year:

The large bronze statue of Stone will be located outside the Rangers home plate gate and should be completed for the start of the 2012 season. The Rangers already have statues of Tom Vandergriff – the former Arlington mayor who helped bring the franchise to town  – and Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan – now the team’s president and CEO. Team officials announced in August they planned to place a statue of Stone outside the stadium.

Which raises this question: Would the Rangers be creating such a permanent, prominent memorial to Stone if he’d been an insurance salesman or a proctologist, and not a firefighter?

A Belo-employed FrontBurnervian points out that Terry Maxon had the story first. On 1A of the print version today, under the “exclusive” tag, Maxon wrote a story headlined “AMR To File Chapter 11 Today.” Maxon cited “people familiar with the situation.” On one hand, that’s pretty impressive. I don’t know what the press deadline for the front page is, but I’m guessing that means Maxon cranked out the story around 9 or 10 o’clock last night.

On the other hand, who cares? Is there any value to the front-page scoop these days? I didn’t go into our kitchen at work and see the newspaper until someone sent me an email to tell me what was in the newspaper. By then, I’d already read (or, okay, skimmed) five stories about AMR’s filing online. Does it really matter that the Star-Telegram didn’t have this story on the front page of today’s paper? It matters to Terry Maxon. To the rest of us? Not so much.

Update (12:08) — I asked this person at Belo how it went down last night at the paper, whether Maxon was down in the paste-up room rewriting his copy as his sources phoned in more information. I was kidding about the paste-up room. But I was curious about the details. This Belo person shared some details about what it still means to get something first in print:

[Maxon] heard about it at 7 or so and filed the story from home. There’s no paste-up room, of course. He got confirmation a little after 10:30, and that’s when he found out about Arpey. Our night editor sent his last email after the story was finished, and the pages were sent at 12:40 a.m. The Plano press guys go nuts if we send stories at midnight, but it can be done.

And I saw your snarky new post [this post], and you’re right that it matters to us. Maxon was interviewed early this morning by CBS national news and got credit from several sources before the announcement came out — not to mention that every airline reporter in the biz knows who had it first. It’s extremely hard to be first these days and beat all the bloggers, who have no rules and can just throw out rumors for fun.