Pulse of the City

Piper Hot

Tinseltown beauty makes her mark on Dallas.

Piper Perabo’s new movie, Slap Her, She’s French,
is due to hit theaters at the end of this month. The Hollywood hottie
was in town in late 2000 filming the comedy at The Colony High School,
about 30 minutes outside of downtown Dallas. “It was really neat having
her, the cast, and the crew here,” said Tim Baxter, assistant vice
principal. “It gave our theater students a chance to see what making a
movie is all about.”

The 24-year-old actress has seven movies under her belt, but her most memorable role to date was Violet in the chick flick Coyote Ugly,
in which Perabo played an aspiring singer/songwriter by day, bartending
neophyte by night. Her new role is a far cry from the naive, sweet
Violet. In her latest film, Perabo, who graduated summa cum laude from
Ohio University, plays a French foreign-exchange student hellbent on
stealing the identity of the most popular girl at a Texas high school. Slap Her, She’s French opens March 22.

THE BALLOON THAT SHUT DOWN DEEP ELLUM
A New Year’s Eve “accident” might lead to lawsuits.

The
hangovers from New Year’s Eve may be a distant memory, but an
unfortunate electrical blackout in Deep Ellum has bar owners still
hurting—and possibly suing.

The
cause was unexpected fireworks on the power lines. Shortly after
midnight, just as the real partying was about to begin, two electrical
transformers blew on Elm Street. TXU records indicate that an
aluminumized Mylar balloon, apparently released from the East Wind
restaurant, shorted out the transformers, sending Deep Ellum bars into
darkness.

Downtown
partygoers grew impatient and closed their bar tabs long before the
bars had wanted to close their doors. One Deep Ellum business owner
says he lost nearly $60,000. Another estimates the total losses for the
neighborhood in the hundreds of thousands. Celebrants suffered, too.
“Imagine trying to return 700 coats in the dark,” says Witt Myers of
the Entertainment Collaborative, which owns the Gypsy Tea Room and
other Deep Ellum spots. Myers and others want justice and recompense,
but no one in the tight-knit community wants to play the part of the
bully and sue.

One
balloon-based blackout could be chalked up to chance. But how to
explain the second incident, when, at 1:13 that morning, a third
transformer blew in the alley behind East Wind, also due to a Mylar
balloon? And, given that a Mylar balloon blew a transformer outside
East Wind on New Year’s Eve four years ago, what do Mylar balloons have
against East Wind’s transformers? Tuyet Davis, the owner of East Wind,
pleads innocence, saying her balloons were pink and that the
misbehaving balloons were black.

Still, Davis says, “Next year, no Mylar balloons.”