About 20 years ago, Cynthia Mulcahy was walking through Kidd Springs Park in Oak Cliff when she noticed two stone carvings. The conceptual artist had spent her honeymoon in Japan, visiting the temples and gardens of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagasaki, and she recognized the carvings as Buddhist garden steles, or funeral statuaries. But what were they doing here, and why were there no markers? More than a decade later, an artist grant from the city allowed Mulcahy to delve into the mystery. She spent a year researching the history of Kidd Springs Park in the City Hall archives, combing through the leather-bound, marbled pages of Park Board minutes. What she discovered was remarkable.

Tonight’s the night: Best of Big D goes down at 7 p.m. at the Bomb Factory in Deep Ellum. We’ve been planning this thing for months—literally, I think the first editorial meeting on the issue happened in April—and we’re thrilled to reveal the feature alongside the food and drinks and culture that helped define the city over the last 12 months.

Anyway, enough of that. We’ve been gradually rolling out what to expect at the event—of which my bosses have reminded me to remind you to buy tickets at this link if you haven’t already—and this’ll be a roundup of sorts. First, the food: Tei-An’s doing pork over handmade ramen noodles. Uchi’s doing miso-cured ocean trout. Pecan Lodge is bringing beef ribs. Beef ribs! Barley & Board has shrunken its magnificent cheeseburger and made hundreds of them. Bolsa’s got pork jowl. Flora Street is doing a cassis parfait with shortbread. There’s more, and you can see that here. It’s a dream menu.

Angela Paxton Considers Run for Texas Senate. The Frisco guidance counselor, noted “Pistol-Packin’ Mama” crooner, and wife of indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton, is considering a challenge to Phillip Huffines, twin brother of Republican Sen. Don Huffines. Jordan Berry, a political consultant and Paxton family friend, said a Collin County candidate would be a welcome change: “Highland Park already has one senator. They don’t need two.”

Reginald Kimbro Faces Two Capital Murder Charges. Kimbro was first indicted on August 10 for the 2014 killing of Molly Matheson, a former college girlfriend, in Tarrant County. Yesterday he was indicted in Dallas County for raping and strangling Megan Leigh Getrum days later in Plano’s Arbor Hills Nature Preserve and then dumping her body in Lake Ray Hubbard, 30 miles away.

I have now seen black subway tile lining an entire men’s restroom, complete with black lacquered urinals. I have seen a magenta and royal blue Albert Einstein spewing water into a puddle that drains into a sunlit pool. I have perched on a barstool underneath several dozen surveillance mirrors while sipping a local, craft beer. I have stared 12 stories up at a black and white photograph of a cheerleader’s unblinking, heavily-lined eyeball. I have ordered a kolache from the bowels of a shipping container. I have seen a hotel room with charging stations for more than seven devices. I have now seen inside a millennial soul as imagined by the older generation. They’re calling it the Lorenzo Hotel.

In March, developer Larry Hamilton completed the aggressive transformation of the long-deserted Ramada Inn at the corner of Akard and Griffin streets in The Cedars, just south of downtown. He purchased the hotel in 2006 with plans to renovate it, after previous successes with the Davis Building and the Lone Star Gas Lofts downtown. It stalled during the Great Recession and sat (relatively) empty until the $41 million renovation plans resurfaced a few years ago. The project was aided, in no small part, by an $11 million loan from the city’s Community Development Block Grants, passed down by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The developers also received $2.2 million in tax increment finance district reimbursements; Hamilton told The Dallas Morning News in 2015 that it would go toward paying for large-scale public artworks between Interstate 30 and Akard. That public art would bleed right into what Hamilton’s describing as a “boutique hotel that caters to millennials.” Which might explain the visual fidget spinner that is the Lorenzo.

Hustling around downtown Dallas yesterday morning in last-minute pursuit of a pair of NASA-approved eclipse glasses, I witnessed firsthand some of the earthly fervor that greeted the day’s cosmic phenomenon.

I first hopped on the closest bicycle proffered by one of our new bike-share programs and pedaled furiously to reach the central branch of the Dallas Public Library, where I was too late to grab one of the 50 free pairs of glasses. The library had some educational programming lined up before the main event, a sizable and attentive audience taking it in. I was told there would be an opportunity to craft pinhole projectors to safely view the eclipse, but I’ve never been much for arts and crafts, or for school, and time was of the essence. The moon waits for no man.

Outwardly cursing the morning meeting that had made me late to the library and inwardly musing at the money I was now costing my employer in lost productivity, I biked back across downtown to a watch party at the Perot Museum.

At the Perot, it was friendly pandemonium, well-organized by knowledgable museum employees, with hundreds of would-be sun-gazers wrapped around the building and waiting for eye protection. I lack the patience for that kind of line, and I lacked the cash for the scalper on the other side of the museum, hawking eclipse glasses for $20 a pop.

Last night’s episode of the Real Housewives of Dallas had a lot to live up to. It was a big day. Arguably, it was a super big day. There was a solar eclipse that everyone knew would burn your retinas and cause Forever Damage if you stared directly at it without the proper sunglasses. And then, reporters caught some truly glorious photos of America’s “Making Everything Super Great!” President staring directly at the eclipse without the proper sunglasses.

How can we possibly expect Real Housewives of Dallas to top that? I guess you just tell LeeAnne it’s Go Time, so she throws on a hot dog costume and starts cussing. Suck that, halo-like solar corona and totality. Neil deGrasse Tyson would never dress up in a hot dog costume. Nerd.