If this video of Zola the gorilla dancing at the Dallas Zoo doesn’t brighten your Friday, I don’t know what will. Honestly, it’s so hot today I wish I were splash-dancing in a pool, too. Enjoy.
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Prior to last night’s NBA draft, I was a bit concerned that the Mavericks would end up taking Lauri Markkanen, a 7-foot three-point specialist from Arizona. But he was gone when No. 9 rolled around, snapped up for whatever reason by the Bulls. My biggest fear, however, was that the team would end up with Luke Kennard, a guard from Duke who looks like he has tweeted at least once, “But why can’t *I* say it?”
All potential crises were averted when the Mavs drafted the best-case scenario for that spot in the draft: NC State point guard Dennis Smith Jr. He is an electrifying scorer with an NBA record 48-inch vertical leap. That is all of my analysis at this point. Watch all of these YouTube clips instead.
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The Dallas Library will exhibit some of the supportive tokens and messages left at DPD headquarters after five officers were slain last year.
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Dallas has often struggled to find its own cultural voice — torn, as it seems to have always been, between historical indifference and appropriated aspiration. Throughout this city’s history, however, there have been a handful of artists who have seen and understood this place for what it is, and have made work that has managed to embrace and manifest the cultural identity and character of this city in its best light. Perhaps none were better at this than the architect Frank Welch. Sadly, Welch has passed away. He was 90.
Welch’s importance as an architect certainly outstretched his impact and relationship with Dallas. Considered the Dean of Texas Architecture, Welch, like his mentor O’Neil Ford, inherited and expanded upon a tradition for finding in Texas’ landscapes, materials, style, and character the opportunity for a unique brand of modernism
In Dallas, Welch’s work is best exemplified in the many residences he designed here that blend of warmth and sophistication. They are buildings that engage with the subtly of their environments, while also expressing style and understated panache in a meticulous attention detail, expressive choice of materials, and attention to a humane quality possible through spacial design.
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The music of Star Wars and of Jurassic Park, and of Future, and of Iron Maiden, and more this weekend.
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ProPublica, in collaboration with National Geographic, published a story last week by Ginger Thompson about the massacre in Allende, Mexico, that occurred in March 2011. Gunmen from the Zetas cartel launched an attack on the quiet ranching town, a 40-minute drive from Eagle Pass, Texas, in retribution for a DEA operation. That operation was based on intel, specifically trackable cell phone PIN numbers, provided by a high-level Zetas operative from Dallas. But then the DEA shared the information they gathered on two of the cartel’s most wanted kingpins with the Mexican federal police, knowing the agency’s history with leaks. And the unthinkable happened.
Read this. You can even listen to the interviews. And then read Thompson’s article published Monday about the DEA’s accountability, or lack thereof. She raises some good questions about the costs of war.
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City Manager T.C. Broadnax has himself eight finalists for the job of top cop. They are:
I am pulling hard for Gary Tittle, and here is why. I hope he gets the job. I hope the Dallas Police Department is embroiled in another fake drug scandal that draws him into its web of deceit. I hope he then flips on his fellow cops and has to testify in court against them. Because then I will write the following headline:
“Tittle Tattles at Talcum Trial”
I apologize for wasting your time.
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Celebrate America's birthday with shows in Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Frisco, and elsewhere in North Texas.
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