Would Mets closer Edwin Diaz be nearly as dominant without the greatest entrance in the sport? Doubtful. Mandatory Credit: Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports
The Rangers need a badass closer entrance. A badass closer, too, but let’s keep our eyes on the prize, people. Because while late-game dominance may feel like a distant memory as Texas shuffles through its fourth season of mediocrity at the position—possibly longer if you got less mileage out of Keone Kela’s half-season in 2018 than I did—the Rangers have had their share of great ninth-inning guys over the years.
What none of them had, though, was an entrance like this:
That’s Mets closer Edwin Diaz, the game’s gold standard both at his job and his arrival to the mound. Seriously, did you watch that? Do you now harbor the strength of a thousand horses and the urge to storm a castle?
First thing I did was make the coyotes carry around at all times for my personal use a tin of dip, a bottle opener, cigarettes, and a lighter. And the lighter had to be blue. That was important. When all the stores in Dallas ran out of blue lighters, the coyotes had to go to Garland to find them. If the coyotes are going to say that was inhumane, then maybe they should learn to avoid this human. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Then I made the coyotes drink milk. Lots and lots of milk. I know that’s old school, but I don’t mind being labeled old school.
Did I make the coyotes do an elephant walk? Do I even know what an elephant walk is? We can let the courts sort this out, if that’s the direction you want to go. Let’s just say the Ringling Bros. got nothing on me.
You know what happens when you put 20 coyotes in a darkened room and then light that room with only a strobe and force the coyotes to sort 3 pounds of ice cream sprinkles by color? Ask the coyotes.
Mark Cuban Targeted by Crypto Lawsuit. A class-action suit filed in Florida accuses the Mavs owner and others of fleecing investors with the crypto platform Voyager Digital, which recently entered bankruptcy. If I look smug, it’s because all my money is in Beanie Babies.
OMG! Cowboys-vs-Broncos Fracas! This is the part of the preseason where we’ve all gotten so bored with watching players practice that when they get chippy with each other, it’s huge news.
Good News for Oncor Acreage at White Rock. Remember when Oncor laid waste to about 7 acres of the Old Fish Hatchery Nature Area back in October of 2020? The DMN’s Sharon Grigsby has a follow-up. She talked to some nature lovers, and things are looking better.
Gov. Greg Abbott Visits South Dallas School. He went to the private King’s Academy to talk about school vouchers and say other stuff.
OnlyFans Model Kills Boyfriend. Courtney Clenney stabbed Christian “Toby” Obumseli and killed him. It happened in Florida in April. Honestly, the connection to North Texas is pretty thin. Obumseli lived in Miami with Clenney, but he was from Plano. The story involves the phrase “OnlyFans model,” though, so every media outlet here is duty bound to mention it. Now there’s elevator surveillance video of the couple fighting two months before the killing.
The Dallas City Council yesterday approved a resolution aimed at lessening the local impact of the state’s forthcoming abortion ban.
It was among the laundry list of items up for discussion during the Council’s first meeting back after the body’s July recess. Councilman Adam Bazaldua drafted the resolution, which directs city staff to make investigating and prosecuting accusations of abortion “the lowest priority for enforcement.” It instructs City Manager T.C. Broadnax to not use city resources (except in specific situations) to investigate whether an abortion has occurred.
The resolution—which is similar to so-called Guarding the Right to Abortion Care for Everyone, or GRACE, Acts passed in San Antonio, Denton, Waco, El Paso, and Austin—doesn’t tell law enforcement that it cannot investigate. It just makes doing so the lowest possible priority, which many on Council presented as a way to save police resources.
The measure does not apply to instances where law enforcement officials might need to investigate cases of criminal negligence by a practitioner in the care of a pregnant person, or where force or coercion is used against a pregnant person.
A child of the ’80s, my baby teeth were made primarily of Tang and Fruit Stripe gum. Going to see the dentist in Dallas was terrifying, their toolkits filled with aggressive Waterpiks and drills and that weird mouth mold clay that had to harden inside your mouth, forcing you to gag for an eternity to take an impression of your teeth. All teeth-care incentives were nightmare-based. “I didn’t floss” was the headliner of my first confession sacrament at St. Rita Catholic Church. The priest gave me three Hail Marys and a travel-size bottle of brown Listerine. (Back then, we didn’t have the luxury of Cool Mint Listerine. It was character-building, burn-your-mouth-out, alcohol-forward Listerine only. You could spit it out only after you cried a little.)
But now Dallas dentistry is all about making the visit more comfortable. There’s an espresso machine and an arcade and someone making balloon animals in the lobby of the pediatric dentist’s office of my youth. Plus, everything has gone digital. My 9-year-old needed a retainer, and instead of putting him through an unreasonable amount of discomfort, they just took some pictures and 3D-printed the perfect bite-glamorizer for him. He even got to pick the color. (Obviously he chose glow-in-the-dark, which is factually the best of all colors.)
We’re trying to rebrand dentistry with a new image that’s less dentist from Little Shop of Horrors, more Nordstrom spa. If you’re reading this in a dentist’s office right now, they’re probably about to offer you a set of headphones with soothing playlists to muffle the high-pitched squeals of the drills. Dallas Functional Dentistry’s website says their office even boasts “Soothing textures & colors to feel comfortable and at home” and also “local artwork.” Not sure what percentage of people are drawn to visit a dentist based on knowing that the walls will be cloaked in Sherwin-Williams’ Evergreen Fog and their aunt’s acrylic paint pour art, but y’all are the experts.
Maybe dentists are going overboard trying to make us comfortable because Dallas is so stressed out all the time. Dr. Randy Sanovich, oral maxillofacial surgeon at Dallas Surgical Arts, says, “Our TMJ Botox treatments went up 60 percent in the last year and a half.” You’re grinding your teeth, Dallas. You gotta cut that out. It’s hard to guess exactly what we could have been worrying about in this perfect world, but it had to be the stress of parking our own cars at the dentist, right?
Dallas Voters to Weigh in on Convention Center Expansion. The Dallas City Council Wednesday approved a measure that will ask voters to OK plans for expanding Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center and upgrading Fair Park buildings. The matter will appear on the November ballot.
Child Shot by Unknown Driver. Dallas police said a 10-year-old was taken to the hospital Wednesday afternoon after an unknown driver in a red car shot at the vehicle he was traveling in, striking the child in the foot. The incident happened just after 1 p.m. near U.S. 175 and S. Beltline Road.
Inflation Rate up in DFW. Dallas-Fort Worth inflation rose to 9.4 percent in July, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The U.S. inflation rate dropped to 8.5 percent from 9.1 percent in June.
Home Prices Are up, Inventory Slowly Rising. According to July sales numbers from MetroTex Association of Realtors, Dallas County had 1.8 months of inventory last month, compared to the 1.5 months of inventory it had a year ago. Texas had 2.5 months of inventory last month. Five to six months is considered a healthy supply.
We made it past a month and I’m still doing this. A month is sort of an arbitrary milestone to celebrate. To me, these days, if you can do something two weeks in a row, high fives all around and let’s let the social media love pour in. No monologue this week. It’s not the point, and it never was, and it never will be. Photos!
Do you know where this is? I’m not going to give you any hints. I wrote about this image, or the many versions I have taken of this image, in the introductory essay of my photo book. (A Pedestrian’s Recent History of Dallas, Deep Vellum, 2020, still available!) I originally wanted one of those iterations to be the cover, but I was consistently outvoted or ignored or briefly placated, so it probably means more to me than anyone else. And I don’t really know why. I keep coming back to this spot and I take more photos, and I don’t really know why I do that either. Because I don’t think this one is better than I’ve done before, and I don’t think—with my lack of training and with my outdated iPhone—that I can actually do much better. But I am drawn to it all the same.
The Chicharron Nachos are a “savory” Big Tex Choice Awards 2022 finalist.State Fair of Texas
In a huge upset this morning, Deep Fried Buc-ee’s did not make it into the 2022 Big Tex Choice Awards Finals. The result fractured the current timeline of the State-Fair-of-Texasverse, and it’s unclear what the future holds for Big Tex. Even more frightening, Deep Fried Charcuterie Board is vying for the title of Best Savory in the finals: We have chosen fanciness over beaver nuggets. For this, there will surely be consequences.
Also missing from the finals are Abel Gonzales (AKA Fried Jesus) and Christi Erpillo, two concessionaires who brought Fried Coke and Fried Peaches to the competition, paving the way for this generation of fried competitors.
Will the State Fair of Texas be the same, now that we have chosen charcuterie over beaver nuggs? Will Big Tex be wearing a Vineyard Vines shirt and talking about Bitcoin? Will people be putting ketchup on their Fletcher’s corny dogs? One thing’s for sure: This list of fried finalists had turned The State Fair of Texas world upside down.
Here is your complete list of finalists in the 2022 Big Tex Choice Awards. And a gallery for you to see them all:
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Paul Slavens, a North Texas musician you likely know from KXT and his many years playing around Dallas and Denton. Marc Montoya
Most North Texans old enough to rent a car have probably heard of Paul Slavens. The 60-year-old has fronted the band Ten Hands for 35 years (with a break here and there). He plays with the Baptist Generals and the Travoltas. He was the music director for the improv troupe Four Day Weekend. He has played live scores to silent movies in venues all over. And, of course, he has spun tunes on our public airwaves for 18 years, first at KERA 90.1 and now at KXT 91.7, where The Paul Slavens Show airs Sundays at 8 pm. In June, a serendipitous series of events led to the release of his first solo album in more than a decade, Alphabet Girls, Vol. II.
The city in 2015 expected the Valley View property to turn into this. Seven years later, it’s still rubble.
Valley View Mall has been ruins for years. April marked the 10th anniversary of Beck Ventures purchasing the property. Next June will mark a decade since what was known as the “Midtown” project went before the City Council. Last week, one of the three largest landowners there put its acreage for sale, raising even more questions about the future of the asphalt that once held the old mall.
“It’s going to reshape that whole area of Dallas,” former State Rep. (and former Dallas City Councilwoman) Linda Koop said in 2015. “The entire area there kind of stayed stagnant for a while. There were multiple challenges. The neighbors identified that area as one that they would like to see revitalized.”
The partially dismantled and deteriorating bulk overlooks Montfort Drive, Preston Road, and Interstate 635, where the only activity in years was an old AMC theater and a COVID-19 drive-thru testing tent. The Valley View site is a monument to what happens when the city and a developer can’t reach an agreement. Different parts of the property are owned by three different developers: Beck Ventures, Seritage Growth Properties, and LTF Real Estate. Seritage has now listed its almost 17 acres for sale, which is why the whole matter is back in the news.
What does this mean for the rest of the area? It’s not clear. Beck Ventures CEO Scott Beck said he was not available to talk until Friday. But there is progress further south, near the Galleria. The city last year began referring to these areas as the Dallas International District, walking back Beck’s preferred brand of “Midtown.”
Plans still include a 20-acre park. The city purchased the Prism building at 5580 Peterson Lane in April 2021 to anchor the park as a cultural center. It will also be home to a District 11 City Council office. A Complete Street project will reduce Montfort Drive from six to four lanes, with wider sidewalks and new bike lanes. That job is anticipated to wrap by the end of the year. Three new multi-family apartment projects are complete, as is a 256-room hotel. A luxury apartment property is going up nearby on Noel Road.
Progress is being made, but not where Valley View was.
Salon Shooter Indicted. Jeremy Theron Smith, 37, has been indicted by a grand jury on seven charges of aggravated assault related to the shooting of three women of Asian descent at a northwest Dallas hair salon. The grand jury found that Smith’s crime included a racial bias, which boosts the potential punishment from two to 20 years to five to 99 years, with a possibility of life in prison. Smith’s girlfriend told police that he had experienced “delusions” about Asian people and believed a “mob is after him or attempting to harm him.”
Yaser Said Guilty in 2008 Murder of Daughters. A jury took three hours of deliberations to find Yaser Abdel Said guilty of fatally shooting his daughters. Their bodies were found in a taxi in an Irving parking lot back in 2008. Said evaded police for a dozen years until his arrest at a family member’s house in Denton County. Prosecutors say Said killed his daughters because they wished to date “outside their culture.”
State Fair’s Fried Finalists Announced. On a lighter (emotional) note, we’re only a couple months out from a fried charcuterie board, deep-fried lasagna, chicharron explosion nachos, and plenty more. The State Fair announced its finalists early this morning. Alice Lassaude will surely have more for you in the coming weeks.
Rain Will Tease Us Again Today. We all got a little over-excited at D headquarters yesterday when rain started pelting the building downtown. But it apparently didn’t make it to many of our homes, and DFW Airport didn’t record any measurable amount. Rain coverage this morning stands at about a 40 percent chance, which will taper off into the day and evening. Bring a sweater: temperatures will be in the 90s.
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