Dreamscape is that new virtual reality thing at NorthPark. Heard about it yet? The first location opened in Los Angeles last year. We got the second one. It opens today. For a more detailed description of the whole thing, check out Natalie’s report over here. I was in the same media preview earlier this week. I’ll give you the TL;DR version: it’s pretty badass. There are three “adventures,” as they call them. Each one takes a bit more than 10 minutes (with check-in, suit up, instructions, etc., one adventure takes about 30 minutes). So you’re saying, “It costs $20 for just 10 minutes of this virtual reality thing? You mean if I take my husband and kid, it’s gonna be $60? Plus, you know Mommy’s gonna have a glass of chard while she’s waiting. So probably more like $70?” Yup. It’ll cost you $70. You won’t regret it. We did it Tuesday. My 13-year-old daughter has been bugging me every day since then to go back. And you know what? I actually want to take her. Final note, though: they are already sold out for this weekend. Gotta plan ahead, people.

After Jerry Jones used a bizarre analogy to describe contract talks with three of his star players (really, go read it), I contacted him this morning to get his reaction to the news that in the TEA’s rating system, Keller’s and McKinney’s ISDs slipped from an A to a B, putting them on par with Dallas ISD. I reached Jones somewhere over the Pacific in his private jet, as he was flying to Hawaii for the Rams game. Jones told me he was drinking out of a flagon filled with Johnnie Walker Blue and playing Cards Against Humanity with his security chief, Roosevelt. Here’s what he said about the falling grades in Keller and McKinney:

“Picture you were a stilt walker in a parade, the one that goes through downtown on the first day of the State Fair, and you stepped in an open manhole. Your leg gets torn clean off, right at the hip, and you’re just gushing blood all over Main Street. I mean, gallons and gallons of blood. So you take off the other stilt, the one still attached to your good leg, and you go hopping down the street to Forty Five Ten, and each time you hop, more blood gushes out, so Main Street looks like someone took a big bingo dauber and made red dots in the middle of the road with it. The educated man knows his fashion, and, further, he knows men’s ready-to-wear is on the third floor. That’s where he’ll find a pair of PT Pantaloni Torino flat-front, slim-fit trousers, which are on sale right now for $124, not including the cost to tailor them, because he’ll need to turn ’em into one-legged trousers, obviously. So Keller and McKinney are on the second floor, near women’s handbags and accessories.”

The son of Dallas ISD Trustee Maxie Johnson was shot and killed overnight, police say. Christopher Whitfield Johnson, a 2015 graduate of South Oak Cliff High School, died in east Oak Cliff. He was 21 years old. Police found his body lying in the middle of the street in the 3600 block of Utah Avenue at about 1:30 a.m. He had been shot in the chest.

He was pronounced dead at Methodist Dallas Medical Center. Police do not have any suspects in custody. On the website for his campaign in District 5, which encompasses slices of South Oak Cliff, Uptown, and West Dallas, Maxie Johnson discussed raising as a single father three DISD grads at the top of their respective classes.

Whitfield Johnson’s death comes in the middle of a prolonged run of gun violence in the city. Last night, a 9-year-old named Brandoniya Bennett was mistakenly shot and killed in Old East Dallas as gang members fired into an apartment building.

Miguel Solis, Maxie Johnson’s colleague on the school board, sent this statement:

My colleague Maxie Johnson is the epitome of a great father—one who has put his heart and soul into raising his children. My heart breaks for him and his family. Today I pray for him, I pray for the parents of 9 year-old Brandoniya Bennett, I pray for the families and friends of the many who have recently perished in our city due to the mindless menace of violence. Our lives on this planet are too short to let this spirit flourish any longer in Dallas. Something must change.

Soon after he was sworn in, Mayor Eric Johnson called on police to provide a month-by-month breakdown of homicides dating to 2007.

Demolitions in Tenth Street District Will Stop. The City Council voted unanimously to stop tearing down buildings, some of which were built in the 1800s, in the historic neighborhood.

Girl Killed in Gang-related Shooting. Brandoniya Bennett, only 9 years old, was killed last night after someone shot into an Old East Dallas apartment. Someone accidentally shot her while looking for another person. She died at Baylor University Medical Center.

American Airlines’ Regional Carrier Draws Up New Contract With Customer Service Reps. Yesterday, Envoy signed a new contract with 5,000 gate agents and other Communication Workers of America union employees that gives them $11 million in raises. 500 of those people work at DFW Airport.

Two People Kidnapped, Injured in Northwest Dallas. Two men forced a man and a woman into a vehicle and drove them around to ATMs before going to an apartment. The man who was kidnapped was shot in the hip. Police are still searching for the kidnappers.

An alert FrontBurnervian brings to our attention a pretty dope media campaign cooked up by the folks in SMU’s marketing department. They’ve put up billboards around town advertising the local talent that will play on the Hilltop this year. Check out the video below posted to Instagram or this video on their site. My only question: if Demerick Gary (pictured above) is telling Oak Cliff to ponyup, why do they have Turner Coxe telling Dallas to ponyup? As Coxe makes clear in his video, he was born and raised in Highland Park.

 

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A post shared by SMU Football (@smufb) on Aug 13, 2019 at 6:28pm PDT

The attorney representing Karla Garcia, Dallas ISD’s District 4 trustee, called the case against her a “big nothing-burger.” But I’m going to tell you about it anyway, because her opponent in the June runoff tried, and failed, to get a judge to remove her from office.

Her challenger, Camile White, used the question of Garcia’s residency that trailed the race as a way to get her bumped from her seat as the district’s elected trustee for Pleasant Grove. A judge yesterday dismissed the case, saying White basically missed the boat: these were allegations that should’ve been brought to the court prior to the election. White alleged that Garcia had not returned to Texas from college in North Carolina within the 12 months required to run for local office.

“You can’t complain after the fact,” says attorney Jeronimo Valdez, who represented Garcia. “You’re now asking for a removal instead of keeping her off the ballot. If the other side had an issue with Karla Garcia’s residency, the proper mechanism for that would have been filing suit to keep her from being put on the ballot.”

Associate Judge Monica Purdy dismissed the case after finding the court didn’t have the jurisdiction to remove her. White, who represented herself, filed the lawsuit nine days after the election. Garcia had already been sworn in. Dallas ISD filed a rather thorough rebuttal, basically saying that courts can compel the district to put a candidate on the ballot (or pull one off) but can’t remove one from office if they have already won. Garcia won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. In the case of removal, the state attorney general or the district attorney would be the ones to trigger that action. Not a district court.