Know your stripes and spots

One morning last week, we were watching the news and saw an interesting item; several DART riders called 911 in a panic, saying that they'd see tigers walking the streets in downtown Dallas. So police ordered one of their helicopters to scope out the area with a spotlight, and the news showed several police cars out there, along with some patrol officers on foot with flashlights.

Our conversation in front of the TV went something like this:

James: "Why didn't they just call the zoo and find out if anybody's missing?"

Linda: "So how much did it cost to send out a helicopter?"

James: "I'll bet they're bobcats."

Linda: "Probably, but they don't look anything like tigers. If I was the 911 operator, I'd say, 'are you sure you know what a tiger looks like'?"

Then we started doing the Monty Python routine where Michael Palin wants to be a lion tamer until John Cleese points out that what he's calling a lion is actually an anteater.

Linda: "Call the zoo and see if they're missing an anteater!"

Well, someone finally called the zoo, and no, there were no tigers--or any other animals--missing. Turns out, the cats walking down the street were bobcats.

Then, also last week, we were at a party where a man was talking about a woman across the room wearing "a leopard printed shirt."

The shirt was white with black zebra stripes.

C'mon, people, get your stripes and spots straight, will ya? You're going to drive the police crazy and waste tax dollars that we don't have if you keep calling in reports about tigers on the loose in the city.

We have bobcats in Dallas. They live here, and they were here first. According to this article, bobcats invade urban areas, but it's actually the other way 'round. We've invaded bobcat territory, and put up parking garages and tall buildings where bobcats live. Mostly, they stay hidden like any other cat, but sometimes we see them. When you see one, please don't call 911 saying you saw a tiger, okay?

After that guy called a woman's shirt "leopard print," we decided to do a public service piece called "Know your stripes and spots," to keep the lines clear for real emergencies.

If you think you've seen a tiger walking around downtown Dallas, take a look at the picture at the top of this blog post. That's a tiger.

This is a bobcat:


And, just for the record, women's leopard print tops look something like this:

Zebras are striped like this:

So before calling 911, or attempting to describe a woman's shirt after having consumed quite a few drinks, compare your sighting to the images on this blog. Always glad to help out.

Icehouse Art Gallery re-opens July 1

Good news, North Oak Cliff art lovers--the Icehouse Art Gallery
is re-opening July 1!

In September, 2009, we were told by the Office of Cultural Affairs that Icehouse was closing to "prepare for our transition to the new Oak Cliff Cultural Center in the second half of 2010."

"Gee whiz," we thought at the time, "How come our cool neighborhood gallery has to close just because we're getting a cultural center?" Don't know the particulars yet on how this venue was rescued, but Icehouse is back!

The grand re-opening will be July 1, from 6:00 pm - 10:00 pm, in conjunction with Bishop Arts' First Thursday, and will feature the works of artist and gallery director Randy Gonzales (pictured above, showing his work at an August 2009 show at Daniel Padilla gallery). Icehouse Art Gallery is located at 1000 W. Page St., Dallas, TX 75208. For more information, call (214) 901-3090, or read more about it at GuideLive.

Good Guys, Bad Directions

(by James Kille) If you have tuned into the new Fox cop show called "The Good Guys," you can be happy that another Hollywood television production has taken advantage of local tax incentives and chosen Dallas as the setting for its action series. Much like the long-running "Walker" series, the writing has much to be desired, but it's fun to see Dallas used as a backdrop for a television show, even if the writer doesn't know how to use a Mapsco.

From the two episodes (the pilot and the "Bait & Switch" episode) that I have have seen, there is much to like about this energetic and unconventional cop show, most notably the performance by Bradley Whitford, who seems to have loads of fun shaking off the remnants of his (award winning) role in "The West Wing," now a piece of television history. However,as a Dallas resident, I am continually puzzled by the locations and directions given to further the action.

Most notably, Dan Stark (Whitford's character) lives in a trailer under the shadow of the "Texas Star," the iconic Ferris Wheel in Fair Park. It was featured in both episodes, and it is unmistakeable that Stark's humble trailer is within spitting distance of the famous Star, and the top of the Cotton Bowl is seen in some of the shots of his trashy trailer. To any Dallas resident, it is obvious that Stark's "home" is inside the confines of Fair Park, a National Historic Landmark, 277 acres owned and controlled by the City of Dallas, which does not have and would not allow a private residence, let alone a trashy trailer to exist within its confines. Furthermore, it is a fairly established fact that most Dallas Police Officers live in suburbs, not Dallas proper. Even Jack Bailey, (Hank's character) tells a villain in "Bait & Switch," "not far," when asked, "how far away do you live." They were at a swanky, fictitious 'romantic' restaurant, which would be somewhere in central Dallas. Does Jack Bailey live in a Highland Park apartment? Possibly an Uptown overpriced highrise, or possibly an East Dallas duplex? In any case, he could not live 'minutes away' in Garland, or Grand Prairie, or Desoto, or Richardson, or Plano, or any of the other suburbs that true Dallas Police officers populate.

Even if Stark and Bailey truly worked in Dallas, they would need a Mapsco to navigate the streets and find the bad guys. In the opening shots of "Bait & Switch," the director unfortunately gives us a street sign in the shot, where I saw the street name, "Fulton." Fulton St. is a mile-long stretch of quaint East-Dallas residential real estate, so it is hard to mistake where it is. The good guys then supposedly use an ingenious plan to find the bad guy's hideaway, a warehouse that is actually the Centennial Building once again at Fair Park, (south of Downtown) one mile away from the Fulton St. area. This is supposedly a remote warehouse that "no one else knows about," far away from the action of Central Dallas. This "warehouse" is recognizable by the singular arched windows, part of the design of the Art Deco building that millions of Dallas residents have visited.

Our bad guy (Nigel) wants to ship his stolen cars to Baton Rouge by train, and the director places his "train" scene in front of the 50-100 year-old trains of the Museum of the American Railroad, another resident of Fair Park. These trains haven't run the rails for 50 years; they're museum pieces. It's laughable to Dallas residents that a criminal would think he could load his vintage stolen goods onto a train that is not connected to any working rail line, much less try to get that 50-year-old train to move its dead ass more than an inch towards Baton Rouge.

While we're in Fair Park, why doesn't Stark (a detective with good instincts) realize that this 'warehouse' is several hundred yards from his trashy trailer, also in Fair Park?

Also laughable to Dallas residents is the direction to "go south on McKinney" when the good guys are trying to find Stark's snitch, Julius. They end up at an underpass near Fair Park, which would be logical if the bad guys had their hideaway at the Centennial Building. Unfortunately, McKinney does not go south, but hits downtown Dallas, only to curve west, and end as it merges into Woodall Rogers. Our good guys would have been looking for Julius in the 'Victory Park' area of western Downtown Dallas, a good two miles away from where the true action was.

When Stark uses his snitch, Julius, again to hunt down the bad guys, he ends up in Deep Ellum (with Downtown Dallas in the background), yelling at the laptop computer that it's "go time," and threatening to shoot it if it doesn't tell him where Jack is. Julius figures out how a laptop works, and tells him to "go east on 30 to Westmoreland," to find Sammy's Metalworks (the new hideout). Unfortunately, Westmoreland is positively WEST of downtown Dallas. If these idiots went east on 30 from downtown, they would end up in Mesquite, miles from where they needed to be.

We also see our heroes constantly crossing the Trinity River using the Houston and Jefferson Viaducts, as if these are the major arteries in and out of Downtown Dallas. In fact, these viaducts do not even connect with the major highway, I-30. If Stark was so concerned about getting to his partner in time, he would have used any one of the streets or highways that connect with I-30 to take him WEST to Westmoreland and the warehouse area there. Once there, of course he uses the obligatory car-smashing-through-a-large-window action sequence, plus a shoot-the-propane-tanks-instead-of-the-bad-guys-to-make-a-large-explosion to bring this preposterous plot to its conclusion.

Mayor Tom Leppert recently welcomed the cast of "The Good Guys" to Dallas, hopefully encouraging them to stay a long time and spend lots of money. He should have included a Mapsco in his welcome gift. Apparently, they need to learn their way around Dallas.

If you watch "The Good Guys" to see a few snatches of recognizable Dallas scenery and a few entertaining moments, be sure to have a tall Long Island Iced Tea sitting within reach. As you watch the comedy ensue, make a drinking game of it. Take a swig every time you see Fair Park in the shot, or double gulps when bad directions are given. "The Good Guys" airs Monday at 8:00 pm, KDFW, Fox, channel 4, repeated Friday, 8:00 p.m.

Not Dead Yet

(by Linda Coleman) Yeah, I know. We told everybody about our blog, got y'all to look, then promptly abandoned the project. Every now and then, as we're traveling around this city, making snarky comments about the state of things, we say, "Hey, we should write that hilarious comment on our blog." Then, we forget to do it. Call it TBTB--Too Busy To Blog.

Well, last night, we were at a party and ran into a friend who asked what happened to the blog. "Didn't you used to have a blog about Dallas?" the friend asked. "I really enjoyed reading that."

Wow! We actually have a fan! Maybe more than one. So that encounter was enough to encourage us to re-re-launch the blog. For now, anyway.

The title of this blog post comes from a bad experience at one of our favorite restaurants. I'm not going to say which one, because we usually get really, really great service there. Today, though, we got such lousy service that we started doubting our very existence.

"I'm a ghost," James told me, as I returned from the restroom. By that time, we had been ready to leave for about 15 minutes, but the waitress hadn't been by with our check.

"Maybe we're dead," I ventured.

"Right," James said. "If we tried to leave without paying, we'd find out we're not dead."

Several more minutes went by, as we watched our waitress walk right by without seeing us time after time. She was all kissy-face with the people sitting across the aisle from us, chatty with a table behind us (8 minutes of chatty--James timed her), but she walked right by us, as if we were...

"Dead," I said. We're probably dead."

And we discussed every movie we'd seen, where some character is dead and doesn't know it. I was pretty sure we weren't dead, despite the waitress constantly walking by as if we didn't exist. I was pretty sure we did exist. I was pretty sure I existed, anyway. I'd just been to the bathroom, and I'm pretty sure dead people don't do that. Also, my stomach was awfully full from the omelet, grits and two slices of toast I'd just eaten. I'm no expert on existence beyond the grave, but I'm pretty sure you can't eat and wouldn't feel full if you did.

Besides, we were definitely alive when we walked in. We were shown to a table, and the waitress was attentive then. If we were dead, the transition between this world and the next would have happened while we were at the restaurant. So, if we were dead, there would be an ambulance, a flurry of activity, maybe a TV crew and a health inspector trying to figure out why we suddenly dropped dead after a meal of omelets, grits and toast.

Then, after about half an hour, the waitress finally noticed us.

"How's everything going?"

I felt like saying, "Oh, yay, we're not dead!" but I didn't. James told her we were ready for our check and she gave it to us.

James left her a ghost of a tip, and we headed out to the grand opening of Twelve Hills Nature Center.

Twelve Hills Nature Center
This afternoon was the grand opening of Twelve Hills Nature Center, described on their website as "an urban preserve located in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas". It's really nice out there, and we plan to go back and hike the trails when it's not so blazing hot. It was a nice opening, attended by such local luminaries as city council member Dave Neumann and state representative Rafael Anchia. If I were in a really snarky mood, I'd title this section "Twelve Hills is for the birds!" because that's kind of what Dave Neumann said, calling attention to the variety of bird calls that filled the air. But, of course, he meant it in the nicest way, encouraging us us to take ownership of the place, helping keep it pristine for the benefit birds and the people who watch them. We lasted out there about 20 minutes before heading home to the comfort of our air conditioned house, but we'll definitely be back soon--maybe earlier in the day, or in the cool of the evening. Twelve Hills is located near Rosemont Elementary School, about three blocks north of Davis on Mary Cliff.