Casual Observations

Thanks to My Hero, I have been away on a fabulous, relaxing Florida beach vacation so I have some catching up to do:

• Johnny Manziel and the Dallas Cowboys: Jerry Jones, for once, made the correct decision passing on the overrated Texas A&M quarterback in the recent draft. Although Notre Dame offensive lineman Zack Martin was a solid pick, it didn’t address the Cowboys most pressing need – defense. I would have preferred to see the Cowboys pick Michigan State cornerback Darqueze Dennard. I only saw Dennard in two games last season, but in one he shut down Ohio State’s passing game in the Big 10 Championship game and in the second he squelched Stanford in the Rose Bowl. I am also convinced that had the college playoffs begun last season, Dennard and the Spartan defense would have had their way with Florida State’s offense to win the college title.
• Donald Sterling vs. Magic Johnson: I always thought banishment meant to get rid of. But Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is getting more media attention now that he has been banished by the NBA than he ever did before. Quit giving this jerk a platform, especially when it’s so obvious he’s in desperate need of media training. All Magic Johnson accomplished by answering Sterling’s stupid remarks was to lower himself to Sterling’s level. He could have easily found hundreds of individuals willing and even anxious to speak on his behalf.
• Call me a prude, but that "No more settling in this household" Time-Warner high-speed internet commercial makes me uncomfortable.

Don't see "Duplicity" with high expectations

Those who go to see the movie Duplicity with high expectations are going to be terribly disappointed. My Hero and I went to see it Sunday morning. I walked into the film with absolutely no expectations and found it to be a nice bit of harmless froth. My Hero went in after reading where The Dallas Morning News had wrongheadedly given the movie a grade of A-. At most, the movie deserves a B. She was terribly disappointed by it.

The film has a lot going for it and I will mention most of those in a minute. But first let me tell what's wrong with it. It's a narrative mess. Unfortunately, I can't explain why in great detail without spoiling many of the film's surprises, but let me mention just one bit so you can see what I mean.

The film begins with what appears to be a chance encounter between stars Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, which quickly leads to a sexual liaison in Owen's hotel room. But Roberts drugs Owen and steals papers he's carrying on nefarious Egyptian activities or somesuch (It doesn't matters what the subject of the papers are.) It turns out that Owen was part of British intelligence and Roberts was CIA. Jump to five years later and now both are working in corporate intelligence. They meet again in a New York City bar (it doesn't matter why or how) and Owen has this "How-could-you-have-done-this-to-me" speech while Roberts claims she has no idea who he is. A few minutes later, the film jumps back a couple of years in time to Rome where Owen is sitting with a comely lass at a sidewalk cafe when he spots Roberts. He chases her down and the two have exactly the same conversation they will have two years later in the New York bar. Clever, I thought. I can't wait to see writer-director Tony Gilroy's explanation for this. But, then, there is no explanation. He leaves it hanging out there.

There are more examples of these logic gaps in the picture that winds up being too clever for its own good.

But now that I mentioned the word "good," I guess I should fulfill the promise I made earlier and tell what you I liked about this film. It is beautifully shot and wonderfully scored. It is a romance thriller that falls way short on the thrills but delivers big time on the romance. Owen and Roberts are movie stars of the first order and they play off each other spectacularly. Watching this film made me even more certain that Owen should have been Pierce Brosnan's replacement to play James Bond. And while no couple I will ever know will find themselves in the situations Owen and Roberts experience in this film, the movie does pose the universal question every couple asks: "How completely can I really trust my mate?"

Dallas Mavericks are even more schizophrenic than either one of me

I give up. Which is the real Dallas Mavericks, the one that pulled out this thrilling win tonight over San Antonio or the one that looked so bad against Oklahoma City Monday night, team owner Mark Cuban had to threaten to fire the whole lot of 'em.

Incidentally, My Hero and I found a good downtown joint from which to watch the game. It's called the Ten Sports Grill and it's located at 1302 Main Street, on the south side of main just east of Field Street. The barkeep last night made a decent (not a superb, but a decent) Manhattan and the menu features a great deal on Wednesday nights: two servings of grilled chicken pasta for just $10. And each one is a complete pasta meal, folks, and, according to My Hero, it was good enough that she ordered one more for the road to have for lunch tomorrow. The place features many TVs so that I could cheer the Mavs and only slightly turn my head to catch the Oklahoma-Missouri upset.

Why Josh Howard has to go

After spending an absolutely magnificent Christmas evening making dinner for and just hanging out with My Hero, I returned home to see most of the second half of the Dallas Mavericks-Portland Trailblazers and discovered when I turned on the TV, much to my astonishment, the Mavericks ahead on the road against a very good team. But then Dirk Nowitzki picked up his fourth foul and had to sit and it fell on Josh Howard to carry the Mavericks' luggage.

So what does Howard do? He commits a flagrant foul. No biggie. Sometimes they are called for. But then immediately after Howard picks up a technical. And while Portland is shooting that foul shot, Howard, totally disregarding what's in the best interests of the team, gets his second technical foul, an automatic ejection. Now Nowitzki has to return with four fouls.

Howard's off-the-court antics last season didn't bother me as much as it riled a lot of people. But actions like tonight's are unconscionable. The sooner the Mavericks get rid of this jerk the better off the team will be.

Eight reasons why Sarah Palin is more qualified than Barach Obama

I have hesitated jumping on the Sarah Palin dump truck in print (although My Hero and I had a "What was John McCain thinking?" conversation last night); however, this is just too funny to pass up.

Hunt re-invigorates stale budget townhall meeting

If you've never been to a budget town hall meeting (and that's somewhere around 99.99999 percent of the adult Dallas population) what happens is one of the city's assistant city managers or, on a rare occasion, the city manager her own self, will narrate a city-staff-prepared slide presentation of the city manager's proposed budget. It gives all those special interest groups who feel they've been shortchanged the opportunity to jump up and proclaim "But what our little group does really enriches the entire fabric of the city's society so all 100 gazillion dollars should be restored to our efforts, but don't raise taxes and hooray to you for hiring all those extra police officers." Sometimes intelligent discussions do come up such as whether the city should go to a system of once-a-week garbage and recycling pickup and, if so, in what areas of the city should that switch be made and when and how can we get the residents in those dadgum apartment complexes to recycle.

But the centerpiece of the meeting is the slide presentation and, in a huge example of overkill and at the expense of way too many trees, this massive slide presentation is also handed out to everyone who shows up at the townhall meeting. That means, of course, you can jump to the section of the budget that most interests you and not even pay any attention to the assistant city manager who's trying to explain what debt service is and how come so much of the budget must be spent on it.

This year's City of Dallas budget is (and there really isn't any better word to describe it) dull and that makes the slide presentation even more monotonous than it ordinarily is. This not meant as a criticism to the City's staff because any slide presentation on a municipal budget is going to be dull. Let's face it, replacing the city's aging water infrastucture is necessary and important, but it's not exciting.

Which brings me to Tuesday night's townhall meeting at the Village Apartments' Country Club hosted by Angela Hunt, who said "No offense, city staff, but I think I can do this better all by myself." And you know what? By all accounts she did. She presented the budget, not an assistant city manager (although one, A.C. Gonzalez, was present) and she even made her own slide presentation to accompany it. Now, truth be told, tonight was draft night for the fantasy football league I'm in and our draft started at 6:15 p.m. So, by the time I arrived at the Country Club, Ms. Hunt had already made her presentation and was deftly handling comments from a couple of nut jobs, one railing about people with multiple DWIs who continue to drink (I guess he's never heard the term "alcoholic") and the other espousing his racist views on illegal immigrants and why Ms. Hunt doesn't singlehandedly ship them all back to northwest Arkansas where they came from.

It was only after the meeting that I learned Ms. Hunt flew solo. In a conversation with My Hero who has been to a couple hundred of these budget town hall meetings in the last few weeks and who saw the whole thing, she told me Ms. Hunt made the budget presentation and not an assistant city manager and that Ms. Hunt had made her own slides. "She really simplified it and presented it in a way that made sense," My Hero told me. "She did a great job of presenting the budget from the citizens' point of view and not the city's point of view."

For those who might want to see if she'll do it again, Ms. Hunt will have her final budget town hall meeting for this budget process Thursday evening at the Latino Cultural Center. Unfortunately, I will miss that as well because I will be attending a screening of this movie at the Angelika, and I know the rest of Dallas civilization will be at home watching the opening game of the NFL season and thinking "Those guys beat the Cowboys in the playoffs last year? How did they do that?", but just in case you're civic minded in the least, the Latino Cultural Center might be the place to be Thursday evening.