1. DFW Quick This addendum to the Dallas Morning News is available everywhere – street corners, coffee shops, grocery stores, parking garages, I always find a place to pick one up wherever I’m going. Page to the Day Tripper and see what they recommend you do today. Also check out their drink specials chart in the back if you’re planning on going out. They have a website but it isn’t as well thought out as the paper version. Sorry guys, check it out old school.

2. Dallas Observer Contrary to the Quick, I dont believe I’ve ever actually picked up a Dallas Observer in person. I’m not even sure where I would do that. But, the “Best Bets” and Events section of their website has every activity ever listed. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to sort through the mass amount but it is guarunteed to have plenty of ideas. One downfall: no pictures, and rarely links to websites you need for more information.

3. Upcoming on Yahoo If you have a yahoo account, you already have this nifty little feature on your homepage, and you probably never even noticed. When you’re logged in, to the right of the weather is a link that says “events in your hometown.” Click it and explore! I enjoy the layout of this site a little more than the others as it seems to be designed by someone with eyes instead of spreadsheets.  The only thing is that it does not cover the whole metroplex, but lists events by city/suburb.

Right across the street (literally) from the Nasher is the Dallas Museum of Art. With student discounts, and bonus free entry on the first Tuesday of the month and Thursday nights, it’s well worth taking a walk through The DMA’s vast collection of artwork. Although you usually have to pay extra to see the visiting exhibitions, they are usually worth every penny. The current (and very popular) exhibition is a collection from King Tut’s tomb. “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs brings more than 130 treasures from King Tut’s tomb, as well as from other ancient Egyptian sites, to America. Almost all of these artifacts, 118 of them, have never before been seen in the U.S.” Although you will probably have to pay for metered parking (and learn how to parallel park) downtown, making a day trip of these two sights makes the perfect lazy sunday afternoon. You will even be able to be proud of something you did over the weekend, for once, and pretend to be cultured. Well worth the trip.

And that brings me to the people of Austin. OH, the people. I have such dislike for them. In Austin, on my various visits to there, there are two types of people you will meet (if you’re around the UT campus and my age. Which, lets face it – the UT campus IS Austin). First, you have the pretentious, narcissistic hipsters. The snobbiest of yuppies in Highland Park cannot rival the disdain hipsters have for people who are normal. They will beat you down with their diatribes on how everything alternative is sooooo much better than mainstream, from the way they fix their hair (just a little spiky, to the left) to the organic, gluten-free tofu burger they’re eating, to the music they’re listening to on their so-not-mainstream ipod (bands so indie, they haven’t even been invented yet!). Now, don’t get me wrong. I dig the occasional organic soda, and I’ve been to the odd-indie concert. But I’ve dove into hipster-ville long enough to learn that their tastes are not what bother me. It’s by and large, the attitude. I’m an equal oppurtunity person, and I’ll try anything once. But I absolutely canNOT stand people who have so much conviction that their opinion is the only one that matters. Because of it they have to look down on you, beat you up about it, and then preach to you the error of your ways. Southern Baptists do this also, as an interesting point of fact. Austin hipsters do this with pop culture instead of Jesus. Coincidentally, these are also the people who think Austin is so freakin’ cool and hipster-ish it should be it’s own state. (That is a direct quote as a matter of fact).

Wondering what constitutes a hipster? Play some Hipster Bingo!

If you are brave enough to venture around Austin on a Saturday night you will meet the other half of the Austin population: the wasted college kid. This guy is piss drunk and everything about him creams “I’m THAT guy.” He’s got his burnt orange shirt with the popped collar, and he’s stumbling around screaming obscenities about why Longhorns football is the best in the world. The female version of this has a skanky shirt on, with a breast hanging out or two, and she’s giggling while trying to flirt with a telephone pole. Both of these kids are students whose parents work very hard to send them to school. Both of these kids spend 5 nights a week in this drunken state of confusion. In the waking hours of noon to 3pm when they are sober, you can ask them about college and Austin, why they like it here, and they’ll only be able to mumble something insipid about why their school is great. I’m fairly sure they have no idea what city they’re in. Meeting these people at a party is the absolute worst, because enthusiasm for their school is shortly transferred to talking about drinking games as if they were olympic sports.

Google image search "That guy" and this photo comes up from an actual UT fansite. Yeah, not kidding.

I’m sure there are the odd normal people in Austin, and I probably haven’t been in the right places to run into them. But the multiple time I’ve visited Austin, with different groups of people, staying different places, I find these two living stereotypes as the majority of people I meet. And that’s depressing, because it’s really hard to like a city when the people there are horrible. And I even like New York! I’m not saying Dallas doesnt have annoying hipsters (we do) or wasted college kids (atleast a few) but they dnt make up the seemingly majority of the population nor are they the welcome wagon that rolls out to visitors. I just like to think that they can Keep Austin Weird and I’ll be staying right here where people are down to earth.

But the place is not completely ruined. The Deep Ellum Arts Fesitval is a remnant of it’s glory days that still manages to draw a crowd. Usually the first weekend in April, Artists turn out to line the streets to sell their work or provide demonstrations. As an artist myself I enjoy wandering the streets and being harshly judgemental. There are always the batty old women “artists” who paint bowls of fruit or something insipid, but there are also people you wouldn’t suspect there. Young people of all sorts with really interesting points of view, make art both interesting and fresh. Galleries in deep ellum open their doors for the weekend for onlookers to wander in and out and of course, you also have your typical street fair junk food available. You’ll also see lots of people wandering around with their dogs as they have the annual pet parade Sunday at noon. The pet parade validates all the crazy people who put their animals in stupid outfits the other 364 days of the year. Admission is free and emerging Dallas muscisians play on several stages throughout the day. I have a friend who lives in the area, so I parked at his apartment but generally parking will cost you about 5$ for the day. Altogether, it’s a nice way to spend a spring afternoon even if you aren’t the arsty kind. Plus, then you can always pretend to be cultured and pretentious.

Independent movie theaters like the Magnolia and Angelika often feature not your typical multi-million dollar blockbusters, but more thoughtful, intellectual movies, the kind which often win millions of awards from some academy or another. Another bonus is that they have features that your mega-movie theater does not. At the Angelika, with locations at Mockingbird Station and in Plano, they offer student discounts (which are rare nowadays) so that a weekend evening movie averages about $7.50.  Many independent theaters offer a full bar so that you’re entertained even if the movie is too intellectual or weird for you to enjoy, which sometimes happens. The Angelika also features unusual events such as matinee movies specifically for mother’s to bring crying babies to sleep during, and special features where they play classic old movies such as “Breakfast at Tiffanys” or “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” on the big screen. The Magnolia is an indie theater in Uptown, where they also offer a student discount which brings ticket prices down to $7.00.

But, if you’re exceptionally broke (like me) and haven’t been out to the mega theaters lately, you might want to check out Cinemark’s Plano Movies 10, a discount theater at Park & Coit in Plano. Although the movies only come to this theater after they have left the big screen at full price theaters, the delay is usually only a month or so. And, tickets for a weekend night are only $2.00! If you’re looking for an even better deal, show up for 75cent tuesdays and save all your money for something better. The price being so low almost pushes you to see movies that you would never waste two-hours of your life on otherwise. Sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes you regret it.

Perhaps after watching Slumdog millionaire you find all of your movies missing a certain hint of insane dancing and hindu music. Never fear! I have a cure. At the obscure theater FunAsia Richardson located right off george bush you can watch Bollywood movies to your hearts content. I’ve never ventured out to do this so I don’t know if they actually have subtitles on these movies or not, but prices range from $2 – $10 and its certainly an experience you won’t find anywhere else.

So next time you do dinner and a movie, go out of your comfort zone and make it a little more exciting, as well as a little more inexpensive.

I went down to the America’s Next Top Model Audition in Fair Park to scope things out. Auditions for the show had been held in New York the week before where a smoking car had caused a stampede that landed 4 people in the hospital. Although I certainly didn’t want anyone to end up in the hospital, I was hoping to witness some crazy girls fight. I mean, isn’t that why we watch reality tv shows, to see the ugly side of human nature? Although I didn’t witness any sobbing, screaming, or clawing, I did meet some interesting people. I interviewed Laycee, a 19-yr old auditioning for the show who had driven 6 hours overnight just to come out to the auditions. “I was in a nightclub in downtown Tulsa last week when someone told me they were having an open call in Dallas” she said, “So I got my hair and nails done, took off work, and drove all night to get here around 5am.” Coming from rural Oklahoma, she jumped at the chance to audition in person for the show. “It’s great that they’re doing this in Dallas, otherwise I’d never get the chance to do this. It’s really the only city in the South could get such a large turnout for an audition.” Because of security concerns from the previous auditions, only girls auditioning were allowed to go into the building where they waited for the open call. There were several checkpoints, a metal detector, and lots of staff from the TV station on hand. ONe of the production assistants guesstimated that they had almost 8,000 girls coming to tryout that day. With that much raw talent to choose from, there’s sure to have atleast one girl from the Big D representing on the 13th cycle of the show.

Pinks All Out could not be more different from America’s Next Top Model entertainment-wise but they recieved a warm welcome from Dallas-ites all the same. Filming at the Texas Motorplex just outside the metroplex in Ennis, Tx radio ads the week before called for entrants to be on the show.  The show originated at this very spot, 6 years ago, where entrants would drag race for “pinks” or the title slips to their car. Since then, the show has grown and changed to film all over the nation. Although losers no longer have to surrender their rides, the competition is as fierce as ever. Odd festivities such as the pimped out golf-cart racing started around 7am and continued all day and into the night, with the finals starting around 7pm. Represntatives of the show stated online that they were “thrilled to be returning to their roots here in Dallas. Texas Motorplex has done a great job of welcoming us home.”

So, the moral of the story is that Dallas is welcoming and attracting all kinds of interesting events that you may think only happens in Hollywood. Take a look around  – you never know, your favorite show might be doing some filming here in town soon!

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So recently my challenge has evolved into something more – motivate myself to go out and explore, and make sure it’s cheap or relatively free. Lucky for me, my boyfriend is a gearhead and spends 95% of his day online talking with other people who love cars. the other 5% of his day could probably be broken down to 2% eating, 1% sleep, 1% pretend to listen to girlfriend while eating or thinking about cars and 1% actually talking about/ working on cars with people in real life. That last 1% led to my subject for this post, The Plano car meet.

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Every wednesday night when the weather is decent, around 9pm hundreds of crazy gearheads drag their girlfriends to the May Hua Parking lot at Park and Coit, park their ride and wander. Now, before you picture “the fast and the furious” in your mind consider this: having a passion for cars does not mean that you drive a nice one. Not everyone has Hollywood funding your corvette with green flames on it or whatever. Part of the fun of wandering the car meet is to see what kind of ridiculous home-made modifications people have made. In fact, the plano kids who come from wealthy families are almost looked down upon unless they can prove that they didn’t just pay someone to soup-up their 350z. True passion for the machine and knowledge are coveted here, as well as the fun and ridiculous. My favorite discovery of the night was an imported right-hand drive civic del sol with an automatic hard top. This might not make sense to anyone else, but my brother had that car when I was in high school, only I would attempt to take off the hard top of the convertible myself and nearly get crushed under it. Sometimes my neighbors would sit and watch me struggle for amusement.

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it's robo-car!

I will admit, I am a fan of cars myself, while my knowledge wouldn’t be enough to gain me any street cred here. It is enough interest however, to wander around and enjoy seeing the hard work that people put into their rides. Currently, my baby, a 3000gt VR4 twin turbo is getting an engine rebuild right now, but as soon as she’s fixed I will be showing her off in the May Hua parking lot.

my baby!

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Amazingly enough, the Plano police who tend to be bored and abuse their power by writing tickets for “loitering” and “bad thoughts”, actually leave the car meet alone. This is unusual since any collection of gearheads and machismo almost always turns into a pissing competition of some sort, in this case street racing. Occasionally you might see someracing up and down Coit, but for the most part it is frowned upon on the off chance that the police will decide to break up the party.

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There used to be a car meet called Rice Killers in the Central Market parking lot on Monday nights, more of a mix of people with expensive toys than those interested in mechanics, but it has since been dismantled because of street racing on 190. Although I’ve been less of a fan of that meet due to the overwhelming amount of douchey mid life crisis guys with power-ranger-esque street bikes, the remainders of the Rice Killers meet has decided to join the wednesday night crew and has turned it into more of an event. And of course, the best part is that it’s free! So, if you find yourself getting restless on a wednesday night, even if you don’t know anything or really care for cars, come to the meet and wander around. You might just learn something. Or if you’re a single girl, you’ll probably get hit on. Just be warned that anyone there will probably always care more about their car than you. But don’t take it personally, you just dont have 300 horsepower.