2 minute read
THE IST
STORY BY CHRISTINA HUGHES-BABB
THE MEDIA PERPETUALLY FEEDS THE PUBLIC’S HUNGER FOR LISTS.
There are useful lists, such as Oprah’s “Top 10 Superfoods”, Time ’s “25 People to Blame for America’s Credit Crisis”, or Esquire ’s “Best Bars in America”. Then there are more gratuitous tabulations — Star magazine’s “Best and Worst Beach Bodies”, or TheEnquirer ’s index of gay and not gay celebrities, for instance. Maybe it’s the order and brevity lists inject into our overwhelming lives, or that they make large quantities of information more digestible. Whatever the reason, the masses enjoy consuming info in the form of neat numbered and bulleted boxes, and the Advocate is here to oblige. In fact, we love lists so much that we’ve compiled a list of lists (sometimes useful, sometimes superfluous) for readers who can’t get enough of them.
Their personalities are so magnetic that they can’t carry credit cards. Their charm is so contagious that vaccines have been created for it. The grass is greener on whatever side of the fence they are on. They are
The Most Interesting People Ineast Dallas
1. ABEL GONZALES. This guy is the master of deep fried foods. He’s brought us, via the great State Fair of Texas, fried Coke, fried cookie dough and, most recently, fried butter. Those grease-dripping goodies have garnered him a spot on “The Tonight Show”, a mention in Rolling Stone magazine and many a Big Tex Choice Award. And every year, Texans wait with watering mouths to see what he’ll fry up next. >>
3. Peter Snell. In New Zealand, the three-time gold winning Olympic runner holds the title “Athlete of the 20th Century”. There, he has his image on a postage stamp, a statue in his honor, his shoes on display in a museum, and he was recently named second on an annual New Zealand Reader’s Digest “Most Trusted Person” list. Here in our neighborhood, Snell enjoys relative anonymity. A Ph.D. now, he has turned his physical genius into scientific practice as an associate professor of medicine at the UT Southwestern medical center. His name still appears regularly in Running Times magazine.
2. Andi Comini. She displays a 9-foot dinosaur in her front yard and dresses it in a rotating assortment of hats, sunglasses and scarves, depending on the season. The Forest Hills resident also was a co-founder of the White Rock Lake Dog Park, and she started the Animal Alert program which helps reunite lost animals with their owners.
4. Bill Young. As programming director and president of KERA television station, Young has been analyzing the (relatively sophisticated) public’s television-watching appetites and habits for more than 30 years. He likes the British humor, music programs and documentaries he airs on KERA, but he reveals some surprising sensibilities as well. “I shouldn’t admit this ‘The Family Guy’ is one of my favorite shows. ‘The Simpsons’, too. My appreciation for comedy can go to both ends of the spectrum.”
(Stay East Dallas-y, my friends.)
It’s carwash time. You start with the inside, dropping 50 or 75 cents into the vacuum cleaner slot and ... you’re off to the races. Vacuuming furiously, you move hurriedly from one side of the vehicle to the other when the hose gets hooked on a door — oh no! — wasting precious seconds. Will you finish before the time is up? Or will you need to drop another 75 cents on that one measly remaining floorboard? To better your odds of beating the car vacuum clock, we’ve checked out neighborhood carwashes, stopwatch in hand, to find
Car Vacuums That Go Long
1. NATIONAL PRIDE CAR WASH, NORTHWEST HIGHWAY AND PLANO
/ 4 minutes / 2.5 minutes
2. GLASGOW CARWASH, LIVE OAK AND LAVISTA
Or Have Someone Else Do It
WHITE ROCK CAR BATH, GARLAND BETWEEN PEAVYAND EASTON
They’ve been in the car cleaning biz 50-plus years. They know what they are doing, so have a seat in the cool waiting area, and let them do the work at a resonable price.
WATER WORKS AUTO SPA, NORTHWEST HIGHWAYNEAR ABRAMS
This wash is much younger, but shares the old school commitment to good service — and watch for the $5 full service specials.