SNAP JUDGMENT

I knew that the woman who owns the three-story, multimillion-dollar closet in Houston was an idiot, especially when it was reported that a thief made off with $1 million in luxury goods from her closet one evening. My opinion was confirmed when I saw her crying on TV after the theft; her lips seemed a little artificially plump to me.

Same with whoever decided to bring a couple of Americans with Ebola to Atlanta to treat them — what kind of American brings people with an incredibly contagious disease into our country, risking the health of the rest of us? The 30-second clip didn’t go into details, but I don’t have time to think about Ebola longer than that anyway.

How about Beyonce’s sister, who started beating on Jay-Z in that elevator video clip? He was just standing there looking at her, so she must have been drunk or on drugs or just messed up. The video was kind of grainy, but I could see enough to decide.

That football player, Ray Rice, who turned up on hotel security cameras dragging his girlfriend (now wife) out of a hotel elevator when she appeared to be unconscious? What a bozo. He looked pretty guilty in that black-and-white video.

And the NFL commissioner who only suspended Rice for two games — when that other player who was smoking marijuana was kicked out for a whole year I mean, what was the commissioner thinking? I could tell all I needed to know from the TV news report teaser — there’s no question Rice should be spending time in prison instead of cooling his heels for a couple of Sundays.

That’s the greatest thing about life these days. Thanks to TV news, internet video clips and 10-second sound bites, it’s really easy to condemn, hate, repudiate and dismiss people I’ve never met and never talked with, all based on a few seconds of video or a single photo (celebrities without makeup!) or someone’s 140-character Twitter post.

It’s so much easier to be judgmental now. I don’t have to get my hands dirty with newsprint or books, and I don’t have to depend on friends telling me how to think. Thanks to the internet, I can think on my own and draw conclusions in just a couple of seconds.

Oscar Pistorius? Guilty! Vladimir Putin? Scary! Congress? Dummies!

There’s no longer any need to understand the background of an issue. No need to spend time researching

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214.292.0493 /emangan @advocatemag.com designers: LARRY OLIVER, LISA DUDLEY complicated stories. No reason to consider what others with first-hand information about situations might have to say — I can be the judge, jury and executioner without breaking a sweat, leaving my home or even having any real knowledge about what I’m talking about. contributing editors: KERI MITCHELL, SALLY WAMRE contributors: GAYLA BROOKS, SEAN CHAFFIN, ANGELA HUNT

And if I’m really lucky, I can take care of all of my thinking before breakfast while watching the morning news on TV.

Thank you, Al Gore, for inventing the internet. You should really run for office someday and straighten out those guys in Washington!

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Q&A: David Grover

Forget MP3s. Ripping music off the Internet is so 2000s. The future of the music business, some say, is old school. Sales of vinyl records are the highest they’ve been since the 1980s. And Oak Cliff is getting in on the shift. Spinster Records could open as soon as October on West Davis near Tyler, specializing in records and stereo equipment.

Its owner is David Grover, 49, of Oak Cliff, who has about 30 years of experience in the music business behind him. Grover played in bands in Los Angeles, was a club promoter and DJ, and most recently, gained some retail experience working for Best Buy. He moved to Dallas from Los Angeles eight years ago and settled in our neighborhood with his wife, Suzette.

How were you inspired to open a record shop?

I was biking a lot from Hollywood to Santa Monica. I would stop at my friend Paul Livingston’s house. We’d have a beer, pull out some records … We just had a great time listening to music. With all the technology we have, putting on a record is almost is a passive way of listening. With records, you put the needle on … it’s a little bit of commitment compared to listening to your laptop. And we just had these great music times. I noticed that there were starting to be vinyl-only record stores in L.A. Three opened in 2008. They’re opening stores with nothing else but vinyl. It’s just a different way of finding things out when you go to a record store. It’s like going to the library. I just started getting really excited about that idea.

There are already some pretty good record stores in Dallas.

Yes, there are a few. I went to Good Records, and I was like, “Awesome. Cool shop.” Then went to Bill’s Records, and I guess he does most of his business online. Then you have Forever Young, which is a huge store in Grand Prairie. Then you have your secondary ones like Half Price Books. You have Top Ten Records, which really caters to Latinos. And nobody’s doing only vinyl.

So what is the difference with Spinster?

We’re calling it a “music lifestyle store.” A lot of people want to collect records, but record players are kind of a secondary idea. I noticed at Best Buy that people were coming in for record players, and kids have no idea how to use one. So we’re going to try and get you into that next level.

What are you selling?

We’re going to have a curated record selection, but we can get you whatever you want. We’re going to make sure it’s the highest quality. We’ll have four brands of turntables, and we’ll have them set up so you can hear them. Nobody does that. We’ll have some old turntables too, and we’re going to be a place where we can do the needles, repairs. I’m working with Caroline Rothwell; she’s a publicist. She has some really great brand connections. So we’ll have sunglasses, T-shirts, jewelry, gift items all designed by or for artists.

What else?

I really like the idea of what Dave Spence is doing with the campus idea [at Tyler and Davis]. You can have coffee from Davis Street Espresso on a Saturday and roll on through. We’ll have some music playing and a cool hang-out area. We’re building a stage, and we want to have some meet-and-greets and in-store performances. We have a really great sound system that’s going in there.

You’re interested in local music?

I used to tour here with my band, and I played Trees in the ’90s, so I remember what Deep Ellum was like then. We really want to concentrate on local music. I’m interested in the history of the area. I’m trying to get as much T. Bone Walker and all that stuff that’s from here. I have a huge respect and awe for this whole area as far as all the stuff that came from Texas that you don’t really think about the roots of music. The whole Dallas, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana connection it’s pretty amazing. We should know and appreciate that. There’s such a great music tradition. When musicians would come to L.A. from Dallas, we would always have an ear out. This radio station, KCRW in L.A., they’re constantly playing Midlake, like every hour. There are all these great bands that are starting to come out of Texas again. I think we’re going to see a further explosion. I can be one of those conduits that can help people get their stuff out.

—Rachel Stone