Howard Wen

• 1 year, 1 month ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Early voting numbers hit record highs across North Texas

  Most of the Dallas Democrats in the 1960s became Reagan Democrats and then Republicans in the 1980s.

  And most of the City Council already is Democratic. But ever notice that we don't know for sure what each person's political affiliation is? And during mayoral campaigns, you never see "Republican" or "Democrat" being bandied about? There's a bit of an unwritten rule in our city council's government that they're not supposed to represent (at least blatantly) any one particular political party.

• 1 year, 1 month ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Early voting numbers hit record highs across North Texas

  @snowboard9:

  Sure, Texas will go red, but there's the possibility that Obama might win Dallas county.

  The significance of that? Dallas will be the home of the Bush Presidential Library.

• 1 year, 1 month ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: Allen teen a suspect in case of Frisco homes hit by spaghetti sauce-throwing vandals

  Too expensive to use eggs. Sign of the economic times.

• 1 year, 1 month ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UNT students voted to help pay for new stadium

  It's the whole "build, baby, build" mentality characteristic of Dallas that has now infected UNT. (Or to put this thinking in another way, it's "if you build it -- no matter how much it costs, they will come.")

  Thing is, building a better stadium isn't going to directly build a better team. That takes a good coach and coaching staff. Start from there, win lots of games, build a rep over the years, then talk about a new stadium if the crowds start to fill to capacity. It would cost a whole lot less to pay more for better coaches.

• 1 year, 2 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Haunted House Review: The Cutting Edge in Fort Worth

  This is a great idea -- reviewing the major haunted houses as we near Halloween. But how come there are not any pictures? At least photos of the exterior of the places would be cool.

• 1 year, 2 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: Troubled WaMu's Dallas connection

  The FBI are already investigating the collapses of AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... Could WaMu be next?

• 1 year, 2 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: Texas Supreme Court rejects Bob Barr's attempt to keep Obama, McCain off Texas ballot

  If a crazy series of events actually unfold in the courts, and the two major party candidates are ordered removed from the ballot, then the McCain and Obama campaigns will shift to Plan B -- airing radio and TV ads to instruct their supporters to write in the name of their candidate.

  This would turn out to be a problem for the McCain campaign, I think. They would have to spend additional money campaigning in a state that they were originally guaranteed to win anyway -- a red state with a lot of electoral votes. It would likely turn Texas into a battleground state; Obama would probably have a really good chance of winning Texas under such a write-in requirement for both candidates.

• 1 year, 3 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star Telegram enter joint-distribution deal

  DFW Morning Star News?

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Condo market in Dallas currently stinky, worse than houses, even

  People aren't buying them because they are over-priced and lack amenities. So rather than lower prices (as the building developers don't want to attract the "riff raff"), they're going to attempt to rent them as over-priced apartments that lack amenities. Next, just watch, they will try to convert them into office space.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Dallas should rename Ross Avenue for Cesar Chavez

  I totally predicted that this would become a controversy when I first saw the online survey months ago. Chavez's was the only person's name on that list, and the other choices were boring, generic titles related to the Trinity River (yawners like "Waterfront Way," "Trinity View Dr," "Pricey Condo Front Boulevard," and somesuch). But I knew that Chavez was going to win -- one reason being because that his name was the only choice named after a person.

  What really surprised me was that Stanley Marcus was not on that list.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: More layoffs at Dallas Morning News; freebie Quick to become weekly

  @Jason Rice:

  In fact, I was told by some colleagues that Fry's originally would place their back-page ads in the Business section (makes sense, right?). But then they realized that they got a much better response by placing it on the back page of the Sports section. So that's why you mostly find their full page ads on the back page of Sports.

  Just count the number of pages that the Sports section has over the Business. (On Sundays, the DMN has TWO sections dedicated to Sports!) And count the number of syndicated stories verses locally written stories. Oh, and read the stories and gauge the journalistic quality of the Sports section coverage verses the Business (or the Metropolitan) section. The answer is pretty obvious: Dallas is a sports loving town, and the DMN caters only to that audience.

  And haven't you guys ever noticed that the biggest business and local-area related news (which get the most press) often have a connection to local sports in some way? (i.e. The Cotton Bowl, local bond issues, the access of DART to sporting venues, Victory Park, unfounded rumors of Mark Cuban's local real estate interests from a sports angle, etc.). If you want REAL local business news, you have to pick up the Dallas Business Journal.

  Quick is the worst offender. Many times it has 4 pages of sports verses 1 page of lamely summarized local business -- sometimes Quick doesn't even bother to include business.

  For a city that lots of people demonize as one where most of its people are fixated on making money, you'd think there would be more interest in reading local business news, right? But the reality is: Nada.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATEDX2: Plano-based Bennigan's chain shuts down

  Are there any franchise Bennigan's (and franchise Steak & Ale's) in the Dallas area? From the comments I've been reading on other blogs/sites concerning the bankruptcy, it was the Bennigan's restaurants owned by the corporate parent that were bad. But the franchises are regarded as much better quality.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Grimaldi's Pizzeria opens in Allen at Watters Creek center

  If you enjoy the thin crispy type of crust pizza (as I very much do), then I would recommend Greenville Avenue Pizza. Yep, the place that is open for the Lower Greenville bar crowd up till 4 am on the weekends.

  I also like the other pizza joint at the West Village: Campania. They serve a similar crispy-ish pizza crust.

  Basically, Greenville Avenue Pizza is at the low end (in terms of price), while Campania is at the high end.

  I haven't tried Grimaldi's at the West Village yet, but I plan to. Its prices sound comparable to Capania's.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: More layoffs at Dallas Morning News; freebie Quick to become weekly

  If the DMN is really serious about giving Dallasites what they want (verses what they really need... like, you know, hard hitting news), then they should convert the paper to a daily tabloid format where most of the cover stories are sports related.

  Looks at the size of the sports section of the DMN (or Quick) compared with the other sections. It says to me that Dallasites care more about sports than local news or, even worse, business -- these two latter subjects affect the average Dallasite more directly, yet, based on the dominance of sports coverage in the DMN (and on local Belo stations), all that most Dallasites give a crap about is sports.

• 1 year, 4 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATEDX2: Plano-based Bennigan's chain shuts down

  Christi is pretty much on the mark. The restaurant business is essentially the entertainment business. These theme chain restaurants will come and go. I'm surprised it was Bennigan's that shut down, and not TGI Friday's. The market was saturated with three similarly themed major chains (the third being Chili's, of course).

• 1 year, 6 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Dallas' Industrial Boulevard "vote" discounts Latinos' wishes

  I wanted to vote for Stanley Marcus, but I didn't see his name among the choices. What the heck was going on with this online poll?

• 1 year, 10 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Coca-Cola Starplex Smirnoff Music Centre becomes Superpages.com Center

  If I was crazy rich, I would pay to have it named "The Baby Dolls Music Extravaganzaplex 3000."

• 2 years, 1 month ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  UPDATED: Dallas County election results

  Am I the only one who questions the way the election ballot was worded? If you voted "for", then you were actually voting AGAINST the toll. But if you voted "against," you were voting FOR the toll. Doesn't anybody wonder if those voting "against" knew what they were actually voting for (or "against")?

  Frankly, the election results did not surprise me. The whole affair reeks of manipulation of the wording by the for-toll road side with the intent to purposely confuse voters.

• 2 years, 8 months ago
  Howard Wen's comment on:

  Applebee's in Colleyville and Fort Worth to close

  Just patronize another chain that sells SYSCO prepackaged food. :)

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