January was hard.
It’s the last day of a long, busy month.
Dallas kicked off January with a snowstorm — which is what they call any amount of snow around here.
At first, people were in denial that it would snow at all. The snow inevitably came, and then there was a collective freak-out in which people fled downtown to spin-out on the highways (or sit in traffic.)
I was amused by this until I remembered that drivers in Minnesota weren’t much better.
Ingrid the Labradoodle as the snow is melting at Lee Park / Turtle Creek in Oak Lawn.
The snow didn’t stick around long.
It never does in Dallas.
However, the abrupt temperature fluctuations helped me catch a cold.
I don’t get sick often, which is perhaps why I am horrible at being ill. I initially blamed allergies and delayed taking medicine, so I was on the Typhoid Mary-level by the time I had important meetings and interviews that I couldn’t reschedule.
Perhaps I’ll have learned my lesson when I get my next cold in 2 years.
No pants subway ride in Dallas.
The bar crawl
Before I caught my cold, my friend Justin convinced me to go on the Dallas version of “No Pants Subway Ride,” which is an annual bar crawl styled as an “improv comedy event.”
The event consisted of a couple dozen people taking off their pants on the North Texas light rail and then walking around pantless to bars.
The men had it easy because we could just wear underwear that resembles biker shorts. Meanwhile, some of the women probably violated public decency laws with their choices.
It was fun to get out of the gayborhood and try something new. It was also my first (and hopefully only) time at a downtown Plano bar while wearing biker’s shorts.
Trump protesters hang a sign off of a Dallas highway.
Trump, Trump, Trump
The most memorable thing about January was Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency.
Slate’s Political Gabfest has really smart coverage on our new president, but the best explainer on recent events is from Vox’s The Weeds podcast. Also don’t miss this article on why Trump’s staff lies.
One difficult conversation I continue to have in our newsroom is about when to call-out Donald Trump (or his staff) for lying.
Some of my coworkers believe that the term “lie” imputes an “intent to deceive” on a person. Because we are not mind-readers, this means that we can (practically) never call out a politician for lying.
I however am willing to use the term “liar” or “lies” for people who either know, or should have known, that their statements are false.
Connie Schultz puts things more vividly in this article:
“True, I can’t peer into the dark recesses of Trump’s head — thank you, Jesus — but that doesn’t mean I can’t discern his intentions by the content of his words.
“He lies, but he may not mean it? That’s like someone hitting me in the head with a baseball bat and then assuring me on the ambulance ride that he didn’t mean to make me bleed. At some point, one of us has to state the obvious because the medical staff and the police are definitely going to have their assumptions.”
Amen.
A drag pageant at the Round-up Saloon in Oak Lawn, Dallas.
Besides Trump, there was drag.
And all of the other normal events in the gayborhood.
I’ve started doing twice-weekly LGBT event roundups for Guidelive.com, our entertainment website. Some of my neighbors think this is silly, but I have to remind them that not everyone lives in the heart of the gayborhood and knows what’s going on.
Some of our readers disapprove of increased LGBT coverage in The Dallas Morning News, but the overall response has been positive. See all of our LGBT event listings here.
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