Fort Worth Weekly - News, Entertainment, Restaurants, Music

We at Fort Worth Weekly are nothing if not topical. We have noticed that Times Are Tough. And so, like every other retailer on this planet, we have figured out how to sell the sizzle when the bird itself is tougher than a driller's heart and money is harder to find than an agenda for the city's Ethics Committee. But, hey, even families on a budget can afford a potluck feast now and again, and, pilgrims, that's what we've got for you.

True, it's a menu full of losers. That's our job, to put a little humbug in the holiday, just in case you mistakenly thought things were cheery and bright. This year the shopping list bordered on the surreal, as though every public official, sports team owner, and gas company executive in the county had drunk the same Kool-Aid and become convinced that no one would notice they were serving up cardboard soup and calling it caviar. (The Weekleteers know from cardboard soup, especially if it's on sale at Wal-Mart. Caviar, not so much.)

As far as we can tell, this year's selection of birds is politically correct - our turkey kebab chefs skewer without regard to race, creed, religion, title, bank account, or whether you can afford the steak at Eddie V's. In general, these dishes are best enjoyed away from the table, so that the bad judgment, venality, hypocrisy, greed, and other sins they embody won't make you turn pea-green over your Pop Tarts or seven-grain granola.

The turkey nuggets are also, as a rule, spicy. Think about it: How could this annual celebration of faux pas and foolishness lose in a year when we had the Rainbow Lounge raid, the opening of Cowboys Stadium, Tea Parties, Party Passes, and the mood swings and gajillion-dollar flings of a certain county college board? The list of birds who seem to be tying down the Fort hand and foot, like Gulliver in Lilliput, also included Tom Hicks, longtime favorite Mike Moncrief, and, needless to say, the Bird That Ate Fort Worth - that's right, the Barnett Shale, a gift that, like Montezuma's revenge, keeps on giving. Global warming may have played havoc with our seasons, and compressor stations may have fouled our air, but, sports fans, it's been raining bad birds all year long.

Our traditional dishes and one-time specials are listed below. The management is not responsible for either hilarity or indigestion. - Gayle Reaves

That boot was made for Walker.

The big turkey enchilada this year goes to Jerome Walker who, in 12 years as the seemingly untouchable head of the city's housing department, managed to screw up just about everything he touched. In his last year, before he was finally and unceremoniously booted out, he drew a salary of more than $153,000 and was charged with overseeing tens of millions of federal dollars meant to provide affordable and decent housing for the city's poor. Instead, much of the money went to ... well, no one's quite sure where it went except that it didn't go to the least of those among us.

How did he sin? Let us - or rather the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development - count the ways: Money for housing loans to low-income residents languished in the bank unspent. Few houses were built or repaired, and the work on many of those was substandard. He authorized subcontractors to work without getting construction permits - then paid the contractors thousands of (federal) dollars for those phantom permits. And he even set up his own nonprofit city-owned construction company to do some of the shoddy work. His misdeeds finally caught up with him in May after his new boss found a stack of HUD audits going back several years showing that millions of federal dollars were being misused, wasted, or outright lost and that government regulations were being systematically ignored. Now the city has to pay back millions in misused funds, and HUD is threatening to withhold $6 million more in housing funds for 2009-2010. Walker got fired, along with four others high in the department.

The worst part of Walker's sad tale may be that folks above him had also been getting copies of those HUD audits and warning letters over the years and had failed to act.

Plenty of room inside that tortilla for some other dirty birds.

If they rapped, they could be BattShak.

The electronics retailer tried to reverse its hopelessly uncool image this past summer with a $200 million marketing campaign rebranding itself as "The Shack." The move went over like a suburban dad suddenly telling his kids how much he digs Lady Gaga. The derision was immediate and widespread: Conan O'Brien said the new name's appeal was "for people who are scared off by high-tech buzzwords like 'radio.' " Look past the comedy value, and the campaign still makes no sense. Eliminating the space between the words "radio" and "shack" in the 1990s didn't appreciably raise business (despite costing a ton of money), and the new campaign bore an all-too-uncomfortable similarity to competitor Circuit City, which changed its name to The City shortly before going belly-up. This time around, a company that has gotten a free ride from Fort Worth for years is talking about moving out of town. Ungrateful as well as uncool. A battery-operated bird to The Shack.

Outshone.

A little leftover turkey hash to the dim bulb at city hall who decided to locate artist Cliff Garten's 36-foot high, stainless-steel sculptures along the median of the restored East Lancaster Avenue. In that location, the poor dears, entwined in pale violet LED lights, have to compete with so much brightness, from headlights to traffic signals to street lights, that their subtle effect is lost. The six soaring pieces, which in the daytime look like giant egg-beaters, are supposed to reflect the art deco architecture of the old T&P railroad terminal, now morphed into high-dollar condos. But sadly for the artist and the citizens who paid for it, this is still a "what were they thinking" moment, another misstep in the city's campaign to bring art to the public.