Salad Ahoy!

—Meredith Louise Miller, “Dad’s Flannel (Live),” Bob (1992)

Best of April Fools 2009: Dallas Area

Lots of good stuff out there today but I wanted to let you know about three local ones that I thought were particularly good:

1. Dallas Mavericks owner and tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban announced on Twitter today that he had signed a “360” deal with onetime Dallas singer-songwriter Meredith Louise Miller. They’ll share revenues from her music, concerts, merchandise, and so on, in exchange for which Cuban will feature her on all of his electronic properties, as well as at Mavericks games and Cuban’s house parties. They claim it’s the only way for an independent musician to get the kind of exposure she would need to make a living these days. “Sortof a DeMedici 2.9,” Cuban tweeted.

2. Strip club Spearmint Rhino and fledgling theater company Enter Stage Left announced that on Wednesday night, the club would host a “special performance” of the group’s production of the play Closer. Smart idea, really: it brought a new demo out to Spearmint Rhino on what would otherwise have been a pretty slow night, and gave Enter Stage Left great exposure (sorry about the pun) for its first production. Of course, the “special performance” was really just that the only scenes from the play that were performed were the stripping scenes. If you bought a lap dance you could pretend to be the dermatologist, though.

3. Local paper The Dallas Morning News sent out letters to all its subscribers (think about the coordination and cost required to pull that off). In the letters, editor Bob Mong thanked readers for their commitment to the paper and to reading, and reaffirmed the paper’s dedication to delivering outstanding local news. Tucked in the bottom panel of the letter, though, was a mention that the monthly subscription price was now $28.50—raised from $19.95 (and nearly 100 percent higher than the rate five years ago). Most readers probably missed the rate change since it didn’t look like any rate change letter that had come in the last five years, but if you took the time to make a call to the circulation department, they gave you straightfaced nonreasons for the change like “times are difficult.” I’m reading into the joke a bit, I guess, but I thought it was an interesting take on the struggle of newspapers: they might have to raise subscription rates exorbitantly to drive their readership online—the only place where advertising rates could increase—and just eat the losses from canceled subscriptions and from lower advertising rates due to smaller circulation.