This episode is an experiment we're calling an EarBurner Quickie. No guest. It's just Tim and Zac in the podcast kitchen, cooking up a special dish together. For an amuse-bouche, they discuss monster pickup trucks that don't belong in the Whole Foods parking lot. Then the main course: why the mayor of Dallas approaches Twitter like a fifth-round draft pick with a chip on his shoulder. He picks fights. He roasts his "haters." And he makes a fair number of sophomoric references to "Big Dallas Energy." (P.S.: Tim mentions a Cowboys player who tattooed a potato chip on his shoulder, but he couldn't recall his name. It was cornerback Anthony Brown.)

Jay started Cane Rosso with his first restaurant in Deep Ellum 12 years ago. Now the dude employs 520 people in his pizza empire. He's got a salty mouth. He loves dogs. And his two daughters force him to spend a lot of time in airports. Fun connection: the EarBurner guest from the previous episode, Frank Campagna, has done some mural work for Jay. It's almost like we planned it. In terms of show notes, Tim was right about puntata. Please know that. In terms of everything else, this was a banger. Five stars.

If you've lived in Dallas for any length of time, chances are you've encoutered Frank's art. He estimates that he has done more than 1,000 murals in Deep Ellum (many of them to promote performances at the old Gypsy Tea Room). On February 11, he'll have his annual "For the Love of Kettle" show at his Deep Ellum gallery, Kettle Art, with works from dozens of artists, each of which is 9 by 12 inches and priced at $50. Doors open at 7 p.m. for what Frank calls "competitive shopping." We also talked with Frank about the 150th anniversary of Deep Ellum and about the time the South Korean pop group BTS created worldwide headlines when a few of its members dropped in to the gallery. 

GNO is a poet who not long ago put out a collection titled "101 Break Up Poems." In this EarBurner, he explains why he nicknamed himself GNO (pronounced "Gino"), what happened when he told his mom Prince wasn't a girl, and how poetry can save young people's lives. Oh, also, he tells the story about how he wound up doing a McDonald's commercial for the Filet-O-Fish. (If you're reading these words in time for it, you can catch GNO at a poetry-and-cocktails gig on 2/10/23 at the Dallas Institute, where he'll read a selection of his break-up poems.)