BagOfNothing.com

Apparently, it’s a popular thing for principals and teachers to dress like the Elf on the Shelf and show up in random places in between periods to lighten the mood during the last week of school before winter break. I’m just now hearing about this, but it’s been going on for over five years.

Related: The latest episode of SNL had a fun Elf on the Shelf skit.

Rob Reiner was the first Saturday Night Live host to appear in one of the episode’s sketches. Granted, it was just the third episode in the show’s history, which was previously hosted by George Carlin and Paul Simon.

For those of you locals looking to make it onto television or the silver screen, or just to work in the industry.

Movies and TV shows casting in Dallas

Whether you’re a working actor or an aspiring one, you might be curious to know which movies and TV shows are casting roles near you. Backstage compiled a list of projects casting right now in Dallas, nearby cities, and nationwide, and which roles they’re looking to fill.

Texas universities deploy AI tools to review and rewrite how some courses discuss race and gender – Records obtained by The Texas Tribune show how universities are using the technology to reshape curriculum under political pressure, raising concerns about academic freedom.

This list from The New York Times gave me a few laughs.

The 52 Best Breakup Lines – (Said in Real Life)

To mark the winter holidays — an especially popular time to break up — we asked people around the world for their most striking parting words to each other.

I was really enjoying the CBS Evening News co-anchored by Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson. I was especially a fan of Dickerson, and bummed he (and DuBois) are gone. Now I fear what it’s going to turn into with Bari Weiss at the helm. I was glad to see her much hyped special with Erika Kirk was a massive ratings flop.

Weiss also killed a story ready to air on 60 Minutes, and it was big news on the socials last night: Sharyn Alfonsi, the veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported a segment about migrants sent to the El Salvadoran torture prison CECOT, just sent a blistering letter to colleagues, sounding the alarm that Bari Weiss spiked the story for political reasons.

1. BREAKING

Sharyn Alfonsi, a correspondent for 60 Minutes, sent an internal email to colleagues stating that CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss “spiked our story” about the Trump administration and the transfer of deportees to a prison in El Salvador.

[image or embed]

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yasharali.bsky.social) December 21, 2025 at 9:34 PM

Why did CBS delete this promo and cancel this from airing in full?

[image or embed]

— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) December 21, 2025 at 6:41 PM

The 10 Best Shows Of 2025, According To 10 ‘Best Shows Of 2025’ Lists

I’ve only seen Andor, Adolescence, and Pluribus. I thought Adolescence was exceptional, and the other two were also more than solid.

This year, the Texas Longhorns beat both Oklahoma and Texas A&M by double digits. Texas didn’t make the college football playoff but the latter two did, and lost home playoff games. But then again, Texas lost to a Florida team they should have beatened. But that Aggie lost was easy to see coming, it’s just so typical Aggie. They like to think they are this legendary football powerhouse program when they are just the little brother in the state who really hasn’t done anything legendary. All hat, no cattle, that would be the Aggies, year in and year out.

This quote by Jimmy Kimmel in his last monolog of the year resonated with me.

“You know, you grew up reading Superman, and you learn to value truth, justice and the American way, and then you start to realize, especially over the last year, you don’t know where that all went. You don’t know what the American way even is anymore,” Kimmel said. “But when I hear from people who tell me that they watch our show and the shows that my friends and colleagues do on the other channels, and that it makes them feel less crazy. It makes me feel less crazy too, and I think that’s an important thing.

I told a friend the other day that you are only truly over something if you can understand what you learned from it or describe how it made you stronger. I don’t know where I pulled that from or if it’s true, but it came out of my mouth, so I guess I believe it.

I hear Mineral Wells will become a 4A school. I don’t think it’s been 4A since I graduated in 1994.

I’m not sure what rock I’ve been under, but I knew nothing about the 1980 axe killing of Betty Gore in Wiley, TX, until late last week. And that’s only because, as a Jesse Plemons fan, I saw Love & Death in the top 10 on Netflix and decided to give it a try. Interesting that the series came out in 2023 on HBO Max. Probably more interesting, there was a 2022 Hulu series about it starring Jessica Beil and a 1990 CBS movie about the ordeal, all based on a Texas Monthly article and book.

I don’t know if I’ll watch the Hulu series, but Love & Death really captivated me, and I was impressed by the supporting cast’s acting. In particular, Tom Pelphrey‘s portrayal of Don Crowder, who successfully defended Candy Montgomery’s 41 axe chops on Betty Gore as an act of self-defense despite being a civil lawyer and never being a part of a criminal trial. I was also impressed by Bruce McGill‘s portrayal as the judge. He’s an overlooked character actor, who you might know best as the sheriff in My Cousin Vinny.

Where is Candy Montgomery today? Short story, but she’s now working as a certified family counselor in Georgia. Yeah, go figure.

And you know me, I like to do a deep dive after a movie. I was shocked by how heavy Plemons was in the series and how much weight he lost while promoting it.

I wonder how 99-year-old Mel Brooks is dealing with the news of the murder of the son of his best friend and his wife. Carl Reiner passed away only five years ago.

Carl Reiner gave Rob Reiner a copy of The Princess Bride, and Rob Reiner loved it and its father/son love story so much he turned it into a movie (with a grandfather and grandson). Three days before Carl’s death in 2020, he and Rob reenacted the final scene and “As you wish” pic.twitter.com/kxxYKYRF2r

— Jenna Guillaume (@JennaGuillaume) December 15, 2025

I subscribe to the daily Arnold Schwarzenegger newsletter. It’s short and provides some good tidbits on improving physical and mental health. I thought I’d share this tidbit about the importance of taking at least one 10-15 minute walk a day, especially if you are like me and have trouble getting steps in at all.

How Long You Walk Might Matter More Than Step Count

A study tracking 33,000 adults for nearly 8 years found that walks lasting at least 10-15 minutes significantly reduced heart disease and mortality risk, even when total daily steps stayed the same. For people averaging fewer than 5,000 steps daily, a single 15-minute walk provided stronger cardiovascular protection than multiple shorter bursts, likely because sustained movement activates insulin sensitivity and vascular function that brief walks don’t trigger.

While watching the Army-Navy game, which USAA heavily sponsors, I heard what I thought was the late James Garner (1928-2014) voicing one of their current ads about the upcoming year 2026. It turns out I’m not alone.

A good friend in Canada keeps me informed of some interesting trends.

Vacation travel to the U.S. is down as Canadian tourists make strategic decisions on where to spend time, money

• Tourism from Canada to Mexico is up 11.3% this year. That is 200,000 people.
• United States tourism from Canada is down 24%.
• Las Vegas is down 50%. New York City is down 46%, Honolulu is down 41%, and Florida is down 22%.

“Since the election of Trump and the insults that he placed on our country, 51st state and all of that garbage, we decided that no, we’re not going to spend money down there,” Birt said.

“We’ve had rumors of people being mistreated, or where they see your licence plate they tell you ‘North is that way.’ We’ve never run into that, but we didn’t want to support an economy and a government situation that was basically cruel and mean to us and wanted to take us over.

I meant to post this remarkable story last week. Talk about a heck of a family secret.

In 1994 Christine Kuehn received a letter that revealed a family history from which her father had tried to shield her: Christine’s grandfather, Otto, was a Nazi spy who was the only person tried and convicted for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. David Martin talks with Kuehn about her German family conducting World War II-era espionage, a tale she recounts in her new book, “Family of Spies.”

And I don’t understand how you go from the firing squad to serving just four years of hard labor and then being deported to your homeland. What the heck was Hoover thinking?

A University Park mansion spanning close to 13,000 square feet recently sold for $30.5 million, the priciest home sale in Texas this year.

Where people moved to (and from) in 2025 (Article and interactive map)

The Mega Marvin instrument is used to create cinematic sounds for horror movies and games. Here’s a short film on the making of the instrument. He named it after his grandfather, mainly because of a hand-me-down welder he gifted him.

https://youtube.com/shorts/I3l8xyoVI9Y?si=cStL7qq-3ATDh2p0

I don’t know why I haven’t noticed it before, but Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell looks like an older version of Harry Hamilin’s Mad Men character.

This week I had two second-round interviews. The one I prefer is still a steep hill to climb. I’m told that there will be two more rounds and a case study to complete within a week.

I went on a lunch date earlier this week. At the end of the date, she initiated a kiss. That was a first. Funny thing, we both got our undergraduate degrees from the same college, though we are about a decade apart in age.

Police in Edmonton, Canada, have started a pilot project using AI-equipped body cameras to detect faces on a “high risk” watch list.

AI-powered police body cameras, once taboo, get tested on Canadian city’s ‘watch list’ of faces

Police body cameras equipped with artificial intelligence have been trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a “high risk” watch list in the Canadian city of Edmonton, a live test of whether facial recognition technology shunned as too intrusive could have a place in policing throughout North America.

But six years after leading body camera maker Axon Enterprise, Inc. said police use of facial recognition technology posed serious ethical concerns, the pilot project — switched on last week— is raising alarms far beyond Edmonton, the continent’s northernmost city of more than 1 million people.

But the movie was shot in Dallas.

Marco Rubio orders US State Department to revert to Times New Roman font, calling Calibri adoption ‘wasteful’

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered diplomats to revert to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken’s decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move, according to a leaked internal cable.

The department switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, in January 2023, saying it was a more accessible font for people with disabilities because it did not have decorative angular features and was at the time the default in Microsoft products.

Some scientific studies have suggested that sans-serif fonts such as Calibri are indeed easier to read for those with certain visual disabilities.

Today I Learned:  Venus flytraps are only found in North and South Carolina (within 100 miles of Wilmington NC), and nowhere else in the world.

At my darkest, I wish I had heard someone tell me, “You’ll figure it out.”

Her message resonated with me, though I don’t think I could have ever come up with it myself. But what I take from it is that the next time I talk to someone in despair, I’m going to tell them, “You’ll figure it out.” For me, the message is two-fold: you give them hope in their temporary turmoil, you let them know you believe in them, and that they are smart and strong enough to get through this. Can’t tell you how much it means when someone lets you know they believe in you.

I guess the only caveat that I’d add is to say, “And I’m here to help, if you need it.”

This isn’t new music, but it’s new to me, and I can’t stop listening to it.

This arrived in my mail. I included a couple of bananas for scale.

An “action shot” I took of BoyGeeding at a chess tournament earlier this week. He’s an eighth-grader playing on the varsity team. He was bothered by his loss in his last match. I had to remind him that his opponent was almost a foot tall and literally had a beard. But in case you are wondering, he won the match in the photo below.

If there’s one thing I go way overboard on, it’s replacing the registration sticker on my car’s windshield. Decades ago, I’d struggle to scrape it off with nothing but a razor blade, but years later, I bought a special super-duper scraper. But glue residue is still left, and that’s unsightly, so I have to use a chemical like mineral spirits or acetone to remove it. That leaves one corner of the windshield clean, and I just can’t let that be, so I have to clean the inside of the windscreen, which means I also have to clean the outside. Now, it’s finally time to place the sticker on the inside of the windshield. Still, I can’t stand it if it’s even slightly crooked or placed too high or too low, so I make a painstaking effort to ensure it’s parallel and perpendicular using imaginary x- and y-axes.

The rest of the Cowboys’ season:

On a whim, I decided to watch The Great Escape for the first time. While I enjoyed the film, I really enjoyed reading the backstory and trivia behind it.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” remains the top holiday song in Dallas, the state and the rest of the U.S.

• Burl Ives’ “Holly Jolly Christmas” came in third, while Michael Bublé’s version ranked eighth.
• Brenda Lee’s “Jingle Bell Rock” ranked fifth, followed by Bobby Helms’ version.
• Jackson 5’s “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” was seventh, followed by Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.”
• Wham!’s “Last Christmas” and Andy Williams’ “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” round out the local Top 10.
• José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad” is ranked third in Texas but didn’t make Dallas’ Top 10. It’s L.A.’s top holiday song, per iHeart Radio.

That last song is my kryptonite. For a year or two in college, I worked at Coach House Gifts in the Mall of Abilene, and that song seemed to play on repeat in our store nonstop.

Texas might get a new Interstate that could cut through East Texas and connect DFW to Amarillo, providing a more direct trade route between the Texas coast and the Panhandle.

Just an observation: You never hear the term “going postal” anymore.

The President changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, and then named the United States Institute of Peace after him?

Zohran Mamdani and the Louvre make the list of most mispronounced words of 2025

But this is what got my attention:

In a pronunciation surprise of the year, actor Denzel Washington told late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel that he was named after his father and their first names are actually pronounced DEN-zul. But, he said, that became confusing so his mother decided to pronounce her son’s name Den-ZELLE.

Texas pastor advises young, single, unmarried women to ‘lose 20 to 30 pounds’

The area is north of Austin.

Joel Webbon, senior pastor at Covenant Bible Church and founder of Righteous Response Ministries—which he founded to advance theonomy, or the modern imposition of divine law as portrayed in the Old Testament—offered advice for women who “want to be married but feel like they’re being passed over” on a Wednesday episode of the ministry’s “The Live Stream” show.

This song may be old to you, but it’s new to me, and I can’t get enough of it.

How a bald coach solved volleyball’s ponytail predicament

That story has a local “tie.”

full clip with inputs from nebraska, louisville and tcu players #whatstartsherechangestheworld https://t.co/rhqjvheR3p pic.twitter.com/k00DEJOhRj

— cardiac longhorns (@scorsesebdd) December 1, 2025

full clip with inputs from nebraska, louisville and tcu players #whatstartsherechangestheworld https://t.co/rhqjvheR3p pic.twitter.com/k00DEJOhRj

— cardiac longhorns (@scorsesebdd) December 1, 2025

The mayor of a small town in Kansas risks being deported over allegations that he voted in American elections illegally.