A spectacular reason to layover in Dallas

On my way home for New Year's from Hong Kong to Phoenix, there was a 20-minute window when I thought I wouldn't make my connecting flight at DFW and I started to think of things I would want to do during my forced layover in Dallas. The only thing I came up with was a visit the Kimbell Art Museum, but that's actually in Fort Worth.

This morning, as I was catching up on TED talks, I finally came upon a reason to visit Dallas; a reason as good as the Seattle Public Library -- the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre at the AT&T Performing Arts Center. Both buildings were designed by the same architects. Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus' talk contains a lot of food for thought that I hope the master planners (OMA being one of them) and developers of Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District will chew on and digest. More importantly, I hope they aspire to creating an infrastructure and environment that is as innovative, end-user sensitive and nurturing of culture, creativity and community as this:



I checked out the calendar at Wyly Theatre and was amused to see performances of It's Superman slated for this summer. What is it with this current trend for superhero musicals? It just seems like such a hokey concept. I am not a fan of musicals, but with Bono & The Edge writing the music, even I am intrigued to check out the big Broadway production of Spiderman that is slated to open some time soon, hopefully. Apparently, it is way over budget (it will take five years of full house sales each night just to break even) and late (original preview date had been set for 16 January this year). Will it be a superhuman hit or a fatal flop?