At first, I said to myself, “What a great idea!”  But then I realized it was a good idea… sort of.

To you Dallasites, this explanation will probably make sense.  To you outsiders, probably less so.  But I’ll try to paint the picture.

The sign is located at westbound I30 and Munger — which is 2 exits before downtown Dallas, and about 2 miles away from downtown.  I35 is on the west side of downtown, which is probably a mile and a half or 2 miles wide.  So this sign is located about 4 miles from I35.  In bad traffic, 4 miles can take forever — and such a sign is a good idea.

The problem here is that there’s really not much of an alternate route to I35 from that spot.  You could exit; go into downtown (not via the service road; I30 has no service road around here — just onramps); fight the one way streets, constant bus stopping, pedestrian traffic and general mess of rush hour downtown Dallas; and then come out on the other side, where I35 is.  Of course, since the sign is saying “6 hours to get to I35″, so will everyone else — making the traffic even worse.

If you want to get to I35 from I30, there’s two ways to do it — I30 to I35 or I30 to US75 to Woodall Rogers to I35.  But whenever one of those is clogged, the other gets clogged with people avoiding the clogged one — so there’s no real benefit one way or the other.

Essentially, the sign is useless.  But it’s good information.  I feel they should put a similar sign as you exit downtown onto US75 that gives an estimate for how long it will take to get to Loop 635.  That’s a 7 mile hike with alternate routes (Hillcrest, Greenville, or even Preston or the Tollroad) that’s probably just as heavily trafficked.

Lunar Adventures, solving your traffic problems every day.  Or sometimes.  Or rarely.  Whatever.

As is my habit when I pass a bad driver, I looked over at him as I passed, with the intention of giving a dirty look.  I surprised to find though that the dirty look was actually coming from his passenger, who appeared to be female.  Of course, it was hard to tell, because all I could see was the top of her head as she leaned over the lap of the driver.

My guess is that he was a very good driver, and the passenger felt compelled to give him a reward for such good driving.

He passed me a mile or so up the road, driving 70mph again and not swerving anymore.  I guess he regained his focus and was ready for the day at that point.

My buddy Tim Rogers, an editor at D Magazine, posted to the D Magazine blog about his attempt to qualify for the invite list to a beautiful-people-only club. I’m not at all ashamed to admit in public that Tim, despite his numerous flaws, is not a bad looking guy. He’s even pretty athletic. Astoundingly, he was rejected.

Now, rather than calling it a “beautiful-people-only club”, it might be fitting to call it a “shallow morons only” club. But that would mean I’d be calling myself a shallow moron, because I am certain that they are going to let me in, as soon as I can find enough flattering photos of myself. I might have to Photoshop away a little bit of extraness around my tummy, and maybe Photoshop in some more muscle, but that’s beside the point. I wonder how pissed off they’d be if I showed up at a party and they realized I had Photoshopped my application pictures. It’d be pretty hypocrtical of them — after all, tons of magazines (Maxim, FHM, Playboy, etc.) Photoshop their models — so why not average Dallasites?

I’m actually pretty curious about this. I wonder if there are hidden requirements to entry, like, no fewer than 2 botox injections, but no more than three sessions with the breast augmentation surgeon. Or maybe there’s a height requirement. Those always get me. You can be pretty and still be short, dangit!

I encourage all of you guys to try to get in — I’m sure that among us, at least one of us must be pretty enough to qualify. And then you can report to the rest of us, while we sit and home alone on a Friday night because we’re just not durned purty enough. Maybe we can make our own exclusive little club, and have a treehouse fort and everything! My only request is we not make some requirement on height or smarts — I’d hate to feel left out.