Event planner

Melissa Etheridge, TX-OU and Othello: The best events in Dallas this weekend

Melissa Etheridge comes to the Majestic October 13.

Courtesy of melissaetheridge.com
Art in the Park in Frisco benefits North Texas Food Bank.
The Legend of Zelda comes alive at Annette Strauss Square October 12.
Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition at the Fort Worth Museum of Art and Historyopens this weekend.

In Dallas, a breadth of venues means that no matter what your interests, you can find something exciting to do any day of the week. On the weekend, this is doubly true. So, if you can't find anything to do, you're just not trying.

Below are some of your best options for Thursday through Sunday. Don't like what you see? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, October 11

Art in the Park 2012
With the weather hitting that sweet spot, it would be remiss of us not to recommend an outdoor event or two. You may have to travel into the the northern hinterlands, a.k.a. Frisco, to get to Art in the Park, but rest assured it's for a good cause. Benefiting the North Texas Food Bank, the event at Hall Office Park includes a concert by Emerald City, food trucks and a kids area sponsored by the Dallas Stars.

TeCo Theatrical Productions presents Ain't This Some S**t!
With a name like that, how could you not be interested? It even has the subtitle, A Conservative Right-wing Guide to Over-simplifying the Complexities of the Female Body and Extolling the Virtues of Jesus' Favorite Southern Fried Treat, which makes it all the more intriguing. The opener to TeCo Theatrical Productions' 2012-2013 season at the Bishop Arts Theatre Center runs through Sunday, and it gives you a new look at nuns, reality shows and chicken sandwiches.

Friday, October 12

Jeff Garlin — Built for Comfort
Garlin is arguably most well-known for his supporting role on the inimitable HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm. Because that series contains a high degree of improvisation, you know that Garlin has a keen comic instinct. He brings his great sense of humor to the Eisemann Center for the Performing Arts in Richardson with a stand-up show.

The Legend of Zelda — Symphony of the Goddesses
The Legend of Zelda is one of the top video game series of all time and remains close to the heart of many a gamer, especially concert producer Jason Michael Paul, who combines video games and classical music. The Dallas POPS Orchestra performs the four-movement symphony that pays tribute to 25 years of Zelda, complete with a synchronization to game footage from the series' 18 games (and counting), in Annette Strauss Square.

Saturday, October 13

Texas-Oklahoma Party on the Plaza
With the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners only separated by a few slots in the rankings, this year's Red River Rivalry is shaping up to be another doozy. If you aren't one of the 92,000 or so lucky enough to snag a ticket to the big game but still want to watch it among the rabid masses, head to Victory Plaza just outside American Airlines Center and watch the rivalry on the big screen. With concessions for sale, it feels a lot like the Cotton Bowl. Well, almost.

Melissa Etheridge in concert
Granted, Etheridge is a long way from her heyday of songs like "Come to My Window" and "I'm the Only One," but her signature raspy voice and tell-it-like-it-is songwriting never goes out of style. Etheridge has just started her tour in support of her latest album 4th Street Feeling. The intimate setting of the Majestic Theatre in Dallas allows the crowd to get up close and personal with the rocker who always wears her emotions on her sleeve.

Sunday, October 14

Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition
It's been more than 100 years since one of the greatest ocean disasters of all time, and the RMS Titanic still fascinates. As James Cameron's movie can attest, people go gaga trying to keep tabs on luggage, jewelry and other things recovered from the wreckage. There are no fewer than eight exhibitions displayed throughout the country, and we get our chance to peruse pieces of history as the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History hosts Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition now through March 24, 2013.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare — Othello
You want culture, you say? How does seeing every single work Shakespeare ever wrote — or was credited for, if you're a conspiracy theorist — strike you? That's the ambitious gauntlet Shakespeare Dallas and the AT&T Performing Arts Center threw down starting last month, and it continues on Sunday and Monday with Othello. The staged reading takes the classic play out of its usual setting and puts it in the world of motorcycle gangs, which just gives you one more reason to head to Winspear Opera House for a taste of the Bard.

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Good as gold

Dallas gymnast Skye Blakely wins gold at 2026 world championships

Day 7 - Artistic Gymnastics World Championships Rotterdam 2026

Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images

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ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — American Skye Blakely soared to the women's all-around gold at the world gymnastics championships on Friday, putting together four stellar routines as other top competitors faltered.

The 21-year-old's total of 55.733 included a dazzling set on uneven bars and a stoic and steady performance on balance beam and no major form breaks or falls, giving the Dallas native a moment of redemption after bids to make the 2020 and 2024 U.S. Olympic teams ended due to injury.

Blakely was born in Dallas and lives and trains in Frisco, at the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA); she's also a student-athlete at the University of Florida.

Blakely broke into tears when she walked off the podium at the end of her floor exercise in the final rotation, her long and painful journey with an unforgiving sport hitting a high note that seemed far away during lengthy rehabs that taxed both her mind and her body.

Liudmila Roschina earned silver at 55.199. Ke Qinqin of China took bronze at 55.032.

Algerian Kaylia Nemour's bid to become the first gymnast from Africa to win an all-around title at worlds ended with a fourth-place finish. The 19-year-old's finals got off to a rough start in her first rotation when her feet didn't land squarely on the springboard while vaulting, forcing her to do a simpler vault that cost her valuable points.

While Nemour recovered spectacularly thanks in large part to an uneven bars routine that is one of the hardest routines done on any apparatus by any gymnast — male or female — in the world, it wasn't quite enough to reach the podium.

American Claire Pease's hopes of joining Blakely on the medal stand ended when she hopped off beam on her way to a seventh-place finish. Pease, a Sunnyvale native, also trains at WOGA in Frisco.

Blakely and Pease were competing two days after the U.S. saw its long run of gold medals in the team finals at worlds end with a second-place finish to resurgent China. That up-and-down night included Blakely failing to get credit for a connection during her beam routine that cost the Americans nearly a point in a meet where they missed out on gold by a fraction of that.

There were no such issues this time around. Blakely headed to beam atop the leaderboard after an excellent start on vault followed by a bars routine that's pretty good in its own right.

Still, beam is something different. And this time there were no missed connections and barely a wobble. Her score of 14.200 kept her in front and turned her floor exercise largely into a victory lap.

The tears after she saluted the judges were real. So were the ones when her spot atop the sport became official about 15 minutes later.

Blakely then draped the American flag over her back while posing for the cameras becoming the ninth U.S. woman — and sixth this century — to win a world all-around crown.

While the picture figures to get considerably more crowded in the next two years ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, Blakely's perseverance and talent have thrust her back into the conversation.

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