North Texas Daily

An Abilene high school student is currently terrifying us all by bench pressing 700 pounds at a recent weightlifting competition. This shiny building of a man is named Matt Poursoltani, and his feat ties a statewide record for his division.

We’re suitably impressed, but a quick look at Poursoltani’s Facebook “likes” disappoints us a little: In the “books” section, the only item is a single page proudly proclaiming that “I Dont [sic] Read.”

We hope this statement is symbolic rather than literal. We might chide this West Texas hulk for conforming to simplistic jock stereotypes or something equally pretentious, but he could rip each and every one of us in half so we still salute his accomplishment.

This Saturday morning, you ought to beam yourself down to the Dallas Convention Center. The Texas Lottery, with the help of William Shatner, are celebrating a new “Star Trek” themed scratch-off lotto ticket by attempting to break the Guinness World Record for “most Star Trek costumes at one event.”

We didn’t know they kept track of this stuff, but clearly there’s a demand for these numbers. The record break requires at least 1,064 costumed Trekkies to simultaneously stand in place for 10 minutes.

This is probably harder than it sounds, since if you’re a big enough fan to own a costume, the urge to bum-rush Shatner could be overpowering. Still, we wish these fans the best of luck, along with long life and prosperity.

During the 2012 State Fair of Texas, beloved talking cowboy giant Big Tex went up in flames. This was depressing on its own, but our shock and horror was relieved somewhat by promises from Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and other fair organizers that next year’s Tex would be bigger, better and Texan as ever.

The final design has yet to be unveiled, but we do know that Tex might talk a little different from here on out.

Bill Bragg, who has provided the cowboy’s voice since 2002, was fired this week by the State Fair of Texas for spreading Big Tex a little too far outside the fairgrounds.

Bragg, who frequently speaks at charity events, made a habit of introducing himself as the “voice of Big Tex.”

Fair officials must have finally had enough, and declined to renew his contract for next year’s fair citing misuse of the Big Tex brand.

Texas may be hot, but whoever decided to kick Bragg to the curb is ice cold. We hope the new voice actor does the cowboy justice, but things still won’t be the same.