A North Texas cable TV special: Comedian Paul Mooney performed last night at the Dallas mens’ club, the Lodge. His “adult material” set was taped by Dallas video production company AMS Pictures to air on Showtime this fall. The 67-year-old outspoken comic is a former writer for Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and was a regular on Chappelle’s Show. For those who have seen Mooney on YouTube, some of the set was pretty familiar (the man really doesn’t like Oprah or Barbara Walters). But the Louisiana-born comic fired away at  enough current events and pop culture references to hit some. And we could even print one or two. He’s delighted, for instance, to discover that with Barack Obama in the White House these days, “watching the news is like watching BET all day.”

First, the ballet, now the Nasher: The Dallas Morning News continues to peer into questions of arts leaders and money. Sunday’s paper saw the big feature on Texas Ballet Theater’s finances. Yesterday, reporter Brooks Egerton looked into the home loan given new Nasher Sculpture Center director Jeremy Strick when he was head of the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA. 

Breaking the curse: Holland Cotter won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism yesterday. Not so unusual, you think? He writes for the New York Times, after all. But he was the first visual arts critic to win in 35 years.

Other Pulitzer reactions: Yes, it mattters that the prize-winning playwright (and her competitors among the finalists) was a woman. Women attend theater much more than men, yet only two of the top 10 most-produced plays in American theaters last year were written by female playwrights. It still was something of a surprise: This was W. S. Merwin’s second Pulitzer for poetry. And speaking of surprises: Steve Reich, one of the world’s most important composers, had never won a Pulitzer in music before. Click here to listen to the rough first rehearsal of his minimalist prize-winner, Double Sextet.