Alan Peppard

What has this election cycle been missing?

Exactly. Gennifer Flowers.

The singer who was the big news of the 1992 presidential campaign is coming back this weekend to Dallas, the city where she settled after announcing her 12-year relationship with Bill Clinton.

The Catalina Room on Lemmon Avenue has booked her for a Saturday night dinner show.

After the Clinton-Flowers scandal broke, she settled into a Turtle Creek condo before relocating to New Orleans. These days, Gennifer lives in Las Vegas.

In a different Clintonian sphere, Slate magazine reports that the Clintons' TV pals Harry and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason are having a conniption after HBO canceled their comedy about Dallas, 12 Miles of Bad Road, without airing any of the six episodes already in the can.

HBO put $25 million into the series with Lily Tomlin and Mary Kay Place before euthanizing it.

The actresses play the Shakespeare sisters, residential real estate doyennes who make the Ewings of Southfork look as refined as the Marchmains of Brideshead.

In town to play the Mavericks, San Antonio Spur Tony Parker took his wife, Desperate Housewives star Eva Longoria Parker , to Bob's Steak and Chop House on Lemmon.

Meanwhile, Mavs coach Avery Johnson celebrated his 43rd birthday last weekend with dinner at Bolla in The Stoneleigh hotel.

For those who like their rap old school, members of Public Enemy will be in Dallas next week to promote the film Public Enemy: Welcome to Terrordome about the group's influence on hip-hop.

Tuesday, the AFI Dallas International Film Festival will screen the doc at the Angelika.

Ghostbar is hosting the after-party, where Public Enemy members Chuck D, Professor Griff and DJ Lord will perform.

Wednesday night, DJ Lord will take over the booth at Glo Lounge.

Actor Sacha Grunpeter didn't live to see his portrayal of an Englishman obsessed with becoming a country singer in Tracing Cowboys. He wrote and starred in the film. But in a James Dean-like turn of events, he died in a car accident in California on the last day of filming.

His family is coming from England to the AFI festival for the world premiere of Tracing Cowboys on Saturday at the Dallas Angelika.

The Easter death of longtime Beatles intimate Neil Aspinall brings to mind the 1976 death of the band's other confidante, Mal Evans, the 6-foot-6 "Gentle Giant."

Carrying a harmless air rifle, an intoxicated Mal was shot and killed in his Los Angeles duplex by police. He was cremated, and the ashes were mailed to England but were lost and never arrived.

Upon hearing this, John Lennon couldn't resist quipping that Mal "wound up in the Dead Letter Department."