Buzz

Ask what Miss Texas can do for you
It's nice to know somebody is addressing society's more pressing problems. Miss America President Leonard Horn has given the Miss Texas organization a deadline to correct a long-time Texas beauty pageant tradition of carpetbagging (i.e. Miss Bexar County is actually from Tarrant County, and Miss Metroplex is from, of all places, Lubbock).

"What's important is for these kids to be addressing issues of concern consistent with their communities," Horn told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "What can she do for Fort Worth if she is from San Antonio?"

Excuse us, but what can she do for Fort Worth if she is from Fort Worth? Stop drive-by shootings? Cut a racetrack deal?

Sometimes, it never comes around
Ever wonder what happens to writers after they leave the Observer? (No, not detox, then the Met.)

Former stage critic Porter Anderson, if you recall, critiqued and tormented the theater community in these pages for more than a year, basking in the angry letters and reveling in ultimately being barred from the performances of one local theater company. Porter, who had previously worked for the Dallas Times Herald, finally bid Big D adieu in spring 1994 and moved his freelance writing career to the sleepy South Carolina resort community of Edisto Island.

Taking a job as editor of the island's weekly, Anderson soon had the locals writhing in anger when he announced to the world that the resort's beaches were washing out to sea. Never mind that it was true--Porter came to work the next day to find his distribution boxes piled on the front porch and himself at the vortex of an ad boycott.

Where does a guy with a checkered journalism background go from there? To CNN, of course.

Porter Anderson now anchors the weekend graveyard shift on CNN News. Dallas theater and dance professionals suffering from low blood pressure can tune in after midnight Sundays and Mondays to get their Porter fix.

Say it ain't so, Dick J.
Speaking of former Observer writers sinking into ignominy, Dick J. Reavis, whose book on the David Koresh fiasco, Ashes of Waco, is due out this month, was Ted Koppel's guest last week on "Nightline." Sadly, the possibility of income and a shot at vague celebrity have changed the man Texans once cherished as the "Cowboy Communist." By analyzing a tape of his "Nightline" appearance, Buzz technicians confirmed that Dick J. actually wore a tie. Worse, during his several seconds of on-air time, Dick J. didn't use the term lumpenproletariat once! Marx is spinning in his grave.

If you can make it here...
Sometimes, it comes around for our writers--in this case for the good. After four years with the Observer, our homegrown movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz is taking his considerable talent to New York at the end of August. Seitz, who was a 1994 finalist for a Pulitzer prize for his film criticism and made a national name for himself as a regular contributor to The New York Times Sunday arts section, will write about pop culture for the daily Newsday.