Email Author Robert Wilonsky

1997 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• The high cost of winning

  published December 18, 1997

  It has been almost a decade since Randy White got paid by the Dallas Cowboys to hit someone. It has been almost 15 years since Billy Joe DuPree... More >>

• Out There

  published December 11, 1997

  Fall from Graceland Songs from The Capeman Paul Simon Warner Bros. Records It's easy to understand why Paul Simon would be... More >>

• Fire at will

  published December 11, 1997

  Downstairs, the beat writers were scrambling for quotes. Just moments earlier in the bowels of Reunion Arena, Ross Perot Jr.--the man who owns the... More >>

• Deck the malls

  published December 4, 1997

  It's been looking a lot like Christmas here in the office since about July, when the first "seasonal" albums began arriving, presaging a time when... More >>

• Foul trouble

  published December 4, 1997

  Dick Motta enters Reunion Arena quietly, with no introduction or applause. The crowd doesn't even know he's on the floor; they pay him no mind as... More >>

• Pucking great

  published November 27, 1997

  Not long ago, Mike Modano would have been frustrated by nights like this. He would have been dissatisfied by his inability to shoot the puck to... More >>

• Schleppin' out

  published November 20, 1997

  He throws it out there, like a pitch that doesn't quite make it to home plate, then he walks away from it. Only later, when the interviewer brings... More >>

• Wrestling With Tragedy

  published November 20, 1997

  His hands are those of his father--enormous, fleshy, strong. They are calloused, almost faded, worn from years of wrapping them around men's faces... More >>

• Pssst...

  published November 13, 1997

  They awaited his arrival as though he were a visiting king from a faraway land. The reporters set up their microphones, checked their tape... More >>

• Roadshows

  published November 6, 1997

  Baby, it's him In person, Burt Bacharach seems a little smaller than he does when you see him on television or in old photos standing next... More >>

• Here's the pitch

  published November 6, 1997

  On September 20, Texas Rangers president and general partner Tom Schieffer sat behind the home team's first-base dugout at the Ballpark in... More >>

• Out There

  published October 30, 1997

  Door mats All For Nothing, Nothing For All The Replacements Reprise Records Sometimes I listen to old Replacements records... More >>

• The wizard of odd

  published October 30, 1997

  During a recent VH1 documentary on the making of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Lindsey Buckingham sat behind the console, fiddling with knobs and dials... More >>

• Passed up

  published October 30, 1997

  It's about 6 p.m. on the Thursday before the Dallas Cowboys are to fly to Philadelphia to be humiliated by the despised Eagles. Most of Jason... More >>

• One-on-one

  published October 23, 1997

  Jim Cleamons, head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, is quick to answer. His voice is soft and reflective; his phrasing, slow and measured. ... More >>

• Losing it

  published October 16, 1997

  Editor's note: The Dallas Observer's regular sports column debuts this week. Barry Switzer speaks in a soft, twangy growl. At first, you can... More >>

• Out There

  published October 9, 1997

  Bringin' It All Back Home Time Out of Mind Bob Dylan Columbia Records The Bob Dylan whose silences were once the stuff of... More >>

• Net Loss

  published October 9, 1997

  C'mon, this is bullshit!" goalkeeper Hank Henry is screaming, his voice resounding through the empty arena. "There need to be two guys against the... More >>

• Negative Seven

  published October 2, 1997

  By its very definition, a thriller should, you know, thrill. It should not only scare its audience with a quick jolt, that sudden noise in the... More >>

• Roadshows

  published October 2, 1997

  Authentically fake Madeleine Peyroux--a 24-year-old woman born in New Orleans and raised in both Brooklyn and Paris (but of course)--raises... More >>

• Road to nowhere

  published September 25, 1997

  Kevin Corrigan doesn't act as much as he seems to stumble from scene to scene, like a guy who doesn't follow a script as much as his own internal... More >>

• Closet case

  published September 18, 1997

  Howard and Emily's marriage is the talk of Greenleaf, Indiana, a small town idyllic enough to repel Norman Rockwell. The town has waited three... More >>

• A wake

  published September 11, 1997

  Tomas Gutierrez Alea's final film, Guantanamera, shares a tone of wistful romanticism with the late Cuban director's Letters From the Park (a... More >>

• Time to kill

  published August 28, 1997

  Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation--a goofy remake of the 1974 scare, uh, classic--is a film so worthless that the admission ought to... More >>

• Power lines

  published August 28, 1997

  Jimmy Webb, the man who wrote one of the greatest songs of all time, does not know when he will be able to write again. He wants to--"with a... More >>