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• Best Comedy Troupe
  Punch Drunk
  It's no secret why KERA called Punch Drunk Comedy one of Dallas' best-kept secrets. The quartet of comedians serves up funny and unpredictable shows every Thursday for four to six weeks at the Home Bar off of Greenville Avenue. It also takes the revues--often centering around a theme and... More >>
• Best Radio News Reader
  Valerie Moore, WRR-FM (101.1)
  You're taking your early-morning jog with your pet dog Old Blue and desperately searching your headset for some music to run by. Frustrated, you are willing to settle for anything other than the mindless prattle of two self-absorbed DJs who laugh at their own canned jokes as if they were... More >>
• Best Public Sculpture
  Oakland Cemetery
  OK, we've got bronzed cattle-drive re-creations, statues of hard-throwing Nolan Ryan, Texas Rangers, mustangs, et al. around town, but if it's real art by master craftsmen you want to see, the Oakland Cemetery, established in 1891, will blow you away. Elaborate memorial sculptures in granite... More >>
• Best Promoter of Cultural Diversity
  Dallas International
  With Dallas being home to more than 200 ethnic communities, Dallas International sees its mission as attempting to harness their cultural diversity by providing a forum to express the richness of their heritage and thereby create a better understanding of each group to the rest of the city. We... More >>
• Best City Council Member
  Dr. Elba Garcia
  Too bad we don't have a category for Best-looking City Council Member so she could win twice. Dr. Elba, a dentist, wins this one because we have a very simple criterion: Does the council member do more or less what her constituents want? Garcia attacks her job obsessively as if every single... More >>
• Best One-man Show
  Rob Becker, Defending the Caveman
  Just as the stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s was fizzling out, comedian Rob Becker began his research into the oddities of human behavior. Do women carry a shopping gene? Do men have a territorial imperative when it comes to the remote? Becker took what he learned and wrote Defending the... More >>
• Best Place to Learn About Black Dallas History
  African American Museum
  Besides the free parking and free admission, the African American Museum in Fair Park contains some really cool stuff about African American history in Dallas that you are unlikely to find elsewhere. One of the current displays contains artifacts from Freedman's Town, a black enclave in old... More >>
• Best Coverage by a Graffiti Artist (3 Comments)
  "Sekt"
  It doesn't matter where you are, Sekt has been there. Street corners, drains, rain gutters and brick walls. Our very own building has been graced with the tag of the elusive being. We have to wonder, is that a name, a statement, some sort of slang or just a favorite word-cum-identity? We... More >>
• Best Acting Debut
  Joey Steakley, Barbette, Kitchen Dog Theater
  Talk about commitment to one's art. For the title role in Barbette, a new biographical play by Bill Lengfelder and David Goodwin performed at Kitchen Dog Theater in June, Joey Steakley spent nearly a year learning the art of the trapeze and perfecting the moves of the "Spanish web," a balletic... More >>
• Best Place to See the Famous Wilson Brothers Eating Mexican Food with Their Parents
  Javier's
  Owen and Luke Wilson, this year's Hollywood It-Boys, make it back home to Dallas pretty often, and when they do, they inevitably drop in (with their handsome 'rents) at this pricey but delish Park Cities Mexican spot. The country-club crowd this restaurant attracts (need the valet parkers for... More >>
• Best Cheesy Public Sculpture
  Longhorns in Pioneer Park
  Unlike its crosstown cousin, not much of Dallas resembles the days of cattle drives or cowboys, and maybe that was the idea behind this popular public sculpture. The large herd of longhorns and cowboys, which promoters say is the "biggest outdoor sculpture of longhorns and cowboys in the... More >>
• Best Local TV News Show
  KTVT-Channel 11
  Let's admit something to each other. For the most part, they're all the same. Sure, there's a difference in the personnel, in the tone, of each station. Channel 8 has a bunch of vets and an air of superiority, which works if you don't watch 'em every night. Channel 5 HAS THIS LATE-BREAKING... More >>
• Best Debut by a New Acting Company
  Martice Enterprises, Latinologues
  For their first theatrical production, an update of Rick Najera's comic collection of sketches about Latino life, this group of young theater tyros had to hold opening night in a cramped conference room at the Ice House Cultural Center off Swiss Avenue. With only a tiny platform, minimal... More >>
• Best DART Art
  Richardson Transit Center
  It is hard to miss the eye-catching work of famed sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp as you make the walk through the pedestrian tunnel connecting the transit center and the light-rail station. The 8-foot red aluminum free-form structure in the shape of an "O" appears to be alive, undulating,... More >>
• Best Political Moment
  The Return of Al Lipscomb
  Much to the joy of most Dallas-area media, the former Dallas city councilman took off the electronic shackles 27 months into his 41-month sentence of house arrest (watching television). Just about everybody seemed downright giddy at the announcement that an appeals court overturned his... More >>
• Best TV News Anchor
  Tracy Rowlett, Channel 11
  TV news is suddenly crowded with 20-something models who stumble on words with more than three syllables and are never quite sure if famine in Bangladesh is happy news or sad. Tracy Rowlett reassures precisely because the years have bequested him with the opposite set of traits--some wrinkles,... More >>
• Best Theater Company
  Kitchen Dog Theater
  With most theaters jobbing in actors (Dallas Theater Center gets 'em from New Yawk City, no less), a good old-fashioned repertory company is getting hard to find 'round these parts. Now in its second decade, the Kitchen Dog Theater's resident acting company still is composed mostly of SMU... More >>
• Best Sneak Peek at Movies You Haven't Heard Of...Yet
  Talk Cinema at the Magnolia Theatre
  If you're a fan of independent cinema--movies that don't suck, usually--here's the best deal in town, in the country...OK, in the world, whatever. Pay a small fee, and every other Sunday or so you can wake up a little early and be greeted by a sneak preview of a would-be art-house hit. Now,... More >>
• Best Book of Local Plants
  Shinners & Mahler's Illustrated Flora of North Central Texas
  Published this year by the Botanical Research Institute of Texas, quite pricey at $89.95, this book is it, the authority, the comprehensive catalog of anything and everything that grows in this part of Texas. Years in the making, one of a series of books that will one day cover the entire... More >>
• Best Local Theater
  WaterTower Theatre
  This theater space, like a good actor, never does it the same way twice. For every play, the 32,000-square-foot interior of this glass and concrete space is reconfigured. Sometimes it's arena-style, sometimes thrust. For Book of Days, the Lanford Wilson drama performed this summer, actors trod... More >>
• Best Local Singer Who's So Good She May Have to Move
  N'Dambi
  We're going to take credit for her success, so deal; we've been singing this gal's praises for years and years...a couple, at least. We'll just say this: Erykah Badu's longtime backup singer should never have to stand in the shadows again. N'Dambi's second album, last year's Tunin Up &... More >>
• Best New House, Architecturally Speaking
  6000 block of McCommas Avenue
  Arthur Eisenberg took a lot of crap, literally, from some of his neighbors when he built this house in 2000, but it is an excellent example of tasteful contemporary design. The home, built on a stout but eloquent stucco and steel frame, consists of two "cottages" that are separate and... More >>
• Best Daily Newspaper Columnist
  Ruben Navarrette, The Dallas Morning News
  Since we have trashed most of The Dallas Morning News columnists at some time or another during the year, it would be damn inconsistent, if not bordering on hypocritical, to celebrate them now. But what the heck. Crow is an acquired taste and one that we don't mind indulging, particularly when... More >>
• Best Lie for Music Snobs
  Saying you saw Norah Jones playing piano at an Italian restaurant before she became famous
  Yes, yes, we know Norah Jones used to play piano at an Italian restaurant in North Dallas before she moved to NYC and sold a million or so copies of her debut album, Come Away With Me. But you did not see her there. No, really, you didn't. More >>
• Best Theater Director
  Terry L. Martin, WaterTower Theatre, Addison
  Addison? Theater mecca? Whodathunk that a few years ago? Then along came an Alabama grad named Terry Martin, determined to turn a small but well-loved community theater company into a major force in Dallas-area arts. He's done that by consistently raising the bar in the choices of plays,... More >>
• Best Political Gaffe
  The police and firefighter pay vote
  Since 9-11, most right-thinking Amurkins have had lumps in their throats when it comes to the sacrifices made by dutiful police and firefighters. But the throat bone doesn't connect to the wallet bone, and sentimentality will only get you so far (not very) when you ask Dallas taxpayers for a... More >>
• Best Thing D Magazine Ever Wrote That Wasn't Advertorial
  Tom Hicks is Going Broke
  We'll admit it: We wish we had that damned story, not Wick Allison's Park Cities Greensheet. So, when D ran that cover with Hicks, or a Photoshopped Tommy, flashing empty pockets, we pretended it was so much tabloid hogwash, Allison's way of proving to his moneyed pals he couldn't be bought by... More >>
• Best Local Actor
  Bill Jenkins
  Judging by how often he's cast in local productions, Bill Jenkins appears to be a director's darling. In the three leading roles he's had at three theaters here this year, he's proven versatile, likable and dependable as a performer, expertly tackling a wide range of accents and acting styles.... More >>
• Best Movie Theater
  The Magnolia Theatre
  Quite a fuss was made when the Angelika Film Center & Café opened at Mockingbird Station, but here's the dirty truth: Parking is impossible, and once you actually get inside the theater (if you do; shows sell out quicker than most business majors), you're surrounded by every North... More >>
• Best Proof that Talent Scouts Have Been Ignoring the D-FW Area for Too Long
  American Idol
  Grand Prairie's Nikki McKibbin was one of the final three contestants, and Burleson's Kelly Clarkson won the whole shooting match. Maybe A&R reps will start paying a little more attention. Then again, what good did winning a televised battle of the bands do for Flickerstick (since bought out... More >>
• Best Proof Dallas isn't a Cultural Wasteland
  The proliferation of art-house movie theaters
  Fourteen months ago, Dallas was home to but a single art-house movie theater: the Inwood, as rundown as an Industrial Boulevard "masseuse." Then the Angelika pulled into Mockingbird Station, and where once there were three screens, suddenly there were almost a dozen. Then, earlier this year,... More >>
• Best Gallery
  Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art
  Whew. Talk about a way to make enemies. They've all got their niches, as well as their weaknesses--oops, we mean quirks. Here, then, a few peeves and observations. Some of the "top" galleries in this town (no names here) are way too tuned in to the biennials for our tastes. Others (no names)... More >>
• Best Local Actress
  Tina Parker
  Is there anything this woman can't do? When she's not producing, directing or designing some wild and woolly experimental thing for Kitchen Dog Theater, her home company down at McKinney Avenue Contemporary, this Texas native and SMU theater grad can take center stage and act up a storm. As... More >>
• Best Radio Station
  KDBN-FM (93.3), The Bone
  You might as well give up on radio, because we can assure you, radio has given up on you. At least the people who run it have. It's all about making the numbers instead of making the listeners happy. Not so at The Bone, where they give the people what they want. Which, as it turns out, is... More >>
• Best Reason to Move South By Southwest to Dallas
  Because Austin stopped being cool about a decade ago
  Every year, we make the three-hour trip to the, ahem, Live Music Capital of the World for SXSW, and what we find is a city that pales in comparison to our own (entertainment-wise, at any rate), a place that's been coasting on its rep since before Willie Nelson got in trouble with the IRS. We... More >>
• Best Museum Show
  Mondrian, 1892-1914: The Path to Abstraction, Kimbell Art Museum
  Without a doubt, the Kimbell Art Museum's show tracking Piet Mondrian's long, slow evolution into a 20th-century icon. A gloriously middlebrow effort, the show--organized by the Musée d'Orsay and on display through December 8--sets out to "analyze...the disparate influences upon... More >>
• Best Proof Dallas isn't a Cultural Wasteland, Deux
  The proliferation of film festivals
  Used to be there was one and only one: the venerable USA Film Festival, co-founded in 1970 by filmmaker L.M. Kit Carson. Now you can't shake a reel of film without hitting someone putting together a lineup of films making the fest-circuit rounds--that is, movies without distribution, and only... More >>
• Best Visual Artist
  David Bates
  To get Clintonian for a moment, what, exactly, is a "visual" artist? One can argue that this must mean movies or video or even performance, since the other folks--your painters and your sculptors and your bits-of-confetti-on-the-museum-floor types--work with physical materials and thus should... More >>
• Best Radio Morning Show
  The Morning Team, KKDA-FM (104.5), K104
  Did anyone really think a decade ago that K104 would survive when "flyjock" Tom Joyner left? The station has not only survived but thrived, and the Morning Team, led by Skip Murphy, is the reason. He is the perfect complement to his team--Sam Putney, Chris Arnold, the Wig and the wonderful... More >>
• Best Gallery Show
  Shelby Lee Adams' Modern Appalachia, Photographs Do Not Bend
  In some ways, this is the easiest pick. So many of the gallery shows we've reviewed were so weak that the images left our memory banks before the next week's paper hit the streets. Indeed, looking back on the last year, there's only one show from which we remember every single work: Modern... More >>
• Best Alternative Art Space
  Forbidden Gallery and Emporium
  Besides being geographically miles away from the Dallas Art Dealers Association galleries along Cedar Springs, Fairmount and Routh, Forbidden Gallery and Emporium is miles away from them in its choice of art. Group and solo exhibits highlight artwork shown and collected on both coasts, but... More >>
• Best Radio Talk Show
  The Glenn Mitchell Show KERA-FM (90.1)
  Every weekday from noon to 2 p.m., Mitchell entertains a variety of guests--anyone from, say, Alan Dershowitz to Kinky Friedman--and the resulting conversations (they're more than mere interviews) never fail to entertain. Mitchell can hold his own no matter who's on the other side of his... More >>
• Best Place to See in Black and White
  Photographs Do Not Bend Gallery
  Photographs Do Not Bend offers rotating exhibits of both black-and-white and color photography, pulling from its stable of contemporary, still-producing artists and its extensive and varied archive and creating some of the best examples of the medium through themed or spontaneous exhibits.... More >>
• Best Government Agency
  Dallas County District Clerk's Office
  It sounds a bit oxymoronic, but there really is such a thing as a competent bureaucrat, and he comes in the form of Stan Tungate, who supervises the public access area to the civil and family court records of the district clerk's office. Tungate is not only extremely knowledgeable but... More >>
• Best Radio DJ
  Cindy Scull, KEGL-FM (97.1)
  Don't need much to be a great radio DJ, and Cindy Scull has the most important thing on the list: a voice that sounds like butter and whiskey, and the ability to use it. She's naughty and nice and the only reason to tune in to KEGL; God knows it's not the music. Give her the afternoon-drive... More >>
• Best Brain Food for Seniors
  Richland College's Emeritus Program
  They call it "The Joy of Learning After 55," and there's proof in the packaging. Seniors who never thought they would darken another classroom door are registering for lecture series on everything from "Opera for Dummies" to computer classes, "Shakespeare on Film" to pottery, photography and... More >>
• Best Criminal Judge
  Judge John Creuzot
  To be a truly innovative judge is a rare thing. It's so much easier just to follow the law, to mete out punishment because it's your job, to have a cuff-'em-and-stuff-'em mentality in order to get re-elected for life. But the drug addict cries out to be treated differently; he is destined to... More >>