Reality bites: I am a dentist. Grillz ("All That Glitters," by Andrea Grimes, October 19) will eventually cause an anterior open bite from wearing them too long. It would take jaw surgery to put your bite back to normal.
Allen Pearson
Richardson
Lovely smile: I would just like to let Andrea Grimes know that her article "All That Glitters" was a great article to put a smile on my face during the workday. Cheers!
Chris Apaliski
Dallas A little dose of sarcasm: Your articles (along with the fun ads for strippers and escorts in the back pages) are what keep me reading the DO. Genius. Keep it up.
Michael Brown
Dallas
Cold Reminder
Fort Worth serial killers: Jesse Hyde's "Caught Cold" (October 12) was an interesting journalistic read. The cold-case units across the nation are solving murders of the past with surprising accuracy now that DNA has become such a valuable crime-solving tool.
Cold case Detective Reyes is an asset to the Fort Worth Police Department. It is ironic but fitting that he was a pioneering murder investigator in the slaying of little Vanessa Villa and 20 years later, poetic justice!
At long last this has brought a degree of closure for the Villa family with the incarceration of Juan Segunda, but hardly a quid pro quo for their years of agony, not knowing who the perpetrator was.
Thanks for the Observer's attention to this case, as this will surely be the catalyst for future cases to be resolved.
Pat Conley
Fort Worth
All Shook Up
Something wrong with this picture: I generally am an admirer of the Dallas Observer's investigative reporting. And I would not vote for district attorney candidate Toby Shook for dogcatcher. But in the article "Can I Get a Witness?" (by Matt Pulle, October 19), I believe your repeated reference to Shook as felony prosecutor Shelley Hallman's husband (when he has nothing to do with the case you're reporting) and, worse yet, your totally gratuitous use of two photographs of Shook, rather than any of Hallman, is about as serious a breach of journalistic ethics as the numerous breaches of legal ethics that you rightly ascribe to Hallman.
Bill Halstead
Dallas
Go Jonanna
Keep an open mind: Jonanna Widner seems to have a pretty good feel for Dallas for the short time that she has been here. I am a musician who's originally from Dallas but have been in Spain for the last three years. Now that I have had some distance, the Dallas "scene" is in sharper focus than before I left. The "infighting and backstabbing and cynicism" are still very evident, but I'm starting to hear dissent against the dissent. I am finding a group of musicians who are tired of all that and really want a more supportive environment to create and perform in. I like to contact all the bands that we have shows with before the concert and just say hello. The response has been great. It's just a way to take down the defenses we have all built up in the music scene here and say, "Hey, I'm not here to judge, compare, deride, etc. I'm just here to play the best show I can and meet other musicians who want to do the same." We have only been playing here for the last two months, but I have to say that The Amsterdam Bar has been one of the most open and supportive venues in town thanks to John Freeman, who is booking there. The music world is filled with insecure people hiding behind inflated egos, so casualties are inevitable, but hopefully we can minimize the damage to each other.
Clyde Reed
Dallas
Gloom, Doom, Etc.
Accentuate the positive: You and I both know that most of the time the city of Dallas can't get its head out of its own ass long enough to get something right. Or be honest. Or care about pressing issues. Or at least pretend. Or spend money wisely. Or stop crime.
But...
Surely there's someone somewhere doing something right. Helping someone. Improving something (other than a concrete jungle's apparent lack of bridges...).
Speaking of urban development, in Jim Schutze's "Dunce Cap" article (October 19), he did touch base on something worthwhile—the development of southern Dallas with a little help from John Wiley Price. There's a start! How about a few more articles on something the city does right? Also, why did he leave out this small ray of sunshine from his original article? Is the Dallas Observer that dead-set against shedding positive light on Dallas/Dallas County?
Even redheaded stepchildren get an A+ in math on occasion. How about a positive headline for once? (Then go back to the morbidly curious muckraking the other 51 weeks of the year...God knows I do enjoy reading it!!!)
A little dose of smiles and warm fuzzies in between all the bullshit and doom would be nice once in a while.
Also, how is a gold grill front-page news? I fail to see the timeliness, need or point to that story. You should have put "White Girl With Grill" in small print at the bottom, in lieu of the tagline for "Dunce Cap."
Jessica Perry
Dallas