Pittsburgh

Mark Cuban Takes to Forbes to Remind Us That He, Too, Was Once Poor

You wouldn't know it from glancing at his bank account, but Mark Cuban used to be poor. This isn't exactly news. Cuban embodies the modern version of the peculiarly American up-by-the-bootstraps fairy tale, in which a hard-luck young person, through hard work and business savvy, transforms himself f ... More >>

First Round of SXSW 2013 Acts Announced, Including Blackstone Rangers and The Relatives

With the announcement of 35 Denton's initial lineup, it was only a matter of time before you felt that tightening in your chest, aka the first round of SXSW acts. North Texas' Blackstone Rangers, Ronnie Fauss, the Relatives, Somebody's Darling, Sarah Jaffe and Tedashii are all represented. Thurston ... More >>

She'll Drag You To The Grave

Cooking with Dad: Mark Cuban, Chris Ryan, Eric Nystrom and More Share Their Memories

We tracked down a few locals, and asked them about their dad's cooking choices and what they remember the most about breaking bread with the family. Here's who shared their food memories of cooking with Dad with us: Mark Cuban: Savior of the Greenville St. Patrick's Day Parade and owner of the Dal ... More >>

Tomorrow Night at Iron Fork, Whiskey Cake Chef TJ Lengnick Challenges Reigning Champ Scott Romano

Tomorrow night Dallas will gather at the Fashion Industry Gallery for the Observer's second annual Iron Fork competition. While many will focus on the food and booze sampling, the backdrop for the event is a cooking competition between former Joule chef and reigning Iron Fork Champion Scott Romano, ... More >>

Predicting Mike Miles' Future at DISD: Broadly Speaking, I See Blood and Privatization

Not sure what to think of Mike Miles, the Dallas school board's pick for new superintendent? Here's a shortcut. Decide what you think of the Broad Superintendents Academy (BSA). Miles is a 2011 graduate of a boot camp for school superintendents in Los Angeles founded and funded by a foundation nam ... More >>

Shippin' Shale, or: What's That You Say About Our Energy Independence?

​The days of lease-bearing landmen making it rain on the Barnett Shale are over. The industry became so proficient at fracturing the rock thousands of feet beneath the surface and extracting the gas trapped within that they glutted the market. Gas prices took a swan dive and have stagnated eve ... More >>

The Five Best Math- and Post-Rock Bands That Claim They're Neither Math- Nor Post-Rock.

​Genre labels are fascinating tools in the overall study of popular music. Even the term "popular music" can be misleading, for heaven's sake. Metal gods Anthrax are popular -- but they're certainly not pop. Kesha is certainly pop -- but not popular with people, y'know, who like music to not be th ... More >>

Dallas Cowboys Vehemently Deny They're Making Clothes in a Salvadoran Sweatshop

​On Wednesday, the Pittsburgh-based Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights issued a report titled Dressing Babies in Sweatshop Clothing: Dallas Cowboys, Ohio State and a Creepy Business, in which it alleged that the Cowboys are having team-branded clothing made in "gross sweatshop conditions ... More >>

RAND Corp. Enrolls in Dallas ISD's Summer Schools As Part of $50-Mil Best Practices Study

​Yesterday, some 8,500 Dallas Independent School District elementary students reported to 17 campuses, from Bryan and Caillet to Truett and Winnetka, to begin summer school. Pardon: Make that summer camp. At least, that's how district officials and DISD's educational partners sell the idea to kids ... More >>

Erykah Badu to Join My Morning Jacket As Guest For Streaming Tuesday Night Concert

Once-in-a-lifetime events sometimes happen more than once, turns out. Next Tuesday night, when My Morning Jacket performs in its hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, to celebrate the release of their new album, Circuital, they will be joined on stage by one Erykah Badu, just as they so memorably were t ... More >>

Pittsburgh Label Reissues Early Releases From Legendary '70s Dallas Punks The Nervebreakers

David "Nicke Blitz" Mitchell​Truly one of the seminal bands in Dallas history, The Nervebreakers' heyday came way back in 1977 when the band got the chance to open up for a Dallas date with Ramones. Then, in 1978, they did the same for the Sex Pistols -- and even got a mention in Rolling Stone in ... More >>

"Leveraging Our Resources," or: If You Read One Council Briefing All Day, Make It This One

The Dallas skyline circa 1982, as depicted in this morning's economic development council briefing​At the end of February, city and council officials explained Dallas's meager 0.8 percent population growth over the last decade thusly: "The third-largest city in Texas is simply built out." Which le ... More >>

SXSW 2011 Buzz Power Rankings: Kanye Is On Top For Now... And Pretty Easily, Too.

You can do it, put your stinger into it.​South by Southwest is a static thing -- both in theory and in practice. It's a chance for bands to fans to see the established acts they've been wanting to see and for new, up-and-coming acts to try and make names for themselves. And that latter part very m ... More >>

Welcome, Cheeseheads and Towlettes! Let Us Show You How to Get the True Big D Experience

In Trinity Trust News: Calatrava Party Plans! And, the Promise of a "More Humane City."

Last night I espied this billboard in a TV trailer for Country Strong, which clearly takes place in the distant future. The Dallas Trinity Arena can be found next to Ray's Sporting Goods. Or Austin, home of Hornitos.​The Trinity Trust this morning sends further details concerning the grand opening ... More >>

Heinz Rolls Out the Free Fries and Ketchup, Food Truck Included

You say you want food trucks in Dallas? Well, here you go.​It seems even marketers are getting in on the food-truck fever that has infected every major U.S. city. In yesterday's New York Times, Tanzina Vega wrote an excellent article about corporations jumping on the mobile food vending bandwagon, ... More >>

Drill, Maybe, Drill? Almost Three Years After Council OK'd Gas Leases, Hunt Still Concerned.

​Patrick Michels has been all over XTO Energy's efforts to sink some gas drills in and around Dallas, a piece of which may or may not wind up on the council's year-ending agenda on December 8 following the City Plan Commission's decision last month to deny the wastewater-spilling Exxon subsidiary ... More >>

The Next Three Days: Paul Haggis Shows No Improvement.

God, I Hope I Get It: As Hamlisch Takes Over DSO's Pops, A Talent Search at Arts Magnet

Elaine LinerSing us a song, you're the Piano Man, Marvin Hamlisch!​Marvin Hamlisch has his EGOT. That's Emmys (four of 'em), Grammys (four), Oscars (three) and a Tony. The composer of A Chorus Line and the film score for The Way We Were also has a Pulitzer Prize and three Golden Globes. So he's go ... More >>

Kitchen Dog's Long Way Go Down Too Cinematic For Stage;Jubilee Sails With Gem Of The Ocean

Dallas, You Are Very Charitable

Charity Navigator​So says Charity Navigator today in a press release announcing The Most Charity-Conscious Cities in America -- we're right there at No. 3 on the highest-rated-cities list, so barely behind No. 1 Pittsburgh and No. 2 Houston (Houston). So, to all those who give till it hurts, a hea ... More >>

The Artist Behind The Ads

After the Explosion: How Irving Might Wind Up Using Texas Stadium Site

One of the early conceptual renderings for the Texas Stadium site, before officials decided to blow it up real good​Patrick will be along shortly with some photos and observations from today's final final media tour of what remains of Texas Stadium before the big blow-em-up on April 11. (Hey, ther ... More >>

It's Good To Make Time For A Bro, Even After SXSW and NX35.

Did Tom Hicks Strike Out By Turning Down a Better Deal for the Texas Rangers?

​Perhaps I missed this elsewhere, but in the wake of Saturday night's announcement concerning Tom Hicks's having hammered out a deal with Pittsburgh attorney Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan -- otherwise known as the Rangers Baseball Express -- there's news that the deal's anything but done. It come ... More >>

All About the Rangers Baseball Express as Hicks, Greenberg and Ryan Hash Out Deal

​No need to ask Lisa LeMaster for any further comment this time around -- the press release below, just sent out by Texas Rangers spokesman John Blake, is all we're going to get about the consummation of the "complex business deal" that's one step closer to putting Tom Hicks's ball club in the mit ... More >>

An Innovative Court Offers New Tricks to Turn Ex-Prostitutes into Real Working Girls

Thomas O. Hicks: In Memoriam

​With his decision to sell the Texas Rangers to Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg, long-time owner Tom Hicks will willingly, yet grudgingly step into the shadows of Metroplex baseball. But how will he be perceived? While Greenberg, 48, and his group seek approval from Major League Ba ... More >>

Christmas Comes Early For Tom Hicks

​Last night, Texas Rangers exec VP of communications John Blake sent the word since heard 'round the sports world: Tom Hicks has 30 days to get a deal done with Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan before asking MLB (and his myriad creditors) if it's OK, pretty please, to sell ... More >>

American Baseball, the European Way

​Even if European soccer owner Tom Hicks convinced Major League Baseball to inject the same screwy tables that govern soccer into America's pasttime your Texas Rangers wouldn't be a playoff team. But, alas, they wouldn't be relegated, either. If baseball were run according to European soccer ... More >>

Blessed With Sexy Synthpop Satire, Altar Boyz Zings

Adventureland: Greg Mottola loves the '80s

10 Questions: Lidia Bastianich

She arrived in New York at the age of 12 in 1958. Half a century later, she's a cooking icon with five cookbooks, four television series and six restaurants to her name.Bastianich's most recent PBS cooking show, Lidia's Italy, is such a hit in Dallas that she's frequently asked to help with loca ... More >>

10 Questions: Cynthia Hobbs

Patrick MichelsAlthough not a sports fan at all, she tends bar at Frankie's, a sports bar in Uptown featuring some 40 screens--38 regular flat ones and a couple of the big monsters.Of course, Sunday is a big day for the city's sports bars, what with Arizona getting ready to crush Pittsburgh in the S ... More >>

Whitt's End 1.9.09

Whether you're at the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End: *First things first. If you plan to see this movie, or even think it looks remotely entertaining, please, leave these premises immediately. *Nothing official yet (UPDATE: Now it's official), but I hear E ... More >>

Choirboys 20, New York Sack Exchange 8

After the two teammates who disconnected last week connected this week, it was a third-string lineman and a third-string running back who ran the Dallas Cowboys past the New York Giants and firmly into their own playoff destiny Sunday night. Running behind beleaguered left guard Cory Procter, ... More >>

Stars Struck

Finally, Hitting the "Reset" Button

Teenage and Transgendered|Feet of Clay|Not So Special

Irsay Can You See the Super Bowl in Indy and Not Arlington?

Perfect Game

With Fences, DTC steps up to take a big swing at a major work by August Wilson

Dallas' Prostitute

The once-Little D hussy opens on Commerce Street

Head Coach

Science-schmience, truth-schmooth: A New Age consciousness coach says ya gotta believe

Freaks of the industry

A guide to music on the Web that the RIAA isn't worried about

Stopped short

Kevin Elster was through with baseball once, but it was not finished with him

Channeling the spirit of Christmas

East meets Stage West in Greetings!, a strangely wrapped holiday comedy

Hide and seek

Stage West's Joe Turner illuminates the ties that bind

Buzz

Letters