Perhaps you heard that Plano was recently named the 12th longest-living city in the country by the Daily Beast. But what you may not know is that a whole bunch of other listicles ranking places based on their General Pleasantness have spotlighted the ‘burb. The results are mostly positive, occasionally…
This morning at the Museum of Nature & Science in Fair Park, a group of very small people in oversized white lab coats were intently pulverizing strawberries in plastic bags. “Smash your strawberry into as fine a mess as you can,” urged their instructor, a considerably taller person, also lab-coated…
Under the baking sky at the Texas Motor Speedway, a small, rotund man adjusted his straw hat and tightened his grip on a green flag nearly half as tall as he was. “Houston Lady Racers, you’ve got 30 seconds,” he said to the high-school aged girls surrounding him. They flanked…
At 10 this morning on the steps of the Heman Marion Sweatt Travis County Courthouse, Rais Bhuiyan, who was shot in the face by white supremacist Mark Stroman as part of a post-September 11, 2001 shooting spree, will announce that he’s filing suit today against Gov. Rick Perry and other…
I had a really horrible landlady one time in Northern California. For more than a year after I moved out of that house, I fantasized about slowly and stealthily populating her yard with garden gnomes in the dead of night. It would have driven her slightly mad without being too…
At last, an interesting Redistricting Commission meeting. And a vaguely star-studded one too. Among those in attendance at last night’s meeting: council members Dwaine Caraway, Carolyn Davis and Tennell Atkins (who didn’t stick around the whole time), Schutze debating partner Sandra Crenshaw, preservationist Virgina McAlester and former plan commissioner Neil…
We’re sure that you’ve been shocked (shocked!) to hear that many of the leaders and endorsers of Rick Perry’s upcoming prayer-palooza, The Response, are people from organizations who really disapprove of both The Gays and The Abortion. Most of the protest against The Response so far has come from human…
Once more Nolan Ryan gathered the media together to discuss “a very, very sad day for the Texas Rangers organization” — the death last night of 39-year-old Brownwood firefighter Shannon Stone, who fell 20 feet to his death at the Ballpark in Arlington attempting to reach a ball Josh Hamilton…
If you were were strolling through Main Street Garden late this afternoon, perhaps accompanied by Angela Hunt and a homeless acquaintance or pausing to let your dog take a leisurely crap on its spacious green lawns, you may have seen a group of increasingly sweaty teenage boys running towards a…
As we’ve noted before, the Texas Legislature special session this year was awfully concerned with abortion — namely, making it as hard as possible for anyone to get one. Now, House Bill 15 is heading for Governor Rick Perry’s desk, and the Center for Reproductive Rights is trying to stop…
If you drove to Grapevine last night, entered the mall on the corner of Grapevine Mills Boulevard and Stars and Stripes Way, hurried past the Legoland, the Foot Locker and, outside the aquarium, two children strapped into some kind of bungee-jumping ride, pogoing slowly over and over again from floor…
On Monday Mark Stroman, the white supremacist who shot three men he believed were of Middle Eastern descent, killing two, lost another appeal to prevent his execution, which is scheduled for July 20 in Huntsville. The Supreme Court declined, without comment, to review his case, after the Fifth Court of…
Dallas, I’ve been feeling a little bit left out. You’ve been great to me so far: The bars are plentiful; my rent is cheap; my boss sent me on assignment to a strip club. Everything should be awesome, right? Not quite. Frankly, eating’s been a little bit of a problem. Here’s the…
Through September 5, a special exhibit at the Dallas Holocaust Museum is dedicated to some of the lesser-known victims of the Holocaust: gay men. Paragraph 175 was a provision of the German Criminal Code that made homosexual acts between men illegal, and roughly 140,000 German men were convicted under this…
In the end, it only took minutes for Judge Larry Mitchell to clear Hilliard Fields of the sexual assault charges that have followed him for the last 14 years.”Sir, I’m very sorry for the misery this has caused you in your life,” Mitchell said to Fields, who, at a hearing…
Around lunchtime yesterday, Dawn Rizos was walking through The Lodge, the Spangler Road strip club she owns, when her adult daughter handed her a freshly printed-out copy of this Texas Tribune story. Supporters of the so-called “Pole Tax,” a five-dollar fee tacked on to every visit to a strip club,…
As we noted just last month, a group of parents with kids at the First Presbyterian Church Developmental Day School on St. Paul are upset that a permanent supportive housing project (PSH) for the chronically homeless may be going up next door to the school. They’re especially concerned that parts…
On September 21, 2001, Rais Bhuiyan, then 27 years old, was working behind the cash register of a Texaco station in Pleasant Grove when a man wearing a bandanna, sunglasses and a baseball cap walked into the station holding a gun.Bhuiyan, a slight, soft-spoken man with big eyes and a thatch…
Last week we told you about a questionnaire that Arlington state Rep. Bill Zedler wants Texas women to have to fill out before they can get an abortion, the answers to which would eventually show up in some state-run internet database. We asked for a copy, but Phil Fountain, a…
Starting September 1, if you’re a woman in Texas seeking an abortion, a few new things are going to happen at the doctor’s office. You’re going to be given a sonogram, have the image of the fetus described to you “in detail,” and possibly be asked to listen to a…
Dr. Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998) was a painter, textile designer, teacher, basketball coach, piano player, and total badass. She made art well into her 90s, traveled all over the world, lived in Paris, traveled extensively through Haiti and Africa, married a fellow artist (in 1952, when she was 47), all…
In the latest piece of depressing women’s health news from the Texas Legislature, The Dallas Morning News reported today that the House has voted to deny state funding to public hospitals that either perform “elective abortions” or “do business with entities that provide ‘abortion-related services,'” whatever that means.But that’s just…
