The Score

In case you didn’t get enough soccer action during the World Cup (yeah, right), one of the most popular soccer teams in Mexico is coming to town Wednesday night to take on our beloved Hoops, which is what FC Dallas calls themselves for some strange reason (their mascot is a…

The Big Thaw

For 16 years, the case of Charles Coulston gathered little but dust. No new leads. No new suspects. Nothing. Investigators didn’t have much to work with. Coulston had been killed in a rock pit near New Hope, a small town on the rural outskirts of Collin County. From the jagged…

Mind Games

There are hypnotists who say they can make people do anything. Like punch someone in the face. I’ve never seen it happen, though. I have, however, seen hypnotists who can make people dance like Michael Jackson, which is sort of funny if you know the person but also sort of…

Opera Lives!

Figaro! Figaro, figaro, figaro! Figaro! Figaro, figaro, figaro, figaro! Figaro! And that, friends, is all I know about opera. But if Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is anywhere near as intriguing as the Living Opera’s Web site (which features a desperado flashing a hand of cards and…

Masters of Cymbal Drive

Andre Ford stood there on the curb, a couple rocks of crack in his hand. It was September but still warm enough for a tank top and shorts, which was more or less his summer uniform. Come winter, he would pull on a pair of heavy blue coveralls, the kind…

Work Book

The best way to show America how the working class lives, Esther Cohen figured, was to give janitors, cabbies and other low-wage workers cameras to document their lives. The result is a new book called Unseen America, which Cohen will sign 7 p.m. Thursday at Borders West Village, 3600 McKinney…

Mayflower Complex

In his new book, Mayflower, acclaimed historian Nathaniel Philbrick explains how the first 50 years of settlement at Plymouth in essence defined America and its subsequent push westward. The book’s subtitle, A Voyage to War, is fitting as Philbrick dispenses with the elementary-school version of the pilgrims’ landing in America…

Rays of ‘Gold

Gustafer Yellowgold is gold, and he is part cat and part alien, and he is from the sun. His friends include an eel and a dinosaur. Trust me, your kids will love him, and you might too. That’s because the only way to see Gustafer, the creation of songwriter/illustrator Morgan…

Rock Steady

Kid Rock, like Mike Tyson and Tom Cruise, should never say no to an interview. While Tyson and Cruise are great quotes because they’re crazy, Kid Rock is great because he says stuff like this: “I do not believe that artists or actors and people should be out there like…

Crossing Boundaries

It’s 8:45 a.m., drive time in talk radio land, and Darrell Ankarlo is just winding down. On the air is a caller who calls himself the Wingman. For a small fee, he says, he drives drunk people home. It’s one of the lighter bits of the morning, and Ankarlo, who…

Something Permanent

There’s a lot of art that goes through the Kimbell (traveling exhibitions and whatnot) which forces the staff to cram a lot of the great stuff the museum owns—called the permanent collection—into the side room or basement or wherever it is they keep the art when it’s not on display…

All the Rage

A few days after the city’s April 9 immigration rally, which culminated in half a million people marching downtown, therapist Jane Ledesma was sitting in her car, listening to conservative talk radio for a change. Ledesma, a Latina activist in her mid-50s, wanted to hear what the other side was…

Legends of the Ball

If my kid was a little older, I might take him out to the Little Legends Storytime at Ameriquest Field on Thursday at 10 a.m. for a “fun-filled journey into the magical world of baseball!” As it is, my kid can barely walk, so he probably wouldn’t appreciate it. But…

Spare Some Change?

For those who think poverty is a choice, allow me to recommend the book Nickel and Dimed, in which the author, a journalist named Barbara Ehrenreich, works as a waitress, a cleaning woman, a nursing home aide and a Wal-Mart clerk to prove that poverty is not the result of…

Hoochies on Hoods

Some girls grow up to become Miss America, and some girls grow up to become low-rider beauty queens. That, more or less, is the subject of Latino playwright Cristobal Beal’s new comedy, Miss Hell on Heels—Low Rider Queen. The play tells the story of two girls, Mona and Nita, and…

Ridin’ Rough?

The Frisco RoughRiders weren’t too good at baseball last year (they finished 24 games under .500), and yet the minor league club drew more fans than any other Double-A team in the country. Why? Perhaps it was the bathrooms. That’s right, the bathrooms. Visit the RoughRiders’ Web site (ridersbaseball.com), click…

Health Class

Its just after lunch on a warm Wednesday in March, and Helen Rodriguez-Farias is seeing her third patient of the day. The nurse beside her, whom Rodriguez-Farias is training, pulls on a pair of gloves and preps the needle. She says something in Spanish to the patient and pricks the…

Global Warming Is Real

A couple decades ago people argued about whether tobacco and asbestos actually caused cancer. Even when the evidence began to mount, there were still scientists who would scratch their heads in public and say they just weren’t sure (they were, of course, paid to say so by the tobacco and…

Missing Links

At about 4 a.m. on March 4, Dallas police responded to a 911 hang-up call at an apartment complex in Lake Highlands. They found the front door ajar and inside, on the floor of the bedroom, the dead body of 43-year-old Gary Hashaway. He had been strangled. Two days later,…

Triple Art Score

Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve would look like as blow-up sex dolls? Me neither. But if you’re wondering, head on over to the McKinney Avenue Contemporary (the MAC) to check out the work of Vera Barnett, one of three artists whose pieces are currently on display at…

Swords and Swashes

I don’t know why I never saw The Three Musketeers. Something with Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Chris O’Donnell in tights has got to be good, especially if they’re playing swashbuckling swordsmen named Aramis, Athos and D’Artagnan respectively, and especially if, according to IMDB, “jokes and stunts are the expected…

The Ducatis of Hazzard

Ducati has been making motorcycles since 1946, when they weren’t even motorcycles—they were bikes with little engines strapped to them. Today, Ducati, which is based in Bologna, Italy, is known as the premier maker of superbikes, which is short for bikes that haul ass. They also look cool, which is…