It was strange to pick up The Dallas Morning News today and learn that Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price has impugned the integrity of Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze. The commish accuses Schutze of reporting comments made by two public officials — U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson and Dallas…
Old. That’s how I felt after I agreed to write about the upcoming performance of Gordon Lightfoot at Nokia Theatre. My feelings were exacerbated even further when I turned to the Nokia Web site, which described the singer-songwriter’s style as “time-defying” and his hits as “legendary.” Small wonder no one…
It’s embarrassing–copping to the fact that the 1988 movie version of Crossing Delancey is something of a guilty pleasure for me. Amy Irving gives a wooden performance as Izzy, a thoroughly modern New York single who feels the pull of her Jewish roots as she navigates romantically between an egotistical…
Until this election cycle, I never gave much thought to early voting. Considered it my civic duty to schlep my son and daughter to the polls on Election Day, queue up in long lines with elderly citizens in exercise suits and teach my kids something about the democratic process so…
Now, there is a Nancy Nichols who works at D magazine and writes about food and taught me a hell of a lot about hockey, once upon a time, but writing about husband-hunting–don’t think so. This Nancy Nichols, the one who is signing copies of her book at Barnes &…
Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders Writing for Texas Lawyer as I did for four years and being a Texas lawyer for 34 years, I have known many judges. Some came to the job unprepared, young and unwise in the ways of the world, ballot-sitters who simply caught a wave of Republican…
What is it about baseball that so connects father to son? Think Field of Dreams and that iconic moment when Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner)–who turned his cornfield into a baseball field for reasons even the movie’s producers probably don’t understand–is divinely given another chance to play catch with his father…
What, Price justice?: Three decades ago, I was a baby lawyer smitten with the notion of becoming a public defender. It seemed the pure practice of law, unfettered by the ethical challenges of collecting a fee from clients who were doing their manipulative best to beat me out of one…
For those who just couldn’t get enough of Lorenzo Lamas in Falcon Crest, where he played playboy grandson Lance Cumson from 1981 to 1990, or his occasional guest appearances on The Love Boat (also in his 1980s heyday), Fort Worth’s Casa Mañana Theatre has a treat for you. Lamas will…
Maybe it’s the absence of a preposition that makes Taste Addison 2008 (instead of Taste of Addison) sound mandatory rather than suggestive, but if these organizers think they can push me into an eat-to-bloat, three-day food fest without being nice about it, they know nothing about my capacity to consume…
Some folks have no stomach for Arianna Huffington, who runs the popular news/commentary Web site The Huffington Post, and those folks are generally Republicans. Her flip-floppery from conservative Republican to independent to liberal Democrat makes her seem opportunistic and grasping. The problem I have with her is more about her…
Conventional wisdom (as well as the unconventional wisdom of Jim Schutze, who wrote a book about race relations in Dallas) has it that this city was never a hotbed of activism (more of a warm bed, some say) and that the civil rights movement here was more akin to a…
Never understood the mythological staying power of Little Red Riding Hood. Girl walks through woods to bring food to sick granny; girl meets wolf who would eat her but for the public nature of his carnage; wolf arrives at granny’s house first and eats granny whole; wolf dresses in granny…
Been going to Theatre Three productions since I was big enough to say, “No, don’t make me!,” and I have never known why Theatre Three calls itself Theatre Three. Turns out, its name is derived from the three human elements that comprise the theatrical experience: author, actor and audience. Fair…
Contrary to what the national media had you believing, the Democratic presidential primary did not end on Super Tuesday, and Texas is now in play. You figure it’s time to get involved. After all, you’re a Dallas County Democrat. For the first time in a generation, you are relevant. It’s…
Many is the promising playwright who cuts his teeth on a one-act play or at least attempts one during those fondly remembered starvation years. Likely, some have three or four one-acts or short plays sitting around in some dusty trunk waiting to be brushed off after the author gets discovered…
Maybe it’s a mistake bringing my wife and son to the theater, hoping Sandy Duncan can pull off the part of Anna Leonowens in Dallas Summer Musicals’ production of The King and I. Yes, Duncan is a Tony Award-winning actress, with a Broadway résumé as solid as it is varied…
Shelly Martin was bone tired from the countless hours she spent at the bedside of her sick friend, but she figured she had better return to the hospital, and fast. For the last 10 days, Mike Scarcella had been in the intensive care unit at Presbyterian Hospital of Plano. Now…
McKinney, May 16, 2002, 1:33 p.m. “McKinney, 911,” answers a female dispatcher, sounding somewhat blasé. “What was the address of your emergency?” “Yes, ah…I am at the hospital at North Central Medical Center,” says a male caller. “Uh-huh.” “Right behind the professional building,” he continues, his twang as pronounced as…
Amid protest signs and peace songs and the animated anti-war crowd that had gathered Saturday in Crawford stood Robyn Curtz, a teenager who was worried about her mother. In less than an hour, Trish Major, Dallas mother and former church secretary, would be standing trial with four other defendants for…
Every weekday morning beginning at 7 o’clock, the gate of Huntsville’s Walls Unit opens, just slightly. Returned to society are a dozen or so prisoners who have completely discharged their sentences. As a parting gift, the state provides them with $50, the clothes on their backs and bus tickets. Those…
For a crime fighter, Peter Fleet seems on the smallish side, his slight appearance lacking a command presence, his reedy voice a bit nervous around the edges. But two weeks ago, after his car was burglarized for the third time in three months, after the neighbors in his condominium complex…
