Think of it as a cross between a certain movie about gay cowboys and an extraordinarily talented baseball player. Brokeback Natural, perhaps. Take Me Out is the Tony Award-winning play about star slugger Darren Lemming who has a different version of “making it to third base” than most of his…
As Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez faces questions about her department’s skyrocketing overtime costs, at least some of her jailers have been logging hours that seem to defy common sense. For the last 24 months, Detention Service Officer Muriana Olugbode has made nearly $175,000 by working about 80 hours a…
Comedian Russell Peters is supposedly renowned for his “quick wit and piercing mimicry,” which sounds kinda cool until you remember that the same thing used to be said about Robin Williams, who now is starring in a movie whose title, RV, is also its premise. Not exactly a high-concept alert,…
When I lived in Nashville, my girlfriend and I ran out of stuff to do. Sometimes we’d just drive around town literally looking for something—anything—to occupy our time for the evening, and all too often we’d wind up at the one independent movie house watching some foreign film about an…
In the first political tussle since her election, Sheriff Lupe Valdez appeared before a skeptical Dallas County Commissioners Court on Tuesday to talk about skyrocketing overtime costs in her department that brought jailers $15,000 to $35,000 in extra pay over the last six months. For the fiscal year, which ends…
There are good songs, there are great songs and there is “Hey Jealousy,” the ultimate anthem for slacker boyfriends, from the Gin Blossom’s debut album New Miserable Experience. Only a loopy, cheery guitar riff and a propulsive guitar solo could make a line like, “Tomorrow we can drive around this…
Fighting back after his ouster for sexual harassment, former assistant fire Chief Roland Gamez has filed a federal lawsuit that depicts him as the victim of an elaborate plot while portraying the department’s communications division that he once led as a bizarre outpost of Machiavellian plotting and odd sexual innuendos…
There are two types of people in this world: People who have opinions and people who write Metro columns for the Dallas Morning News. OK, that’s not entirely fair, as Jacquielynn Floyd knows how to deliver a cogent point even if her commentary is about as middle-of-the-road as a Train…
It was a stunning triumph. Lupe Valdez, a Latina lesbian who had toiled for decades as an obscure federal agent, won election in 2004 as the sheriff of Dallas County after a series of scandals dogged the incumbent Jim Bowles. Sprung from a family of migrant workers, the diminutive Democratic…
Here’s the great thing about pop music: Even when it’s not transcendent, or particularly creative or insightful or even, well, decent, it can still hit the spot. At least for me. This may fall under the “too much information” department, but there may have been a time or two when,…
After being ticketed by state alcohol police for public intoxication, Chris Nash is worried about the strangest thing. He’s fretting that the charge against him will be dropped following public outcry over the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission’s undercover bar stings. So he’s working with a lawyer to make sure he…
More than a year after Dallas County debuted a disastrous criminal justice computer system that kept inmates locked up long after they were supposed to go free, defense attorney Deandra Grant tells her clients to expect the worst. “I tell them, ‘Even if your sentence is up today, it’s very…
Comics seem to have a good track record at developing sitcoms. There’s Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano, of course, but I also have to confess a liking for Kevin James’ King of Queens. Now comic Kevin Brennan is developing a sitcom for NBC. We’ll get to see if he can…
I’ve never quite understood the appeal of drag shows. If you’re a gay male, why would you want to see men trying to pose as hot women? Wouldn’t you prefer they pose as hot men? And if you’re a straight man, why would you want to attend a pageant at…
Elected officials, as a rule, should not call a detractor, no matter how vicious, a “jailhouse bitch,” but the typically profane and intermittently profound John Wiley Price had his reasons. The object of his anger, Darryl Blair, had torn the longtime Dallas County commissioner into a million little pieces in…
We’ve never heard of World Theatre Day, but if we had to come up with a parade commemorating a “holiday,” we couldn’t do any better than the upcoming Masked March on Main. Featuring a G-rated, if creepy, blend of masked performers, puppets and children, the Masked March is a part…
Kevin Nealon is hardly an innovative stand-up comic, but he has a light, nonfussy style that evokes memories of Saturday Night Live’s second golden age: During the late ’80s and early ’90s, SNL was stocked with future stars like Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and Mike Myers (Dana Carvey?, not so…
If Neil Strauss ever planned to pen a sequel to The Game, the “pick up girls’ manifesto, he’d probably suggest a floral show as a wonderful place to sweet-talk (read: lie) your way into a woman’s heart. Do a little Googling beforehand (you can appear knowledgeable about tulips, daisies and…
Stephen McPherson, the high-tech massage parlor owner who humiliated Dallas vice officers after he caught them on tape disrobing and receiving X-rated massages from his employees, has been charged with first-degree murder after he allegedly shot and killed a man following a domestic dispute outside his Frisco home. Frisco police…
Just about every city has a river road race…and even though Dallas doesn’t really have a real river, the Trinity River Levee Run is a real race. Really. A 10K race that will wind downtown and along the levee, the Trinity River Run promises to be a fast and competitive…
It’s hardly a stretch to call Emily Braun, a professor of art history at Hunter College, a Renaissance woman. After all, she’s published works on late 19th-century European painting,’20th-century American art, women’s studies, (be patient) Jewish history, contemporary sculpture, (not there yet) modern Italian art, fascist culture and Renaissance architecture…
WHEN IT COMES to crafting conspiracy theories, Oliver Stone has nothing on Judge Sally Montgomery. Facing a relentless, flat-out obsessive challenger in the Democratic primary for her county judge seat, Montgomery has several explanations for why so many people think that the only time she should sit on the bench…
