WE HAVE A WINNER: While several commenters captured the tone and tenor of a Schutze — Beck, Grumpy Demo, Michael MacNaughton and Jpgreenan are clearly HUGE fans — we can have only one winner, and the Iron Fork tickets go to … dfw75208. Big round of applause, everyone. We’re sure…
The City Hall staffers who last year tried to toss road blocks in the path of a City Council plan to stripe 840 miles of bike lanes in Dallas — that’s 840 miles more than what the city has now — might be pleasantly surprised by part of what Gil…
Texas public schools are barely squeaking by, The New York Times reported this morning in a heart-rending story about state budget cuts. Things have gotten so dire that the Times led its story with the horrifying tale of a youth in Hutto, northeast of Austin, who must now walk a…
Dallas photographer Danny Fulgencio rolled out early this morning to capture images from the aftermath of the tornado in Forney. “I started shooting at around 7 a.m., just after the curfew lifted,” he tells Unfair Park. “These shots document the swath of destruction from yesterday’s tornado which struck the Diamond…
Last week, in response to a post Brantley Hargrove wrote about power giant Energy Future Holdings’ slow death waltz with potential bankruptcy, a commenter gently smacked him for ignoring some Major News related to power plants, smokestacks, etc. “And in other [news] this kid refuses to cover. The 5th Circuit…
Before I get to the lame joke that’s required by my job description, here’s something really cool: Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Virginia Tech have designed and built a robotic jellyfish powered by dissolved gasses. No, really, they have. They have video of it swimming in…
Well, crap. Look, I’m generally pro-government. You know, down with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who said, “I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” And like any good leftie hippie-type, I just love kitschy Main Street shops that I’d definitely ride my bike to if it weren’t…
To his credit, Joe Crafton didn’t sigh, or mutter, or hang up the phone when Unfair Park hit him with The Big Dumb Question. Instead, the chairman and co-founder of Park Cities Quail — a group of well-heeled quail hunters who recently announced success in their campaign to raise money…
So Kevin Dixon, principal of West Middle School in DeSoto ISD, is apologizing for emailing “a video of dancing chimpanzees to his staff last week that a school board trustee found racist,” the Morning News’ Matthew Haag writes in today’s Metro section. For some reason, the News didn’t see fit…
As Brantley pointed out yesterday, the Texas Public Utility Commission got down to hard numbers last week as it inched further toward what appears to be inevitable — a huge increase in the current $3,000 per megawatt-hour cap on the price of wholesale electricity during times when demand is high…
The Sheriff’s Department sent over a boatload (heh) of photos from this morning’s flooding at the Frank Crowley Courthouse, plus a mugshot of Juan Ramires, a jail trusty called in to join the mop-and-bucket brigade when a busted water main filled the courthouse’s first floor with 1 to 3 inches…
A picture is worth 6,700 words. If you look around on our home page, you’ll find “Blackout Blues,” a story by Brantley Hargrove about North Texas’ biggest electricity company, the EPA, money and lies. It’s a good read. The gist of the story is simple: We’re screwed. How screwed? Well,…
He’s just a bang-beat, bell-ringing, big-haul, great-go, neck-or-nothin’, rip-roarin’, every-time-a-bull’s-eye salesman. That’s Professor Harold Hill, Harold Hill. And like robins in spring the good professor and his con make regular returns to Dallas with performances of Music Man — not that anyone is complaining. Who could be grumpy about a…
They may lack the hot females and new-agey synth of those Celtic Women, or the leggy high-stepping of Riverdance, but to that we say “thank you, God.” No one’s ever going to give Paddy Moloney and the rest of The Chieftains a beauty prize, but they did manage to collect…
Spoiler alert: The lovers die, but not before singing a whole bunch. Other people die too. Also singing. And thus we arrive at the moral of Tristan and Isolde: Singing will kill you. Listening to singing, though, is probably safe, so live dangerously and check out the Richard Wagner opera…
Like to play the ponies? Think you can sing? Then put your mouth where your money is a take a real gamble — singing the national anthem at Lone Star Park. The horse track is inviting soloists, duos, groups, choirs and instrumentalists to try out for a chance to perform…
Huh. Well, it seems some Observer editor doesn’t think much of science fiction, referring to this weekend’s SFX Sci-Fi Expo, taking place at the Irving Convention Center, as “dorkocity.” That seems a little dismissive of a genre that’s brought us A Canticle for Leibowitz and works from the likes of…
When Sherwood Schwartz died last year, the creator of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch ranked a lengthy obit in The New York Times, complete with a quote from a pair of academics who wrote, “Schwartz was pioneering a dramatic matrix built upon the emerging cultural concept of the ‘support…
Oh, oh, oh — now I get it. All this time former Mayor Tom Leppert sure seemed to be just a stinking hypocrite, a back-stabbing, forked-tongue phony who turned all anti-gay and old-time religious-y after leaving office and deciding to run for Senate as a Republican. But no, ol’ Tom…
While you were busy with all the holidays, another important reason for drinking heavily probably escaped your attention. This month marks 10 years of deregulation in Texas’s retail electric market. Hey, put down that chair. No need for violence. This is the free market we’re huzzahing here, Bub. Actually, it…
The poor soul who attempted to teach me guitar at age 40 was a jazz man, a fan of the great Django Reinhardt and the Gypsy-infused, swing guitar style he perfected in France in the ’30s and ’40s. Maybe my teacher thought that if Reinhardt could overcome adversity — born…
Actor Hal Holbrook has portrayed Mark Twain longer than Samuel Clemens did — 57 years for Holbrook, who first performed a version of his one-man stage show as Twain in 1954, versus 47 years for Clemens. So it’s not surprising that the white-wigged, mustachioed, sardonic, witty grandfatherly archetype Holbrook has…
