You have to give the organizers of the Chile Pepperama Festival at Old Town Shopping Center credit. They don’t shy away from asking the hard question, as in: Who makes the best chili in town? This is Texas, after all, and no question short of “Who has the best religion?”…
Governor nutso: So, whaddya think? Is Governor Rick Perry crazy like a fox or just plain crazy? Dallas Morning News editorialist William McKenzie posed a similar question in his column Tuesday…well, sort of similar. “What is Rick Perry doing?” McKenzie asked about the governor’s recent gutting of the Texas Forensic…
“Perry sets up pay for recruiters”—headline in The Dallas Morning News about Governor Rick Perry’s Amway-like campaign program that pays cash incentives to “volunteers” who recruit additional “volunteers” Coming soon to a cable channel near you: Perry, dressed in an electric-blue dress shirt, white belt and tan slacks, rushes from…
Don’t blame the system: We’ve been hearing a lot of chatter from commenters on the Observer’s Web site about how former city council member Don Hill’s trial on charges of corruption is, in fact, an indictment of the city’s 14-1 council system. Under 14-1, created under federal court order in…
They’re the kings of the barnyard, rulers of the roosts, clarions of dawn and a mighty fine artistic metaphor in virtually any medium. Just don’t try to raise any roosters in Dallas. That’s against the law, thanks to former Mayor Laura Miller. So, if you’re missing the old family farm…
So, the third-string team is in to cover what will probably be Don Hill’s last day of testimony. Appropriate, then, that the morning’s starting off with technical difficulties with Hill’s mic and computer monitor. Buzz!Hill’s being questioned about $18,000 and $12,000 payments from Brian Potashinik’s Arbor Wood development to his…
Defining inanity: It’s not often anything we read in The Dallas Morning News makes us laugh out loud, but we giggled last Thursday morning when we read this headline over a story out of City Hall: “Lobbyist registrations, gift limits discussed in closed-door session.” That’s right, the city council, tackling…
Copy cats: You’d think the activist folks on the left of the political spectrum would be pretty chapped right about now. After all, they’ve been in the protest and civil disobedience game for decades, speaking out against everything from war to the death penalty to environmental rape. And now we…
Leaking dollars: Buzz is not what you’d call a materialistic person. A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou is paradise enow for us. Still, there come moments when we’re gob-smacked by how much money other people make and become a little bit envious. OK, a large bit…
Smoke ’em if you got ’em: Craig Johnson, executive director of ProtectYouth.org, a Dallas-based nonprofit and lobbying group, doesn’t smoke marijuana himself, he says. He doesn’t think your kids should be smoking it either. No drug dealings in the neighborhood; none in the schoolyard either. But he and his group…
Immodest proposal: Buzz has yet to weigh in on the draconian budget cuts facing City Hall, which could spell layoffs for 840 city employees, because, frankly, no one at City Hall has offered us an exorbitant fee for our advice. Given the way city government operates, as revealed at the…
Oh, sure, Mr. Private Sector Wage Slave, you probably get formally evaluated by your boss every year. That annual review by your boss—that idiot—is a painful, tedious, unfair rite of passage annually. Well, if it makes you feel any better, you can take comfort from the fact that local judges,…
There’s plenty of shooting and fishing to be done at Rough Creek Lodge & Resort in Glen Rose–lots of trails to ride, an enormous swimming pool, and a climbing and rappelling tower. Oddly, though I’ve been there a few times for weekend getaways, I’ve never done much of the outdoorsy…
Now he tells us: Regrets. Mitchell Rasansky has had a few—and not too few to mention. For example, the former city councilman now regrets supporting Mayor Tom Leppert when the mayor was elected in 2007. “Not too many people pull the wool over my eyes, but he did,” Rasansky tells…
Too smart: Buzz, being a geek, was pretty excited about the rollout of new-fangled “smart meters” in Texas by Oncor, the giant electric transmission company. A new gadget that allows us to see exactly how we’re using electricity by measuring consumption in 15-minute increments and even allows us to monitor…
Dallas two-step: Buzz has been a crime victim four times in Dallas: one car break-in, two break-ins of a shed and one home burglary that cleaned us out. The number of times Dallas police have been at our house? Zero. Now, Buzz is a realist, so we understand that the…
Victory smells: It is wrong to kick a man when he’s down or rub salt in another’s wounds. Very un-Christian. But what the heck? It’s fun, and Buzz has never been baptized. So we can’t help but resurrect (heh) this quote from Ross Perot Jr., given to USA Today back…
Just do it: This can’t be right. A highly unscientific “Trojan Pleasure Survey” undertaken by the condom maker finds that Houstonians are a bunny-like people and have sex on average 101 times a year, making it the No. 1 do-it town in America, far surpassing D-FW’s paltry average of 73…
Geographically clueless: This week, we give a Buzz salute to Cornell University associate music professor David Yearsley. (A Buzz salute looks like what is commonly called the double bird, only it’s done with a smile and heartfelt respect.) Why do we respect Yearsley? Because last week he posted an essay…
Going batty: Buzz has always been kind of fond of Avi Adelman—a position not common among many of our readers, who would prefer to do their drinking on Lower Greenville Avenue without being hassled by Adelman. It’s not that Buzz agrees with Adelman’s efforts to drive the bars from his…
Stand and deliver: On behalf of Dallas, Buzz would like to make the following statement: Listen, world, we’re sorry about that whole Kennedy assassination thing. Real sorry. Now, can we just move on? Apparently not. A new Web site—a sort of photo sharing, socializing spot called www.stoodthere.com, based in the…
Magnetic Retraction By Jim Schutze, May 14 Messing with Success The magnets are not only “islands” of excellence, cut off from the larger world around them. They provide a crucial role in allowing a sense of possibility and aspiration to permeate the entire district—to kill them is to kill that…
