The Merchant of Venice is a comedy? Oh, sure, that’s easy for you to say, white bread. If you’re Jewish or black–ol’ Willie Shakespeare’s play has some unflattering words about a Moorish prince’s complexion, and, of course, there’s Shylock–you might not exactly split your sides. On the plus side, liberally…
Is it over yet? Because any election in which Paris Hilton becomes an issue—and offers a better energy plan than the two candidates—can’t be over too soon, Buzz called Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet to see if he’d spotted any nifty electoral trends in the wind. Truthfully, we were…
Slow and steady wins the race? Ha. Don’t believe it, kid. Let us tell you how The Tortoise and the Hare really went down: The hare, after a night of tweaking with strippers, got the shakes on race day and ducked off the track to vomit. Repeatedly. The tortoise, meanwhile,…
Shocking: Like many of you, Buzz recently received our electricity bill for July. Don’t ask us how much it was; just picture a middle-aged man doing the bulging-eyes thing you see in old Warner Bros. cartoons, accompanied by the sound of a horn blaring, “Aaahoogaa!” Not a pretty sight. So,…
According to the December 2007 article that first accompanied photographer Robb Kendrick’s tintypes of modern cowboys, a typical horse-riding buckaroo can expect to earn around $750 a month. They work from before dawn till after sunset in temperatures that range from below zero to triple digits. Broken ribs and thumbs…
Dear Dallas Independent School District trustees, Thank you for taking the time to solicit our opinion on whether your organization should strengthen its conflict-of-interest policy for board members. While we appreciate your posting of an online survey (www.dallasisdsurveys.org) allowing us to give our views, unfortunately we will not be able…
Trash ain’t nothin’ but cash: Virtue, they say, is its own reward. That fact probably helps explain why Buzz isn’t on anyone’s short list for sainthood. We prefer more tangible rewards for our rare good works, like cash money. Take recycling, for example. Although our neighbor allows us to use…
Which is better: sex or fireworks? Seems like the two could share a lot of the same terminology — a Roman candle, a bottle rocket or a screamer just sound dirty, don’t they? We’d continue, but we’re out of space, so let’s just say this: You can sample some of…
Organic brick: The cry went up almost immediately after the story broke in The Dallas Morning News last week that investment firm Beck Ventures was looking into buying 10 acres in Deep Ellum, presumably for redevelopment. “We don’t want West Village II!” the clamor went. “Save our beloved history!” The…
Here’s a li’l factoid for all you former Rimbaud-reading, snake-skin-boot-wearing, mushroom-munching boomer kids: Jim Morrison would have turned 65 this year. That’s right, the Lizard King would be eligible for Medicare. Probably bald too. Tick-tock, former wild children. Tick-tock. Forgive the schadenfreude, boomers. It’s just the bitterness of someone catching…
Time warped: Man, Buzz really must stop washing down the Ambien with a bottle of cough syrup at night. It’s giving us the weirdest dreams. For example, we mistakenly thought that a major American political party had chosen a young, black, politically ambitious newcomer to run for president on a…
Rethinking pink: Time again for a Buzz pop quiz. What’s the precise, quantitative difference between a liberal—or progressive, as we pinkos prefer to call ourselves these days—and a conservative? Impossible to answer, you say? Nonsense. Buzz knows exactly what the difference is, at least in our case. It’s 1 cent…
Words of wiz-dumb: Here’s an interesting bit of polling news reported by political Web site Daily Kos: Democrat Rick Noriega has pulled within 4 points of…beg your pardon? Who’s that, you ask? Noriega is a candidate for U.S. Senate, running against incumbent John Cornyn. Anyway, recent polls show… No, not…
The ick factor: Here Buzz was, ready to congratulate the 3rd Court of Appeals on its courage and commitment to the rule of law for deciding last week that the state overreached in taking more than 450 kids from the polygamist FLDS compound in West Texas. Gotta be tough, hearing…
For many, an evening watching actors in period costumes hoof it and sing bouncy tunes is heavenly. For others, it sounds like the ninth circle of hell. If you’re in the latter bunch, is The Drowsy Chaperone, a comic musical-within-a-play set to a 1920s beat going to change your mind?…
Oh, all right already: Its outside smells like street-person pee. Its inside, when Buzz was in the bar years ago, looks like your parents’ basement rec room. Its concrete and metal exterior reminds one vaguely of the nicest hotel ever built in the old Soviet Union. So Buzz, who considers…
Man, I never thought I’d say this, but I kinda liked Steve Blow’s and James Ragland’s little dialogue on race this past week in The Dallas Morning News. Of course, the bar there is set pretty low — at least they weren’t writing about their love of Luby’s. I’m not…
You hate the robber who mugged you last week, but we celebrate outlaws who made Texas their playground in the 1800s. Why? Blame the hats. Criminals in stylish hats such as Stetsons and fedoras seem cool, even if they were killers. Get the skinny on some hat-wearing outlaws when Dallas…
Fairly mediocre: So last week, D magazine executive editor Tim Rogers and The Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow got into a blog squabble over whether the Morning News is being forthcoming enough in its reporting about city plans for a convention center hotel. Belo Corp., owner of WFAA and,…
Kids rule: Buzz was wondering when the Liberty Legal Institute, that Dallas-based network of lawyers who labor on behalf of religious freedom and parental rights, would weigh in on Texas authorities’ raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound in West Texas. How could Liberty…
Thanks a bunch, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. You’ve taken a perfectly good childhood memory—Gene Wilder sing “Pure Imagination” in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—and replaced it with your own mocking, nefarious version from the violent South Park episode “Imaginationland.” Seriously, thank you. That saccharine Wilder number never really…
Logo jam: At last…at last we can see some real progress in the Trinity River Project, that ambitious $800 kabillion—give or take a few kabillion—plan, approved in 1937, to turn the Trinity near downtown from a muddy, levee-lined ditch into a muddy, levee-lined ditch bordered by a toll road. So…
