Making crime pay: Because nothing says “Happy Holidays” like raging paranoia that faceless criminals are coming for you, we’d like to close out 2007 with a shout-out to our pal, Avi Adelman, who has started up a new business that aims to keep Dallas residents apprised of crime in their…
Aw, shit: If, like Buzz, you grow weary of all the canned holiday sentimentality—in other words, you’re a misanthropic SOB who thinks your fellow humans are, generally speaking, bastards—then hang on. We have a story just right for your Christmas: Once upon a time—a couple of weeks ago—Ginger Reid, an…
Picture this: Should we feel violated or famous? Out there on the Internet, for the entire world to see, is a fuzzy photo of a man outside the Dallas Observer’s offices at Maple and Oak Lawn avenues. It might not be Buzz, but since the blurry man appears to have…
Help wanted: Here’s a little inside Dallas Observer baseball stuff for you: Our editor, Julie Lyons, is departing in January to write a book; Girl on Top Andrea Grimes is leaving to attend graduate school at UT-Austin and continue her work as a stand-up comedian; staff writer Matt Pulle is…
Maybe Christmas doesn’t come in a box. Maybe it doesn’t come from a store. Perhaps Christmas means a little bit more. Hah. Yeah, right. It’s all about the retail baby! It’s about singing fish and hip-shaking Santa robots and bling. Why wait for the Thanksgiving turkey to be digested when…
Here’s a note to a very special set of regular Dallas Observer readers: The Salvation Army will offer traditional Thanksgiving dinners with all the trimmings to more than 4,000 poor and homeless folk from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at its local shelters: 5302 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas; 1855…
Dear Very Important Person: On behalf of UT Southwestern Medical Center’s staff, I wish to offer our sincere apologies for The Dallas Morning News’ recent publication of our list of 6,400 people guaranteed special treatment in the event they become patients at any of our facilities. We want to assure…
Divided we stand: Short of reading that the United States has invaded Iran (God forbid) or that Tony Romo broke a leg (God, Allah, Buddha and L.Ron Hubbard forfend), Tuesday’s Metro headline in The Dallas Morning News is about the grimmest thing you’re likely to see in a long, long…
Crock the vote: By the time you read this, the votes in an election called “the most critical in city history” will be counted, and it’ll be left to the jabbering classes to tell you What It All Means. Buzz, who is a member of that class (we sit in…
Our Man With Nothing Better to Do on a Tuesday Night, Matt Pulle, will be blogging live from election headquarters tonight, bringing the results of the all-important hides and animal inspector prop vote as they come in, starting around 7 p.m. He may even have something to say about the…
Recently, I got a call from a public call center in Mexico. I could tell because the second after I answered, I heard a voice say in Spanish, “They will speak to you now,” the formal call center etiquette used anywhere from Laredo to Tierra del Fuego. “Who is it?”…
Last week’s death of The Sports Fan 990 AM was a total surprise. Or. Not. The struggling radio station with the questionable leadership and the meek signal failed to see its first birthday, pulling the plug and forgoing its all-sports format for what – last I checked – sounded like…
Because Texas Observer managing editor David Pasztor asked so nicely — in an e-mail that begins, “Yo, dipshit” — we’re going to toss out a recommendation that you head immediately to the Lakewood Theater to check out readings from the Texas Observer by Lou Dubose, Wade Goodwyn and Jake Bernstein,…
Inquiring minds: Buzz keeps watching the video of reporter Rebecca Aguilar’s interview with James Walton, the West Dallas business owner who, in separate incidents in about the past four weeks, shot and killed two burglars breaking into his machine shop. We watch and watch and still don’t get it: Why…
KDFW-Channel 4’s Rebecca Aguilar In this week’s paper version of Unfair Park, which isn’t yet online, I write a defense of KDFW-Channel 4 reporter Rebecca Aguilar, who was suspended last week after her controversial interview with James Walton, a West Dallas businessman who shot and killed two men breaking into…
Holy crap: Man oh man oh man. Just met Dallas County Judge Jim Foster for the first time. Wow. In more than a decade of writing nasty things about public officials, we’ve never been speechless or felt a twinge of conscience, but writing an accurate description of a chat with…
One thing for sure, artist Sarah Maxwell English’s grandmother had way cooler taste than my grandma. For a joint exhibit with fellow Dallas artist Jennifer Gassiraro Nguyen at Magnolia Gallery, Maxwell says she is “layering fabric from my grandmothers home and my own home, thinking about how I define what…
So, if you want to score big with the women in Dallas these days, what’s the secret? Easy, you pretend to be impotent. Sounds a little counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Every day, roughly 87.5 percent of the Internet’s transmission capability (we made that number up, but we stand by it) is…
Ol’ man river: In our effort to decide how to vote on the Trinity toll road initiative, Buzz spent a fun day last week looking through databases we didn’t really understand and talking to unhelpful people at the EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality seeking an answer to a…
Remember when your favorite black recording artists had huge ‘fros, wore funky hats and tuxes with velvet lapels? When groups consisted of three women or five men standing in a line, doing fancy spin dance moves? You do? Damn, man, you are old. We’re tempted to type in all capital…
Home to roost: First off, Buzz apologizes to U.S. Attorney Richard Roper and his cohorts for ever hinting in this space that the feds’ investigation into alleged corruption at City Hall was taking too long. As the release of indictments Monday accusing 16 people of various counts of bribery, extortion,…
Whew. We just spent a couple of hours reading the 166-page indictment from the feds’ investigation into alleged bribery and extortion at City Hall, charges concerning a federal low-income housing program and other tax-supported real-estate doings. Thought we’d try to spare all you people with real jobs the trouble or…
