Sandra Bernhard is Hot*

Sandra just doesn’t get Bible Girl. We know the feeling. Seems as if our very own Bible Girl is becoming a celeb’s celeb. Well, maybe that’s overstating it, but she’s on at least one celeb’s radar: None other than queer icon Sandra Bernhard brought Bible Girl up during my recent…

Soak in Some Sound

Folk singer/songwriter Tom Brosseau grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, a city devastated by the massive Red River (not ours, theirs) flood of 1997. Though it’s taken him a solid decade, Brosseau’s newest album — simply titled Grand Forks — gives a voice to the once struggling residents of…

Kudos

Kudos: We don’t usually envy daily newspaper folk. Dailies are too bureaucratic, too lacking in the smart-alecky-ness that we love. Here in alterna-world, when big papers suffer through staff cuts, as The Dallas Morning News did with a round of buyouts last year, we eat up the schadenfreude like it’s…

Here’s a Tip For You

This week’s cover story in the paper edition of Unfair Park — on newsstands beginning tomorrow — deals in part with a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was demoted, passed over for promotions and eventually forced into retirement because he blew the whistle on two different cases of alleged…

Black Thumb

Every year, I threaten to attend the All Texas All Garden Show with Neil Sperry to learn once and for all if it is really possible to grow a tasty Texas homegrown tomato. Then I look at my shameful yard and realize that the last thing I need is more…

Into the Breach

Into the breach: Once again, the Texas Legislature will consider baby steps that would make it somewhat easier for sick people to use marijuana to treat their ailments. We say “somewhat easier” because this session’s HB 1534 would not legalize medical marijuana. It would simply allow anyone busted for possession…

Smoked Out

Well, it looks like Mayor Laura Miller’s schedule has cleared up for tomorrow. She was supposed to land in Austin at 7:20 a.m. Wednesday for the first day of hearings before the State Office of Administrative Hearings concerning TXU’s attempt to get permits for 11 coal-fired plants throughout the state…

Lost in Transition

Mark Graham District Attorney Craig Watkins denies his office cut some slack to a Dallas police officer who lied to a DeSoto cop. Did Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins’ office cut a break for one of his friends? That’s what one of his own prosecutors suggested in a secretly…

Snakes on the Brain

More than 10,000 cold-blooded creatures are heading to North Texas this weekend, which is surprising. I didn’t know the GOP National Convention was coming to Texas, and I thought it wasn’t scheduled to place take until next year. (Thank you. Remember to tip your waiter.) Seriously now…the first North American…

Beats a Weekend in Oklahoma City

It’s everyone’s dream to be an illegal immigrant, right? Walking for days through the desert with little food or water, watching painful blisters pop up on your heels and burning or freezing your feet since no one told you to wear decent shoes. And the most fun of all –…

Be Careful What You Ask For

Wade Phillips, aka Parcells Light. Right, Richie Whitt? As both of my loyal readers know, I led the campaign to run Bill Parcells’ old, tired ass out of town. So it is with great, um, pleasure(?) that today I join Dallas Cowboys’ fans in welcoming the new head coach: the…

Man From Hope

Maybe the wife and I are just devoted Democrats. Maybe we just needed an excuse to get out of town. Whatever the case, we took a pilgrimage to Little Rock last year to visit the William J. Clinton Presidential Center. It’s a lovely, glassy place overlooking the Arkansas River. It…

Ten Paces

He was straight O.G., out of Grayson County. He pimped, gambled, dressed like a dandy, sold intoxicants—sometimes illegally—and killed, killed, killed. Turn the clock forward 100 years or so, and Old West gambler and gunslinger Luke Short probably would have won a Grammy for best rap artist. There won’t be…

You Don’t Know Jack

We, members of the NAAGP, hereby protest Casa Mañana’s Children’s Playhouse’s premiere of a new musical, Jack & the Beanstalk, on Friday and encourage all largish people and NBA players to join us for a protest at 7 p.m. outside the theater, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. (We’ll…

Take This Job…

Take this job…: Buzz and, as far as we know, Mrs. Buzz, are not running for mayor. That makes two of us. As of Monday, the city secretary’s office listed 20 people who have filed to run. There’s the usual slate of generic white male biz types. We forget their…

New Year? Try New Era

Here’s a number that might encourage you to attend New Tang Dynasty Television’s Chinese New Year Spectacular in Richardson: $346.5 billion. That’s how much China held in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of November, an amount second only to Japan. That’s how much we’re borrowing from China’s smoking-hot economy…

Pet Sounds

I suppose there are children who find the combination of puppetry and classical music delightful. They’re probably the same plaid- and Mary Janes-wearing waifs who squeal when they get one of those meticulously handcrafted wooden “traditional” toys for Christmas. As for the house-apes I know, if a gift doesn’t have…

Ethics, schmethics

Ethics, schmethics: Starting Wednesday, the parking lot that is the Dallas North Tollway toll plaza at Wycliff Avenue might become a little less congested, which is good, because it greatly lowers the chance that Buzz will spend the rest of his life face-down in a pillow at a state penitentiary,…

A Cunning Plan Foiled

This is not young Jim Schutze… OK, this is navel-gazing of the worst kind, but I thought you might like to know about it anyway: That picture (at right) on the cover of this week’s Dallas Observer, accompanying Jim Schutze’s story about the de-hippy-fication of East Dallas, is not Schutze…

Oh, Please, Bring it On. Pretty Please.

Uh, note to DISD Superintendent Michael Hinojosa: You’d best tell your spokesperson the definition of “legal” before this gets ugly. Oh, wait. Too late. Our bad. Breaking news: The Dallas Independent School District is investigating whether a crime was committed at Preston Hollow Elementary School in the wake of a…

Cost of Doing Business

Buzz is a little late getting to the party with this, but it behooves us to say something about the city’s plans to tighten regulations and raise the fees for newspaper racks on city right-of-way—including the Dallas Observer’s. Ahem…here goes: It’s an outrage, an assault on our precious First Amendment-guaranteed…