If news happens, but no one is there to issue a press release, is it still news? There’s a koan for all you tree-hugging hippie stoner types to mull over while we offer up some rather old news to the less easily distracted: The League of Women Voters of Texas…
Whenever Cousin Pearl would cut loose with a yodel on The Beverly Hillbillies and the dogs would come a-runnin’, you pretty much knew where yodeling stood in pop culture: a hillbilly joke, the sound of hickdom. If you think that, then you’ve probably never heard Jimmie Rodgers sing “Train Whistle…
Hey, hipster, got eight grand or so lying around your pad unused? Heritage Auction Galleries has just the thing for you: “home” movies of the Rat Pack shot by a Canadian couple while Francis Albert, Dino, Sammy and those other two guys were filming the original Ocean’s 11 in Las…
Can’t legally buy crack. Noooo, that would be bad. Grass, heroin, X, speed? Go directly to jail. But cookies? Not only has the DEA failed to regulate these highly addictive, waistline-destroying sugar bombs, some wicked people are even teaching classes on how to bake them at the Central Market cooking…
Texas was not just outplayed yesterday in the Big 12 Men’s Basketball Tournament final. It was out-fanned. Looked to me like burnt orange outnumbered by about two-to-one the grape or periwinkle or whatever color Kansas claims, but the KU fans absolutely shook the American Airlines Center with their ardor. Texas…
Five staples in the head of a Dallas Observer employee. Wound courtesy of a drunk asshole at the Toadies’ reunion concert. The crowd at Saturday’s Greenville Ave. St. Patrick’s Day Parade concert bided its time. As long lines filed into the blocked-off Yale Boulevard party zone, Dallas’ Baboon unleashed some…
Popular link-collecting Web site Fark.com allows users to make fun of news stories in their barely moderated comments section–the exact opposite of the no-comments, autocratic regime we run here at Unfair Park. It’s rare when we make their list, and this week, Jesse Hyde’s Little Boy Blue makes the cut…
Publicists exist to give journalists free stuff. (Alternatively, they also coordinate attempts to prevent us from trying to get the information we really need vs. what they want to tell us.) They may also make a mean meat loaf or run a four-minute mile, but in the grand scheme of…
Remember way back when there were only two sports in Dallas: football and off-season football? Don’t look now, helmet head, but Dallas is suddenly imitating a pretty decent Mecca of basketball. The rise of roundball permeates all levels. Last weekend in Austin, Dallas-area high schools swept the three biggest classes…
Sarah Wamsley ran sobbing out of a Tarrant County courtroom yesterday afternoon as her 21-year-old brother, Andrew Wamsley, was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of both his parents for their $1.65 million estate in December 2003. Prosecuting attorney Mike Parrish had sought the death penalty, because he…
You saw the picture here on Monday. Now you get the details. Seems 65-year-old former Mavs coach Don Nelson is having a life the rest of us only dream about. That is, assuming you fantasize about getting drunk with Owen Wilson, acting in shows directed by George Clooney, sitting in…
I have been bouncing around courtrooms in the George Allen Courts Building (the white structure at 600 Commerce) the last couple of days. Each judge has his or her own rules for cell phones and pagers posted on the courtroom doors. Some say, “No cell phone or pager use.” Some…
When Lindsey Lanzisero called her husband at work last week, he thought he was finally about to be a father. With his wife due to deliver their first baby within the week, restaurant manager Peter Lanzisero rushed across the Galleria’s Grand Luxe Cafe to the phone, sure that tonight was…
Yours truly will be one of the “celebrity judges” judging this year’s 27th Annual Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade. That means either the bar for celebrity here has fallen way, way below the low bar set by the likes of Judge Judy, or the press release announcing “Dallas’ version…
Zzzzz: Buzz was fascinated to read Gerry Fraley’s front-page story in The Dallas Morning News last Saturday about Major League Baseball’s announcement that it will now test for amphetamine use among players–bringing a halt (as if) to widespread use of little green uppers. According to the story, the ban on…
Laissez les bon temps rouler: Talk radio last week was all over testimony from the Government Accountability Office that emergency aid given to victims of Hurricane Katrina was used in at least one instance to buy goodies from the Condoms to Go store on LBJ Freeway, among several local purchases…
Bang, bang: Buzz had a couple of items to blather about this week. One was about Texas game wardens busting North Texas fishmongers and restaurants for illegally selling game fish. Eh, whatever. We had something else about whether that Woodall-Rogers park the city is thinking about will extend to Ray…
Oh, c’mon: It probably doesn’t bode well for a budding politician when the first question a reporter asks about his plans to run for Dallas mayor is: “Dude, seriously?” To be fair, Buzz had pretty much the same reaction when we heard George W. was running for president, so perhaps…
Testy: The 5th District Court of Appeals last week sided with the Dallas Observer and rejected a civil suit filed by a man who claimed we violated state law by revealing that he is HIV-positive. Roger Stanley, a worker at the Cathedral of Hope, had sought in excess of–get this–$1…
Grinched: We’ll be honest. Christmastime isn’t exactly Buzz’s season. We prefer caustic sarcasm to the mawkish sentimentality, and it’s not often when we can combine both in one tidy package. But it happens. Like now, for instance. See, we received an e-mail from “Two Guys from Dallas, Texas” asking us…
Glenn Mitchell, 1950-2005: We have a tendency to break rules here at the Dallas Observer, even those we make ourselves. For example, in our annual Best of Dallas issue, our staff writers are not supposed to give the same award to the same person two years running, since we like…
True truisms: Good writers eschew clichés, but this is Buzz, so we’re giving you two to ponder right off the bat: “Lie down with dogs and rise up with fleas,” and “A man is known by the company he keeps.” With those in mind, ask yourself how you’d like to…
