If you are a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or its spin-off Angel, then you no doubt understand why a soon-to-be-41-year-old man has a Buffy poster hanging in his laundry room and a Buffy calendar on his office wall. And to you non-fans out there, let me just say…
It’s hard to ignore Plano-based author H.J. Ralles’ ambition. “Move over Rowling, here comes Ralles,” reads the blunt headline of a press release from Ralles, announcing the release of her latest sci-fi fantasy novel aimed at the preteen market. Let’s see: Ralles, like J.K. Rowling, was born in England. Both…
So what, Buzz wonders, would Martin Luther King Jr. make of the war fever gripping certain parts of the country, specifically that part residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Young people putting on uniforms and taking up guns to march: Would King approve? And what if they were marching in a…
>The east end of downtown may be dead, but now it’s getting deadly. A Dallas Observer reporter was padding down Commerce Street the other day, on his way no doubt to pick up some super-important highly damning records–or smokes, whatever–when a chunk of the defunct Mercantile Building nearly squashed him…
Here’s a black-and-white rhetorical question for you: How many people of the opposite race do you socialize with regularly? Schoolmates, co-workers, your kids’ friends and fellow church members you see on Sunday don’t count. We suspect that it’s not many. And we don’t say this meanly, since the same is…
Buzz has a great idea for a high school band’s halftime show: a marching musical tribute to state Representative Tony Goolsby. Yearbook staffs, chess clubs and computer groups should do something nice for the Dallas Republican, too. Why? Goolsby has introduced legislation to stymie school bullies. Praise his name. (A…
This is one of a series of essays in the Dallas Observer’s calendar section demonstrating that some among our staff are, not to put too fine a point on it, one-browed knuckle-draggers. Our subject this week is opera, or specifically The Dallas Opera’s premiere of a new production of Giancomo…
It’s time once again for Buzz to look back on the year that’s passed, to recall the noteworthy events of 2002, to pause and reflect and grind out roughly 4,000 words of warmed-over hash served with a side of wise-ass. All right, let’s roll. Here they come, the events of…
Savage philistine that Buzz is, we’ve never quite understood the appeal of ballet. Yeah, yeah–grace, beauty, all that–we know. But there’s just not enough gunplay or nudity to make an entertaining night out for Buzz. We need some action, some drama. Maybe we need to head out to see Ballet…
I can’t dance. Don’t ask me. Consider yourself warned. My few ventures onto a dance floor with the missus usually ended up with some good Samaritan rushing up, reaching into my mouth and grabbing my tongue to keep me from swallowing it. “I’b okayb,” I’d say as I broke out…
Here’s a rough estimate of how a standard 24-shot roll of film is typically used in our household: Pictures of feet, walls, ceilings, etc. taken by accident: five Pictures of family, friends, vacation spots: eight Pictures of pet cats taken to “finish up the roll”: 11 As you might imagine,…
Maybe Robert Ramirez should have named his new Oak Cliff restaurant the Twilight Zone. Ramirez’s efforts to open the Twilight Café, a bizarre saga that resulted in an ethics complaint and the resignation of Dallas plan commissioner David Spence after he improperly used his city title to get a copy…
Back in the last century, when Buzz was in college learning all the important things an aspiring newspaper person needs to know–how to glom onto free drinks and food, how to type, how to slyly spread the hidden liberal agenda of the media elite–we were hired to help edit the…
The good news, according to the Texas Freedom Network, is that more people than ever paid attention to the debate over school social studies textbooks that recently concluded before the State Board of Education, thus dampening the influence of small numbers of religious zealots. That means that the book of…
For those of you not from these parts, the preceding phrase–yippie etc.–is cowboy talk for “Hooray!” At least we think it is. It could very well mean something else, like, “Hey, honey, show me them there panties you’re wearin’.” Or it could be the sound a plaintiff’s lawyer makes when…
Ah, yes. We remember it like it was yesterday. Taking a mid-afternoon break from high school, tooling down a two-lane blacktop doing 96 mph in a classmate’s jacked-up Chevy SS, smoking a fatty and listening to Skynyrd blaring on his cassette deck. Of course, where we’re from–the backwoods of the…
So is David Spence, who resigned this month from his seat on Dallas’ plan and zoning commission after being reprimanded by the city’s ethics panel, a bad guy or a good guy done wrong? Seeing how Dallas Observer staffer Rose Farley broke the story of his alleged ethical lapse, which…
“When I was a child, I spake as a child… but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” So the New Testament says, and like many passages in what Homer J. Simpson aptly describes as “a preachy book,” that passage sidesteps an important question, namely: Why? Why…
Your regular Buzz correspondent is back from a week’s vacation, rested and ready to tackle weighty issues, provide pithy commen…OH, DEAR GOD, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE SHUT THAT KID UP! So sorry. It’s Election Day, four days after deadline–when Buzz usually starts writing–and half a block down the street, outside Ron…
Last week, Buzz asked if anyone out in reader-land really cared that much about the fake-drug scandal that has tainted the Dallas Police Department and district attorney’s office over the past year. Pretty nasty business, we suggested, what with police paying an informant thousands of dollars to make cases against…
Since news of the Dallas police fake drug scandal broke not quite a year ago, Buzz has been struggling unsuccessfully to understand something, and maybe you, dear reader, can give us an answer: Where’s the outrage? Where are the pickets, the protests, the raucous calls for someone’s head on a…
Someone once said that it pays to be nice. Someone was full of crapola. You might expect Buzz to say this, seeing how we’re well compensated for being not nice, but this week we have extra cause to be peevish. Thank you, Premiere Video. The store, a nearly perennial Dallas…
