These Old Houses

For some reason we can’t quite fathom, someone once gave us a gift subscription to Southern Living, the magazine devoted to helping its readers live more elegant “Southern” lives. Maybe they were trying to tell us something. In addition to recipes for mint juleps (we drink beer) and many creative…

Sis-boom-bah

Buzz, admittedly, is at times a bit naïve–naïve in this case being a polite word for “dumb.” For instance, we naïvely thought that to be a cheerleader required only that you support the home team, know how to say “rah!” and don’t look like Buzz. We were wrong about that…

It Lives

In one of the greatest movies ever made, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur confronts the enchanted Black Knight, an indestructible character who challenges Arthur to a sword fight. Arthur begins lopping off the knight’s limbs one at a time, but he refuses to quit. Finally reduced to…

Basic Instinct

All of you staunch Laura Miller supporters who think that changing Dallas to a “strong mayor” form of government is a good idea now that she’s in the hot seat, please repeat after Buzz: “Ron Kirk, strong mayor.” Doesn’t sound quite so appealing now, does it? Well, it could be…

No Fooling

There’s an old maxim in the reporting business that states, “If your grandmother says she loves you, check it out.” This rule was tattooed on Buzz’s soul by our college newspaper adviser, a cranky old nicotine-stained newsman who, rumor had it, would hurl typewriters at student reporters who got sloppy…

Toot, Toot

From our two or three forced visits to Sunday school, Buzz knows that if you do something good for the poor, you’re not supposed to “sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets.” Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t brag about…

Blown Off

First it was her identity; now it’s her status as a victim that has been stolen. In December 2000 we told you how thieves stole Ronnie Wilson’s wallet, which she accidentally left at a Tom Thumb store, then used her identification to rack up some $10,000 worth of goods–everything from…

Urban Renewal

Lucano Transports, the Oak Cliff bus company that stirred up such a fuss for Mayor Laura Miller last summer, is gone. Neighborhood homeowners, whose complaints about congestion and the stink of bus fumes prompted then-City Councilwoman Miller to try to shut down the Davis Street bus depot, should be happy…

Call 911

It’s time for another Buzz pop quiz. The topic this week is citizenship. Suppose some shady character offers to sell you a brand-new 40-inch television for 100 bucks as long as you aren’t too particular about where it came from. Do you: A) Ask him if he’ll take a check;…

Fellow Travelers

Now that Laura Miller has climbed to the top of Dallas’ greasy political pole, what, Buzz wonders, will happen to some of the little people who helped hoist her up there? Specifically, what will become of Web masters such as Sharon Boyd (www.dallasarena.com) and Avi Adelman (www.barkingdogs.org), who turned their…

That’s the Ticket

They’re the Gentle Musers–said so right on Laura Miller’s T-shirt. But on Tuesday morning, George Dunham and Craig Miller, the morning-show hosts on sports-talk station KTCK-AM (1310), played gatekeepers of local politics. The highly rated Dunham and Miller show gave way to the–oh, dear God, no–“Dunning and Miller Show” as…

Keeping It Unreal

Buzz has always prided itself on being able to laugh at pretty much anything. So we expected to guffaw ourselves into incontinence when we heard that Tom Dunning’s mayoral campaign was going “urban” and had produced a rap ad being aired on KKDA-FM. Then we heard the ad. We didn’t…

Bulworth

Buzz has been a bit afraid to go to sleep lately. For decades we’ve been a proud, left-leaning, pro-choice, social-program-supporting, anti-drug-war liberal, but apparently there’s something in the water in Dallas that takes perfectly normal people of the Democratic stripe and turns them into (shudder) Republicans. It’s happened with mayoral…

Fill Potholes, Not Tunnels

Naim Alasaad would like Buzz to deliver the following message to mayoral candidate Laura Miller and anyone else with bright ideas about breathing life into downtown: This is Texas. It gets hot in the summer. That’s obvious, you say? You suspect she already knows that? Then why, oh why does…

Huh?

Maybe you’ve seen them, the billboards selling “Erma Bombeck for Dallas mayor” and “Cesar Romero for Dallas mayor.” You have? You don’t get it? Neither did Buzz. Was this some sort of hip, postmodern commentary on the mayoral election? A dig at mayoral candidate Laura Miller’s new happy homemaker persona…

Coming to You Live…

Imagine this: Actors perform a comic space opera that spans the galaxies, featuring a lone hero battling futuristic evil threatening to undo the galaxy. There are no blue-screen or computer-generated special effects. In fact, apart from cobbled-together sound effects, there are no special effects. There’s just you and the actors…

Senior Moment

The Belo empire is too preoccupied with pumping up its favorite candidate to report this, so we’ll let you in on a little secret. Former Dallas Observer columnist Laura Miller is kicking fanny in the mayoral race. So maybe that wasn’t such a secret, at least to anyone who judges…

Dark Side of the Tunes

When the press release for the “all-new” Pink Floyd LaserSpectacular hit our desk, our first reaction was to check the calendar. Nope, it’s not 1985. Our second was to inspect the release more closely, in case it was some ancient leftover. (The Dallas Observer’s offices are not what you’d call…

SNAFU

This is going to be tough. Now comes the point at which Buzz annually recounts some of the more significant events and people of the past 12 months in Dallas and makes fun of them. In the past, this has been fairly easy, as the months generally have provided a steady…

Politically Incorrect

When you got nothing, the great Bob Dylan once sang, you got nothing to lose. Maybe perennial mayoral candidate Bill Jack Ludwig has been jamming to “Like a Rolling Stone” lately. Or maybe he’s just loopy. Whatever the case, in recent days Ludwig provided some much needed, if unintended, levity…

Good Money After Bad

Last week the Dallas Observer printed an article about Charles Wilkerson, an itinerant minister who seems to have a knack for buying struggling private schools and closing them down. The article reported that those he left behind with piles of debts dispute Wilkerson’s versions of how school closures came about…

A Guy Thing

(Editor’s note: The following contains a very un-P.C. sexist rant. The author is not normally a pig, but Yuletide avarice has affected his reasoning. Please forgive him.) Here’s a conversation that’s been taking place about every week lately at a certain married couple’s Northwest Dallas home. Their names have been…