Don’t have a cow: At the end of a tidy yet depressed street in Pleasant Grove chock-full of pawnshops and ethnic restaurants, a shuttered Army-Navy store bordering Interstate 30 awaits demolition. A new Golden Arches is going up here. Maybe. Plans for McDonald’s in this quiet neighborhood face resistance from…
Digging in: To Buzz, it doesn’t look like much–the tunnel on Good-Latimer Expressway on the northwest corner of Deep Ellum. It’s dim, the traffic lanes are narrow, and the mural art lining it…well, it may be good for all we know. It’s just hard to see it when you’re whizzing…
Fighting fire: On June 5, a long-running lawsuit against the Dallas school district hit a wall. Now the people who filed it may have their backs against one. The case began March 10, 2000, after the school board voted 5-4 to hire a private company, Edison Schools, to run up…
We shall overcome: Buzz, being in the free-speech biz and somewhat left-leaning, generally supports an adult’s right to view and purchase images of nakedness and consensual sex acts on the Internet. Not that Buzz would ever, ever take a peek–goodness gracious no–but we fully support your right to do so,…
Dallas-based CompUSA Inc. and its former chief executive James Halpin must be feeling pretty happy this week, thanks to a decision by District Judge Carlos Lopez that took them off the hook for a multimillion-dollar judgment awarded by a local jury earlier this year. Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú, one…
Flip a coin: Dwaine Caraway is black. Ed Oakley is white. Which one is best fit to be the District 6 City Council representative? Buzz, who lives in the district, would suggest that voters need a little more information than that to decide. We would say that the best candidate–for…
Busted: At the risk of sounding like the crotchety old guy we’re in danger of quickly becoming, Buzz must ask: What kind of bizarro world do we live in that arrests school administrators and puts them in detention because a kid can’t read well? Oh, that’s right. This is Dallas…
Suckers: “Pigeon drops,” home-remodeling scams, vacation time-share offers, the Texas state lottery, recording contracts from major labels. They’re all obvious scams that no intelligent person would fall for if he or she just remembered one simple rule: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Pretty basic…
Sauce for the goose: Steady now. This is tricky. Buzz is going to sermonize about civility while trying not to look like the biggest hypocrite since evangelist Jimmy Swaggart went looking for love in all the wrong places. Here goes: That Mayor Ron Kirk, when he’s right, he’s right. Buzz…
Humorless: It’s not that Buzz is getting a big head or wishes to take credit–or blame–where none is due, but we can’t help but feel a little responsible for some of the foulmouthed picketers who gathered outside City Councilwoman Laura Miller’s house twice this week. Last week, writing about how…
Sticks and stones: Give ol’ Al Lipscomb credit. The former city councilman may have been on the take, but at least he was always polite, a gentleman, even on his way to the pokey. Apparently he didn’t pass his good manners on to his progeny. Testifying before the Dallas City…
Java jive: It was a small protest–one 19-year-old girl standing outside a Dallas Starbucks on Tuesday to object to the coffeehouse corporation’s sale of milk products from cows treated with a bioengineered hormone and food and beverages containing genetically modified ingredients. Who says kids today aren’t politically active? The girl,…
What passes for “reality” under the great video eye of network television is pretty lame these days. Personally, we’re not going to take that prefab national phenom known as Survivor seriously until someone dies of exposure, snakebite, or hunger during the show. Similarly, we’ll consider Temptation Island “reality-based programming” only…
Try the fricassee: The Dallas Zoo is letting children pet baby chicks before the birdies are gassed and used for their intended purpose–food for bigger animals. (See “Chick Fillet,” February 15.) This is widely regarded as reprehensible. Now PETCO, the national pet-supply retailer, is selling rabbits at some of its…
When the Tejano Democrats threw their support behind Elsa Tovar, a political neophyte challenging state Rep. Harryette Ehrhardt in last year’s Democratic primary, the four-term Democrat of East Dallas was perturbed. Why not concentrate fire on Republicans instead? Some Hispanic political leaders brushed off such sentiments then, and they’re not…
Forgive Buzz for bringing this news to you a week late, but when we first heard about it, we became so giddy at the prospect of firing off juvenile Dallas Morning News jokes, we felt like Anna Nicole Smith at a Highland Park AARP meeting–overwhelmed by the rich possibilities. Here’s…
Now that his Rhodes scholar buddy Bill no longer resides in the White House (replaced as he was by anti-scholar Dubya), U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins is planning to take a job with the Dallas office of Fish & Richardson, a Boston-based law firm that represents Broadcast.com and its parent Yahoo.com,…
Disorderly retreat: A generally accepted practice in journalism is to write about things that happen, not those that don’t. A general rule for humor is that you put the punch line at the end of the joke. But this being Buzz, which is neither journalism nor, some would argue, funny,…
No news…: Sanger police last week removed a prominently placed 4-foot-by-2-foot sign proclaiming January 15 “James Earl Ray Day.” For Buzz’s historically unaware readers, January 15 was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. James Earl Ray is the man who murdered MLK. And the person or persons who put up that…
Sinner man: When it comes to the seven deadly sins, Buzz has never had a particular problem with envy. Gluttony? Mmmm. Lust? Heh-heh-heh. As for our personal favorite, sloth…well, we’d get into it, but it’s late and we want to go home and get some couch time. But we’ve never…
Stinking thinking: Make that 20 good ideas for 2001. The latest issue of Inside magazine–the print version of media fetishist Kurt Anderson’s Inside.com Web site, which claims to cover “the business of entertainment, media & technology”–touts on its cover a feature detailing 21 good ideas for the new year. (One…
Teed off: Dallas officials zealously guard the city’s status as a major convention magnet. Certainly, civic leaders know that conventioneers spend precious little time actually convening at trade shows and professional gatherings. But once you’ve seen the grassy knoll, taken in a game, and zipped to the top of Reunion…
