We hardly knew ye The Irrelevant Party, formerly known as the Texas Democratic Party, held a series of wakes around Austin on election night. The Republicans, on the other hand, gathered all their statewide candidates together for a single huge election-night celebration at the Austin Convention Center. (Buzz will refrain…

I shall whine no more forever Noisy activist-type guy Lee Alcorn gets to stay in the race for president of the NAACP’s Dallas chapter–for now, anyway. But the stage is set for a potentially nasty dispute if he manages to win the November 21 election. The national NAACP has been…

That’s entertainment Forget the cheesy haunted houses, skip the costume parties. If you’re looking for some real Halloween fun, wash your face, comb your hair, and head to church this weekend in Irving and Fort Worth. Bob Larson, described in his press release as a “lecturer, author, and radio and…

See no evil, etc. Regular readers of Buzz–both of you–may have noticed that former Dallas Observer columnist and current city council member Laura Miller appears fairly frequently in this space. This is not a conspiracy. We swear it. It’s just that, with the exception of Miller and Mayor Ron Kirk,…

Smells like Victory What do Albert Einstein, Jesse Owens, and the freedom fighters of Tiananmen Square have in common? Beats us. Maybe they all liked to shop at the Gap, which, Buzz suspects, one day will be one of the many stores at Hillwood Development Corp.’s arena-retail-office-entertainment complex. Al, Jesse,…

Old times best forgotten First, City Councilwoman Laura Miller made people cry when she suggested the city might have something better to spend $50,000 on than a Veterans Day parade. Now the city is the target of righteous anger by Confederate history buffs. It’s becoming clear why the city hasn’t…

As dramas go, last week’s City Plan Commission meeting wasn’t exactly a barn burner, but it was about as close to excitement as a meeting on street widths and railroads is likely to get. Greed. Conspiracy. Suspicion. Think The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as performed by a troupe of…

Slow to anger Finally, someone in the judicial system is a little steamed about Vance Miller, the rich-as-God’s-bookie real estate heir who has spent the last decade saying he’s broke so he can avoid paying some big bills. U.S. District Judge Joe Fish ordered Miller to appear at a September…

No strings attached? Buzz likes trees. Buzz likes plants. Some of our most memorable moments–well, not memorable, but enjoyable, anyway–come from plants. So we’re as happy as anyone to hear that the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens has completed plans for a $16 million expansion, funded largely with private donations…

Coarse description We generally hesitate to point out weaknesses in others’ grammar and spelling, because we’ve received our share of snippy letters from retired seventh-grade English teachers raising doubts about our parentage over some improper use of subjunctive mood, but this course description from Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of…

Man bites bulldog When Buzz thinks of victims, our thoughts generally don’t go anywhere near Jim Mattox. But the former attorney general, who wants the job again, is fretting over the possibility of being a victim of negative campaigning. This is the same Jim Mattox who spread rumors during the…

Sacred cows? What sacred cows? Ah, the things Buzz does on your behalf, readers, such as reading a 14,000-word love letter to the Belo Corp. to be published in an upcoming edition of the American Journalism Review–and before lunch, to boot. Buzz received an advance copy of the article, one…

Serendipitous politics Buzz believes that it’s better to be lucky than smart, but being a little of both is best of all. So we envy Karl Rove, the chief political consultant to Gov. George W. Bush. “People are calling me up and asking if I’m a genius,” says Rove, who,…

Details, details We have long held off taking swipes at the Log Cabin Republicans for two reasons–pity, and the fact that the premise of the gay GOP group is itself so absurd that it defies what passes for commentary to Buzz. Gay Republicans? What’s next, an all-hetero Judy Garland fan…

To hear lawyers at the Dallas law firm of Baron & Budd tell it, they are frontline warriors in a battle against callous corporations whose product, asbestos, claimed the lives and health of thousands of working men. But the first casualty of war is truth, and at Baron & Budd,…

Animal act Who says U.S. District Judge John McBryde, often described as churlish, doesn’t have a sense of humor? Buzz figures the Fort Worth judge must have some notion of the comic, otherwise he would have hurled his gavel at the lawyers representing two petitioners in his court recently–Barney the…

The doctor is out Dallas Independent School District board candidate Richard Evans, the self-described “doctor”(as in bogus Ph.D.), has been quiet in the wake of reports that he may have dropped out of high school and never attended an accredited college or university. That may be because Evans has been…

The best things in life “People pay for value, and most people disregard free things because they intrinsically have no value because people don’t pay for them.” That bit of, um, wisdom spilled from the lips of D magazine publisher Wick Allison, as quoted in The Dallas Morning News. He…

Pay up and shut up Get ready. Buzz has located the nation’s newest persecuted minority: the filthy rich. That’s their claim, anyway, judging by comments from two members of the metroplex’s moneyed class, who say they were harassed by “Nazis” who (gasp!) demanded that they pay their taxes. A few…

Info:Correction Date: 07/30/1998 Info: Buzz By Patrick Williams Where’s Gopher and the gang? OK now, everybody sing! “The l-o-o-ove bus Soon will be making another round…” Oh, skip it. We’ve been trying to see DART’s stretch limos as hotbeds of passion and romance–Love Boats of the road–ever since we first…

The tryouts begin Please, would someone explain to Buzz how George W. Bush has become the Republican front-runner for the 2000 presidential nomination? It’s not that we don’t like him, you understand. Any man who’s a baseball fan and fesses up to a hard-drinking youth has gone a long way…

And your point is? So former House Speaker Jim Wright–whom we love like kin; read last week’s Buzz–says that Fort Worth and Dallas liked the restrictions on Love Field when he pushed them through Congress in 1979. Wright’s comment came earlier this week during a court hearing on Fort Worth’s…