Buzz

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…

Buzz

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,…

Buzz

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,…

Buzz

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…

Trust no one

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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,…

Buzz

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…

Toxic Justice

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,…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

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…

Buzz

Home again Itinerant former city council candidate Brenda Reyes found a new place to hang her hat earlier this week–jail. Police hauled Reyes to the slammer June 22 after they were called to an eye-scratching fight between her and her husband, Phillip Brooks Gould. The question remains whether Reyes plans…

Buzz

George who? As the millennium comes to a close, it’s good to know that American democracy rests firmly in the hands of a contented and thoroughly confused electorate–at least among Republicans and non-Texans. But of course. For evidence, we look to last Sunday’s New York Times and an article on…