Exactly 30 years ago last January, Dallas voters passed a measure that gave a 15 percent pay raise to police officers, fire fighters and rescue workers; included in the ordinance was a caveat that there would remain in place a “pay differential between the grades in the sworn ranks.” Which…
Let’s be honest here: This is little more than meringue-whipped empty calories served alongside the real meat and potatoes at this most award-whoring time of the year at the cineplex. Which is fine. Better than fine, frankly, as Hugh Grant yet again proves he’s the most reliable deadpan smart-ass this…
Those astounding Storybook Playhouses out at the Dallas Arboretum are getting adiosed at year’s end; they’ll be good and gone by January 16. But that doesn’t mean they’re disappearing forever: Bruce Rose, a senior designer at FKP Architects on Travis Street, wants to give away his firm’s playhouse, the estimable…
A couple of hours ago, Rudy Bush posted a lawsuit 13 Dallas Water Utilities employees have filed against the city, in which they allege all manner of racial discrimination. According to the docs, the litigants — who are either African-American, Asian or Hispanic — had, in 2008, taken their complaints…
I heard Gordon Keith on The Ticket this morning referencing this “story” concerning Tony Romo’s alleged engagement to CW33’s Candice Crawford. Apparently, the tale has made the rounds far beyond 1310: “News outlets from across the country and throughout DFW are calling us looking for an answer,” says this just-posted…
One month ago we introduced you to the NCR-manufactured Blockbuster kiosk that allows users to download movies to SD cards. The response was, to put it mildly, mixed. I finally saw one a couple of days ago while reporting a piece for next week’s paper version of Unfair Park; there’s…
Back to that story about John Reed, the first-class passenger on that Sacramento-to-Dallas American Airlines flight earlier this month who asked a flight attendant for a glass of orange juice and wound up with a federal warning for bad behavior instead. A Friend of Unfair Park sends along Reed’s appearance…
Speaking of the O.C. …We were in Bishop Arts over the weekend when my 6-year-old espied this “sad sign,” as he called it, affixed to a telephone poll at the N. Bishop Avenue-W. 8th Street intersection. ‘Tis the season. My son, blog editor in training (poor kid), thought I should…
Good Lord. Here we go again: Project Runway, which just ended its lifeless run on Lifetime, returns January 14 and brings with its two homegrowns. One’s 40-year-old Mila Hermanovski, who boasts what’s clearly become the favorite hairstyle among locally grown reality-TV show contestants (cf. Louise Black, Lisa Garza). She writes…
Those following along Monday read Jim’s account of the council committee meeting during which members debated regulating neighborhood farmers markets, in part to protect the city’s investment in the downtown Dallas Farmers Market. Over on the Bike Friendly Oak Cliff blog there’s this response:As Oak Cliff slowly shakes off the…
It’s been more than a year since Microsoft shuttered Dallas-based Ensemble Studios, which was responsible for, among others, such top-selling titles as Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Halo Wars for Xbox 360. From that wreckage emerged two offshoots, both locally HQ’d: Robot Entertainment and Bonfire Studios, neither of…
Last night, Texas Rangers exec VP of communications John Blake sent the word since heard ’round the sports world: Tom Hicks has 30 days to get a deal done with Pittsburgh sports attorney Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan before asking MLB (and his myriad creditors) if it’s OK, pretty please,…
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association just released its tops-o’-2009 list; it follows in full after the jump. But, first, this teaser: Dodging critical conventional wisdom that has put Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker at the top of most critics’ polls, the DFWCA instead opted to follow the National Board…
When last we spoke to Tom Keen, the Plano attorney who counts among his clients the Hong Kong-based owners of the old Statler Hilton downtown, it was one long year ago. And, as far as Keen was concerned back then, Hamsher International just wanted out: “Our preference,” he told me,…
A few hours before Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to talk health care yesterday, he held a briefing in the Judiciary Committee hearing room to discuss “the human sex trafficking crisis.” Among the invited speakers was Dallas Police Department Sgt. Byron Fassett, who,…
The reason I called Steve Leach, the so-called “buy guy” at Half Price Books, yesterday was because I was wondering: What’s up with the expensive assortment of signed tomes sitting under glass at the Northwest Highway mothership? I was there Sunday morning and noticed, among other things, a John F…
A few week back Schutze wrote about Adamson High School alums’ efforts to spare their old school from the wrecking ball as the Dallas Independent School District makes way for a new campus. (In the words of DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander, the district “plans to build a replacement school on…
Randy Galloway, Evan Grant and I received an e-mail at 4:20 this morning from Spirit of Shankly organizer Paul Gardner, in which he writes that a fans’ protest before Liverpool FC’s Sunday-afternoon match against Arsenal kept the owners out of Anfield: “Tom Hicks was turned away a few hundred yards…
So here’s the crime-stats story Dallas First Assistant City Manager Ryan Evans warned the city council about Friday evening. Looks like he had good reason to want to get ahead of Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer, who looked at a single week’s worth of police reports — July 1 through…
One minute he’s making fun of you; the next, it’s a bona fide bromance. But one question: Was that Eminem talking to Tony Romo before yesterday’s loss to the Chargers or Princess Leia? What up the headphones, Marshall?…
But a month after Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith’s book about the late, great Molly Ivins hit stores comes word of a stage production based on the Dallas Times Herald columnist’s life: Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, scheduled to debut March 19 on the Philadelphia…
Waiting on a call back from Steve Leach, the so-called “buy guy” at Half Price Books, about something entirely unrelated to this point. But, to kill a little time, let me share with you a couple of items I picked up at the Northwest Highway mothership Sunday morning and converted…
