Sixty-six-year-old Levander Carlton McLean and his wife Rita Murphy McLean, who’s 21 years his junior, are gonna be spending a little time apart — five years or so, give or take, thanks to U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade, who yesterday sentenced the Garland couple to federal prison for using fake…
I appreciate Baby Dolls. I appreciate Baby Doll’s business, as, last time I checked, it was an advertiser on this here blog. What I don’t appreciate is Baby Doll’s, um, “customer relations”. Consider this not a blanket condemnation of the joint on Shady Trail, but merely a review of my visit last Sunday…
By now, Meridian Room regulars know that the joint quietly reopened a few weeks back, as we promised in October following news of its demise a month earlier. And with not too many changes — some updates in the kitchen and two or three labels added to what co-owner Vince…
Southwest Airlines’s stock is taking a beating today — down $1.90 at last check, to $7.91, following an analyst’s decision to downgrade the stock to “sell” from “underperform.” That follows yesterday’s announcement that, for the second quarter in a row, the Dallas-based carrier posted a loss — even though it…
Not worthy of the “BREAKING NEWS” banner ‘cuz, really, you read this about three months ago. Remember? In the final analysis, these were strange bedfellows from the outset: The Cowboys, who rely upon an expansive signal, jumping under the sheets with a station that built its legacy in part by…
Steven Johnson, grandson of Robert Johnson, contacted Unfair Park today after reading this week’s cover story concerning the fate of 508 Park Ave. downtown, where the Mississippi bluesman recorded in June 1937. Says Johnson — vice president of the Robert Johnson Blues Foundation in Crystal Springs, Mississippi — this was…
Give me “Alternate 2”. You? Thumbs up or down? Home Uniform…
Jeff Catlin just sent Unfair Park a press release proving Richie was right when he predicted the Dallas Cowboys and KTCK-AM (1310, The Ticket) would be parting ways sooner than later. Officially, the deal was up and into its option phase, and Catlin says the Ticket actually opted out of…
This Dallas Mavericks promo was just posted to YouTube, and the Unfair Parkers who semi-regularly attend home games say they haven’t yet seen this at the American Airlines Center. The joke, such as it is, works only when the vid’s viewed in high-quality mode. Still, not even in the same…
I bet there were times over the last month when you read Tony Romo’s “sun’ll come out tomorrow” quotes and profanely muttered, “Man, he needs a $%&*$#@ publicist!” Well, he’s got one. Same one he’s had since – before, actually – he ascended to the throne of starting quaterback of…
Today’s issue of Science features a study by U.S. Geological Survey ecologists Nathan L. Stephenson and Phillip van Mantgem about how trees in the Western U.S. are dying twice as fast as they did a couple of decades ago. Reached by phone in his California office, Stephenson said there are…
A welcome touch of class this morning courtesy the Dallas Opera, which tonight bows its production of Gaetano Donizetti’s lyric tragedy in three acts, Roberto Devereux. (Had plans to go, but, well, for those about rock and so forth.) Yet again, the Opera has smartly used YouTube to offer myriad…
It was 13 years ago. Feels like 103. In January 1996 I was a 31-year-old Mavericks beat writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram trying to make sense of The Three J’s. You?…
As it’s never too early to sneak a peek at the city council’s agenda, as evidenced by this morning’s wake-up, do take a look at Item No. 42 when you have a chance. It has to do with proposed alignment of Central Expressway between Commerce Street and Live Oak Street…
In 1961, while compiling the Robert Johnson collection King of the Delta Blues Singers, producer Frank Driggs sent Don Law a letter with a few questions concerning the bluesman and his sessions in San Antonio and in Dallas in November 1936 and June 1937, respectively. Law — who worked for…
From the same team that lost Adam Eaton in spring training 2006 just hours after general manager Jon Daniels announced his starting rotation comes news that top pitching prospect Eric Hurley has undergone rotator cuff surgery and is out for the 2009 season. In news that will surprise no one: Rangers…
Well, this story at least shows I wasn’t alone this month when I nearly had a coronary while opening my electric bill. Said the study cited in the News piece that might have gone overlooked post-Obama Day, Dallas’s average monthly bill for all utilities in ’08 was $378.27, compared to…
Well, actually, that’d be San Francisco-based Mother Jones writer Josh Harkinson, a Preston Hollow native (his parents still live here) who today posted an essay about what it’s like to grow up in the neighborhood populated by the likes of Ross Perot, Tom Hicks, AT&T CEO Rayford Wilkins Jr. and,…
Last night, the missus wondered why we received a postcard from the city’s Sanitation Services Department inviting us to a “community meeting” with our city council member this Saturday to discuss garbage collection. “Um,” I told her, “probably because they want to tell us that starting in February, the city’s…
Talibah Newman, David “Fathead” Newman’s granddaughter, tells Unfair Park today that on Sunday at 2 p.m., there will be a memorial service in honor of the saxophone great, who died Tuesday night in New York following a long bout with pancreatic cancer. The service will take place at the Warren…
This is why I’m sticking to sports. Because if I show up to, say, a Mavs game or the Super Bowl or a Green-White Scrimmage, the event actually occurs. Not so with Russ Martin’s supposed trial in Fort Worth this morning. The media – myself, a reporter from Dallas’ Only…
Because, look, your ride just ain’t safe. KXAS-Channel 5 has the story of the “brick-wielding vandals” targeting cars in East Dallas. In all, more than 24 folks had their cars smashed up late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning — without anything being stolen. Alas, this no-really? note at the…
