Peace Out

Elizabeth Villafranca, protesting Farmers Branch’s anti-illegal-immigrant measures in November 2006 Last fall, Elizabeth Villafranca was getting into political activism for the first time, attending protests against the crackdown on illegal immigrants in Farmers Branch and holding community meetings at Cuquitas, the restaurant she owns with her husband. A year later,…

Philip Wuntch, Now “Film Critic Emeritus”

Philip Wuntch, seen here signing copies of his book Martin Jurow Seein’ Stars in 2003 at UTA Well, well — look who’s back. After taking some time off, courtesy the Belo brain trust, former Dallas Morning News film critic Philip Wuntch makes his return to the dark side, reviewing the…

Chocolate, With a Side of Hog

Notes from the lunch-time feed bag, which is more like a grab bag: Over-priced and over-rated NOKA Chocolates of Plano announced today that it’s getting a primo spot in Harrods’ Food Halls — otherwise known, says here, as “one of the most luxurious and indulgent gastronomic experiences known to man.”…

Cowboys 34, Packers 24

We all know how Tony Romo’s tried to downplay his adoration of Brett Favre. And how watching tonight’s clash between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers will be difficult today and expensive tomorrow. And how, considering NFL Network is available in only one-third of the country, the national draw…

Better Than a Post Office Wall

Courtesy Dallas Is My Home, I’ve just spent the last too long browsing Bandit Tracker, where local and federal law-enforcement agencies are posting surveillance-cam photos taken during bank robberies. It’s been around since the spring, Mark White, the FBI’s local media relations coordinator, tells Unfair Park this morning, but it…

Dallas Man Asks Republican Candidates for a Book Review

Plenty of news from last night’s CNN/YouTube Republican debate — like, oh, did Hillary Clinton’s peeps plant a plant in the audience to ask the candidates about gays serving in the military. Also, from Dallas, came The Question of the Night: Asked Joseph Dearing, “Do you believe every word of…

More Better Badness

More better badness: Activist Carlos Quintanilla was recently arrested on a host of warrants, but that little stint in the Irving jail doesn’t seem to have dented his role as human bullhorn for the brown and oppressed. Just this week, Quintanilla appeared on CNN’s “Out in the Open” with Rick…

Corporate Cowboys

Got four primo season tickets on the 35-yard line to see the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers? Lucky bastard. It’s an epic showdown between elite 10-1 powers. The fabled rivalry that brought us the 1967 Ice Bowl and the 1995 NFC Championship Game, on Thursday night is providing the…

For Love, Aryan Brotherhood Killer Confesses

They had shot out his tires, and for miles he had driven his truck on its rims. Now stalled on Interstate 45, just outside of Dallas, with helicopters hovering above and what seemed like a hundred squad cars surrounding him, Dale Clayton Jameton realized there was no way out. He…

Shock the Monkey|Heal Thyself|Folded, Spindled and Mutilated|Potty Mouth

Shock the Monkey Let me get this straight. Three or four (is it that hard to count in the single digits?) people showed up to speak against the Monkey Bar (“Autopsying the Monkey Bar,” by Jonanna Widner, November 15). Two of them were quoted, named and had their identifying street…

$30,000 Millionaires: Douchebags in the Mist

After weeks of painstaking research and late-night expeditions that had turned up next to nothing, I was finally on the verge of a breakthrough. I found myself standing, nearly motionless, in the dark, warm environment that I’d identified as the native habitat of the creature I’d been trying so hard…

The “True Grit” of Dallas’ Victoria Clark

Victoria Clark, in the role that won her a Tony two years ago Hockadaisy Victoria Clark gets a rave today in The New York Times, following her Monday-night performance at Lincoln Center’s Kaplan Penthouse. Clark, a Yale University grad in 1982 who made her Broadway bow three years later in…

A Doc About Texas’ Juvenile Prison

Justin, who was physically abused before trying to escape from TYC in January, is one of four young men to be profiled in the forthcoming documentary. Via Grits for Breakfast, we learn today that investigative reporter Emily Pyle — who wrote an oft-cited piece about former Dallas school board president…

Or, You Could Just Watch the Big Game on Your Cell Phone

A cell phone with Sprint TV service, that is. Go to Sprint’s Web site today and sign up — it’s free — for Sprint NFL Mobile, a service that will allow you to view live game footage on your cell phone. Sprint customers need merely text “NFL” to 7777. The…

Dallas-Fort Worth Becoming Splitsville?

GlobeSt.com has the lowdown on the $60-million expansion at Arlington Highlands, the megamall at I-20 and Matlock Road full of “lifestyle retailers”; there’s a new hotel on the way, along with anchor tenants including a 33,000-square-foot Dave & Buster’s. But buried in the piece about the mall — which, says…

Did a Dallas Woman Just Re-Invent the Paper-Clip Dispenser?

From what I can tell, Michelle O. Edens is a Dallas attorney. And as of today, she’s also most definitely the holder of a United States patent, along with Frisco’s Ronald Burns. Says the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, Edens and Burns have invented … wait, this can’t be right…

Housing the Homeless, How Novel

Brian Harkin Larry James, president and CEO of Central Dallas Ministries In February 2005, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson stood at a homeless shelter in Los Angeles, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and announced that HUD would be doling out $1.4 billion in grants nationwide whose sole…

Doug Dunbar Is Now Channel 11’s Hardest-Working Anchorman

Channel 11’s new weatherman, Larry Mowry, likes turkey sandwiches, Poison, Oprah Winfrey and working out. KTVT-Channel 11 just shipped out a mediawide missive in which it announces a few changes to its nightly-news line-up. Chief among the alterations: Doug Dunbar, already anchoring the station’s 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts,…