Yes, when you think intimate theater-sized venues, certainly the American Airlines Center is the first venue that comes to mind. When the Dallas Stars play in the American Airlines Center, the joint holds 18,000 people; when the Mavs are there, the capacity jumps to 19,200. But the AAC is just…
Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling keeps a place in Dallas, presumably so he can drink and drive in a major Texas city where he’s less likely to run into someone whose life he’s already ruined. Our old pal and former colleague Tom Korosec’s reporting in the Houston Chronicle this morning…
Suckers: Not long after Dallas city council member Mitchell Rasansky started talking about the need for a vote of the people on the Calatrava “signature bridges,” Buzz began seeing signs of pressure by the mayor and city manager to head that off. For one thing, Rasansky himself appears to have…
Vanderjoke The greatest ever: How do you like being called an “idiot”? (“Our Idiot Kicker,” by Richie Whitt, September 7.) What if every time you wrote an article or said something–anything–people started calling you an “idiot writer”? Give Mike Vanderjagt a chance–he holds the NFL record, for Pete’s sake. He…
Each weekend night the Mesquite Championship Rodeo is interrupted by a short drama, the script of which reads something like this: Act I: Bull. Act II: Shiiiiit!!! “Those guys have a screw loose,” says Darren Robertson, taking a sip of Monster energy drink while taking a shot at kamikaze cowboys…
Agape Christian Fellowship’s worship leader shouted into the microphone as he played the keyboards: “Somebody needs to turn cartwheels for Jesus–act crazy stupid for the Lord!” Nearly all of the roughly 400 people present when Andrea Grimes and I visited Agape in November 2005 were engaged in what, from the…
A news conference was scheduled to take place in Victory Plaza Wednesday morning announcing there will be a new film festival in Dallas making its debut next spring. But the declaration that the Deep Ellum Film Festival is becoming the AFI Dallas International Film Festival is already old news. Not…
On judgment day, the bishop’s women have all come together in one exquisitely cold place: the 372nd District Court in Fort Worth, where a jury has just agreed on a sentence for the Reverend Terry Hornbuckle. The 44-year-old pastor has been convicted of drugging and raping three women, two of…
Sam Gipson is a preacher’s kid. He grew up in church; he knows right from wrong. His wife, Pam, is a sweet woman–soft-spoken, genteel. Their spacious home with its perfectly manicured yard is the largest on their street in the Denton County suburb of Corinth. They’re an upper-middle-class family–friendly, hardworking,…
On the morning of September 3 in Mexico City, a maid was cleaning rooms at the hotel Maria Cristina. After knocking repeatedly on the door of a room occupied by a retired American judge named Christopher Kepler, she called security. When they opened the door, they found Kepler, 57, dead…
This is a little girl named Rachael. She’s 9. She spends much of her free time trying to save non-believers. Here, in a scene from Jesus Camp, she’s protesting abortion in during a trip to Washington, D.C. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady were in town today trying to rustle…
This is what happens when you’re between music editors: The Ne-Yo show our dead-tree edition said was happening next week at Smirnoff Centre ain’t happening. Was canceled a while ago, in fact. Please ignore our screw-up, which no doubt has former music editor Sam Machkovech smiling in the wilds of…
We get a lot of, pardon, nutty mail at the paper version of Unfair Park–mostly from prisoners, some from concerned citizens, much of it from people with way too much time on their hands. One of those folks last week sent us a rather impressive collection of clippings, most from…
Bible Girl will not appear today; from now on it will be posted on Thursdays. The other girl–Girl on Top–will appear next week in the Dallas Observer. If you’re wondering what Andrea Grimes is up to this week, read her cover story: “The Reverend Freak.” At a newsstand near you…
Jerome Weeks sends this comment concerning yesterday’s posting of his farewell address. It’s been posted in the item’s comments sections, but to make sure it’s seen by those who scroll past the day’s news and move onward and upward, I am including it here. “My apologies to Mr. Wilonsky for…
Turns out there are some locals who love Yankees–the New York Yankees, that is. Says here that German construction company Hochtief AG (gesundheit) today got the contract to build the Yanks’ new stadium in the Bronx. Actually, its U.S. unit got the bid: Dallas-based Turner Corp., which will build the…
Come January 2008, or thereabouts, this is what the “new” Booker T. Washington School for the Performing and Visual Arts will look like. Artsy. It’s going to cost $47 million to renovate the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts–or, ya know, Arts Magnet, for those…
There’s at least one guy in our regular poker game who could probably play Cowboy Poker, and not because he drinks a lot. No, not all. Yep, another cowboys column. But in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park I write not about Cowboys who catch pigskins, but rather cowboys…
This is not a scene from the air traffic control tower at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Not yet, anyway. Keep this in mind next time you fly: The Federal Aviation Administration is getting rid of air traffic controllers–by creating salary caps for vets, offering lower pay to rookies, mandating a…
Rose Renfroe–or “Rosita,” to the ghost of her late husband–has been involved in the same lawsuit since 1995. Rose Renfroe, the oft-maligned Democratic candidate for District 4 County Commissioner’s seat, had a bench warrant out for her arrest earlier this year after she failed to appear in a court on…
“Feed Me, Wine Me” may yet remain the gourmand cry up and down the musty channels of Deep Ellum. Don Cass, president of Decco Services/Urban Lab and owner of healthy chunks of Deep Ellum real estate, says there’s a deal in the works to revive the Green Room, albeit in…
Since Dallas Morning News management refused to publish book critic Jerome Weeks’ farewell column last week–he was among the 111 who took the paper’s buyout, about which we can find little else to say at this late date–it has been posted today on Critical Mass, billed as “the blog of…
