Finally, The Finals

Us sports nuts have been waiting since Saturday for the Dallas Mavericks-Miami Heat NBA Finals to start. Devoted Mavs fans have been waiting 26 years, actually. But for the rest of you Dallasites just now trendily hopping aboard the bandwagon (Hi, honey!), here’s a neophyte primer to this really important…

Pots on Fire

So this story in The Dallas Morning News says via a Census Bureau report that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita flushed some 350,000 people out of Louisiana. It also says 140,000 of those landed in Houston and that Dallas absorbed another 70,000. One of those 70k is Averriel Thomas, front man…

Game 1’s Tonight. Uh, Don’t Forget.

But seriously, don’t these guys scare you just a little bit? Abu Musab al-Zarqawi no longer needs his morning Mavs-Heat round-up, and it sure looks like he’s gonna miss tonight’s first game of the NBA Finals, but what say the rest of us get down to it? Let’s go international…

Chop Suey Syndrome

“If you thought Red Lobster was good, try Buddha mountain crab brains.” –Chinese language student Anthony Kohler in a dispatch from Guangzhou, southern China The betrayals are subtle at first. A server is bewildered by limes, so after numerous delays the Corona arrives with a narrow wedge of lemon. The…

Chumps to Champs

Screw David Hasselhoff. Where’s Zelda Rubinstein? Rather than the former Baywatch crooner turned Mavericks coattailer, Dallas should trumpet its long-awaited arrival at the NBA Finals with Zelda, who played creepy clairvoyant Tangina Barrons in Poltergeist. As she did dramatically in declaring the departure of ghosts from a haunted house in…

Time Heals No Wounds

There are any number of reasons why the U.S. Justice Department decided to investigate the health practices at the Dallas County jail, but perhaps none of them cut to the core like the gaping gash in Jeffrey Ellard’s left leg. On the morning of his court hearing, he shows off…

Portable Idol

The DreMak studio launch party at the Granada Theater has all the elements of a quintessential entertainment industry ‘do: live music, comp drinks, VIP tags and all kinds of free appetizers. But the crowd is hardly straight outta Los Angeles. It’s more like a family reunion, with middle-aged couples, their…

Leading man

Leading man: How many times does a rumor have to be repeated before a responsible journalist passes it on? Beats us. We’re Buzz, not Responsible Journalist Man, so here goes: Twice in the past week we’ve come across rumors that Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill was the leader in a…

Gentleman Don | A Rat’s Ash | Pee on Me

Gentleman Don True Maverick: Many thanks to Richie Whitt for his column recognizing Don Carter for being THE original Dallas Maverick (“Proud Papa,” June 1). It was actually much more than a “gentle nudge” from his wife Linda that got him to put up ALL the money to fund Norm…

Traveling Violation

Tomorrow (officially, anyway–though you can probably get it today) my travelogue on Chinese food and why Dallas can’t do it authentically hits the stands. (Hint: It has something to do with guts.) Tomorrow also marks the beginning of the NBA Finals. This is significant, because while it is exceedingly difficult…

Legend Had It

All this talk about the city coming in and seizing and probably tearing down the old Legend Airlines terminal at Love Field, lest the former owner sell out to some other still-unnamed commercial airline, is getting me wistful and teary-eyed. Seems like only yesterday (fine, six years ago) some of…

And You Thought Gas Prices Were Out of Control

As you can probably tell by now, I loves me some Mavs. I’m a teenager who attended their first game at Reunion Arena back in 1980, an adult who made a decent living chronicling their every move in the newspaper and a parent whose son named the family dog “Maverick.”…

You Better You Bet: Why Miami Wins This Time

There’s one reason I go to Miami…OK, two, because I really should mention the in-laws: the Cuban sandwiches from Versailles in Little Havana. Turns out, those beloved sandwiches–made of pork and ham and cheese and a sweet-soft bread I’ve been unable to find anywhere outside of Miami–are part of the…

Dissed by DISD: The Movie

This morning, an e-mail landed in my inbox containing a link to a short film by local moviemaker Israel Luna. (Go to the site, click on the About Us section, then go to the Everything & Nothing Page link to see the movie.) Luna’s a well-respected director—winner of awards at…

Texans Love Al Gore!

Al Gore needs to check on box-office grosses, then proposes to “hug it out” with George Dubya. No, really–or at least those folks who went to see An Inconvenient Truth last weekend in Dallas and Austin love Al Gore and his movie about global warming. Says so right here: IndieWIRE’s…

Sports News You Can Use or Peruse or, Even, Abuse

In our ramp-up to the Mavs-Heat NBA Finals, which tips off tomorrow night, we continue our wrap-up of the national media coverage of the series. Let’s begin all the way up in Washington state, where Seattle Times writer Percy Allen brands this a most watchable series–and not only that, but…

Sliced Meat Loaf

Yesterday, Unfair Park received a press release from the offices of legendary publicist Ken Sunshine bearing the, well, news that Meat Loaf has filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles. And what’s bugging the former Marvin Aday, graduate of good ol’ Thomas Jefferson High School? Seems his old pal and…

Show Up, 6/6/06

Assuming you didn’t get tickets to tonight’s sold out Arctic Monkeys concert at the Granada (or even if you did), swing by Good Records at 7 p.m. to see a special acoustic performance by the pAper chAse. Yeah, I know, the words “special acoustic performance” are enough to send most…

Gossage a Ranger! Well, Different One.

My old baseball-card-tradin’ pal Jamey Newberg, author of the beloved and essential Newberg Report, passes along the following missive regarding the Texas Rangers’ draft-day doings. Yeah, I know–who knew the MLB was having its draft today? Well, Jamey did, which is why Unfair Park allows him free access to the…

Corn Conspiracy?

We see that The Dallas Morning News tackled the ubiquitousness of corn today, showing how everything from sodas to bread to bacon is suffused with high fructose corn syrup. Arguable result: fatso nation. But this just scratches the surface of rampant corn perniciousness and the powerful political (Iowa Caucuses) forces…

The Texas Strangers

Don’t look now–no, really, don’t look, you might miss the Mavs in the NBA Finals–but your baseball team is somehow in first place into June. I say somehow because, considering the moves that have backfired, what the Texas Rangers are accomplishing would make David Blaine do a double-take. Consider: General…

Don’t Mess with Texas’ A.G.

If you have plans in the near future to claim that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott endorses your business when, in fact, that is not the case, a word of caution: Your ass will be paying the A.G. $64 million. The offender is Sun Country Travel, a.k.a. Texas Travel Partners,…