Yo, Don’t Have Kittens

After partaking in last night’s incredibly loud Dinosaur Jr. concert, I hightailed it to Tom Cats on the opposite end of Deep Ellum, where New York’s Percee P was scheduled to headline the Video Killed the Rapper Tour. The venue listed doors at 9 p.m., which meant that when I…

Single Barrel Theory

I may spend my days getting hollered at and hung up on by lawyers and politicians, but occasionally I get to spend my evenings drinking free booze at promotional parties. Last night I followed a Scotsman in a kilt into the Sixth Floor Museum and got loaded up on premium…

Who Stole the Seoul? Why, a Dallas Company.

Wuh-oh. Looks like downtown Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, a powerful international investment firm (to the tune of $13 billion, which I think is a lot), is in some kinda big trouble in South Korea. Something to do with tax evasion, embezzlement and “other allegations,” which cannot be good. Apparently, South…

Qantas Never Crashed. Never Crashed.

I guess Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitt would be happy about this development. And my pal Tearlach Hutcheson, that Landmark Theater-lovin’ Aussie who flies to Sydney regularly (which is to say, more than you or I). “Imagine you’re from New York and have to fly to Los Angeles, whch is five…

Rangers Get the Finger. Again.

You gotta love the Texas Rangers. No, seriously, you have to. They need your affection, because going on 35 years of misery and misfortune, someone up there in the most exclusive luxury suite has it in for them. Since 1972 we’ve been screaming for the Rangers to get some pitching…

Why a Low-Rent “Us” Calls Us

In case you, like, didn’t know already, Kevin “Coattails” Federline will be at the new Club X this weekend–and he might even bring his knocked-up sugar mama. An editor for Life & Style Weekly even called the Observer offices Wednesday, desperately seeking that well-connected someone who could tail Mrs. and…

Undressing Room

On Monday, The Dallas Morning News reported how school board candidate Adam Medrano evaded arrest after the Dallas police conducted a sting of homosexual activity in a Dillard’s men’s room…six years ago. Medrano’s estimable political consultant Anna Casey was fuming. She felt that DMN reporter Kent Fischer misled her about…

Dinosaur Sr.

The foggy haze of nostalgia was in full effect at last night’s Dinosaur Jr. reunion show–especially at the urinals. Seemingly everyone in line had seen the band except me (I was a little young the first time around), and they all had a story about Lollapalooza ’93, that Edgefest where…

The Curse of Sucking

Hell hath frozen over. The Red Sox and White Sox won a World Series. The Seahawks played in a Super Bowl. The Clippers will make the NBA Playoffs. George Friggin’ Mason is in the Final Four. And somewhere Wile E. Coyote just nabbed the Roadrunner. Yet there, left standing at…

Missing Links

At about 4 a.m. on March 4, Dallas police responded to a 911 hang-up call at an apartment complex in Lake Highlands. They found the front door ajar and inside, on the floor of the bedroom, the dead body of 43-year-old Gary Hashaway. He had been strangled. Two days later,…

Unfit to Print

Elected officials, as a rule, should not call a detractor, no matter how vicious, a “jailhouse bitch,” but the typically profane and intermittently profound John Wiley Price had his reasons. The object of his anger, Darryl Blair, had torn the longtime Dallas County commissioner into a million little pieces in…

All Fund, No Trust

Last fall, the Dallas Observer ran a cover story (“Money for Nothing,” November 17) about the South Dallas/Fair Park Trust Fund’s sordid history of making lousy loans to business owners who wind up making busy work for folks in the City Attorney’s Office. Since the fund’s inception in 1988, the…

Trifecta

Trifecta: First the FBI comes snooping around City Hall, looking for council members and others sharing wallets and cars with real-estate developers. Then the Department of Justice starts banging cell doors at the Dallas County Jail to find out whether the county’s giving its prisoners proper treatment. Now, it seems,…

Show Up, 3/29/06

For once, Wednesday night is completely and totally loaded with quality concerts. Three great shows were already previewed in last week’s music section: Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins, Percee P and some old Dinosaurs. Jenny Lewis is sold out (though I just got confirmation that 15 tickets will be…

Farewell to an Old Friend

Courtesy of David Border Alex Magocsi behind the bar at Club Dada, circa 1990 Sorta drummer Trey Carmichael just e-mailed with some sad news: On Friday, former Dallas Observer music editor Alex Magocsi was found dead in New Mexico, where he had lived since leaving Dallas in about 1997. He…

Another Brick in the Wall of Sound Preview

Calhoun (Fort Worth): In February, I wandered into Bass Propulsion Labs in Dallas to visit its house producers; I had time to kill and was trolling for ideas for Unfair Park entries (the blog would launch a few weeks later). Nobody answered the door, so I let myself in, and…

Sites for Sore Eyes

I used to think that Dallas County and City of Dallas had ugly, hard-to-navigate Web sites because they were just pumped about bringing the government tradition of bureaucratic hassles from the real world into cyberspace. Now, I guess they just had bad designers, because both the city and the county…

Those Damned Liberals

And so the conspiracy theories begin about just who was behind the immigration rallies that took place this week, not only in Dallas but across the country. Me, I tend to shy away from any Web site that employs Tammy Bruce as a columnist, but feel free to check it…

Small Steps

The Terrell Owens gamble notwithstanding, the Dallas Cowboys quietly are taking small steps to make big improvements next season. First, Dallas cured its chronic kicking cancer by signing Mike Vanderjagt. Despite being labeled an “idiot kicker” by Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning for running his mouth, and being nicknamed “Vandershank”…

V for Vendetta

If you happen to find yourself in Vermont any time soon–and especially the lovely town of Barnard–whatever you do, do not tell the townspeople up there you’re from Dallas. You can thank Herbert Hall McAdams III and his wife Letty for that. According to two stories that have appeared in…