In the Squeezing Blood from a Stone filings at the United States Bankruptcy Court Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, it seems there are still a few folks who want some scratch from what remains of the Entertainment Collaborative. In January, U.S. District Judge Harlin DeWayne Hale officially chopped down…
You wouldn’t hire Charles Barkley to be the Mavericks’ team psychologist. Put Robin Ventura in charge of the Rangers’ alumni association. Or name Lee Harvey Oswald Inc. as Dallas’ public relations firm. Um, then why in the world would you applaud the signing of Terrell Owens as a Dallas Cowboy?…
As Mayor Mackie Choice sits with friends on his front porch on a warm March afternoon, he periodically surveys the horizon for danger. The bulldozers could come at any moment, from any direction, to level the entire town. Already they have razed a nearby settlement, and nobody knows what their…
IN THE MOVIES, Hogwarts castle is a towering Gothic monument to magical education, with Harry Potter and the rest of J.K. Rowling’s young wizards traipsing across the expansive school grounds. Set against the foggy, mountainous backdrop of Scotland, the boarding school features secret passageways that contain dangerous monsters, moving staircases…
No, you didn’t miss the news that Belo Corp., the owner of The Dallas Morning News and WFAA-Channel 8, is involved in what looks like a nasty lawsuit with the mighty New York City-based CBS Corporation. That’s because Belo’s media outlets (and CBS’, for that matter) have failed to report…
Keep it: The Federal Emergency Management Agency began its audit of aid money doled out to victims of Hurricanes Katrina/Rita/Wilma last week, but if you are one of the people who used FEMA debit cards to buy booze, tattoos, sex toys or a trip to a massage parlor in Dallas…
Texas Crude Gramps, just get over it: Sorry, Jim, I’m going to have to break a little tradition I have and disagree with the spirit of your latest article (“SMU’s Shame,” by Jim Schutze, March 16). Sure, SMU was operating on the shady side when they systematically subverted the University…
In a rare piece of good news for the Dallas County Jail, InfoIntegration, the infamously incompetent computer firm that lost track of inmates like they were old pairs of tube socks, will not renew its contract when it expires in July. Tonya Brenneman, the founder of the firm, got the…
The worst thing that can ever happen to you, according to my wife, is bedbugs. For those of you who don’t pay attention to the news, bedbugs, those nasty little bloodsuckers, have made a comeback. You can read about their resurgence here. My wife and I found this out the…
Former Republican strategist-turned-Republican critic Kevin Phillips, now a bestselling author with such titles as American Dynasty (about the Bush family) and Wealth and Democracy, is at it again with his brand-new tome American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century. (Ah,…
I always answer my office phone with some degree of trepidation. Not that I don’t like bitching out publicists trying to sell me on a “summer wedding feature,” because I do–and how. But I like a good old-fashioned news tip a lot better, and those are few and far between…
What’s bad news for Tom DeLay is good news for Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck, the Dallas-based documentary filmmakers whose movie about Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle’s investigation into the doings of DeLay’s Texans for a Republican Majority political action committee (TRMPAC) has found a distributor. The Observer first…
Last night I went to an early screening of the film Water by acclaimed Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 1996 film Fire sparked rioting in her native India upon its release. (Seems the radical Hindus back home didn’t dig the storyline involving two women who leave their husbands and wind…
Mike Rhyner is still calling Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells “The New Jersey Con Man.” Rhyner’s on-air partner, Greg Williams, is bashing Parcells for missing last weekend’s earth-shattering press conference to instead attend baseball spring training. And there are at least enough dissenting Terrell Owens opinions to form a small…
I’ll admit it. I watch Deal or No Deal like a fiend. I cheer, I yell, I jeer. (If this show is a complete mystery to you, go here for a rather cynical explanation by the Freakonomics freaks.) There are contestants I love totally and ones I loathe completely. On…
I know the image of Terrell Owens celebrating in the middle of Texas Stadium in 2000 sickens most Dallas Cowboys fans. Well, hate to break it to you, but that star ain’t all that sacred. Want proof? We’ve all heard the suburban legends about kids sneaking into the stadium and…
The Democrats kinda, sorta have the registered voters in their corner come the mid-term elections, at least according to a Zogby poll released today. Yeah, well, judging by this info, Texas Dems really shouldn’t get their hopes up. Barbara Ann Radnofsky, we’re looking at you. You too, Chuck Thompson. –Robert…
Since many of you probably spent your daily four-hour YouTube stint watching Chuck Norris read his own facts, you may have missed the first-ever Happy Bullets music video. “Drinking on the Job” features bassist Andrea Roberts puking Post-It notes after a long day of swigging the sauce at work. If…
My, the oil barrels are already in bloom this season. Sunday’s flood waters left an odd deposit along Turtle Creek: a 55-gallon barrel of oil jammed into a tree about 15 feet above the ground, and it’s dripping its contents into another barrel. Officials charged with cleaning up with the…
Splashed below the fold on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today is a piece on how Irving-based ExxonMobil may have sparked an Internal Revenue Service audit of Greenpeace, challenging the environmental organization’s tax-exempt status. The spark: a letter to the IRS from Public Interest Watch, a group…
Didn’t take long for Terrell Owens to start paying dividends. On Monday the Cowboys sold 1,500 Owens jerseys at $75 a pop. According to my abacus that’s around $112,000, which makes it a long way to go toward recouping the $10 million he’s guaranteed this season, but it’s a healthy…
During the Ring of Honor induction for the Triplets last fall, I asked Michael Irvin about Terrell Owens and the controversy of the moment—T.O.’s stream of negative comments about Eagles QB and multiple Pro Bowler Donovan McNabb. Irvin, of course, is buddies with T.O., who infamously agreed with Irvin’s comments…
