Maybe Robert Ramirez should have named his new Oak Cliff restaurant the Twilight Zone. Ramirez’s efforts to open the Twilight Café, a bizarre saga that resulted in an ethics complaint and the resignation of Dallas plan commissioner David Spence after he improperly used his city title to get a copy…
It’s always something out at Valley Ranch, but it’s rarely good. This time around, the media pack–I wonder, if pack reporting were outlawed, would there be any sports coverage in D-FW?–has descended upon Dwayne Goodrich. Apart from being a terrible cornerback, Goodrich is also apparently fatigued; he’s fielding questions about…
Choosing LifeTrue convictions: I see four important questions coming out of Nancy DePriest’s case (“Lethal Rejection,” December 12): 1. What steps are our lawmakers taking to ensure that convictions are correct and just? 2. What steps are our district attorneys taking to ensure that convictions are correct and just? 3…
Although the new year is a few weeks away, as an early Christmas gift, we offer this list of resolutions. We know you don’t need these–you’re thin, beautiful, rich, smoke- and disease-free. But just in case… 1. I will quit smoking. 2. I will lose weight. 3. I will stop…
It could be that Brenden Morrow’s head hurts, which might explain why the thoughts come slowly, even a little unwillingly. It would certainly figure. His face is decorated with black stitches across the left part of his nose and above the left eyebrow, and his forehead is spotted with what…
Back in the last century, when Buzz was in college learning all the important things an aspiring newspaper person needs to know–how to glom onto free drinks and food, how to type, how to slyly spread the hidden liberal agenda of the media elite–we were hired to help edit the…
Sucker PunchKick ass she did: Wrong title–looking at the picture, it should have been called “A Boy Named Sue.” Having finally gotten past the pic, I discovered what a farce Valerie Mahfood really is (“A Girl Named Suicide,” November 28). One of the best things a good athlete can do…
Ever since her daughter’s funeral, she had been stalked by the same nightmare: Nancy is in the Pizza Hut in Austin, stripped naked in the washroom, shoved to her knees on the cold, soiled floor by someone unseen. Sobbing, she begs for her life: “Please don’t hurt me. I have…
In the recent pre-dawn promise of Arkansas’ first ice storm of the season, sports author/journalist Jim Dent bundled himself, put his work on a new book aside and embarked on a six-mile walk. It was a solitary trek born of anxious waiting. He was in the countdown days leading up…
It’s not easy being a mail carrier this time of year, schlepping about with tons of holiday cards, sale fliers and tins of fruit cakes and summer sausage. Sometimes the poor guys get confused, as they did this week when several greeting cards were misdirected to our office. Sure, we…
Jeanie Laube wasn’t sure what her father was up to in India and Pakistan in the late 1960s. He was almost never home, and he wasn’t in the habit of calling, she says. That’s why she was stunned one morning in 1970. While listening to her car radio in Wisconsin…
James Barfoot is starting to get that feeling that comes shortly before a good relationship goes bad. As president of International Market Place Inc., a company comprising the independent vendors who hawk goods inside Shed Two at the Dallas Farmers Market, Barfoot suspects that he and his colleagues are about…
There are only two players in the gym. Practice ended an hour ago, and the others have long since left. These two, Walt Williams and Adrian Griffin, loiter beyond the three-point line arcing shot after shot toward the net. The sound of balls bouncing against the hardwood resonates off the…
The Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau came under fire after Channel 8’s Brett Shipp reported on suspect spending by the bureau’s president, David Whitney, including high-dollar golf trips, using limos for rides to the airport and expensive liquor tabs for DCVB members and clients at area topless clubs. Here’s a…
The technical revolution has brought about two things that make Buzz happy. One has to do with child rearing, as now kids practically raise themselves, what with the Internet and all. Two, reporters don’t have to “report.” They can simply wait for their inboxes to fill with tips from the…
Deadly SkiesThe first plane: There is a factual error in “Rough Skies” (November 21) that got past the writer and editor. Several female employees had not “just watched a plane fly into the North Tower of New York’s World Trade Center.” They might have been reacting to the start of…
When the tuxedo-clad announcer, in his best let’s-get-ready-to-rumble voice, bellows the name Valerie “The Wolfe” Mahfood, a chorus of boos fills the desert air outside the Stratosphere casino and hotel in Las Vegas. There’s no question which fighter this sold-out crowd is here to see: Laila “She Bee Stingin'” Ali–the…
It was almost midnight when the banged-up Dodge Neon began weaving from one lane to another along North Central Expressway, traveling so slowly that it was impeding the normal flow of traffic. As the car approached the Lovers Lane exit, it barely escaped a collision with a fast-moving 18-wheeler, then…
Bruce Coslet is a quick learner. Really, he is. But not for the reasons you might think. The lot of you are probably still high from Sunday–a meaningless two-point win over a Jacksonville team that’s been nothing but average this season in record (one game below .500) and defensive ranking…
The good news, according to the Texas Freedom Network, is that more people than ever paid attention to the debate over school social studies textbooks that recently concluded before the State Board of Education, thus dampening the influence of small numbers of religious zealots. That means that the book of…
Who he said he was: I am writing to congratulate you for publishing Thomas Korosec’s excellent piece “Crusaders” in the November 14 issue. I have no idea what I was expecting to find in this article when I picked up the Dallas Observer. As a “fifty-something” grandfather, I am not…
In a second-floor room of the Hotel Lawrence, which stands in the shadow of Dealey Plaza and the former Texas School Book Depository, they gathered last weekend to buy their books and espouse their theories. Poring over a table of books laid out by Andy Winiarczyk–whose Last Hurrah Bookshop in…
