Discordant MeowsWhen beauty is ugly: Let me start by saying I’ve been a big fan of the Dallas Observer for many years and appreciate the role it’s played in the Dallas music scene. I’ve been a musician in the Dallas scene for 17 years, and I’ve always looked forward to…
Why does downtown Fort Worth suck way less than Dallas? Still the investigative reporter at heart, Mayor Laura Miller wagon-trained west last week to find out, and Buzz suspects she may not have liked at least part of the answer: because the people there are willing to pay for it…
“You’re gonna get killed.”That’s what my mom said when I told her I was trying out for a women’s professional football team. Not some pansy-ass flag football team, either. Full-contact football, played according to NFL rules with shoulder pads, helmets, the whole shebang. She thought the idea was absurd. So…
Jennifer King has a passion for Italian ceramics. Her Plano home is punctuated with hand-painted plates, vases and pitchers in iridescent reds, greens, golds and blues. Along a wall in a small room are glimmering steel racks that hold cups, teapots, plates and loose ceramic tiles. This chamber is the…
Dallas’ Drug WarFair pay: I just saw on the news this weekend that police and firemen were disappointed in the mayor and city council for misleading people about the 17 percent pay raise they sought. Had it ever occurred to them that people are usually given raises for good performance?…
Almost without warning, she bursts into a flash flood of tears. All it takes is for you to gently scratch the surface of her memory of the time she spent behind bars for a crime she did not commit. Her soft eyes redden easily; her high-pitched voice at times grows…
In Dallas’ enduring war against topless clubs, it was supposed to be a new weapon. But in the legal Beirut that has the city fighting 35 different court and licensing cases involving many of the city’s two dozen adult cabarets, the city’s “two-rubs-and-you’re-out” law has so far turned out to…
Never let it be said that Buzz be not smart. For we be. Vewwwy smart. For proof, look no further than the story this paper ran last week about how The Dallas Morning News killed a story that involved a groin-kickin’ spat between well-known Highland Park charity types Bill and…
Waste of Good AirAlive and well: There are many things that keep the Dallas music scene alive and well, all the way from Gypsy Tea Room to the Rock, from Polyphonic Spree to Pimpadelic, from Club Dada to Trees, from Jibe to Chomsky, from Galaxy to Club Clearview, from Pleasant…
Williams Run was supposed to be a sterling example of the latest thinking in affordable housing when Virginia McGuire convinced state officials to approve her plans to buy and rehabilitate the place in December 2000. Unlike public housing, where the poor are concentrated in problem-ridden complexes, Williams Run was going…
The old television series M*A*S*H ran through about 4 billion episodes, each with the same story line–war bad, wisecracking disdain for authority good–before viewers tired of the show. Ah-nold earned fame by uttering “I’ll be back,” a singular tribute to our appreciation of redundancy. Even General Douglas MacArthur understood America’s…
Buzz, admittedly, is at times a bit naïve–naïve in this case being a polite word for “dumb.” For instance, we naïvely thought that to be a cheerleader required only that you support the home team, know how to say “rah!” and don’t look like Buzz. We were wrong about that…
The Sheep Are ListeningAccess to this tripe: “It’s pretty sad when one of the greatest achievements by a Dallas musician is getting impregnated by Paul Simon…” Hell, it’s even more sad that this is the writer’s perception and that an editor would post this shit (2002 Dallas Observer Music Awards,…
Almost 7,000 people voted in this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards, and while I have absolutely no numbers to back it up, I’ll go ahead and say I’m fairly certain it’s the highest turnout for this election in quite some time. At least in the five years or so I’ve…
It hit him when two weeks had gone by and he hadn’t won a single race. “When am I gonna win?” Marlon St. Julien, one of Lone Star Park’s all-time leading jockeys, would ask himself. Then more weeks passed. And more. People started talking. Trainers backed off from hiring him…
Let’s play Big City Newspaper Editor. I’ll ask a question, and you try to answer it correctly–in other words, answer it the way a man in charge at, say, The Dallas Morning News would answer it. Got it? Good. The question is simple: If you were an editor at a…
In one of the greatest movies ever made, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur confronts the enchanted Black Knight, an indestructible character who challenges Arthur to a sword fight. Arthur begins lopping off the knight’s limbs one at a time, but he refuses to quit. Finally reduced to…
Where He BelongsNo hope, and rightfully so: It is comforting to know that Edwin Debrow Jr. (“12-year-old Killer,” March 28, and “Boy in the Big House,” April 4) is still behind bars. Let’s hope he will remain there for the rest of his life. There should be no “small cause…
Last August, shortly after returning as chief executive officer of Enron Corp., Ken Lay sent an e-mail to employees asking them to “Lay It On The Line” and answer a few questions about the company. Within days, Lay received more than 4,000 responses from around the world, covering issues that…
Governor Rick Perry has ordered the Department of Public Safety to begin monitoring the state’s 49 narcotics task forces following allegations that some of the drug teams were little more than vigilantes run amok. “What the DPS involvement will do is make sure all the bases have been touched,” says…
“What do you know about the Dixie Mafia?””Nothing…They’re not like the organized crime families. There’s a bunch that deals drugs. There’s a bunch that hijack trucks and commit armed robberies…They’re not associated with each other. The only thing they have in common, they’re all violent criminals.”–from Tishomingo Blues It is…
All of you staunch Laura Miller supporters who think that changing Dallas to a “strong mayor” form of government is a good idea now that she’s in the hot seat, please repeat after Buzz: “Ron Kirk, strong mayor.” Doesn’t sound quite so appealing now, does it? Well, it could be…
