You Retard

You Retard KKK diatribe: Can you be any more bigoted, Wilonsky? OK, you don’t like Sean Penn as a person or actor (“Sam I Slam,” January 24). Fine. You think a movie about people with autism is needless pandering for an Oscar, maybe. But when you refer to people with…

Men From g.o.d.

Bill Wisener’s right index finger is stained a ghoulish shade of orange. It gleams almost Day-Glo against the starched white of the Carlton cigarettes he chains together in one seamless series of puffs. To his right is a black-and-white monitor with the screen broken into four quadrants, his eyes on…

Radio Haze

Rick Day has dedicated his life to two causes: marijuana and barbecued beef. Although he has smoked both–the latter as an award-winning caterer, the former as a die-hard stoner–it’s pot that has ignited his political conscience. He has shouted down Drug Enforcement Administration agents at local high school drug forums,…

Hate Crime

I have a theory. This conjecture involves former colleague Laura Miller, who is running for mayor, and the executives at The Dallas Morning News, who hate her. The theory is simple. It’s the horny churchgoer theory. In other words, the paper will do anything it can to screw Miller, so…

Fill Potholes, Not Tunnels

Naim Alasaad would like Buzz to deliver the following message to mayoral candidate Laura Miller and anyone else with bright ideas about breathing life into downtown: This is Texas. It gets hot in the summer. That’s obvious, you say? You suspect she already knows that? Then why, oh why does…

Let the Madwomen Rule

Let the Madwomen Rule True grit: Where did you dig up this Dave Vance (Letters, January 10)? He must have been living in a cave for the past 100 years. The North Dallas businessmen who have been running this city since my advent in ’57 have driven it into the…

Conflicted

The story is tantalizing, if only for the characters, who seem as if they’ve been yanked from an Elmore Leonard novel, except they are real and working on the paying side of Dallas crime. There is bounty hunter Reggie Spellman, partial to loud hats, Superfly suits and on occasion some…

Woman in Gray

“A Mayor of absolute integrity.” I keep tripping on those words, a blustery little sentence fragment with “Mayor” proudly capitalized, on Laura Miller’s Web site. I was shocked when I first read them, but not in the good way I was back when Miller was putting out some of the…

Huh?

Maybe you’ve seen them, the billboards selling “Erma Bombeck for Dallas mayor” and “Cesar Romero for Dallas mayor.” You have? You don’t get it? Neither did Buzz. Was this some sort of hip, postmodern commentary on the mayoral election? A dig at mayoral candidate Laura Miller’s new happy homemaker persona…

Muddy Waters

Muddy Waters Bigger fish to fry: The Lufkin paper mill (“Down by the Old Mill,” December 27) has shrunk from 1,100 workers to 650 in a matter of months, and this woman is upset because people have to carry her sandwiches in unmarked bags? Perhaps Abitibi has bigger fish to…

This Land Is My Land

Murdine “Baby Ruth” Berry’s knees have grown weak, but that doesn’t stop her from making the rounds on her land. Walking cane in hand, the 72-year-old retired schoolteacher yanks open the crooked door of an old Jeep and climbs behind the wheel. After wrestling the metal shut, she turns on…

A Hole in Every Pot

Mildred Greene, my conservative 92-year-old mother-in-law, tells me out of the blue as I drive her from Oak Cliff to East Dallas for the holidays that she has called Laura Miller’s campaign office asking for a yard sign. I ask her why she’s voting for Miller. Silence on her side…

The Art (House) of War

It is the Saturday before the new year, and buried somewhere beneath the plastic and sawdust and buckets of paint and construction workers’ boots is Dallas’ newest art house, the Magnolia Theatre in the West Village. Tearlach Hutcheson, the imposing Australian tapped to run the place, stands in the middle…

Senior Moment

The Belo empire is too preoccupied with pumping up its favorite candidate to report this, so we’ll let you in on a little secret. Former Dallas Observer columnist Laura Miller is kicking fanny in the mayoral race. So maybe that wasn’t such a secret, at least to anyone who judges…

Madwoman

Madwoman: A well-respected Dallasite recently told me, “Laura Miller is so full of herself that I think she actually believes her own shit.” Looking back at various actions and articles from Ms. Miller, I couldn’t agree more. Prior to becoming a city council member, Laura Miller was a reporter for…

SNAFU

This is going to be tough. Now comes the point at which Buzz annually recounts some of the more significant events and people of the past 12 months in Dallas and makes fun of them. In the past, this has been fairly easy, as the months generally have provided a steady…

Odds and Ends

One of the problems with publishing a weekly newspaper is that the stories we bring you continue to develop long after we publish them. Time and space seldom allow us to provide updates, so as a new year commences, we thought we’d pause to bring you the latest chapters to…

Look Back in Confusion

A quick rundown of trends, notes and final thoughts about the year in local media, an aught-one that said goodbye to KLIF’s Tom Kamb and hello, again, to the Crab Nebula’s Marty Griffin. Afghan Wigs: If you have a life, you may not realize that former Channel 4 anchorbabe Ashleigh…

School’s Out Forever

School’s Out Forever Slippery Reverend: Kudos to Charlie Siderius for his article “Reverend Fix-It” (December 13). Never have I read an article that did such a good job of reporting fact without trying to interject the author’s opinion. Since I personally have been acquainted with Charles Wilkerson, I would hope…

Politically Incorrect

When you got nothing, the great Bob Dylan once sang, you got nothing to lose. Maybe perennial mayoral candidate Bill Jack Ludwig has been jamming to “Like a Rolling Stone” lately. Or maybe he’s just loopy. Whatever the case, in recent days Ludwig provided some much needed, if unintended, levity…

From Soup to Nuts

“I’d like to thank Bob St. John for reminding me of a lot of stories I’ve been trying very hard to forget.” –sports columnist Frank Luksa In the landscape of local journalism, the Distinguished Soup Nose Award has for years remained a closely guarded secret, its winners reluctant to brag…

Down by the Old Mill

At Dian Avriett’s Lunch Box, the homespun signs for Christmas cakes and 22-pound holiday hams are easier to spot than the two small holes in the plate-glass windows at the front of the shop. One is located behind the drive-up doughnut counter, the other in the dining room, near the…