For the third consecutive year, the Dallas Observer has been named a winner of the national Benjamin Fine Award for Outstanding Education Reporting. Observer Editor Julie Lyons won in the editorial writing category for her November 27, 1998, column “Bad boys,” about the election runoff between DISD board candidates Don…
Wishful thinking If you can’t beat him, find him a new job. That seems to be the strategy among Mayor Ron Kirk’s opponents, who continue to float Kirk’s name for a variety of jobs–other than mayor, of course. The Dallas Morning News last week reported rumors that Kirk is considering…
In a perverse coincidence, federal agents and Dallas County sheriff’s deputies chose March 24, David Roland Waters’ 52nd birthday, to descend upon his Austin apartment to execute a search warrant. For Waters, a former office manager for missing atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair and an old buddy of Danny Fry,…
Jim Wyatt gingerly picked his way through the thorny, dry North Texas brush, careful of the loose, sharp rocks that made the uneven terrain treacherous. With only half an hour left before sunset on a hot summer day, Wyatt strained his eyes looking for…what? He wasn’t quite sure himself. He…
Free Al Lipscomb I do not care who gives Al Lipscomb [Buzz, March 18] money; he has not stolen anything from the taxpayers. Al Lipscomb has given his life to Dallas for free, so if someone cared enough about him and his family to give him a monthly allowance, shame…
All the workers at the Dallas Zoo know that Hercules has an attitude problem. You can see it in his menacing eyes, which are always alert whenever a human is near, in the way he cautiously patrols the habitat, and in the permanent scowl on his leathery face. Of the…
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.–So much for the Rafael Palmeiro interview. Spring training isn’t a week old, and the Texas Rangers’ newest old first baseman is limping around the Charlotte County Stadium facilities like a man whose right leg is a foot shorter than his left. It’s 4 p.m. on March 6,…
Beginning last summer, Samuell Farm Park–the city-run petting zoo and favorite field trip for local schoolkids sent to commune with nature–became a severe migraine for the Dallas Department of Park and Recreation. Piles of rotting trash revealed illegal dumping amid the wildlife. Buried beneath the land was even more garbage,…
Punching Rocco’s Ticket It didn’t take long. Less than a week after the Dallas Observer’s story about KTCK-AM (1310) appeared (“Talking up The Ticket,” March 18), Ticket noon-to-3 p.m. talker Rocco Pendola was fired by station management. Not that the Observer story had anything to do with the talk-jock’s firing…
Homeschool hooky I just read your hatchet job on homeschooling [“No place like home”] in the March 18 issue. I understand that you think you’ve found a major problem brewing in Texas society and with education in the state. In some ways you have. However, did you once wonder where…
The lawyer who successfully defended Candace Montgomery never quit, until his end.
What follows are brief reviews of some highlights from the Dallas Video Festival, arranged chronologically. The festival runs from Thursday, March 25, through Sunday, March 28, in four different areas–the Electronic Theater, Video Cabaret, Video Lounge, and Video Box–at the Kalita Humphreys Theater, 3636 Turtle Creek Boulevard. Installations of video…
Love ‘im or hate ‘im, Hal Hartley has invaded the ranks of lauded indie filmmakers with quiet determination. His material–intentionally flat, talky, and existentially “hip”–usually involves urban anti-heroes and -heroines stumbling through modern emotional war zones, most often those of love and commitment. And boy, do they talk. Not Whit…
Searching for Carrie Fisher may be the best little gem in the festival. Too bad it’s buried in the otherwise unremarkable “Love and Obsession” compilation. You may have to sit through some pretty bad selections to get to it, but it’s definitely worth the wait. Then again, you already may…
“What is a suffete?” Chava Ruderman asks. The 8-year-old has come across the curious word in an ancient book she now lugs from the desk in her bedroom to a sewing room next door, where her mother plucks stray pins from the floor. Chava’s mom, Chana Ruderman, an English teacher…
Bart Weiss, artistic director of the Dallas Video Festival, loves every single entry in his international video showcase’s 12th year, again hosted by the Dallas Theater Center in its Kalita Humphreys Theater. He has watched each of them from beginning to end, and a helluva lot more that didn’t make…
“Free My Pee-wee!” That clarion call from outraged fans rose up in the form of buttons, T-shirts, and bumper stickers just a few days after July 26, 1991, when Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-wee Herman, was arrested for masturbating in a Florida adult theater while watching the film Nancy Nurse. It…
Al’s pals Anonymous sources within U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins’ office say he is angry at how The Dallas Morning News is covering the federal bribery indictment against city council member Al Lipscomb. Those close to the case call the reporting “just bullshit.” “They’re doing ‘[a] day in the life of…
In an unexpected move, last week a divided Dallas County Commissioners Court voted to raise the salaries of independent court translators. “I was pleased to see it,” says Lana McDaniel, presiding felony judge at the Frank Crowley courts building. “Frankly, I was kind of surprised.” As the Dallas Observer reported…
Lying to taxpayers about their taxes is a basic political skill some politicians grasp sooner than others. Veteran members of the Dallas City Council are trying now to get new member Laura Miller to wise up and stop behaving as if they really meant it when they promised not to…
Schoolhouse putsch Jim Schutze’s “Gutless coup” [March 11] catalogs the complete lack of educational ideas in the public discussion surrounding DISD. Because the superintendent search has been prolonged and controversial, whoever ends up with the job will be faced with ridiculously inflated expectations in addition, no doubt, to a divided…
The longer you sit there, the creepier things get. Goose-bumps creepy. As you perch in a metal folding chair at one of three “discussion tables” in the all-purpose room of the Jaycee Zaragoza Rec Center, the evening’s events somehow seem the opposite of deja vu: A familiar event slowly begins…
