Darrell Jordan can’t get comfortable. He shifts in his seat, squirms from left to right till his long legs bend and twist into position. His arms and shoulders and back seem to be pointing in three different directions as he attempts to cram his imposing frame into one of the…
To free-market conservatives, the Marianas–a chain of tiny, palm-shrouded islands in the western Pacific–are, well, paradise. According to this ideological spin, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas is a capitalist Eden, a Rock Candy Mountain of commerce bustling with folks willing to cut and stitch and sew in the service…
For the past 12 years, Dennis Eichelbaum has served as general counsel for the Dallas Independent School District. But earlier this month the DISD board, apparently displeased with his performance, handed Eichelbaum his walking papers. The trustees had terminated Eichelbaum’s contract as outside legal counsel in June but continued to…
Making amends Buzz has just been all torn up inside since colleagues here at the Dallas Observer wrongly accused FOX 4 anchor Ashleigh Banfield of performing a Linda Ronstadt song and, of course, made fun of her singing with the band Tommy Hyatt & the Haywires. So when we read…
Us rubes Thanks so much for “Renoir, Shmenoir” [February 5]. I hope the Kimbell Museum curators are as chastened by Christine Biederman’s astuteness as I am. How rueful was my realization that I was one of “the rubes” drawn in by the Kimbell’s desire to “toady up to potential donors!”…
Only one photograph of Willard Rollins exists in his personnel file at the Dallas Police Department. This crude mug shot, taken 23 years ago, captures Rollins–now third-in-command on the Dallas force–as a fresh recruit. The image is flawed: Bright lighting casts a sharp glare on Rollins’ face, and a name…
It was time for the clock on Amarillo’s 15 minutes of fame to start ticking. A herd of reporters had gathered at Amarillo International Airport for the arrival of Oprah Winfrey, who was flying into town January 19 to defend herself against accusations that she had libeled beef. It was…
Conspiracy du jour They were all in one place, sitting in a stuffy back room at DISD’s Environmental Education Center in Seagoville: Matthew Harden. Kathleen Leos. Don Venable. Shirley Ison-Newsome. What do all of these folks have in common? Lawsuits, of course. Big, messy ones–sprinkled with tales of racism, sexual…
Critics of the Texas Industries cement plant in Midlothian have obtained company documents that appear to bolster their contention that TXI officials distorted information about health hazards posed by the plant’s emissions. The information comes as TXI opponents prepare their final challenge of TXI’s attempt to win a 10-year state…
On February 21, volunteers, local artists, and arts board members will gather at the Fairmont Hotel for the 1998 Gala for the Arts fundraiser for 500 Inc., the nonprofit organization that last year coughed up $350,000 for more than 40 Dallas performing arts groups. Depending on whom you ask, the…
Art, shmart We live in a city that tears down beautiful architecture and replaces it with tanning salons and condom stores, considers its shameless sports heroes “art” (in their case, “non-performance” art), and “boasts” a public school system that, well…you guys have written enough about that. After reading the Dallas…
Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side, once did a cartoon that showed a grizzled old cowpoke lifting a coffeepot from the campfire. Though at first glance both the poke and the pot appear to be standard cattle-drive issue, upon closer inspection the pot has some funny-looking spouts and attachments…
Faced with the single biggest embarrassment in the modern history of their newspaper, top Dallas Morning News editors went to great lengths last week to explain why they had published, then retracted, then reasserted a story about a government eyewitness to sex between the president and a 21-year-old intern. Unfortunately,…
The dog never smells its own DISD board member Don Venable has a tendency to attach himself to nitpicky legal issues like a rabid chihuahua, running, yapping, ripping, and biting till he manages to score a bloody chunk of flesh. Venable has sued the district several times over the years,…
Biting back It was comforting to have “Buzz” confirm it was my fault that “It’s A Bad Deal!” lost by 1,600+ votes [“Winners and whiners,” January 22]. I thought it was a little arrogant of me to assume that responsibility since over 300 people worked in our campaign and over…
Richard Hamburger, Dallas Theater Center’s artistic director, has a taste for the perverse. Maybe that’s why he’s preparing to stage Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s claustrophobic drama about one tormented family’s day of bitter revelation, in the Arts District Theater, DTC’s gigantic downtown space. That’s roughly the artistic…
The courtyard at the new Treymore Apartments in East Dallas was filled with high-profile types–visiting dignitaries, elected officials, land developers–most of whom wouldn’t be caught dead in a subsidized housing project if not for the staged photo-op that kept TV cameras rolling on a hot afternoon last September. The city…
Tanks a lot, Mr. Loncar Tank-driving attorney Brian Loncar doesn’t see the inside of a courtroom that often. After all, as Dallas Observer staff writer Thomas Korosec revealed in his January 9, 1997, cover story “Smash ’em and smile,” Loncar essentially ran a lawsuit mill–where untrained, underpaid staff churned personal…
Black and Hispanic community leaders–at each other’s throats in recent months over the Gonzalez-Harden mess at DISD–are drawing together, very carefully, over a school issue that could really blow the roof off. Both blacks and Hispanics think they may finally be onto the reason why kids of color come out…
Dallas’ richest deadbeat Having just finished reading your extensive article on Vance Miller’s financial “woes” [“Deadbeat,” January 15], this has to be, without a doubt, one of the most egregious examples of upper-class arrogance and refusal to accept responsibility that I have ever heard of. Hell, if the rest of…
On this cold January morning, patches of steam rise from the ground that separates the homes of Charlotte Parkhurst and Mike Rhoads, two Pleasant Grove neighbors who are in the most unfortunate predicament of being stuck with each other. Their homes sit atop the second-highest point in Dallas, a hill…
If the grand plan to rebuild the Trinity River floodway through Dallas ever gets done–a one- to two-billion-dollar package of levees, parks, highways, and ponds–someone should erect an obelisk beside it with the words of Noah Cross. This genially evil character from Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s 1974 movie, says: “Politicians, ugly…
