X’s and Big O’s With a nod to Spy, Buzz offers the world’s first separated at birth advertisement. On the left, an ad from Texas Monthly for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Grapefest, a wine festival so overwhelmingly wholesome it includes “activities for the whole family.” On the right, we have…
An incentive clause? Regarding Laura Miller’s exceptional piece [“The dope bowl,” July 18]: Once a “player” signs a contract involving millions of dollars in exchange for jockstrap-clad performances on a playing field, the “player” immediately becomes a role model–like it or not. It is extremely doubtful that professional sports contracts…
For all those years of battle, one war story stands out. The Scrabble board was tight, so tight. But after 10 minutes of tournament play, Michael Chitwood had his opponent right where he wanted her: stuck and grasping for a place to go. No matter that the gray-haired woman across…
Sorry excuse for “sorry” District Judge Manny Alvarez told The Dallas Morning News that Michael Irvin’s apology “seemed sincere.” The News itself referred to the now-famous apology as “profuse.” Is Buzz the only one around here who spent enough hard time in the fourth grade to know a crossed-fingers-behind-the-back “I’m…
Don Maison was worried. As president of AIDS Services of Dallas, the only local agency providing housing to indigent persons suffering from the HIV virus, Maison this spring found himself facing two problems. The waiting list for his agency’s handsomely renovated garden apartments in Oak Cliff was growing. And the…
Touchy, touchy Regarding Mary Brown Malouf’s reluctantly favorable review of Vitto’s restaurant in Oak Cliff [“Cliff hanger,” July 11]: Having been born and raised in Oak Cliff, I was amused to see that the North Dallas paranoia, fear, and blatant prejudice against Oak Cliff is still alive and sick. I…
For months, Lincoln High School’s librarian, Helen “Bobbie” Welsh, had struggled to operate a four-person library with the help of a single assistant. The stress had begun to take its toll:She was suffering from debilitating back and neck spasms and bouts of anxiety. But on February 19, 1996, things got…
Gee, could it have been…the lesbian sex show? Or was it all those previous sex parties? The cocaine-laced marijuana these folks liked to smoke? Or the strip search of Rachelle Smith–the one where Michael Irvin ordered someone to explore her orifices for microphones right before he told her what to…
As much as state District Judge Manny Alvarez loved the press coverage he got from presiding over the year’s hottest celeb trial, he didn’t much like press people. Apparently, if the camera isn’t trained on the judge’s indisputably cute face, the media just isn’t doing much of anything that’s important…
It’s almost noon on a hot Saturday morning in July, and the professional photographer who volunteered to teach Artist Thornton’s photography workshop at the South Dallas Cultural Center is more than an hour late. A roomful of about 20 eager youngsters, many clutching rolls of photographic negatives, stare expectantly at…
Public-radio regulars endured the usual whining last month during KERA-FM 90.1’s June pledge drive. But this time, the pleas for donations were slightly shriller. KERA announcers and staff members told listeners they were worried because donations have fallen off since the station revamped its format, switching to all talk and…
Friends and business associates of Henry Billingsley say the son-in-law of developer Trammell Crow has always relished the sheer drama and mystery of high-stakes deal-making. “Henry, intellectually, likes to cross swords,” Randy Dumas, a London investment banker, once told the Dallas Observer. Last week, Billingsley made what could be regarded…
Prayers of trees are answered One of the greatest threats to literacy has, like a bad virus, spread to the Internet. That, of course, would be vanity publishing. Since Gutenberg, self-proclaimed novelists, poets, and pundits have paid to have their loopy thoughts on travel, politics, and beloved schnauzers bound into…
Snakes bite I explained clearly to Miriam Rozen, when she asked me to cooperate with her story [“Hot product,” June 27], that it was common knowledge that, at the very least, the Observer is “fast and loose” with facts. But, after listening to her assertions to the contrary, I “opened…
At 8:15 on a Sunday morning in June–Father’s Day, specifically–families pack the St. Luke Community United Methodist Church, where the Rev. Zan Holmes presides over one of the largest African-American congregations in Dallas. Three Palestinian children sit in a front, left pew of the church, looking bored and tired during…
Customers wandering into VVV Records last week found one of Dallas’ more venerable music stores in its death throes. Tables were cluttered with merchandise and five-for-one specials, and price tags hung from everything that could be hauled away. There was a distinctive smell in the air, a musty odor of…
Daisy Joe divides the world simply. You are either on the side of good, or the side of evil. You either do right, or you do wrong. And if you do wrong, she will come for you with a picket sign. As director of Black Citizens for Justice, Law and…
Will it call collect? In another sign of the collapse of American civilization, Buzz received an information packet on a new communications service being offered locally by The Computer Services Group in Dallas. What’s offered is a high-tech solution to that time-consuming, tedious, not to mention incredibly annoying, task of…
Chez canard Mary Malouf’s review of Chez Gerard [“French, seriously,” June 27] is hard to take seriously: “You have to cultivate your relationship with this restaurant to truly enjoy it.” Let’s see–they overlooked her reservation, she and her guests received inattentive service, and she had to track down her check…
The first time I saw David Rivera, he was standing behind the lipstick-smudged glass of a jail visiting room, head bowed as if in prayer. Guards had led the 38-year-old Fort Worth printer there from Tank 30, Unit 59D–better known as the “pervert pod.” Through the glass I noted Rivera’s…
Mark Linnear Hays sat beside his defense attorney in federal court two weeks ago, arms folded across his chest, face drawn and sullen. So far, it had not been a good day. It was halfway into his trial–U.S. vs. Hays–and a string of forensics experts had spent the morning testifying…
Loe blow Passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own is a basic taboo among writers, yet it’s amazing how casually transgressions are tolerated at newspapers, including, apparently, The Dallas Morning News. An allegation of intellectual theft has been brought to the attention of the Observer by Stephen…
