My, my, my. I know the fashion is for political folks to bash Hollywood these days, but if you’ll permit, I’d prefer to bash Washington for a bit. Sometimes this place strikes me as politically toxic. It’s practically radioactive, just pulsing out all this conflict and controversy and clawing down…
It was the dawn of a new day at Dallas City Hall. The city’s freshly minted, first African-American mayor–Ron “the-blame-game-is-over” Kirk–had finally slipped into the lead chair in the city’s council chambers. It was his first day actually running a council meeting–his first real opportunity to seize his electoral mandate…
Telling it like it is Thank you again to Laura Miller (no relation to me), who is truly the best investigative reporter in the Metroplex, for her article in the June 5 issue, “None of your business? Closed council sessions scorn open-meetings law.” The residents in District 12 (Max Wells’…
Canned classical music falls lifelessly amid the rows of empty red velvet seats of the Majestic Theatre. And as the curtain opens to reveal a stage set that looks like it was borrowed from a high school drama department, the applause is weak. As weak, some would say, as the…
It was 1986, and Tarrant County Judge Mike Moncrief wanted a keepsake–something by which he could remember his just-deceased grandfather, the legendary Texas wildcatter W.A. “Monty” Moncrief. W.A. “Tex” Moncrief Jr., Mike’s uncle and the executor of Monty’s estate, allowed Mike and his brother to go through some of the…
Call it that Deep Ellum entrepreneurial spirit, but some creative street people have seized a money-making opportunity that lies in city parking lots. Subsequently, some unsuspecting visitors to the city’s Left Bank have been more than a little put out upon returning to the lots to find their cars–and the…
An Irving artist and art instructor whose “penis painting” outraged Irving’s mayor took down the painting, but only after the show in which it was exhibited ended. Laray Polk, whose fight with Irving leaders was recounted in a May 25 Observer news story, decided not to remove from the Irving…
Kay is the NRA A few weeks back, millionaire Dallas Democrat Richard Fisher publicly challenged his old nemesis, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, to follow the lead of former President George Bush and resign her much-touted membership in the National Rifle Association. Neither Fisher nor Hutchison’s constituents ever got an answer…
On the phone from New York, Wick Allison wanted to offer kind words about the June issue of D magazine, the monthly he founded in 1974 and plans to return to next month as publisher and editor-in-chief. He wanted to be charitable because Chris Tucker, editor of the magazine, whom…
In praise of secrecy Stop the presses! The Morning News has published one of the most wrongheaded and dishonest editorials in the history of Dallas journalism–and believe BeloWatch, given the tenor of the News editorial page over the ages, that’s saying a lot. Headlined “Arena talks–Garcia’s response is out of…
Last February, Rick Finlan–taxpayer, voter, idealist–tried to go to a meeting about the proposed new sports arena. The early morning get-together was between select city officials and Dallas Mavericks owner Don Carter. It was being held in a conference room in Reunion Arena, and when Finlan walked in about 8:30…
Sifting deeper into the rubble of the 74th session here in Austin, one finds several nominees for Worst Bill of the Session beyond the previously nominated “takings” bill, also known as “property rights.” One law we need desperately is truth-in-bill-naming. One more piece of special-interest, greed-head legislation called the Something…
No justice, no peace The actions of Justice of the Peace Thomas Jones [Laura Miller columns, May 25, June 1, and June 8] seem to illustrate perfectly the saying, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Sir Dalberg, 1834-1902). I think his arrogant disregard for justice may warrant…
Two and a half years ago, Sonya Kennedy moved from an apartment in North Dallas to a house with a huge backyard in Ferris, a town 20 miles south of Dallas. She made the move for one reason: to give her two dogs room to romp and roam. “They were…
Do you know the Muffin Man? Audiences who attend radio station-sponsored film screenings wait in line for hours to pick up the free passes, figuring they’ll get more than a movie in return: a hyped-up crowd and, if they luck out, tie-in gewgaws. But when KEGL disc jockey Russ Martin…
OK, here’s the score card from the Texas Legislature: Environment–screwed. Consumers–screwed. Legal and civil rights–screwed. The Senate–a whore’s dream. The House–some leadership, but mostly outgunned minorities, not enough to stop “local control” of schools. It was a baby version of what’s happening in Washington, except there’s no President Clinton to…
Fowl sense of humor Writer P.B. Miller either knows something I don’t know or has a really unusual sense of humor. Last time I checked, Anthony Burgess wrote the novel A Clockwork Orange [“Thug life,” May 25], but Burgess Meredith played the role of the Penguin in the old “Batman”…
It was a cold, gray morning. A Sunday–they never have funerals on Sunday. The Reverend Gregory Spencer, Fort Worth’s renowned preacher, undertaker, and entrepreneur, opened the back door of his Eastwood mortuary, which doubles as his home. And as he looked outside, he found himself staring straight into the barrel…
It was a sultry, moonlit night in July, on a back road in rural Archer County, and Gail Bennett thought it would never end. Gail and her ex-husband, Tony Marsh Bennett, had been fighting all day, and Tony’s rage roiled into the evening hours. This time, he was enraged that…
Star fever If your only sources of information are the Morning News’ gossip columns, then bloated Hollywood character actor and part-time Dallas resident Gary Busey’s spectacular May 5 drug overdose in Malibu, California, probably came as a huge surprise. While Busey has been a prime source of copy for inveterate…
Irving just doesn’t get it, says Laray Polk, a Dallas artist whose mural-size drawing adorns a wall of the suburb’s city-funded arts center. In her 8-by-20-foot work, titled “They’re calling for a Flowery War!” there are heroic-size male figures, snippets of a pop song written in Chaucerian English, a giant…
New York investment advisor has been arrested for illegal receipt of funds from the Libyan government, in dealings that involved millionaire Dallas developer Trammell Crow and members of his family. Federal authorities last week charged William Bodine, 51, a longtime friend of Crow’s son-in-law, Henry Billingsley. He is being held…
