To do our part to conserve energy as Dallas streaks toward 1980-level awfulness, we’re going to cut the lights on the two Observer signs that adorn our Oak Lawn headquarters. So when your alarm clock is still on when you wake up tomorrow morning, you’ll know who to thank. We…
Last week, our friends across the office at DC9 introduced us to a new way to creep on people in the Twitterverse: Undetweetable, an invention by professor Dr. Dean Terry and grad student Bradley Griffith, both of the Emerging Media + Communication program at the University of Texas at Dallas. Undetweetable…
That sure happened fast. Behold, the Three Stages of Lawyering Up: Stage 1: A perceived injustice occurs — in this case, a July 29 letter from attorneys representing the Diocese of Dallas and Kevin Farrell, the recently installed, Dublin-born Bishop imported from a titular see in Algeria, ordering the Calumet…
With each passing day this week, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas sets a new record for peak demand — and today is no different. One day after hinting that rolling blackouts may be headed our way, ERCOT sends word that at 2:50 this afternoon it initiated Energy Emergency Alert…
In the end, council members Delia Jasso, Dwaine Caraway and Scott Griggs skipped Mayor Mike’s shindig to sit amongst the public at last night’s hearing in front of the city’s gas drilling task force. And they were surrounded: The council members were joined by about 100 people who addressed many…
I know we had some fun earlier in the week with Dallas County’s stash of for-sale gas masks, which has climbed to $50 since last we checked. But I see the county’s also auctioning off quite a few donkeys, mules and horses — all of which, says Dallas County Sheriff’s…
10. Impressed yesterday that — on a players day off — 6th-round draft choice and receiver Dwayne Harris was running sprints and routes. All by his lonesome. 9. Mat McBriar isn’t exactly Rob Ryan, but he’s departing pudgy and heading toward fat. McBriar pulled his hamstring running in last Wednesday’s conditioning…
After much talk about his civil liberties and all the spiritual good his clubs were offering young adults and couples, Wyakie Glenn Hudson, who operated DarkSide and The Playground, agreed to shut down both locations. His approach was significantly softened as he addressed reporters outside this morning’s hearing at the…
Speaking of downtown fun …I see on the City Plan Commission’s agenda for tomorrow that downtown ultra-lounge Plush is hoping to get its specific use permit reupped — and that the CPC, at the moment, is recommending denial. Long story short: Its two-year SUP expired in September of last year…
Behind closed doors this afternoon, the back-to-work Dallas City Council will be briefed by city attorneys on a handful of lawsuits, all of which we’re quite familiar with: City of Dallas v. Museum of the American Railroad (which, last we looked, is close to being settled); Marcus Wood, et al…
This is what happens when, for the first time in a long time, the Cowboys have no sexy new faces at training camp. Seems every player Dallas signs has already played with Dallas. The hottest topic in San Antonio is … Tony Romo Dez Bryant Jay Ratliff’s weight the Dallas…
Redistricting Commissioners Elizabeth Jones and Domingo Garcia, who have tough and thankless jobs for which they aren’t paid a penny, are displeased with me at the moment for nay-saying their incomplete maps. Garcia chided me in the comments, writing that it appears I’ve graduated from “the Rupert Murdock school of…
The Titanic. Waterworld. Joey Galloway as a Cowboy. The Dallas Wave. And now, finding his sheepish spot among the worst debuts in the history of ever: Mike Adams, Texas Ranger. Ugliest opening act on our baseball team since waaay back, well, actually, since Cliff Lee stunk it up by allowing three…
By the end of the day, the sanitation workers who pick up after downtown and South Dallas will have started and stopped their truck around 500 times, pausing each time to heave gray plastic bins of stinking, dripping trash in the compactor. It’s 109 degrees outside, but to the “throwers,”…
My Exposition Park apartment has an urbanely picturesque view of David’s Garage, an auto repair shop whose gated parking lot has recently been packed with cars like the screen of a Tetris game. As I make my coffee, I’ll notice the garage doors roll open, and sometimes, when I go…
Earlier this summer we told you about how state lawmakers slyly tucked into the school-finance bill a new law requiring illegal immigrants to prove their legal status before receiving a driver’s license. Although civil libertarians and certain pinko newspaper guys decried the legislation as unnecessary, it actually contained some protections…
Still, long after we’ve realized that humans are no match for heat and that even football players aren’t indestructable super heroes, people are dying on football fields. Last week 14-year-old Tyquan Brantley collapsed and died in South Carolina and yesterday in Plano a football assistant coach died, apparently of heat exhaustion…
Yesterday Bloomberg noted that high-end American hotels are being sold to buyers from Hong King, Singapore and China in the hopes of catering to “a growing number of affluent Asians traveling abroad.” Among those sold: the Rosewood Crescent Hotel and the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, now in the possession…
Reason I missed Sanitation Services head Mary Nix last week was because she was on a plane bound for California — Roseville, specifically, site of a “resource recovery” facility that converts trash into renewable energy. Which means … get ready … we’re about to talk about flow control, the proposed…
A Friend of Unfair Park directs our attention to Boing Boing, which yesterday pointed out that you can buy a replica of the Texas School Book Depository made of pewter courtesy something called InFocusTech. (Which prompted this comment: “It’s a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, and handsomely electroplated in antique…
For a couple of anxious minutes last Friday the Cowboys thought they’d signed Nnamdi Asomugha. Then on Monday for a curious second we thought they’d acquired Bears’ receiver/returner Devin Hester. Huh is right. DallasCowboys.com sent out a text/Tweet yesterday announcing “Cowboys Sign Hester!” Hey, look, we all make mistakes. I make…
One month ago, Jim broke down exactly how Kathy Nealy spent the $270,000 paid her by Mike Rawlings’s campaign: $50,000 to phone-bank workers, $15,000 on “religious outreach,” $65,000 on the so-called “walk program” and so on. A few days later it was revealed that Rawlings, whose campaign offices were visited…
