The sports pages are filled with war metaphors on a daily basis: Quarterbacks throw bombs to receivers, general managers and head coaches congregate in the war room on draft day, a running back explodes through the backfield, a playing field becomes a battleground, and on and on. (And God knows…
It was a snow-covered December in 1995 when President Bill Clinton, visiting Northern Ireland in support of the country’s new and fragile peace process, spoke to a large gathering that had arrived for a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. The president opted to dismiss politics and keep the mood of his…
Long before there was the riddle of Roswell, Texas had its own strange story of the crash of an unidentified flying object and the recovery of its pilot. It happened in the Wise County community of Aurora, west of Fort Worth–a decade before Orville and Henry Wright got their flimsy…
It is a warm and lazy East Texas summer a half century ago that author and former SMU journalism professor C.C. Risenhoover most fondly remembers–long before the 1998 dragging death of a black man named James Byrd Jr. chilled and repulsed the nation and turned the logging community of Jasper…
You would think that if someone were to build the world’s largest zoo in Denton and announce plans to have it open this summer, the public would have noticed by now. It’s hard to be stealthy when you’re moving lions, tigers and elephants into a suburb. It’s even harder when…
Just a FightGirl fight, good thing: Why is it that two women cannot compete without it being called a catfight? (“Catfight!” by Jim Schutze, March 27.) It is completely acceptable when two men do the same thing. Our world expects women to be sweet and polite or at least diplomatic…
If there were a show called CSI: Grandview, this is how one episode would have unfolded. An urgent phone call early Sunday morning wakes Max Courtney, veteran crime scene investigator and forensic scientist. He hurriedly travels south to Johnson County, where the sheriff’s office had made a gruesome discovery. In…
The Mary Poss for Mayor campaign thinks the public doesn’t know the real Laura Miller. Some people in the Miller camp think there is no real Mary Poss. Is this a girl-fight or what? Miller, the very popular incumbent, is rounding out a partial term and hoping to get elected…
SURPRISE, ARIZONA–I think Einar Diaz is laughing at me. I can’t be sure. He’s talking with a pitcher, who also happens to be Latino. They are speaking Spanish. I don’t speak Spanish. I had plenty of opportunities to learn–I “studied” the language in high school, and my father, who is…
If you build it, they’ll be pissed. Dallas hotel owners, already struggling with what one hotel manager describes as the lowest occupancy rates in the city’s history, are none too happy with a proposal being forwarded by some local government officials to use taxpayer money to build a 1,200-room upscale…
Country in crisis Local radio stations have stopped playing the pro-war, pro-drinking hit “Getting Bombed in Nashville” after the singer, country-music sensation and native Dallasite Gage Hawkins, made anti-war comments to reporters following his show at the Gypsy Tea Room on Saturday. Hawkins, like Toby Keith (“The Angry American”), had…
A youth group that calls itself the Young Conservatives of Texas is taking some credit for the recent firing of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram business writer who called them “anti-intellectual little fascists” in an e-mail. The missive upset the group, though Buzz isn’t sure why. Maybe they didn’t like being…
DPD BluesDon’t miss that mess: I am glad there is still one place in Dallas that writes the truth about the Dallas Police Department (“Ticket to Ride,” by Thomas Korosec, March 13). That rag, The Dallas Morning News, never puts anything in their paper about what is really going on…
Texans have to bear the burden of a number of stereotypes: Texas men are brash, gun-loving bubbas; the women are over made-up, big-haired shallow shoppers; we’re all materialistic, right-wing, anti-enviro religious freaks. In reality, none of those descriptions is more than 60 or 70 percent true, tops. Still, the tarring…
Auto racing tycoon Bruton Smith stood in a massive parking lot helping direct traffic away from his brand-new Texas Motor Speedway six years ago. He wasn’t happy about it. The first-ever NASCAR race at the speedway just north of Fort Worth had arrived in a mess and ended the same…
As anyone who has watched the grave, opening sequence to Law & Order knows, police and prosecutors work hand in glove gathering criminal evidence and presenting it in court. If the heads of those agencies are on the outs, it’s akin to a bad business partnership, or maybe a bad…
Saw a story in the paper. Local sports columnist wrote a piece from the road. Lots of punctuation. Very straightforward. Very punchy. Very daily newspaper. I used to be a daily guy. Didn’t agree with me. I decide to give it another shot. I resolve to cover the men’s Big…
Albert Maysles does not give out awards. He accepts them frequently, all those accolades for a lifetime’s worth of achievement, including immortal films made with his late brother David (Gimme Shelter, Salesman, Grey Gardens) and others (Primary, LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton). But Maysles has never before lent his…
Because We CareThis stinks: As a longtime reader of the Dallas Observer, I have learned to take most of the sensationalism written by Jim Schutze in stride. I continue to read the Schutze brand of speculative journalism week after week because it’s entertaining in a way that is not unlike…
In August, Sergeant Raul Rios called it quits. He couldn’t stand working in the Dallas Police Department anymore. The 21-year department veteran says the immediate cause of his leaving was his surprise transfer from supervising a dozen patrol officers on the streets of Northwest Dallas to a graveyard shift in…
See, this is why I never do stories on Channel 5. Because the station sucks. OK, maybe that’s too harsh. It usually sucks. Most nights on most stories, it offers nothing by way of news value or entertainment. With its overhyped “breaking news” segments, breathless anchors (Mike Snyder, holla!) and…
Last month, the Dallas Central Appraisal District proudly announced that its new self-designed “state-of-the-art mass appraisal system,” known as MARS, was finally running. It had been a four-year effort to update the district’s systems that had cost upward of $5.5 million. Officials say the system is nearly at full speed…
