Da Bomb!Let’s roll: Finally–my voter’s registration will count for something! I’m awake! Take me to your leader! How can I help? So instead of boring you with what you already know about our wonderful city council (“Taxpayers, Arise!” July 11), let me just say I’m ready to do my part…
Tom Gilley had been through it before: the termination, the humiliation, the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that something just wasn’t right. At 52, he was fired as regional marketing director for an employee benefits company, discarded like so much spoiled meat along with four other senior…
A hot, dusty Rio Grande Valley day gives way to twilight as people sit in their yards, shaded by wilted mesquite trees. Smoke from outdoor grills hangs in the air, children choose sides for street games and laughing toddlers dance under the spray of a garden hose. A couple of…
After racking up an impressive record of about a dozen wins and no losses defending low-level Dallas porn-store clerks accused of violating anti-obscenity laws, lawyer Andrew Chatham’s winning streak is tapering off. That’s not because he’s losing, mind you, but because the cases appear to be drying up. That’s called…
Ice AgeAll of a sudden it sucks: I just finished reading your story on Rob (“Ice Ice Maybe,” July 4). As a longtime fan of Rob’s, it was nice to read something written about Ice that wasn’t filled with hidden ridicule and sarcasm. Twelve years ago I was winning talent…
Being somewhat of a public forum, Buzz receives something on the order of 11,000 e-mails a day, conservatively speaking. We choose not to share these with you, since most are for porn, pleas to help Nigeria transfer $25 million in government money, offers to increase our ejaculate by 300 percent…
Let’s start with a round of Trivial Pursuit: What year is it? The voters of Dallas have recently approved a multimillion-dollar bond issue to tame the Trinity River, which threatens to flood large swaths of the city. The work has already begun, but some civic groups are grumbling that the…
In January, Public Broadcasting Service President Pat Mitchell bemoaned the decreased financial support PBS was battling in the wake of September 11. “Corporate philanthropy has all but disappeared,” she said. “We don’t know, long-term, how any of this is going to impact us, but we’re feeling some of it right…
Raise Taxes NowCostly but nice: Mary Poss, Ed Oakley and Alan Walne are just voting for and trying to better our city with costly but nice development projects (“Cain’t Say No,” June 13). The fact is that Dallas City Hall needs to raise our taxes, period. We now seem to…
In many respects, Son Nguyen is a typical practitioner of Cao Dai, a Vietnamese religion that bubbled up from the spirit world in 1926. His voice is gentle but firm. He is dignified, yet relaxed. He wears a bright white tunic and a pleated black headdress. He is a refugee…
More than half a century has passed since Harrison Ocie Jones was seized in the night from his sharecropper’s cabin in North Texas and beaten to near death by a group of white men supposedly trying to collect a debt. The story goes that after they beat him, they dumped…
Betty Culbreath-Lister insists there’s no hidden agenda, no friend she’s supposed to snag a job for and that she “ain’t mad at nobody.” But the outspoken Dallas County official’s decision to run for the Dallas school board against longtime trustee Hollis Brashear has caught some by surprise. She may not…
Business My WayDemon Laura: I am fortunate among those who have had their reputations gratuitously trashed by the Dallas Observer: I can rely on the city of Dallas Ethics Advisory Commission to pass fair judgment on the slanders of bar owner-cum-victim Robert Ramirez (“Code Breaker,” June 13). Will Rose Farley…
Imagine this: A local purveyor of Serious Journalism begins publishing ads of a sexually and commercially suspect nature, offering “private shows” and “private pleasures” and featuring photos of women with provocative “hey, sailor” grins. And it’s not us. Well, it’s not just us. It’s The Dallas Morning News, too. Shocked,…
The winding footpath that once connected the next-door homes of the two men is now overgrown, lost in a tangle of waist-high weeds and the shadows of the ancient oaks that green this serene Cedar Creek Lake area. Tom Cherry, wandering his back yard with his dogs, points toward the…
Lois Finkelman had questions about Dallas’ residential recycling program before last month. Now, both the city councilwoman and the city’s auditor are, you might say, a lot more curious. Just how does a driver make two trips across the scales in the same truck with a purportedly new 2,000-pound load…
Dallas Observer staff writer Charles Siderius was named Texas print journalist of the year in the Houston Press Club’s recent Lone Star Awards, a statewide journalism contest. Siderius finished ahead of two finalists from the Observer’s sister paper, the Houston Press, for the best portfolio of stories by a reporter…
From start to finish, there was something carnival-like about the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which gathered in Dallas last week to draft a national policy regarding sexual abuse of youths by clerics. For one, members of the media outnumbered the 252 bishops and cardinals by 2-to-1, and the entire…
The Last MeowFunny is good: Please bring back “Sack of Kittens” right away. You still haven’t shredded my band! And more stuff like the Snoop Dogg preview and Jeff Liles’ Danzig thing (Out & About, June 6), too! Funny is good. Funny is good. Funny is good. Funny makes me…
It’s late on a Wednesday night in a warehouse district west of Dallas. Dozens of teen-agers face each other across a wide road. Between them, headlights from two muscle cars shine white in their faces. The snaking group presses closer into the lanes while unmuffled engines growl and clatter as…
Robert Ramirez, a successful artist and a family man, wants the same thing other business owners in the Bishop Arts District in North Oak Cliff already have: a chance to open a full-service restaurant and capture the dollars of local residents, who clamor for more dining options in the burgeoning…
Maryln Schwartz is ticked. The 20-year lifestyle columnist at The Dallas Morning News, who was granted “permanent medical leave” from the paper after acknowledging multiple mistakes in her columns, is upset at an item in last week’s Dallas Observer that suggests she made up names and sources in her columns…
