Mommy’s little angel

You were right about God, Marshall. He is a Good God. And you, you there, with imagination in your eyes And hope forever forwards in your soul, you are A Good Person. You are a human being and isn’t it exciting to be one? Isn’t it glorious this life God…

Idiot box

Dallas Community Television’s studios usually don’t get busy until after 5 p.m., when people get off their real jobs and turn to shooting, producing, and editing Dallas’ public access TV fare. On a recent Friday evening, El Centro College student Vernon Hadnot was in one editing room, using computer graphics…

Critic’s circle

It’s Oscar time. Everyone wants to be a critic. On Thursday evenings at the Starbucks on Northwest Highway near Preston Road, for the price of a cup of java, everyone can do just that: voice their cinematic opinions nonstop for 90 minutes as Gary Cogill, the film critic for WFAA-Channel…

Buzz

The new Mod Squad Last week, a group of cops went to the city council to ask whether it would please pay Dallas police officers wages competitive with such crime-ridden hot spots as Plano. This week, the cops aren’t playing quite as nice. The Dallas Police Patrolman’s Union has posted…

Family man

“He called me a little asshole, a crybaby, and I backed up, and he picked up a table in front of me and moved it and pinned me against the wall and said I was a motherfucker, and I ran, and he hit me in the back of the head…

Bloodhounds

For the two ex-cons accused of kidnapping and murdering missing atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her two children, the “South Pacific getaway” defense may just have been torpedoed by three familiar letters: DNA. In a motion filed recently in Austin, federal authorities say they have genetic evidence to support their…

Letters to the Editor

Walk in my shoes I just got home from a rough day in the classroom. Earlier this morning, I attended a meeting about the tests that we’ll be giving to students in our Pre-K to 3 school. We teachers have been under immense pressure from the district regarding the new…

Bench press

Nearly a hundred lawyers filled the Routh Street Brewery’s private party room one hot evening last summer. The faux rustic setting — hewn limestone walls, antler-trimmed cabinets, and weathered rafters — echoed with the clink of beer steins, the hum of conversation. In attendance were many of the city’s top…

Queen Crank

In Sharon Boyd’s Net world, a scruffy cast of characters mumbles and bumbles its way through every aspect of the city’s affairs. There’s “You Go To Hell” Kirk, “Mayor Pre-Tend” Poss, “Send Me Some Money” Loza, “Princess Velveeta” Lill, “Pretty Barbara” Mallory Caraway, “Brain-Dead” Thornton-Reese. The cartoonish fools act in…

Catch as catch can

Working homicide for the last 20 years, Dallas Detective Jesse Briseno was all too familiar with the pattern — a dead body, a thorough investigation, and an air-tight case, yet the prime suspect gets away with murder. Too often that murderer was a Mexican national living and killing in Dallas…

Buzz

Author, author Chris Beamon, the Ponder seventh-grader who landed in the pokey in Denton County last fall after writing a Halloween essay that described shooting a teacher and students, has moved beyond Big Chief notebooks to having his work appear in a tonier rag, Harper’s magazine. (True quote from a…

Love unlimited

Rudy V is a voice. Soft, warm, throaty, the cadence so deliberate and sensual, you’d think this man was born to tell bedtime stories. The naughty kind. When you hear that voice rolling over the airwaves, you envision a playboy. And if that is where your imagination takes you, you…

Impossible dreamer

Bobby Wightman-Cervantes insists on explaining himself, purposefully slowing the rapid-fire patter of his New York twang to make himself understood. Yes, just two years ago, he ran for Dallas County district judge as the first openly gay Republican to seek that office. And yes, he is now running for the…

Divided they stand

On the grass in front of the Dallas Independent School District headquarters last week, a small group of school support staff workers protested before an almost equally large gaggle of reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen. About 10 workers and their children, members of Local 100 of the Service Employees International…

Buzz

By-buyout D magazine got at least this much right about columnist John Anders’ split from The Dallas Morning News: He left behind a high salary from the daily, and he’s moving with his wife, News columnist Helen Bryant, to Austin. The question, which D purports to answer in its March…

Tapped out

Some six months ago, the inmates confined inside the Carswell federal prison in south Fort Worth got a rare glimmer of hope when they were presented with a unique proposition: If an artist could come to the prison and teach them, they were asked, what type of artist-teacher would they…

Letters

Jailbreak Thanks to Mark Donald for letting me whip him up into an empathetic froth so he, too, came to the defense of my clients (“Gimme shelter,” February 10). The women from Yugoslavia in the Dallas County jail were released the same afternoon that his article was published in the…

Letters

Leavin’ on a jet plane Just a note to let you know that I have always looked forward to reading anything written by Christina Rees (“Cheers and tallyho,” February 17). I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the Dallas visual-art scene is in short supply of writers who inject…

Hot and bothered

It’s close to midnight at Baby Dolls Saloon, a popular topless club north of Love Field near Bachman Lake, and the place is electrified. Dancers in nothing but g-strings gyrate on elevated stages as young and middle-aged men ogle them from below and shell out a steady stream of dollar…

Poor vs. poorer

Tim Lott stood before a seething crowd of East Dallas homeowners and residents of the Roseland Homes public housing project, trying to show them the big picture. In one hand he held a diagram of the Dallas Housing Authority’s plan for a new and improved Roseland. In the other he…

Air homophobia

Southwest Airlines, rated last month by Fortune magazine as the nation’s second-best place to work, may be less than gay-friendly. Both gay and straight employees of the Dallas-based airline were outraged in December when a vitriolic letter in the company pilots union newsletter blasted a corporate proposal to offer domestic-partner…

Buzz

Mission improbable OK, class, here’s another Buzz pop quiz: Give us three words that best describe The Dallas Morning News’ editorial content without using a synonym for “boring.” Time’s up. The correct answer, according to the daily’s recent in-house editorial newsletter News news — kindly faxed to us from an…