News

Blowing smoke David Pasztor’s article on Texas Industries’ participation in the WFAA-TV “Companies Who Care” program [“Companies that whore,” August 15] bought into our opponents’ ongoing misinformation campaign about our operations in Midlothian. Pasztor did call me to ask about the television spots. However, he didn’t ask about our operations…

Since Seasons in Hell was published in June, I’ve done about 30 sports talk-radio programs, and the question that surfaced on almost all of them was this: Why, after more than 20 years, did you finally get around to writing this book? Usually, my explanation involved the notion that some…

John Battaglia was riffling through some billing invoices on his desk three years ago when he noticed something odd. A certified public accountant, Battaglia was among the troops assembled by the Resolution Trust Corporation to pick through the wreckage of the country’s savings and loan disaster. Three years in the…

The man who tried to convince Dallas parents he would build an academically rigorous private school for African-American children has instead landed in jail for fraud. Fred Hampton, whose Dallas Preparatory School was slated to open last week, was arrested in Houston August 8 on an outstanding warrant from Milwaukee…

Bloodsuckers In a recent Texas Observer (no relation to the Dallas Observer, to the relief of both sides), Dallas-based writer Rod Davis lamented that Texas is becoming a tough place to make a living as a serious writer. Rod said a lot of other important things about the “monopolistic tendencies…

Last Saturday, Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb was having one of those moments–and he’s had plenty this year–when he seemed flummoxed, flabbergasted, bewildered, and befuddled about the sensitive subject at hand. “This broadsided me, this one did,” he said uncomfortably. “It surely did.” He was, he said, very sad about…

Natural selection Thomas Korosec’s article [“Honky-tonk from hell,” August 8] was just what I needed. The idiots who drink and drive and then crash deserve nothing. Drink, drive, crash, burn, sue. Die you redneck white trash, die. As for the unlucky soul who got run down in the parking lot,…

It’s 5 a.m. on a Wednesday. Bobby Jack Pack opens his eighth can of Dr Pepper and slips it into a mint-green coozie. It’s still a few hours before Bobby–who keeps the hours of a B-movie vampire–will go to sleep. And today, Kelly Higgins, his writing partner, has shown up…

A baseball cap covers the closely cropped, strawberry-blond hair of Marc Alvarez, and a Nike logo pendant dangles from the gold chain around his neck. Baggy jean shorts hover below his hips, drooping toward his leather high-tops with their flashy stripes. Top to bottom, he looks more like a teen-ager…

Bartlett who? Sheesh, the promotions folks at D magazine, like most of the city, apparently don’t read D either. We were led to this unsurprising conclusion by their new bus ad campaign, which poses the question: “Where’s our arena?” Had they read D–official magazine for the rich and callous–about a…

How much is the good name of WFAA-TV Channel 8 worth? Apparently, not even six figures. The going price appears to be $30,000, or at least that’s what environmental activist Jim Schermbeck was told when he complained to Channel 8 management about an advertisement that the station is airing in…

I really did think my interest in Michael Irvin was over. I’d attended his trial day after day with three dozen other reporters from around the country. I’d heard more than I ever wanted to know about the drugs and the girls and the vibrating sex toys. I’d marveled, along…

Ditch the cummerbunds Good timing, Dallas Observer! I just had received an invitation to this year’s Black Tie event–complete with a set of postcards for me to mail to others in order to increase ticket sales. After reading your article [“Black Tie winners,” July 25], I decided to decline on…

Sheldon Pearl is edgy. As the new school year draws near, the East Dallas teen-ager can’t seem to shake the anxiety that knots his neck muscles and clutches at his stomach. He tried to keep calm during the summer, spending several weeks, as he has in the past, looking after…

When last we checked in with Mica England and Ceslie Armstrong, founders of defunct Vary magazine [“Vary messy business,” August 1], both women were strenuously defending their reputations against a Dallas County Court-issued judgment ordering them to pay nearly $40,000 to a graphic designer who claimed he was never paid…

Virtually every popular source of personal financial advice repeats the retirement mantra of the 1990s–sock money away in some form of tax-sheltered plan, like a 401(k). Nobody talks about what happens if the boss decides to sink the retirement fund into a speculative piece of flood-plain land, and then sues…

Comeback kid It’s got to be the most amazing public-relations coup since Mike Tyson’s comeback. Dallas-based country singer Ty Herndon is surfing a tide of popularity with the release of his second album, Living in a Moment, and his career couldn’t look brighter. Hard to believe a short year ago…

Black Tie dilettanti Brava! Ann Zimmerman. Thanks for putting into print what I, as well as many others, have been saying for years [“Black tie winners,” July 25]. As a gay man, I am not surprised–and no less outraged–at how the Black Tie Dinner operates. Elitism knows no sexual orientation…

For more than an hour now, the nice Jewish doctor from New Jersey has stood before a group of 17 people in the sunlit Horizon Unitarian Universalist Church in Carrollton, explaining why he–a urologist whose sole claim to fame is a cure for female incontinence–should be the man to replace…

A gray granite marker put up by the Texas Historical Society stands in a weed-choked field a dozen miles west of Tyler. It is the only reminder of what happened here. If Ruth Smith had her way, the world would know about the betrayal and murder of the legendary Cherokee…

For nearly a year, Dallas graphic designer Steve Cox tried to collect what he was owed for helping produce Vary, a fat and glossy–though very short-lived–magazine featuring high-fashion photo spreads, interviews with supermodels and famous chefs, and slick writing on raves, body piercing, and all manner of pop culture trends…