The municipal motto of Northfield, Minnesota, is “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” Honest. Last year, they had a contest to think up a new motto and, after some civic thought, decided to keep “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” So as we veer rhetorically toward the apocalypse, as various social prophets mutter direly…
What happened to ‘Dilbert’ One day it was there, in its usual, reassuring place, between “Wizard of Id” and “Curtis.” The next day, it was gone, wiped from Dallas nerds’ essential reality without so much as an explanatory word. BeloWatch is speaking, of course, about “Dilbert,” the popular cartoon chronicling…
The women at the post office cringed every time they saw Ella Patterson heading their way. The busty, energetic teacher-turned-author would arrive at West Dallas’ central station lugging cartloads of her book, Will the Real Women…Please Stand Up!, packed one-by-one in red-and-white overnight envelopes. The postal workers just saw packages…
When Cloyce Box was alive, three things seemed destined to come his way: money, notoriety, and lawsuits. Box may have left behind his millions–and his reputation as a freewheeling businessman–when he died in 1993. But the lawsuits just keep on coming. The former football star’s estate is on the hook…
On target The most insightful Morning News coverage of the city’s $175 million bond program came not from the paper’s on-the-team news coverage, but from veteran columnist Phil Seib. Seib, an SMU instructor and political consultant who writes for the “Viewpoints” page and has written for the News for 15…
How do you spell m-a-y-o-r? Thanks to former vice president Dan Quayle, we know spelling isn’t a prerequisite for elected office. But shouldn’t a candidate at least know how to spell his own name? Dallas mayoral candidate Domingo Garcia found himself in an embarrassing situation last week when his television…
By nightfall last Tuesday, the Ambassador Room of the Regal Row Ramada Inn held more empty chairs than crowd. The rumor of television cameras had scared a fair number of regulars away. On ordinary Tuesdays, the unadorned ballroom is packed with as many as 300 true believers. But in the…
Sometimes there is solace in having the right words to use, in being able to call something exactly what it is. I would like to thank President Clinton for the phrase “evil cowards.” Evil cowards killed babies in the springtime. Evil cowards made death in Normal, Oklahoma. A pickup truck,…
Deadhead Whoa! Matt Seitz’s vehemence re: the Grateful Dead and the movie Tie-Died [“Dead on arrival,” April 20] was more bracing than the usual morning cup of coffee, but I fear his passion is untrammeled by much knowledge of the subject. The parking lot scene around Dead shows has been…
The incredible shrinking designer Dallas designer Victor Costa is known in fashion circles as the copy-cat couturier for knocking off the work of leading fashion designers. Recently he’s borrowed something else–the time-honored method of dealing with civil lawsuits by filing bankruptcy. Thirty days before Costa was supposed to appear in…
Self-serving star On April 7, A.H. Belo hosted a “Stars of Texas” gala at the Loews Anatole Hotel so the 600 or so ink-stained wretches of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, which was holding its national convention here, could mingle with luminaries of Texas business, entertainment, and politics. (BeloWatch,…
Selena la Reina Let’s see…”Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon…Elvis Presley…” And Selena? [“Myth, martyr, musician,” April 20.] Please, Mr. Wilonsky, see a doctor. Anonymous I’ll cry if I want to I found the review of Letterman hosting the Academy Awards [“Stupid Dave Tricks,” April 6] both insensitive and one-sided…
Don’t you think the greatest heroes are those who persevere? Some people get medals for being in the right place at the right time to do a splendid thing in a split second–and deserve medals for presence of mind alone. But those who hang in there for a long time…
Breezy was a beautiful bitch, and Chuck Milner loved her dearly. He loved the way she seemed to float as she walked, the way she held her exquisitely formed, regal head high like a princess. She had perfectly shaped almond eyes, an aquiline nose. She was very well-traveled and a…
Fred Cuny is missing in action. One of the world’s foremost authorities on disaster relief and refugee management, Cuny was on an emergency mission helping refugees in Chechnya, the breakaway region under attack by Russian troops, when he and three Russian aid workers disappeared. The group has not been heard…
Wunderkind producer Irving Thalberg had a lot of theories about how to make a piece of entertainment that gives audiences their money’s worth. One surefire ingredient was a little scriptwriting gimmick he called “the old 98-yard dash to victory”: put a stalwart hero in a horrifically complicated predicament, stack the…
Darrell Jordan is having second thoughts. The Dallas mayoral candidate had promised to join his two top rivals, Ron Kirk and Domingo Garcia, at an April 23 political event at Roosevelt High School in Dallas. The event is an “accountability session”–the first such mayoral-election event organized by Dallas Area Interfaith…
Suffer the little children State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) appears so frequently on the local evening news she’s practically an anchorwoman. It’s her personal crusade against child molesters that has earned her those coveted sound bites, of course. Her laudable package of get-tough measures, known as Ashley’s Laws–after murdered 7-year-old…
Static I just finished reading Laura Miller’s latest expose on phone use by our council members [“Who ya gonna call?” April 6] and am delighted. How does she do it? If only you could have accompanied the article with a photo spread showing their faces when the s–t hit the…
I always did think the Washington press corps had played center too long in the Great Football Game (old joke: sees the world backward and upside down), and now I know it. For three months, we have been reading about “the new leadership” in Washington. People have devoted long and…
The gospel, according to the News What makes The Dallas Morning News perhaps the most annoying newspaper in America? Stories like Ed Housewright’s incredibly condescending page-one story on the remarkable circumstance of Good Friday and the first day of Passover sharing the same date. Published, of course, last Friday, this…
In 1995, Dallas’ rich musical heritage continues with a new breed of musician–some are young, some old, some natives, some transplants, some keepers of the flame, some creating their own brand of noise. But like the musicians who preceded them–such Dallas music legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Red Garland, Aaron…
