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…
BEST ACT OVERALL: Reverend Horton Heat ALBUM RELEASE (1994): Liquor in the Front, Reverend Horton Heat (Interscope Records) LOCAL MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR: Andy Timmons ROCK, ALTERNATIVE ROCK/POP: Toadies MALE VOCALIST, SONGWRITER: Todd Lewis of Toadies NEW ACT: Old 97’s MOST IMPROVED ACT: Vibrolux FEMALE VOCALIST: Kim Pendleton of Vibrolux…
Linda Koop worries that Roderick will miss his stuffed animals. For the past three months, Koop has offered Roderick, a sweet-natured boy just shy of three, a couple of furry critters as bedmates each night. Koop is 31 and unmarried, a real-estate agent selling multi-million dollar homes in the Park…
Bodice rip-offs If things seemed a little, well, hotter around the Dallas-Fort Worth area earlier this month, there may have been a good reason. The 13th Annual Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Book Fair and Romance Festival was being held at the Tarrant County Convention Center. Texas, it seems, has the…
All about Eve Displaying its characteristic gumption in the fight against ignorance, the News on March 14 reported the Richardson Public Library’s refusal to display an oil painting of a bare-breasted Eve. The painting, titled Eden, was included in the selections by the Richardson Civic Art Society for an annual…
Big fish in a stagnant pond The following thoughts were prompted by David Pasztor’s recent article on Wendy Lee Gramm [“Take my wife–please!” March 30]. How loudly to yell at football games and whether to eat at Burger King are probably as stimulating as intellectual debate gets in the Economics…
Censorship in cyberspaaaaace! (Why is it that computer issues lend themselves to horror comic book headlines? “Tiny Mummies in Cyberland!”) Aside from fear of technology (one of the most sensible phobias of our time–did anyone ever ask a fly if it needed eyes on its wings?), I think we’re stuck…
Mike Marcotte is a very busy man. This was especially obvious on the afternoon of December 9, a day when I was having absolutely no luck getting in touch with him. Marcotte works for the city of Dallas. Once the virtually anonymous director of the Dallas Water Utilities department, Marcotte…
If you’re a topless dancer who wiggled at Cabaret Royale some time during the past six years, you may be eligible for back pay. So ruled a federal judge last week in a protracted dispute between the U.S. Department of Labor and Dallas’ best-known topless club. The Labor Department won…
Definitely not resting in peace D Magazine writer Jim Schutze sheepishly phoned former city councilman Max Goldblatt last week to ask his forgiveness. In Schutze’s April cover story on the Dallas mayor’s race, he had mistakenly referred to the retired Pleasant Grove hardware store owner as the “late Mr. Goldblatt.”…
Aging with grace In regard to the “Yippie traitor” story [“Confessions of a Yippie spy,” March 16]: it’s not the missteps we make, but the grace with which we recover from them. Michael Helsem Dallas Even if I did not personally know George de Merle to be a gentle, compassionate,…
Worsening storm If you don’t like the News’ coverage of the Texas weather, just wait a minute–it’ll change. The Monday, March 27 story on the previous Saturday night’s bad weather put the price tag for damaged roofs and cratered cars at $15 million. “Storm damage in area could hit $15…
For complicated reasons, Cincinnati is sensitive about sin. The city is graced with militant antipornography brigades, somewhat reminiscent of the Smut-Snatchers in Greater Tuna. It turns out that this is one of the more peculiar legacies of Charles Keating, who later went on to become famous in the savings-and-loan debacle…
Only a sliver of the new moon shone through the overcast evening sky. It was humid and felt like rain. Ho’opuka E-ka-la Ma Ka-hikina. Ho’opuka E-ka-la Ma Kahikina. On the second floor of an old Oak Lawn house, a primal chant resonated through a room where 35 women and men…
Randall Dale Adams is married and living a quiet life in Columbus, Ohio, near his mother and family. Clarence Brandley has turned to preaching, opening his own church in Houston. What the two men have in common, of course, is that each–after years in prison and torturous legal appeals–managed to…
