If you’ve got little to do this morning, and you missed it the first time ’round in the fall of ’09, might I suggest you spend a little time with “The Consummation of Dirk,” penned by Jonathan Callahan, an American living in Japan. “Batshit insane,” declared Deadspin upon its mysterious…
A few days ago an old friend asked: When did Dallas’s reign as country-music comer officially end? Hard to say, officially, though I’ve always pinpointed it ’round May 3, 1956 — when producer Jim Beck died, after he’d been poisoned by the carbon tetrachloride he was using to clean his…
The Annie E. Casey Foundation just released KIDS COUNT, its annual report on child well-being in every state across the U.S. One of their grantees, the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, put the report for Texas on its website on Wednesday: The State of Texas Children. So how are…
Driving through downtown earlier this week I couldn’t help but notice: First Baptist Dallas is erecting its new downtown campus with remarkable speed. Seems like only yesterday Tom Leppert, Mark Lovvorn and Robert Jeffress were pressin’ The Big Red Button. But according to this nicely done look-see just posted to…
Back to the animal shelter for a second …One other thing interim assistant city manager Joey Zapata and I touched on briefly yesterday was an item on the council’s agenda for next week involving the lowering of adoption fees at Dallas Animal Services. Because right now, it’s kinda pricey for…
A few days ago I was offered at a rather reasonable price a small but estimable stash of local relics, dating as far back as a thick, musty scrapbook of 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition newspaper clippings that belonged to Otto Herald, its general manager. (We’ll get to that, oh, next…
Jerry Jones has scheduled a 2 p.m. press conference here at Cowboys Stadium. As I’ve said all along, Drew Pearson is in. Question is, will he have company? Larry Allen, you still in town? Pretty sure he is. Four chairs up on the stage for the presser…
For now, at least, you can forget about the city spending an additional five figures to study the Dallas Wave, which Schutze calls in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park “the unbelievably screwed-up man-made kayaking rapids” in the Trinity River. No doubt you recall: A few weeks ago the…
You can’t swing a mace and chain around Observer HQ without hitting someone who knows what it’s like to fight in a real newspaper war. That Buzz fellow worked in San Antonio back when the Express-News toiled against the Light. Schutze and Wilonsky are both veterans of The Dallas Morning…
The following is an excerpt from the Beat poetry of Michael Woolman of Lincoln, Nebraska, available in a complaint filed in Dallas federal court yesterday. He claims he checked in to Baylor for tonsil and sinus surgery, and left with an unexpected gift. Punctuation and spelling remain unchanged.I was in…
When first we noted in March that Wendy Russell Reves’s only child, Arnold Leon Schroeder Jr., was suing the Dallas Museum of Art and former UT Southwestern president Kern Wildenthal, it was, for a moment, Big News — big enough, even, for The New York Times. Schroeder, of course, is…
Residents of Jubilee Park, the neighborhood of modest single-family homes just north of Fair Park, have become conditioned to distrust, if not fear, the Dallas Independent School District. For as long as we can recall, DISD has grappled with plans for a new O.M. Elementary school in the area, and…
How does one explain the follicle-by-follicle perfection of Gov. Rick Perry’s imperturbable man-mane? Where does his mega-watt smile and its rows of pearly whites come from? Braces? No, silly. They come from God. God spoke, and Perry was born a man of uncommon comeliness. That, Friends of Unfair Park, is…
Yesterday, we told you about the Feed Store of God Cowboy Church, where police are investigating possible animal cruelty charges relating to dead livestock, and introduced you to its pastor, James Hatley Jr. We’re still awaiting more information about the investigation, but the name Hatley rang a bell for Wilonsky,…
Straight off, City Hall spokesman Frank Librio would like us to clarify something he told Anna yesterday: It’s not that new Dallas Animal Services director Jody Jones isn’t ready to handle media requests, as we noted, it’s just that she’s “focusing on operations at the moment and not handling media…
A little more than a month ago, the Dallas gas drilling task force embarked on its mission to tackle the subject of hydraulic fracturing and recommend regulations to be included in the city’s drilling ordinance. At their first meeting on July 12, Rick Trice, the assistant director of planning and…
A good Friend of Unfair Park who knows of my fondness for Johnny Cash and the old Big “D” Jamboree — and those magical moments when they meet on a piece of paper — was kind enough to send along this Columbia/Legacy press release issued yesterday, which says that come…
Several Friends of Unfair Park, including a grumpy one below, have asked if we’ll make mention of Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President and Chief Executive Officer Richard Fisher’s speech given in Midland yesterday. Sure, absolutely, happy to. Because, first, I’m a big fan of Fisher’s — anyone who mentions…
Of the myriad lawsuits involving the city, Doug Moore v. City of Dallas et al is among the most expensive — and getting a little more pricey all the time. This case, for those not keeping score at home, has already cost the city $2.5 million, paid to the state…
Is Felix Jones the man? Or just the man until DeMarco Murray becomes the man? Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said this week on his weekly radio show that he considers the fourth-year running back one of the keys to Dallas’ season. “I expect Felix to have a really good season,” Jones…
Not sure he remembers any of it, but lead singer Scott Weiland put on quite the show Wednesday night. Two words: Fucked. Up. 9. Among his amusing, entertaining offerings: “The thing I love about Texas is you’ve got soul. I don’t care about politics, you guys care about your community.”…
No doubt you heard the radio spots in which they promised to “settle your credit card debt for pennies on the dollar without filing for bankruptcy”; no doubt you saw the TV ads in which they claimed you would “truly be debt free in less than 36 months.” From 2005…
