Opinion & Commentary

Two recent conversations put the Trinity toll road debate into a certain perspective for me. The first, after dinner with friends, came while saying good-bye. One friend, a person of the Park Cities persuasion, said while waving good-night, “Hey, Jim, when are we going to get Town Lake?” Does anybody…

University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall wins again. This week Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion upholding every single claim Hall made to him in defense of Hall’s right to information from the university, shooting down all of the university’s arguments for muzzling Hall. You know what? Whenever…

First thing I need to tell you right off the bat, I am not obsessed with the flood levels on the Trinity River in downtown Dallas this week because I want the river to overtop and destroy the flood-control levees and wreak havoc on lives and property. That would be…

The other weekend I, along with my equally-stupid friend and fellow Dallas Observer contributor Matt Wood, decided to clear all the furniture out of my house near the University of North Texas, buy about six cases of Lone Star and have four bands play in my living room. Okay, so…

It’s like the mom who smacked her kid and dragged him out of a riot in Baltimore a couple weeks ago. When life gets complex we yearn for simple. So I guess it was inevitable that people, especially parents, would get all ape-crazy a year ago for Admiral William McRaven,…

What was Saturday’s City Council election about? It’s a tale of two candidates, both of whom won election. In his most recent campaign finance report filed May 9 and covering his last month of fundraising, District 5 southeast Dallas candidate Rick Callahan, an incumbent, took in just over 30 grand…

Ah, watercolors. They are just so great. Yesterday, two days before the Saturday City Council elections, a slick campaign mailer hit select households (not my own) with some wonderful watercolors of the Trinity River project, courtesy of our mayor, Mike Rawlings. As people (not many) head to the polls Saturday,…

The Dallas Morning News does so much better about telling the truth on thorny local stories when it’s easy, when we’re in a news lull. But when the rubber meets the Trinity toll road, they revert to character, and watch out. Days before the Saturday election in which the toll…

Which would you consider more horrible? Drowning in the White Water Feature or going permanently nuts in the Water Maze? The most vicious form of bullshit in this world is the kind that wears a necktie, shines its shoes and masquerades as calm, cool and collected. Beware the knife from…

During last week’s failed attempt to fire the Dallas superintendent of schools — at a school board meeting so depressing it made me think of Thanksgiving Day dinner at psycho prison — Superintendent Mike Miles made a speech. See also: Mike Miles Doesn’t Get Fired at Special Dallas ISD Board…

Count on everybody to be too clever by half in this one — trying to figure out why Dallas cops brought felony charges last week against a City Council member because he got into it with a city employee about whether she doing her job properly. And, yeah, they say…

Two stories flew across my path yesterday like wobbly arrows tipped with suction cups. One was about the mayor’s campaign to stoke economic fires in poverty-blighted southern Dallas with a team of privately paid cheerleaders. The other was about City Hall putting a belated bullet in the head of the…

The greatest thing on Dallas radio (that’s not something on the Ticket) is when you’re cruising through town late at night, and the sounds of Houston start to come from your speakers. The slow synth beat emitting from the Third Coast is the work of Fat Pat, and if you’re…

Bunch of things could happen at tonight’s Dallas school board meeting, topmost that Dallas may wind up firing its reform school superintendent, Mike Miles. And that will be a real whodunnit. Miles, hired with fanfare three years ago as a reformer, drew kudos and support early on for battling the…

Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas based musicians with some extra ammo to spare. Having a local music scene like Dallas’ is great. Any night of the week, there’s quality music being played in local clubs by local artists. The only…

One of the coolest and strangest aspects of baseball is the batter ditty. The batter ditty is the song that blares through the stadium surround sound as the player walks up to home plate before the fail, because failure is common in baseball, which makes it the most realistic sports…

Pitbull’s show tomorrow night in Oklahoma at the Winstar World Casino is sold out, it has been that way for months, and this tells us something. He’s not going away. No matter how much we want him to. But, why? In the world of pop music with some exceptions, everyone…

Strictly from a newspaper point of view and comparing today with maybe 40 years ago, current events are re-writing the basic rules of what we in the business have always called call “story sense.” Forty years ago it would have been major front-page news for researchers to find a geological…

Yeah, Steve Blow definitely got my attention yesterday with his column in The Dallas Morning News about an anti-pitbull organization, maybe because I just got my socks scared off again yesterday afternoon by the Amazing Flying Pit Bull From Hell in the alley across the street from me. I walk…

Starting on Thursday night, legendary punk band Face to Face will do a three-night residency at Gas Monkey Bar N Grill. Each night, they will play a full album from front to back: Their classic debut Don’t Turn Away comes tomorrow, Big Choice on Friday and their self-titled record on…

Dallas school trustee Mike Morath sent me a link to an Ira Glass “This American Life” radio show about testing and the ability of children to succeed in life. I thought it spoke to a lot of the blowback I get from teachers mad at me for sticking up for…