Reaching for a badly mixed metaphor, I guess I would say those of us personally involved for a long time on the opposition side of the Trinity roll road issue feel right now like we’re breathless flies on the wall with our fingers crossed and our dukes up (flies have…
WOW. Looks like bigbexardaddy knows whereof he speaks. Little over a week ago bigbexardaddy commented on an item I had posted here about the Bexar Street boondoggle, giving away a lot of detail that sure sounded like it came from inside City Hall, including a claim that Dallas, even in…
The Austin American-Statesmanand The Houston Chronicle this morning are reporting that Governor Rick Perry will hold a press conference this afternoon to announce he’s sending 1,000 Texas National Guard troops to the Mexican border to defend Texas against an invasion of unarmed Central American children. This, of course, goes nowhere…
As a lifelong reporter, I can’t help looking at the babies-at-the-border story and worry about the way my own craft tends to tilt a narrative like this. And don’t think I think I’m Goody Two-Shoes. If anything I know the drill too well. A front-page story in The New York…
That most notoriously unsentimental of bands, Steely Dan, are coming back to North Texas. (Well, the North Texas area. Kind of.) Comprised essentially of two men, singer Donald Fagen and guitarist Walter Becker, the band has shuffled unapologetically through its band members over the years, drawing primarily on the likes…
Tuesday was a very strange day for me — an experience I am sharing with you today (or inflicting on you, never quite sure) both here on the blog and also in a short film I made called “A Note for Mary.” I made it with my hat-cam, a small…
Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding race as a criterion for admissions to the University of Texas at Austin comes on the heels of another big UT-Austin story — the alleged role of under-the-table political influence in admissions at UT and…
We all know that country music, by and large, isn’t the most progressive of musical genres. With loudmouth GOP musicians like Charlie Daniels and Hank Williams Jr., it’s easy to forget that country music isn’t all about trucks, America and hating President Obama. Believe it or not, there are surprisingly…
That Texas redistricting trial that started up yesterday in federal court in San Antonio? Watch that one. It could be third side of the magic triangle that turns Texas blue. The trial is not about whether the tea-tinged Republican-dominated Texas Legislature gerrymandered the vote maps in 2011. Asked and answered…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Sloppy handling of deadly viruses at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, including shipping a deadly virus to a lab by mistake, has spurred calls for an independent investigation of the agency. The head of of it concedes in a New York Times piece this morning there may be a…
At the risk of repeating myself, every time I see, hear or read Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins speaking about the immigrant kid issue, I’m struck by something dramatically new, almost shocking, in the way he frames the question. He starts from the heart. The heart. We don’t get much…
Dallas doesn’t get to call itself home to tons of living legends, but nowhere else in the world has the privilege of calling itself the home of Erykah Badu. As one of the most influential figures in modern R&B and one of the most interesting people alive, Badu is almost…
Maybe I need to do a mid-course correction. Beginning last Sunday, Dallas Morning News City Hall reporter Steve Thompson had what anybody would consider a terrific series of stories in the paper about an ill-fated slum clearance and renovation project on Bexar Street in South Dallas in which the city…
Although Queen has remained hugely popular worldwide for over four decades, the band’s albums have always proved rather spotty. As a matter of fact, it can be especially challenging to make it through any of Queen’s 14 studio efforts. For every great song (“You’re My Best Friend,” “39,” “Sheer Heart…
For six years we have talked about an accusation that Dallas practiced deliberate racial segregation in redeveloping downtown. In the last six months we have talked about City Hall’s absolute defiance of that charge. So, imagine my surprise when assistant city manager Theresa O’Donnell told me the city is no…
First thing, Dallas shouldn’t take its rebuff by the Republican Party so personally, because … because Dallas shouldn’t take everything so personally. Sometimes I feel like we’re sitting at one end of the bus, a woman gets on and sits at the other end, and we shout at her, “What?…
Via Wiki CommonsStopped clocks are right twice a day. Geoffrey Arend is married to Christina Hendricks. Performance artists get federal funding. Canada is south of Detroit. People wear Google Glass and think they look awesome. Some things you just can’t explain, like how really shitty bands occasionally luck into recording…
Doritos come in multiple forms and dimensions these days. There’s the two dimensional-like flat chip option, which have been Street Tacoed, nacho cheese explosioned, Tapatioed, and, more recently, contorted into the taco dimension. On the taco axis, Doritos is often filled with “beef” and sour cream and stuff. Now, 7-Eleven…
Blame cannot be un-owned. Like money, blame has to go in somebody’s purse. It can’t be left on the table. If the responsible person is able somehow to cleverly skate on the blame he deserves, that just means somebody else has to be the scapegoat. Witness the grand saga going…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Bruce Dickinson rules. He’s the greatest singer for one of the greatest bands of all time, Iron Maiden. But recently, he unleashed some pretty charged words in an interview with The Guardian. In addition to dropping one of the most incredible quotations ever, “fame is the excrement of creativity,” he…
