Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is pushing a personal and public agenda against domestic violence, which used to be called wife-beating. Of course the TV news had to do a story about husband-beating to keep everything correct, and I’m against that, too, along with journalist-beating, French-people-beating and pan-flutist-beating. But let’s concentrate…
After reading her gutsy open letter to Clive Davis that fought back against some of the hurtful accusations he made against her in his new memoir, it’s fun to repurpose some of her feistiest lyrics as a career-long diatribe against the legendary but stifling mogul. Presented in no particular and…
A signed essay in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News by editorial writer Tod Robberson suggested the historical lock-step loyalty of black southern Dallas voters to the Democratic Party has done them little good. It’s safe to say something has done southern Dallas little good. In recent decades the overall saga of…
In the very wee hours as my eye first opened to the light of this day, I thought I heard a rushing of wings aloft. I caught my breath. Was this …? And then distinctly as if from the next room, I heard the oinking of pigs. Only later with…
In our ongoing quest to shine some light on some of the kindest, most supportive people hiding in the shadows, and behind the scenes, in DFW’s music community, there’s never a shortage when it comes to the people who bend over backwards for the 35 Denton festival, which is on…
This is a little embarrassing. Nobody wants to say it. It’s sort of rude, I guess. Uh-oh. Sounds like my job. OK. Here goes. Dallas City Council member Vonciel Hill is a mean-spirited, spiteful suck-up to the rich who is also increasingly unhinged. Ugly-talking. And way over the top out…
A friend picked me up to take me to the airport. She cracked the window, lit a cigarette and turned down the music. I was chatty, the pre-vacation adrenaline already swirling through my veins. It was just a long weekend, not quite the escape of a European sabbatical. But dreams…
Dear Mexican: You mentioned in the past that your dad is against illegal immigration, but that’s a voice you never hear. Why aren’t the legal immigrants and legal aliens “vocally outraged” about the illegals who drive down wages, drive up housing prices, use government services, give all immigrants a bad…
Several minor political brush fires sent up smoke at the Dallas public school system after a tough new reform-minded superintendent took over the reins last July. But in two months the whole woods will be on fire, with Superintendent Mike Miles in the middle of it. Does he survive? I…
Scott K. Parks has a pretty good OK story in The Dallas Morning News today. It’s the good-enough-for-Belo version of a story we brought you two weeks ago about the city’s use of eminent domain to seize a privately owned parcel of land near the Trinity River, sandwiched between the…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. The Farmers Market is going to be…
And here we go with the discussion of cheap housing for artists in that triumphal and glitzy array of Mussoliniano mausoleums that we insist on calling our “arts district,” even though art has the same chance of surviving there as a cockroach in a microwave oven. Say this for the…
Oh, Dallas. Something is fishy at our sushi restaurants. Katharine Shilcutt at the Houston Press has been digging through a new Oceana Study, and it doesn’t say very nice things about the sushi we’re eating. That snapper you covet, sumptuously draped over carefully seasoned and packed rice, may very well…
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…
Wanted to go ahead and let you know, since apparently nobody else is going to do the story, that Robert Groden, the Kennedy assassination author, has won yet another legal victory in his fight against the city’s years-long efforts to muzzle him. And, sorry, certain commenters here, but that’s what…
Fort Worth singer-songwriter Clint Niosi, 33, works in the basement of a community college library doing on-site tech support and on-call tutoring. This does not sound fascinating, and I quickly see upon taking his invitation to meet him at his job that it really isn’t. For about a half hour…
M&M’s are small chocolates with candy shells. They melt in your mouth, not in your hand. And they’re not fucking supposed to taste like carrot cake. Or candy corn. JUST BE M&M’s, M&M’s. It’s not that hard…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Dearest The Klyde Warren, It’s my hope…
Tale of two dailies today, I guess. Our own Dallas daily, the Morning News, takes a kind of hey-why-not approach to a bill introduced by Houston GOP state Senator Dan Patrick that would divert more money from state funding for public schools to charters. The Austin American Statesman, meanwhile, gives…
Meet Wes McIntyre. Yeah, he works at Granada…for years now. You’ve probably seen him. He’s been gaining a reputation around the venue as being a pretty awesome human being in general. Exemplified in his nice-guy style of security work, and cornerstoned by his recent role as Santa at a Libertine-organized…
Casually drop that you’re a power Yelper while you dine at a restaurant, and undoubtedly your service will improve. Perhaps an extra cocktail will come your way. And ah, is that a free dessert? Of course some of us aren’t as forward as others. It can be hard saying out…
It looks like Okon Metals, a fourth-generation-owned scrap recycling company, may have found safe haven after all. If nothing else, at least Okon’s proposed move to a site even more isolated than its current address on an island between downtown and the river will put it out of the prying…
