Damn! Who the hell is in my pocket? This morning’s New York Times tells me Senate hearings will convene Thursday on the issue of cell phone privacy. I convened yesterday. My wife was complaining about banner ads appearing on the display of her flip-phone. The thing is: She has to…
When you get a call from Blake Ward, notorious for his Glamorama party at Beauty Bar, kindly calling you a tastemaker and asking you to do a guest hour on the decks at The Dram, you smile, agree and then panic about what hour of music you are going to…
A wonderful Thanksgiving behind me, having managed to enjoy generous hospitality in Wichita Falls while keeping my mouth shut about Obama. But now it’s the morning after, and Monsieur Gilles de la Tourette beckons. I blame a thought-provoking piece on today’s Dallas Morning News op-ed page by the Reverend Gerald…
Dear Mexican: My granddaughters were born and raised in Georgia, as was their father. Their knowledge of their culture is zero, and I have tried to educate them by talking to them and even writing a book of my life growing up in New Mexico. I even encouraged them to…
Look, you did not hear this here, OK? I don’t want to have any of this attributed to me. Anyway, it’s possible I overdid my Benadryl and maybe this is just one of those brain swerves like when I thought we were going to get bike paths. But I can’t…
Damn. Now I have to send Roland Dickey’s barbecue book back to him. I got it a few days back. It was a gift. I looked it up online, and it’s worth about 45 bucks with shipping. I want to say something positive about his wife today, so if I…
For years, non-metal people have been accusing various metal bands of influencing their flock with hidden messages that could only be heard by playing the vinyl backwards. Overnight, this “backmasking” became a threat to national security, especially after Dan Rather played clips of hidden messages on CBS Evening News in…
Spent the first part of morning searching around on-line for anything to remind me why Rod Dreher and I used to fight. No luck, really. When he was here working on The Dallas Morning News editorial board, he lived on my old street in East Dallas, and I think we…
It’s been almost two years since we talked to booker Scott Beggs for this column. He was one of the first approached for it, as he’s done a lot for Dallas and Deep Ellum’s entertainment intake through the years, but his most recent gig booking for LaGrange came to an…
As a teenager, I remember eating breakfast at a friend’s home after spending the night. We were all gathered, about to take some little sister types get their photo taken with Santa Claus. My friend’s grandmother used to be a shop girl at Neiman Marcus, and told us stories of…
So a couple weeks ago Angela Hunt calls me up and tells me I have to go down to the new deck park. Then maybe two days later my wife starts telling me I have to go down to the new deck park. So Sunday I was about to embark…
Every once in a while life provides us with a major reality check, which can be good or bad, depending on our relationship with reality. The news yesterday that the massive reconstruction of Dallas’ downtown freeways is about to get under way at long last contained one very big reality…
The story in today’s Dallas Morning News about Dallas Cowboys football player Dez Bryant getting off on mom-beating charges contains this line about Bryant’s lawyer, state Senator Royce West: “West said the incident was a dispute, not an assault.” The woman called DeSoto cops and said her son had tried…
Dear Mexican: Lately, I’ve noticed a few bands, como Voodoo Glow Skulls, have embraced ska music both at home and in Mexico. I was curious what the appeal is for Mexicans. Also, if you had to turn people to Mexican ska, what would be your top five recommendations? TOMMY MILAGROS…
Last week I attended a Dallas City Council briefing in which I heard a top staff member tell council members the city needs to spend $12 million in tax money on a “horse park” because it “fills the public purpose that voters have twice said they want.” I’m a voter…
Hey, All-Caps Guy. We need to have a talk. Really. I sometimes poke you with a sharp stick. You poke back. That’s what I want. But sometimes when you poke, I wince. Not for me. For you. You know, I hope, that every single thing you say online lives forever…
The area we call the Park Cities, twin affluent enclave municipalities surrounded by Dallas proper, is riven by a rape case in which the son of a prominent family stands accused. One reason that case is tough to talk about is that nobody knows what happened. The accused, a high…
Tom Urquhart’s Saturday KTCU FM 88.7 radio show, The Good Show, is up for another nomination in this year’s Dallas Observer Music Awards, for Best Radio Show. It’s exactly what Fort Worth needs a little more of: A vehicle to make their local music scene all the more cohesive and…
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg has a new column out saying the presidential election was about our desire as a nation to become more European and by sad inference less American. Do you remember voting on that? I’m trying to think what the ballot language might have been. Proposition One (ink…
Saturday began and ended with brave displays from North Texas musicians, kicking off with a band you’ve likely never heard of, The Happening. First to perform at Art Con 8, The Happening was comprised of students from Girls Rock Dallas, one of the evening’s beneficiaries, and they took to the…
OK, I guess we’re all going to pile on departing Dallas school executive Shirley Ison-Newsome, a person accused of serial scandals and of making off with a bunch of loot in the form of a “golden parachute.” Look, Unfair Park Czar Eric Nicholson was quite right to observe a week…
Because there are multiple decades of jazz, it’s almost impossible to pick the top 10 albums of all time; the hip cats with their canes and cool shades will throw their used saxophone reeds in my direction and call me a young whippersnapper. The debate is so polemic that I…
