Oh thank you, God of Lazy Non-Recyclers, for sparing that grocery sack full of this week’s copies of The Dallas Morning News, hiding it in that corner of the bedroom from the eye of The Great Recycler with whom I live, so that I was able to retrieve from it…
When Brad Paisley isn’t writing and performing sweet, tender songs that make women melt into a big pile of love — or even haunting songs about death — he’s writing some hilarious, off-the-wall, kind of stupid songs about the things happening to or around him. That’s the charm of Paisley,…
It seems like we’ve been here before: On Saturday afternoon, Club Dada will be taken over by 13th Floor Music for a “music fest” that includes 15 local bands. As you may recall, a very similar thing happened last Saturday, when King Camel Productions put on its own little showcase…
For music writers, it seems like there has never been a lower-hanging fruit than the ascension of bro-country into the mainstream. Acts like Florida Georgia Line are getting near-equal airtime on pop and country radio while selling millions of records. What’s worse, they’re also influencing a class of up-and-comers that…
People have been apologizing and telling me I was right all along about the Trinity River toll road — not a thing I enjoy. I really don’t need or want people to offer me apologies, but I can think of something else to do with them. This week, Eric Celeste…
Last week Dallas school board member Dan Micciche had an op-ed essay in The Dallas Morning News urging people to push their City Council members and the mayor about the chronic under-funding of public libraries in the city. The numbers he cited for the city’s support of libraries were abysmal…
Saw in a local daily the other day there’s a plan to develop a bunch of raw dirt at the base of the city’s new fake suspension bridge downtown. Thought, “Hang on. Don’t I know that dirt?” Looked it up. Had to go way back. Yeah! I do know that…
Yesterday we got the ball rolling on our picks for the best musical cameos from The Simpsons’ first 25 years on the air, in honor of the show’s ongoing marathon of 552 episodes on FXX. We went through the first half of our list of 30 episodes, meaning it’s time…
How can I devote so many words here to housing discrimination in Dallas and not even mention poor doors in Manhattan? I can’t, even though I’m still not sure exactly what New York poor doors teach us. Maybe the lesson is just that pompous posturing assholes with thinly defended egos…
Can there be too much of a good thing? Perhaps. Fans of The Simpsons have likely been asking themselves that question for years now, given that the beloved Fox TV show has been on the air for 25 years now and, arguably, past its best for quite some time. But…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s accusation of racial segregation lodged against Dallas has probably reached a point of incomprehensibility for most people, but there is still a simple question in it: What if it’s true? As far as understanding most of what they say now, the city…
Ran into a retired city department head on a parking lot in the afternoon heat yesterday, thought I was gonna die. This guy had an entire career’s worth of anger and frustration to unload, and there I was in the sun with my head uncovered. I think I lost a…
A great moment in music history. By Diane Martinez This summer marks the fifteen-year anniversary of the greatest song of all time. I KNOW. I couldn’t believe it either, but fifteen years have come and gone since the first time you heard “Smooth” by Santana, featuring Rob Thomas. FIFTEEN. YEARS…
This is the week something should happen in the now 5-year-old dispute between the city of Dallas and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over HUD’s landmark segregation complaint against Dallas. HUD and the city have been jaw-boning each other for several weeks now over what Dallas must…
You could very well be a OneRepublic fan and not even know it. Or at least a Ryan Tedder fan. OK, you could be a fan of Tedder’s work and not even know it. You see, Tedder’s day job might be singing as OneRepublic’s front man, but it’s his side…
Sunday it was 7 a.m. California time when I called my brother in the Bay Area to ask if he had died in the quake. He said no. I thought he sounded sleepy, but he could have been serene. It’s hard to tell with those people. I asked if he…
Yesterday I said I would eat crow if Dallas Morning News editorial writer Rudy Bush turns out to be right and I turn out to be wrong about the outcome of the HUD racial discrimination complaint against the city of Dallas. Today after much more snooping around, I would offer…
The line that designates what is and is not country music is muddier than most of us are willing to admit. What is abundantly clear, though, is that country music appeals to more people than just rednecks and sappy beer drinkers. Taylor Swift may think she’s reinventing the wheel in…
Oh, man, I shouldn’t even tell you about this. I guess it’s me and Rudy Bush, “High Noon,” “OK Corral,” all those old movies. One of us has got to wind up on his back in the horseshit with his toes in the air. I promise I’ll let you know…
In President Obama’s 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, one passage describes a day when he is still a kid in Indonesia, walking down a road with his Indonesian stepfather. His stepfather asks him how much money he has in his pocket. Then the stepfather asks how many beggars he…
If the editorial in The Dallas Morning News this morning has any credibility, and I am sure it does, HUD has agreed to throw the whistleblowers under the bus in the Lockey/MacKenzie racial segregation complaint against the city of Dallas. It’s not a surprising outcome, because paying off the two…
This is a first. In an editorial this morning The New York Times is defending Rick Perry. Sort of. They offer major caveats, calling him, “one of the least thoughtful and most damaging state leaders in America, having done great harm to immigrants, abortion clinics and people without health insurance…
