Let me offer a disclaimer at the top. Part of what I am about to tell you here about the investigation of Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles is tea-leaf-reading. I happen to think I’m pretty good at reading the tea in this area. But tea leaves are tea leaves. Some…
There is a silver lining in the David-Dewhurst-calls-the-cops thing. It’s just more fun with Republicans. Nobody thinks it’s terrible that the lieutenant governor called the Allen cops to get his relative out of jail. Anybody would do that. It’s not even that Dewhurst tried to pull rank. Everybody does that…
Wow. What a bunch of junk in the The Dallas Morning News this morning about Rene Martinez, The LeMaster Group and Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles. The whole school reform story in Dallas just gets more weird with every passing day. But should that surprise us? Remember: Dallas County Commissioner…
Dear The Public Broadcasting Service, Parents love your channel. We really do. When it’s none o’clock in the morning, my kid really loves beatboxing with the newer, improved-er version of The Electric Company. So I see what you’re doing. I see you hosting a pledge drive during the last weeks…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef[Editor’s Note: Long-time concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out two years ago that he had stage IV colon cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events, on top of other freelance work and working a day job at a hospital, of all places…
Dear Mexican: In a nutshell, you inspired me to rediscover my culture, my pride as a Mexican and love for my people (though it’s hard to love my own people at times). I’m writing a college paper on Mexican apathy, which is deeply rooted here in my city of El…
The Regional Tourism Council of Paris (France) has launched a good manners campaign for French table waiters, urging them to be more understanding of the cultural peculiarities of foreigners. Unfortunately, the manual on how to be nice to foreigners lumps all of us Americans together, as if the rules of…
There is some magic to the heat of August in Texas. It’s sticky and unrelenting, and in the right moment, it’s sexy. It unites us, even if only in complaint. So when an invitation to an anniversary party in the back lot of Studio 410 made the rounds, there was…
Oh, no, no, no, Madame Dallas Morning News. You don’t giveth and then taketh away from us just like that. We were absolutely thrilled by your piece Sunday in which you published a big fat picture of U.S. Senator Ted “Take this government and shove it” Cruz’s foreign birth certificate…
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…
Must be more to the President George W. Bush arterial stent operation than we have heard so far. About the only conclusion fair to draw, in fact, is that not all the facts have been made public. The Dallas Morning News has an op-ed page piece in the paper this…
I admit it: I have a serious boner for The Price Is Right. I can’t wait until I’m a senior citizen and my love for this show is finally age-appropriate. In case you haven’t seen The Price Is Right (probably because you’re under 75 years of age or have never…
The person who shares living quarters with me is a Dallas native who lets out a small yelp whenever she comes across a mention in the media she thinks is insulting to Dallas. I’m a carpetbagger. I don’t even notice. This morning’s offending mention was in The New York Times…
Last night on WFAA Channel 8, reporter Brett Shipp aired a one-on-one interview with a retired Dallas business executive living in Santa Fe saying that Dallas schools chief Mike Miles needs to be whacked. I’m not accusing Shipp or the former businessman, J. McDonald Williams, of expressing anything other than…
I don’t like the anti-immigrant rental ordinance that the suburban city of Farmers Branch has spent seven years defending in court. I was delighted last month when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck it down. Last week when I saw white Farmers Branch residents on TV begging their…
Dear Mexican: This pregunta has been simmering in my brain for a while, and the recent question about whether saying “Viva la Raza” is racist reminded me to ask you. According to José Vasconcelos, the Mexican people are La Raza Cósmica (Cosmic Race), which, to me at least, seems like…
So I’m walking into this very faded 1990s airport hotel bar that smells like my vet’s waiting room. It’s 10 in the morning. There’s one customer, an old broad slumped over a beer at a table in front of the TV, her whole head wreathed in cigarette smoke. And I…
He’s a very busy man, indeed…running Kirtland Records (Boom Boom Box, Toadies, The Fixx, The Hourly Radio, Polyphonic Spree, Bob Schneider, Sarah Jaffe, more) and Sonar Management as well as part of a building developer partnership in downtown Dallas, he’s not the easiest fella to catch up with. But Kirtland,…
A federal district court finding in New York has spurred a national conversation about police “stop-and-frisk” practices ruled unconstitutional by the judge. Even though the judge referred to it in her finding, one key factor gets left out of a lot of the media chatter: It’s never a good idea…
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…
Lindsey BestAndrew Youssef[Editor’s Note: Long-time concert photographer Andrew Youssef found out two years ago that he had stage IV colon cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events, on top of other freelance work and working a day job at a hospital, of all places…
Time out. Wait a minute. Maybe it’s my fault. Now we’re all over the map and flying blind on the Museum Tower/Nasher Sculpture Center thing, headed for outer space. Let’s see if we can’t steer this ship back toward Mother Earth. The protracted, very bitter dispute between two buildings in…
