Regardless of genre or tenured status, a common thread among all musicians is the nightmare gig, the gig that just did not go the way you expected. It’s the gig where that bassist shows up so hammered that he thinks he’s the singer. Or maybe it’s the night you forget…
I can tell you all about the delicious things I used to eat as the daughter of Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants. I can tell you how deeply comforting they were, and how masterful of a home cook my mom was. I can tell you how our house always smelled of the deep…
The Oscars ceremony was fairly unpredictable this year: Singer Mary J. Blige was nominated for best supporting actress, athlete Kobe Bryant won an Oscar for Best Documentary, actor Gael Garcia Bernal performed a song, and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead was nominated as a composer. Most importantly, Eva-Marie Saint and Christopher…
OK, this is a rant, plain and simple, plus it’s way outside my wheelhouse as a local reporter, which I am sworn never to depart upon pain of humiliation by editors. But I can’t stand it. I’m like that crazy guy in the movie years ago who said, “I’m mad…
It’s been three months since Dallas’ KVIL-FM 103.7 switched formats. Long known as Amp 103.7, the station specialized in Top 40 playlists before a November rebrand turned the frequency into an alternative rock format dubbed Alt 103.7 — “DFW’s New Alternative.” For a listening audience still reeling from the 2016…
Editor’s note: Paige forgot to mention her deep, deep love for Ms. Swift during her job interview. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I, the new Dallas Observer music (and arts) editor, love Taylor Swift. Bite me. You might have read this headline and wondered why I didn’t delete…
One last thing about the controversial and beleaguered new Santiago Calatrava suspension bridge over the Trinity River downtown: To my untrained eye it’s not a suspension bridge. I went down there over the weekend and got pictures. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the world’s most expensive garden ornament…
Allegations of sexual assault and sordid cover-ups are shaking the American restaurant industry. Mario Batali is facing a reckoning for years of alleged foul behavior toward nearly every woman in his path; New Orleans celebrity chef John Besh faces accusations of fostering a culture of sexual predation; James Beard-winning restaurateur…
Last Saturday’s false nuclear alert in Hawaii does this for us: It offers a unique window on what you and I will feel like if it ever really happens. To us. Jeff Jackson, who lives on Haleakala Mountain on Maui, and his mother, Mary Nell Jackson, who lives in the…
The State Fair of Texas, or, as I call it, Sigma Phi Tau, has always been an exclusive, secretive, good-old-boy fraternity, but it hasn’t always been easy to catch. Thank goodness Sigma-Phi has a certain penchant for showing its … let’s say its hand … as this recent example illustrates:…
When you’re a food critic, a lot of your research involves maps. Every few weeks, I scroll around Google Maps hunting for new restaurants to review, clicking on every orange fork-and-knife icon along the streets of Dallas and its suburbs. Reviews have resulted from Google Maps finds. On Jan. 2,…
Jim Schutze is going live on Facebook at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 10 from his office! That’s the plan, anyway, if we can persuade the janitorial staff to move all the cleaning supplies out of there by then. And if Schutze shows up on time. In any event, tune in…
The bloody handprint could not be more clear. In a city that should be enabling upward mobility for everybody, a core of impacted poverty only grows and deepens. The giveaway, the paw print that explains it, is Dallas Area Rapid Transit, our regional mass-transit agency. No, I’m not saying DART…
Why does Dallas always want to get the big corporate headquarters relocation? Wouldn’t we be a better candidate for and better off with the factory? Or even better, maybe, with the warehouse? In the national race to land the new Amazon subheadquarters, the depressing news for Dallas a week ago…
All right, I beg you, just this one time. Break with habit. Normally, I assume you are like me. You never really read all that fine print on a city bond proposal when you go to the polls. If it’s something about more money for the cops or the libraries,…
When I go to the state fair, as I did yesterday with my wife, I’m looking for three things. Something the same as always. Something different. And something really and truly fun. I have to have all three, or I’m not going. Yesterday my two same as always things were…
This week, an ornate box landed on my desk. Inside was an even more ornate box, a box with heft and gold accents and rich blue velvet lining. Inside that box: a gold enamel stationery set with an enamel invitation to a party at the forthcoming Bullion restaurant. Bullion, led…
Something I did not know about Amazon’s search for a new subheadquarters — I guess they forgot to tell me — is that Amazon wants to see a lot of regional cooperation and coordination coming from the metro areas vying for this $5 billion prize. Rather than a bunch of…
When I realized my nephew Chris was stranded in another part of the world and could not get home to Catherine and the kids, Nicole and Paul, in Sarasota, Florida, my first thought was to jump in my truck, drive there and somehow get them out of Florida by myself…
On Sept. 6, when the Dallas City Council sat to consider bringing down the city’s 81-year-old equestrian monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, slavery and the American Civil War flowed into the moment as if yesterday and today were one. A packed council chamber was alternately raucous and respectful…
The Confederate statues debate is coming at us so fast that nobody in Dallas should feel embarrassed about having to change footing, alter or even flip a previous position. I know I’m not. Did what I said about it a month ago even make sense back then? I wrote that…
Because the Dallas municipal system of government is this kind of headless, directionless fidget spinner, we may lose sight of something: There is a right way to go. Somewhere. A right direction. Take Fair Park, our decaying exposition park in the center of the city. Maybe you don’t want to…
