Member papers of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) this week are providing links on their websites that direct their readers to the many places on the Internet where the home address of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is listed. AAN papers are doing so to show solidarity with the...
This is one of the worst deadline pickles I think I have ever encountered in my 200 years as a newspaper writer. I am writing this at the end of the week before the Trinity toll road election. The results from the election will come in about an hour after...
Wait a minute. Think about this. The main argument for keeping the toll road inside the park downtown is that it can't go anywhere else because of the cost. I just looked at files in the offices of the people who would build the road. It's flat-out untrue. This is...
Good Records’ C.J. Davis has sung the praises of Denton duo Mom for some time now (they’re on his label, Pancakes for Mattie, after all). And when we finally caught them a couple months back, we were impressed, to say the least. By running acoustic instruments into a variety of...
The North Dallas apartment is tiny and as dim as a titty bar at noon. Only one light bulb burns in the ceiling fan fixture, so for the sake of a visitor, Russell Hamilton Fish III screws in the other three bulbs. "My parents said they bought a house with...
Seriously, wasn't Jack Pierce the name of a popular local band in the early 1990s? Three people get that joke. If you happen to hear the new anti-Ed Oakley ad on the radio, featuring the guy I wrote about a couple weeks go whose land was almost zoned out from...
I'm perfect gang material. I mean, I love the matching jackets, and I'm super great at tying bandanas. I could be front row in any gang versus gang dance-off, any day. But, last time I went to gang tryouts, things looked way less like West Side Story and Grease than...
Business Week's been showcasing the "best affordable suburbs" to which its readers might wanna move, and this week it saves the best for last: the South, notable for its "strong job markets and low living costs." And, naturally, there is a Dallas-Ft. Worth suburb included on the list: Flower Mound,...
Yesterday I was all worried about being shut out of a closed city council meeting that turned out to be a luncheon for officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So today I got to go. And it was … odd. The guest of honor was John Paul Woodley...
Although the song in Wonderful Town titled "100 Easy Ways (to Lose a Man)" does talk about a bunch of different ways you could lose a guy, I was surprised it never mentioned these surefire ways you can lose your man: do his grandpa, ask him to do a chore,...
Laura Sanchez glances at the gold watch on her wrist. She looks up and smiles stiffly. She only has an hour, she says, fidgeting with the pearl ring on her finger. And then she has to catch a flight to Monterrey, Mexico. She needs to escape; she needs to stop...
In recent months, the Dallas-based father-and-son investment team of Craig and Don Hodges -- better known as the $650-mil Hodges Fund -- has gotten plenty o' pub in such pubs as Kiplinger's and USA Today. The former celebrated the duo as "a rare, old-fashioned fund" that's making more on its...
There is a moment early on in "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers," the 14th episode of the brilliant but canceled television series Freaks and Geeks, in which gangly, bespectacled, picked-last-in-gym-class high school freshman Bill Haverchuck (Martin Starr) arrives home from school, makes himself a grilled cheese sandwich, and sits down...
We, members of the NAAGP, hereby protest Casa Mañana's Children's Playhouse's premiere of a new musical, Jack & the Beanstalk, on Friday and encourage all largish people and NBA players to join us for a protest at 7 p.m. outside the theater, 3101 W. Lancaster Ave. in Fort Worth. (We'll...
Zac Crain may or not become mayor, but he does know the good rock from the bad. Gary Griffith, not s'much. A Friend of Unfair Park sends word today that he's been listening to advance tracks from the double-disc comp due out shortly to raise some campaign dough for our...
A federal judge recently found the principal of a North Dallas elementary school guilty of 1940s-style racial and ethnic segregation. In a civil suit, Judge Sam Lindsay ruled that Preston Hollow Principal Teresa Parker had systematically herded black and Latino kids into segregated classrooms to appease affluent white parents. At...
Good news for folks who're good with computers and stuff: If you're not working today -- which is to say, you're out of work and not just taking the day off to download current theatrical releases or browse for porn -- just wait till the beginning of 2007. You just...
It took about five minutes for this much of The Dallas Morning News' crap Web site to load. Seriously. Five minutes. Sure, ours ain't the best either, but at least it loads...most of the time. I have been trying to focus my thoughts on why the new Dallas Morning News...
Former Observer music editor Zac Crain has leaked the tentative tracklisting for his double-CD Zac Crain for Mayor campaign fundraiser, and it's somewhat of a doozy. Though the set contains the requisite contributions from Sorta-obvious Barley House drinking buddies such as Olospo, I Love Math and Salim Nourallah (plus everyone's...
Bent over a shelf of aging vinyl, Johnny Lloyd Rollins adds another record to his stack of take-home goodies. He's got a $20 bill in his pocket, and he wants to get the maximum amount of Disney for his buck. Rollins has struck gold: a Robin Hood picture disc, vivid...
According to legend (and by "legend" we mean "Wikipedia"), the original model for the hootenanny was a result of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie's inability to pay their bills. The folk-legends-to-be invited all their musically inclined friends and Greenwich Village neighbors to attend an open jam session that doubled as...
The magnificent aroma had but to waft enticingly around my olfactory receptors, and I was seduced. The bubbly sound of plastic on plastic sent my senses into overdrive. Ravenous, I pulled the Lean Cuisine from the microwave, tore the clear wrap off my partitioned Salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese...
