Hassles at the doctor's office and threats to the household budget have made heroism a dicey proposition for Dallas police lately. Sergeant Michael Flusche, a 20-year veteran assigned to patrol in the southwest division, was shot last month as he and other officers charged into an Oak Cliff apartment in...
When Buzz last checked in with the Dallas-based Vice Fund (VICEX) at its birth late last August, the mutual fund's managers were betting that investing in sin would pay off big. There are few certainties in life, the reasoning went. There are death and taxes, then there's the human hunger...
Secondhand Lions is cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, playing grumpy old brothers with mismatched accents. (Caine, in fact, has accent enough for three actors--one English, another maybe Texan, another perhaps Australian.) There is no...
7/4 Rest up, folks, the 2003 Trinity Fest Fourth of July celebration is going to take all the stamina you have. From an afternoon filled with music, rides, food and fun right up to the fireworks program choreographed by the pyrotechnic genius of Gruccis of New York, this promises to...
Having seemingly exhausted all permutations of the sports comedy formula (Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump, et al.), Ron Shelton has now moved on to another obsession: the Los Angeles Police Department. Earlier this year, we got the uncharacteristically somber Dark Blue, a "what if" tale of the alternately corrupt...
Dino-myte What are you wearing right now, big boy? Are there just a ton of MILFs in the audience? Big nose, big feet, is the rest of the saying true? But Full Frontal took the high road and tried to insult the big, purple dinosaur as little as possible. Barney,...
The back-road drive into Tomball is stereotypical Texas. Cattle graze on long, flat prairies spotted with yellow dandelions. Trees are scarce; rolls of sod and wire fences mark the land. Large state and American flags fly at ranch entrances. A portable sign with black plastic letters, the kind youd find...
In August, Sergeant Raul Rios called it quits. He couldn't stand working in the Dallas Police Department anymore. The 21-year department veteran says the immediate cause of his leaving was his surprise transfer from supervising a dozen patrol officers on the streets of Northwest Dallas to a graveyard shift in...
Like many of you, Buzz has been keeping close watch on our 401(k) investment account in this troubled economy, and we're happy to report that despite recent setbacks, we're still on track for a comfortable retirement. At age 135. Barring any unforeseen changes at the Dallas Observer, or a winning...
Poor Caesar Barber. For the past 27 years, the cumbersome maintenance worker from New York tried only to meander harmlessly through life. But a gang of marketing toughs from McDonald's and Burger King and other fast-food chains pummeled him daily with slogans. Teen-age hoodlums threatened to "super size" his orders...
Low-income housing developer Virginia McGuire has resigned from the troubled nonprofit that paid her and her husband's company roughly $500,000 to buy an aging East Dallas apartment complex. In late April, on the same day the Dallas Observer published a story about the big fees McGuire and her family collected...
Bill Wisener's right index finger is stained a ghoulish shade of orange. It gleams almost Day-Glo against the starched white of the Carlton cigarettes he chains together in one seamless series of puffs. To his right is a black-and-white monitor with the screen broken into four quadrants, his eyes on...
Midwestern State University's practice field is lined with the usual media types who chuckle and babble about nothing in particular. It's hot. Almost unbearably so. The heat index at Dallas Cowboys training camp is in triple digits again and will be for the rest of the summer--or until G.W.'s plan...
Spring officially ends Thursday, which means there will be a quick transition from when the sun leaves a pleasant feeling on the shoulders to when its oppressive waves sear them brick red. For the next few months, indoors is the place to be, but staring at the same four walls...
ODESSA--On a recent summer afternoon, long after the temperature had climbed past the 100-degree mark and even the dust devils seemed to weave and dance with lackluster effort, it was all but impossible to imagine how things once were. Standing amid the parched mesquites and the rhythmic nodding of the...
He looks as confident as ever striding into the room, and for a moment you think he might peel back his suit jacket and patterned, blue necktie to reveal a hidden No. 8 jersey. Could be that it's all some sick ruse, a poorly played joke for the media and...
Disorderly retreat: A generally accepted practice in journalism is to write about things that happen, not those that don't. A general rule for humor is that you put the punch line at the end of the joke. But this being Buzz, which is neither journalism nor, some would argue, funny,...
It's hard not to notice the cheesy advertisement: a full page in The Dallas Morning News, screaming tabloid headlines, before and after photos of big fleshy people morphed by hypnosis into small suggestive people: "True story how Mineola man wins 20-year battle with obesity"..."Fast Weight Loss"..."Instant Results." Take Bob Denton,...
Before Sesame Street but during the heyday of Captain Kangaroo, legend has it, Dallas-area kiddies got their kicks while they ate their Kix in front of the TV from one of two locally produced morning shows. It was the early 1960s, and television was still creeping out of its primordial...
To most of the world, at least those who love all things "E" (Entertainment Weekly, Entertainment Tonight, and E!), the word "Sundance" means Robert Redford's indie-film festival, held each January in the snow-and-golden-sun-capped mountains of Utah. Newspapers, magazines, and TV shows have also wrapped another layer of creepy meaning around...
While our governor has been out running for president on the strength of a dramatic rise in test scores for Texas schoolchildren, it would have been helpful to know that students who took the last statewide math test received a passing score of 70 percent for answering 50 percent of...
t's hard to know what to make of Jimmy Lu's, so shrouded are its subtleties, so disguised are its flavors. Maybe disguised isn't the right word, but I'm at a loss. I consulted the press kit, a stylish collection of tightly focused propaganda slipped into the sleeves of a glossy...
