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...
Carolyn Osborn vividly remembers the day in July two years ago when the nurse from Cross Timbers Care Center in Flower Mound telephoned. We have a little bit of a problem with your mother, the nurse said. She has a couple of ant bites. Don't worry though; your mother is...
Ellis Pickett uses his camera to document the oceanic minutiae that tell the story of how, when, where, and why the beaches he loves are going all to hell.
After three years of hype about how the Dallas Independent School District was finally going to teach kids to read, the jury is now in. It's thumbs-down. According to a recently released evaluation of the "Dallas Reading Plan," it's a total bust. Kids in grades one through three have barely...
Either somebody finds a way to turn down the heat at Dallas police headquarters, or the family feud between the new chief and the old one goes nuclear. And won't that be a pretty sight? Just as Dallas gets ready to do its fashion-model runway walk in the 2012 Olympics...
Washington Elementary is housed in an old beige brick building in a neighborhood near downtown Sherman, a blue-collar town of about 35,000 near the Oklahoma border. It's in a part of the city where nearly every house needs a paint job, roofs sag, and the occasional worn sofa rests on...
It's so hot in Wichita Falls that the heat almost becomes a solid. The thermometer reads 107 degrees at this moment, with the heat index creeping toward 115. Even the breeze becomes an enemy when the mercury climbs this high. Imagine a thousand hair dryers aimed in your face --...
For the last few months, Dallas County Community College District professors have exchanged a series of angry e-mail messages lambasting The Dallas Morning News for what the professors characterize as a greedy, monopolistic move that they believe is hurting their students. It seems Dallas' Only Daily has a pretty high...
That little restaurant space with the burgundy awning near Lovers and Inwood has gone through some modest mutations over the years. In 1992, it was Le Caviste, a French wine bistro. Then in 1993, Guy and Martine Calluaud appropriated the space and created Calluaud's restaurant, a more informal version of...
