Giving up the funk On his last album, George Clinton asked you to smell his finger, truly spoken like a man who's had his thumb up his ass for a while now. It has been a long time since Clinton was the Funkmaster General: His heyday stretches from 1970 (with...
The original screen version of Jane Eyre, released in 1944--with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, both at the height of their powers--is one of the minor masterpieces of the studio system's Golden Age. Like all the best Victorian pictures of the time (The Heiress, Gaslight, and others) the entire production...
thursday april 11 Guarded Territories: The author of the new play Guarded Territories, which is being presented by the Beardsley Living Theatre in its North Texas premiere, was born in Canada, educated in the United Kingdom (where he studied scriptwriting), and currently lives in Fort Worth. Yet it's not a...
Alan Bonebrake, a Dallas chiropractor, doesn't know much about the Internet, except that he wants to know more. "People keep telling me it's the way to go," says Bonebrake (yes, that's his real name), who plans to advertise his services on the Net. Last month, Bonebrake, like thousands of others...
Last week, my silver-haired mother ate an Egg McMuffin for the first time in her life. I won't go into the details surrounding her surrender to fast food, except that circumstances demanded it, that she'd reached the point between hunger and availability otherwise known as a rock and a hard...
I still think Randy Newman should have taken home the Oscar for best song, and my opinion was reinforced when I walked into Eastside Grill where they were playing "Good Old Boys," Newman's brilliant album about Louisiana and Huey P. Long, which became the soundtrack for our early dinner. Newman...
Brunch at Parigi is such a natural idea, it's hard to believe it's a new one. The venerable cafe, which still seems as fresh as it did when it opened 10 years ago, is certainly the perfect setting, with its pale color scheme and wide windows, for a leisurely spring...
They got the beat The Fugees' set at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin last month was one of the more anticipated gigs of the weekend--with good reason, too, not just the result of undeserved hype that follows every band into Austin in March like bad body odor...
Have you noticed how there's been a backlash against the use of stunt breasts? Guys are deciding that they're not that crazy about artificial breastskis anymore. There are only so many Silicone Sacs you can look at before you go: "You know what? I knew this girl who had breasts...
thursday april 4 Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, Chuck Pyle: This three-headliner event at Sons of Hermann Hall is called "Writers in the Round," which in this open-mic crazy town suggests yet another convergence of literary muses. Actually, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Darden Smith, and Chuck Pyle all work firmly within...
Mouse recalls everything that happened to him on August 13, 1995. He remembers getting off work at the Galaxy Club in Deep Ellum. He remembers getting on his bicycle, only to find one of the tires flat. He remembers hitching a ride to his apartment, opening the door, sleepily trying...
Sipping coffee at midmorning around Linda Terrell's kitchen table is strictly a "come as you are" proposition. She hands you a well-worn mug, pours the stout black brew, and asks if you take milk or sugar. No fancy china cream-and-sugar set here. The half-gallon carton of milk is sitting in...
Their boss is Goofy Who says Fort Worth Star-Telegram publisher Rich Connor can't take a joke? Well, most of his employees, actually. The allegation was confirmed this week when Connor barred S-T reporters from participating in a skit in the Texas Gridiron Show. The show is the local media's annual...
Robert Dorrell, a part-time state-licensed massage therapist, says he has grown tired of fielding telephone calls from misguided--not to mention overexcited--prospective customers, who mistake his service for a massage parlor. Typically, Dorrell says, the errant callers "ask me if I'm going to give them a hand job." Dorrell is blaming...
For more than a year, chicken tycoon Bo Pilgrim has been casting about East Texas for a place to build his next processing plant. But the reputation of Pilgrim's Pride as one of the state's worst polluters has doggedly pursued his company, causing doors to slam in communities that do...
Reading, writing, research I'm writing to commend you on the truly comprehensive article written by Laura Miller ["The truth about Townview," March 14]. I am a graduate of the TAG Magnet here in Dallas, and I am also African-American. I attended TAG from 1988 to 1992 while living with my...
Steve Hatchell answered the telephone in his hotel room last Thursday evening full of good cheer. And, hey, why not? The 49-year-old commissioner of the new Big 12 athletic conference was in New York City for an extended weekend. He was staying at the Marriott Marquis, a big, glitzy hotel...
What, me pander? It's hard to say what's more ludicrous: the Morning News' slobbering coverage of the Nordstrom department store's arrival in Dallas or managing editor Stu Wilk's dismissal of the suggestion that the paper was sucking up to a major advertiser. The News' treatment of the store's opening was...
The realists of this world have the romantics by the balls, but the romantics refuse to cry uncle. Instead, they produce epics like War and Peace, Moby Dick, or Angels in America--works which suggest there is some kind of overarching moral or spiritual purpose to the universe, even though the...
"After Show Only" backstage passes are concert promoters' version of a good news-bad news joke. The good news is that you can go backstage. The bad news is that you are often segregated from the real action and rarely get to meet the band. If there is going to be...
Nick Cave has a hard time describing his music, and as he speaks over the phone from New York City, he does so slowly. He forms his words with calculated enunciation, and though he is never evasive, he answers questions carefully and thoughtfully, like a man pondering his own existence...
It's a wonder the Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. doesn't sue Elvis Costello. Or National Public Radio commentator Elvis Mitchell. Or every single Elvis Presley impersonator stalking the streets of Las Vegas. Priscilla and Lisa Marie don't' take too kindly to anyone using the King's name in vain: Try eating a...
