In 10 years of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin--the annual gathering of music-bizzers that has become the largest such confab of its kind, drawing well over 5,000 registrants and more than 600 bands--there have been plenty of great concerts and a myriad of impressive showcases...
When they were booked on the same Ed Sullivan Show episode in 1956, Elvis Presley told Ella Mae Morse that listening to her sassy '40s records, such as "Get On Board Little Chillun," "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet," and her million-selling "Cow Cow Boogie," taught him how to sing. But...
When is a kid's film not for kids? When it uses child characters to portray universal adult dilemmas, when one simple but philosophically profound problem propels all the action, and when a witty script attempts to capture the foibles of grownups in all their childish (or, more accurately, unchildlike) guile...
Among my most cherished television memories are the outrageous movie parodies shown almost weekly on the old Carol Burnett Show. Burnett's staff had a genius for writing those bits--distilling a two-hour movie down to its essential characters, events, and motivations, then extracting from what was left 15 minutes worth of...
friday march 22 Sorrow and Solace: Every American military action since the mid-'70s--Kuwait, Panama, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia--is examined up, down, and sideways by the press and politicians for any sign of infection by that most dreaded of American viruses--Vietnamitis. Everyone wants to know if the latest deployment of troops...
By now, everyone in the Metroplex should know about the ice-cream king of Bedford, former-federal-agent-turned-dessert-entrepreneur Milwaukee Joe, whose tiny, old-fashioned ice-cream store is worth the drive and worth the calories. If you really only splurge for a celebration, order your birthday cake from Joe. A three-layer extravagance of chocolate and...
It was a cold, bleak 7:45 in the morning--the second Monday in January, the first day of school after the winter break--and Townview Center, the most expensive, most eagerly awaited school ever built in Dallas, was being picketed for allegedly grave racial injustices being perpetrated inside. Newspaper, TV, and radio...
I recently made up with my girlfriend, Cherry Dilday--for the 37th time--and we were on our way to catch One Night Stand at the triple-screen Astro Drive-In on Loop 12 in Dallas. I was thinking how it was really weird that nobody has ever used the title One Night Stand...
By the beginning of December, with pressure on Watson mounting, a new and much more formidable ally stepped onto center stage on her behalf: County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It is no accident that Price's two biggest racial battles this past year have involved Ora Lee Watson--at Parkland Memorial Hospital,...
Don't even think about it, mayor Sometimes Buzz marvels at what life in Dallas has done to its citizens. Last week, a seemingly bright, articulate woman called with a question. "I've called everywhere--city and county--and no one seems to be able to give me an answer," she said. "So, I...
The city of Dallas' overwhelming problem with false burglar alarms became abundantly apparent this past January when Ivey Head's 77-Drive-In Cafe on South Industrial Boulevard burned to the ground. A controversy ensued because a police dispatcher had refused to respond to Head's alarm company's call for help because the city...
A document the A.H. Belo Corp. recently filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission flatly contradicts a key Dallas Morning News executive's published explanation for the demise of the paper's Sunday magazine. On November 15, 1994, The Dallas Morning News published a story on page 10D of the business...
Get up offa that thing I just read the article, "Single with children" [February 22], the story of Linda Koop and the two boys she took in. I could say a lot of negative things about some of the players in that piece--but my hat still goes off to her...
Social scientists and cultural engineers are, even as you read, racking their brains to determine why sketch comedy has reached rock bottom. Could it be that amusing situations and snappy lines are finite resources that have been exhausted? Or are all the good writers busy working on The Larry Sanders...
There are some things that, to be truly enjoyed, require a certain suspension of cynicism--stuff like reading fiction, finding God, falling in love...and music, of course. And cynicism about David Garza--or Dah-veed, as he prefers to be called--has been all but the party line in many of the hipper music...
Better than their bite The audience was so sparse all Dave Sardy could do was laugh. The Barkmarket frontman stood at the edge of the Orbit Room stage in late November, staring and smiling slightly at the 15 or so boys--and they were truly boys, kids in backwards baseball caps...
Yippee-yi-oh-oy-vay! Who wouldn't trade Irish stew for a bowl of red? The third-annual community Kosher Chili Cook-Off at Tiferet Israel Synogogue takes place on March 17, St. Patrick's Day. All the koshered burners in the entire Metroplex have been secured for the event and pots of chili should be bubbling...
The movies of Spike Lee must present something of a nightmare to the mainstream liberal mind. He's the most confrontational, radical-left political filmmaker of his time, and a personal friend of the most powerful pair of Michaels in entertainment (Jackson and Jordan) to boot. As a director, he glides comfortably--and...
thursday march 14 Ampersand Dance/Theatre: The title of the latest multimedia showcase by the Fort Worth-based Ampersand Dance/Theatre is nicely populist for a troupe which dabbles in decidedly noncommercial media--"Better Than A Movie and Cheaper Than A Cowboys Game" (a two-part statement to which we reply: "We'll see about that,"...
Neighbors think the old man who lives at the corner of Cortez and Thornberry might be a little crazy. His house is falling down, its paint is fading away, and plastic tarps cover holes in its crumbling wood-shingle roof. The old man's yard, jammed with lumber, pipes, bricks, scaffolding, and...
Editor's note: This is the final week Molly Ivins' column will appear in the Dallas Observer. We are forced to discontinue her column because the management of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has ordered her syndicate to yank it from our pages. The Star-Telegram took the action after the Observer published...
It came from Memphis Post-rock--that's what they call it in rock-crit and indie-rock circles, a term that has come to signify the end of rock and roll and the beginning of something new fashioned from something dead. It means, as I understand it, that all rock and roll made now...
