The Cotes du Coeur fine-wine auction and dinner takes place this year on February 10 at the Hyatt Regency. The event, expected to gross $500,000, was founded in 1992 by a Dallas physician, Dr. James Hillert, a true believer in the heart-health benefits of wine. Wine aristocracy from around the...
Danny Wettreich, a 44-year-old native of London, England, personifies precisely what many find repugnant about American capitalism. In the 13 years since he moved to Dallas, Wettreich has bought and shut down businesses, shuffled millions of dollars in securities, drawn suspicion from two federal agencies, and thrown people out of...
Between a Boulder and a hard place More than a year ago, feminist Karen Ashmore said goodbye and good riddance to Dallas. Ashmore, who co-founded the Dallas Rainbow Chapter of the National Organization for Women, said she was burned out on Big D's provincialism--especially when it came to race relations...
Gold Rush! Yee-haw! Look at them settlers lashin' their teams and bouncin' their wagons in an all-out scramble to stake a claim in Electronville. The telecommunications bill is the Gold Rush of 1996, an industry free-for-all, a wild, pell-mell greed-stampede. All the settlers have pretty fair grubstakes to start with;...
There are many ways to get nookie at a drive-in, and some of them are legal. But the best way to execute the art of autoerotic suggestion is to pay good money for a flick that has proven to be so irresistible to women that sometimes just the title alone...
There is a moment in the controversial new film, Georgia, which will pretty much decide what you think of the movie and its star, the ever courageous, enigmatic Jennifer Jason Leigh. Actually, there are nine of them. Legendary "actor's director" Ulu Grosbard (The Subject Was Roses, Straight Time) lets the...
On the eve of Armageddon, my grandma sat on the living-room sofa and considered this theological conundrum: Was it right to pray for the Green Bay Packers to win? Was it right to beg divine intervention on behalf of the more virtuous, if less talented, team? If Jesus were here...
Granbury's jewel on the square During the summer of 1989, I was fortunate enough to direct a production of Kander and Ebb's musical Chicago at the Granbury Opera House. I had met Jo Ann Miller on a previous visit, and was enthusiastic about working with her and my old friend...
Julie Mote--whose name, I assure you, would not ring any bells at Dallas City Hall--was sitting in her North Dallas home with her husband two Wednesdays ago, eating baked chicken and asparagus, when something unusual happened. The couple began discussing city politics. "We don't usually talk politics in this house...
Let's apply a little Queer Theory to the Harry Hunsacker plays. Before beginning this instructive exercise, however, it's necessary to explain to the benighted what the Harry Hunsacker plays are. Harry is the bumbling, narcissistic hero of a series of stage whodunits performed at the Pegasus Theater in Deep Ellum...
A wise man--perhaps it was James Brown, or maybe it was Don Rickles--once said that when someone calls you a legend, they just mean you're looking for work. It's a title writers give to the has-beens and never-weres, the guys who had their shot, watched it fall just short of...
A desperado for all times The folks about whom Warren Zevon has written for more than two decades are all the same--outlaws with guns blazing, madmen who point those guns at their own heads and pull the triggers. They're losers and loners, schizophrenics and sociopaths, outcasts and outsiders, deranged men...
It's a culinary Frank Capra script. Call it downright heartwarming. The lovely old house that used to be home to Routh Street Cafe has been through some changes since the famous restaurant closed, as has Russ Hodges, who worked in that stellar kitchen with the first talented team under Stephan...
When critics talk about the great actors of American cinema, their opinions are often based on not upsetting the critical status quo--De Niro is a chameleon, Pacino a sizzling stick of dynamite, yadda yadda yadda. Forget what you've been told--compared to Sean Penn, De Niro is an anemic bore who's...
For a few minutes at the beginning of Mr. Holland's Opus, it might occur to you that if George Bailey, the Joblike hero played by Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life, were a teacher rather than an S&L owner, this film might have been moot. Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss)...
thursday january 18 KNON Benefit: If you haven't checked out the western swing stylings of Cowboys and Indians, investigate the Dallas Observer Scene, Heard compilation of local artists (next time, we won't ask so nicely). You'll find a jaunty little ditty about a happy fat boy called "Roly Poly." It's...
It's Wednesday evening--still almost afternoon--and it's cold, but the line snakes out the door almost to the street anyway. It will still be there when you've finished eating. Inside, the place, though just remodeled, still has the bustling, noisy atmosphere, kitschy murals, and plastic plants of original Tex-Mex palaces. It's...
Daisy Duke dreams Is it some kind of colossal I.Q. test? Buzz learned last week that Texas Motor Speedway officials have been "overwhelmed" by interest in the condominiums they plan to build at the stock-car racetrack under construction north of Fort Worth. If the interest turns into deals, the condos,...
On January 5, KERA-FM music director and disc jockey Gabrielle West was not returning phone calls, nor would she for the next several days. Her voice-mail message at the public radio station explained why: "We're going through some serious changes that will involve everybody--including you, as well," she offered callers...
So long, 1995; what a year you were. Bob Packwood, the Republican "revolution," O.J. Simpson, Oklahoma City--ah, yes, we remember it well. Onward we march, through the accumulating history of human folly, greed, bad manners, and general goofiness, with the touching faith that next year will be better--a faith founded...
The first recorded theatrical performance, according to anthropologists studying Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, France, was an audience-participation comedy. Several Cro Magnon hunters reenacted how Og, the tribal fool, was run through the kidney by a woolly rhinoceros during a particularly raucous foraging party. Meanwhile, the audience encouraged the players...
Am I the only person on the planet who's watched all four Body Chemistry movies, including the one where Morton Downey Jr. has sex while making animal noises? Naw, let's assume there's two of us--me, and a paraplegic channel surfer in Boise. You guys can call him if any of...
