If playwrights and producers would only subscribe to the "Journal of the American Medical Association," they wouldn't have to waste so much time worrying about the nature of laughter and what generates it. As the journal points out, laughter is merely a matter of the levator labbi superioris muscle lifting...
It's comforting to think of leadership as an innate ability among certain men and women, a talent much like any other, such as playing the harpsichord or doing long division in your head. "A born leader," you often hear, as if no training were involved to demonstrate proficiency at it...
If you are 7-and-a-half years old, halfway through the second grade, and living on a steady diet of CD-ROM and Nickelodeon's "Weinerville," very little slips by you. Such is the case with Caitlin, who has already shattered some of the most sacred myths of childhood. First, she is already hip...
Did Ray Hunt support Mandela? We learn more about Mayor Ron Kirk every day. Last week, for instance, the mayor, who announced he would lead a trade mission to South Africa, told The Dallas Morning News, "I cannot escape the symbolic parallels of being the first African-American mayor of Dallas...
Like businesses throughout the city celebrating the holiday spirit, the office of Intertect Relief and Reconstruction Corporation held a Christmas party last week in the Oak Cliff home of one of its staff members. It was a bittersweet affair, to be sure, because Fred Cuny, the founder and director of...
Channel 8 gives Rene Syler the boot Eager to head off a lawsuit, A.H. Belo Corp. attorneys are negotiating with a lawyer for dumped Channel 8 anchor Rene Syler, BeloWatch has learned. Syler, who worked as a field reporter and as co-anchor for WFAA's noon news broadcast, was summoned into...
Hopeful house I am very unhappy with the way the article on Hope House was written ["Young, Gay, and Thrown Away," November 30]. The tone is very sensational, there are many things stated that are just not true, and some things Johnathon Briggs wrote are plain rude and offensive. When...
Oh boy, a good race! I know that politics is in dreadful disrepute, but the prospect of a fine, old-fashioned duke-out over some real stuff--not just the spin on stuff--gets the juices stirring. Rep. John Bryant, a populist Democrat, has announced he's running against Phil Gramm, the part-time senator for...
It must be Brave Combo They start arriving in stores in late October, those early Christmas presents better known as the fruitcake of the record industry--Christmas albums, that is, lumps of coal to be played as you and yours trim the tree and gulp down eggnog and wait for that...
Did you hear the one about the Jew who played in a bluegrass band? This Jewish musician was proficient at his trade, a banjo player highly respected among his peers, many of whom had grown up in Kentucky and were reared on a steady diet of traditional music. The bluegrass...
Face it--not all your meals this holiday season will be eaten in the cloying company of seldom-seen family and office friends. Often, gladly or grudgingly, you'll be eating on your own. Here are some suggestions for a single, serviceable meal: a gorditas plate at Cenaduria on Greenville--$1.95 for a stuffed...
Ordering from a menu can be a real art. Not the way you do it, but what you order. There are people who can compose the perfect meal from a restaurant menu, each dish progressing perfectly into the next, each dish the pinnacle of what the kitchen can produce, so...
Terry McMillan and Ron Bass are Hollywood's hot item, collaborators on the most eagerly anticipated movie of the year, even the decade. Waiting to Exhale, McMillan's book, has sold about three million copies to date, camping out on The New York Times bestseller list for 38 weeks. And Waiting to...
Our topic today is the Woman of Easy Virtue. Bless her little heart. I've been hearin' a lot lately about the big bad Womanizer. Oooooooooooo, what a piece of scummy crud he is. We've got Congressional Womanizers, Big-Business Womanizers, Showbiz Womanizers and, of course, the old-fashioned Traveling-Salesman Womanizer. These are...
thursday december 21 Winter Solstice Celebration: When Dallas Observer ran an item about the Summer Solstice drum celebration, we received angry calls from organizers because the term "pagan rituals" was used. Maybe we should have said "pagan-influenced," or "paganish in a nice way" instead. Now the Winter Solstice Celebration is...
Mickey Mantle never saw himself as a hero, never felt comfortable in the role, and he rebelled against it all his life. After he had been out of baseball for several years, he was contacted by the New York Yankees, who wanted information from him for a publicity package they...
With rare exceptions, Al Green has not stepped onto a concert stage since 1979. Sixteen years ago, during a concert in Cincinnati, he fell 12 feet off a stage and barely missed being seriously injured. Already a disciple of the Lord, preaching in front of his Memphis congregation most every...
I try to keep my spirit lively, my mind open and I truly mean to muster anticipation for every new restaurant. But my mouth has a mind of its own: "Oh God, another Mexican restaurant," it sighs. Every one that opens promises it will be different, but after all, how...
Antoine's offers the perfect student lunch: a pre-wrapped po' boy sandwich ("original," turkey, roast beef, tuna or minced ham), a big grab of chips and a Coke for under $4. Take it to-go and eat it outside since evidently winter's never coming, or always going, this year. Or, if it...
All right, that's enough. Let's stop stealin' one another's football teams. I was just gettin' used to the Carolina Panthers, for God's sake, and the Jacksonville Jagwires, and now they're expecting the words "Nashville Oilers" to come out of my mouth? Heck, I still can't say "Indianapolis Colts," much less...
Heat, writer-director Michael Mann's heavy-hitting crime drama, has some eye-catching images, a wonderfully ambiguous mood, and numerous detailed characters ably performed by a great cast. You have to admire the brazen magnitude it's reaching for, even though the film's impressive scope ultimately works against it. The central narrative--about the symbiotic...
White Man's Burden has a lofty goal: to put the races in the other guy's shoes. But being released as it is in the wake of O.J. Simpson's acquittal, White Man's Burden comes off as a Hollywood knee-jerk take on race--something like those "in-depth," 300-page "real-story" books released 17 days...
