Glen Coleman's killer was not one for subtlety. When Coleman's body was found, somebody had plugged him so many times with a .45 that bullet holes riddled virtually every part of the corpse. A coroner could not say exactly how many times the murderer pulled the trigger, but as many...
Sometime in the early hours of October 18, a computer hacker infiltrated the Nation of Islam's Internet website and electronically altered the homepage with insulting graffiti, triggering an online debate about "cyber hate crime." The homepage's greeting was modified to: "Welcome to the nation of Murderers Homeb0y pAge,[sic]" and other...
Ratings madness Earlier this month, KXAS-Channel 5 did a hilarious, dead-on send-up of television's penchant for hysterical coverage of dubious trend stories--particularly when it involves the use of hidden cameras and disguises--to pump up ratings during sweeps week. In this case, Sabrina Smith, the perky blonde member of the Public...
Staff writers Miller, Rozen take awards for investigative, business-news stories The Dallas Observer has won two Texas Katie Awards for outstanding journalistic achievement in the Dallas Press Club's annual statewide contest. Announced at a November 11 ceremony, the Observer awards came in the major-market newspapers competition, open to all Texas...
It's a shame that Colin Powell decided not to run; I think he would have contributed a much-needed lowering of the rhetorical temperature on the Republican side. I accept Powell's word that his decision came from looking into his own soul and finding that he did not have the passion...
Holly Keiser was sitting on the living-room sofa, watching the evening news, when the story broke: a Dallas public-school teacher had been suspended from her job, supposedly for telling her black fifth-graders to "Go back to Africa." At first blush, Keiser couldn't imagine the story was true. What schoolteacher in...
The News' Paul Quinn problem In columns past, BeloWatch has sounded alarms about how the Belo Corporation--which has a strict conflict-of-interest policy for lowly reporters and editors--allows its top brass to ignore those same rules. Belo CEO Robert Decherd, for example, personally made two contributions to the 1994 U.S. Senate...
Williams: Laura Miller maligns Laura Miller's latest emotional tirade ["Kress and the merry morons," November 9] is not only an extremely poor example of fair, objective journalism, it could be considered libelous. In every other of Miller's advocacy pieces that I've read, she has at least allowed the targets of...
The commissioner of the NFL, Paul Tagliabue, was holding a formal press conference downstairs. The pain in the butt of the NFL was holding an impromptu press conference upstairs--in a hallway at the D-FW Airport Hilton. Only about seven reporters were in attendance. But some worked for very big and...
With Ohio Tip-Off, the Dallas Theater Center takes aim at the merry dance of dreams and commerce that is professional sports. Unfortunately, it puts up an air ball. The play takes for its subject the Ohio Shakers, a team mired in the recesses of the downscale Continental Basketball Association. The...
Soul survivor There's a genius in there somewhere--a genuine artist instead of a bullshit artist, Prince instead of Lenny Kravitz. But that's Terence Trent D'Arby for you, an egomaniacal would-be superstar when he debuted in 1987 with the audacious Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby (hit single: "Wishing...
When Rita Webb left KNON-FM (89.3) a year and a half ago under the most trying and disheartening of circumstances, it was like being kicked out of the house she had grown up in. Her departure from the community radio station came during a difficult period in the station's decade-long...
Before his November 7 appearance at the Dallas Music Complex, Bob Dylan hadn't performed in Dallas since his 1990 concert at the Fair Park Music Hall. It was a sit-down (and scratch-your-head) affair, with Dylan blurring the line between mattering and muttering, lathering and butchering, as he rendered his own...
Just what you've been waiting for--the first combination dry cleaner, coffeehouse, and flower shop, recently opened at the corner of Preston and Frankford in Far North Dallas. According to the owners of Saint James Cleaners, the "wave of the future" is combining several retail concepts into one--that's how pitifully busy...
The 41-year-old Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee has been granted a rare international honor--unanimous box-office approval from audiences who don't often mix. His second feature, 1993's The Wedding Banquet, became one of the highest-grossing indie films ever made, and also became a beloved cult treasure that crossed gender, sexual, and ethnic...
The first time I saw Annette Bening was in Valmont, Milos Forman's adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She played Madame de Merteuil, a part portrayed the previous year by Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons. Both actresses gave terrific performances, although they couldn't have interpreted the role more differently: where Close's...
How do you spot the people in the office who are indulging in Happy-Hour Nookie? Of course, we all know the answer to that one: The ones who never speak to each other in the office. The reason you can't talk in the office if you're in the middle of...
thursday november 16 Birthday Benefit Bash For The Word: If you have any doubt that Dallas has a spoken-word it can be proud of, just attend the Birthday Benefit Bash for The Word, the locally published monthly guide to performance venues in Dallas. To celebrate the first birthday of The...
A tale of two pizzas: I said it was the best of pizzas, and though no one said it was the worst, there were a lot of people who claimed the superlative for their favorite pizza place, not mine. In the weeks following the Observer's September 28 "Best of Dallas"...
A poetic public place The story on the Prince of Peace Catholic Community's experience in building their church and school ["From Bauhaus to God's house," October 26] is a very telling piece, for the following reasons: in one simple parable, the crisis of American culture and environment is made clear...
Darrell Frank appears at the door of his apartment wearing a black baseball cap with a Dead Serious logo--a guitar and bleached cow's skull. His long, frizzy ponytail is pulled through the back. He ushers his guest past the living room's big-screen TV, past his wife's vast collection of stuffed...
Just call him Al With three distinctly different mug shots topping his column in just a week, it looked as if an identity crisis had befallen gushing Dallas Morning News gossip writer Alan Peppard. (To stay on Al's good side, pronounce his name like "peppered," not like that other puffy,...
