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,...
Holy cow! What a vote that was in Canada. Speaking as one who is terribly fond of our neighbors, both north and south, I must confess that for me Canada has the additional charm of being the perfect polar opposite of Texas. In addition to affection, respect, concern, and goodwill,...
News gives brief play to ex-staffer's kiddie-porn case In a 20-minute court appearance, with a soft voice, former Morning News assistant sports editor George Woods last Thursday formally entered his guilty plea to the felony charge of possessing kiddie-porn videotapes. The official action stirred Dallas' paper of record to acknowledge--months...
"Back in the old days," Chuck Carson, MC of the first annual Leon Rabin Awards was saying to a well-coiffed crowd, "Dallasites used to show their displeasure with a play by torching the theater. Now, we just don't go." Carson, a Dallas native and professional wiseacre, put his thumb on...
Why do all the famous museum nudes lack female genitalia? No matter how meticulously drawn the breasts, the elbow, the little toe, each nude coyly protects her external reproductive organs with tightly crossed legs, a hand or a strategically draped sheet, or perhaps a swatch of long hair. Even Edouard...
When Mac Curtis visited England in December 1977, it was not as a tourist, but as a long-awaited hero. Maybe even as something of a god. Curtis had not performed in front of a crowd like this in nearly 20 years, but when he stepped up to the microphone at...
In 1992, when I began performing Monday nights at the Winedale Tavern on Lower Greenville Avenue, it was Skid Row's royal palace in Dallas. There, some patrons behave as if released from Parkland Hospital's observation ward directly to the Winedale; others, as though sprung from the dog pound. The audience...
Middle-age riot The early albums led to it, the later ones strayed from it in varying degrees of brilliant: 1988's Daydream Nation was the album, "Teen Age Riot" was the Epiphany, and the noise was never again so catchy or perfect. Those who'd claim not to "get" Sonic Youth--those who...
There aren't any human cultures that haven't made a ritual out of dining, and there aren't any that don't dine on some things that are totally repulsive to other cultures. So the French eat snails and frogs, the Koreans eat dogs, the Chinese eat shark fins and swallows' nests made...
If you aren't already familiar with the sound a Theremin makes, I'm not sure I can describe it to you. The Theremin was the first electronic musical instrument, and its eerie, plaintive squeal approximates a tone somewhere between a violin, a kazoo, and controlled microphone feedback. Because it has one...
The voice that comes across the phone line from New York City is fearlessly confident and authoritative--except when it becomes agitated or passionate about a certain point. At that moment, Agnieszka Holland's language begins to speed up and she's wont to stutter or repeat herself. Either way, her elegant Eastern...
Is it my imagination, or are there a whole lot of little kids gettin' medicated every day? I hear about this drug Ritalin all the time. "Yeah, my kid's on Ritalin. He was so hyperactive we had to give it to him to calm him down." And you go: "Wow!...
thursday november 9 David Hume Kennerly: Photojournalism gets closer to being an art form than almost any other discipline in the wide field of journalism, if you define "art" as an expression that goes straight for your emotions and doesn't let go. You'd have to hold most professional writers at...
Not just for seafood anymore, TJ's Seafood at Preston and Royal, as well as selling really fresh seafood (clearly marked if it's fresh or flash-frozen), also sells a variety of Dallas' finest locally produced foodstuffs: Raviolismo's ravioli; bread from Empire Baking Company; flower, fruit, and herb-flavored sorbets made by Out...
There are as many ways of looking at death as there are ways to die, and eventually we all have to pick the way that suits us best. Spanish playwright Alejandro Casona tinkers with this idea in The Lady of the Dawn, a spooky drama that fits the crepe and...
"Indie-rock," once used simply to describe music made on independent record labels with no connections to the majors, has become a genre unto itself as much as "alternative rock" or "metal" or "free jazz." It now signifies a lifestyle, an allegiance to an aesthetic, a specific sound born in the...
Usually my problem is how to express what I have to say; seldom am I at a loss for what to say. But I've been floundering around for several days now--way past my deadline--trying to figure out what there is to say about Cafe Sierra, a new restaurant on Greenville...
While you're watching Jodie Foster's second directorial effort (she hit notes both gorgeous and discordant with Little Man Tate, her 1991 debut as a filmmaker), you might find yourself wondering exactly when you've seen a comedy-drama paced like this one before. Certainly, most people expect the laughs and the pathos...
Fired editor agrees to guilty plea in kiddie-porn case; News remains mum George Rodney Woods, a Dallas Morning News sports editor who became the center of an interstate kiddie-porn sting, has agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography. But Dallas' Only Daily has continued to pretend the embarrassing...
Retching on Redbeard I feel dirty. I can't seem to wash the filth off of my ashamed flesh. After reading some of the picks in your Best of Dallas issue [September 28], I was overcome with the urge to shower and forget what I had just seen. In particular, I...
One of my problems with Big Bidness is that those folks don't have the sense God gave gravel. What a bunch of cashews. Here we are, going through this massive, enormous, Gingrich-powered transfer of wealth from the Have-Nots to the Haves, and what does the latest mega-merger media conglomerate do?...
