Mumbling toward Bethlehem When he wants--when the mood strikes him and the lights aren't too bright and the planets are aligned and the promoter's check doesn't bounce--Bob Dylan can give you a great show. Not merely shadowdancing on stage, not just Image and Legend going through the motions, but a...
The three members of Lower Caste Struggle sit hunched around a table, their eyes intense and their fingers fidgety. They scarf down pizza, suck down beer, exhale cigarette smoke, and pontificate about their young lives as punk rockers. Of the three band members, singer-guitarist Peter Yoass (not his real name,...
Santiago Jimenez Jr. reverently lowers the needle of one of the old wooden phonographs onto an old 78 RPM record made by his late father, Don Santiago Jimenez, in 1928. "Now this is the first record he ever recorded," Jimenez explains, before sitting down in his San Antonio living room...
Things you ought to know: Morgen Chocolates has moved its factory to McKinney Avenue. It's in the old Crystal Pagoda space, and there's an expanded retail store in the front. Avner Samuel (right), formerly the chef of Yellow, Da Spot, Avner's, the Mansion (ad infinitum) is now chef at the...
I have a question. Whatever happened to the 40-hour work week? Didn't we fight for, like, a hundred years to force all the greedy capitalists to give us a 40-hour work week so we could have all this hammock time we needed? I don't know anybody who works 40 hours...
In the 1980 Woody Allen film Stardust Memories, a Martian descends upon the troubled hero Sandy Bates. Sandy is a movie director in crisis, full of doubts about everything from his creative output to the existence of God to the meaning of life. "If nothing lasts," he asks in frustration,...
thursday november 2 15th Annual Fall Craft Fair: The non-profit Craft Guild of Dallas wants to drag closeted hobbyists and their work into the light of day by sponsoring classes and fairs to encourage a rather nifty notion--creativity for its own sake, not just because you're the best at what...
On July 20, 1994, former Dallas resident Roosevelt Lampkin learned the city had bulldozed his rental house at 2330 Britton Street in Oak Cliff. The news came as quite a shock to Lampkin, who had retired in Milton, Florida. He had been in constant contact with city officials ever since...
Virtually every day, a guy named Joe Bob Burkleo climbs onto a DART bus, rides into neighborhoods he doesn't live in, and pokes around in vacant houses and shabby properties that belong to people he doesn't know. After cruising Dallas' residential streets most of the day, he'll end his journey...
The church ladies fell in love with the old church house the minute they laid eyes on it. The Lord had blessed them yet again, this time with a home on South Dallas' Dryden Avenue for their fledgling ministry, which they intended to call Church of the Living God Youth...
Politics, doggy style It appears City Hall's Doggygate is alive and kicking. You'll remember gadfly Frank Bodzin blasted the city for harassing a widower while trying to collect on a $7 bounced check from the man's dead wife, who had written the check--when she was alive, of course--to register her...
Close your eyes and say "coffee shop." Tell me what you see. Ten-to-one the vision involves orange vinyl, white polyester, and hottles. Maybe a laminated menu, too--I like the ones illustrated with those reassuring color photographs. Coffee shops are attached to motels: they're a one-night stand, a quick fix. Change...
In the midst of Oak Cliff's Bishop Arts warehouse district, a stone's throw from the Oak Cliff Coffee House, sits an unusual shop. It's not the store's collection of lovely antiques that makes it unique, or the relatively low cost of the well-maintained furniture crammed inside, although visitors constantly remark...
President Clinton made a good speech in Austin last week on this country's worst problem. Clinton on race is always worth listening to; it's his best thing, and he does it as well as anyone walking. For those who could see or switch between Clinton's speech and the Million Man...
In remembrance Thank you, Peter Elkind, for the story on Brian Keith Thomas ["The forgotten man," October 12]. I grew up in Richardson, graduating from Richardson High School. My husband is a former RISD English teacher. I grew up respecting J.J. Pearce. I still respect him, but... Ever since hearing...
When the National Militia Commanders Council opened its second congress earlier this month on a farm at Mountain Springs, a spot in the road about 50 miles northeast of Dallas, Jim Adams, the regional chief of the FBI, was on hand. The representative of the agency responsible for the bloody...
Father Jim Balint was nervous when he stepped into the Loews Theater on February 10, 1991. The seats were filling up fast, and he knew the theater would only hold 550. The priest had scheduled three masses for that morning--the most he could squeeze in before his makeshift church had...
For the third time in five years, an African-American attorney has been nominated to the federal bench in the North Texas District. And for the third time, that nomination has stalled--again a victim, insiders say, of partisan politics. Cheryl Wattley, a former federal prosecutor now in private legal practice in...
Making a silk purse outta Dan We're glad that someone is taking seriously Buzz's suggestion that the Dallas School District name a school after spectacularly profane former trustee Dan Peavy. If you remember, we suggested the board pass up suggestions for school names like Arthur Ashe or Anne Frank to...
Dallas Observer staff writer Miriam Rozen has won the Dallas Bar Association's 1995 Stephen Philbin Award for excellence in legal reporting. Rozen's prize in the Division I newspaper category, open to all area newspapers, came for "This Boy's Life," her October 12, 1994, Observer cover story about a 15-year-old drug...
Rowlett's broadcast blues Venerable WFAA-Channel 8 anchor Tracy Rowlett last week selected a very public forum--a Dallas Bar Association media awards luncheon--to take aim at a very surprising target: local television news. And he did not spare his own station. Rowlett, keynote speaker for the annual Stephen Philbin Awards, told...
Katharine Hepburn took a lot of razzing for repeatedly rasping "The loons! The loons!" in the movie version of On Golden Pond. Insouciant young wags couldn't help but point out that Katharine the Great was acting a bit loony herself. There's plenty of other stuff in both the movie On...
