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?...
Anyone who stopped fretting about Jerry Jones and Deion Sanders last week long enough to notice that some baseball games were going on may have realized they involved one of our own, Cleveland Indians manager Mike Hargrove. You probably read accounts of how Hargrove held the young team together after...
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...
