It's been a strange summer. In July I accepted a position as a pop culture writer at New York Newsday. I gave my notice on a Monday. On Wednesday, my editors ran an affectionate Buzz item bidding me farewell. The editor of The Met, Eric Celeste, once my boss in...
Photographer Larry Clark's debut feature film Kids is one of those tough critical calls for a movie pundit, although you wouldn't know it by reading any of the rapturous notices printed in the national press about this eye-poppingly explicit look at the hijinks of a group of rootless adolescents on...
"What an actor that guy is!" "She is such a little actress!" When people say stuff like this, they usually mean, "What a liar!"' And this is a little annoying--especially if you're an actor. Because I know a lot of actors, and they spend all their time, every day, thinking...
thursday september 7 Ampersand Dance/Theatre: Two good buddies, Texas Christian University graduates Eric Salisbury and Shannon Slaton, have been profiled extensively in the Dallas press for talents that don't often bring you much acclaim - not to mention financial security - in this city. Salisbury is a dancer-choreographer who's performed...
Right now I'm disturbed by definitions. The language seems to be getting less and less precise. "Family-style," for instance. And "home cooking." What could these terms mean in 1995? Not what they seem, that's for sure. Avila's is a real "family-style," "home-cooking" restaurant. But it doesn't serve food in communal...
We want fresh-made pasta, fresh-ground coffee, fresh herbs, and just-squeezed juice. In the age of convenience, we value immediacy, freshness, and old-fashioned "elbow grease" more than ever. So don't be surprised that the Great Harvest Bread Company actually grinds its own flour right there in the bakery and makes it...
This much-anticipated, unofficial American version of the 1994 Australian art-house hit Priscilla, Queen of the Desert has different audiences waiting for different results. Action film fans wonder how Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze will carry themselves with heels, fake nails, and extravagant drag-queen mannerisms. Gay audiences, thrilled by the moxie...
Put him on a trading card In the wake of Mickey Mantle's wake--enlivened as it was by tales of his drinking and skirt-chasing--we have all realized, once again, that our sports heroes are no angels. Still, it never ceases to amaze Buzz what obnoxious creeps they can be. Gil Brandt,...
News strikes out In an August 25 editorial, The Dallas Morning News finally weighed in on the manipulations of Baylor Hospital doctors in the case of Mickey Mantle. The editorial first quotes an ethicist to offer a helpful definition of "lying." ("That is, a statement that says X occurred when...
Following the downward trajectory of television news Warning! O.J. content within. Let's "stipulate," as Marcia Clark says, that if the media had spent as much time on what the Republicans in Congress are doing to environmental laws and regulations as they have on O.J. Simpson, we'd all be on the...
So...The Dallas Morning News is getting into the weekly newspaper business. According to an August 23 "media advisory," Dallas' Only Daily has entered into a "consulting relationship" with The Met, Not Dallas' Only Weekly. So much for being an "alternative to the alternative"--The Met is now part of Dallas' Evil...
Ministry of hate Regarding your story on Dallas' Nation of Islam leader Jeffery Muhammad ["Black man's burden," August 10]: as with all hate-based groups, there will be some who may want to overlook the damage these groups do in favor of the positive aspects of the group. They may say:...
Right-thinking people--and Woody Allen agrees with me on this--would much rather live in the 1930s than endure our current decade, if somehow they had a choice. No, not the real Thirties, with its bread lines, fascist pogroms, lynchings, and all of that. I mean the champagne-laced Fred and Ginger Thirties,...
Lots--maybe the majority--of people are convinced that restaurant reviewers live in the advertisers' pocket. Many times I've been assured by "people who know" (but don't know what I do for a living) that all restaurant reviews are paid for by restaurant advertising, that no review is an unvarnished, honest opinion,...
Matthew McConaughey, a lean, 25-year-old Texan with curly, blondish-brown hair and a scraggly beard and moustache, is hunched over a Tex-Mex breakfast at Barney's Beanery, a popular greasy spoon on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, scooping egg onto a tortilla with a fork and telling a reporter from Dallas...
Let's talk Pro Beach Volleyball. I've decided the universe can continue to exist without Pro Beach Volleyball. Baggy-shorts jerks in a sandbox, right? Not just baggy shorts. Purple baggy shorts. Aquamarine baggy shorts. With goggle sunglasses riding up on their foreheads like they were a bunch of four-eyed possums sponsored...
In retrospect, it seems odd that a project like The Right Stuff--screened Monday, September 4 at 7 p.m. at the AMC Glen Lakes by the USA Film Festival--could get made in Hollywood at all. Sure, the 1983 movie is based on a best seller by New Journalism icon Tom Wolfe,...
Advertising would lead you to believe that Americans are living in a fat-free zone. Everything that can be is touted as less fat, low-fat, no fat. Even products that never did have fat in them have "No Fat" blaring from the bag. Tortilla chips are misguidedly baked, not fried, in...
What a prix fixe! For $35 (half of which is tax-deductible), you can sample food and wine from Star Canyon, Mediterraneo, Gaspar's, Parigi, Dakota's, Cafe Margaux, The French Room, Blue Mesa Grill, Laurels, and dozens more of Dallas' best restaurants. Plus--the reason food industry events are such profitable charity--you'll be...
Joe Ely has left Texas many times, spent many years busking in New York City subway stations and the Paris Metro. He traveled throughout Europe and the United States as a young man, even ran away with the circus for a little while to tend the llamas and a pony...
Cake check: A good cake, as I point out frequently, is hard to find. Celebrity makes a decent divinity icing; Highland Park Cafeteria makes good chocolate cake. But Sweet Endings in Deep Ellum (or Plano) takes the cake. Their whole cakes start at $25 and they recently came up with...
Get a load of this: Antonio Banderas, all decked out in bandit black, scampering across the bar in a dingy cantina, a blazing gun in either hand, mowing down bad guys as he twirls his arm this way, that way, any way, like a flamboyant bullfighter facing death in the...
