Ask what Miss Texas can do for you It's nice to know somebody is addressing society's more pressing problems. Miss America President Leonard Horn has given the Miss Texas organization a deadline to correct a long-time Texas beauty pageant tradition of carpetbagging (i.e. Miss Bexar County is actually from Tarrant...
The words "Be prepared" may soon greet patrons when they enter the restrooms of local bars and restaurants. The slogan, printed on designer condom dispensers, isn't just aimed at former Boy Scouts, but at anyone who is sexually active. The brightly colored condom vending machines carrying the "Be prepared" warning...
A better brew Six Flags Over Beer indeed ["Theme parks for beer," June 29]. Instead of the adventure- land approach of brewing, why don't these micros concentrate on making better beer? A good bock, or a true lager, for example. Also, the beer needs a little more carbonation (a little--not...
News opens up checkbook to prove McVeigh's guilty "His few friends and many casual acquaintances say he doesn't drink, smoke or take drugs. He doesn't curse or chase women. He is frugal and keeps his room neat and orderly. He prefers listening to talking. He is intelligent, loyal and polite...
Wouldn't you think that by now we would all react to the word "deregulation" the same way we do when we hear the buzz of a rattlesnake? Freeze, spot it, then run like hell. 'Cause we sure have been snake-bit by deregulation in this country. Deregulating the savings and loans...
Jason Kidd is sucking a small Gatorade and sweating like a fat guy on a rec gym free-throw line. He is atop a trailer at "Hoop it Up" in the West End. The sun feels hotter up here. And he really hates that Texas sun. No offense, of course, he...
I write this, my final column for the Dallas Observer, from an otherwise empty townhouse I have just moved into, somewhere between the Beltway and Virginia's Bible belt. It is the transitory nature of this business that just when you feel confident in your writing gig and your babysitter and...
Love songs are, of course, the heart--or, more accurately, the broken heart--of popular music. Whether they are autobiographical stories or thinly veiled tales or imagined fantasies and failures, songs about love (or the promise of love, or the departure of love) constitute the bulk of the popular song catalog, followed...
"Did anybody tell you you have a voice like Joan Baez?" The crowd in the Dark Room on this Wednesday night after the Fourth of July is atypically small, the sort of intimate setting that engenders banter between audience members and performers. On stage, Meredith Louise Miller and Bruce Dickinson...
Good enough, Wells enough Twenty-three years after its release, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells Play the Blues stands as one of the turning points in the history of modern blues; it's the crossroads at which the authentic and the commercial meet, a project that began with good intentions (to make...
I get a lot of press releases and a lot of voice mail, but I gather a good deal of my restaurant information from that most professional of sources, my car. Like everyone else in Dallas, I spend half my waking hours behind the wheel, and cue in to changes...
The opening credits of the new sci-fi thriller Species are splashed across a panorama of stars while ominous, understated theme music lurks in the background. Veteran monster movie fans might be reminded of Ridley Scott's 1979 Alien by this deliberately hushed but melodramatic beginning. Audiences will find another link between...
There's a moment in the second half of Crumb, Terry Zwigoff's scorching and fearless feature-length profile of the underground comic-book artist Robert Crumb, that confirms movie audiences have entered a very different world than they are accustomed to exploring. After Crumb and numerous friends, family members, and loved ones have...
Looking at Judge Dredd star Sylvester Stallone these days, with his bulbous physique, his imploding face, and his orangeish, rubbery-looking skin, it's tough to recall that he once seemed rather charming, and that he was a pretty good actor to boot. He made his starring debut in the self-written 1976...
The city of Bellevue, Wash., is trying to force Papagayo's Cantina--which, by the way, is an excellent topless bar if you ever get up that way--to make its stage "wheelchair-accessible.'' In case any handicapped topless dancers decide to buy G-strings. Let me pause here for a moment so you can...
Since Chuck Jones is the subject of a tribute at the Dallas Museum of Art this weekend, I have an excuse to wax eloquent about how much joy his work has given me over the years. The legendary Warner Bros. animator's distinctively rough draftsmanship and quirky sense of humor gave...
friday july 14 West End's Taste of Dallas: This is a warning to people who think they have iron stomachs--the wide variety of foods available at the West End's three-day Taste of Dallas doesn't necessarily mix well. If you choose to sample Frito pie and ostrich stew in the same...
You don't see wings as often as breasts, and they're not as big here as in Buffalo, but chicken wings are a coming thing--one part of the bird that still has bones. Wingstop serves 'em hot, mild, covered in lemon pepper or garlic and parmesan, coated with Hawaiian or atomic-strength...
As Matt Hillyer and Steve Berg welcome their guest into the living room-cum-rehearsal space in which Lone Star Trio and the Collyers practice and hang out, they bring out three cans of Lone Star beer. The gesture could not be more welcome, or appropriate: As two-thirds of Lone Star Trio--Hillyer...
Ray Audette amuses his Far North Dallas neighbors. They laugh when they see Audette, a diet book author, tramp across the manicured lawns lugging fresh roadkill, usually squirrels. They know their neighbor is toting the furry accident victims back to his yard to feed his young red-tailed hawk. The hawk,...
We bought it for the prose For the past year, Buzz has chronicled the obsessive publicity-seeking of former Dallas Morning News plagiarist and world-class depressive Elizabeth Wurtzel as she desperately clung to the 15 minutes of fame that her fellate-and-tell book, Prozac Nation, generated. Well, Elizabeth's popped up again, you...
Ryan Amacher, the former University of Texas at Arlington president who, with help from an interior designer imported from Arizona, spent more than $157,000 last year to remodel a presidential suite for himself, has fallen a long way. In March, Amacher moved from a spacious office in College Hall, noted...
