Someone in the Dallas city manager's office is not telling the truth. Fabricating. Covering up. Dissembling. Lying. And almost no one seems to care about it. That's disturbing--because it's not a lowly clerk or mid-level stiff who's bending the truth. It's city manager John Ware and his top deputies, first...
I listen to Republican rhetoric about how power should be returned to "the states" with some degree of alarm. It sounds so good in the abstract--by George, gummint should be closer to the people, those beanbrains in Washington don't know anything about our problems here. But then one realizes what...
It has been a year and a half since Marshall Crenshaw has written a song--18 months since the man sat down with his guitar and completed the dozens of unfinished thoughts that rattle around inside his head. He has run smack into writer's block, that often impenetrable barrier created by...
At about 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Edie Brickell--dressed in a brown leather jacket, a striped T-shirt, black jeans, and old K-Swiss tennis shoes, looking less like the famous wife of a pop-music icon and more like the good ol' Edie of Prophet Bars and 500 Cafes past--loitered outside Trees, basking in...
Their evil twin In an interview with the Observer a couple of years ago, Frank Black confessed that if he could have been in any band other than his own Pixies, he would have joined They Might Be Giants. Such an admission seemed both odd and appropriate: the Pixies and...
Eighteen (count "em if you can) different herbs and spices go into the crust at In the Red. They say the recipe came from a pizzeria in Rome--that In the Red's owner stood outside the back door and bribed a waiter for the formula. It could have happened, I guess...
Well, the No-Smoking Nazis have reached the borders of New York City. There's a lot of things you can say about New York City, but the one thing I always liked about the place is that it was the last place in America that respected smokers. Some of the office...
John Frankenheimer's World War II-era railway adventure The Train turns 30 this year, and it's almost appalling to consider just how infrequently modern-day Hollywood has mustered up the energy and dedication to match its countless splendors. A huge, roiling, clanking, screeching, rumbling hulk of mayhem that seizes you from frame...
When a first film--especially a locally produced, very low-budget film--doesn't ring your bell, the tempting course as a critic is simply to ignore it, under the assumption that bad press isn't always better than no press at all. Fortunately, Joseph Alexandre, the Dallas-based writer, director, editor, and co-star of the...
thursday december 1 Through the Looking Glass: Getting on the InterNet: As you know by now, all those newsmagazine headlines trumpeting The Information Superhighway were too much, too soon. They spent so much time brainstorming the potential colossal change in our daily lives--yet only a sizable minority of people are...
When I moved to Dallas at the age of 10, we lived way up north at the edge of town, near Forest Lane. Back then, you could catch crawdads and find fossils in the fields by Marsh Lane, LBJ was just a ditch, and Addison wasn't even a gleam in...
On a ridge overlooking the scrub and pinon country of northern New Mexico, Clifford Sinclair crafted a monument to his own felonious ingenuity. From a federal prison cell, the confessed swindler directed construction of a house in an exclusive subdivision outside Santa Fe. It would be the home Sinclair retired...
Louise Elam sat on the floor next to a copy machine last Thursday morning, trying her best to fish a jammed piece of paper out of a document feeder with a pair of scissors. Elam, her terra cotta-colored pantsuit rumpled after only two hours at work, jabbed at the copier...
The road has risen up to meet Dallas' Kitchen Dog Theater, proving that hard work and artistic talent, even of an alternative and sometimes enigmatic nature, can still be rewarded. The company's good fortune this season began with a $5,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. (If that...
Twenty pages into her first read through the script of The Last Seduction, John Dahl's stunningly nasty film noir, Linda Fiorentino realized she simply had to play the film's antiheroine, Bridget--a femme so fatale she makes Sharon Stone look like Sandy Dennis. She'd reached the page where Bridget arrives in...
Tuned out The abrupt announcement that veteran evening talk-show voice Karen Denard will depart in January has left KERA-90.1 FM mulling over a replacement. Some at KERA view Denard's departure as a splendid opportunity to try to lure Bob Ray Sanders back to public broadcasting. Sanders, KERA's brightest local light...
Federal auditors are urging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to terminate longstanding contracts with a Dallas company that operates some of the area's worst apartment complexes. The company, Pioneer Management, Inc., based in Oak Cliff, ran the Prince Hall Chambre Apartments in South Dallas until November 1...
With the program over, the image of a couple enjoying their pots and pans flashes on the TV screen. This is All-Clad cookware, the voice-over informs us, "the great conductor, available at Dillard's." Welcome to public television--Dallas style. For decades, public television has billed itself as "listener-supported" and "commercial-free." But...
Death to Dallas Life The Dallas Morning News has put a long-suffering stepchild out of its misery. On Monday, November 14, a one-page memo was posted in the paper's newsroom, announcing the demise of Dallas Life Magazine. The Christmas Day issue will be its last. In the memo, News executive...
Adventures in waste I read with interest your article "The Trashing of Ferris, Texas" [November 10] and noted several similarities between Ferris' experiences with Waste Management and that of the City of Garland. During 1993, while I was a member of the city council, Waste Management attempted to reopen negotiations...
Shortly after 10:30 p.m. this past Friday night, when thousands are crammed into a soggy Cotton Bowl to hear the Rolling Stones, Charles Kennedy and 11 others--some wrapped in blankets, some in shorts or bathing suits, a couple completely naked--climb into a sweat lodge and wait for the ceremony to...
Ben Watt, one half of the English music duo Everything But the Girl, is talking about death from his Atlanta hotel room. "I know it sounds glib," the 31-year-old singer-songwriter-musician says in his high, clear, thoughtful voice, "but everything really is more important now. I find myself wanting to simplify...
