In Taiwan, perhaps, there is someone sitting in front of a home computer reading Funland's band bio. In Australia, a record fanatic might be searching George Gimarc's Record Collectors home page, scouring the catalogs for some obscure psychedelic 7-inch single from the 1960s. Down the street, some kid might be...
Waxahachie is the perfect distance for a springtime day trip, and it's full of antique and curiosity shops. The only problem has been, where to eat? Cafe d'Amici is the answer. The old Rogers Hotel was empty for years. In fact, they used to use it for a Halloween haunted...
I've pointed out before that while nam pla and kim chee have become household words, the mother of all cuisines, French, is increasingly hard to find in Dallas. So I bring to your attention this week a French restaurant you might have forgotten or overlooked: Watel's. To be entirely accurate,...
When Major Theatre cofounder Bryce Gonzalez' brother, who lives in California, fell ill with AIDS last month and needed a caretaker, Gonzalez made the trip west. That left the East Dallas theater operating with a one-man staff--cofounder Rob Clements--who, of course, couldn't run the projector, sell popcorn, and tear tickets...
Ginger Rogers, who died April 25 at the age of 83, embodied star power with unsurpassed subtlety. Born Virginia McMath in Independence, Missouri (a location with a name so symbolically right it sounds invented), she was primed for stardom at age six when her ambitious mother took her on the...
For nearly three decades, some of Hollywood's most powerful African-American players have labored unsuccessfully to bring the story of the Black Panther Party to the big screen. The father-son filmmaking duo of Melvin and Mario Van Peebles has managed to make the dream come true, and "dreamlike" is certainly the...
Why do people on the witness stand lie about stuff that doesn't even matter? "Isn't it true, Mr. Mossfelt, that before you identified this man as the thief, you were complaining that your contact lenses were dirty?" And all Mr. Mossfelt has to do is say, "Yeah, they were dirty."...
The Perez Family and My Family (Mi Familia) are full of hardship, deprivation, bitterness, and death, yet they're ultimately optimistic. They remind us that no matter how terrible our daily lives might seem, for our immigrant predecessors, life was almost certainly worse. These movies don't glance off of you the...
thursday may 11 Male Figurative Show: Why is it that everyone's afraid of the penis? From popular entertainment to classic visual art, any Western medium that deals in images over the last few hundred years has treated the male genitalia as verboten--while women's bodies can be viewed from any and...
The women at the post office cringed every time they saw Ella Patterson heading their way. The busty, energetic teacher-turned-author would arrive at West Dallas' central station lugging cartloads of her book, Will the Real Women...Please Stand Up!, packed one-by-one in red-and-white overnight envelopes. The postal workers just saw packages...
When Cloyce Box was alive, three things seemed destined to come his way: money, notoriety, and lawsuits. Box may have left behind his millions--and his reputation as a freewheeling businessman--when he died in 1993. But the lawsuits just keep on coming. The former football star's estate is on the hook...
Babe's is a family-style restaurant, so we descended on it in full-strength family style, which, frankly, can be formidable. Our waitress was not one to be intimidated, however. She was tiny, young, and sassy, with a clever comeback for every query or comment. About half of our extremely extended family...
On target The most insightful Morning News coverage of the city's $175 million bond program came not from the paper's on-the-team news coverage, but from veteran columnist Phil Seib. Seib, an SMU instructor and political consultant who writes for the "Viewpoints" page and has written for the News for 15...
About 20 minutes into the French-Italian melodrama Farinelli, a spoiled courtesan summons the greatest castrato singer of 18th century Europe, Farinelli (Stefano Dionisi), to a private meeting with her and dozens of tittering ladies fair. All of them are astounded by the three-octave range of this slender, incendiary beauty who...
In the past two decades, filmmaker John Carpenter has directed 17 movies, and has established himself as a towering figure in modern horror. In technical terms, he's some kind of lowbrow genius: he has a better idea of how to build unease through freaky camera movements, dissonant sound effects, and...
How do you spell m-a-y-o-r? Thanks to former vice president Dan Quayle, we know spelling isn't a prerequisite for elected office. But shouldn't a candidate at least know how to spell his own name? Dallas mayoral candidate Domingo Garcia found himself in an embarrassing situation last week when his television...
By nightfall last Tuesday, the Ambassador Room of the Regal Row Ramada Inn held more empty chairs than crowd. The rumor of television cameras had scared a fair number of regulars away. On ordinary Tuesdays, the unadorned ballroom is packed with as many as 300 true believers. But in the...
Deadhead Whoa! Matt Seitz's vehemence re: the Grateful Dead and the movie Tie-Died ["Dead on arrival," April 20] was more bracing than the usual morning cup of coffee, but I fear his passion is untrammeled by much knowledge of the subject. The parking lot scene around Dead shows has been...
Will Clark, the slugging first baseman, made some predictions before the start of the Home Opener at The Ballpark in Arlington last Thursday. Then again, a lot of guys have put on their Kreskin panties lately. A few should have stuck to jocks. But more on them in a minute...
You have to give Gaitley Mathews credit. The indefatigable artistic director of Deep Ellum Opera Theatre nurtures ambitious new operas in his hole-in-the-wall, neo-warehouse setting. And Mathews' current offering, Mata Hari, is his third world premiere. It is based on a true tale that has all the elements of an...
A few years ago, a perplexed music writer asked Joey Ramone the $64,000 question: how can the Ramones write all these songs when they only seem to use three chords? The reply was typical Joey: "Because we only know three chords; it just happens they're the right ones." Ramones songs...
Swervin' from side to side When Jeff Tweedy performs, holding an acoustic guitar with the word "Wilco" painted between the frets, a broad smile spreads across his face. He says he's embarrassed by photos from live shows that bear this image--he's afraid it makes him look "goofy and grinning." But...
