Inside its modest confines, Direct Hit Records resembles most any independent record store: CDs, new and used, line one wall; and used LPs and seven-inch singles sit in a bin smack in the middle of the store, facing another wall of new records. Near the store's entrance, a rack displays...
The Go-Go's have long been dismissed and forgotten--relegated to slots on new-wave-hits-of-the-'80s compilations alongside Kajagoogoo, Bananarama, and Bow Wow Wow, written off as disposable products of a disposable era that gave us the Yugo, Members Only jackets, James Watt, PeoplExpress, and Cabbage Patch Kids. Where, say, the Runaways (and Joan...
The peach-colored building stands amid plainer houses of entertainment along Restaurant Row like a country club among car dealerships. Its nightclub and adjacent management offices affect an air of aloof respectability, complete with valet parking and handcarved Spanish doors. Inside, a brass chandelier dominates the foyer. An ornate staircase ascends...
To the victor belongs the spoils. Or so the saying goes. But if the victor happens to defeat the city of Dallas, his battle has just begun. Just ask civil rights lawyer Mike Daniel. For the past year, he and fellow lawyer Betsy Julian have been trying to collect their...
Presumed ignorant Excitement is building at Buzz as the O.J. Simpson trial approaches. Forget the 12 jurors in L.A.; we'll have our eye on the Arlington 10. In one of the more creative Simpson-trial media excesses to date, the Arlington edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram has selected a group...
During a political question-and-answer session, a middle-aged, middle-class white woman hesitantly held up her hand and said: "You know, Time magazine said one reason Tom Daschle might have trouble getting elected minority leader is because South Dakota is just so...well...blah. What can we do about that?" The heartbreak of being...
Letter from Coppell: I am not a clod What a bunch of erroneous claptrap! ["The muckraker of Coppell," December 1]. Arthur Kwast was not a "former engineer" on my last visit to his office nor did an outgoing councilmember present Mr. Moore his "Team Wacko" cap. This cap was designed...
Bill Bates wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy ever since elementary school. He had spent his life preparing for this career on the field. But nothing prepared him for the night last week at Incredible Universe when a pair of soft cotton panties came sliding across the table for an...
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol because he needed money, and it's been produced for that same sound reason for more than a century. It might have proved more interesting, however, if the Dallas Theater Center had staged a modern adaptation of Dickens' Oliver Twist this year rather than the...
Crucify and mortify "Boilermaker," the track that kicks off the Jesus Lizard's 1992 album Liar, explodes suddenly and unexpectedly, as though the first couple of minutes were lopped off; you're placed immediately into this volatile blur, a man screaming "I'm calm now" over this monstrous guitar riff that comes out...
The big deal about Cafe Express isn't the concept - we've seen upscale fast food (as if that weren't an oxymoron) before - but the fact that its owner is Robert Del Grande, a real big deal chef, the owner of the renowned and illustrious Cafe Annie in Houston. This...
I've expressed loudly and often my general distast and ill-will toward Cajun food outside Cajun country. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times - I don't think it works, and I resent people continuing to try. Let Muhammad go to the mountain, I say. Most Cajun...
When fans of old Hollywood complain that modern feature films are too darned commercial--that they've lost the personality and passion that made films emerging from the old studio system so pleasurable--they are often reminded that there's no such thing as the Good Old Days. Movies are, and always have been,...
I just got kicked out of a hotel bar for smoking a cigar. I don't mind so much gettin' kicked out, 'cause it was a 15-dollar Bolivar and I managed to save it without havin' to smush it out in an ashtray. But what bugged me was: there was nobody...
The set of the gentle-spirited independent romance Late Bloomers incurred a stroke of bad luck last week, when the director, Julie Dyer, narrowly escaped an attempted mugging in an alley behind an East Dallas house where a wedding scene was being shot. She managed to escape her assailant, who panicked...
thursday december 15 Jingle Bell Run: Should you be walking or driving near downtown Dallas this evening and hear a terrific jingling commotion, don't worry--Santa's reindeer aren't flying kamikaze missions among the skyscrapers. In fact, you've stumbled on one of the most fun Dallas holiday traditions--great because it combines a...
It's getting to be that time of year when partygoers start working overtime, often covering several invitations in a single night, not to mention a limited number of days between now and New Year's to hit the clubs. End your night out with Avanti's "moonlight breakfast"; the restaurant on McKinney...
Screenwriter Steven DeSouza, who wrote the scripts for such action opuses as Commando and the Die Hard pictures, summarizes the lasting appeal of blade weapons in movies with the succinctness of a letter opener to the throat. "Not many people have been shot or blown up," he says, "so when...
There's a modern cliche that it takes only three or four phone calls to get in touch with anyone in the world. But trying to contact action-film mogul Joel Silver for comment on Jack Crain, the Weatherford knifemaker whose career in action movies he singlehandedly created, repudiates it handily. The...
Lifestyles of the rich and Republican Governor-elect George W. may still be pinching himself, but wife Laura Bush has the makings of a Marie Antoinette stiff upper lip. Remarking on the trials of moving her two children into the Governor's Mansion, she told the Associated Press: "I heard it was...
Lots of people donate their bodies to science. But most of them wait until after they're dead. Not Charlie Procter. For five months earlier this year, the 45-year-old petroleum engineer allowed nurses to probe and prick him dozens of times while drilling for blood; underwent several bone-density sonagram tests forcing...
Sorry to begin with an apologia, but one of the things I try not to do as a commentator is put in my two cents' worth when I don't have enough knowledge to back it up. When I venture into international affairs or international economic issues--not my native turf, to...
