How Dallas Helped and Hurt Dallas

Dallas gets thrown under the bus in this morning’s Los Angeles Times. In a story about how the Fox series The O.C. — which went from beloved to…uh…beloathed (?) in record time — is likely to get the ax, there’s also some question about how the show affected the image…

Tu Rock Es Votar

Well, the numbers are in, and it seems that all the door-knocking and phone-calling may have paid off after all. A report due to be released tomorrow by the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project shows that more Latinos voted in Dallas County in November than in the last mid-term election…

Exclusive: Feds Damn County Jail as “Grossly Inadequate”

Department of Justice officials have concluded that conditions at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center amount to a house of horrors. It was even worse than anyone expected. Just more than a year after it launched its investigation of the Dallas County jail, the U.S. Department of Justice on Saturday sent…

So You Can Motorboat While Running the Rock

I spent Sunday watching the White Rock Marathon from Dolly Parton’s cleavage, and it wasn’t as warm there as I thought it would be. But the spot between the 19th and 20th mile markers is the best possible vantage point to observe all the dedication, determination and drama that accompanies…

Bolton Gets a “Howdy, Y’All” in Atlanta Paper Today

Terrell Bolton: the only guy up for the top cop gig in Georgia who’s been fired. Terrell Bolton may have won the right to take his wrongful-termination suit against the city to the federal level, but he still doesn’t know whether he’ll fight City Hall in court as the next…

If You Drew the Short Straw in the Secret Santa Pool

We were at Toys “R” Us yesterday shopping for the 3-year-old who lives in our house; apparently it’s gettin’ close to Hannukah or something. Whatever. Anyway, while browing the action-figure aisle (though, oddly, not for the 3-year-old who lives in our house) we came across more than a dozen of…

A Search for a Missing Dallas Man Comes Up Empty

Seventy-year-old Mitchell Buchanan has been missing since October 24. But rescuers haven’t given up looking for him. Over the weekend, there was a search for Mitchell Buchanan, a 70-year-old Dallas man who has been missing since October 24. The Tyler Morning Telegraph reported that about 60 volunteers and members of…

Get High Everybody, Get High

The Nightcaps, pictured here during their 1960s heyday, influenced the Vaughans and the Top. And, yes, the word is still “Thunderbird.” So, enough with the young paying homage to the old. Seems like the old — well, c’mon, you know what I mean — can manage just fine on their…

Will Linux for Food

Good news for folks who’re good with computers and stuff: If you’re not working today — which is to say, you’re out of work and not just taking the day off to download current theatrical releases or browse for porn — just wait till the beginning of 2007. You just…

Payton Place

We saw these yesterday while Christmas shopping. And not at a deep discount, either. To be honest, you couldn’t pay us to take these. Well, Julius Jones, maybe. But the Roy Williams figurine? We’d just lose it 30 yards downfield anyway. Mike Karney 18, Dallas Cowboys 17. Where to start?…

Another Bite of the Big Apple Bites It

The long-rumored, difficult-to-confirm is official now: New York-based Smith & Wollensky is closing its huge Dallas Steak House, incurring $3.2 million in charges in the process. In short: “The Company decided to close S&W Dallas because it was unable to achieve a level of income from operations that was in…

No Christmas Miracle for Ash Creek, Looks Like

Photo taken by Ash Creek resident Jack Loughead For the last year or so, the plight of the Ash Creeek Mobile Home Park — a low-income enclave on Highland Road, between Interstate 30 and White Rock Lake, that’s been around since the 1940s — has been the source of much…

“Do” It One More Time

Like I said Wednesday, the Reunion Tower Revue tracks available here and here are coming down on Monday. Fret not, they’ll resurface at a later date, but if you want ’em to warm you on a cold winter’s night, best act fast. Enough’s been said about that night, but not…

Re: A Dreamgirl’s Potential Nightmare

Yesterday, we mentioned the Dallas Voice article in which good Baptist and Dreamgirl Jennifer Hudson said, in response to a question about whether homosexuality is a sin, said, “According to the way we’re taught, and what it says in the Bible, it is.” And we pointed you to her blog…

Are You Ready to Rock?

Sunday’s White Rock Marathon looks like it will be bigger. And better: Thanks to the first sponsor — Wellstone’s — in its 36-year history, the Rock will this year award a record $150,000 in prize money. Sprinkled around the 26.2-mile course Sunday will be 12,000 runners; 100,000 spectators; 300 police…

Life as a Holy Roller

Young and old, they lined up to get healed. Old farmer’s wives with calloused, misshapen hands. A pot-bellied guy and his bum knee, souvenir of an athletic youth. Willowy teenage girls with their eyes closed, arms raised, illness unspecified. On some faces you saw quiet expectation. Others seemed so weary…

Instant Nostalgia (Or: How Old is John McCaa, Anyway?)

This morning, we stumbled across some vintage video recently posted to YouTube featuring Dallas newscasts from the early and mid-1980s. So, yeah, there’s Iola Johnson, John Criswell, a boyishly rugged Dale Hansen and John “Dorian Gray” McCaa (seriously, wow) on WFAA-Channel 8…..

Don’t Call It a Comeback

Back and better than ever: Terrell Bolton now gets to say he made a federal case of his firing. How awesome is that? Terrell Bolton’s already gotten some $1.8 million from the city in retirement benefits. Yesterday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, Ya know, maybe we oughta…

All Covered Up

In the paper version of Unfair Park last week I had a little something to say about little d musician Daniel Folmer’s latest release Wear Headphones. I gotta say, I like Folmer — from his handwritten letters to his “Hey, so, this is who I am” songwriting style. He’s no-bullshit…

A Culbreath of Fresh Air, Vanished

You know what’s odd? Yesterday, we linked to City Plan Commission chair Betty Culbreath’s blog, where she wrote on Wednesday about the possible reasons behind the Dallas Housing Authority’s decision to get rid of CEO Ann Lott. In her post, Culbreath wrote that she knows “for a fact a Professional…