Former Dallas attorney Mark Gimenez’s new book–old one, but new to you in paperback–is out in a few days. There’s a small, but growing, stack of books written by local authors piling on my desk, and it is one mixed bag of lit. Random House’s Anchor Books imprint has sent…
Richard Hamburger’s decision to leave the Dallas Theater Center is accompanied by a press release and a lot of questions. Dallas Theater Center Artistic Director Richard Hamburger is out. Not for another year, but, as our friends at FrontBurner noted this morning, the timing does seem odd: DTC is due…
On Sunday, The Dallas Morning News ran a story about Kenny Troutt, the local billionaire who flies his son’s basketball team to tournaments on a private jet normally used by the San Antonio Spurs. He has also hired three full-time coaches, two skill instructors, a general manager, a traveling secretary…
If you wanna see what’s going on right behind Unfair Park HQ–which is to say, a four-alarm fire that has cops shutting down Maple Avenue heading north–go here. Funny, all I see’s the KXAS-Channel 5 helicopter. And from here, looks like just a little bit o’ smoke. Very little. –Robert…
Vinnie Paul’s got a new project. Bet ya, like, 10 bucks that it rocks. Hard. To our dedicated blog-metal audience, we giveth unto you this: a new Vinnie Paul band. The Fort Worth Weekly hinted at it nearly two months ago, but Blabbermouth.net confirmed this week that the former Pantera…
If this guy is the quarterback of the future, Quincy Carter just got a free pass to the Hall of Fame. Tug the reigns on the Tony Romo bandwagon. That means you, overzealous and obnoxious Dallas Cowboys fan. And you guys, Romo’s agent and Tony’s third cousin, chill. And especially…
Last year in the paper version of Unfair Park, we ran a piece about the nuttiest dispute–over the control of the local accordion market. No, seriously. Accordion teacher and performer Natasha Geddie accused Texas Accordion Association (and, later, National Accordion Association) founder Norman Seaton of essentially trying to monopolize the…
Midlake prefers the summer breezes of Christopher Cross and other soft-rock faves. Which doesn’t explain why the band’s new record is genius. The latest issue of Spin, which should be on stands any second now (it’s the one with Johnny Knoxville on the cover; no, it’s not the September 2003…
All I know about Green Mountain Energy’s this: It’s supposed to provide cleaner electricity “from less-polluting sources like wind, water, solar, biomass, geothermal, and natural gas,” and that there’s always some slightly bearded dude on the sidewalk trying to get me to sign up every time I go to CD…
Copper theft’s all the rage these days, especially among folks stealing the stuff for quick drug money. Ask the city council in Montgomery, Alabama, which last week adopted an ordinance that requires folks who buy scrap metal to electronically send a daily report to police. Or Dean Wallace and Angela…
Last Thursday, we had an item about the federal civil-rights lawsuit filed by Lucresia Mayorga Santamaria, who’s claiming that Preston Hollow Elementary School is segregating its students by forcing Hispanic kids into English-as-second-language classes even if they’re English-proficient. Santamaria, who has three kids at the school, is also claiming that…
No one thought McGraw-Hill would make a federal case over the name Standard & Pours. Whoops. Last week, The McGraw-Hill Company did something Pascale Hall never thought it would have the nerve to do: The company, which owns the financial-analysis company Standards & Poor’s, filed a federal trademark infringement suit…
We had our theories as to why Charlie Waters might have missed his radio broadcast as the Dallas Cowboys’ on-air analyst, but it really was as simple as his contract gave him an out, so he took it. You would have too. If you turned on the TV Saturday night…
Yeah, I really miss Chad Hutchinson–especially that winning grin that asked, “Exactly how do you a throw a football?” Tony Romo threw the crap outta the football on Saturday night. Quarterback of the future; you read it here first or thereabouts. Course, I think I said the same thing about…
Somebody recorded The Old 97’s performing in Kentucky in 1999. Lucky for you, you can download that show in 2006. For free. Better hurry. Over the weekend, “Jennings in Boston”–otherwise known as the person who runs the very top-notch MP3 blog known as rbally–posted a 7-year-old Old 97’s show recorded…
Here’s some good news for fans of the cable networks Logo and Here!, two channels with content aimed at gay viewers that had been dropped from local cable programming when Time Warner Cable took over the Dallas cable from Comcast Corp. on August 1. That had some local viewers mighty…
You read it here first: Thesis is gonna be huge. (Just in case.) Friday: Already said it in this week’s And Another Thing column, but I can’t impress upon you enough how exciting a prospect Thesis is to the city’s R&B/neo-soul scene. Her demos are nothing compared to her live…
Time for another weekly Unfair Park giveaway. Today, we’re offering two fabulous prizes. The first is two tickets and a parking pass to the Mary J. Blige concert tonight a Smirnoff Music Center. The first person to correctly guess Unfair Park blogmeister Robert Wilonsky’s favorite color will be obliged with…
I began watching Fox’s Hell’s Kitchen in its first season after developing love and mad respect for foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay, thanks to his BBC ventures. Before the current season, the show held auditions here in Big D. I had friends that went. None made it, but Texas had showing…
The Invisible Sheriff strikes again. This week, we wrote about how Lupe Valdez infuriated her rank-and-file officers when she declined to fire Larry Locke, one of her top chiefs, for keeping a Thompson submachine gun in his storage cabinet. Valdez had overruled her highest-ranking employee, Jesse Flores, who wanted to…
Six weeks after my story on the truck-eating railway trestle on Garland Road near the White Rock Lake spillway, DART told The Dallas Morning News that it is looking at tearing the bridge down. Three bright yellow signs warn drivers that the abandoned trestle has a clearance of 12 feet…
This morning, The Wall Street Journal has a story about the stock-option scandal that’s hounding technology-outsourcing Affiliated Computer Services Inc., a subject about which we’ve written a few times. ACS is mentioned at length as part of a larger pattern of conflict-of-interest issues arising as other companies across the country…
