Seems like everybody loves Rhett Miller right now. He’s currently one of the “featured artists” at MySpace’s music section, where his latest solo album, The Believer, is available to preview gratis. Miller’s on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight, and Rolling Stone and some non-music mags, such as Esquire…
New York University professor Jay Rosen and a 17-member brood of undergraduate and graduate J-school students siphoned from Rosen’s blogging 101 class set out to sift and rank the best newspaper blogs from among the nation’s top 100 newspapers by circulation. The winner? The Houston Chronicle. “By a mile.” The…
Finally, it was over. After seven months of pain and six hours of mediation, they reached an agreement. Documents signed. Sighs exhaled. Farewells exchanged. But wait, Kenny Rogers had one more surprise for Larry Rodriguez. As the former Texas Rangers pitcher, the KDFW-Channel 4 cameraman he assaulted last June and…
Never say die: The last time Buzz wrote about Dallas Blog Queen Sharon Boyd’s lawsuit against Dallas school board member Joe May (August 5, 2004), we compared her to the Terminator, an unstoppable force unfazed by any roadblock as she pursues her cause. Man, we nailed that one. Boyd had…
WHEN IT COMES to crafting conspiracy theories, Oliver Stone has nothing on Judge Sally Montgomery. Facing a relentless, flat-out obsessive challenger in the Democratic primary for her county judge seat, Montgomery has several explanations for why so many people think that the only time she should sit on the bench…
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled in favor of prison inmate Emily Dowdy (“Oklahoma Railroad,” by Glenna Whitley, July 21, 2005), granting her an evidentiary hearing. Her family hopes the ruling could lead to a new trial. But the hearing, which must be held by mid-April, will take…
Three-Chord Wonder Darlington again: Like any other Thursday morning, I was reading through my Dallas Observer when I came across “And Another Thing” by Sam Machkovech (February 23). What caught my eye was the startling Jolie-lipped Darlington staring back at me. Like the recent Darlington articles, I figured it would…
Sorry to copy our buddies at We Shot J.R., but tonight’s Pre-SXSW Party at the Darkside Lounge (in Deep Ellum, so there) is pretty much the only show in town on Hump Day. It’s a good opportunity to see what Dallas is sending to Austin for the mid-March music festival…with…
In today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram is a piece about Jon Stewart, written by Alyson Ward. It includes this nugget, which is essentially the central point to her alarmingly unspectacular, tired story: “Don’t laugh. American culture, it seems, can’t decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist.” Really,…
In his Deep Ellum Town Hall post below, Robert neglected to mention the exchange between Mayor Laura Miller and Club Blue’s Marshall Armstrong that has already been reported. Thing is, The Dallas Morning News missed the point of why that conversation was so troubling. When the mayor said, “I just…
Bruce Bartlett, the former Reagan-Bush I administration official fired from his gig at the locally based National Center for Policy Analysis think tank, is getting much pub these days. (Bush-bashing is, after all, the new aqua.) After appearing on the Dallas Observer cover two weeks ago, he’s been spotted on…
Since Monday, I’ve been parked on an unforgiving bench in the 297th District Court in Tarrant County, watching the trial of Andrew Wamsley, the 21-year-old Mansfield man (and my fellow Mansfield High School alum) who is accused of corralling his girlfriend, her best friend and the manager of a local…
Remember when Dallas police Chief David Kunkle was unhappy with the influx of Katrina evacuees, insisting they’d roll into Dallas on a crime wave? No? Then a refresher from the September 2, 2005, edition of The Dallas Morning News: “Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle said, ‘We’re hoping for the best…
I can’t say I told you so, because I wasn’t the one who said it. It was my friend, Village Voice Media video game columnist Luke O’Brien, who told me Eva Alejandro-Pena would soon be chopping down her tree and putting it on eBay. “Give it a week,” he said…
The mayor oughta play Deep Ellum more often. At 10:30 a.m. yesterday, there was quite the line snaking out of the front door of the Gypsy Tea Room, as some 200 folks waited for Mayor Laura Miller and her backup band–Dallas police Chief David Kunkle and council members Pauline Medrano…
Soxxy: Bobby Soxx, back when he was a star. And alive. Whilst trolling the MP3 junkyards for free music this weekend, because I am nothing if not a cheap bastard, I stumbled across this mention of an old Observer fave on the Punk Records blog, along with two outta-print MP3s…
If you haven’t heard, MP3 blogs are the new MTV. Just ask Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Thanks to word-of-mouth buzz initiated by taste-making music blogs such as Said the Gramophone and Stereogum, the Brooklyn-based band went from toiling in obscurity to selling out shows across the country essentially overnight…
He amassed a 30-2 record, hung 467 yards and 41 points on Southern Cal and led the University of Texas to its first national championship in 35 years. But from this day forward, right or wrong, Vince Young will always be associated with the number six. As in “Act your…
Welcome to American Airlines Center, home to bells, whistles and enough sensory stimuli to obliterate the line between Mavericks game and Mardi Gras. On the court, roving reporter Chris Arnold prods fans, screaming into a microphone. Up in the stands there is a drum line, a section of freaky face-painters,…
Life in Dallas politics can be nasty, brutish and short when ambition, outrageous rumors and bitter rivalries turn a low-key election into primordial combat. But even in this uncivilized context, Karl Smith was shocked to find a police report dropped off at his Oak Cliff home that detailed a charge…
Waving to the crowd, the man with the most-talked-about hair in the world bounds onstage to the music of “Money, Money, Money,” surrounded by the “Fun Girls”–tall, sexy models in short black skirts and white tank tops, who are leading the audience in a chant of “Trump, Trump, Trump…” Confetti…
Laissez les bon temps rouler: Talk radio last week was all over testimony from the Government Accountability Office that emergency aid given to victims of Hurricane Katrina was used in at least one instance to buy goodies from the Condoms to Go store on LBJ Freeway, among several local purchases…
