Good fences surely make good neighbors–which is why City Manager John Ware’s neighbors are blowing the whistle on him. The 6-foot, weathered cedar fence behind Ware’s house on Burleson Drive in North Dallas has been half tipped-over in two places for at least four months, two neighbors who prefer to…
God love ya, Dan One of the problems newshounds face when writing about scandalous or bizarre behavior by elected officials is that the reporting tends to drive the more entertaining politicos out of office. That’s good for government, but bad for the muckraking business. (Buzz once worked in a city…
Thank God Ross Perot Jr. thinks we’re all idiots. And don’t think he doesn’t. How else to explain last week’s lunatic Times Square proposal–his most recent, most flatulent offer to privately develop the area around the publicly financed sports arena. In case you missed this gust of hot air–disguised as…
Courthouse putsch Christine Biederman’s recent article “Courthouse Coup” [November 27] was fun and entertaining. However, the article gave me too much credit, or blame, according to one’s view. For example, while I supported Keith Anderson’s race for a district judgeship, I did not recruit him to run. And, I would…
Most everyone laughed as the squad of men in ski masks and police flak jackets quickly weaved through the dance floor, parting a sea of scantily clad werewolves, devils, and nurses jammed inside the Jet Set for a Halloween party. Great gag, they thought, dressing up as vice cops and…
There are a lot of questions surrounding the murder of 20-year-old Rogelio Chin. Who did it isn’t one of them. Dallas police don’t know why David Paz Ramirez, a 22-year-old two-time felon from Pleasant Grove, and two buddies were speeding down Stemmons Freeway in pursuit of Chin, who was at…
Few would detect it when they whiz past the Exxon gas station, the Boston Market outlet, the Albertson’s grocery, and the other merchants at the intersection of Campell and Coit roads. But a small war has erupted in the suburban Richardson shopping mall environs recently. It’s a kosher war. So…
Shortly before Thanksgiving, parents at Dallas Independent School District’s Preston Hollow Elementary School got some alarming news. Their children, who had suffered through a six-month paint job at the Walnut Hill Lane school–a job that was supposed to be completed during the summer break–may have been breathing dust from lead-based…
Mea culpa Buzz doesn’t want to dwell on how we found this out. We simply want to warn our fellow motorists on the Dallas North Tollway. You may have, like Buzz, occasionally whizzed by the exact-change basket as you passed a toll booth even though you hadn’t found 50 cents…
Sax sells OK, two weeks. Two Buzz mentions [November 13 and 20]. It’s time to set the record straight about how I am not John Tesh-like: 10. I’m not married to Connie Sellecca. 9. I’ve never been part of an infomercial and never will. 8. I would never use cheesy…
Dallas city councilman John Loza has been an elected official for only six months, but you’d never know it. Because when he opens his mouth–which he does frequently and with no small degree of self-importance–there is no doubt in his voice, no hesitation, no sign of a learning curve for…
The man on the phone speaks in conspiratorial tones. His name is Martin Barkley, a 40-something divorced father of two who has devoted so much of his life to a single purpose–proving that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill John Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book…
Late one day last week, after presiding over a full day of misdemeanors, Dallas County Criminal Court at Law Judge Dan L. Wyde hied himself from the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts Building to a run-down area of strip shopping centers, Korean grocers, and small warehouses near the intersection of Royal…
A woman scorned It’s a proud moment for a reporter to learn that his or her work has driven some crooked bureaucrat to Nixonesque levels of paranoia. So Buzz was touched to read the deposition of Freda Jinks, the Dallas schools administrative assistant turned cheese-eater whose ratting led former superintendent…
Last week, federal prosecutors from the offices of U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins reversed their ever-shifting position on the heavily guarded Peavy Tapes. Earlier this year, those same prosecutors had agreed that Dan Carver Peavy, a former Dallas Independent School District trustee, could keep a copy of his tape-recorded conversations with…
A big sign in the Seagoville senior center commands us to “Smile.” Another one–stretched across the back of the stage in stenciled letters–declares that “Life is beautiful when in full bloom.” But the cheery thoughts stay stuck to the walls. There is nothing beautiful or blooming about the handful of…
Fowled out [Robert] Wilonsky is on the way out. Sources in Washington, our nation’s capital, report that the Observer is going to release the reporter for his four-letter word usage [“Pssst…” November 13]. Ken Hurrington Via e-mail Wilonsky, psychoanalyzed Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about places, and…
On ordinary school days, Kerry Walls grips the wheel of his white squad car and patrols DISD’s hundreds of campuses. But on a Sunday afternoon in October 1996, Walls landed a much loftier assignment. He stepped into his role as chauffeur and ferried a trio of highly distinguished passengers downtown…
A Dallas Observer Guide to Holiday Gift Buying and Events For the holiday exterior decorator whose skills consist of creating Gordian wire knots, blowing fuses, and electrocuting small shrubs: Tired of Houdini-proof tangles of wire, palm piercings caused by tiny Italian lightbulb tips, and the smell of smoldering body hair…
His hands are those of his father–enormous, fleshy, strong. They are calloused, almost faded, worn from years of wrapping them around men’s faces and using them as weapons. These are the hands that wrestled a decade’s worth of opponents, men with such names as Ric “Nature Boy” Flair and “Gorgeous”…
Guess again, Kay Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has made her opposition to changes in the Wright Amendment clear. What a pity she hasn’t bothered to acquaint herself with the amendment’s history before weighing in on whether to expand flights from Love Field. In a letter to a constituent, Hutchison offered…
After six months of turmoil that turned neighbor against neighbor, sister against sister, the tiny town of Bethel, population of maybe 210, is no longer a town. In a Grayson County courtroom packed with more than 100 protesters and staffed with extra sheriff’s deputies, Visiting District Judge John McCraw on…
