It is one of the stranger sights in South Dallas: each day, when the weather is fair, 125 teenage girls stream out of the Ambassador hotel and cross the street into Old City Park. The girls are dressed almost identically, in navy blue smocks and skirts and crisp, lace-collared blouses,…
Realtor politik The folks who sell real estate in the tony Preston Hollow neighborhood were emotionally traumatized last month when an appraiser they invited to speak before a North Dallas Branch of the Greater Dallas Multiple Listing Service Realtors lunch uttered words no North Dallas house shopper should ever hear:…
The last day criminologist Daniel Rhodes worked for the Plano police department, he found someone had been messing with things on his desk. He had already found a new job with the Arlington police department and was cleaning out his cubicle. But in a frame that used to hold a…
Beware of reporters bearing flowers You have to give the guy credit for ingenuity–as well as a brazen willingness to dupe the bereaved. In the June issue of American Journalism Review, Morning News police reporter Todd Bensman–in a story titled “How Do You Feel?”–explains how he gets in the door…
Neander-goof One of the best things about your wonderful weekly is its ability to challenge convention. Sometimes you even do this on behalf of the underdog. Sometimes, however, all you do is give a platform for goofy people with terrible ideas. One of the goofiest is Ray Audette, who claims…
At Dallas City Hall, it can take a long time to find the truth. That’s because this city manager and city council don’t like the public to know what they’re doing. So they play games. They have a lot of closed-door meetings. They discuss things they’re not supposed to discuss…
On November 16, 1994, the Dallas city council convened behind closed doors, citing in its formal agenda two exceptions to the Texas Open Meetings Act–“discussion of Reunion Arena leases” and “attorney briefings”–as justification for doing so. This 10-page transcript of its recorded discussion, obtained by the Observer from the city…
Ask what Miss Texas can do for you It’s nice to know somebody is addressing society’s more pressing problems. Miss America President Leonard Horn has given the Miss Texas organization a deadline to correct a long-time Texas beauty pageant tradition of carpetbagging (i.e. Miss Bexar County is actually from Tarrant…
The words “Be prepared” may soon greet patrons when they enter the restrooms of local bars and restaurants. The slogan, printed on designer condom dispensers, isn’t just aimed at former Boy Scouts, but at anyone who is sexually active. The brightly colored condom vending machines carrying the “Be prepared” warning…
A better brew Six Flags Over Beer indeed [“Theme parks for beer,” June 29]. Instead of the adventure- land approach of brewing, why don’t these micros concentrate on making better beer? A good bock, or a true lager, for example. Also, the beer needs a little more carbonation (a little–not…
News opens up checkbook to prove McVeigh’s guilty “His few friends and many casual acquaintances say he doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs. He doesn’t curse or chase women. He is frugal and keeps his room neat and orderly. He prefers listening to talking. He is intelligent, loyal and polite…
Wouldn’t you think that by now we would all react to the word “deregulation” the same way we do when we hear the buzz of a rattlesnake? Freeze, spot it, then run like hell. ‘Cause we sure have been snake-bit by deregulation in this country. Deregulating the savings and loans…
Ray Audette amuses his Far North Dallas neighbors. They laugh when they see Audette, a diet book author, tramp across the manicured lawns lugging fresh roadkill, usually squirrels. They know their neighbor is toting the furry accident victims back to his yard to feed his young red-tailed hawk. The hawk,…
We bought it for the prose For the past year, Buzz has chronicled the obsessive publicity-seeking of former Dallas Morning News plagiarist and world-class depressive Elizabeth Wurtzel as she desperately clung to the 15 minutes of fame that her fellate-and-tell book, Prozac Nation, generated. Well, Elizabeth’s popped up again, you…
Ryan Amacher, the former University of Texas at Arlington president who, with help from an interior designer imported from Arizona, spent more than $157,000 last year to remodel a presidential suite for himself, has fallen a long way. In March, Amacher moved from a spacious office in College Hall, noted…
Damn, life’s a funny ol’ female-dog, idn’t she? Here I am, back in Tucson, one of my favorite places in the U.S. of A., and also the place of one of my most bitter professional regrets. I did a man wrong here one time. I didn’t mean to, and it…
Dancin’ machine Thank you for your precious article about “Why Dallas can’t dance” [June 22]. As a former dancer and extra for Dallas Ballet and Dallas Opera, I agree that Ballet Dallas is a victim of its own mediocrity. It takes a courageous paper to stand up and say the…
Spilled ink: New book offers insights into life at Dallas’ Only Daily Can’t get enough of the Dallas Morning News from BeloWatch? Well, now there’s an entire book about the operations of Dallas’ Only Daily. It’s called Fresh Ink–Behind the Scenes at a Major Metropolitan Newspaper. As the cover illustration,…
You’d have to be living under a rock not to know that the Democratic Party–particularly in Texas–has big problems. From lowly constable positions to the highest elected office in the state, Democratic candidates took a drubbing in the last general election. Taking their cue from such successful political initiatives as…
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing A Dallas-Fort Worth artists group found themselves in a Mexican standoff with censors at an Abilene art museum. Both sides lost. The director of Abilene’s Grace Museum and Cultural Center, Terence Keane, told members of WAVE, a visual artists’…
My, my, my. I know the fashion is for political folks to bash Hollywood these days, but if you’ll permit, I’d prefer to bash Washington for a bit. Sometimes this place strikes me as politically toxic. It’s practically radioactive, just pulsing out all this conflict and controversy and clawing down…
It was the dawn of a new day at Dallas City Hall. The city’s freshly minted, first African-American mayor–Ron “the-blame-game-is-over” Kirk–had finally slipped into the lead chair in the city’s council chambers. It was his first day actually running a council meeting–his first real opportunity to seize his electoral mandate…
