Godspeed, Goodspeed The turning point in the career of 29-year-old singer-actress Sheran Goodspeed-Keyton came in college. Now starring in the title role in Jubilee Theatre’s production of Bessie Smith: Empress of the Blues (playing at the Fort Worth theater through April 18), Goodspeed-Keyton commands the stage with a gospel-powered voice…
At some point, without anyone formally notifying us, the Mavs shifted from one of Dallas’ more stable teams to its most capricious. The Rangers are rotting, and the Cowboys have Jerry Jones (and now Keyshawn) to make Valley Ranch feel like a bad afternoon soap, but the Mavericks have been…
Kleenex Cops Underqualified, thank God: Before I became a police officer for the city of Richardson in 1981, I spent four years as a reserve police officer with the Dallas Police Department (“Disposable Cops,” by Jim Schutze, April 1). When I decided to become a regular police officer, I was…
When they got the tip, Chris and Joanne Webb looked at each other in panic. The couple had learned that police in Burleson–a town of 25,000 in Johnson County, 14 miles south of downtown Fort Worth–had issued a warrant for Joanne’s arrest. But while a lawyer negotiated Joanne’s surrender, the…
The Commerce Casino is no place for Mom and Pop Kansas to stop on their way to Los Angeles, which lies just a few minutes south on the freeway. Keep driving down to Disneyland; make sure that family Truckster doesn’t find itself veering toward the off ramp. Don’t pull over…
Temperatures have hit the 80-degree mark, which means that Dallas has become a giant, squalid stink fest. Wafting high above the jasmine and hyacinths, above the odoriferous co-workers with deodorant breakthrough and the urine-baked buildings downtown is the Godzilla of offensive smells: dog waste. Highland Park matrons with their shih…
Last week Jim Schutze wrote about open-records guru Russell Fish getting booted from his apartment for speaking up at a management-sponsored crime meeting (“Scapegoats,” March 25). Fish got steamed and walked out when he discovered that the so-called Crime Watch meeting at Celery Stalk Apartments in North Dallas was really…
Mark Cuban Going Broke A Full Frontal exclusive investigation Earlier this year, Forbes magazine noted that Dallas Mavericks and HDNet owner Mark Cuban is the 437th richest man in the world, with an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion. An 11-month investigation of Cuban’s assets, however, reveals a different figure:…
For much of the hour it took to introduce Keyshawn Johnson to the Dallas media, most everyone in the room deferred to the Cowboys’ newest wideout, who was all too happy to talk and talk and talk. At times he was challenged–asked about his often obstinate personality, about the perception…
Icebox Murder Texas’ Dark Ages: I just read “Boxed In” (by Keven McAlester, March 11). Stories like this really unnerve me–the kind in which people are blamed even when much evidence goes to the contrary. We’d like to think that things like this can never happen anymore. They’re an act…
A fugitive from the law for more than a year, former SMU student Douglas Havard is alive and thriving in Hong Kong. No, Spain. Well, try Central Europe. Rio de Janeiro? No, Doug Havard, now 21, is wheeling and dealing in Austin. All of those locations have been reported as…
You’ll forgive Buzz if he’s feeling a little sentimental this week. It seems all the good ones are leaving us too soon: Bob Edwards is leaving the hosting gig at NPR Morning Edition; Jack Valenti and his platinum hair are leaving the Motion Picture Association of America; Jabari, the Dallas…
It was growing grim around here. The Cowboys were stagnant for months, and it only got worse once free agency began. While the rest of the league drove armored cars filled with cash to the homes of various players, or made high-profile trades, Dallas remained quiet. There were rumors about…
A Tear for Mr. Buzz The sound of silence: How can you be surprised? (Buzz, March 18.) These are the same readers who haven’t uttered a peep about the additional funds given to the American Airlines Center folks, and there still hasn’t been development around the center. When a story…
Shelly Martin was bone tired from the countless hours she spent at the bedside of her sick friend, but she figured she had better return to the hospital, and fast. For the last 10 days, Mike Scarcella had been in the intensive care unit at Presbyterian Hospital of Plano. Now…
On February 20, or seven months later than promised, the five major music labels and some retailers began sending out checks for $13.86 to people who bought CDs from 1995 to 2000 and felt, Jeez, ya know, I paid too much for that CD. The checks are the result of…
We here at the Dallas Observer do read and sometimes even care about the letters you send us; they serve as a handy barometer of how we’re being received. So with that in mind, we’d like to ask a question: What is up with you people? Sorry. Shouldn’t criticize the…
Re: Your New Job! Don Nelson should really keep better track of his correspondence. Once again, we’ve intercepted one of his missives, this one meant for Avery Johnson, the former Dallas Mavericks point guard now exiled to Golden State. Nellie asked Johnson if he wants to be a coach on…
Free Murders Get out of jail free: It’s 1981; you are a serial killer and have just moved to the murder capital of the world, Houston, Texas. The killers here know what law-abiding citizens don’t, that there is nothing here to stop them from killing. It’s now 2004, and by…
SURPRISE, Arizona–Across the way, just beyond the cart path and behind the cheap rope that separates royalty from the serfs–that is, players and personnel from fans and media–former Rangers great Jim Sundberg stands on the calisthenics field and smiles broadly. Both arms are outstretched, as though he’s being measured by…
Wednesday, July 22, 1959: As near as he can remember it, Robert LeRoy Miller was just sitting on the porch of his parents’ home. He was 13, about to enter the seventh grade, and he’d been idling away his summer in a languid blur of marbles, neighborhood boxing matches and…
For the first time in his long career of homicidal violence against women, Texas prisoner Coral Eugene Watts has been charged with murder–thanks to a man who saw a television show about Watts, recalled something he’d witnessed 25 years ago and telephoned Michigan authorities. For two years, victims’ families have…
