SURPRISE, Arizona–It’s a damp, overcast day. Not what you’d expect in the Cactus League. The Rangers are playing another intra-squad scrimmage. No one, save the knot of fans sitting just behind the Rangers dugout, is particularly thrilled with the idea of another intra-squad scrimmage. The players least of all. The…
Buzz is going to keep it short this week because we have a whopper of a headache, thanks to one Larry S. Kilgore, Republican candidate for the Texas House. It’s not his fault, really. When we spoke to Kilgore about his problem–we’ll get to that in a bit; hang on–he…
Hardball Repubs You nailed them: Mr. Gonzalez, If you continue writing articles that paint a less than favorable picture of the sitting president, you will make an enemy of not just a man, but a whole party, and a wealthy, powerful Texas family. You live in Texas, correct? Maybe it…
McKinney, May 16, 2002, 1:33 p.m. “McKinney, 911,” answers a female dispatcher, sounding somewhat blasé. “What was the address of your emergency?” “Yes, ah…I am at the hospital at North Central Medical Center,” says a male caller. “Uh-huh.” “Right behind the professional building,” he continues, his twang as pronounced as…
Shortly after the Dallas Cowboys lost their playoff game at Carolina and before head coach Bill Parcells went into hibernation for the winter, he gathered the local media and offered us free counsel. The team was heading in the right direction, he said, but he cautioned us not to get…
About a year ago, Mike Murphy and his pal J.J. Miller were at his pad in Frisco shooting pool over a few cold beers and lamenting the state of politics. Murphy, who is now 30, and Miller, 33, couldn’t find a candidate whose ideas and values meshed with theirs, and…
Top Dog K. Todd Freeman, 38, and David Rainey, 44, starring in Topdog/Underdog at the Dallas Theater Center through March 21, have been playing the roles of brothers Booth and Lincoln since early last fall. Their performances drew raves from critics in Chicago and Houston, where both actors are company…
Brace yourself, Buzz is feeling a bit George Will-ish this week, so we’re gonna do some literary quotin’ here. Our victim is George Orwell and his political fable Animal Farm, about animals that stage a revolution and take over a farm. (Hence the name. Der.) It ends with poor, hungry…
All Guts, No Glory Degenerates like you: This kind of nonsense is why the Dallas Observer is and always will be free (“God Awful,” by Robert Wilonsky, February 26). No one but the degenerates who pay for advertising on your paper would ever pay for the publication. Mike Frazer Duncanville…
Buzz, being born and raised in the heart of United Mine Workers territory in Illinois, can’t help but feel some sympathy with organized labor. So it pains us to say this to Steel Workers Local 9479: Guys, did you really have to sink so low as to play the awful,…
When the train pulled into the station, Bryan Mark Rigg wrestled his bicycle onto the platform, balanced a rucksack stuffed with a video camera, laptop and tripod on his back and started pedaling through the German countryside. He had 70 miles to cover before dark. The Yale student had learned…
Jessica Nelson didn’t need a new car. Her Deep Ellum loft was a short walk from her job as studio manager at Broadcast.com, so she didn’t need a car at all, really. Walking from her parking space would have taken longer than the trip from her front door. But she…
Sams’ Club File this under “Things you didn’t know about WFAA-TV anchorbot Scott Sams”: He has a blog. Yes, Scott Sams, former weather guy-turned-anchorman at Channel 8, has a Web log, the sort of place where he can communicate with viewers directly, letting you into the mind of Sams. In…
The All-Star break couldn’t have come sooner for the Mavs–that’s the simple truth. They were starting to play better, sure, but the first half of the season was unexpectedly taxing on the court. The media often crucified the lot of them for not living up to the enormous expectations that…
On the Road Again Still laughing: This was great! I laughed out loud so many times while reading it at 6 o’clock this morning, my neighbors are probably writing letters to the manager right this minute (“Fretting,” by Ken Bethea, February 19). I’ve been an Old 97’s fan since the…
Michael Bills thought he had a pretty good gig with the federal Transportation Security Administration. His job as a screener at Love Field was government work–good bennies, nice retirement package. An ex-Marine and former quality inspector for a company in Garland before he was laid off, Bills says he even…
The year was 1925, and wealthy white men ruled the South. In South Carolina, a handsome young schoolteacher, the son of prominent white citizens, sired a daughter by his family’s 16-year-old black maid. The teacher, of course, was Strom Thurmond, who rose politically to become one of the South’s most…
When federal agent Jason Meadows interviewed the elderly resident at the Primrose Oaks senior living center in Oak Cliff, the man presented him with a business card for Universal Health. “Here’s your crook,” the man told Meadows, according to a recently unsealed affidavit filed in federal court. The name on…
Danger Zone Kenny Loggins was the king of ’80s soundtracks, with contributions to such classics as Caddyshack, Top Gun, Over the Top, and what’s the other one? Oh, yes: Footloose. We wore a hole in our red shag carpet dancing to that soundtrack, which we still occasionally slip in to…
Cynics Like Us Inspired: I read your article “Spanish Fly,” by Jim Schutze (December 18), and I had to reply to it because I believe it distorts the opportunities that the bridge creates for Dallas. The first Calatrava bridge flows into West Dallas and is a road project designed to…
Wheel Skills Twenty-three of the best basketball players without shoe contracts will gather in Atlanta this week for the 2004 National Wheelchair Basketball Association All-Star Classic in a game that won’t be televised on TNT or even ESPN2. Representing the Dallas Wheelchair Mavericks is Jermell Pennie, who has helped lead…
Off the coast of Galicia, a rocky province in northwest Spain, a storm was brewing. Captain Luis Dopico, aboard the tiny Carmen Belen, towed a line of 2,000 hooks through the ocean. He braced against the spray and hoisted up a cord writhing with sea snakes. Ocean life from the…
