Lancing Plano Five-time Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong has always been one of Full Frontal’s fave athletes. He battled cancer, he has a schweet ride and he has the name of an action hero. After we read his autobiography–It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (G.P…
Well now, that’s just plain rude. Buzz is referring to the Texas Senate Democrats’ sudden skedaddling to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to deny GOP efforts to redraw congressional district maps more to Republicans’ liking–or more to the liking of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom “Mr. Megalomania” DeLay. Eleven Democrats bolted for…
Bloodbath The crazy years: Julie Lyons’ article “The Girl Who Played Dead” (July 17) definitely gave me a clearer understanding of what was happening in South Dallas over a decade ago. I was actually in junior high at the time and would constantly hear these horrific stories of Jamaicans taking…
Pat Douglass steers his 31-foot cabin cruiser, the “Wet Rat,” away from its slip at Pier 121 Marina and slowly motors through the “no wake” zone on Lewisville Lake, about 20 miles north of Dallas. His business partner stands on the bow and watches boat traffic. His fiancee stands at…
The Dallas Observer is often incorrectly referred to as a “liberal” rag. We’re not really; we just run sex ads, which makes us relatively well-paid, not necessarily liberal. You doubt Buzz? Well, smartyboots, we have in our hands an official Republican National Committee “census document” that seeks to delve into…
Marie Grove is an unlikely candidate to rule a corner of Dallas nightlife. She conducts day-to-day business in flip-flops and jeans; her long blond locks unravel in irascible strands. She never raises her voice, even when the pressure of an August 2 restaurant opening seems unbearable. Instead of barking contractors…
It’s not much of a place, really: a bland, one-story yellow brick building hoping to remain innocuous to the small-town traffic that drives by. Its sign–Corsicana Health Services–also doesn’t arouse much curiosity. It’s better to remain low-key, to blend in rather than let everyone in town know the clinic is…
About a month ago I was in Shreveport on the back end of a 10-hour poker session. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The cocktail waitress who was ostensibly en route with my coffee hadn’t materialized. It was hardly surprising. The employees at the Hollywood Casino move (and,…
Not a Polish Joke He may have served you a drink once upon a time at a Turtle Creek-area bar, or perhaps he integrated your company’s software. That was awhile back, before Josh Barker left Dallas for Los Angeles to become an actor, before he built a small résumé (in…
Attack of the Squid Responsible riders: I would like to commend your authors for doing a piece that is not the typical inflammatory stereotyping of motorcycle riders (“Where the Rubber Leaves the Road,” by Mark Donald and Merritt Martin, July 10). The stunt riders and squids are a small but…
Her name, like most of her life, is forgotten, but her one defining moment is carved into memory: She is the girl who played dead. That moment came in a South Dallas crack house, where she’d been hanging out with four other teen-agers “in the game,” dabbling in the margins…
The road to Tennessee Colony passes through rich farmland and acres of spreading trees; it’s some of the prettiest scenery in Texas, but Mark Anthony Larmond has never seen it. Sentenced to 99 years in one of Tennessee Colony’s maximum-security state prison units, the stiffest sentence of the Cleveland Street…
Whether in his small corner spot on the 11th floor of his Central Expressway workplace or, later, in his spacious office at Valley Ranch, he was always pacing, ever on the move as he thought and spoke. For longtime Dallas Cowboys president and general manager Tex Schramm, who died Tuesday…
Despite the name of this gray box, Buzz is not always concerned with being what we in the journalism world call “timely.” So, if you happen to have, say, a Dallas Morning News memo from earlier this year that we may find interesting, go ahead and slip it under our…
Scary Place Do something: The timing of your article was uncanny (“Make Yourself at Home,” by Charles Siderius). As I was dropping off books at the library last Thursday, I thought to myself, “Someone should write an article about the scariness of the library.” And as I arrived at my…
Like flies to honey, they swarm into the Sonic Drive-In on Northwest Highway near Garland Road, revving their high-performance motorcycles as if to announce their “Hey, look at me” arrival. Some ride their sport bikes solo, others travel in packs, a few have passengers draped across their backs. No protective…
When a tough-talking, scar-faced convict named David R. Waters died of lung cancer in January in a federal prison hospital in North Carolina, an unusual flurry of coverage followed. The news hook was Waters’ role as evil mastermind of the infamous kidnapping and murder of Austin-based atheist leader Madalyn Murray…
So, The Dallas Morning News is going to publish announcements of same-sex unions alongside traditional marriage and engagement announcements. Buzz, being liberal and all, can get behind that. The daily, it announced this week, also is going to be more restrictive on advertisements for firearms, only taking ads from federally…
Q & Eh After interviewing Lisa Loeb about her role as Mary Jane Watson in MTV’s new animated series Spider-Man almost a month ago, we set the tape aside, thinking we’d get around to transcribing it closer to the time the show was set to debut–July 11, 9 p.m. No…
Your Library For the people: As a faithful reader of the Dallas Observer, I appreciate your ability to write what The Dallas Only News won’t; however, “Make Yourself At Home,” by Charles Siderius (July 26), disappointed me. Apparently the J. Erik Jonsson Library that he visited was not the same…
Rogelio Sanchez Brito drove his red Ford pickup south to the Millennium Hotel in the Mexican border town of Ojinaga, where he turned it over to a man he’d never before seen. Brito, young and nervous, waited at the hotel for two days before his truck was returned, loaded with…
Dallas Independent School District police officer Mike McKinney was working an off-duty protection job at an auto parts store one night in March when he went out for some food. Walking back toward the store with a cheeseburger and a pizza, McKinney saw the door of a parked van open…
