Country in crisis Local radio stations have stopped playing the pro-war, pro-drinking hit “Getting Bombed in Nashville” after the singer, country-music sensation and native Dallasite Gage Hawkins, made anti-war comments to reporters following his show at the Gypsy Tea Room on Saturday. Hawkins, like Toby Keith (“The Angry American”), had…
A youth group that calls itself the Young Conservatives of Texas is taking some credit for the recent firing of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram business writer who called them “anti-intellectual little fascists” in an e-mail. The missive upset the group, though Buzz isn’t sure why. Maybe they didn’t like being…
DPD BluesDon’t miss that mess: I am glad there is still one place in Dallas that writes the truth about the Dallas Police Department (“Ticket to Ride,” by Thomas Korosec, March 13). That rag, The Dallas Morning News, never puts anything in their paper about what is really going on…
Texans have to bear the burden of a number of stereotypes: Texas men are brash, gun-loving bubbas; the women are over made-up, big-haired shallow shoppers; we’re all materialistic, right-wing, anti-enviro religious freaks. In reality, none of those descriptions is more than 60 or 70 percent true, tops. Still, the tarring…
Auto racing tycoon Bruton Smith stood in a massive parking lot helping direct traffic away from his brand-new Texas Motor Speedway six years ago. He wasn’t happy about it. The first-ever NASCAR race at the speedway just north of Fort Worth had arrived in a mess and ended the same…
As anyone who has watched the grave, opening sequence to Law & Order knows, police and prosecutors work hand in glove gathering criminal evidence and presenting it in court. If the heads of those agencies are on the outs, it’s akin to a bad business partnership, or maybe a bad…
Saw a story in the paper. Local sports columnist wrote a piece from the road. Lots of punctuation. Very straightforward. Very punchy. Very daily newspaper. I used to be a daily guy. Didn’t agree with me. I decide to give it another shot. I resolve to cover the men’s Big…
Albert Maysles does not give out awards. He accepts them frequently, all those accolades for a lifetime’s worth of achievement, including immortal films made with his late brother David (Gimme Shelter, Salesman, Grey Gardens) and others (Primary, LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton). But Maysles has never before lent his…
Because We CareThis stinks: As a longtime reader of the Dallas Observer, I have learned to take most of the sensationalism written by Jim Schutze in stride. I continue to read the Schutze brand of speculative journalism week after week because it’s entertaining in a way that is not unlike…
In August, Sergeant Raul Rios called it quits. He couldn’t stand working in the Dallas Police Department anymore. The 21-year department veteran says the immediate cause of his leaving was his surprise transfer from supervising a dozen patrol officers on the streets of Northwest Dallas to a graveyard shift in…
See, this is why I never do stories on Channel 5. Because the station sucks. OK, maybe that’s too harsh. It usually sucks. Most nights on most stories, it offers nothing by way of news value or entertainment. With its overhyped “breaking news” segments, breathless anchors (Mike Snyder, holla!) and…
Last month, the Dallas Central Appraisal District proudly announced that its new self-designed “state-of-the-art mass appraisal system,” known as MARS, was finally running. It had been a four-year effort to update the district’s systems that had cost upward of $5.5 million. Officials say the system is nearly at full speed…
Turns out Entertainment Weekly, not High Times, is a co-sponsor of the Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards handed out each March to unofficially herald the opening of the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin. Still, during Friday night’s shindig at the Austin Studios, some of us couldn’t help…
In this installment of Sack of Kittens: Loaded Moses. Looks like? If the entire city of Flower Mound could be distilled into five people, they would look something like these fellas. The same scenario would also work if you replaced Flower Mound with Lewisville or Farmers Branch, or possibly Mars…
SURPRISE, ARIZONA–A quick look around the Rangers clubhouse leaves me feeling that, despite the overall luxury, this is less a professional locker room than it is a halfway house for could-have-beens, used-to-bes and hope-they-still-cans. It’s a sad sight, a total downer. (They have buckets of workout powder in this joint–Creatine…
Well, isn’t this just peachy? For years now, Buzz has made it known that we are amenable to a little journalistic bribery. Cheap bribery, too. Our soul, we’ve advertised, can be bought for $1.89. Cash or check. Granted, it’s a bit frayed, sort of a fixer-upper, but still cheap at…
On the SpotAmazed: I wanted to write and say that the author hit the spot on this article (“Dancing Across the Border,” by Cheryl Smith, February 27). I am Caucasian, and I was born and raised here. However, I am married to a Chilango. I dated a Chicano for several…
In the current U.S. climate of French-bashing, winemaker Eileen Crane finds herself in the unique position of heading up Domaine Carneros, a joint venture in Napa, California, between France’s Champagne Tattinger and New York-based Kobrand Corp. Crane claims to be the world’s first woman to have built two large commercial…
SURPRISE, ARIZONA–If baseball has a paradise, this is it. Surprise, where the Rangers now share a palatial 132-acre facility with the Kansas City Royals, is the polar opposite of Port Charlotte, Florida, the retirement swamp where the team had trained since 1987. Here there is more energy, more life. Periodically,…
SURPRISE, ARIZONA — I’d heard bad things about Carl Everett, horror stories from sportswriters who said he could be tempestuous and condescending. Whatever, I thought. That’s news when an athlete isn’t that way. I’m not a beat writer. I don’t hang around every day; I fly low. The following is…
Digging through piles of nondescript hats, T-shirts and sweatshirts at T-N-T Sports Wear, I soon struck shopper’s gold. It came in the form of a baby-blue knit cap bearing that famous Ralph Lauren insignia, the tiny polo player so beloved by Yuppies. Only $2.50–a steal of a deal. At least…
Sex for SaleHypocrisy begins at home: Nicholas Bredimus (“American Sex Tourist,” by Thomas Korosec, February 20) could probably have gratified himself and avoided the hassle of trying to obstruct justice in the first place if he’d only settled for what’s closer to home, where a man with practically any budget…
