Expunge Him Culinary assassins: Apparently Mark Stuertz never listened to his mother’s admonishment to “don’t say anything if you don’t have anything nice to say.” Like his predecessor Mary Brown Malouf, apparently the Dallas Observer prefers to hire verbose assassins rather than skilled journalists who are knowledgeable food critics. Your…
The arrival of the West Nile virus in Dallas has proceeded with all the panicked fanfare that typically comes with public health scares: News reports announce the “deadly” virus’ arrival; residents begin to worry, and city officials respond, in this case, by spraying neighborhoods with pesticides in an attempt to…
Yvonne went skiing the day KKMR-FM (93.3), better known as Merge, went off the air. It was January 3, and the radio station had given away ski trips to a few lucky listeners–among the few listeners Merge had–and Yvonne, the host of the station’s morning show, Early Merge, was to…
Henry Miller would be dumbstruck. The New York-born author of sexually explicit novels often castigated Americans for their chronic paralysis of taste and crude cuisine. “Americans will eat garbage,” he once wrote, “provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper or any other condiment…
Maybe it’s no coincidence that Central Market’s serpentine maze empties into a delta of counters stocked with chef-prepared food, sandwiches and Paciugo Gelato ice cream. After all, this is the realm where margins are fattened. But will it fatten consumers, too? This Mecca of convenience dining is called Café on…
Don’t you just hate it when columnists get lazy or run short on ideas and resort to answering their mail in print? You do? Well, turn the page, bub, ’cause this week, Buzz gots a letter. Joan Covici of Dallas didn’t appreciate our item last week where we purported to…
Heart of GoldForgotten inmates: “The Ex-Con Game” (August 1) is right on target. I’ve known and worked with Ned Rollo at various conferences. His rough exterior belies the softness of his heart. Tell Ned to keep his chin up and continue his great work for those forgotten inmates. Dr. H…
Sack of Kittens This week in Sack of Kittens: The Filthy Skanks. Looks like? GWAR with absolutely no production values. Meaning: Instead of, say, an enormous erupting penis, you get a dude in an old Skeletor and/or He-Man Halloween costume held together with duct tape and whatever else he could…
So Mayor Laura Miller, The Dallas Morning News reports, was vacationing in La Jolla, California, last week, just blocks from Tom Hicks’ “summer retreat” offices. Miller wanted to take the opportunity to discuss renegotiating the no-compete clause that the city’s Reunion Arena has with Hicks’ and Mark Cuban’s Center Operating…
He grew anxious as he approached a customs official at the Ottawa airport, declaring that he had lost his fanny pack, which contained his drivers license and all his cash. It didn’t help that he had this thing about authority figures, a holdover from his time in prison that made…
Dallas’ daily has been singing an odd refrain lately. Dallas Morning News writers have been insisting that the city shouldn’t worry its little head about a retrial of Al Lipscomb now that an appeals court has overturned the former city council member’s federal bribery and conspiracy conviction on technical grounds…
Not So Hot Pitiful thing: Thank you, thank you, thank you for having the guts to expose Some Like It Hot for what it is–a disgusting attempt by Dallas Summer Musicals to fill seats and get some cash (“Some Like It Not,” July 25). This production was the most pitiful…
Through no fault of our own, it seems that Buzz has become one of the countless hated e-mail spammers clogging the Internet. This would be a cause for shame for our dear old mother, but let’s be honest: Maternal pride hasn’t exactly been swelling her bosom since we chose newspapering…
The last thing Arthur Eisenberg wants is people to think he is a neighborhood antagonist. After all, he has lived in the “M Streets East” for 25 years, having raised his family at the corner of McCommas Boulevard and Concho Street. When Eisenberg recently decided he wanted a new house,…
You need not bother reading this, Stephen King. Nor you, John Grisham or Mary Higgins Clark or you folks who crank out all that warm and fuzzy “chicken soup” drivel. You brand-name authors, rolling in high-dollar advances, celestial sales numbers and permanent spots on The New York Times best-seller list,…
When I was in college I read two publications from back to front: Newsweek and the Dallas Observer. I read Newsweek because I liked the back-page columns by George Will and Meg Greenfield, as well as the magazine’s “back of the book” arts coverage. I read the Observer this way…
Missing MomSmall comfort: The article that you have written about the current situation with my family (“The Reluctant Witness,” July 18) is nothing less than spectacular. You have been the only person in the press who has reached the public through the views of all of the family and friends…
He simply wanted his father to tell the truth, to stop the posing and the big-shot games and start saying something that made sense. Why is Mom still missing? What do you know? Why haven’t you told your own brothers and sisters that she vanished three months ago and that…
For the 11-year-old black boy growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the ’60s, the steel industry mecca he called home offered a never-ending series of confusing, often humiliating, lessons. Public drinking fountains and rest rooms were marked for “white” and “colored”; blacks were not welcome to sit among whites in…
Fort Worth Weekly reporter Betty Brink has racked up a respectable number of journalism awards for the paper, most recently being named Print Journalist of the Year in the under-100,000-circulation category by the Houston Press Club. She’s been a stalwart for the weekly, and some of her excellent work has…
Da Bomb!Let’s roll: Finally–my voter’s registration will count for something! I’m awake! Take me to your leader! How can I help? So instead of boring you with what you already know about our wonderful city council (“Taxpayers, Arise!” July 11), let me just say I’m ready to do my part…
Tom Gilley had been through it before: the termination, the humiliation, the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that something just wasn’t right. At 52, he was fired as regional marketing director for an employee benefits company, discarded like so much spoiled meat along with four other senior…
