If they start throwing chairs, you’ll know you’re on the wrong set.” With such sage advice, my 11-year-old daughter bid me adieu before I jetted off to Los Angeles on less than a day’s notice to appear on the Leeza Gibbons show, the outer ring of TV talk-show hell. On…
Dallas Observer staff writer Jim Schutze has been named a winner of a 1999 Unity Award for political reporting. The Unity Awards in Media, sponsored by Lincoln University of Jefferson City, Missouri, honor outstanding reporting on issues concerning minorities. Schutze won for his April 16, 1998, cover story, “Saint Al,”…
Stung by a recent rejection, thrilled by a rumor that someone attractive might like them, the Dallas school board leaped into the arms of San Francisco schools chief Bill Rojas without a wisp of investigation or information about his past. If recruiting a new school superintendent were anything like romance,…
On a bill and a prayer Texas legislators appear to be taking kindly to the complimentary subscription to the Dallas Observer they began receiving this year. Some say they actually are reading the articles, even the long ones. One story causing a stir in Austin is “Holy Handouts” (January 21)…
A commercial truck carrying bottled water rumbles up the rocky street, stopping in front of one of the 25 or so homes in a listless neighborhood in the town of Socorro, 10 miles east of El Paso. The driver slings a water jug over his shoulder and drops it on…
Dysfunction junction “Are you a member of the NAACP? If not, why not?” asks the voice of Dallas branch not-quite President Lee Alcorn on his office answering machine. Good question. Here’s a good answer: because our own family is plenty dysfunctional. We don’t need to pay dues to join another…
It would be unfair, at this point in time, to paint a portrait of Dallas Independent School District Superintendent-designate Bill Rojas as a man wearing a several-sizes-too-small miniskirt, reclining on a cheap Chinese love seat with a come-hither look while he waits for history to come through the door and…
The thing about the current Dallas City Council is that the truth tends to get them all upset, whereas they never seem to mind all that much being lied to. At the April 21 council briefing, North Dallas council member Sandy Greyson asked David Dybala, the city’s head of public…
Info:Correction Date: 05/06/1999 Info: Vapor war ION Storm’s Daikatana still isn’t out, but several legal filings are By Christine Biederman For a bunch that set out to have the highest profile in the $2.5 billion-a-year, in-your-face computer-game business, the silence has been deafening. In fact, if you strain hard enough,…
We can only hope In reference to the April 15 Dallas Observer cover story “The fandom menace,” I understand that high-tech employers are worried about the so-called “Star Wars flu,” in which hundreds of thousands of fanatical Star Wars geeks plan to call in sick on May 16 just to…
Sometime in late December, in the hip, harmony-green halls of the Sammons Center, Chuck Moore and 26 other arts-group managers received their questionnaires. Their “Nonprofit Accountability Checklists,” to be precise. Sent by the influential Dallas Business Committee for the Arts, the mailing asked 20 questions about taxes, debts, budgets, and…
This little stretch of Parry Avenue, just northeast of Fair Park, isn’t the street of broken dreams. Not yet, anyway. The dream here is still tangible and exciting. But it has definitely taken some hits. Parry Avenue is a bitter window on what everybody in every neighborhood is going through…
The Texarkana federal judge who presided over Texas’ case against the tobacco industry, which led last year to a $17.3 billion settlement, is raising questions about one lawyer’s claims to a share of the windfall. U.S. District Judge David Folsom wants to know why a state arbitration panel that awarded…
Early in the morning, children line up on sidewalks to wait for the yellow school bus, much as their parents and grandparents did in their time. This time, though, something’s a little off. The bus has a sign on the side. Dr Pepper, it says. The kids get to school,…
Good council hard to find Watch out. Buzz is getting literary again. This time it’s Flannery O’Connor, who wrote: “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” A psychotic killer in the short story “A Good Man…
The tall, deep-voiced security guard looked at his buddy, a squat cowboy in droopy trousers cinched at crack-level. “It’s a woman thing,” he said, as dozens of fans lined up in the Lone Star Park paddock for autographs from a tiny girl jockey with a hamster face, darting hands, and…
Money grubbers The only reason Dallas Observer Editor Julie Lyons is taking a big public stand for giving Dallas City Council members a living wage [“It’s the money,” April 8] is because Laura Miller, her buddy, probably needs the cash right now to pay off her Neiman’s credit card. Still,…
One of them is out there right now. The skinny raver who wears a different T-shirt in every picture on his Web site sat down on the concrete a week ago with his Dell Inspiron laptop and sleeping bag. Right there on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard too, right outside…
“What in the hell?” asks Dallas City Councilman Al Lipscomb, who has just been put on hold by a goosey receptionist inside the city manager’s office and is thoroughly frustrated. On this Thursday afternoon, Lipscomb and Carol Brandon, his appointee to the city’s park and recreation board, are angry as…
More or less First comes the disclaimer: Buzz is not exactly a business whiz. Our long-term financial strategy is this: Earn money. Spend it. Borrow more money. Spend it too. Die young. So we’re probably not the best source to glean useful information from the 1998 annual report of A.H…
Bounty hunting–a cheesy but sometimes deadly occupation–has come under scrutiny in Austin, where a bill with law-enforcement backing would restrict who can go after bail “skips” and how the absconders can be arrested. The aim is to stop would-be goon squads, stoked on reality-TV bounty-hunter busts, from going out and…
On Monday morning, Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde weren’t quite sure what was going to become of their surreal, ambitious musical based on the life of Dallas blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson. For a brief moment, the men thought they were going to come up $30,000 short and wind up…
