Margie Chestnut doesn’t look like your average felon. With her long, scraggly gray locks smoothed back in a paisley scarf, her soft yellow cotton sweater, and her oversized, owlish glasses, the 63-year-old Chestnut looks more like a grandma than the prototypical grifter. Indeed, as she sits at a plastic-covered table…
The details would kill a mere mortal. Making gefilte fish from scratch, shaping matzo balls with your bare hands, chopping liver, stuffing cabbage, purging your kitchen of every crumb of bread, all to commemorate some ancient fast food eaten at Mount Sinai by the 10 tribes of Israel and carried…
Pretty vacant I’m not quite sure who said it, but whoever stated that “ignorance is bliss” definitely knew what they were talking about, and they must have had Christina Rees in mind when they said it. Anybody who could walk away from a Richard Diebenkorn exhibit [“Empty beach,” March 26]…
Christopher Walken is creepy–at least on screen. Not creepy in some your-grandmother-slipped-you-a-little-tongue kind of creepy. No, no, Walken is much more insidious. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing an angel, the devil, the hero, the villain, the star of the show or simply a walk-on going for laughs, his characters…
The explosion of gay visibility in contemporary cinema might make some believe that you can’t get a script produced in America unless it has at least one world-weary, big-hearted gay neighbor or a wisecracking lesbian best friend/daughter/sister, both of whom put the central heterosexual romance into perspective by the exotic…
Since January, someone with inside knowledge of the USA Film Festival has regularly trickled anonymous letters, legal correspondence, and inter-office memos to both the Dallas Observer and The Dallas Morning News that suggest some pretty nasty conflicts tearing at the soul of the organization. But nobody in Dallas arts journalism…
Eddie “Junior” Lovejoy’s short life and violent death are the stuff country and western songs are made of. Big dreams, cheating hearts, cold blue steel, long-suffering widows–just the type of material Lovejoy himself liked to sing while strumming his mandolin. With his pretty-boy looks, lush voice, and aim-to-please manner, Lovejoy…
It’s a shame that of all the young Asian-American filmmakers showcased at this year’s Festival, the one to nab the most hype is spotlight-chaser Jon Moritsugu. A shame, but not a surprise. Moritsugu is a hack–hack director, hack screenwriter, hack editor and producer. His films, driven by quasi shock-value and…
The voice on the answering machine was unmistakable: “This is Kevin Massey, aka ‘Cyberstalker.’ “Just to let you know, I won a $75,000 judgment against Maynard yesterday in court…Just to let you know who’s the loudmouth who was right. Have a good day.” The Maynard in question is Robert Maynard,…
The $750,000 Ross Perot-funded survey of what’s good and bad about the Dallas Independent School District has become a giant Rorschach test. Every conceivable group has found something about it that offends them. The PTA governing board and two teachers’ unions voted recently not to support the survey. Then last…
What a difference a week makes. Seven days ago, as the Dallas Observer went to press, Paula Jones’ legal team was worrying about how to pick a sympathetic jury; this week, they’re worrying about whether their client has the stamina for a last-ditch appeal. On April Fools’ Day, federal District…
April fools We’d like to say it was a deliberate April Fools’ joke, but even Buzz, with our sometimes–ah–imaginative interpretation of the facts, can’t carry that one with a straight face. We’re referring to last week’s Dallas Observer cover story, “The Jones Boys,” about Paula Jones’ Dallas lawyers, who, we…
Oops When I read Christine Biederman’s piece “The Jones Boys,” I thought to myself, “This is something I’d expect to see in The Dallas Morning News. The Observer is really slipping.” Then I remembered: April Fools! Mitchell Crenshaw Via e-mail How ironic. You published Christine Biederman’s laudatory story on Rader,…
In TV soundbites, he is taut-faced and frenetic as he sputters and raves about the evils of the U.S. government. But late last week, from a cubicle at the Dallas County jail, Richard McLaren, the self-proclaimed leader of the Republic of Texas separatist movement, seemed surprisingly docile, relaxed, even convivial…
There were a couple of reasons why Hoover vs. Cain wasn’t your typical probate-court lawsuit. First was the case itself. Oh, sure, from the way 33-year-old Dallas lawyer Wes Holmes described the dispute to a panel of prospective jurors, it sounded ordinary: 28-year-old Melissa Rene McReynolds and her sister, 36-year-old…
A loose alliance of computer experts, dubbed the “Geek Garrison” by their leader, has descended on the Dallas Independent School District, demanding all of the district’s financial records for the last two decades. When they get it, the geeks plan to post all of the information on the World Wide…
Life doing a bad imitation of art When Buzz ran across the name Delvin J. Diles as one of two suspects charged in the abduction and murder of Plano stockbroker Frank Meziere, we did a double take. Delvin J. Diles. Where had we heard that name before? As it turns…
What began as an old-fashioned family feud in JP court culminated last week in U.S. District Court when jurors found that controversial Oak Cliff Justice of the Peace Thomas G. Jones conspired with Oak Cliff funeral operator Sandra Clark to arrest Inez Clark without probable cause. Although the jury only…
Goat massacre Re: “The goatslayers” [March 26]. It’s enough to make you sick! What an arrogant son of a bitch, this Jerry Jones. Of course, with a name like that, who’d-a thunk it! Anonymous Via e-mail When all other avenues of relocation have been been tried and exhausted, there may…
Head south out of Dallas, drive about an hour down I-35, and take a right once you get to Hillsboro. About 14 miles out of town on the pristine shores of Lake Whitney at the edge of the Hill Country sits the White Bluff Resort, a sanctuary of sorts for…
He is cute, almost cuddly, with a harmless smirk and a sandy mop that maintains its state of calculated dishevelment as he scampers about the soundstage, grabbing props, dropping jokes, chattering continuously like a rapper without a beat. He wears a tight, grass-green V-neck sweater, several braided string bracelets–the kind…
Vance Miller lies. So says a federal judge in ruling that the real estate magnate cannot keep his membership at pricey Preston Trail Golf Club while owing U.S. taxpayers $26 million. The scion of the Henry S. Miller real estate dynasty refuses to pay a whopping debt he owes on…
