If there’s one lesson Alice Britt says she learned during her short tenure as the head of the city’s oldest job training and placement agency, it’s that doing a good job doesn’t pay. On March 16, Britt was stunned to learn that she was fired from her position as executive…
Look for the slavery label Congress has scheduled its first hearing on Saipan’s sweatshops, those bastions of free-market economics and indentured servitude so strongly endorsed by House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [“Our man in Saipan,” February 19]. On March 31, the Senate Energy and Resources Committee will hear the Clinton…
Family man I read with great interest your article titled “Rambo justice” [March 19]. Like dozens of other lawyers in this town, I, too, put in my time at Bickel & Brewer as an associate. During that time, I worked closely with Bill Brewer for nearly two years and got…
Dr. Dennis Birenbaum looks a little like a runaway chuck wagon as he rumbles down the hall of his Farmers Branch office. Short and wide, he clear-cuts a path through the lavender corridor, at once quizzing his office assistants, scanning a file, and filibustering an interviewer who has been hard-pressed…
This is where the plot was hatched–or so the story goes. Not in some smoke-filled room at City Hall where politicos broker deals that placate rather than please, not on the top floor of some downtown bank building where law firms send buttoned-down lawyers to fight for the status quo,…
When tenant organizer Dina Levy ventured out to Regis Square Apartments to inform residents that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development might cancel the complex’s federal rental-assistance contract, she expected some resistance from management. After all, Regis Square made the August 8 list of 450 properties targeted nationwide…
Run, Jesse, run? If things have been a bit too quiet lately on Dallas’ racial front, here’s a piece of news that promises to warm things up: Jesse Diaz is planning to run against County Commissioner John Wiley Price. Diaz, an activist with the League of United Latin American Citizens,…
Dallas Observer editor Julie Lyons has won the Unity Award in editorial writing for a series of four columns published in 1997 on problems in the Dallas Independent School District. The Unity Awards in Media, sponsored by Lincoln University of Missouri, honor outstanding coverage of minority issues. Lyons’ column “Bully…
Dah-veed’s cojones It’s ironic that after recently celebrating the local Rock en Espanol scene, your magazine would print a feature that criticizes David Garza for insisting “that his first name be pronounced Dah-veed in honor of his Mexican heritage” [“Deifying Dah-veed,” March 12]. It’s even more ironic that such a…
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla.–A man sits in the bleachers of Charlotte County Stadium. Judging by the white hair sprouting from beneath his Panama hat and the wrinkles covering his enormous pink face, he is about 70. Judging by the high nasal twang in his voice, evident whether he is whispering to…
City Manager John Ware sat stone-faced, staring straight at Larry Duncan while they did it to him. Mayor Ron Kirk turned away, trying to gloss over the moment with decorum and weak jokes. But the truth of it–the smell–broke out over the room in the moment right after they had…
With little fanfare, Ross Perot launched his plan to rescue the embattled Dallas public schools. In January and February, a team from Sirota Consulting, a New York-based firm specializing in rehabilitating Fortune 500 companies, not ragtag urban school districts, held focus groups throughout the district to find out what was…
That’s ho—m’fo—bik Like many, Buzz, uh, forgot to vote in this week’s primaries. It’s not that we don’t care about good government. It’s just that all those Republicans look alike to us. Fortunately, the Dallas Gay and Lesbian Alliance is a little more attentive. They monitor the races and send…
Science war Thanks for the excellent article on Dr. Robert Haley’s work on Gulf War Syndrome [“The war over Gulf War Syndrome,” March 5]. As a graduate of the UT Texas School of Public Health, I applaud the thoroughness and rigor of his approach. I thought it was interesting that…
When the Conduit Gallery invited Good/Bad Art Collective to stage the first show in its new annex, the union evoked a list of strange but workable partnerships. A shot of whiskey in a beer. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. CBGB’s and early punk rock. The common thread? Each of these…
How’s this for a novel idea, Dallas: A black school board president. Thank you. It took me a long time to come up with that. We’re supposed to be way beyond racial hang-ups, I know. We’re sophisticated folk, savvy enough to purge the N word from our vocabularies and subject…
Just as HDTV is the television of tomorrow, DVD is the compact disc of tomorrow–and most likely the laserdisc of tomorrow and, quite possibly, the videotape of tomorrow as well. Of course, with DVD, “tomorrow” is really today. DVDs have been on the market for a year. Short for Digital…
In the end, Terry Gilliam will be most remembered for his feature film direction, and perhaps rightly so. From high-profile works of great ambition like The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys to his irony-laden fairy tales The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits, and most impressively, his cult-followed satirical…
Robert Smigel, denizen of late-night TV and member of the new creative royalty of animation for adults–a white-hot humor elite that includes the masterminds of South Park and King of the Hill–is set to receive the Dallas Video Festival’s Ernie Kovacs award this year for his pioneering work in TV…
Best known for his just-this-side-of-cloying giant Polaroids of his Weimaraner dogs, William Wegman has kept one foot in the elitist high-art sphere while cultivating larger commercial success since the mid-’70s, when he broke from his post-art-school conceptual experimentation to work with his beloved pooch Man Ray. In video shorts and…
Ask a roomful of college graduates how many have waited tables for a living. Don’t be surprised by an impressive show of hands. Or by a high turnout of those still making their living from tips rather than tackling the corporate world. The real surprise: that a documentary about the…
The case of Texas vs. Joel Pruitt was depressingly typical among those in Judge Marshall Gandy’s court. In the latest of a string of violent episodes, Jeanie Pruitt had accused her husband of knocking her across a room with one punch. But the outcome would be anything but typical. In…
