It was a cold, gray morning. A Sunday–they never have funerals on Sunday. The Reverend Gregory Spencer, Fort Worth’s renowned preacher, undertaker, and entrepreneur, opened the back door of his Eastwood mortuary, which doubles as his home. And as he looked outside, he found himself staring straight into the barrel…
It was a sultry, moonlit night in July, on a back road in rural Archer County, and Gail Bennett thought it would never end. Gail and her ex-husband, Tony Marsh Bennett, had been fighting all day, and Tony’s rage roiled into the evening hours. This time, he was enraged that…
Star fever If your only sources of information are the Morning News’ gossip columns, then bloated Hollywood character actor and part-time Dallas resident Gary Busey’s spectacular May 5 drug overdose in Malibu, California, probably came as a huge surprise. While Busey has been a prime source of copy for inveterate…
Irving just doesn’t get it, says Laray Polk, a Dallas artist whose mural-size drawing adorns a wall of the suburb’s city-funded arts center. In her 8-by-20-foot work, titled “They’re calling for a Flowery War!” there are heroic-size male figures, snippets of a pop song written in Chaucerian English, a giant…
New York investment advisor has been arrested for illegal receipt of funds from the Libyan government, in dealings that involved millionaire Dallas developer Trammell Crow and members of his family. Federal authorities last week charged William Bodine, 51, a longtime friend of Crow’s son-in-law, Henry Billingsley. He is being held…
‘The Observer 1′: The $99 million CEO– plus Burl hits the jackpot Forget the Fortune 500. Put Texas Monthly’s annual special issue on the Texas 100–the 100 richest Texans–out of your mind. Most of all, forget about the D-FW Top 100, the Dallas Morning News’ entry in the ranking sweepstakes…
Mailer gets relevant I am writing to thank you for your piece on Norman Mailer [“Oswald’s ghost,” May 11]. I never thought I would say that. Until I saw your article, I always wondered why Norman Mailer even bothered to write. He told us about a convention of hack politicians…
To read the Christian Coalition’s “Contract With the American Family” is to wonder how well-intentioned people can come up with so many bad ideas. And then again, to wonder what some of it has to do with either the family or Christianity. What in the world do these people have…
At 10 weeks, the procedure seems simple enough. The woman assumes the standard gynecological position–back flat against the table, thighs spread, feet elevated in stirrups. Nitrous oxide is offered to calm her anxiety, deep breathing encouraged to take off the edge. Think of a favorite place, says the counselor, a…
Dallas congressman John Bryant had felt a lot of conflicting emotions watching Frank Capra’s classic 1946 tearjerker It’s a Wonderful Life, but he’d never numbered anger among them. Then one Christmas a few years ago, as the Democratic legislator sat in his living room watching the film on TV for…
Dallas Observer assistant editor Julie Lyons has won the 1995 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The prestigious national prize honors “outstanding achievement in newspaper writing in the fight against racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.” Lyons, 31, received the award for a pair…
Rosebud A visit to a famous downtown department store offers an interesting revelation about Dallas: this city has a more virulent cult of personality for beloved retailer Stanley Marcus, now celebrating his 90th birthday, than North Korea has for its dictators. Which makes us wonder: if Stanley’s such an arbiter…
Armey’s army I read the Dallas Observer once in a blue moon, and today must have been that blue moon. I read your article on Dick Armey [“The improbable rise of Richard Armey” May 4] and was not entirely surprised to find that you barely got through a paragraph without…
AUSTIN–A truism of education debates is that somebody, somewhere, has already figured out how to solve whatever the problem is. In Los Angeles, there’s a Jaime Escalante, about whom the film Stand and Deliver was made, successfully teaching physics to kids in the barrios. In Philadelphia, there’s a terrific program…
It was a beautiful afternoon, one week before the Dallas mayor’s race, and Ron Kirk was in the unusual position of having 45 minutes to kill. Political candidates in the home stretch of the fight do not have lives, let alone free time. But Kirk had just emerged from a…
News spotlights new form of economic development Leave it to the Morning News to find the silver lining in the darkest storm cloud. You could call it optimism, the upbeat attitude perfusing Dallas’ Only Daily that always seeks to make the best of a bad situation–that believes tomorrow will always…
Wild at heart Who would know more about affairs of the heart than St. Paul Medical Center, where they regularly repair and transplant them? The hospital’s cardiac-rehabilitation program’s “Going Home Instructions,” handed to recovering surgery patients, is full of common-sense advice about exercise and warning signs. And to their credit,…
Norman Mailer stands behind the lectern, leaning against it as he addresses the 150 or so who have come to hear the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner speak. He wears a blue blazer, an argyle sweater vest, and gray slacks; his tousled white head of hair barely peeks above the lectern. He…
Hit man Thanks to both the Observer and David Pasztor for the article on William Dean Singleton and his career of destroying major daily newspapers in Texas [“Citizen Dean,” May 4]. As a former employee of both the Dallas Times Herald and the Houston Post, I was always amazed to…
The municipal motto of Northfield, Minnesota, is “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” Honest. Last year, they had a contest to think up a new motto and, after some civic thought, decided to keep “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment.” So as we veer rhetorically toward the apocalypse, as various social prophets mutter direly…
What happened to ‘Dilbert’ One day it was there, in its usual, reassuring place, between “Wizard of Id” and “Curtis.” The next day, it was gone, wiped from Dallas nerds’ essential reality without so much as an explanatory word. BeloWatch is speaking, of course, about “Dilbert,” the popular cartoon chronicling…
The women at the post office cringed every time they saw Ella Patterson heading their way. The busty, energetic teacher-turned-author would arrive at West Dallas’ central station lugging cartloads of her book, Will the Real Women…Please Stand Up!, packed one-by-one in red-and-white overnight envelopes. The postal workers just saw packages…
