If you missed Brett Shipp’s Willis Johnson story on WFAA-Channel 8 last night, you need to go give it a gander here. I also have a column in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park talking about Johnson, a radio host who is a crucial but mysteriously low-profile figure in…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we meet the people in the local music scene that you don’t see on stages. It’s such a cool thing when our LMA subjects have the humble beginning of simply being a fan. Even more exhilarating is the fan who elevates to a position of…
Jack Floyd (I don’t really know Jacquielynn personally, but I’m told that’s what cool people call her) has a good column today behind The Dallas Morning News pay well today about making downtown Dallas fun. I know. I know. Right off the top it sounds like a dreadfully dreary topic,…
Somewhere in the saga of the Dallas Wave, formerly known as the Standing Wave, there is sanity. Things happen for a reason. I take this as an article of faith, but my faith is sorely tested by the wave. The standing wave is a manmade rapids in the Trinity River…
Look, I hate it when people tell me stuff and then won’t tell me how they know it. I generally apply about a 50 percent discount to information like that. So I’m about to do the same thing to you: tell you a bunch of stuff I have been learning…
Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *I know one practice doesn’t make a career and, as Bill Parcells says, let’s hold off on shipping that bust to Canton, but Cowboys’ first-round draft pick Tyron Smith looks like a…
Hey, I was out of town last week when the August issue of D hit the streets — well, given the magazine’s target demo, perhaps we should say it hit the winding lanes and parkways — with an essay titled “Let’s Ditch the Trinity River Toll Road.” Wow. Pretty remarkable…
Dear Mexican: A few years ago, my girlfriend and I visited the beautiful city of Merida in the Yucatan. We were surprised to see a sentence in our guidebook warning us to be on the lookout for Mennonites peddling queso in the mercado. Sure enough, we bumped into a bearded,…
Quite a bit of chest-puffing harrumphing holier-than-thou going on over at The Dallas Morning News editorial page today, with a self-congratulatory ditty about that dirty Rupert Murdoch, about those nasty dirty Brit tabloids and about how happy the News is with itself for being … well … you know …..
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we meet the people in the local music scene that you don’t see on stages. Scotty Mankoff can be a bit menacing to witness at a live music show, with his hulking frame draped in black clothing, a flowing, curly mane of long dark…
Whether you’ve reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt’s End: *Dear NFL owners, you’re a slimy lot. Signed, Everyone. Basically on Thursday the owners ratified a proposal, not an agreement. They made a deal with themselves. Then — with darting eyes…
Earlier this week I mentioned a few Tex-Mex joints that are serving up some pretty sub-par guac. Ever ready to jump into the fray, a few Aters chimed in, saying I’d simply gone to the wrong restaurants. But the thing is, there’s no excuse for bad guacamole. Ever. If you…
Dear Ask a Wetback: You and your fellow law-breaking wetbacks don’t like Arizona’s SB 1070? Too damn bad. Trot back to Make Sick o and protest there, see where it gets you. If you’d work half as hard cleaning up your dump nation as you do sneaking in here, your…
If the ongoing FBI corruption probe is based on things that have gone wrong with county government, the feds may be in trouble. Really bad things happen at the county on really good days. If you walk into county offices and it looks like the entire psych ward has escaped…
Ahh, codeine cough syrup. It started off innocently enough, as a remedy for a sore throat. However, if it can get you high, people will use it to get high. And, if it gets you high, someone will at some point write a song about it. However, this classy beverage…
Leslie Brenner’s new Best of Guide touts Dallas’ top cocktails, complete with a swanky photo spread. One of the shots mirrors an experience I’ve had enough of. A high ball glass filled with glistening ice and dotted with kumquat slices is topped with not just a sprig of lavender, but…
OK, let’s get over the thing about “no one has been indicted” in the ongoing federal corruption investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It’s true. No one has been indicted. But let’s be real. Somebody will be. I am working on a column for next week’s paper about…
I have been looking back at the federal corruption conviction that forced the late Al Lipscomb off the Dallas City Council in 2000. That conviction was set aside two years later by a conservative panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. We have lessons, people…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans , where we meet some of the people behind the local music scene — those who aren’t necessarily members of local bands, but the people who make the scene move. Brian Fiegelman came to DFW from the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. His friend Scotty Teece…
Wilonsky and I attended the John Wiley Price rally together yesterday. He has already done a fine job here reporting on what happened. The only reason I would even open my mouth is in response to some of the comments I see in response to his item. One commenter asked…
While we await word of court dates in DeShawn Stevenson’s Irving arrest and shrug at yet another blemish on the record of former Texas running back Cedric Benson, some TCU football players and a former Dallas Cowboy were arrested over the weekend in Dallas. According to Dallas police, former Frogs…
Interesting blow-black — so muted you might call it whisper-back — to recent stories and an op-ed piece in The Dallas Morning News extolling so-called economic progress in Southern Dallas. One instance is on the paper’s op-ed page today, a column from respected Southern Dallas blogger-journalist Shawn Williams, who echoes…
