The voodoo thing is closing in on us. I wrote a well researched and highly readable column about the voodoo pot found recently in Hutchins just south of Dallas. Now two more Palo Mayombe voodoo cauldrons have been discovered in Conowingo, Maryland, with a human skull and human leg-bones in…
Dear Mexican, I have a major crush on a worker with the Mexican Consulate aqu en Tucson. But I fear that, like two star-crossed lovers, we’re destined for doom. I’m a gabacha yaktivist and against governments in general. He represents the PAN or PRD or PRI or whatever Mexican political…
Mullets and rebel flags. Those Dallas Cowboys know their target demographic. Here goes. I am going to write about a sports-related issue. I know better. But I just can’t take any more of this hang-dog, slump-shouldered, foot-scuffling, snot-snuffling agony over the Cotton Bowl game. So the big namesake winter classic…
Last couple days have seen mounting interest in Hillary Clinton’s excruciatingly bad Southern accent since a compendium was posted at ifilm.com. And why should a bad Southern accent be an issue in a presidential race? Because a bad Southern accent is just…it’s major. It’s major major. One actor with a…
Maybe you don’t remember how a 400-square-foot closet in this house tore apart Swiss Ave. But some folks do. Do they ever. I like Mary Poss. She’s smart, and she did much more good than bad on the council. But before we allow this stuff about her role as a…
If nothing else, Tom Leppert’s a front-runner in the mayoral mailings, of which we’ve received more than a few. Sunday saw a major effort by Gromer Jeffers in The Dallas Morning News to slice and dice the very confusing mayoral race in Dallas. Of course, Jeffers neglected to raise the…
Dear Mexican, As a kid, I grew up with Mexicans who stole things just to steal. As an adult, I see much of the same behavior from adult Mexicans and their children. And I don’t mean just the poor Mexicans. Why is it in their nature for Mexicans to steal?…
You just never know. You go to these incredibly boring City Hall meetings in a back room with people mumbling about fill dirt, and you think it is never…ever…EVVVer going to end. And then BAM! The big bomb goes off. Last week I attended a meeting of the Dallas City…
Dear Mexican, Why does Arnold Schwarzenegger keep putting his foot in his mouth and talking smack about Mexicans? To my understanding, his wife, Maria, is of Mexican descent. He’s not only humiliating nuestra raza but his wife too. Please give the readers and me some input on the Governator. —Deep…
When Hutchins police Detective Emily Owens saw the voodoo pot her colleagues had found beneath a bridge, her reaction was an immediate reflex. “As soon as I saw it, I said a prayer over it and bound the spirit in it. “I believe in evil spirits and good spirits, but…
There was a typical long, boring, obscure city council briefing yesterday at City Hall yesterday during which I found myself doing make-believe physics problems like, “Do office towers rise out of the soil a tiny amount when all the people leave at night?” Then, all of the sudden, city councilperson…
The new Green Laura Miller has the old greenies around town kind of scratching their heads. Our mayor, who’s taking the kids on a field trip to Waco tonight, is becoming a national Joan of Arc for her fight against coal-fired power plants in Texas. And the greenies are happy…
Dear Readers, Mucho comments about my February 1 column regarding the metamorphosis of Mexican names into seemingly wacky nicknames—Nini from Alejandrina, for instance, or Chely from Araceli. I argued such changes occurred thanks to linguistic laws; some of you had other theories. Here are the best. Here’s what a Chicano…
Sorry, but I feel like Thomas Alva Edison the first time his light bulb lit. I must share. In the last year and a half I have written five columns—count ’em, five, and this one makes an even half-dozen—about the strange case of Jim’s Car Wash on MLK. Six too…
This may not be Jim Schutze, but we’re so wishing we were as high as this guy right about now. On The Dallas Morning News editorial-section blog today, Rod Dreher attacks my rebuttal of his attack in Sunday’s Points section on my recent cover story, “Good-bye, Groovy East Dallas.” Dreher…
This still isn’t Jim Schutze, but if it’ll make you happier to think so, feel free. Oh, man, if there is one thing I really really hate to do, it’s explain myself. But The Dallas Morning News devoted an entire page of its editorial section Sunday to a deconstruction of…
This is Veletta Lill as we know her, though not as Jim imagines her. Oh, Jim. I just got back from a huge luncheon at Fair Park at which former city councilman and longtime Friends of Fair Park director Craig Holcomb was presented with the 2007 Spirit of the Centennial…
Dear Mexican, Why is it that from my personal, thoroughly unscientific observations it seems blue-collar, illiterate Mexicans are more prone to cheating on their wives than other races? Almost every other Mexican I have known seems to brag about how they got it on with their mamacitas while their wife…
If we had the equivalent of a national sport just for Dallas, it would be “Tip-toe ‘Round the Elephant.” I do get why everybody debating the Bush library at SMU does it. The people against the library don’t want to get drawn off their base into an argument they can’t…
Writing about Molly is harder than I thought it would be, and not for the reasons you think. She and I were not close friends. We both wrote columns for the Metro page of the Dallas Times Herald. We were drinking buddies, which is not the same as buddies. We…
Dear Mexican, How do Mexicans get such ridiculous nicknames from seemingly normal names? For instance, José becomes Chepe, Eduardo is Lalo, Gabriel becomes Gabi, and Guillermo devolves into Memo. —It’s Marcela, Not Chela I want to know why Mexicans have such incongruous nicknames. In English, people have nicknames that have…
You don’t really have to get too deep into the parts-per-million debate about coal-fired power plants to see the sea change. The really revolutionary shift here is not about the coal. It’s the people opposed to the coal. The roster of people fighting against TXU Corp. on its application to…
