Count on everybody to be too clever by half in this one — trying to figure out why Dallas cops brought felony charges last week against a City Council member because he got into it with a city employee about whether she doing her job properly. And, yeah, they say…
Two stories flew across my path yesterday like wobbly arrows tipped with suction cups. One was about the mayor’s campaign to stoke economic fires in poverty-blighted southern Dallas with a team of privately paid cheerleaders. The other was about City Hall putting a belated bullet in the head of the…
The greatest thing on Dallas radio (that’s not something on the Ticket) is when you’re cruising through town late at night, and the sounds of Houston start to come from your speakers. The slow synth beat emitting from the Third Coast is the work of Fat Pat, and if you’re…
Bunch of things could happen at tonight’s Dallas school board meeting, topmost that Dallas may wind up firing its reform school superintendent, Mike Miles. And that will be a real whodunnit. Miles, hired with fanfare three years ago as a reformer, drew kudos and support early on for battling the…
Six Shooter is a recurring feature where we highlight six new releases by North Texas based musicians with some extra ammo to spare. Having a local music scene like Dallas’ is great. Any night of the week, there’s quality music being played in local clubs by local artists. The only…
One of the coolest and strangest aspects of baseball is the batter ditty. The batter ditty is the song that blares through the stadium surround sound as the player walks up to home plate before the fail, because failure is common in baseball, which makes it the most realistic sports…
Pitbull’s show tomorrow night in Oklahoma at the Winstar World Casino is sold out, it has been that way for months, and this tells us something. He’s not going away. No matter how much we want him to. But, why? In the world of pop music with some exceptions, everyone…
Strictly from a newspaper point of view and comparing today with maybe 40 years ago, current events are re-writing the basic rules of what we in the business have always called call “story sense.” Forty years ago it would have been major front-page news for researchers to find a geological…
Yeah, Steve Blow definitely got my attention yesterday with his column in The Dallas Morning News about an anti-pitbull organization, maybe because I just got my socks scared off again yesterday afternoon by the Amazing Flying Pit Bull From Hell in the alley across the street from me. I walk…
In this era of hippy-dippy, gluten-free, all-natural organic food, going to Whole Foods is just a foregone conclusion. You, assuming you’re lucky enough to not live in our city’s vast food desert, are going to round up all those stupid reusable bags, hop in your Subaru, and head to the…
Starting on Thursday night, legendary punk band Face to Face will do a three-night residency at Gas Monkey Bar N Grill. Each night, they will play a full album from front to back: Their classic debut Don’t Turn Away comes tomorrow, Big Choice on Friday and their self-titled record on…
Dallas school trustee Mike Morath sent me a link to an Ira Glass “This American Life” radio show about testing and the ability of children to succeed in life. I thought it spoke to a lot of the blowback I get from teachers mad at me for sticking up for…
Earlier this week, Leslier Brenner, the food critic at The Dallas Morning News, took an indirect shot at her own food section when it paid tribute to Bisous Bisous’ muffin/croissant mashup. “How about a little originality?” Brenner grumbled. I get the grumble. When I visited Bisous Bisous last year, I…
A recent story in The New York Times tackles the the state of Mexican dining in New York. Authentic Mexican restaurants are overtaking the city, which would be great if they didn’t all suck. The Times points out that the chefs running these kitchens know little about Mexican cooking and…
Wait a minute. Before we all just go tripping on down the road, we need to go back and sort out a particular aspect of last week’s nasty city council meeting about the Trinity River toll road, the multi-lane, high-speed, limited access highway some people still want to stick on…
Right after the Trinity Commons luncheon early last week, there was something close to euphoria among hardcore opponents of the Trinity toll road, the limited-access, high-speed highway proposed but unbuilt for 18 years along the Trinity River downtown. They spoke to me off the record, because they assumed negotiations lay…
Oops. Had to leave town early last week for a wedding. Almost let a good one slip by. Do you mind if I go back and pick it up, if a few days belatedly? Three weeks ago I told you about the case of Don Smith, an internal investigator at…
Told you so. Curtis Lockey and Craig MacKenzie, the downtown tower redevelopers who accused Dallas of practicing deliberate racial segregation, are back with a brand-new federal lawsuit against the city. These guys won’t go away. See also: Nobody Has Counted to 10 Yet in that Lockey/Mackenzie vs. City of Dallas…
I guess he read my review…
The new face of Coke?Legislators in California and New York are currently considering warning labels for sugary drinks. If it sounds like overbearing nanny-state legislation — and if you live in Texas, it very well might — recall how warning labels have contributed in part to a massive reduction in…
The muscle is on, Chicago-style in Dallas. The mayor and the people he carries water for on the Trinity toll road do not want you to see, hear or talk about their so-called “Dream Team” plan for the toll road before they can get it underway. That’s why they will…
All right, the only thing I’m doing here is hitting the button to start the half-life timer on the latest installment of Scandalgate. At the end of last week, Brett Shipp at WFAA TV and the education beat reporters at The Dallas Morning News launched a new Dallas school district…
