People of Dallas! One of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation is coming to our fair city in March, and the tickets haven’t sold out yet. I know they’re $80, but come on. He’s very unlikely to come back again, and for some reason that no one can explain he’s…
How About We has been spreading VD one date at a time with the innovative idea that users propose a specific and simple activity for a first date. The idea is that simple activities make for good icebreakers and possibly prevent painful first date marathons. For instance, proposing “how about…
We now live in a world where major corporate radio routinely features songs by Phoenix, M83, The Black Keys, Passion Pit, The Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon and Macklemore. These were largely independent artists who for the most part built critical acclaim over the years by producing quality…
This country is being hoodooed by the oldest magic show trick in the book — misdirection. The fictional crisis of entitlement spending is just a new version of the stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress, the latest cheap trick by the super-rich to turn our attention away from the truth. For…
Dear Mexican: What is it about Mexicans and collecting old cars? I have three Mexican neighbors with middle-class incomes but in each case, when the old car or truck wouldn’t run anymore, they would buy a nearly new replacement and then just let the old clunker sit in the driveway…
All right, wait, what are we talking about again? The new superintendent of schools and the people he hired and did he follow the right procedures in hiring them and did he pay them too much money and stuff like that. Yeah. That’s what I’ve been talking about, anyway. But…
At 16, Michael Briggs was a Deep Ellum kid hanging with the late-night, all-ages coffee crowd at old favorite Insomnia Café. Briggs has come a long way for the cause since then, running a great local music podcast called The Violitionist Sessions, which has spotlighted over 100 artists from our…
I was recently asked if I’d ever had a skinny margarita. “You mean, like, in a sex-type way?” No, it turns out they just mean a lower-calorie margarita. “Is that a fancy way of ordering two shots of tequila with salt and a lime?” Apparently, it’s not. Ordering drinks “skinny”…
We are old obit writers at our house who scour the obituary pages by habit every morning, and, yes, we did notice the long obituary in The Dallas Morning News last week for Harriet Schoelllkopf Deison, 65, wife of the pastor of Highland Park Presbyterian Church. I think we both…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
While the UK-US flow of music has become more than the steady one-way stream of US rock of the last two decades (presumably thanks to the internet), I’ve noticed you enjoy importing our wimpiest bands, like the dull drone of Mumford and Sons or the operatic cock-rock of Muse. Here…
Sometimes it feels like we grab the gun issue by the tail instead of the head. It’s always about ultimate constitutional rights and last-ditch defense measures. But the real face of the gun question isn’t some kind of semi-reluctant insistence on a necessary evil. It’s sheer joy. The real issue…
My belated New year’s resolution: I absolutely refuse to read, talk about or use my brain to consider social theories based on Batman movies. Said. Done. There we have it. But. This morning’s romp through the newspapers does provoke certain musings about the erosion of a social consensus around the…
Warren Fagadau, a Dallas ophthalmologist who has been involved in health insurance reform efforts in Texas, has a piece on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News today about the qualities our public hospital in Dallas should look for in its ongoing search for a new chief executive officer…
I know you are tired of the year-end lists, the resolutions. The time for wishing is over, and the time for doing has begun. By now you have probably been forwarded or seen some of the observant commentary on The Paris Review’s recent piece, “Dallas, Part 1: From Afar,” by…
So by now it begins to be obvious there are two ways to go on this city-owned private high-dollar golf course being proposed in a poor neighborhood. Not one and a half ways. Not three ways. Only two, and they point in opposite directions. 1) Help the ‘hood. 2) Dig…
Dear Mexican: Is Lou Dobbs right when he says that close to 80 hospitals in California have been closed because of the illegals, or is he lying? Cabrónes No Necesitamos Dear CNN: Dobbs is right to a certain point, and only in spite of his idiocy. The father of two…
An odd sense of kinship came to me recently when I read an essay by New York writer Andrew Solomon about his new book Far From the Tree, in which he examines and gives voice to Tom and Sue Klebold, parents of Dylan Klebold, who with his friend Eric Harris…
Last February I saw a blog post announcing McDonald’s latest and greatest offering. Fish McBites were introduced at the start of Lent to give Catholics a way to torture themselves through Easter Sunday. I ordered a small cardboard container of the fish nuggets and ate two or three before I…
New Year’s Day was great — saw The Hobbit with son and girlfriend, came home to prime rib, what could be better? — but I also spent a hell of a lot of time on the iPad trying to find out if I had fallen off a cliff yet. I’m…
Oh, it’s the very last day of the year, and I’m just not going to write about that damned fiscal cliff thing because it makes me so angry, and I don’t feel like ending the year on that note. I want one day off from angry, if you don’t mind…
For roughly 25 years, Arthur Stephens has been running Dallas’ ASA Audio. Historically, he’s a familiar face amongst Deep Ellum’s gifted sound-crafters: He mixed at Club Clearview until 2007, then it was on to the sorely-missed Deep Ellum Live, formerly located just a block behind The Dancing Marlin and Angry…
