OK, look: if I predict the future, and the future turns out to be exactly what I predicted, I have a right to point that out, right? It’s not bragging. C’mon. It’s more like pointing out that I wasn’t being a total nutcase. So last week in my column in…
“If you are here tonight, it’s because you know somebody. You came here with a friend. And don’t go put this on Facebook, don’t Instagram this. Just put your phone away and have a good time.” A trip to The Stoneleigh Hotel is always a pleasure. The art deco grandeur…
The Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky story is like a coffee table puzzle I can solve most of the way but never completely. Maybe you can show me the last moves. The first move is this. Beginning in 1998, according to the Freeh inquiry released yesterday, Paterno, Penn State President Graham B…
Every time City Hall sets about reforming its own court system through the judicial appointments process, I see that same old bad penny coming around again. They want municipal court judges who will do what a bunch of 23-year-old city prosecutors tell them to do. Been there myself. Let me…
Dear Mexican: Magdalena has worked for me many years. She came over as a mojada with her two little girls when they were 4 and 6. The girls went to school but only until middle school because they are undocumented; they can’t get a job or a bank account or…
From the beginning of the Trinity River toll road debate 14 years ago, one of the biggest hurdles faced by critics of the road has been the unwillingness of urban planners and other so-called experts to publicly speak ill of a project with so much money and power behind it…
Want to know what’s really going on in Dallas? Keep an eye on Krymsk. Last Saturday more than 170 people died in flash floods in this southern Russia city. Today The New York Times reports that angry survivors think the Putin government is lying to them about a big release…
Never ever thought I would hear myself saying this — ever never ever. But there may be something to say for certain kinds of all boys schools. Well, that is, if there is anything good at all to say about boys, and there may not be, then maybe it’s a…
See also: Girls Rock Dallas gets some help from Amanda Palmer You might have seen a little blurb here or there on DC9 about Girls Rock Dallas, a new non-profit summer camp for girls, in which they learn how to play, write, record and market their own songs. The first…
Update/Correction/Apology/Literary Forehead Slap: The premise of this column is a stupid mistake on my part. For some time I have labored under the impression that Lucy Crow Billingsley, a daughter of Trammell Crow, was an early partner with John Sughrue in the development of Museum Tower. That’s wrong. She wasn’t…
Generally, I take my muses in the form of flappers, gypsies and Dolly Parton. I also heed the advice of Emily Post. Her regard for manners and civility may swing square to some, but I find her devoted involvement to the enjoyment of others helps conquer narcissism and ensures a…
Over at The Dallas Morning News uniblog, my former colleague Robert Wilonsky has an item keeping us up to date on plans to turn Fair Park in South Dallas into a year-round commercial amusement park, an idea about which I have no personal objections or, for that matter, especially strong…
This morning I found a story in my copy of The Dallas Morning News called “Dallas Police & Fire Pension System looks to reduce its real estate exposure.” Translated into ordinary English, that headline would be: “Boson Six Pineapple Hiccup-Hiccup Do Not Read This Story.” Of course I rushed into…
DEAR MEXICAN: Suppose the United States were as progressive and conscious of our country’s true self-interest as are, for example, many European countries; and suppose this had been true in the decades immediately following World War II, when Northern and Western Europe subsidized the development of southern European nations. If…
Let’s go back to hell first, see how things are going down there. Then we’ll visit heaven. Promise. We are trudging in together, you and I, one very hot recent afternoon. If you think back, we have actually visited hell several times. But today, for some reason, as we hike…
So I’m doing a this-hand versus that-hand thing in my head on Obamacare. Everybody says the Republicans are going to make this year’s presidential election a referendum on the Affordable Care Act. I just want to be ready. On the one hand, Affordable Care will encourage tons of poor people…
Freelance photographer (and Observer contributor) Mike Brooks grew up in Hawaii. Pretty easy to fall in love with the visual arts there, but he didn’t start out as a music photographer. Since his days at the Punahou School in Honolulu, and two colleges in Northern California, he’s built a rep…
Sometimes I think the dumbest people to talk to about the newspaper business are newspaper people, of which I am one, obviously. Is it possible to scream blindness? David Carr, The New York Times’s media columnist — one of the few media reporters on whose word I truly hang, often…
It’s over 100 degrees these days. I know because, in addition to the endless polite conversations I’ve had regarding the topic, you keep taking pictures of thermometers. There is no ocean breeze to save us on these plains. There is only one savior: the pool. Enter Ku De Ta, where…
Dallas Mayor Mike (“I’m a toll road guy”) Rawlings has pitched a bunch of numbers to the media that he says prove Dallas should build the Trinity toll road before it fixes the existing freeways downtown. But thanks to some very handy detective work by three anti-toll road city council…
Dear Mexican: Barrack Hussein Obama, how you dare deprive Mexico of its young, educated people? These illegal aliens in the United States are the only hope for Mexico, and you want to keep them here. They could start businesses, create jobs and improve the standard of living for the people…
So Teresa Sullivan, the president who didn’t cut costs at the University of Virginia, got her job back anyway. Meanwhile making the rounds of newspaper op-ed pages is an essay by Jeff Selingo, editorial director of The Chronicle of Higher Education, saying the way to get college costs down is…
