Dear Mexican: I work construction in Texas. The mojados at work call me “Chicano” (which really angers me) to make fun of me, and I reply to them by saying, “¡México, bien por su gente!” This usually leads to debates that the Hispanic population will be the majority of the…
Hey, it was great having Mitt Romney in town this week, was it not? He looks so different in Texas. Those national mediatoids were making him out to be a rich plutocrat who made his money killing companies and shipping jobs to Vietnam, but when we got to see him…
About seven years ago, G.I. Sanders signed a record deal with MCA, as part of a pretty successful local rock act called South FM. The sun set on that band not long after, and Sanders more or less walked away from playing music, and into his own start-up company, Fancorps…
Oh my God, am I just going to keep blabbing about John Wiley Price every day for the rest of my life? Will I wind up buckled into a padded chair against the wall in some long corridor with ladies in white dresses whispering to the visitors, “He’s the John…
A grandfather and his granddaughter were fighting over the headphones. She couldn’t have been more than five years old, but she was stubborn, and insisted she ” … would cover her ears with her hands the whole time.” In an effort to prove the headphones were cool, the elder removed…
Pretty soon, any day now, maybe tomorrow, well, possibly in a week or so, I may join a 12-steps program in which I stand up at the beginning of every meeting and say, “Hi everybody, my name is Jim, and I can’t stop talking about John Wiley Price.” Not today…
OK, I’ve got my idiot coloring book out again. Sorry. Just have to do this. I just want to help people not get totally lost in the delicious detritus of the FBI affidavit released yesterday in the Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price corruption probe. The details are delectable –…
Let’s be clear about this. Old, rich keep-a-lid-on-it Dallas is not going to rule next year’s 50th anniversary observations of the Kennedy killing in Dealey Plaza. No matter what it takes. The official City of Dallas JFK Assassination 50th Anniversary Celebration Committee, named in a story this morning in the…
Dear Mexican: Why can’t the United States and Mexico agree on just one name for the Rio Bravo/Grande river? And I don’t understand why the Americans lo dice in español? —Marfa Maven Dear Wabette: The Mexican is a Californian by the grace of God so doesn’t dare tread the intellectual…
To shred or not to shred? Is sudden large-scale document shredding in a semi-public entity ever a good thing? On the morning of May 21, Randy Johnson, the recently fired director of horticulture at the Texas Discovery Gardens, goes to a sit-down visit at City Hall with Paul Dyer, director…
Oh, man, and me a total Obamatoid! Am I going to have to vote for Mitt Romney? But he’s already way to the left of Obama on education and batting 1.000 on one of my favorite themes, the need to integrate schools by class, not race. For years there has…
Typically, I do not believe in signs. But after a weekend spent at Homegrown Fest, after-parties and beyond, it was difficult not to interpret a good omen or two as I made my way into Lota’s Goat on Sunday night. Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City” was on full…
So today I put aside my morning paper after the customary two-minute encyclopedic read, and I think, “OK Lawners, you tell me.” You work it out. I can’t. I’m tired. So you give me the answer. Who is the “conservative” here? On the one hand I have former City Council…
Aside from being a spitting image of actor Dermot Mulroney, KHYI-95.3 FMGeneral Manager Joshua Jones is quite the rising celeb. On a local level, anyway. He’s taken advantage of the fact that he manages a station owned by true supporters of good, old-fashioned local and live radio, and the Jones…
Dallas is a weird little speed-trap town in its own way. I often wonder what visitors think. What they need to think is, “I’ve got to be really careful and keep my mouth shut until I get out of this burg safely.” These musings come to me after reading a…
Wait. Click the pause button. Freeze this. There’s a huge point here that some people do not want us to notice. In the last 24 hours, the entire debate about the Trinity River toll road has completely shifted ground. I was just now on the phone about it with City…
Dear Mexican: I was wondering why Mexicans in Chicago are meaner than Mexicans in California. —Pinche Caliente Gabacha Dear Fucking Hot-Ass Gabacha: Mexicans in Chicago, mean? In my many visits to the Windy Ciudad, I’ve found them to be a wonderful, hospitable raza, with their only real vice being they’re…
After an afternoon spent talking to people down on Rock Island Street, I drove back for something the next day. As I rolled south on Industrial Boulevard — ground I’ve covered a zillion times over the years — a huge smile broke over my face. Instead of just staring straight…
On the one hand, our former mayor and Republican primary candidate for the U.S. Senate, Tom Leppert, wasn’t afraid to break GOP ranks and tell us that his fellow Republican opponent Ted Cruz is a known communist sympathizer. Amazing. On the other hand, now we also know that Leppert himself…
I have been thinking about you, Dallas. Every week, I am at your parties, eavesdropping on your conversations. And every week, I get to share with you some tidbit, some moment caught between drinks, which reveals a little more about who you are and what you are up to. It’s…
Yesterday we talked about The Dallas Morning News and its editorial campaign against allowing children in poor neighborhoods to have ice cream — more specifically, their call for tough law enforcement measures against ice cream trucks whose low-quality music systems apparently have been causing discomfort to rich people who are…
Becki Howard’s role might be more behind the scenes nowadays, but she’s done her fair share in the spotlight over the years, playing violin on three Paper Chase albums, and performing live with The Crash That Took Me, Sarah Jaffe and, more recently, Bethan. It’s likely her passion for performing,…
