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…
This is my end-of-the-year lawn, but I’m so grateful to you loyal lawners out there for showing up, I’m going to go you one better. In fact, 100 better. This is “Get Off My Lawn” from the year 2112. So here I am in the year 2112 still cranking out…
A couple of days ago The Dallas Morning News reported that the new Audubon Center, a vaunted jewel in the tiara of the Trinity River project, is sucking wind already, failing to attract the visitors and income the city had hoped for. Being mean to bird-watchers is difficult even for…
Resolutions. I have only ever kept one. Still, the year’s end is a moment to take inventory of what I want less or more of, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the promise-keeping to our newer, shinier, skinnier, well-read selves. I will get eight hours of sleep…
This holiday season we are sharing our home with two rescue dogs, and, yes, frankly, I do believe it makes me holier than thou, thank you for asking. I think it makes me a saint. We had a long series of dog deaths, two while walking. Don’t even ask about…
Dear Mexican: I need some advice. My wife (who’s a half-Mexican L.A. native, just so you don’t think we’re a couple of white hipster dickheads) and myself (who’s white, but an immigrant, so I hope that lowers my dickhead factor) have had it up to our orejas with our Hispanic…
This is the first holiday season I can remember in which people stood around the Yule log talking about the country going off a cliff. No, wait. That’s not the big part. The big part is that some of the people standing around the Yule log want the country try…
