As a former college runner and current disdainer of cookie-cutter cities, I am going to have an unusual dilemma next week. Ordinarily, I’d love to race the Resolution Run, but as luck would have it, it will be held in Addison, the home of every chain restaurant known to man…
There are any number of crappy songs I never need to hear again, including the entire Styx and Steve Miller catalogs and, most of all, John Mellencamp’s revolting “Our Country.” Then there are some legendary songs that I’d like to go 10 years without hearing, if only because I’ve been…
In February 2005, Alice Lynch-Fullen visited her brother, Christopher Lynch, at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after he was arrested on rape charges in Grand Prairie. A large, imposing man, Lynch had ligature marks around his neck, alerting his distraught sister that he had tried to hang himself. “Don’t let…
Few things are as tacky as a Gaylord Hotel. Big, brash and garish, Gaylord’s larger-than-life accomodations hit you on the head with their all-thumbs design. The Gaylord Hotel in Nashville, for example, features a slightly smaller version of the Mississippi Delta where Midwestern tourists can be seen paying for boat…
An inmate lawsuit, whose allegations of incompetence and neglect at the Dallas County jail have been echoed by a pair of internal investigations into the health care at the facility, continues to stymie the county. If that’s not exactly a surprise, the case has also underscored the ineffectiveness of the…
To paraphrase the old Saturday Night Live skit, if it’s not A Scottish Christmas, it’s crap. Which is all the more reason why you want to catch A Scottish Christmas, a veritable holiday extravaganza coming to the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. The event will include traditional Scottish carols,…
There are hazards in allowing partisan voters to select local judges. As a defense attorney, Carter Thompson handles mostly low-profile misdemeanor cases, which are typically easy to turn around and bill than the more languid and complicated felony cases such as aggravated assault and murder. Then Thompson ran for criminal…
No matter what the city, school board meetings can be bizarre spectacles that blend clumsy gestures of civic pride with demoralizing flashes of stupidity from elected officials and parents. Around 10 years ago, the people who came to Dallas Independent School District meetings recast this shopworn script, adding dramatic flourishes,…
We understand there are many reasons why people think that Fort Worth is a better city than Dallas. A much cooler downtown, more affordable homes, better steak houses and, of course, the Trinity actually resembling a river as it winds through Cowtown. But then again, Dallas has the Mavericks, who…
If you think the local Democratic Party achieved its victory in Dallas County last week through good luck and timing, the rise of Jim Foster won’t change your mind. Now the county judge-elect, Foster hadn’t even decided to run until an hour before the filing deadline. On January 2, the…
Here’s our kind of Sunday: Sleep in way late, feast on pigs-in-a-blanket and watch the Cowboys beat up on the lowly Arizona Cardinals. Fortunately, the Granada has effortlessly found a way to indulge in all three of our passions—slackerdom, food and Tony Romo—by offering a pre-game brunch and a subsequent…
Previewing what promises to be a raucous and competitive Dallas Mavericks home opener against the San Antonio Spurs is so easy a caveman could do it. With that in mind, we turned over the assignment to Boro, a Neanderthal we found outside a bar on Lower Greenville. Here’s what he…
The Reverend Peter Johnson is a civil rights activist and former confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. who spoke at an anti-Iraqi war protest at Bush’s ranch in Crawford. Ken Mayfield is a Republican county commissioner who regularly spars with the lone African-American on the commissioners court, John Wiley Price,…
The sound of gunfire broke the calm of a clear, cold February morning just a few hours before dawn. Rushing through the breezeway of a southeast Dallas apartment complex, the thief yelled in vain for help. The first two bullets struck him in the back, slicing through his ribs and…
I’m not sure you can judge an art exhibit by its name, but calling a Miami-themed showcase of paintings and collages “say hello to my little friend…” is pure genius. The catch line of Brian De Palma’s classic Scarface has been repeated so often on SportsCenter and the like that…
Here’s a quick lesson for all police officers: Pulling over the president of the Dallas NAACP branch could be hazardous to your career. Just ask Dallas County sheriff’s Deputy Mike Baker, who was ordered to be transferred out of patrol last month even though two separate investigations exonerated him of…
If you could somehow cross The Daily Show with All the President’s Men and add a touch of A Chorus Line, you might end up with NEWSical, an inspired musical that satires current events and familiar targets such as Martha Stewart. This is the kind of high-concept production that will…
Wilting Rose: Four days before the November 7 general election, candidate Rose Renfroe–sorry, we mean Rosita–won’t be able to campaign around the clock. That’s because the Democratic candidate for county commissioner will be appearing in a Tarrant County Court in an ongoing lawsuit related to a judgment she has yet…
David Kunkle could have hung up the phone. Or bullied us into killing our story. He could have tried to guilt us by saying that he expected the Dallas Observer to be above writing gossip. Instead, the still-married Dallas police chief talked amiably about his fledgling relationship with television reporter…
It’s not enough that Governor Rick Perry owes his political career to good fortune and better timing. Now he’s creating his own luck. After six years in office, during which he belatedly passed a school finance bill that doesn’t seem to do a whole lot, Perry wound up being such…
Jeff Foxworthy is the comic equivalent of Rascal Flatts—someone who pretends to represent the authentic South, who, in fact, appeals mostly to Sun Belt suburbanites who wear pleated khakis to wash their SUVs. Despite his redneck shtick, Foxworthy isn’t the Springsteen—or even the Billy Joel—of the South, but a minstrel…
Low standards: Well, apparently if you’re a male and you flunked the fire department’s new physical agility test, you may be in danger of losing a footrace to late actor Chris Farley. In his current state. But as long as we’re on the subject of just how easy it is…
