Every week, managing editor Patrick Williams disappears into his office and reemerges a cranky, nicotine-addicted, third-person-referring superhero we like to call Buzz. Let’s kick this off with a couple of truisms: It’s hard to keep a good man down, and be careful what you wish for. We’re looking at you,…
Every week, managing editor Patrick Williams disappears into his office and reemerges a cranky, nicotine-addicted, third-person-referring superhero we like to call Buzz. This week, Buzz has a familiar villain in his sights. Oh, man, Buzz is so depissed©. No, that’s not a typo. It’s our own neologism, a combination of…
So Mayor Mike Rawlings responded, sort of, to Schutze’s post this morning about City Manager Mary Suhm’s double-super-secret letter of understanding with gas drilling company Trinity East, in which she promised the city’s staff would do its level best to get the company the permits it needs to drill on…
Every true-blue Texan remembers where they were when the big man went up in flames. There in the heart of the carnival, stunned masses watched agape as an icon of the Lone Star State, whose squinty, handsome stare and vacuous drawl had represented the spirit of Texas for decades, disintegrated…
Well, sure the brew at the newly open Ascension Coffee is good. Really, really good, in fact. And, the shop’s Design District space is lovely. Broad windows send light flowing into a space filled with blond wood and open ceilings. The air is not saturated with the heavy aroma of…
A little mood music to get you in that City Hall frame of mind. Earlier this week Jim Schutze racked his shotgun and unloaded some righteous thunder on City Hall’s failure to adopt a whole bunch of auditor’s recommendations aimed at helping the city do little things — like making…
Lower down on this blog, you’ll find Observer staffers having a little fun at the expense of all those people — 97,463* as Buzz writes this — who signed a petition on a White House website calling for the federal government to allow Texas to “peacefully” secede from the union…
Food is art. It’s literature, TV, entertainment and competition. You can even consume it for, you know, sustenance, if you want. But hey, why be plebeian? Instead, get your RDA of fancy food blather at Good Vs. Evil: An Evening with Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert at Bass Performance Hall…
Let’s just cut to the chase: At least 14 months. That’s how long it will be before the first retail non-medical marijuana store in Colorado, our friendly neighbor to the northwest, might open. Not that anyone is counting. Looks like the nearest big town to Texas on an interstate in…
We don’t respect much here at the Dallas Observer, but when it comes to Texas barbecue, there’s one guy whose word is holy writ: BBQ Snob Daniel Vaughn, whose Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog is the go-to guide for sniffing out the best smoked meat in the state. So for…
Alice “Cheap Bastard” Laussade has spoken, so we have a winner in our Meat Fight caption contest. Apparently — and this surprises her co-bloggers, who pegged her as more of an Anthrax fan — Alice is into Peter Gabriel, ’cause she picked commenter mitchiswright’s entry. How … sensitive of her…
Tickets to Meat Fight, the barbecue competition and fundraiser being hosted by Alice “Cheap Bastard” Laussade at Sons of Hermann Hall in Deep Ellum, are sold out. Never fear, though, because City of Ate has a pair of tickets that will let some lucky duo gorge themselves on delicious dead…
Wind, sun and bullshit: Texas has plenty of all three, and we’ve done a good job converting wind to electricity. So, why hasn’t the sunny Lone Star State done more to create more power from the sun? Well, you could blame the bullshit. Today in Austin, The Clean Energy Works…
You’d think a guy with the job title “Texas land commissioner” would know a thing or two about Texas land. Little items, you know, like what the state boundaries are, what a landowner is and how to tell a Texan apart from, say, a Canadian. See also: – Keystone Pipeline…
Poor Mitt Romney finally says exactly what he’s thinking and the guy gets hammered for it. You wanted specificity and numbers from the man? Well, as you no doubt heard, Mother Jones reported this week that he’s plenty specific when talking to gatherings of his big-money contributors: “All right, there…
Texas will elect it’s next senator today. Odds are, you won’t vote for him. In fact, a good number of you, even if you’re registered to vote, can’t vote in the truly decisive race going down Tuesday, because you were dumb enough to vote in the Democratic primary in May…
On June 28, the Texas Public Utility Commission, the state agency that regulates energy, will likely vote on whether to sharply increase the top amount that electricity generators can charge retail providers such as Reliant and TXU for power when supplies run short. In other words, when we’re all whimpering…
What a bunch of wusses those kids at Horace B. Smedley School are. When their kindhearted teacher Miss Nelson can no longer take her students’ unruly behavior and disappears, the kiddies are instantly cowed by her stern, ruler-waving replacement, Miss Viola Swamp. Hah. In my day (ca. 1847-50), any class…
Here’s a question for all you MBAs in Unfair Park Land: Why would an independent retailer operating in a free, deregulated market want the state to take steps to suddenly raise the retailer’s costs? For example, say you own a mom-and-pop store that sells tomatoes. The government suddenly wants to…
OK, follow along: Viola, a woman, dresses as a man — there’s a reason for this involving a shipwreck, but that’s not important right now — and enters the service of a duke. The duke sends his servant to woo a woman, who instead falls in love with the servant…
Every so often, we employ here at the Dallas Observer reporters who are not what you might call “of a Texas persuasion.” East and West Coast natives. Yankees. Also, every so often, one of these bright, young people — from parts of the world where the Second Amendment is not…
Let’s see. By now, school will have been out for about a week. Yep, that’s just about enough time for loving parents everywhere to start asking themselves the annual summertime question: “How can I get these annoying, screaming little savages out of the goddamn house before I go crazy!?” Can’t…
