As Brantley pointed out yesterday, the Texas Public Utility Commission got down to hard numbers last week as it inched further toward what appears to be inevitable — a huge increase in the current $3,000 per megawatt-hour cap on the price of wholesale electricity during times when demand is high…
The Sheriff’s Department sent over a boatload (heh) of photos from this morning’s flooding at the Frank Crowley Courthouse, plus a mugshot of Juan Ramires, a jail trusty called in to join the mop-and-bucket brigade when a busted water main filled the courthouse’s first floor with 1 to 3 inches…
A picture is worth 6,700 words. If you look around on our home page, you’ll find “Blackout Blues,” a story by Brantley Hargrove about North Texas’ biggest electricity company, the EPA, money and lies. It’s a good read. The gist of the story is simple: We’re screwed. How screwed? Well,…
He’s just a bang-beat, bell-ringing, big-haul, great-go, neck-or-nothin’, rip-roarin’, every-time-a-bull’s-eye salesman. That’s Professor Harold Hill, Harold Hill. And like robins in spring the good professor and his con make regular returns to Dallas with performances of Music Man — not that anyone is complaining. Who could be grumpy about a…
They may lack the hot females and new-agey synth of those Celtic Women, or the leggy high-stepping of Riverdance, but to that we say “thank you, God.” No one’s ever going to give Paddy Moloney and the rest of The Chieftains a beauty prize, but they did manage to collect…
Spoiler alert: The lovers die, but not before singing a whole bunch. Other people die too. Also singing. And thus we arrive at the moral of Tristan and Isolde: Singing will kill you. Listening to singing, though, is probably safe, so live dangerously and check out the Richard Wagner opera…
Like to play the ponies? Think you can sing? Then put your mouth where your money is a take a real gamble — singing the national anthem at Lone Star Park. The horse track is inviting soloists, duos, groups, choirs and instrumentalists to try out for a chance to perform…
Huh. Well, it seems some Observer editor doesn’t think much of science fiction, referring to this weekend’s SFX Sci-Fi Expo, taking place at the Irving Convention Center, as “dorkocity.” That seems a little dismissive of a genre that’s brought us A Canticle for Leibowitz and works from the likes of…
When Sherwood Schwartz died last year, the creator of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch ranked a lengthy obit in The New York Times, complete with a quote from a pair of academics who wrote, “Schwartz was pioneering a dramatic matrix built upon the emerging cultural concept of the ‘support…
Oh, oh, oh — now I get it. All this time former Mayor Tom Leppert sure seemed to be just a stinking hypocrite, a back-stabbing, forked-tongue phony who turned all anti-gay and old-time religious-y after leaving office and deciding to run for Senate as a Republican. But no, ol’ Tom…
While you were busy with all the holidays, another important reason for drinking heavily probably escaped your attention. This month marks 10 years of deregulation in Texas’s retail electric market. Hey, put down that chair. No need for violence. This is the free market we’re huzzahing here, Bub. Actually, it…
The poor soul who attempted to teach me guitar at age 40 was a jazz man, a fan of the great Django Reinhardt and the Gypsy-infused, swing guitar style he perfected in France in the ’30s and ’40s. Maybe my teacher thought that if Reinhardt could overcome adversity — born…
Actor Hal Holbrook has portrayed Mark Twain longer than Samuel Clemens did — 57 years for Holbrook, who first performed a version of his one-man stage show as Twain in 1954, versus 47 years for Clemens. So it’s not surprising that the white-wigged, mustachioed, sardonic, witty grandfatherly archetype Holbrook has…
“I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death!” teen diarist Anne Frank wrote during the two years she and seven other Jews spent hiding in an attic in Holland, attempting to avoid…
For 14 years now, Buzz has written a summary of the previous 12 months of news in Dallas. Not to brag, but that’s a pretty impressive stretch, taking into account that it means we’ve persuaded someone to pay us for more than 730 consecutive weeks. Pretty sly, huh? Countless more…
Maybe you’ve given toys to Toys for Tots. Perhaps you spent some time camped out near City Hall on behalf of the downtrodden 99 percent. You’re a good, socially conscientious soul — so don’t stop now. Get behind a cause that’s dear to us and greet 2012 at DFW NORML’s…
Move along: Another new year — time to take stock, clean the slate, roll out the cliches and take advantage of our editor’s holiday cheer to slip by a few words of drivel about Buzz’s New Year’s resolutions. Now Buzz is just shy of turning 50, so the mind is…
Ah, Ebeneezer Scrooge, what a fine symbol of redemption he is. Listen and learn, children: You can spend nearly all your life as the meanest, most miserly SOB on the planet. Just make sure that before the end comes, you get sappy and buy some poor family a goose. All…
Christmas caroling, ornament-making, a Christmas-tree maze, a holiday stage show and a visit from Santa, all wrapped up with a ride on the Grapevine Vintage Railroad: The North Pole Express in Grapevine has everything a train- and Christmas-loving child could desire, minus any creepily not-quite-human Tom Hanks characters straight from…
Tired of the same ol’ Christmas tunes, the fruitcake and ho-ho-hoing? Explore the holiday from a different cultural perspective with the 8th Annual Posada Dallas! Festivities, presented by the Latino Cultural Center, 2600 Live Oak St. Traditionally a re-enactment of the holy family’s search for shelter, the LCC’s version begins…
Listen up: The first thing Buzz noticed when we got our advance copy of Press 2 for English: Fix Immigration, Save America were numbers: “The direct after-tax costs illegal immigrants impost on the public coffers each year,” said press material accompanying the book, is $9.6 billion. The source cited for…
Ah, the holidays, that one time of year when otherwise happy philistines find themselves corralled into attending a ballet — The Nutcracker, the classic story of dancing toys, wicked rodents and a brave nutcracker. Pity the poor fools dragged away from their comfy nests and the warm glow of ESPN…
