Pity poor zucchini. Like its squash cousin, the pumpkin, it’s a fairly useless fruit that grows large and abundantly. They’re watery and bland, and the gardeners who grow them always wind up with more than they can eat–just like the pumpkin. But Charles Schulz didn’t create The Great Zucchini, did…
Falling on a sword: So, Dallas Independent School District announces last week that—whoopsie daisy—it inadvertently blew its 2007-’08 budget by $64 million. The school board president, Jack Lowe, was very apologetic about it. “I’m the member of the board with the most business experience,” he told the Dallas Observer blog…
Have you ever read any of the original German, pre-Disney-fied versions of classic Brothers Grimm fairy tales? The story of Cinderella, for example, in which the ugly stepsisters cut off their toes to try to fit their feet in the glass slipper, only to be exposed by birds singing “blood…
Goin’ to the chapel: If Buzz were introspective, we would pause and contemplate the creeping conservatism that has overtaken us in middle age. It’s the thing that causes a vein to throb in our temple as we cry, “Oh, come on!” whenever we hear about the latest expenditure of tax…
How to tell if you’re a dude (in case there’s any doubt): You consider bacon appropriate as an appetizer, entree and dessert dish; you bought a DVD burner just so you could save all the episodes of Shockwave on The History Channel; and, finally, going to see “Warbirds on Parade,”…
In the cards: Only a fool would predict the outcome of a hotly contested election more than two months out. So, all righty then, here goes: The election for Dallas County sheriff will go 52-48. You read it here first. What, you say you want to know who will win?…
OK, everybody, let’s sing! “Oklahoma, where the storms come roarin’ down the plains/And the trailer parks fly just like larks/And we pee our pants ev’ry time it rains.” Hah! We kid you, Oklahoma. Loves ya. You’re a proud state that has made many fine cultural contributions to our nation–chiefly amateur…
We don’t really want to see a dinosaur eat a child. That would be wrong. Entertaining? Perhaps. Be that as it may, if the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary really wants to thrill its patrons with its Dinosaurs Alive! exhibit of life-size, animatronic dinosaurs and demonstrate the glory…
Facts are slippery: Do we really know enough about John McCain to elect him president? For instance, have you heard that the man spent five and a half years of his youth associating with foreign communists at war with the United States? Oh, sure, he says he was a “prisoner…
Grapes of Wrath: So now City Plan Commissioner Neil Emmons wants to rename the Dallas North Tollway after César Chávez. Proposals floated this summer to rechristen Industrial Boulevard after the late farm-labor leader—and then Ross Avenue—have drawn too much opposition, so let’s try the tollway, he says. Good idea. One…
The Merchant of Venice is a comedy? Oh, sure, that’s easy for you to say, white bread. If you’re Jewish or black–ol’ Willie Shakespeare’s play has some unflattering words about a Moorish prince’s complexion, and, of course, there’s Shylock–you might not exactly split your sides. On the plus side, liberally…
Is it over yet? Because any election in which Paris Hilton becomes an issue—and offers a better energy plan than the two candidates—can’t be over too soon, Buzz called Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet to see if he’d spotted any nifty electoral trends in the wind. Truthfully, we were…
Slow and steady wins the race? Ha. Don’t believe it, kid. Let us tell you how The Tortoise and the Hare really went down: The hare, after a night of tweaking with strippers, got the shakes on race day and ducked off the track to vomit. Repeatedly. The tortoise, meanwhile,…
Shocking: Like many of you, Buzz recently received our electricity bill for July. Don’t ask us how much it was; just picture a middle-aged man doing the bulging-eyes thing you see in old Warner Bros. cartoons, accompanied by the sound of a horn blaring, “Aaahoogaa!” Not a pretty sight. So,…
According to the December 2007 article that first accompanied photographer Robb Kendrick’s tintypes of modern cowboys, a typical horse-riding buckaroo can expect to earn around $750 a month. They work from before dawn till after sunset in temperatures that range from below zero to triple digits. Broken ribs and thumbs…
Dear Dallas Independent School District trustees, Thank you for taking the time to solicit our opinion on whether your organization should strengthen its conflict-of-interest policy for board members. While we appreciate your posting of an online survey (www.dallasisdsurveys.org) allowing us to give our views, unfortunately we will not be able…
Trash ain’t nothin’ but cash: Virtue, they say, is its own reward. That fact probably helps explain why Buzz isn’t on anyone’s short list for sainthood. We prefer more tangible rewards for our rare good works, like cash money. Take recycling, for example. Although our neighbor allows us to use…
Which is better: sex or fireworks? Seems like the two could share a lot of the same terminology — a Roman candle, a bottle rocket or a screamer just sound dirty, don’t they? We’d continue, but we’re out of space, so let’s just say this: You can sample some of…
Organic brick: The cry went up almost immediately after the story broke in The Dallas Morning News last week that investment firm Beck Ventures was looking into buying 10 acres in Deep Ellum, presumably for redevelopment. “We don’t want West Village II!” the clamor went. “Save our beloved history!” The…
Here’s a li’l factoid for all you former Rimbaud-reading, snake-skin-boot-wearing, mushroom-munching boomer kids: Jim Morrison would have turned 65 this year. That’s right, the Lizard King would be eligible for Medicare. Probably bald too. Tick-tock, former wild children. Tick-tock. Forgive the schadenfreude, boomers. It’s just the bitterness of someone catching…
Time warped: Man, Buzz really must stop washing down the Ambien with a bottle of cough syrup at night. It’s giving us the weirdest dreams. For example, we mistakenly thought that a major American political party had chosen a young, black, politically ambitious newcomer to run for president on a…
Rethinking pink: Time again for a Buzz pop quiz. What’s the precise, quantitative difference between a liberal—or progressive, as we pinkos prefer to call ourselves these days—and a conservative? Impossible to answer, you say? Nonsense. Buzz knows exactly what the difference is, at least in our case. It’s 1 cent…
