Next Time, Phone

Being somewhat of a public forum, Buzz receives something on the order of 11,000 e-mails a day, conservatively speaking. We choose not to share these with you, since most are for porn, pleas to help Nigeria transfer $25 million in government money, offers to increase our ejaculate by 300 percent…

Run, Betty, Run

Betty Culbreath-Lister insists there’s no hidden agenda, no friend she’s supposed to snag a job for and that she “ain’t mad at nobody.” But the outspoken Dallas County official’s decision to run for the Dallas school board against longtime trustee Hollis Brashear has caught some by surprise. She may not…

Get Offa Our Cloud

Imagine this: A local purveyor of Serious Journalism begins publishing ads of a sexually and commercially suspect nature, offering “private shows” and “private pleasures” and featuring photos of women with provocative “hey, sailor” grins. And it’s not us. Well, it’s not just us. It’s The Dallas Morning News, too. Shocked,…

Clash of Symbols

Buzz is feeling a bit out of touch lately, having spent the better part of the past two weeks cowering under a blanket. This was prompted by the many letters we received after our recent cover story “Open Season” about the growing number of incidents of South Texas homeowners shooting…

Soaked Rich

So you say your double-wide manufactured home has been socked with a higher property tax appraisal this year, meaning heftier taxes for you and more meals of Hamburger Helper, sans hamburger. (That would be “Helper.”) Oh, quit whining, you big baby. It could be worse. You could be rich. Turns…

Trading Up?

Buzz loves Movie Trading Company for lots of reasons: the rent-before-you-buy policy, racks full of cheap secondhand DVDs and videos (a lot of which are hard to find), its lenient rental policy, the fact it’s a local chain with a familiar and friendly neighborhood vibe. OK, so mostly we like…

Slice of Life

During nearly 20 years in the news business, Buzz has had to ask otherwise innocent people all sorts of nosy personal questions. But never, until this week, had we ever asked anyone the following: “So, how are your nuts?” This might have been embarrassing, except that the person we asked…

Judge Not

The Dallas Observer spent the better part of a week calling state District Judge Margaret Keliher to ask her why she hadn’t resigned from the bench five months ago when she started running for county judge. The state “judicial canon of ethics” says judges have to quit if they run…

Different Seasons

It’s cliché: Women at midlife suffer hot flashes; men at midlife buy hot cars. So what happens to a 53-year-old butch lesbian grandmother entering menopause? In playwright Peggy Shaw’s case, she puts on a double-breasted suit and suspenders, passes for a 35-year-old man and lets loose the tiger within. The…

How To

Why does downtown Fort Worth suck way less than Dallas? Still the investigative reporter at heart, Mayor Laura Miller wagon-trained west last week to find out, and Buzz suspects she may not have liked at least part of the answer: because the people there are willing to pay for it…

These Old Houses

For some reason we can’t quite fathom, someone once gave us a gift subscription to Southern Living, the magazine devoted to helping its readers live more elegant “Southern” lives. Maybe they were trying to tell us something. In addition to recipes for mint juleps (we drink beer) and many creative…

Sis-boom-bah

Buzz, admittedly, is at times a bit naïve–naïve in this case being a polite word for “dumb.” For instance, we naïvely thought that to be a cheerleader required only that you support the home team, know how to say “rah!” and don’t look like Buzz. We were wrong about that…

It Lives

In one of the greatest movies ever made, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur confronts the enchanted Black Knight, an indestructible character who challenges Arthur to a sword fight. Arthur begins lopping off the knight’s limbs one at a time, but he refuses to quit. Finally reduced to…

Basic Instinct

All of you staunch Laura Miller supporters who think that changing Dallas to a “strong mayor” form of government is a good idea now that she’s in the hot seat, please repeat after Buzz: “Ron Kirk, strong mayor.” Doesn’t sound quite so appealing now, does it? Well, it could be…

No Fooling

There’s an old maxim in the reporting business that states, “If your grandmother says she loves you, check it out.” This rule was tattooed on Buzz’s soul by our college newspaper adviser, a cranky old nicotine-stained newsman who, rumor had it, would hurl typewriters at student reporters who got sloppy…

Toot, Toot

From our two or three forced visits to Sunday school, Buzz knows that if you do something good for the poor, you’re not supposed to “sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets.” Of course, that doesn’t mean we can’t brag about…

Blown Off

First it was her identity; now it’s her status as a victim that has been stolen. In December 2000 we told you how thieves stole Ronnie Wilson’s wallet, which she accidentally left at a Tom Thumb store, then used her identification to rack up some $10,000 worth of goods–everything from…

Urban Renewal

Lucano Transports, the Oak Cliff bus company that stirred up such a fuss for Mayor Laura Miller last summer, is gone. Neighborhood homeowners, whose complaints about congestion and the stink of bus fumes prompted then-City Councilwoman Miller to try to shut down the Davis Street bus depot, should be happy…

Call 911

It’s time for another Buzz pop quiz. The topic this week is citizenship. Suppose some shady character offers to sell you a brand-new 40-inch television for 100 bucks as long as you aren’t too particular about where it came from. Do you: A) Ask him if he’ll take a check;…

Fellow Travelers

Now that Laura Miller has climbed to the top of Dallas’ greasy political pole, what, Buzz wonders, will happen to some of the little people who helped hoist her up there? Specifically, what will become of Web masters such as Sharon Boyd (www.dallasarena.com) and Avi Adelman (www.barkingdogs.org), who turned their…

That’s the Ticket

They’re the Gentle Musers–said so right on Laura Miller’s T-shirt. But on Tuesday morning, George Dunham and Craig Miller, the morning-show hosts on sports-talk station KTCK-AM (1310), played gatekeepers of local politics. The highly rated Dunham and Miller show gave way to the–oh, dear God, no–“Dunning and Miller Show” as…

Keeping It Unreal

Buzz has always prided itself on being able to laugh at pretty much anything. So we expected to guffaw ourselves into incontinence when we heard that Tom Dunning’s mayoral campaign was going “urban” and had produced a rap ad being aired on KKDA-FM. Then we heard the ad. We didn’t…