In this week’s Dallas Observer we profile 20 of the metro area’s most interesting characters, with new portraits of each from local photographer Can Turkyilmaz. See the entire Dallas Observer People Issue here. Before Paco Vique and Javier Garcia del Moral settle into yet another interview about The Wild Detectives,…
In 2006, hunters generated $2.63 billion in retail sales for their sport in Texas, paying nearly $284 million in state and local taxes and supporting more than 44,119 jobs, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. That doesn’t include the millions spent by birdwatchers, photographers and others who enjoy…
It’s impossible to accurately describe an Eddie Izzard show. Intellectually dazzling, multi-lingual stream of consciousness? Well, yeah, it’s that, but way, way more fun than that sounds. He dives into history, religion, culture, nature and language – but with silly voices and physical comedy that can leave a crowded hall…
The U.S. Olympic Committee met yesterday, and one of the things reportedly on the agenda was which American city, maybe Dallas, will get to bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. It’s a long, obscure, secretive convoluted competition — sort of a modern bribery pentathlon — and we’re just excited…
Razzle Dazzle, the Dallas street festival celebrating Gay Pride Month – that’s June – returns to the Oak Lawn area this year with vendors, food, booze, live music and none of the controversy over bare skin. Nope, that’s the pride parade in September that had the brouhaha over how much…
Here’s what we gleaned about Ping Pong Summer, the indie comedy screening at 9:15 p.m. Friday at Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd.: It’s Karate Kid, except with table tennis and hip hop, the beach is on the East Coast, the time is 1985 and Susan Sarandon is Mr. Miyagi…
Staff in Governor Rick Perry’s office must have had a case of the Mondays. It was noon before we got his emailed statement blasting the Obama administration’s proposal to cut carbon emissions from power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels over the next 15 years. Seriously? That was, like, hours,…
There comes a time in most men’s lives when they realize they will never front a rock band, never dunk a basketball, never engage in witty banter with Penelope Cruz, never own a European sports car capable of hitting 200 mph. New ships are sailing every day, and that’s too…
Attention Yankee transplants, snowbirds, corporate carpetbaggers and assorted other Texas immigrants: Do your adopted state a favor and go check out the free concert by the Quebe Sisters Band at 8 p.m. at Klyde Warren Park. Hulda, Grace and Sophia, the fiddle-playing, three-part harmonizing trio from Denton, have won awards…
The polka has a lot to answer for, namely the terrible damage polka-ing did to the reputation of the innocent accordion in this country. In the right hands — the late Clifton Chenier’s, or Flaco Jimenez’s for example — the accordion is a perfectly fine folk instrument that can boogie…
What will become of comic strips when the last printed newspaper rolls off the presses? Can the art form that brought us Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes endure in a digital age? Yes, indeed, it would be just tragic to lose the pages where…
OK, we need a new word here, people. Help us out. Something that describes a simultaneous feeling of great joy and nausea, laughing with delight while urping up a little bit at the same time. That word, whatever it might be, describes the reaction here at Unfair Park headquarters to…
Here’s the Iron Fork deal: Returning champion chef Matt McCallister of FT33 will square off against Richard Gras of Oak in a toque-to-toque competition moderated by restaurateur Kent Rathbun. Each chef receives a basket of ingredients, including one mystery item, and they compete to see who can whip up the…
Among Celtic cultures, the Irish get the most publicity, what with all the boozy parades. But while plenty of faux Irish hurl on St. Paddy’s Day, we bet you’ve never seen anyone on Greenville Avenue hurl a nearly 20-foot-long, 175-pound log through the air. That’s called the caber toss, and…
A man walks into your office with white, chalky powder on his fingers, a nervous twitch and bags under his eyes. Obviously, he’s a school teacher. It’s elementary. Next case, Watson. Um … unless, of course, he’s just some slob who snarfed too many powdered doughnuts with his espresso after…
Are you unfamiliar with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the Tom Stoppard play being produced with a cast of 10- to 16-year-olds at Fun House Theatre and Film? Allow us to sum up the plot in one word: Cabbage, zinc and talcum powder. OK, so that’s not one word, and…
If ever a life deserved to be retold in a grand, bombastic musical, it was Eva Peron’s. You think Jean Valjean fleeing through Paris’ sewers is dramatic? Hah. Peron clawed her way up from poverty to become first an actress, then Argentina’s first lady and finally a sort of secular…
They still call Detroit the Motor City. As if. And Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love? Whoever came up with that one obviously never met an Eagles fans. So let’s not take the whole City of Hate thing too much to heart. It’s not like anyone calls Dallas that…
Did you know that the role of Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville was originally written for contralto, but a general shortage of contraltos — who apparently are the operatic equivalent of rhythm and blues’ Big Mama Thornton — means the role is mostly performed by mezzo sopranos?…
Are you, like a certain former U.S. president, a budding artist looking to expand your horizons? Tired of sketching the usual still lifes of bowls of fruit? The Dallas chapter of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School has just the thing to expand your endeavors into life drawing. Better yet, if you’re…
In Nocturne, a 17-year-old piano prodigy accidentally decapitates his 9-year-old sister in an auto accident. Mom goes nuts. Dad threatens to shoot son. Son heads off to New York, escapes to books, becomes a writer and struggles to comes to grips with the tragedy. No further word on what happened to…
Every week, Managing Editor Patrick Williams disappears into his office and reemerges a cranky, anti-depressant-gobbling, third-person-referring superhero we like to call Buzz. Listen up, fellow leftist members of the conspiracy to destroy America. It’s time to lay off the Boy Scouts of America and other Scout-like groups. We had a…
