We are now taking your requests: A Friend of Unfair Park who would like to see more blues and jazz coverage in the paper also asks me to post the following video of Marchel Ivery performing in 1990 with Dallas’ late blues great Zuzu Bollin at the original Poor David’s…
On Tuesday, as expected, the Toy Industry Association decided whether or not to keep its mammoth Fall Toy Preview show in Dallas. And the answer is: Yes, absolutely. At least, the TIA will keep its annual shindig at Dallas Market Center through 2010, after which time it will again decide…
This is from the original West End production of Bat Boy, but Hillcrest’s version doesn’t look that far off. Hillcrest High School sure has trendy tastes in stage productions: The school’s latest offering is none other than the award-winning Off-Broadway and London West End hit Bat Boy: The Musical, which…
WFAA-Channel 8 Sorry to disappoint, but I’m talking about this deceased equine, not that one. As I wrote in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park, Dale Hansen’s role in the 1980s SMU pay-for-play scandal made him more pariah than Peruna. He broke the story, which, coupled with the death…
Only one day after Cerberus Capital Management LP decided not to buy out Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services after all — for, like, $6.2 billion — ACS’s chairman, Darwin Deason, is demanding the company’s independent directors resign. Immediately. Wrote Deason in a letter dated today, he wants Robert B. Holland III,…
Cody Garrett of The Texas Observer recounts the pub’s visit to the Lakewood Theater on Friday, where it hosted a reading of classic material, a tribute to Molly Ivins and Jimmie Dale Gilmore performing, what else, “Dallas” and “Deep Ellum Blues.” The Observer folks felt right at home: “The streets…
Many thoughtful and heartfelt comments have poured in concerning the death of Texas tenor Marchel Ivery on Tuesday. Among those who’ve posted is Earl Harvin, who actually introduced me to Ivery and James Clay many, many years ago. Writes Earl, who now lives in Berlin: I’m very saddened to hear…
Local attorney David Marlett’s getting a lot of national attention, including a recent shot on CNN, for promoting companies that pledge not to hire illegal or undocumented workers. Two stories today highlight a Dallas-based Web site called ProAmerica Companies, which lists companies that pledge not to “knowingly hire illegal or…
Several viewing options this morning. Could go with the three-part extravaganza, in which some dude hassles a Dallas police officer who’s stopped him for reckless driving somewhere on Northwest Highway. (Here’s parts one, two and three — kind of like Star Wars.) Or we could go with the San Diego-based…
The Securities and Exchange Commission is letting Belo Corp. off the hook concerning those inflated circulation numbers three years ago. Courtesy Editor & Publisher, that info can be found in Belo’s SEC filing yesterday, in which it says: In 2004, the staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”)…
We ain’t sayin’ Mayor Tom’s a liar … oh, no, wait. Yes, we are. Pardon. KERA-FM (90.1) this morning quotes Mayor Tom Leppert as saying the US Army Corp of Engineers is totally cool with dropping a toll road into a flood way. As in, “The Corp has signed off…
After making a mint off a series about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld apparently decided his first feature film ought to be about something—in the case of Bee Movie, the enslavement and torture of bees for the pleasure and profit of humans, which is, like, hilarious. It’s rather tempting to approach Seinfeld’s…
John Cusack, who more or less began his career sneaking a peek at Molly Ringwald’s panties in Sixteen Candles, has finally become an on-screen daddy—only took, what, 23 years? Except, he’s not exactly the most fortunate family man on film: First, in Martian Child he plays a widower who adopts…
No matter how apparently brilliant or obviously slobbering a kid is, every single parent has said the exact same thing about 38 times this week alone: My Kid Could Paint That. We’re so proud of our little geniuses and so desperate to prove to the world that our children know…
No End in Sight (Magnolia) Charles Ferguson’s debut doc, easily the most important in a year full of notable fact-gathering films, assembles some of the key players behind the invasion and occupation of Iraq and seems to ask them but one question: “What went wrong?” In short: everything. But Ferguson’s…
A good Friend of Unfair Park just called with some sad news, at least for those of us who grew up in North Dallas: The Holiday Inn at Meadow Central — which, on some weekend nights in the 1980s, used to look like the set of a John Hughes movie…
Last night, Dallas Observer clubs editor Rich Lopez and I ventured to Reverchon Park, lured by a sign advertising $3 “haunted hay rides.” It’s right across from the Observer’s Oak Lawn offices, conveniently located smack dab in the middle of the gayborhood. So it wasn’t long before we realized that…
I think maybe what I should do at this point is go down by the Trinity River with a baseball bat, hit myself in the head and just fall in. How can we be 10 years into the debate on putting a toll road inside the river park downtown? How…
Tonight of all nights, you must not succumb to the show-us-your-tits costume contests being thrown in bar rooms and frat parties across the DFW. We won’t have it. Instead you have to get thine bedazzled and unrecognizable ass up the stairs of The Cavern for a Horror Remix Double Feature…
Lorlee Bartos Quite the pin-up, eh, fellas? And while we’re on the subject of local winners — and, look, you’re all winners, far as I am concerned — Friend of Unfair Park Lorlee Bartos has done won herself a spot in the National Park Service’s forthcoming National Historic Landmarks calendar,…
One has to wonder if the students are making the best use of their time at the Dallas Baptist University. Then again, God would totally want you to kick ass at Guitar Hero III. So sayeth the Lord as Conrad, a student at DBU, shreds his way through DragonForce’s “Through…
Dallas Morning News editorialisteur Rod Dreher wrote yesterday on the Dallas Morning Views blog: If I analyzed Jim Schutze’s columns about the Trinity project with the same exacting intellectual rigor with which he took apart my piece about the Holy Land trial, it would read as follows: Jim Schutze is…
