News

So, yeah. You know where last week we said the Hard Rock Cafe was still rockin’, at least for the time being? Well, the time’s come and gone. I just got off the phone with Hard Rock Cafe’s New Jersey-based publicist John Gogarty, who does confirm that on March 3,…

It wouldn’t be South by Southwest without a heroic performance from our favorite local soul legend, Bobby Patterson. So, we’ve been trolling the SXSW Music site for the locals that made the cut. Until today we’d only heard tale of Hogpig and The Theater Fire, since, well, there’d been no…

It’s everyone’s dream to be an illegal immigrant, right? Walking for days through the desert with little food or water, watching painful blisters pop up on your heels and burning or freezing your feet since no one told you to wear decent shoes. And the most fun of all –…

This is the Case Study Home being built at 701 Peavy Road. Better this than a McMansion, but is it 1958 already? We kid. This morning, a good Friend of Unfair Park alerts us to some new homes being built near his White Rock Lake domicile — homes, he asks,…

This is either Newt from Aliens or part of a controversial ad campaign. If you go to The Dallas Morning News’ Web site, you will see something shocking: Wade Phillips is the new coach of the Dallas Cowboys! No, wait. It’s not that. No, among the ads there is one…

Alan MacDiarmid, at left, received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2000 from the King of Sweden, Carl Gustaf. The name Alan G. MacDiarmid’s probably unfamiliar to you; it was to me until this morning, when I stumbled across his obituary on the University of Texas at Dallas’ Web site…

Nick Redfern’s a Brit living among us, penning tales of little green men and big dead comedians. I will be enjoying me some jury duty this morning at the George Allen. (Guilty! They’re all guilty!) I mention this only to plug my choice of reading material, which I got in…

Someone has gotten a little too enthusiastic with the fog machine tonight. Smoke fills the wide room up to the club’s low ceiling and back toward the concession stand. There, some teenager is probably handing out fog-flavored nachos, the smoke adding an extra kick to that goopy, gummy cheese of…

Charges of corruption have long haunted the Denton County District Attorney’s Office, so when former prosecutor Paul Johnson decided to run against his old boss last year, he made the most of the allegations. During the campaign, Johnson painted himself as a crusader for social reform who, if elected, would…

A long-awaited ruling from the Court of Criminal Appeals in Oklahoma was released last week, crushing the hopes of Nancy and Charlie Jackson that their daughter Emily Dowdy would receive a new trial. Dowdy was convicted of first-degree manslaughter resulting from a 1999 auto accident that killed Ryan Brewer, the…

Take this job…: Buzz and, as far as we know, Mrs. Buzz, are not running for mayor. That makes two of us. As of Monday, the city secretary’s office listed 20 people who have filed to run. There’s the usual slate of generic white male biz types. We forget their…

Rhymes With Puck Off Whittless: Having just read the column on hockey in Dallas (“Frozen Assets,” February 1), I can only conclude that Richie Whitt’s middle name must be Nit. Eugene Flynn Dallas Richie, you ignorant slut: The problem with the Stars is not the team but the media reporting…

Ricardo Garcia plays it cool, but he’s nervous. One of the guys who just finished has a chiseled, martial-arts physique and knocked out 60 rapid-fire push-ups without breaking a sweat. “How many sit-ups do I have to do?” Garcia asks the female soldier supervising the practice test. “Fifty-three,” she says…

I dunno, I just love typing that phrase above. It’s magnetically displayed on my fridge, and, yeah, I see your post-Super Bowl letdown and raise you a pre-March Madness abyss. This, my friends, is what we call the dead of winter. Since neither National Signing Day or a ho-hum Mavs…

Mark Graham Workers, most of them immigrants from Mexico, wait at the Garland Day Labor Center for contractors to pick them up. Late last year, when members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps visited the Garland Day Labor Center with binoculars and videocameras, they triggered a small labor movement that…

Kristine Hughes, associate editor of Texas Lawyer and now a good Friend of Unfair Park, sends this accounting of today’s PETA nude-in downtown. Oh, but before we show you hers, Kristine wants to make it clear she’s not the kind who normally shows up “up at the promise of nude…

Really, some of us at Unfair Park aren’t big fans of American Idol. We are, however, fans of cousins William Green and Akron Watson of Dallas, one of whom didn’t make the cut on last night’s show. Why not? Well, if there’s a note hit during Willie’s version of “Amazing…

Energy-saving guru Amory Lovins used to consult for TXU and finds its plan to build 11 coal-fired plants “puzzling.” And very troubling. At this very moment, Mike Greene, president and CEO of TXU Power, is being deposed by Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition’s attorneys down at Energy Plaza on Bryan…

Still sounds like there’s a lot of injustice taking place at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center. Sheriff Lupe Valdez recently told The Dallas Morning News that under her watch, the ever-beleagured jail has improved “400 percent.” She should have told that to Jill and Conrad Galvin, the devoted parents of…

At right, Toadies guitarist and Emmy-nominated Project Runway editor Clark Vogeler. At left, Jay McCarroll, who won Project Runway’s first season. As the paper version of Unfair Park is only now hitting the streets, we figure now would be as good a time as any to let you know that…