It began with a seemingly harmless joke, the kind good ol’ boys in the rural North Texas community of Whitewright traditionally enjoy. Down at the Quick Check, an early-morning coffee stop, someone placed a donation jar on the counter, attaching a handwritten sign that urged contributions to a fund that…
This much we know is true: (PRIZM!) Youth OUTreach is a local organization for gay, lesbian and transgendered young people. On May 2, members of the group decided to get together in the food court in Town East Mall in Mesquite. They sat at tables. They ordered food. They talked…
Blue Crush You hypocrites: I knew better, I really did. But when I saw Todd and Toby on the cover (“Back and Blue,” by Shannon Sutlief, May 22), I couldn’t resist. So I picked up and read your story on the Deep Blue Something brothers; then I read it again…
News that disgraced former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair routinely lied and plagiarized stories has prompted a wave of soul searching among responsible journalists across the nation. We at the Dallas Observer, while technically neither responsible nor journalists, aren’t immune, and we’ve been busily scanning our archives to see…
“Then there was the guy who loved his wife so much, he almost told her.” –Anonymous It seems a bit bizarre and a lot ironic that the Army, part of the mightiest military machine in history, is offering its troops a touchy-feely weekend workshop in romance. Yet eight soldiers and…
Surely there must have been something below-board about the deal, even with all the lawyers and due diligence and state officials assuring it was fine-‘n-dandy. With no money down, former state housing official Virginia McGuire managed in late 2000 to arrange a complex state-sponsored financing package to buy an East…
Just a few songs into Deep Blue Somethings hour-long set, it happens. A stagehand brings guitarist Taylor Tatsch an acoustic, replacing the electric model he had been usinga subtle transaction, a swap that takes place unnoticed at most concerts. But here its important. Because only a few seconds later, Tatsch…
Getting to school and back home to the West Dallas projects in the 1980s without being accosted or beat up wasnt easy for Sophia Graham. The streets could be rough, and she had to know how to act and what to avoid. But once at school, she felt safe, says…
He has only been working behind the bar since last New Year’s Eve, so he can’t really size up the extent of the dining room hemorrhage, he says. “I’ve never really seen it busy,” he deadpans as the television monitors behind him play out the Texas drama Giant. It’s Saturday…
One of Buzz’s favorite episodes of the TV show South Park introduced characters called “underpants gnomes.” They’re dim, vulgar pixies who steal little boys’ underpants as part of a grand business strategy. The plan? Step 1: Collect a big pile of underpants; Step 3, the profits. The joke is that…
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Don Nelson wasn’t supposed to be at the podium talking about the Western Conference Finals and looking at ease. He was supposed to be yelling or sobbing or venting somehow–wearing a white jacket and sitting in a padded room. Let’s go back to the season’s…
I’ll Fly Away Salute to the dead seagull: First, I would like to commend the Dallas Observer for its existence in my world. I am a recent Hispanic graduate from the Dallas Independent School District now attending Southern Methodist University. The Observer has long been my publication of choice from…
The Book on Golf Should the girls be allowed to play with the boys on the PGA tour? Other than the editors of The New York Times and their crusade to open up Augusta National, who really gives a rat’s ass? Well, you should, silly. There’s Very Important Civil Rights…
Here’s a rhetorical question for you, apropos of nothing, really: How many pictures of dead Iraqi soldiers did you see during the media’s wall-to-wall coverage of the war? Buzz watched roughly 40 hours of TV news during the heavy fighting and saw lots of pictures of artillery pieces firing, tons…
In the next two months a federal judge will declare the Dallas Public Schools officially desegregated. That designation–desegregated at last!–will close a battle over racism that has consumed the city and the school system for a third of a century. And at that point people on both sides agree the…
A popular Dallas County court program that successfully treats first-time drug offenders instead of shipping them off to prison is almost out of money and could be dramatically scaled back later this year unless state legislators find big bucks, those who are involved in the program say. District Judge John…
Strange things happen on Saturday nights in Dallas. People roam the streets freely, wildly intoxicated and blissfully oblivious. It is a night of escape. Sometimes, if the drugs and drink are strong and mixed together properly, the night yields an epiphany. Last Saturday was such a night. I watched the…
Library BummerThe stench: Jim Schutze made a good point about the bond referendum (“Saddam and City Bonds,” May 1). I used to be a big fan of the downtown library. I could usually manage to find a spot near an air vent and a reasonable distance from the nearest “researcher”…
The latest season of The Real World, MTV’s long-running show where “people stop being polite and start getting real,” featured smoking, drinking, cursing, screwing, fighting, cheating, bad parenting, overreacting and, somewhere in there, forking. (Seriously.) Somehow, even with all that going for it, as well as a sweet suite at…
The back-road drive into Tomball is stereotypical Texas. Cattle graze on long, flat prairies spotted with yellow dandelions. Trees are scarce; rolls of sod and wire fences mark the land. Large state and American flags fly at ranch entrances. A portable sign with black plastic letters, the kind youd find…
The charge might have been best described as “doesn’t play nice with others,” or so it seems from the tape of an unusual meeting of the seven people who govern Wilmer-Hutchins ISD. The 3,000-student district in southeast Dallas County generates more than its share of news (state interventions, federal probes…
Dallas Observer restaurant critic Mark Stuertz won a James Beard Award last weekend for his December 5, 2002, cover story “Green Giant,” about Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” in agriculture. The James Beard Foundation’s annual journalism awards are among the most prestigious national honors a food…
