The cell phone crackles some as he drives down the highway, and there’s a foreign beeping noise muddling the conversation at times, but that doesn’t stop him from merrily rolling through an account of his post-career résumé. After a few unfortunate years away from the Mavs, Derek Harper has finally…
“You can’t put a dollar value…on keeping our regular teachers in the classroom,” said Dallas school board President Ken Zornes in a Dallas Morning News story about efforts to reduce growing absenteeism among teachers. Laugh, cry or cuss–what exactly are we supposed to do when we’re told that teachers in…
StoopidGangstas, yours and mine: First off, thank you, Jeff Liles, for telling me what I, as an African-American, thought of N.W.A. (“Straight Outta Left Field,” September 12). I know you guys at the Dallas Observer don’t like The Dallas Morning News, but don’t use one of their articles as an…
Goofy Golf Most writers long to golf or have a cushy TV job for a living. David Feherty, who lives in Dallas, went the opposite route: After golf, he became a CBS Sports commentator, columnist for Golf magazine and now, with A Nasty Bit of Rough, a novelist. Feherty, unlike…
Inside offices at the 60-year-old Dallas Naval Air Station, insulation and tiles dangle from holes in the ceilings of buildings ruined from years of neglect. Books, old manuals, papers, overturned desks and obsolete equipment clutter unused offices. Yellowed directives from the 1990s are tacked to fallen bulletin boards. From the…
One August morning last year, a woman heading out to fish along the banks of the Trinity River stumbled upon a partially buried human skull. Dallas police and a representative from the medical examiner’s office soon were at the scene, looking at the skull. The medical examiner dug up the…
I am not a business reporter, I know nothing of your “high finance” and I have only 38 minutes to write this column–yet I am going to tell you more about why Tom Hicks is selling the Dallas Stars than The Dallas Morning News has to date. So buckle up…
The laugh was his first sign of emotion. He wasn’t rude before, and he didn’t come off as disinterested, but he wasn’t flailing around with his hands, leaning forward or nodding, either. No, Herbert Perry was just sitting back in one of those comfortable black leather chairs that dot the…
We once heard a boxing commentator suggest doing away with fight judges and replacing them with 10-year-old boys. Where a panel of adults can watch two guys slug it out for 12 rounds and still not agree who won, your basic fourth-grader–having presumably more firsthand experience with the action–tends to…
New, Improved Michael IrvinMoving: I thought your treatment of Mr. Michael Irvin’s life and struggles was excellent (“Back in Bounds,” September 5). Straightforward, moving and void of the sort of clichés such a story often breeds. Neither condemning nor glorifying, the facts were objectively presented, and a strong, compelling article…
Race StoryDirty and ashamed: I know exactly how Jim Schutze felt as a child (“Crossing Division Street,” August 22). I grew up in rural Michigan, and one day I asked my mother if I could have a friend over. When I told my mother my friend’s name, she replied, “No…
On a recent August evening, 16-year-old T.J. Davis retreated to his room, stretched his 6-foot frame across his bed and stared silently at the greeting card that lay on a nearby end table. Finally, he picked it up, propped it against one of his textbooks and began to write. The…
The more David Spence spoke, the deeper the hole he dug himself before the Dallas Ethics Advisory Commission. When he was finally finished, the dirt he’d kicked up had soiled his neat suit. On September 6, Spence appeared before the six-member commission to answer charges that he violated the city’s…
He doesn’t look like a troublemaker. Doesn’t really talk like one, either. Not at first. The morning workout took a lot from him, maybe, and so he’s preoccupied with hydrating himself, quickly slugging back a cup of dirt-colored sports drink. Shirtless, wide receiver Antonio Bryant sits at his corner locker…
WWJD? One in an occasional series (meaning we’ll do it when we get around to it) in which we ask important Dallas questions of Jeff Liles, a local guy who’s been in bands and stuff and is sort of semifamous. Jeff, what do we do with Reunion Arena? How about…
Like many of you, Buzz has been keeping close watch on our 401(k) investment account in this troubled economy, and we’re happy to report that despite recent setbacks, we’re still on track for a comfortable retirement. At age 135. Barring any unforeseen changes at the Dallas Observer, or a winning…
“Control? You think you have control?” Michael Irvin says. “Tell me what you have control of, and I’ll put something in front of you that you’ll realize you don’t have control of that thing.” By the time he hit bottom, his so-called friends, his posse, his peeps, had all slithered…
Remember the 1998 scissors incident? Michael Irvin and Cowboys lineman Everett McIver got in some sort of fight over a haircut, and McIver ended up with a 2-inch cut on his neck and stitches. The incident was hushed up by Cowboys officials, dismissed as mere horseplay, and with good reason:…
Tracy Rowlett knows the biggest challenge his station, KTVT Channel 11, faces next week is to avoid getting too maudlin, too caught up in the emotions of remembering the terrorist attacks of September 11. Not that they won’t interview or talk about people who were and are deeply affected by…
Old habits die hard. Sometimes not at all. It was night, the U-Haul trailer was bouncing behind my car and I could barely make out the neon skyline when the bile began to bubble. A bad sort of déjà vu. I pushed it down, forced the ill will back to…
A Little Less Conversation Elvis is alive and working at a local news station. Seriously. From 1990 to ’95, John Paxson was CBS’ man in Dallas, and though he’s been burning London bridges for the past seven years as the net’s bureau chief, he couldn’t shake our city. That’s one…
Ah, eBay, is there any sort of assorted crap that can’t be purchased at the online auction house/flea market? Perhaps. Buzz went looking for our misspent youth there, but a search turned up only a book and a couple of CDs with those words in the titles; apparently, the days…
