You don’t hear T. Boone Pickens talk much about wind energy, once the cornerstone of his plan for U.S. energy independence. It’s not so much that he’s given up on the idea of wind as a key component of the country’s future energy portfolio as that his recent forays into…
Chris Stoffers regularly sees tow trucks from Longhorn Wrecker trolling the parking lot of his apartment complex, the Pecan Tree Apartments at 3012 Storey Lane. On August 19, they came for his. He paid $168 to retrieve his car and then forked over an additional $26 for something called a…
To the untrained eye, the Google Earth view of the Dallas area looks about like what it is: a cancerous patch of concrete inexorably gobbling up the surrounding pastureland. But to those schooled in the ways of the Illuminati, it’s something else entirely: a blueprint for the end times. All…
Plano East High School slaughtered Richardson’s Berkner Rams on Friday night in the completely metaphorical sense that its football team scored more points (34) than its rival (13). The night before, the slaughter was quite literal. Members of Berkner’s marching band arrived at the high school’s football field at around…
The stakes were high for Saturday night’s fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Mayweather was out to defend his crown as this generation’s most dominant fighter. Canelo, hugely popular in his native Mexico, was out to prove his skill by dethroning a world champ. Then, of course,…
A brief word of advice to Parkland and UT Southwestern. It’s time to throw back the curtains and let in some sunlight. Drag all the skeletons from the closet. All of them, even those gruesomely deformed ones stuffed in the back. Put them where passersby can take a good long…
It should probably go without saying. If you get a random text message saying you’ve won a cruise, or telling you your debit card has been compromised, or offering discount Viagra, you should probably ignore it, unless, of course, you happen to be in the market for some under-the-table boner…
The Texas Worm Ranch, a fixture at local farmer’s markets and producer of the Observer’s reigning Best Worm Doo-Doo Pee-Pee, is in crisis. Yesterday, they declared a “worm emergency” after its five commercial air conditioning units were stripped of their copper wiring, rendering them inoperable. When The Dallas Morning News…
When he drove through the Shadow Brook Apartments on Ferguson Road at 10:30 Thursday night, he dismissed Edward Jackson as just another bumbling rent-a-cop hiding behind a faux badge and uniform. That was his second mistake. His first was playing his music too loud on Jackson’s turf. His third, according…
Carol Nix says she saw the whole thing happen from the door of her front porch. Zuri, a friendly, three-month-old terrier mix she’d given a drink to a few hours before, wandered down Oakview Drive when three teenagers appeared, two boys and a girl. One of the boys grabbed a…
Remember all of the awesome details from the 2008 Democratic primary race in Texas between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? No? Weird. Well the short version of that story is that Clinton won Texas. The longer version is that a businessman from Washington D.C spent hundreds of thousands of secret…
A beer delivery truck idles in a convenience store parking lot, a couple of cases stacked on the pavement while the driver momentarily disappears inside. The cool, refrigerated air wafting from the open beckons you closer. A fleeting voice tugging at the edge of your mind whispers about how easy…
Texas Parks and Wildlife unveiled proposed new rules Thursday to slow the advance of rapacious zebra mussels, which have hitchhiked their way as far south as Lake Lewisville with the help of oblivious boaters. The invasive Eurasian mollusk propagates so rapidly that they stopper public water-uptake pipes, coat the hulls…
Coverage of the serial rapist targeting South Dallas has dominated local news for the past week. First came the revelation of the attacks, then questions about the speed of the police department’s response, then the search for and capture of a suspect, Van Dralan Dixson. All of the major local…
Hooter Boswell has been a bullfighter — a rodeo clown for the uninitiated — for more than 20 years, the past 15 of them on the circuit with the Big L Rodeo Company out of Oklahoma. In all that time, he’d managed to keep his face intact. Then came this…
Craig James, former SMU running back and failed U.S. Senate candidate, has managed to alienate an impressively broad swath of humanity, including but not limited to Texas Tech fans, sex workers, the entire LGBT community, Republican primary voters, and the executives of now two major sports networks. The second of…
The first attack began as a robbery, turned into a carjacking, and ended in sexual assault and arson. Police say that Van Dralan Dixson approached a man as he stepped behind a South Dallas building to take a leak at about 4:45 on the morning of June 22. After the…
Over the years Jennifer Conrad has come to see her fight as one against greed and stupidity, a nasty pocket of the stuff festering deep in the heart of her own profession. When her crusade began, though, Conrad wasn’t thinking that way. She was focused on one patient, Drifter, a…
Steven Kenneth Staley’s guilt was never much in doubt. The facts of the case, attested to by multiple witnesses, were clear. One evening in 1989, Staley and two female accomplices showed up at a Tarrant County Steak & Ale with guns. When police showed up, Staley took the restaurant manager…
Sports Illustrated is now on day two of its five-day rollout of its breathless investigation of the Oklahoma State University football program. Dez Bryant, the Dallas Cowboys’ wide receiver who played two seasons at OSU, was not mentioned in the first installment, which focuses on cash that boosters and coaches…
The North Texas Tollway Authority has had trouble in recent years of actually making drivers pay to use its roads. Hence the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid tolls and fees it says it’s owed, hence its infamous list of the most egregious offenders, hence the lawsuits it began…
In years past, the organizers of Dallas Pride have accepted the idea that the outpouring of joy and solidarity that fuels the annual gay pride parade also occasionally leads to the revealing of a bit more skin than might technically allowed under state law. This year, they won’t be so…
