Humbuggered: Buzz is having trouble this year with Toys for Tots. Just call us a Grinch. You see this smarmy hoopla on the TV news every night with a bunch of shiny-eyed volunteers handing out plastic Big Box crap for poor children, and the volunteers look awfully pleased with themselves…
Perhaps you’ve heard: Famous Person Khloe Kardashian lives in Dallas now. She spent her midday hours today over at Dallas City Hall, collecting toys for Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. Joining her were some 2,000 other not-famous people, all of whom stood in an enormous line for a very long…
Janet Mefferd hosts a radio show on The Word, which sits at 100.7 on your FM dial. Per her program’s description, she “takes a Christ-centered look at the news and events of the day,” and on this day that includes former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, who, of course, is vying…
As we near the end of 2011, let us now look back on the year (without much fondness) and take stock. We racked up one of driest years in recorded history (more on that in a moment). The livestock and agricultural industries took a shuddering blow that, when the final…
Speaking of local sports venues …A Friend of Unfair Park sends this dispatch concerning FC Dallas’s Pizza Hut Park in Frisco, which will no longer be called Pizza Hut Park. Leigh Anne Gullett, director of public relations for the MLS franchise, confirms: After North Dakota State and Sam Houston State…
Were this a normal Wednesday, we’d be a couple of hours into a thrilling city council meeting, at which there’d be, oh, 20 or 30 people in the audience, a few just to get warm. But as we noted yesterday, this is not a normal Wednesday: Any moment now Khloe…
It’s possible we’re not yet done with issues concerning the city of Dallas’s new council-districts map. Lawsuits, after all, have been threatened by Hispanic leaders demanding five majority Latino districts. But some two weeks after several city officials went to D.C. to visit with Department of Justice officials about the…
Speaking of the Texas League, or, at least, teams once affiliated with the mighty Texas League …The Star-Telegram notes today that come January 3, LaGrave Field and the land around the Fort Worth Cats’ ballpark — valuable land too, as it sits between downtown and the Fort Worth Stockyards –…
Late yesterday, friend of the show and Observer contributor Dylan Hollingsworth posted to Facebook the photo you see above; a second followed a little later, and it’s after the jump. He offered no explanation for either, only a title: “Oh, Christmas Tree.” And the date: December 2011.But the site of…
StateImpact Texas is a National Public Radio-KUT Austin-KUHF Houston joint dedicated to environmental issues. This morning, reporter Dave Fehling out of Houston looked at the water coming out of his tap and wondered: Where’s it coming from? The answer: “It’s the roar of many showers and toilets using water in…
Several Friends of Unfair Park have chimed in with the results of Travel+ Leisure’s Top New Landmarks readers’ poll. And while we’re no doubt just one year away from making the Top New Bridges list … sorry, Schutze is saying, “No.” Anyway. Like I was saying, while we’re no doubt…
Ten months ago, Mark Cuban dismissed Bob Ortegel as the Dallas Mavericks’ color commentator, insisting, “Sometimes you’ve just got to freshen things up and try some different things.” Ortegel, who had more or less been the voice of the team for the past 23 years, handled his firing with great…
Whilst perusing the eBay for some gifts on this here first day of Hanukkah, I came across the portrait you see above — significant for two reasons, I should think. First, of course, is the subject: Dick Burnett, for whom the late, great Burnett Field was named. As I’ve noted,…
You wanna talk about a living Dallas City Hall Plaza, dig this: Several Friends of Unfair Park have dispatched this item from the blog of one Khloe Kardashian, now a Dallas resident courtesy her husband’s trade to the Mavericks. And, yes, city officials confirm: Kardashian will indeed be holding a…
I seem to recall there was some discussion in October about West Dallasites famous enough to include in that parade of giant puppets scheduled to march across the Margaret Hunt Hill during opening-weekend festivities planned for early March — ah, yes, there it is. So happens the West Dallas Chamber…
It’s been a good 14 minutes since the state twisted its rusty knife into the already-wounded gut of women’s healthcare. But fear not: There’s a huge, ugly storm brewing between the state and federal governments over the Medicaid Women’s Health Program (WHP), and the fight appears likely to end with…
Over the course of the last month, both ERCOT and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation have warned of outages as early as next summer, due in large part, they say, to new regs issued by the EPA aimed at reducing the amount of mercury, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants…
Earlier this month we noted that the city hopes to use $13 million in federal funds to turn 70 acres at Walnut Hill and Skillman into, you know, the Lake Highlands Town Center, where ground was broken way back in November 2007. Behold: On the city’s website you’ll find a…
In winning the well-publicized bidding for Yu Darvish shortly after 10 Monday night, the Texas Rangers have positioned themselves to sign the famous Japanese hurler to one of the riskiest contracts in baseball history. And unless the 25-year-old right-hander immediately establishes himself among the upper-tier dominant pitchers in the game…
If, by some chance, you have not seen Dale Hansen’s annual “Thank God for Kids” segment that aired last on Channel 8, it’s above. It began making the rounds early this morning, in large part because of what Hansen acknowledged a few minutes into his essay about how children who…
On Friday afternoon, 30-year-old Shontell Johnson lived in a rundown house in South Oak Cliff, where she took care of 13 children: six of her own, three from a neighbor with a drug problem, and four from her sister, who’s currently in prison. The kids were sleeping on mattresses on…
This morning, a Friend of Unfair Park sent me this press release, which, on the surface at least, appears to reveal the mystery behind that real estate deal known only as “Project Wall-E” the council chatted about behind closed doors two months ago. The release is a bit inscrutable but…
