Visitors to Forbidden Media are used to finding something unexpected, out of the ordinary and, sometimes, a little shocking among the store’s selection of videos, books and posters on Exposition Avenue near the gates to Fair Park. They would go there in search of items not available at chain stores,…
Buzz has very little job pressure. Sure, Buzz faces deadlines like every other journalist (“You mean I’m supposed to write 400 words every week?”). But the folks at corporate have been so busy lately, taking meetings with the U.S. Justice Department and such (long story; check out last Sunday’s New…
Joe Avezzano is living his nightmare. He’s coaching, just as he has with the Cowboys for the past 13 seasons. The wind is kicking up, and it’s cold enough on the field that the players can see their breath. The game is football. The trouble lies not in the similarities,…
Down the DrainOur leaky water department: I live in a 19-unit condominium, and we haven’t received a water bill since December 1999! If the city of Dallas keeps this up (“Eeek, the Facts!” by Jim Schutze, January 23), they’ll certainly go the way of other poorly run businesses. I just…
Heather Graham is bendy. I know this because she wants to do yoga during the course of this interview, done to promote her new movie (The Guru, reviewed on page 49). She does it five times a week–did it earlier this very day, in fact, a few hours before we…
So what, Buzz wonders, would Martin Luther King Jr. make of the war fever gripping certain parts of the country, specifically that part residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.? Young people putting on uniforms and taking up guns to march: Would King approve? And what if they were marching in a…
Tell Robert Garcia that his music is too loud for Balch Springs and that he’s probably eligible for a $227 ticket, and he’ll tell you, simply, “That sucks.” After navigating his ’80s-something Nissan through the drive-in lane at a freeway-side Captain D’s, the 22-year-old store clerk pulls his thumping, pulsing,…
I watch local network news in a different manner than you do. I am a professional media observer. I therefore bring a level of “observation” to my news viewing that most humans are not capable of understanding. I am more discerning in my evaluation of reporters and anchors than many…
This week, Serving Sara makes its home-video debut, which means the millions of you who missed this Liz Hurley-Matthew Perry made-in-Dallas costume drama in theaters several weeks ago can now enjoy it in your home, if by “enjoy” you mean not watch it all over again. But by no means…
There had been plenty of previous scrapes, but this one was different. This one made Aaron Downey take a step back. He breathed deeply thereafter, thankful that he was able to breathe at all. He was with the Blackhawks, sometime last year. They were playing Nashville, which perhaps meant less…
God and MammonMusic man: Good article (“Facing the Music,” by Charles Siderius, January 9). Al Petty ripped me off around 1994 with a fake deal to build 24 steel Guitorchestras. He took 24 synthesizer modules from my store to build the units, sold most of them and kept the money…
The young girl, her face framed in golden ringlets, approached the man seated at a nearby table in the quiet restaurant and smiled, holding the Barbie doll she’d recently received for Christmas. When he asked her age, she proudly held up four fingers. “You’re even prettier than Barbie,” he told…
Dallas police Chief Terrell Bolton has a simple answer for those who’ve questioned whether he had any advance knowledge of the massive fake-drug scandal that enveloped his narcotics unit in late 2001: He knew nothing. In the case, which became national news, a Dallas police informant set up unsuspecting day…
On a wide new road, beyond the city van where two workers catch an afternoon nap, there is a visible sign that Dallas is about to enter a new era of garbage technology. Or maybe not. With a sweeping view of the McCommas Bluff landfill sits the $6 million first…
We Meet Again, Mr. BondPants on fire: Jim Schutze’s column (“Junk Bonds,” December 26) should be mandatory reading for every Dallas taxpaying voter, elected official, candidate for mayor and city employee. It describes concisely the monumental difference between what might be “legal” and what is ethically and politically acceptable concerning…
There’s a lot to see from the upper reaches of the American Airline Center, where the press box abuts the roof just beyond the last row of cheap seats. Mostly you’re overcome by drunks who’ve been duped into buying oversized foam novelty hands and families that come complete with kids…
>The east end of downtown may be dead, but now it’s getting deadly. A Dallas Observer reporter was padding down Commerce Street the other day, on his way no doubt to pick up some super-important highly damning records–or smokes, whatever–when a chunk of the defunct Mercantile Building nearly squashed him…
Full Frontal isn’t smart enough to tell you what Michael Lind’s new book, Made in Texas (Basic Books, $24), is really about. This much we did gather, with a little help from Sunday’s New York Times Book Review: George W. Bush represents the backward-thinking born-again Texan who longs for the…
TYLER–In one corner of a disheveled hotel room off Interstate 20 sits the computer that Al Petty uses as he frantically tries to work himself out of a monumental mess, one that could send him away to prison for 1,200 years for money laundering and fraud. In another corner is…
During a recent social gathering, the middle-aged man, attracted by the easy laughter of the woman standing next to him, launched a conversation that finally got around to the question of what line of work she was in. Aware of the response an honest answer often generated, she opted to…
When the phone rang last week, I almost didn’t answer. The long vacation was weighing on me, along with many pounds of pasta and a glutton’s share of homemade cookies. I moved slowly but managed to answer before the machine kicked on. A friend was on the other line, jabbering,…
White-Boy HustleWeird stuff: Guh-REAT story on Doug Havard (“Crazy White Mother,” by Glenna Whitley, December 26). Couldn’t put it down. It gave me the same feeling as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. All that weird stuff going on all around us, in plain view, but we just can’t see it. Also…
