Past Due

(REUTERS) London, Oct. 17 — AES Drax, which runs Britain’s biggest power station, said on Thursday that its wholesale customer TXU Europe had now paid a bill that it had failed to pay on the due date earlier this week. [The Dallas Observer recently found this overdue bill in its…

Race With a Killer

Connie Jimmerson remembers that her daughter Tashica was a bit more attached to home than usual on that Friday seven years ago. She remembers it clearly. “She was fine,” Jimmerson says. “She was just all up under me all that Friday. She wouldn’t go play with the kids…I couldn’t get…

Cheatin’ Situation

H.L. Mencken said that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. Bobby Goldstein is a wealthy man. The shameless culture that begat The Dating Game, Cops and When Animals Attack! has perhaps reached yet a new low with the late-night cult hit Cheaters. Goldstein is…

Smith Blarney

It’s just not right, what you’re doing to him. This Emmitt Smith bashing, this short-term memory problem some of you have, it’s ugly and cruel. But then again, it’s nothing new. You ran Troy Aikman out. When his passes started to slip, when each throw didn’t have smoke spewing from…

Morning Glory

Dude calls me from an entertainment industry trade publication, wanting information on KTVT-TV (Channel 11) anchor Rene Syler. You may have heard that Syler was just named one of the four (!) co-anchors of the revamped CBS morning chat-fest The Early Show, which places a distant third in the ratings…

Science Friction

Scenes from Dallas ComiCon, October 12, 2002, Plano Centre: Number of photographs you were allowed to take of Carrie Fisher: “absolutely” zero Number of $30 pictures you could buy of Carrie Fisher: unlimited Number of Klingons standing next to Academy Award nominee and Lord of the Rings co-star Brad Dourif…

Hello? Anybody There?

Since news of the Dallas police fake drug scandal broke not quite a year ago, Buzz has been struggling unsuccessfully to understand something, and maybe you, dear reader, can give us an answer: Where’s the outrage? Where are the pickets, the protests, the raucous calls for someone’s head on a…

Protect and Serve

Protect and ServeOne of the lucky ones: Years ago, I had one of my college instructors tell my class that it is very unwise to get into a writing war with people who buy ink by the trainloads. He was referring to fighting with the media. However, I feel a…

Best Sour Grapes

Someone once said that it pays to be nice. Someone was full of crapola. You might expect Buzz to say this, seeing how we’re well compensated for being not nice, but this week we have extra cause to be peevish. Thank you, Premiere Video. The store, a nearly perennial Dallas…

Someplace Like Home

Hilda Fernandez looks north from her perch on the 27th floor of the county government center. From here, it is easy to see the massive efforts to revitalize downtown coming together. Off to the right, the brand-new American Airlines arena gleams beneath the morning sun–a jump shot away from the…

Ties of Texas

The grainy security video has been shown ad nauseam over the television airwaves. The young blond mother exits the Kohl’s store with her pigtailed little girl, walks to her white SUV and glances over her right shoulder. She then plants her child in the backseat and begins to smack her…

New Tricks

There is a small child outside the window. He’s maybe 5 or 6, and he has a basketball tucked under his arm. It’s almost as big as he is. He’s looking through the glass–his nose is pressed against it, leaving a snotty smudge–just trying to catch a glimpse of Magic…

Brush With Greatness?

“I’m Jed from Survivor,” is how he introduced himself, flashing the proud pearlies of a Baylor College of Dentistry student who practices what he preaches. No last name was needed, of course, no introductions necessary. Well, we needed one, sure; we haven’t seen an episode of Survivor since we discovered…

No One’s Laughing

No One’s LaughingSomething stupid: What were you guys thinking? Silly me, but I thought that “Best of Dallas” meant something (September 26). As the 2000 recipient of “Best Gay Bar,” we were proud of the selection. It was also good for business, because people do read your picks. Is it…

Like Bill

The former leader of a Western democracy is found to have had an extramarital affair with a woman of questionable taste, and members of the press are sharpening their long knives. Surprise! It’s not Bill Clinton. At least not this week, so far as we know. Nope, this round the…

The Rookie

It was a hot, humid night in Atlantic City two years ago, the kind of evening that grafts damp fabric to skin. Ralph “Pete” Hunter was working at Trump Plaza as a valet. This was the summer before his senior year at Virginia Union University, a long while before the…

His New House

Harold Holigan and his son Michael, who have ridden a nationally televised home-improvement show to minor Dallas celebrity, are being accused by their equally well-known investors of diverting proceeds from the show and using them to build a huge Preston Hollow mansion. Olympus Real Estate Partners, which was founded by…

Not Quite Famous

I am not–repeat, not–a band-aid. Little Grizzly and I are just friends. Really, really good friends, because somehow we survived 72 hours in a van with no air conditioning, playing two packed shows and mostly sleeping on floors. Little Grizzly wasn’t even almost Almost Famous when it left Denton for…

Choking on Asbestos

Choking on AsbestosCourthouse parade: Our country’s economic recovery is being shaken by yet another generation of asbestos litigation (“Enough to Make You Sick,” September 26). Over the years, dozens of companies have been forced to file for bankruptcy, erasing thousands of jobs. Yet the courthouse parade shows no signs of…

Oopsie

Coming up with the Best of Dallas issue you hold in your hands is not an easy task. Using vigorous testing and complex statistical analysis, our highly paid team of expert critics combs the city, carefully computing myriad factors that determine which nominees deserve the coveted title “best.” OK, so…

Enough to Make You Sick

Little did Ronald Bailey know that his handiness and inquisitive mind would one day kill him. The Fort Worth native had a knack for understanding mechanical things. So as an engineering student at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1960s, he took what he thought was a great work-study…

CSI: Cedar Hill

CEDAR HILL–On ordinary days as the arrival of autumn begins its faint whisper through south Dallas County, they go about their lives like most in this slow-moving suburban community of 30,000. Dr. Paula Brumit welcomes patients who arrive at her small strip-mall dental clinic with a smile and first-name greeting,…