We shall overcome: Buzz, being in the free-speech biz and somewhat left-leaning, generally supports an adult’s right to view and purchase images of nakedness and consensual sex acts on the Internet. Not that Buzz would ever, ever take a peek–goodness gracious no–but we fully support your right to do so,…
Down to the Grounds You and Eminem: “Bean Waiting” (May 17) must have rubbed a few of you the wrong way. It damn sure pissed me off! How could I stay angry with such a great paper as the Dallas Observer? It uncovers a lot of corruption within our fair…
NUEVO LAREDO–It’s nearly 10:30 on a Thursday night and 23-year-old Les is on the street, prowling for women. He’s come to the right–if not necessarily the proper–place. “It’s much more organized than I expected,” Les says, walking past the police station in La Zona Rosa and taking in the neon…
It’s hard not to notice the cheesy advertisement: a full page in The Dallas Morning News, screaming tabloid headlines, before and after photos of big fleshy people morphed by hypnosis into small suggestive people: “True story how Mineola man wins 20-year battle with obesity”…”Fast Weight Loss”…”Instant Results.” Take Bob Denton,…
Going to school bored Rudy Barraza, an 18-year-old North Dallas High School junior. So rather than suffer large classes and harried, aloof teachers, he brainstormed a shrewd way to spend weekdays with friends at home, the mall or the park. In the morning, he said goodbye to his work-bound parents…
TRINIDAD, Texas–When last we heard from the rebellious John Joe Gray family it was still entrenched on its 47-acre river-bottom farm near here, vowing if local authorities attempted to serve long-standing arrest warrants on its patriarchal leader all hell would break loose. It has now been more than a year…
Dallas-based CompUSA Inc. and its former chief executive James Halpin must be feeling pretty happy this week, thanks to a decision by District Judge Carlos Lopez that took them off the hook for a multimillion-dollar judgment awarded by a local jury earlier this year. Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helú, one…
Caught in the Middle Children as pawns: Mark Donald’s article “Access Denied” (May 10) is unforgivably one-sided, as if fathers are the only parents who are ever denied visitation rights with their children, and as if men are the only human beings whose lives are forever scarred by ugly custody…
From the backseat of the single-engine airplane, Carmen Rivera-Worley watched uncomfortably as the 25-year-old pilot tapped his finger on an illuminated blue instrument. Raindrops streaked the plane’s windows as it raced at about 120 mph through a blanket of ink-black clouds west of New Orleans. Then, Rivera-Worley and the two…
A week or so ago, Chomsky was in Austin to play a gig at the Flamingo Cantina with its friends from Kissinger. Instead of making the drive back to Dallas in the middle of the night, guitarist Glen Reynolds found a place where the band could get some sleep. Reynolds…
Location: Denton County, Texas Victim: Frieda Lorraine (Becky) Powell, w/f, 15 In June 1983, Henry Lucas described to officers that he and the victim were in Denton County…He and the victim began arguing, and she slapped him, at which time he drew his knife from his belt and immediately stabbed…
After 17 years of unrelenting global expansion that has hooked caffeine fiends from Seattle to Seoul, Starbucks Corp. has, at last, penetrated one of the most remote corners of the retail world: Oak Cliff. In what is certain to go down in Oak Cliff retailing history as the espresso shot…
Let’s say you decide you’re going to be a whore. Maybe you’ve had a long, respectable life in which you’ve only rarely, quietly embarrassed yourself. Some silliness when you were young, a few wayward escapades while growing up, but for the most part you are seen as a sober person…
Flip a coin: Dwaine Caraway is black. Ed Oakley is white. Which one is best fit to be the District 6 City Council representative? Buzz, who lives in the district, would suggest that voters need a little more information than that to decide. We would say that the best candidate–for…
High Hopes Fellow travelers: The information in Joe Pappalardo’s recent article, “Mean Green,” (April 19) is the complete opposite of what occurred at a recent activist camp in Huntsville, Texas. His false information damages the reputation of the animal rights movement and has put activists’ safety in jeopardy. Pappalardo said…
Busted: At the risk of sounding like the crotchety old guy we’re in danger of quickly becoming, Buzz must ask: What kind of bizarro world do we live in that arrests school administrators and puts them in detention because a kid can’t read well? Oh, that’s right. This is Dallas…
So many accusations were flying at the end of the District 1 Dallas City Council race, it wasn’t clear who was blowing the whistle on whom, but Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbet says there is no confusion about one thing: “Someone’s going to get in trouble.” Speaking on Monday…
It was all he could do to keep from going crazy, a little nuts, when he thought about how much he missed his kids. He claims he never anticipated the War of the Roses his ex-wife would wage–with his words twisted, his actions demonized, his own children turned bitterly against…
Bigotry by Any NameKind of WackStraight ShotCaptain Joke
On a Saturday afternoon in late April, 10,200 horse racing fans have gathered in the tan stucco grandstand at Lone Star Park. They’re moistening in the warming sun, ordering beers with their Grand Prairie dogs, queuing up to invest in the ninth race, the $300,000 Texas Mile, which is filled…
“It all begins here,” says Pam Schaefer, the founder and executive director of Trinity Works, a nonprofit agency also known as Trinity Ministry to the Poor. “Here” is the lobby of Trinity’s year-old, custom-built headquarters, located on Bryan Street in Old East Dallas. The headquarters are a spotless testament to…
His modest home in Little Elm on Lake Lewisville is a bachelor-pad parody. Old newspapers and heaps of junk mail sprout like mushrooms in corners and under tables. Cobwebs and balls of dust cloud the narrow spaces under the couches. Tangles of socks, T-shirts and rumpled sheets are visible through…
