I’m trying to think if there is a way the latest news about Plano-based JC Penney could be any more depressing. I was already pretty depressed when I read about the billion dollars in 2012 losses on a four billion dollar drop in sales this morning, and that was before…
Dear Readers: The Mexican is currently dealing with deportation issues but will return next week once he builds his 15-foot escalera to climb over that pesky 14-foot wall. In the meanwhile, here are some oldies-but-goodies. Dear Mexican: It seems that whenever Chicano professors want to show off their mexicanidad, they…
Nothing could be crazier or sadder. It is the continued determination of a small group of people in Dallas to tightly control public observations of the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination here. They want to banish the public from Dealey Plaza where it happened so that no one…
The big news in local politics today is supposed to be that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has publicly slammed Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins over how his office handled a civil suit. Yeah. Sorry. Somehow this doesn’t rise quite to the level of man-bites-dog for me. More like…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Remember when Big Tex’s on-fire face was…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings is pushing a personal and public agenda against domestic violence, which used to be called wife-beating. Of course the TV news had to do a story about husband-beating to keep everything correct, and I’m against that, too, along with journalist-beating, French-people-beating and pan-flutist-beating. But let’s concentrate…
A signed essay in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News by editorial writer Tod Robberson suggested the historical lock-step loyalty of black southern Dallas voters to the Democratic Party has done them little good. It’s safe to say something has done southern Dallas little good. In recent decades the overall saga of…
In the very wee hours as my eye first opened to the light of this day, I thought I heard a rushing of wings aloft. I caught my breath. Was this …? And then distinctly as if from the next room, I heard the oinking of pigs. Only later with…
In our ongoing quest to shine some light on some of the kindest, most supportive people hiding in the shadows, and behind the scenes, in DFW’s music community, there’s never a shortage when it comes to the people who bend over backwards for the 35 Denton festival, which is on…
This is a little embarrassing. Nobody wants to say it. It’s sort of rude, I guess. Uh-oh. Sounds like my job. OK. Here goes. Dallas City Council member Vonciel Hill is a mean-spirited, spiteful suck-up to the rich who is also increasingly unhinged. Ugly-talking. And way over the top out…
A friend picked me up to take me to the airport. She cracked the window, lit a cigarette and turned down the music. I was chatty, the pre-vacation adrenaline already swirling through my veins. It was just a long weekend, not quite the escape of a European sabbatical. But dreams…
Dear Mexican: You mentioned in the past that your dad is against illegal immigration, but that’s a voice you never hear. Why aren’t the legal immigrants and legal aliens “vocally outraged” about the illegals who drive down wages, drive up housing prices, use government services, give all immigrants a bad…
Several minor political brush fires sent up smoke at the Dallas public school system after a tough new reform-minded superintendent took over the reins last July. But in two months the whole woods will be on fire, with Superintendent Mike Miles in the middle of it. Does he survive? I…
Scott K. Parks has a pretty good OK story in The Dallas Morning News today. It’s the good-enough-for-Belo version of a story we brought you two weeks ago about the city’s use of eminent domain to seize a privately owned parcel of land near the Trinity River, sandwiched between the…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. The Farmers Market is going to be…
And here we go with the discussion of cheap housing for artists in that triumphal and glitzy array of Mussoliniano mausoleums that we insist on calling our “arts district,” even though art has the same chance of surviving there as a cockroach in a microwave oven. Say this for the…
Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to…
Wanted to go ahead and let you know, since apparently nobody else is going to do the story, that Robert Groden, the Kennedy assassination author, has won yet another legal victory in his fight against the city’s years-long efforts to muzzle him. And, sorry, certain commenters here, but that’s what…
Welcome to Alice Column, in which Alice Laussade writes stories about things on (roughly) the same day of (roughly) every week, making it (roughly) a column. Got an idea for a column? Start your own blog and write it up, you lazy shit. Dearest The Klyde Warren, It’s my hope…
Tale of two dailies today, I guess. Our own Dallas daily, the Morning News, takes a kind of hey-why-not approach to a bill introduced by Houston GOP state Senator Dan Patrick that would divert more money from state funding for public schools to charters. The Austin American Statesman, meanwhile, gives…
Meet Wes McIntyre. Yeah, he works at Granada…for years now. You’ve probably seen him. He’s been gaining a reputation around the venue as being a pretty awesome human being in general. Exemplified in his nice-guy style of security work, and cornerstoned by his recent role as Santa at a Libertine-organized…
