I was of little faith. I freely admit. I thought Mike Rawlings was bailing on us. But he said no. We spoke yesterday, shortly before he released his list of council committee appointments, and our new mayor reiterated his commitment to a ban on City Hall lobbying by political consultants…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we meet the people in the local music scene that you don’t see on stages. Justin Press was, for many years, one of the key people running what is now known as Verizon Theatre. Back then, it was simply known as NextStage. See, when…
So, pretend I’m the jury pool consultant. Pretend ace white-collar criminal lawyer Billy Ravkind hired me to advise him on the mood and mindset of potential jurors in the eventual and inevitable federal corruption trial of his client, Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, currently the target of a metastasizing…
What I like to say is I told you so. What I do not like to say is I’m full of it. I am not saying I am full of it. But I guess I might be at about a quarter tank. Possibly a third. Yesterday I talked about how…
[jump] A&M to the SEC? To me it’s a joke. Notre Dame to the Big 12? You heard it first right here last week … and it’s gaining momentum. Had my first experience with a red-light camera last week. Got a ticket in the mail from the city of Plano…
The current issue of Texas Monthly takes on the Dallas FBI corruption investigation, sort of, in a “Behind the Lines” essay by deputy editor Brian D. Sweany. He invokes Dallas, the TV show, and another TV show, The Wire, to conclude that, “Like any good drama, it may take a…
Who else but Dallas City Hall could take a simple thing like kayaking and turn it into snaggle-clawed sulfurous lawsuit hell? But that’s what I smell ahead for the Dallas Wave, the fake whitewater thing the city has created in the Trinity River. For two weeks I have been trying…
I hate to say I told you so … no, wait, that’s a lie. I love to say I told you so. A week ago I said in column that we were about to see a lot of high opera in the John Wiley Price FBI corruption investigation. The season…
I wince. I wish. I need to give up reading. Nature writer Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper’s Wife, 2008 Orion Award for nonfiction) has an op-ed piece in The New York Times today telling a wonderful story about cities that have turned wastewater treatment operations into nature preserves. I read it…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we meet the people in the local music scene that you don’t see on stages. Melissa Kirkendall is a filmmaker. It wasn’t always this way. In her younger years, Kirkendall spent a good chuck of her time immersed in the local music scene –…
I have been dealing with both the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in recent weeks seeking answers to questions about the “Dallas Wave” or “Standing Wave” man-made rapids that the city has installed in the Trinity River just downriver from downtown. It was intended to be a…
If you start reading the lead editorial today in The Dallas Morning News, you’re going to think at first that the editorial writers have done a good job explaining what has gone wrong with minority subcontracting in Dallas — a central theme in the ongoing FBI Dallas political corruption probe…
Here is my problem: I was raised in a typical gabacho family. My siblings and I all enjoyed a typical gabacho relationship. We are close as cats. I phoned my brother year-before-last and was gratified to learn that he was still alive. That call went so well I may phone…
This is all high opera from here on out. Every single thing anybody does on any side of the ongoing FBI investigation of political corruption in Dallas will be calculated with trials in mind. Everything — the timing of FBI raids, the way the U.S. attorney releases or does not…
Digging back through old files, I can see some patterns emerging that I missed back in the day. For example, the connection between Willis Johnson, the luckiest radio host in the world, and Ross Perot Jr. Johnson is a close personal and political associate of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley…
Welcome to Local Music ‘Mericans, where we meet the people in the local music scene that you don’t see on stages. Lazo’s experience with record labels has had her working with a variety of national touring acts, but the list of artists that are based in our hometown alone is…
It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that string. Now everybody’s talking about Willis Johnson. But nobody’s got the connection. Last week Brett Shipp of Channel 8 reported on contracts between the county and Southern Dallas political consultant Willis Johnson, and over the weekend The Dallas Morning News…
Colleen McCain Nelson debuts a new political column today on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News in which she holds up my former hometown, Detroit, as the arch example of what Dallas needs not to be. She’s writing about Mayor Dave Bing’s initiative to withdraw scarce city services…
Should have seen this one coming. Hope it’s not my own fault. On Monday I reported here that the city is going to spend some $76,000 to have its screwed-up and unusable fake rapids in the Trinity River digitally modeled by an engineering company that builds sewage treatment plants. That’s…
Dear Mexican: A few years back when I was in high school, my social studies teacher and the leader of our high school M.E.Ch.A. club had deep resentment toward the Spaniards/conquistadors who killed hundreds — probably thousands — of Aztecs. He went so far as to deny that his own…
The classic ’50s radio show Queen for a Day always opened with the line “Would YOU like to be queen for a day?” Presumably for the last several weeks a good many Dallas politicians and City Hall insiders have been greeting each other in darkened corridors with a whispered variation…
If you missed Brett Shipp’s Willis Johnson story on WFAA-Channel 8 last night, you need to go give it a gander here. I also have a column in this week’s paper version of Unfair Park talking about Johnson, a radio host who is a crucial but mysteriously low-profile figure in…
