The city council had plenty on its plate Wednesday, including replacing Lynn Flint Shaw on the Dallas Area Rapid Transit board and a vote on the zoning for the St. Regis Hotel. Also on the agenda: a controversial ordinance to tow uninsured vehicles, which led to more than two hours...
For years, building a Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail line in Fair Park has been viewed a big step toward breathing life into the area and boosting businesses when it opens in September 2009. In the meantime, the construction over the past two years has been a hardship for the...
Canadians—our mild-mannered neighbors to the north—are so irreverent. I did a Google search on Canadian comedians and the words "groundbreaking" and "irreverent" popped up on nearly every result. British comedy is bawdy and dry, American comedy has its moments (Dane Cook excepted), but the Canucks have the market on irreverent...
By any chance, were you ever one of those people from a church or synagogue or mosque or some other outfit that used to come downtown in a van and feed the homeless? I say, "used to," because, as you know, feeding the homeless is all taken care of now...
George Neal likes the characters in his songs to suffer. Chalk it up to a streak of aesthetic sadism if you will, but for the better part of the last two decades, it's a tendency that has allowed Neal to produce some of Denton's most compelling and underappreciated song craft...
Relay races are risky. You're putting your future (and sometimes potential cash money) in someone else's hands, and unless those hands are extremely capable, you're gonna get screwed. Reality shows love having relay race competitions because they can only end in disaster. Or catfights. But, as we all know, people...
When a 16-year-old Charlie Sexton released his debut, Pictures for Pleasure, way back in 1985, most predicted that the singer-songwriter was on his way to major stardom. Tall and handsome, Sexton parlayed his early acclaim into a cameo appearance in the hit film Thelma and Louise. But, oddly, Sexton's striking...
Doing justice to an artist with the gravitas of Tom Waits is a challenge for any singer, much less a 23-year-old actress making her musical debut. But that's exactly what Scarlett Johansson and her hip rock cohort attempt on Anywhere I Lay My Head, a collection of 10 Waits covers...
Brian Harkin Anne Raymond and Harlan Crow of Crow Holdings In response to yesterday’s big announcement that the city will be getting into the hotel business, Harlan Crow fired off his third missive to Mayor Tom -- which we've gotten our hands on to share with the Friends of Unfair...
Daniel Rodrigue The air up there: The view from the Stoneleigh Hotel penthouse balcony, where there's no such thing as a "recession." Not ever. Our slide show offers plenty of proof. Last night, the Stoneleigh Hotel & Spa threw a bash for Dallas’ upper-crust, offering anything and everything to a...
The characters given life by Slug on Atmosphere's new album have unenviable situations, but they're not all "painting that shit gold" (whatever that means): Vagrants, single parents and dope-addled fiends, they all work, fuck and wallow in their misery, giving the emotional indie rap act a chance to traffic in...
Dear Readers: The Mexican has previously published only one Best Of column in his nearly four years living under his cousin's identity in this country, but I must pull this week's first pregunta out of the archives because ustedes keep asking it—obviously, not enough of you bought my paperback since...
When Helio Sequence performs live, it's hard to believe sometimes that it's only two people making all that noise. Especially now. Now, vocalist/guitarist Brandon Summers' vocals, solid and strong, bear no sign of the fact that, for a long stretch during the four years between 2004's Love and Distance and...
Bring on quadraphonic sound!If you like the CD and record selection at Good Records, you better schedule a visit, pronto. Today is your last chance to buy CDs and vinyl at the beloved Greenville Avenue store. Manager Chris Penn said the change is the result of the soaring number of...
The Countdown. [Part I] from Dallas Observer on Vimeo. From left to right: Timm "The InTimmidator" Dilling (in the yellow beanie), "Double-O" Kevin Ross, "Nasty" Nathan Biller and Marc "Meat Sweat" Laureys. For those who prefer still pictures over moving ones, here's our slide show. With his left hand cupping...
As mourners trickled out of Lubbock's Resthaven Memorial Park in the gray chill, Andrew Velez stayed behind. He stood among the gravestones and watched his brother's coffin laid low in the winter ground. Cutting a sharp figure in his Army uniform, his dark eyes and soft-featured baby face set hard...
Rufus Shaw The news that Rufus Shaw did not have cancer, according to autopsy results released yesterday, removes the one semi-plausible motive, however flimsy it may have been in the first place, for the March 10 shooting deaths of Shaw and his wife, Lynn Flint Shaw, former Dallas Area Rapid...
Jerry Jones is our Pied Piper. The Dallas Cowboys' owner has passionately hypnotized us into ditching Tom Landry, embracing Terrell Owens, believing Pacman Jones and, coming soon, leaving Texas Stadium. Not surprisingly—considering his unique combination of money and moxie—Jerry Jones has also marched straight to the top of the Dallas...
If the name Becky Beck rings a bell, it's because she was the whistleblower who, two years ago, notified the feds that a $316,000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant intended to go toward HIV prevention education efforts was being used by the district on everything but HIV prevention...
If you've been to a show in Denton or seen a Denton band recently, there's a good chance you've also seen the work of visual artist and printmaker Nevada Hill. Hill's intricate, hand-drawn images can be seen on record covers and posters for bands such as Record Hop, Dust Congress...
Recent studies have proven that women may enjoy, but cannot actually be described as loving flowers until they enter the maternal state. The maternal state, however, is not exclusively that of having passed offspring through the vaginal canal, but may be inclusive of being a pet mommy, baby-sitter, stepmother, godmother,...
