Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. That's Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic "musical play" Carousel. In Lyric Stage's majestic production, directed by Cheryl Denson, the Irving Arts Center's acoustically generous Carpenter Performance Hall fills with waves of waltzes, ballets and ballads played by a full 40-piece orchestra. A dozen violins! Three violas! And nearly...
Let's just clear some things up here concerning the Dallas Observer Music Awards. There's been a lot of, er, intense feedback concerning this year's ballot. The main concerns appear to be: 1) Some categories contain up to 10 nominees, while others only have a few; 2) Some nominees don't match...
While we're waiting on more election result from Mr. Pulle over at Dallas County Elections HQ, here's a missive from a Friend of Unfair Park who says he too experienced voting problems this gloomy Saturday: I got the same story at the Reverchon Park Rec Center this morning. The ballots...
Dear Mexican: I had a heated discussion in my van pool with a couple of gringos where they made a comment that immigration (both legal and illegal) needs to stop. I replied jokingly, "Then who will take our orders at McDonald's or work in the fields?" They had the nerve...
On this much, everyone agrees: Steve Fleming was unlike anything the Special Olympics had ever seen. At 6 foot 3 and 240 pounds, the former Marine had an imposing presence. He was also black, and in the 23-year history of the Lewisville Special Olympics delegation, there had been few, if...
First, caller ID and cell phones ruined drunk dialing forever. Now, networking sites allow exposure to ridicule and embarrassment without even leaving the house to go to the mailbox. Humiliation has never been easier for the loveless. Of course, everything changes if the object of your attraction actually wants to...
In my column last week I wrote, “Blaming the Corps is a way for New Orleans to dodge its own responsibility for its demise” about Katrina. Since then, the paper version of Unfair Park has received angry missives from New Orleanians accusing me of blaming the victim. Well, you know,...
The sight of Nate Newton, all 340 pounds of him, trying to hide behind a tree would have been funny. If he hadn’t been trying to avoid being spotted and arrested by police. At an illegal dog fight. As Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick prepares for the first of what...
You've heard of one-man bands—but one-man glam is something else entirely. On The Moonstation House Band, released earlier this year on the Secretly Canadian label, and a new EP built around the Moonstation single "Nothin' No," Vandervelde, who's based in Chicago, nods to the glitteriest rock of the early '70s...
This week, Bible Girl turns to Jared Binder, a graduate student at Dallas Theological Seminary and a Dallas Observer intern, for thoughts on the "deadly sin" no one ever talks about in church. Bible Girl posts from Bible Girl will be sparse in the next few weeks; I'm working on...
Earlier this week I spoke with Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle about his department’s investigation of three officers for writing fake tickets and making false arrests, largely of prostitutes and low-level street criminals. The officers -- Timothy Stecker, Jeffrey Nelson and Albert Schoelen -- have been suspended pending the completion...
More news this morning from KTVT-Channel 11. A day after the newsroom there learned that ace reporter-anchor Sarah Dodd had departed 12 days earlier comes word that Ginger Allen has been named the full-time co-anchor of CBS 11 News This Morning -- alongside Scott Sams, lucky girl. Allen, of course,...
Did John Waters sell out? Or did our ever-more-metrosexual age merely render him irrelevant? Certainly long before Hairspray took up residence on the Great White Way in 2002, Waters had abdicated his throne as America's elder statesman of underground smut in favor of a more lucrative career as a neutered...
It's tough to say which part of Art Conspiracy's upcoming event Seed is the most worthy of local support. The event is meant as a fundraiser for AC, a Dallas art collective that promotes visual art and music, as 10 local photographers will be auctioning off original works with the...
Have you prayed for Osama today?If you want to know what defines an evangelical Christian, look no further than Brother Andrew, the 79-year-old Dutchman who called himself "God's smuggler." He is a revered figure among evangelicals because of his single-minded devotion to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ -- one...
Hear that? The silence. The eerie nothingness. The unequivocal lack of support. It's quiet confirmation that Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick really, really, really screwed up, evidenced by rare zipped lips from Gene Upshaw, Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton and anyone else with half a brain and a quart...
After all these years, Carol Reed can still own a room. Election night in Dallas comes on a warm Tuesday in November and Reed avidly mingles with businessmen, City Hall leaders and political insiders in a side hall of a music club a few blocks south of a glittering skyline...
The latest comic meteorite to hurtle forth from the galaxy of producer Judd Apatow, Superbad is about a couple of chronically unpopular best friends who, after four years stuck on the lowest rung of the high-school social ladder, find themselves invited to a legitimately cool party. Goodbye, Friday nights chugging...
He Schutze, He Scores Nothing new there: Once again, Jim Schutze strikes like lightning ("Mirror, Mirror," by Jim Schutze, August 16). It's true that coverage of the toll road election by The Dallas Morning News is self-serving, intentionally misleading and intellectually dishonest. Nothing new there. Does James Ragland ever write...
Keith Urban is the musical equivalent of your average big-box Texas suburb—bland, slick and lifeless—which is why soccer moms in Frisco, Plano and Allen love him and want to have his half-Australian babies. It's almost like he was created in a laboratory (and come to think of it, that's pretty...
Well, you can't say you didn't see it coming. Exactly four months after Citigroup analyst Eileen Furukawa upgraded Belo Corp.'s stock from "hold" to "buy" based on the value of company's TV properties alone, The Dallas Morning News and WFAA-TV's parent company announced, yup, it's separating its newspaper and TV...
The nightmare anniversaries of both 9/11 and Katrina are upon us—again the dream-warped tracking shots of corpses and tangled rot, outstretched arms imploring helicopters from hopeless rooftops. A basic element in both horror stories was the failure of engineering or politics to protect us. Especially in the Katrina story, what...
