I would like to introduce you to a very special lady... What you'll notice first—besides the menacing rebar in a support post near the man slicing grooves into a concrete slab with a huge saw outside Isabella's French doors—is that the waiters don't pretend to know more than they do...
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (New Line) You probably already know where you stand on Tenacious D, the pudgy hard rock comedy duo that made Jack Black famous. And if you haven't heard of them, this isn't the place to start: Their DVD of short films and music...
We here at the Dallas Observer think you've all been slacking. Sure, it's easy to be a music fan when all that entails is dropping a few PBRs at the Double Wide, but what happens when it's time to put your pickled cerebellum to the test? What follows is our...
Me: Do you hate doing this? Sandra Bernhard: No, not at all, of course not. If I don't do this people don't know I'm coming, and it becomes counterproductive to my work. I'm a quarter of the way through an awkward phone interview with Bernhard, a woman whose persona is...
Scott Loomer, namesake and leader of this Canadian sextet, is a songwriter of unqualified vision. Like Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Blue Rodeo's Greg Keelor, Loomer is capable of encapsulating raw feeling and humor by way of cryptic lyrics and detailed musical arrangements. Songs of the Wild West Island, the...
Barry Scheck's all about getting innocent people out of jail, which is great, but it still doesn't explain that whole O.J. thing. Barry Scheck, former O.J. Simpson defense attorney and founder and co-director of The Innocence Project, is scheduled to appear in a Dallas courtroom this morning with John Waller,...
The Postmarks make music that, at times, is part Burt Bacharach, part Beach Boys and part folk rock. That's an odd blend in 2007, but this emo-pop trio knows how to bring it together. The Postmarks have raised their profile during the past year. They're charting in the U.S. and...
Now a staple of weekend entertainment in Dallas, most people go to midnight movies at the Inwood to relive the magic of seeing the movies for the first time. Personally, though, I go for the educational value—not from the movie itself, but from the trivia contest that precedes it. At...
Last time, I bounded down the stairs into the exclusive basement of Sipango for his going-away party. "Jay-SOWN!" I crowed, an obnoxious nod to our mutual affinity for Adam Sandler's "Cajun Man" character on Saturday Night Live. This time, I wait for an hour in a secluded conference room at...
Why is this man smiling? Probably because he's decided not to run for mayor. Who wants that lousy gig anyway? Oh, yeah -- everyone else. Mitchell Rasansky is not going to run for mayor, in spite of poll results showing him at the head of a crowded field in citywide...
When bands and relationships mix, there's usually a divorce lawyer lurking behind the drum riser. Consider the romantic dysfunction that made Fleetwood Mac everyone's favorite arena-rock soap opera of the late '70s. What about the "I'm leaving you, what time is Thursday's gig?" dynamics of the White Stripes and Quasi?...
Waste not, want not: Sam Coats is on the board of directors at TXI, which ain't no friend of the clean air. Till today, it's likely most folks had no idea that mayoral candidate Sam Coats is on the board of directors of Texas Industries, better known as TXI, the...
Can't believe we went a whole day without a Deep Ellum posting. But, alas, it's a brand-new day, and we've got some brand-new news, more or less: The Deep Ellum Association had separated itself from the Deep Ellum Foundation. For background on the spat between the two entities, read Andrea...
When he spotted the pretty woman standing on the front lawn of a stately home in Highland Park, Alan Rehrig whipped his Bronco into the driveway and climbed out. The former college basketball star shook her hand and asked if she knew anyone who had a garage apartment for rent...
There is a woman on a makeshift, multicolored stage in a large backyard full of slightly scuzzy people. Scuzzy in the sense that they probably only take showers every other day, versus every day. Not hippie scuzzy, just sort of... San Francisco scuzzy. Not that anyone is paying attention to...
Julie Doiron has a long-running history with Eric's Trip, a brilliant but mostly defunct Canadian four-piece. The band was great mostly thanks to main songwriter Rick White and his creative production techniques—"lo-fi," if you have to call it something. As a result, I was shocked (shocked!) to find out that...
Things be gettin' uh-guh-lee in the legal battle over TXU's proposed new 11 coal-fired power plants that will, in all probability, choke us to death. Today the Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition (or the TCACC), fronted by Mayor Laura Miller, is going to try to force TXU -- and, specifically,...
There's a moment in Fearless Freaks, Bradley Beesley's fine 2005 documentary about the Flaming Lips, when Lips' multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd allows Beesley to film him shooting heroin. It's a conflicted moment, part truly sad—it's clear Drozd is resigned to his addiction—and also, truth be told, somewhat romantic, in that tragic,...
Dear Readers, Mucho comments about my February 1 column regarding the metamorphosis of Mexican names into seemingly wacky nicknames—Nini from Alejandrina, for instance, or Chely from Araceli. I argued such changes occurred thanks to linguistic laws; some of you had other theories. Here are the best. Here's what a Chicano...
The fact that the Earlies made a second album is pretty remarkable; having band members scattered on both sides of the Atlantic must make songwriting rather difficult, yet they make it look easy. As in, bands that do get to practice and do get to write in the same room...
El Greco, "Descent of the Holy Spirit" He called himself Apostle. And many a Sunday morning was punctuated with the skronk-skronk of a saxophone as he blew his rendition of "Amazing Grace." He was a young man, and he'd recently gotten out of prison, where he had some kind of...
The 120 dutiful souls who'd answered their jury summons on January 9 had been sitting in the historic Waxahachie courthouse listening to lawyers drone on for hours. Then suddenly things got weird. The prosecutor had finished asking questions of potential jurors when David Finn stood up. The 43-year-old Dallas defense...
