Leave it to Jack E. Jett, a Dallas comedian and cable TV talk-show host who has a love/hate relationship with Bible Girl (the love part: he keeps reading it), to cut right to the heart of the matter. "Just to get things clear," he wrote last week in the wake...
Dairy-etteYou can season french fries to death or smother them in pounds of ketchup and come away with a satisfying hunk of cooked taters, but there’s something to be said for the perfect car fry. It always happens: You grab an order to go and can’t wait to start in on those fries, their aroma […]
Angry DogAmerica’s fatter than ever. Obesity epidemic. You’ve heard it all, and maybe you’ve been guilted into reducing your burger intake as a result. So why half-ass your occasional indulgence with a skinny patty or a charred hunk of grease? Don’t settle for less: No hamburger patty in town has more flavor than at the Angry […]
The Polyphonic SpreeWant to complain that the Polyphonic Spree has an unfair advantage in this category? Go right ahead. List all of the factors that make the Spree lopsided candidates, from the surplus of members (up to roughly 170 now, and that’s not including the lion tamer…kidding) to the major-label support of Hollywood Records, to even the […]
Zayra AlvarezRock Star: Supernova was the brainchild of Mtley Cre drummer Tommy Lee, who invited two other washed-up former “legends” to follow in the tattooed footsteps of INXS, who picked a new singer in the first season of this CBS talent contest. Making an immediate splash in the first week of the second season was Puerto […]
In the thick of country pitch-black, it's hard to perceive the grandeur of Four Winds Steakhouse scenery. The night constricts everything to the narrow cone of headlights. The long, twisty pavement ribbon off of FM 47, wood fencing on its flanks, unravels just a few feet at a time. A...
Take 25 musicians, a magic hat and 12 short hours and you've got the recipe for one of the most innovative rock-and-roll ideas ever born. Rock Lottery returns to Dan's Silverleaf in Denton tomorrow, full of suspense and surprises for patrons and participants alike. The fast-paced crossbred concert/social experiment challenges...
Jeff Foxworthy is the comic equivalent of Rascal Flatts—someone who pretends to represent the authentic South, who, in fact, appeals mostly to Sun Belt suburbanites who wear pleated khakis to wash their SUVs. Despite his redneck shtick, Foxworthy isn't the Springsteen—or even the Billy Joel—of the South, but a minstrel...
This is my nightmare. I am in a dressing room outfitted with dark mahogany walls. The place smells faintly of cedar and, fainter still, sulfur. Behind me, several crisp new shirts glare viciously at me from their smug, shape-preserving wooden hangers. White and boxy, these shirts are the very color...
Pay to play: We're having a debate about a debate here at the Dallas Observer. Robert Wilonsky, editor of the Observer's blog Unfair Park, thinks Belo Corp. is behaving like an evil corporate monopoly by limiting access to the live broadcast of this Friday's gubernatorial debate. This is bad, he...
When his teacher asked the class to draw pictures for parents' day, little Doug Wright went to work with relish. His mom often pulled out an easel and paints on the weekends, asking her three children to draw pictures and make up stories about them. She read to them from...
There is one chair in the room, and they sit him in it. He pulls out his wallet. He's looking for a number. A phone number, an address. That is why he is here. Fernando the lawyer. Fernando the drug trafficker. He's got a load of marijuana, and they want...
A Friend of Unfair Park read the item this morning about a federal lawsuit, and the resulting trial, alleging racial segregation at Preston Hollow Elementary School and offered this insightful anecdote: "My son was a student there some time ago, with a different administration. The first week of second grade,...
Dear Mexican, How can you explain the disparity between Japan and Mexico? Japan is a nation a fraction the size of Mexico, with zero natural resources, that suffered a devastating war of four years that included two atom bombs yet has reached the highest in educational achievements, technological advancements and...
One sunny afternoon in the late '80s, my mother was sitting in her blue recliner in the living room of our ranch-style house in Mansfield watching General Hospital. I toddled out of my room, intent on asking that woman the question that had been on my mind all day: "When...
Michael Bolton is the type of celebrity who makes almost every average human feel incredibly lucky to have no talent whatsoever in the realm of entertainment generally (and singing specifically). Because of Bolton, it's not just bearable to have unremarkable mousy brown or dishwater blond hair--it's desirable. For a longtime...
This much we know after yet another disappointing baseball season: Saturday Night Live reruns are way funnier than Texas Rangers reruns. Wanna see shortstop and All-Star Game MVP Michael Young giggle? Turn on SNL's "more cowbell" skit before last Sunday's home finale against the Cleveland Indians and watch him double...
Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed (HBO) Like many other Daily Show success stories, Lewis Black is a comedian made for these times; his facial contortions and verbal tics are expressions of the Bush-era phrase "outrage overload." But unlike other big names in political stand-up right now (David Cross, Bill...
In the September 4 issue of Forbes is the story of Harry Kananian of Ohio, who died on June 24, 2000, of mesothelioma--"a cancer almost certainly caused by asbestos." Precisely how he got the disease is question that will never be answered. Asks writer Daniel Fisher: "Was it as a...
No secret what Tennessee Williams might have been inhaling as he worked his chubby fingers over the typewriter keys creating The Gnädiges Fräulein. This bizarrely funny absurdist one-act, now on view in a production by WingSpan Theatre Company at the Bath House Cultural Center, burbles with doobie-doobie daffiness—like Waiting for...
Yutaka is nothing if not a hole in the wall—a postmodern orifice at that. Bored out of a strip mall just north of the Hard Rock Café on McKinney Avenue, Yutaka has massive floor-to-ceiling pipes with huge bolts secured to fittings with large nuts. The pipes crowd out the cash...
BlueVip.com The owners of Blue are suing the city in federal court, claiming they've had their constitutional rights violated. And they want a few bucks too. On the very first day we launched Unfair Park, former Dallas Observer music editor Sam Machkovech reported about a confrontation that took place between...
