Annie Clark is having all the fun these days. She does her best to hide it, be it as a would-be cult leader or a guitar-shredding robot. But, as happened on several occasions at Austin City Limits last weekend, it still comes through with the occasional smirk or beaming smile:…
The Lockey/MacKenzie federal whistle-blower lawsuit accusing Dallas of deliberate racial segregation, dismissed last year because the judge said I had already blown the whistle, is back in court in all new clothes, filed Friday, this time with less of me and more of former City Council member Angela Hunt and…
The weird shadow government nobody knows about but that runs everything, called “THE COG!,” headquartered near Six Flags amusement park in Arlington, is cooking up a plan to ram a new highway down the city’s throat even if the city votes against it. Well, that would be my interpretation of…
The commenters are already whetting their knives on Stephen Young’s piece here a bit earlier reporting that Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price has raised the issue of racism in the treatment of Ebola Patient Zero, Thomas Eric Duncan, at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. But maybe we could all acknowledge…
The Lockey/MacKenzie federal whistle-blower lawsuit accusing Dallas of deliberate racial segregation, dismissed last year because the judge said I had already blown the whistle, is back in court in all new clothes, filed Friday, this time with less of me and more of former City Council member Angela Hunt and…
The past few weeks have been pretty good to Texas music festival goers. The last two weekends of September saw North Texas welcome in two of its most promising events, with Oaktopia landing in Denton the first week and Index Fest taking over Deep Ellum on the next. While still…
There has been much more talk in Dallas the last few days about the dangers of panic than about the dangers of Ebola. In the meantime if we are paying attention we must notice by now that our vaunted Western industrialized defenses against contagion are riddled with holes. We know…
A major theme — a very dangerous one — in the reaction here to the arrival of Ebola is the notion that we are protected by our cultural and economic superiority from the kind of contagion now in Africa and that all we need to do is remain calm. I…
There’s a power-story making the rounds — I just heard it for the first time a couple weeks ago — about why people in the business community are changing their minds on the Trinity River toll road. It goes like this: “Oh, no, Angela Hunt was not right. Absolutely not…
Today in multiple stories, our only and always comforting local daily, The Dallas Morning News, reiterates the official public line of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control: that physical contact with a person suffering symptoms of Ebola disease is the only mechanism of transmission by which the Ebola virus can…
I have a column that hasn’t quite been published yet that I would like to withdraw in advance. Well, not withdraw. More like re-draw. I don’t think it’s possible to correct something you haven’t said yet, is it? So let’s think of this more in the vein of an expansion…
Old hippie, nanny-state, fault-finding, problem-centric, negative-minded, knee-jerk liberals — and I speak only of myself — were quick enough to jump all over Highland Park school district last week for banning seven books from the high school curriculum. Now I guess we’re under some kind of obligation to come back…
Just heard a good one this morning about another visit by the toll road goon squad. The back story is about a prominent person who let slip recently that she had changed her mind on the proposed 10-lane Trinity toll road through a park cutting off downtown from the river…
Photo courtesy of EB MediaBy Chris Gray and Matthew Keever HONORABLE MENTION: SUNNY SWEENEY Thus far mainstream success has eluded Sunny Sweeney, but not for lack of either talent or trying. According to her Facebook page, Sweeney (a former standup comic) has now played the Grand Ole Opry 41 times…
Ah, you hate to see it. Ben Sandifer, the bicycling nature photographer, has always exuded a certain purity of heart. But on the way back from a city-sponsored tour of a recently decimated portion of the Great Trinity Forest, a colleague and I speculated about him. We both thought he…
“There’s nothing sure. The rich get rich and the poor get poor. In the meantime, in between time, ain’t we got fun?” “Ain’t We Got Fun,” Van and Schenck, 1921 Hate that lyric. Always did. Don’t think it’s true. The most recent big upward mobility study found that, while mobility…
Transportation projects are like the rest of life. Sure they offer benefits, but they carry costs, as well. Powerful Dallas City Council member Vonciel Hill, chair of both the council’s transportation and legislative lobbying committees, stops meetings to introduce the rich people whose families will have bridges named for them…
All weekend long I was pondering great moments in leadership. And then I thought about Dallas Fire Chief Louie Bright III. Dallas firefighter Stanley Wilson burned to death May 20, 2013, when a building he and other firefighters were searching for survivors collapsed. Surviving firefighters said they were ordered to…
It was 10:20 on Friday night when I found out. I had just left the Meyerson when I looked at the clock: 10:00. “Just enough time.” The new Aphex Twin album had just dropped and I realized that with the right amount of luck, will and vehicular skill I could…
Here’s a nice little moment when the truth comes home to roost: Yesterday Stephen Young shared with you here a memo sent to Dallas City Council member Scott Griggs by council member Vonciel Hill in which Hill basically called a Griggs a liar. Hill accused Griggs of distorting the facts…
Monday, I look at The Dallas Morning News, and I see a headline, “Dallas ISD likely breaking attendance law, former lawmaker says.” So immediately right there in the same headline I see a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. I’ve already got a mental image of somebody at school headquarters in cuffs…
In the fall of 2011, I got a gig as an in-house scribe for 35 Denton. It wasn’t paid, save for a complimentary wristband to the four-day festival (which is damn near a golden nugget for any young music fan). One of our tasks leading up to the festival’s weekend…
