Fine. Go ahead. Vote for it. Swallow it down whole. But you better keep some Tums handy. Next fall the entire City Council and all of the heavy-hitters in town will be all over TV and billboards barking at you that you better vote “yes” on a record-setting bond issue…
Dear Mexican, I caught your appearance on the June 19 episode of The Colbert Report. I admire your insight and cultural references, but I noticed you mispronounced the Spanish word “patience.” You told Colbert that the word was pacencia instead of the correct word paciencia. Why do assimilated Mexicans lose…
Last week the Mavericks came close to winning an NBA championship, and the W, an elegant new hotel, opened in the development surrounding the city’s new sports arena. So now we hear a certain drumbeat: Dallas Mayor Laura Miller and the people who opposed city subsidies to the arena have…
Dear Mexican, Why do Mexicans swim with their clothes on? I mean, denim?! –Vicente Fox’s Mustache I know this might be a seasonal question, but why do Mexicans like swimming in their clothes? Is it a Catholic thing? I remember as a child growing up in the San Fernando Valley…
I can predict the future. No, not of everything. I never said that. But of City Hall. I can tell you exactly pretty much partially what will be going on with Dallas City Hall five years from now. For example, I see in my crystal ball that the entire city…
Dear Mexican, Why do Mexican soccer fans chant “Osama! Osama!” when their side plays the United States? You don’t hear American soccer fans yell “¡La migra!” –White Boy Dash ear Gabacho, You think hurling bin Laden’s name is tasteless? How about the Daily Mail columnist who, on the day England…
Dallas is right on the knife’s edge between maybe finally about to become cool and maybe finally not. Believe it or not, the city council will decide. Yikes. Maybe this week. I’m scared. If anything is cool about Dallas, what? Everybody says Uptown, meaning McKinney Avenue, West Village, the Cityplace…
Some of these city tax subsidy deals are a whole lot sweeter than the public ever knows. In fact, they’re sweeter for the developers than the even city council knows. I have a column in today’s paper about the dispute over the city’s giving a $3 million tax subsidy to…
The only way to understand government money is to think of it as your own. Which, by the way, it is. So let’s pretend. There’s this guy you don’t owe any money to, but he’d like some money from you. Couple grand. Imagine yourself thinking this: “I don’t really owe…
Dear Mexican, What is it with you Mexicans who want to take back California? Is it that conquistador blood that’s driving you? –Go Back to Granada Dear Gabacho, Besides beards, light skin and bad wine, the Spanish conquistadors brought with them to Mexico the legacy of reconquista, which has replaced…
Dear Mexican, Why do more Mexicans worship Che Guevara than Argentines? I don’t think we even give a shit about him. –Maradona Maiden Dear Gabacha Wab, You’re one to trash Mexicans for revering a long-dead Argentine–how’s Evita’s corpse holding up these days? Besides, we suffer from the same condition–caudillismo, a…
Robert, as for your friend who thinks a Memphis-style rock-and-soul museum would be better for Dallas than the Calatrava bridges, and with all due respect for the “Calatrava Blues” song he offers, I think he fails to understand the true soul of Dallas. If you want to hear Dallas from…
So Mayor Laura Miller was able to muster a majority on the council to rescind the city’s longstanding policy on giving away federal “block grant” funds to political cronies. For as long as anybody can remember, community development block grants from Washington have been City Hall’s main source of steam…
Sometimes I bring a lot of bad news to you. Much of what I see makes me angry, and then I tell you about it, and maybe I make you angry too. So I owe you one. I need to tell you about something wonderful I watched at City Hall…
Dear Mexican, Why do you portray Mexicans as liberals when the majority are conservative? –Jorge P. Bush Dear Half-Wab, Week in and week out, “Ask a Mexican!” portrays Mexicans as perfect Republicans: homo-hating, Jew-baiting, Negro-bashing, chino-trashing religious fanatics who believe in free markets, self-determination and want to wipe Guatemalans off…
State Rep. Terry Keel’s office confirms that the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, which he heads, and the General Investigating and Ethics Committee have asked the State Bar of Texas to investigate actions by assistant Dallas City Attorney Jennifer Richie. She’s the city lawyer who was going after Dale Davenport,…
Hey, hey, an eviction party. Poor people got their stuff on the curb. Let’s all run over there and see if we can grab a pork chop. Everybody grabbed a chop two weeks ago when the Dallas City Council voted to kick the families out of the Timbercreek Apartments at…
The Dallas Morning News has started a blog just for its columnists. They’re calling it “Bold Types,” which is a very cool name. That makes the Morning News columnists sound like movie stars. I feel like a damn schlub. All I ever get to do is contribute to this blog,…
When people used to talk about cleaning up the neighborhood around Bachman Lake, it usually involved getting rid of Nick Rizos, proprietor of the long-gone, burned-out topless bar Caligula XXI on Northwest Highway. Now just look at how things have changed in that area: It’s Nick Rizos who’s cleaning up…
Well, the blogster microscope has really drilled down into the cellular structure of the story involving Mayor Laura Miller, her AMR Corp. stock and alleged conflict of interest, and Dallas Morning News reporter Dave Levinthal. Now we’ve got detailed accounts, via e-mail, from everyone involved–including Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport VP…
On the other hand, what’s good about Dallas? There has to be something cool. Otherwise, you know, let’s just go. I know, I know. I told you City Hall was going to hell in a hand basket. But did you ever stop and ask yourself, what exactly is a hand…
Dwayne Bray, Metro editor of The Dallas Morning News, called me yesterday in response to a call I had placed to Dave Levinthal, the News reporter who wrote a story over the weekend about Mayor Laura Miller and some stock she and her husband owned briefly in AMR Corp., parent…
