Big Brother (TV Show)

We Did Good on Ebola. It's the Spin that Got Us.

Hoping it's not bad luck to say this so soon, knocking on wood, rubbing my figurative rabbit's foot (my wife won't let me carry a real one), but I think this city and maybe even the nation deserve praise for overwhelming equanimity in the face of the first American Ebola cases. What the response so ... More >>

Contradictions, Mistakes and Bullshit Are What Worry Us in Ebola Response

The Cop Watchers: Chasing (and Sometimes Trolling) Police in the Name of Liberty

Their camcorders and phones recording, about 10 cop-watchers stand on an embankment between six busy lanes and four gas pumps at an Arlington gas station, wondering why cops keep coming for what looks like a simple traffic stop. Don't all these cops have something better to do, they think, like figh ... More >>

Kitchen Dog's Thinner than Water Boils Over with Family Angst

Arlington's City Council Won't Abolish Red Light Cameras, But Its Citizens Might

Arlington City Council member Robert Rivera can rattle off scores of reasons why his constituents think the city should pull the plug on its red-light cameras. They worry about Big Brother's growing omniscience and the privatization of policing, or object to the government making a revenue grab whil ... More >>

Dallas City Council Is Giving "Strong Consideration" to Repealing Bike Helmet Law

On the Wednesday in May 1996 when the Dallas City Council passed a law requiring bicyclists of all ages to wear a helmet, dozens of helmet-clad kids from Kramer Elementary burst into applause, according to The Dallas Morning News report the next day. They apparently hadn't heard of bike share. "Th ... More >>

Dewhurst Looks to Beat Back NSA Snooping and Big Data With Privacy Protection Agenda

Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst unveiled his interim charges to the Senate Committee on State Affairs Friday, and they are, to say the least, pretty ambitious. They read like red meat for the paranoid-hacker constituency at times, but they also include the bones of some common-sense privacy prote ... More >>

John Carona's Primary Opponent is Attacking Him for Pushing "Barack Obama Freeway"

The billboard, featuring John Carona's miserly grin accompanied by the words "Our State Senator," went up months ago on Central Expressway, long before Carona's reelection bid had drawn an opponent. Perhaps he sensed that, with the current political climate what it is, a primary challenge would be i ... More >>

Reality Is the First Great Film about Bad TV

Barry Smitherman Retweets Image of Noose, Accompanied by Names of Senators Who Voted To Consider Gun Safety Proposals

RT @psychscriv: Make sure none of these people have seats in 2014. twitter.com/PsychScriv/sta...We are in trouble when these Rs side w/ Sen Reid— Barry Smitherman (@SmithermanTX) April 11, 2013 The U.S. Senate voted only to consider gun safety legislation Thursday, which includes expanded ba ... More >>

Photos and Observations From The Drunkest Place on Earth: St. Patrick's Day in Dallas

This was my first time braving Greenville for St. Patrick's. I was expecting it to be bad. What I was not expecting was the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah. As I, the only sober person on the entirety of Greenville, struggled through a crowd roughly comparable to the population of Ireland itself (an ... More >>

MasterChef Season 4 to Hold Casting Call in Dallas, Interview with Casting Director

FOX is prepping for season 4 of MasterChef and will hold a casting call in Dallas on October 27, which means you have about one month to do whatever you think necessary to get TV game-ready. The concept of MasterChef is to find the country's best home cook. They start by scouring cities all of sha ... More >>

On Its 85th Anniversary, Local Big Brothers Big Sisters Reunited With a Historic Piece of Paper

Click to expand the historic document.​Out of nowhere, moments ago, I got an email from Dan Stuchal, on the executive team at the local Big Brothers Big Sisters. He's a Friend of Unfair Park, he explained, and well aware of my affection for historic relics. He said he had something at which I migh ... More >>

Cable TV Programmers Make Bait-and-Switch a High Art

Drunken yoga does not equal female empowerment. Show of hands: Who remembers when cable TV's A&E channel featured real art for entertainment? Been a long time, right? Back in the 1990s, the Arts & Entertainment channel, as it was known then, specialized in high-culture programming. Ballet. Opera. ... More >>

Whitt's End: 8.19.11

​Whether you've reached the end of your rope or merely the end of your week, welcome to Whitt's End:Talked to the family of Shannon Stone for next week's Observer column. Wait until you hear their other sad story involving a souvenir ball from a Rangers' game. Sorry, you have to wait.Not ... More >>

Listomania: The Top Music Videos of 2010

This dude knew a thing or two about music videos.​The death of Michael Jackson in 2009 seemed to prompt a lot of artists to rediscover the art of music videos in 2010. Some, like Lady Gaga and Kanye West, took the artistic merit behind mainstream music videos from acts like Michael Jackson and Pri ... More >>

Brave New World

i Fratelli Pizza: Just What We Wanted, and No Sneaky Delivery Charge

​i Fratelli Pizza 2208 Dallas Parkway 972-608-8833 Promised Delivery Time: 30 minutes Actual Delivery Time: 26 minutes The Score No delivery fee or fuel surcharge: 10 points Polite, professional order-taker: 15 points No online ordering: -5 points Delivering sooner than promised: 20 Point ... More >>

Eye See You: SMU and Department of Defense Find a New Use for Their Paper-Thin Camera

​In July of last year, and again last January, we mentioned SMU's partnering with the U.S. Department of  Defense to develop a powerful paper-thin camera that uses low-resolution sensors to create a hi-res image -- a device otherwise known as "Panoptes," short for "Processing Arrays of Nyquis ... More >>

Welcome to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Dallas

Who Gets Constable Jaime Cortes's Computer Data? Not Cortes. For Now, It's the Court's.

Constable Jaime Cortes​During a last-minute hearing this afternoon, a judge ordered that data seized from Precinct 5 Constable Jaime Cortes's office computer be returned -- only, not to Cortes, as his lawyers, Larry Friedman and Domingo Garcia, had demanded, but to the court, where it will remain ... More >>

Ziggy Jr. In Space

How 'Bout Them Knockers: i Fratelli Pizza

i Fratelli Pizza 6109A Greenville Ave. 214-891-0600 Promised delivery time: 45 minutes Actual delivery time: 40 minutes The ScoreSincere and easy ordering process uncharacteristic of most pizza joints in my neck of the woods: 15 Altering their flagship menu item's ingredients without question b ... More >>

Steven Daigle, A Big Brother

CBS-TV Steven Daigle Trust me, Big Brother, the 10th season (!) of which debuts on CBS July 13, is one reality TV show we won't cover. Instead, we'll just introduce you to the contestant getting the most buzz in preview pieces: Dallas resident Steven Daigle, whose CBS bio describes him as "a geogra ... More >>

Truant Dat: How Some Folks Really Feel About Kids on G.P.S.

Yesterday's news concerning the pilot program at Bryan Adams High School, which involves outfitting chronic truants with Global Positioning System monitors, has sparked one hellacious conversation amongst Slashdot readers. The item was at 212 comments when I first checked at 4 p.m. yesterday; this m ... More >>

Review: Atmosphere at The Loft

Atmosphere teased the crowd with new songs Thursday night. (Matthew Blake) When I rolled up to the Loft just before 9 p.m., the line for Atmosphere wrapped around the building. And anyone foolish enough to think they were buying tickets at the door seriously mistook the following the Minnesota rap ... More >>

Local TV Journalism Isn't Totally Dead...

Because Byron Harris needed more encouragement... With KTVT-Channel 11 giving into the Dark Side of the Force and KXAS-Channel 5 peddling fear and face creams, yeah, it's easy to write off local TV news as the Brockmans leading the Burgundys down the primrose path. But all is not lost: Thirty minute ... More >>

Richie Rich Round-Up

We scour the business pages so you don't have to...and because you don't want to. But let's round 'em up, shall we? In the let-them-eat-cake category, two local businesses reported their first-quarter earnings today, and it doesn't look like biz is bad for the likes of Neiman Marcus and Zale Corp., ... More >>

Inside the pocket

Champps Americana provides a comfortable den for families of armchair quarterbacks