Facebook

Greggo, left, and Richie Whitt, during happier times.

Richie Whitt and Greg "Greggo" Williams have now had two months to reflect on CBS's unceremonious cancellation of The Rage, their drive-time sports talk show on 105.3 The Fan, and they've come to starkly different conclusions.

Greggo chalked it all up to ratings, which he says had dropped. Whitt, a former Observer columnist, has another theory: "I was the baby that got thrown out with Greggo's dirty bathwater."

See also
-Richie Whitt and Greggo Were Fired by 105.3 The Fan Today
- The Hard Lie

More »

It's been more than a year since a task force sent the Dallas City Council its recommendations for retooling the city's gas drilling ordinance. But the first step toward updating city code will finally be taken at the Plan Commission. The city attorney's office will brief commissioners at this Thursday's meeting. That's where the rules governing how the city develops its natural gas -- generating no shortage of controversy and headache for prospective drillers -- will begin to take shape.

It was only three months ago that commissioners voted to deny drilling permits to Trinity East, which had paid the city nearly $20 million for the right to drill along the Trinity River. The fact that the city council had yet to take up task force recommendations that would prohibit Trinity East's proposed wells was a sticking point for commissioners like Paul Ridley.

More »

Patrick Michels

The scene at City Hall on the morning of January 27, 2011.

It's been more than three years since the City of Dallas first began moving CNG-powered cabs to the front of the line of taxis at Love Field. The protesters have long since vacated the City Hall plaza, and the city's attention has inevitably drifted. But through it all, the cabbies have never lost hope that their gas guzzlers might once again be allowed at the front of the queue, nor have they given up their legal fight, even after having their asses handed to them in federal court.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt their dreams a possibly fatal blow last week when a three-judge panel emphatically denied the appeal filed by the Association of Taxicab Operators, agreeing with the lower court's decision to grant the city's request for summary judgment.

More »

It's always reassuring to know that no matter how stupid things get in the state legislature, things are just as dumb, if not more so, in Congress. Perhaps "reassuring" is the wrong word. In either case, in order to fully grasp the import of this story, you should know that U.S. Congressman Michael Burgess, in addition to representing the 26th District, was once an actual, practicing OB-GYN. He did his residency at Parkland and had a practice in Lewisville for 26 years. His medical license is still active. And he wants you to know that because male fetuses appear to masturbate, he'd like to see an extreme and very early ban on all abortions.

How did Burgess get the elbow room to expound publicly on his chicken-choking theories, you may ask? As RH Reality Check reports, the House is gearing up today to debate a bill outlawing virtually all abortions in the United States after 20 weeks. Authored by Rep. Trent Franks, H.R. 1797 has been dubbed the "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act."

Sound familiar yet? Yep, the same shitty science that has led your anti-abortion state legislators to claim that fetuses can feel pain at 20 weeks gestation has also taken hold in Congress. As the AP reported, the legislation will likely pass the House today, then be ignored entirely by the Democrat-controlled Senate. And even if it did somehow make it through there, the White House has said they'll veto the bill if it gets anywhere near them.

More »

Oh, tinfoil hat, all that stuff about how I'm paranoid, go ahead, say it, get it out of your system. I've got to be ready for it by now, right? But let me tell you something: There's a big difference between paranoia and clairvoyance.

And in the matter of the Trinity River toll road, I can actually see ghosts. No, really. I can see the way in which the ghost of the highway along the river -- not a stick of it built after 15 years because it's such a dumb idea -- is already there. It's sitting right there along the river, the ghost of it, hunkered down, screwing up and blocking every good thing the city could accomplish along the river like a damn voodoo haint.

See also:
Where's that Trinity Trail Council Approved a Year Ago? Still Buried Under City Hall's Big Lie.

Hear me out. Big news in the city's only daily newspaper today is a groundbreaking for construction of the segment of walk and bike trail that will link existing trails near downtown to trails around White Rock Lake. When the new section of trail is complete a couple years from now, it will create a vast loop of trail tying together an entire bike-able, walkable region of the city.

That's not just biking and walking: It's a whole new way of living. You will be able literally to live, work, shop for groceries and head out to the lake without ever firing up your stinkpot.

Guess what. There is an entire loop of paved modern trail at the other end of town, in southern Dallas, meandering around small lakes and wild grasslands. In a recent chat with City Manager Mary Suhm, she admonished me to get down there on my own bike and ride it, which she had done recently. She said it was thrilling. I still have not done it. But everybody who has biked the Great Trinity Trail tells me it can be a truly exalting experience.

So where's my ghost? Right between the Katy Trail and those recently completed paved trails to the south. Right where the old guard troglodytes still insist they're going to build that stupid underwater toll road. What do I mean? Hey, listen, this is simple. You can see the ghost, too. Just focus.

More »

backpage.com

At first glance, the ads proclaiming last week's grand opening of the JJ Health Center might have appeared to suggest something more than a massage. The massive amounts of cleavage, the pining eyes and lingerie uniforms of the "Friendly Charming Attentants," the scantily clad masseuse doing what appears to be some oddly sexualized version of the Harlem shake -- all seemed to be sended some sort of coded message. But then you read the actual text of the ad -- "Fantastic Good Massage. **Boost your sprits and energy, Reduce pain, Relieve stress and Improve circulation**" -- and conclude that sometimes a massage is just a massage.

And sometimes it's not, which Dallas police suspect is the case with JJ. In a police report filed yesterday, they refer to the establishment as a brothel and make the shocking allegation that men go there to pay for sex.

Dallas police didn't actually visit JJ yesterday. They did, however, raid a home on Kit Lane in Far North Dallas and arrest a 57-year-old named Chinli Yeh for engaging in organized crime.

More »

In his book American Sniper, under the heading "Punching Out Scruff Face," slain Navy SEAL Chris Kyle claimed that in a 2006 he got into a bar fight with "Scruff Face," a "celebrity" veteran. Kyle claimed the fight started because Scruff Face was insulting then-President George Bush, and then said Kyle "deserved to lose a few guys." Mr. Face, it turns out, is supposed to be Jesse "The Body" Ventura, former professional wrestler, Minnesota governor, Predator victim and current litigant. Ventura claims the fight never happened and brought a defamation suit against Kyle a year ago.

That was, of course, before Kyle was shot dead at a Texas gun range. Since then, there has been a national outpouring of sympathy for the murdered SEAL and his widow, Taya. Even Bill O'Reilly has gone out of his way to advise Ventura to drop the lawsuit, saying on air "If he wants to restore his reputation, then he should drop the case. That's how I feel, Jesse. I hope you got the message there."

More »

The Arlington Parks Department described the crime in clinical terms. Vandals had come in the night and defaced a piece of playground equipment at Allen Saxe Park, causing $5,000 in damage. But the detached language masked some strong emotions. This wasn't just any old jungle gym. This was Nessie, which the park department describes as its "beloved dragon," even though she's clearly a mythological Scottish cryptid. They'd found her body on the morning of June 13, tortured and brutally decapitated.

"They used some sort of mechanical tool," park department supervisor Scott DeGrant told WFAA, scarcely able to disguise his fury. "And it's our theory that a teenager or some child or someone has it in their basement or bedroom or closet as a souvenir."

The city is now issuing a plea for any information on the whereabouts of Nessie's head so they can track down the perpetrator and deliver a serving of cold, hard Arlington Parks Department justice.

Fox 4

Every year, something like 6,000 Dallas County residents are diagnosed with HIV, giving us the dubious honor of having the highest infection rate in the state. The statistics are particularly grim for gay black men, who contract the disease at an alarming rate.

Dallas County Health Director Zachary Thompson knows the score and has launched a public education campaign as part of a broader effort to drive down infection rates. The campaign cuts across lines of age, race, gender, and sexuality. He's been critical of the sex ed curricula in public schools for focusing too heavily on abstinence. Alicia Keys graced billboards encouraging people, namely black women, to get tested. Now, two smiling, gay black men are doing the same.

I don't remember where I spotted the billboard. Somewhere in the vicinity of White Rock, I expect. The one in Fox 4's piece from last night stands over Highway 67 and Red Bird Lane. But wherever you come across it, it sticks in your mind, if only because same-sex black couples are rarely represented in media of any form. That's what makes it effective.

More »

When The Dallas Morning News announced three months ago that it would be rolling out the most definitive ranking of the area's neighborhoods in history, I put my money on Frisco. Not real money, mind you; if I had that, I could afford to commute from Frisco. But I was pretty sure, a certainty that was only strengthened as, week after week, the Collin County exurb hovered at the top of the paper's ratings of schools and safety and the like.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Frisco -- the part east of Preston Road, of course -- ranks a paltry third on the News' list, which was finally unveiled on Sunday. No. 1 was Southlake.

In retrospect, that revelation shouldn't have been terribly surprising. Frisco, after a decade or two of explosive growth, has begun to wear around the edges, just a little. It's hardly enough to notice, certainly not enough to dull the shine, but it's plenty to displace it as the exurban utopia du jour.

More »