DART: The Loser Cruiser

Wow. Long time no see.

I apologize for my long hiatus. My day job resumed in the last few weeks, after a wonderful summer vacation. This, along with some of my other projects has consumed much of my time.

So this summer I lost my car. It was totaled in a flash flood in Lubbock, TX.
This has put me back in my beloved metroplex without a car.

It is said that one can't really live in the Dallas area without a car. At least one blogger at Walkable Dallas has devoted a blog to this discussion. I like this blog. And I hope all the recommendations of the author (Patrick Kennedy) be fulfilled. It tends to lean heavily towards urban planning and can sometimes waxes academic. Which is alright, I think all of us need to wax academic a little more. Even IF ignorance is bliss.

My only real criticism of Mr. Kennedy's blog is that he lives in downtown. He works in downtown. He can bike to Deep Ellum for chrissakes! If he has to use public transportation, like to get to the Bishop Arts District or Lower Greenville, his bus/train ride is going to be 30 minutes at its worst.

Most of us can't swing living and working in downtown Dallas. We have to live where most of the Metroplex lives, in the goddamn suburbs!

I live in Irving.

But I have also lived in Richardson, and Lewisville, and have been carless in all these places at one time or another. And in these situations I have had to ride DART, Dallas Area Rapid Transit. They should be required to take the R out of it, because its about as Rapid as a legless turtle going uphill.

I am riding DART again.

I am riding it to work, I am riding it with my wife to go to recreational activities, and all I can think is that I need to hurry the hell up and get another car.

I once read an article in Lit Monthly once proclaiming the virtues of riding DART, the author talked about how wonderful it was to ride DART, and how green it was and whatever. This person probably rode the damn thing once, to write his article, and like everything else in Lit Monthly its always a positive review. IF Lit Monthly reviewed shit it would pontificate about its marvelous texture, its spiritual smell, and its great power to provide warmth.

Let me tell you about DART, and it aint going to be pretty.

First of all, let me just say that I support a strong DART system. I do. I want there to be more trains, more bus routes, and therefore more funding. The reason I want this is because I want DFW to be able to be green. Realistically.

I also want to commend DART for finally putting bike racks on the buses, and bike hooks on the trains, a lot of the inefficiencies of using DART can be circumvented by riding a bus or a train within biking distance of your destination. Though the coexistence of DART and biking still needs to be improved upon.

Let me just shoot this out in a list. Lets call it, reasons why DART sucks.

1.) Security. My number one beef with DART is security. Now not all routes are created equal. If you take the Red line from the Arapaho station in Richardson to any of the stops north into Plano you are going to have a pleasant ride. You really will. The buses are also not as bad as the trains, my personal experiences tend to be primarily with the Red Line and the TRE. But I am told that the Blue line is even worse than what I will now describe.

I have nicknamed the Redline between downtown and the Spring Valley station the Race War. I know this is going to be sensitive commentary, but I don't want to soften the facts.

When riding this route I have often been treated rudely by young men, had my personal space deliberately invaded when there was plenty of space around, I have had young men get in my face like they wanted to fight and start rapping along with their MP3 Players. When riding this route I have had young men approach me in groups and ask me what I would do if they stabbed me. When I have had friends riding this route they have been the target of small impromptu hate rallies against "The White Man" when they were alone and surrounded by a group of antagonists. I have had friends violently assaulted for being white. The aggressors are always young African American men. It seems that hostility towards whites is the motive, which is utterly depressing.

This is the treatment you can expect when paying to ride DART.

I have lived in West Harlem, where black supremacists preach openly. BUT ... I have never been treated as badly, rudely, or felt as concerned for my safety under racial provocation as I have on the Red line between Downtown and the Spring Valley station.

There are also DART bus stops that are unbelievably unsafe. For example the bus stops in front of the Parkland hospital is little better than a homeless camp, and not with the kinds of homeless people you find on a Lifetime movie. Real homeless people, the type who prefer crack or meth to a roof over their heads. Now the scary homeless folks in front of Parkland came in a rainbow of colors, and themselves did not seem to discriminate in their constant panhandling, and other sketchy behavior. Including one I saw threaten to kill a gas station attendant for asking the guy to quit standing around watching the football game.

DART has its own police station, its own police department. Yet the only time I see them is when they are checking for passes on the trains. Maybe the emphasis needs to be on keeping the peace. I believe if the DART PD made it a priority they could really clean up these concerns, but the priorities are off.

If I felt safe on DART I would want to ride it a whole lot more.

2.) DART is too fucking slow. For me to drive from Irving to Downtown Dallas is about 20 minutes. For me to take DART from my place in Irving to Downtown Dallas is about an hour and a half. That means a 3 hour round trip. Unacceptable.

To take DART to Plano or Richardson is 2 hours one way. Thats a four hour roundtrip, there are people who could probably do Austin and back in 4 hours.

This means that if you want to have an active social life, and you want to take advantage of the variety of cool groups and activities in the Metroplex, you are likely to spend more time on DART then where you are trying to go.

3.) DART stops running at midnight on most routes.

DART has the potential to drastically reduce drunk driving, but not if you are looking at a long ride and the rides quit at midnight. You are going to have to leave the bar by midnight in the best case scenarios. For my favorite bars I would have to leave at ten or earlier.

DART should run all night, and there should be an active campaign to reduce drunk driving by increasing DART use.

4.) DART drastically reduces its routes on the weekends.

This is when I go out. Sucks to be me. Once recently I took the DART to Wal Mart on a Sunday evening at 6 pm, to run a simple errand. I didn't double check the schedule but it turns out that I missed the last bus, which came before 7 pm. This was followed by a 7 mile 3 hour walk home.

This is the reality of DART in DFW. There is no sugar coating it.

There are good things about DART. And I am riding it almost every day right now due to my loss of car. My whole complaints about the trains are for the most part not true on the buses or the TRE. I also meet nice people on the bus, and often have good conversation. After my stay in New York I can say that our trains are competitive with the legendary New York system for travel time to comparable distances. Though in New York I was never afraid for my safety. And I rode in Harlem and the Bronx.

Yet that does not outweigh the negatives. Especially being concerned for my safety, and worse yet the safety of my wife. I am far more comfortable with something bad happening to me than her. I ride the trains with a powerful stun baton in my backpack now.

I have regularly visited LA, which is a city that is laid out in similar way to DFW. They have buses that focus on main streets. I think DFW could benefit from this. We need a Beltline route and a loop 12 route that just rides these circles in both directions 24/7. A route like this for any streets that bisect Dallas would be good too.

We need more trains. I am very happy about the Green Line. I am looking forward to finally riding it. I also think we need a train that follows the 635.

The T in Ft. Worth needs to become part of DART and all of the surrounding communities that have heavy commuting as well. I used to have to get from Lewisville to Garland every day without a car. It was a nightmare. I had to get the Carrolton transit station every day, 8 miles from my house to enter the DART system. To use the Denton County Transportation Authority (DCTA) I would have had to pay almost as much as a car payment to use both systems, and thats with a month pass. Arlington should have to pay a million dollar fine for not having a transportation system every year they stubbornly screw up. This city has UTA for chrissakes! If you have a big university you need a bus system!

If we did these things, along with my other suggestions, then we could realistically ask metroplexians to reduce the use of their cars. Until then the DART vehicles will continue to deserve the nickname Dallasites gave them a long time ago "The Loser Cruiser."

Pet Sitting in DFW

So I had a big misadventure this month. I went out of town for 3 weeks, though I was planning on going out of town for a whole month. I had to come back early because my car was totaled in a flash flood. I will try to abstain from boring you with the details of my insurance debacles, at least until I can make it about living in DFW and figure out how to write something funny about it.

My wife and I own two cats. Both were given to us in a rescue type situation, which was a dumb move on my part. For future reference when a friend calls you to give you a kitten, if you want the kitten take it to the pound, surrender it, let the pound do all of its shots, fix it, cure its massive flea infestation, and then adopt it. I promise that its a hell of a lot cheaper than taking a ghetto vagabond cat which is probably disease ridden into your house.

My apartment is not the best. I live in Irving, which is already a kind of toilet to Dallas and Fort Worth (though is the biggest employer in the area strangely enough). I am not supposed to have the cats anyways because we haven't paid our ridiculously high pet deposit. I believe its $300 per pet. I am torn between feelings of "fuck that" and just an earthy terror at my own bills as compared to my income. The toilet doesn't work, it overflows if you look at it with poop in your belly, the apartment maintenance always does the same thing, plunge. We have two plungers next to the toilet, you'd think maybe we'd tried that already. The neighborhood is sketchy, my wife has been sexually harassed by the neighbor, but it is our home. We spend most of our time here, its important that it be as comfortable as possible so that we can recharge and recover here.

So in preparation for our long trip out of town we had a dilemma. We have two cats, and couldn't take them with us. I live in Irving, all of my friends live in other suburbs and very few of them have any incentive to make the 60 mile round trip to go check on our cats. So I decided to do the bourgeois thing and hire a pet sitter. A real pet sitter, not a neighbor or a buddy, but people who charge anywhere from $20-$40 a visit.

In fact I hired DFW Petsitting, at a little over $22 per visit, two visits per week for 3 weeks.

At first we were real happy with the decision. We were having trouble figuring out what to do with the cats. We had called one other large pet sitting service but she refused to do it unless we had her come every other day. That would have cost us almost $300.

DFW Pet Sitting seemed like a great alternative. They were willing to do our twice a week visits, which we knew from experience that the cats could be comfortable for that long with our pet equipment.

The owners father came to see us. His name was Sergei. He is Russian and was very charming. He had a Russian accent and asked us about our vacation. We told him we were going to Lubbock, TX. and he asked "Why? Feesheeng, Hunteeng?"

I responded by telling him that we had a lot of old friends there and he said,"AAAAH! Drreeenkeeeng!"

I loved that story. I loved Sergei. I even took down my weird Soviet propaganda down from the wall so as not offend him.

We stressed very much that we were squeamish about leaving the cats and that we would want to hear regularly how we were doing. We even made sure that we had his personal contact info, beyond the contact info for DFW Pet Sitting.

Then fast forward three weeks. We go to Lubbock, car gets totaled we come back. We had called Sergei, though he never called us, to check on the cats. He said they were great and not to worry.

When we unlock the door the house looks trashed. We had left it clean. The cats look like hell. One cat's fur has changed color, the other cat who has long hair had gook of some kind crusting his hair together.

I step into the house. I am immediately swarmed by fleas. By blood sucking little fleas. Not one or two. Not 10 or 12. But like a hundred. In mere moments my ankles and legs look like I have had chicken pox for a week. My wife gets swarmed too, we see that the cats are afraid of the carpet, which is swarming with fucking fleas.

Now its been three weeks. We have fogged the house three times. Covered the house in Boric Acid. Covered the cats in Frontline Plus. And finally the fleas seem to have gone.

Did you know fleas can give cats tapeworms? They can. They did. My cats had little white worms crawling around their shit before it was all said and done.

My cost to DFW Pet Sitting taken directly from my account: $118.

Could Sergei have called and let us know that the cats, hell, the house had a serious flea problem? Yep, and we would have come back and taken care of it before it got worse.

Did we call Sergei to make sure everything was okay? Yep, and he fucking lied.

The cost of cleaning up after the negligence that DFW Pet Sitting caused by not informing us about a serious problem in addition to what they charged us was another couple of hundred bucks in medicine for the cats, and gear to kill the fleas.

My wife and I had to wear OFF! inside the house for weeks.

So if you have to travel out of town, my advice is don't hire DFW Pet Sitting.

Wizard in Exile

Last mission I did in my beloved Metroplex was at the Lounge in Deep Ellum, I was there with one objective: to see The New Fumes, which is a transcendental rock and roll experience of the truest kind. I believe that I will one day relish my small role in witnessing the early time of the New Fumes.

My entry in to the Lounge was riddled with hazards. I don't even believe that I had taken any mind expanding sacraments, but I must have come off like Hunter S. Thompson in his Southern splendor.

I brought several people who paid their way, but I was broke. Sometimes at the end of the month I am just out of money, and this blog is blessed by the Metroplex's commitment to art with an occasional free pass. My wife was with me and I had no money for her pass.

You must try to understand my wife with me. She is a French super spy sent to kill me for my sins against the foreign legion. She uses a strap-on dildo as her weapon. I live only to please her, and my very days are numbered by the sands in her hourglass.

I told the bouncer that I was on the list twice. This was a fact, because when the New Fumes are involved I am prone to sit in an O.C.D. inspired anxiety attack. This band is like a willow-the-wisp. It has to be seen. I have become a prophet of the idea that rock and roll demands film in performance. Which is what the New Fumes delivers, and more.

So I contacted Parade of Flesh productions, who was putting on the show, and got on the list. Daniel of the New Fumes saw my endless whining on the internet and also put me on the list. Ultravictory.

So my reasoning, my wife belongs on the list. I was on there twice, and we are of one flesh according to the Christian scripture.

The bouncer was not impressed with my classical powers of reasoning, but we were still allowed to pass once I began throwing a tantrum.

My expectations for the evening: other bands would suck, New Fumes would blow my mind, go home without a buzz because I was the kaiser of pennilessness.

My expectations were surpassed. I go in and I saw some small children, about age 20 or so, and they had big keyboards. I did not know what to expect. Yet what these kids delivered was a resurrected abortion of Nitzer Ebb, Sound of Noise, Kraftwerk, yet still somehow new. Current. Futuristic. These lost boys call themselves Florene, they are from Denton. If you understand that Kraftwerk was once musical access to light speed then you would like Florene.

Please understand, this comes from a man who's favorite band is Laibach!

I was very pleased. Though these strange bastards insist on selling their merch as tapes. Yest cassette tapes. Why cassette tapes? I don't fucking now. They ware away. It is like selling a dying piece of music.

When the New Fumes came on, after setting up the elaborate screen, and a Wizard of Oz worthy set of gear, our frontman in his cat mask advises us to forget the past, and forget the future and join him now.

What great words to introduce a set.

Let me tell you that I consider living in the now one of the great secrets of life. I consider it up there with the philosopher's stone or LSD. I consider it to be the very discipline of orgasm.

I am writing this weeks after the show. I am in my hometown, which is Lubbock, Texas. This place is my heart, but it is redneck and religious, and fascist. I had my car destroyed by a local flash flood. This is no exaggeration.

I revel in Dionysean rituals with redneck spartans, the sort of sport that once must have given rise to moonshine and Bonnie and Clyde. And I think of this show and I think about treasuring the now.

I was there, totally connecting with the strange movies that the New Fumes projects. Quality shit, stuff that pleasantly fucks with the mind.

I rocked out and so did my friends, several of which were from Lubbock, TX.

Then it was over.

I was seething a little bit at the bouncer, because as the last band went on stage it became clear that the audience consisted of my friends and all the bands who played. Yeah there were other people there, but I think they worked at the bar across the street.

If Deep Ellum is going to rise like a phoenix its going to take a little bit of promotional ingenuity. No disrespect to Parade of Flesh, the last band Starring showed me that they had booked a great show.

I pride myself on negative reviews. And I only cut slack to local bands, its part of my weird scenester nationalism. But Starring was bad ass. They played songs from their new album Wife of God, and rocked everyone out.

All in all the show was a total success for me, I am sad there were not more people to experience the show.

Luckily for me the great wizard Thor Johnson shared his whisky with me that night. This went well with the good music.

Sage Francis and Friends at the Granada

I have listened to Sage Francis for years. I heard him first working at a small record store (remember those) in Lubbock, TX.

None of the artist at the Granada were local. This is just a fact.

I always prefer there to be a local group present at a show, because we have a lot of great local acts in DFW. But alas, I am trying to write about a city. I am trying to capture in words my actual experience of this vast, strange, and powerful place.

The audience at the Granada seemed to mostly know who Sage Francis was and have appreciation for him. In case you didn't know it; Sage Francis is one of the worlds premiere hip hop performers, he is an accomplished poet, and one of the popularizers of the Slam Poetry scene. Slam Poetry, for the uninitiated, is urban poetry that is heavily influenced by hip hop. It is also very free form with great rapport for originality. To be a bad ass slam poet you have to charm a room full of curmudgeons who aren't going to give you any sympathy if you aren't fucking brilliant. Sage Francis is one of the best.


People who filled the granada for the most part knew this. It wasn't lost on them. They were connoisseurs, and that a theater full of them was present at the Granada speaks highly of this fucking town.

Though I am pretty sure that the Granada attracts a contingency of SMU douchebags. Not that people who go to SMU are douchebags, its just that some happen to flower there. Rich kids, whose parents give an allowance that could finance a heroin addiction. I had a couple of these kids behind me during the show. I ordered a $5 Paps Blue Ribbon (I think this is the cost of a six pack at the supermarket), and eavesdropped on these kids until they disappeared.

Sage's back up band played first. It had a guy from the Mars Volta in it, I can't remember their name besides that. Enough said.

Next was B Dolan, who I had never heard but I had been told he would blow my mind. He did.

When he played this song:


The SMUnthinking dipshits behind me said B Dolan was going to burst into flame. When he insulted G.W. Bush, the pampered mustangs behind me got notably irritated.

It made me love B Dolan even more.

Its amazing how rock and roll hip hop can be.

Sage was fucking amazing. He came on with a toupe and buddy holly glasses. The back up band gave it a rock feeling, which I know was upsetting some of my old school Sage Francis friends. I ate it up. So did the crowd. He slowly regressed in the show from the new sound to the old sound.

The SMU dipshits were gone, the crowd was ecstatic. I was too.

When Sage finished he ran off the stage and began to hug the crowd. In a strange fit of catholic guilt (though I am a staunch atheist) I didn't hug him. I didn't feel like I deserved it.

My buddy Neil said it best, he went to try to shake Sage's hand and he saw some kid hugging Sage talking about how must Sage's music helped him through his grandmother's death. Thats what I assumed was happening. That was the energy of the crowd.

It almost made me forgive my $5 PBR.

Video Rehab

So this week I had the pleasure of attending Video Rehab, a weekly double feature of cool shit anyone with artistic self respect should know about, and probably doesn't.

The Video Rehab was historically conducted at my favorite bar, Tradewinds Social Club, but now the official Video Rehab event has moved to the Texas Theatre. The Texas Theatre was where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended.



This was an irresistible detail for me, and I finally went. The fact that the show was donations only and alcohol provided certainly appealed to me as well. This metroplexian is a cheapskate. Especially this month.

The double feature was The Forbidden Zone, a crazy movie starring the midge(little person) actor who played Tattoo on Treasure Island and was essentially the psychological diarrhea of the Elfman's and friends. Thats right Elfman, as in Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo. This movie was a sexually tantalizing and molesting you at the same time. It was awesome, and I am ashamed that I had not already seen it. I also drank 3 Shiner Bocks. For free. My friends with me also drank. For free.

The only problem was that the turnout was very small.

It did make the whole thing feel more intimate, but I know there have got to be thousands of people in the area that would have fucking loved this event.

Next they showed the Phantom of the Paradise. The picture that I kicked off this post with is from that movie. The movie is a 70s rock and roll adaptation of the Phantom of the Opera by Brian DePalma. Thats right, the same DePalma who directs mob movies known for excessive violence. The Phantom of the Paradise did not disappoint as far as violence was concerned, though the movie was for all intents and purposes a musical. I hate musicals. I loved Phantom or the Paradise.

I want to dress like the Phantom every day and talk out of his creepy voice box, made by his nemesis, the elusive Swan!

All in all. I had a blast, popcorn $2, free beers and suggested donation for entry $5.

The Texas Theatre had great art on its walls, the people organizing the event were nice and friendly and the few other people I saw in the audience are people I would like to be friends with. Only someone of supreme coolness would turn up and stick around for an event like this.

All in all it was a total plus.

Another point for Oak Cliff as the most bad ass part of the Metroplex.

I hope more people turn out for the next one, I plan on being there after my epic battle with Sylvia Browne.

Sylvia Browne is Coming to DFW

So Sylvia Browne is coming to the Lakewood Theatre, I believe its the 16th of June. I am planning on heading out there and passing out a flyer with the stuff posted underneath. I got all the info from the website Stop Sylvia Browne .

It may seem like I am getting bent out of shape for nothing, until you remember that Sylvia Browne often spills her verbal diarrhea all over people who have lost a loved one. This is the case of Opal Jennings, which is the subject of my flyer.



Has Sylvia Browne Ever Been Wrong in DFW?
By: Enrique Recuero (synopsis and analysis quoted from Robert Lancaster)

Sylvia Browne is a well known public figure. She is considered by many Americans to be a psychic and to have the power to communicate with people who have died and various spirits in a different realm. Wealthy and respectable people like Montel Williams have Sylvia Browne on their shows, she has also been a guest on the respectable Larry King Show on CNN. In spite of all this celebrity attention, Sylvia has been wrong many times, one particularly sad case was near Fort Worth. This is the case of Opal Jennings.

The following synopsis of the Sylvia Browne story comes from stopsylvia.com:
Sylvia Browne watches the video montage of Opal Jo Jennings.

Background
In March of 1999, six-year-old Opal Jo Jennings was abducted from her grandparents’ front yard in Tarrant County, Texas. A state-wide search for her was soon underway, with no success in finding her.
Opal’s grandmother, Audrey Sanderford, decided to come on the Montel Williams Show and ask for Sylvia Browne’s help.
It should be noted that some of the families of missing persons who appear on the show do so not because they believe in Sylvia’s “psychic powers”, but primarily to get the face of their missing loved one on national television, in hopes that someone in the viewing audience will be able to help.
I do not know whether Mrs. Sanderford believed in Sylvia or not.

The Reading
The episode in which Mrs. Sanderford appeared was first broadcast on April 29th, 1999.
A little more than halfway through the show, Montel Williams sets up a clip which introduces the segment:
(MONTEL) WILLIAMS: Well, my next guest is distraught over the recent disappearance of her granddaughter, Opal. Take a look at this.
(A video montage of Opal Jo Jennings plays, with an inset in the lower right of Sylvia Browne watching it. Video and still pictures of her are interspersed with video of the search for her. Her grandmother’s voice narrates the images.)
(AUDREY) SANDERFORD: (Voiceover) On March 25th, 1999, my six-year-old granddaughter, Opal Jennings, was abducted from my front yard and has yet to be found. The past few weeks have been unbearable for me and my family. Even though there is an overwhelming amount of support from our community, police department, the FBI and different forms of media, my Opal is still missing. To this day, I still like to believe she is not (unintelligible). This is too much for my family and me to handle. We want her back. I need to know where Opal is. I can’t stand this. I have made so many pleas to whoever has her, to return our little girl home safely. I need your help, Sylvia. Where is Opal? Where is she?

(Video montage ends.)
WILLIAMS: Sylvia, I have to take a little break before we go into this one.
BROWNE: All right.
WILLIAMS: I’m going to take a break. We’ll be right back after this.
At this point, a commercial break is shown.
WILLIAMS: Sylvia, we just looked at this tape. Please welcome Audrey to the show. Audrey, come on up here. Come up here.
(Mrs. Sanderford enters from audience, sits by Sylvia Browne. There is a brief pause, after which Sylvia Browne speaks.)
BROWNE: She’s… not… dead. But what bothers me – now I’ve never heard of this before, but for some reason, she was taken and put into some kind of a slavery thing and taken into Japan. The place is Kukouro. Or Kukoura. I don’t know anything about it, but…
WILLIAMS: Kukouro?
BROWNE: Kukouro, Kukoura. There can’t be that many places…
WILLIAMS: There’s also a Kuro.
BROWNE: No, no. This is… This is…
WILLIAMS: No, but two…
BROWNE: This is many syllables. Kukouro.




BROWNE: So she was taken and put on some kind of a boat or a plane and taken into white slavery.
(A photo montage of Opal is shown over the following.)
WILLIAMS: You know what I can do for you, Audrey, we can put Detective Joe Culligan on this…
BROWNE: Yeah, do it.
WILLIAMS: … and see what we can find out anything on this.
SANDERFORD: All right. Thank you.
(End of photo montage.)
WILLIAMS: We… we’ll… you see Sylvia, she was playing… Opal was playing out in front of the house, within earshot of Grandma and Grandpa and gone.
BROWNE: It doesn’t… It can be that quick. I know.
WILLIAMS: What… what, did somebody drive by and pick her up? Who is it?
BROWNE: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-uhh. It… Yeah, it was a man. He wasn’t Asian. He was white. And then he sold her, like, on the Asian market of some kind.
SANDERFORD: Oh, gosh…
BROWNE: And Montel, you know, I’m so afraid. I’m getting more and more of this now.
WILLIAMS: But you know what? I’m going to tell you something. We… we have heard more and more about this.
BROWNE: I never used to hear about this.
WILLIAMS: Child… children are being… you look at milk cartons and you see missing children. Some of them have been taken other places on the planet.
BROWNE: Mmm-hmm. Exactly.
WILLIAMS: Okay. Maybe we… we’ll have to do a show about it. (To an audience member) Yes ma’am. You had a question.

From this point on, Montel and Sylvia take unrelated questions from the rest of the crowd. Mrs. Sanderford is still seated, on camera, and continues looking understandably distraught throughout.
According to friends of the family, despite Montel Willams’ promise of help, the family never again heard from Williams or Browne.

How Accurate Was the Reading?
Typically, when Sylvia Browne does a reading on the Montel Williams show, we have no way of knowing whether she was right or wrong.
Not so this time.
In August of 1999, convicted child molester Richard Lee Franks was arrested and charged with Opal’s abduction. He admitted to having picked her up and given her a ride (the children who witnessed Opal’s abduction say that a man grabbed her, struck her when she screamed, threw her into his truck, and drove off with her).
Franks was convicted of Opal’s abduction in September of 2000, and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison.
In late December of 2003, the skeletal remains of a small girl were found in a remote area near Fort Worth, Texas. The pink Barbie tennis shoes found with the remains matched those Opal Jo was wearing when she was abducted. A few days later, Tarrant County medical examiners announce that DNA extracted from a tooth confirmed that the remains were those of Opal Jo Jennings. The cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head.
Was Opal still alive when Sylvia talked with Mrs. Sanderford? Not according to a friend of Opal’s family, who says “It was determined that Opal was killed by trauma to the head with(in) several hours of her abduction.”
Was Opal in Japan? No. She was found 13 miles from where she was taken, in Texas.
It would seem that the only thing that Sylvia Browne got right in the case was the fact that Opal had been abducted by a white man. Not only is this not a very impressive “hit,” but it was already known thanks to eyewitnesses, and had been reported nationally. It would have been easy for Sylvia to find this information on the news or on the web, and to drop it into this reading to help convince the family she knew what she was talking about.
But no matter how wrong her reading was, Sylvia didn’t have to worry, since the Montel Show would not be doing any follow-up segment.

Conclusion
Sylvia Browne’s supporters like to talk about how much “comfort” she brings to people.
I wonder how comforted Mrs. Sanderford and the rest of her family felt.
It is bad enough that Sylvia Browne gave them the false hope that Opal was still alive. But she planted in their heads the image of their little girl in “white slavery” - which generally refers to forced prostitution - on the other side of the planet, where they would have had almost no chance of ever finding her. They had to live with that thought for the next four years, until Opal’s remains were finally found.
When confronted with failures of her predictions and readings, Sylvia Browne likes to say that she can’t be right all of the time. If that is the case, why on Earth would she ever say something as horrific as this to a family unless she was 100% certain it was correct?
But if Sylvia Browne is simply a cold reader – as I believe she is – then this is about the cruelest, most disturbing example of cold reading I have ever seen.

The above is a very accurate analysis of the show, with direct quotes. I am not giving you anything against Sylvia Browne except for her own words in the case of a local child abduction where her error, for whatever reason, surely caused the family of this child great grief and confusion.
My main motive for distributing this flyer is to try to inform those of you who have just paid hard earned money to see Sylvia Browne, and may be expecting her to solve a tragic and terrible crime that has occurred in your life, Sylvia has been wrong before.

La Paisanita

North Oak Cliff has delivered yet again.

Taqueria La Paisanita has no website. Hell no! Hell, they probably don't even speak english.

I had heard of this place from the regulars at Trade Winds Social Club, my favorite bar. They said it was the best Taco Place in North Oak Cliff, which is notorious for having the most bad ass of tacos in the metroplex.

La Paisanita is ugly, sketchy looking. Its sign is hard to see, and instead of saying La Paisanita on its neon sign, it says "Ricos Tacos."

When you go there the doors are confusing aluminum gateways that make you feel like you are entering the visiting room of a local jail. Luckily they have big gaps you can crawl out of if you are afraid.

There are flies everywhere. I felt like I was in Ethiopia waiting for Sally Struthers to feed me.

Then the food arrived.

The portions looked very small, though the price was great. The most expensive thing on the menu is less than $4.

Then I dug in, the spices, the onions, the green sauce, and the delicious meat. Oh my goodness, I was in heaven.

The food was so delicious that I felt like the flies crawling on my face where cherubs heralding the coming of the Lord. And the body of Christ was definitely stuffed in my tacos.

The green sauce, oh my God, the green sauce. The green sauce must have heroin as its secret ingredient. I felt the sticky sweetness on my fingers beckoning not to be wasted.

I licked my fingers.

I had two dishes. Two dishes, not because I was hungry, but because I was instantly addictive.

I totally recommend this taco stand as part of the Metroplexian canon. The only excuse to not eat here is vegeterianism.

The place definitely has no vegetarian options, be warned.

But if you are okay with eating other sentient beings, they are exceptionally tasty at this boliche!