January 1999

Features

1999 Bum Steer Awards

A year of asking-for-it Aggies, badass broccoli, contraband coffee, Death Row decor, extrapolating elephants, faux feet, god-awful gimmickry, humongous heavyweights, incomparable ironers, judicial jimjams, kaput kowtowers, lame-brained liberals, moping millionaires, NASA ninnies, off-putting officials, prize-winning pignappers, quasi-comic quipsters, red-handed rapscallions, scarfable sod, theoretical thongs, ungodly ungulates, vomiting vegetation, wild-eyed window-breakers, xenophobic Xanthippes, Yankee yahoos, and zapped zealots.

Teenage Wasteland

With its optimistically broad streets and oversized cantilevered homes, Plano is the suburban ideal taken to its extreme, and its exaggerated scale often gives rise to exaggerated problems. Heroin addiction is only the latest.

by Pamela Colloff

Deep Dish

Which Hollywood legend is “the bitch of all time”? Which comedienne’s daughter was a dope addict by age fourteen and came to Houston to get unhooked? Texas’ top gossips tell all.

by Evan Smith

You Can’t Go Home Again

Folk singer Nanci Griffith thinks the Texas media have been mistreating her. The way she’s fighting back guarantees her trouble with the press isn’t going away.

by Michael Hall

The Six-Billion-Dollar Men

How to spend a huge budget surplus will be the defining issue of the coming legislative session. It will also determine the political futures of George W. Bush, Rick Perry, and Pete Laney.

by Paul Burka

Columns

Behind the Lines

The Games Game

Houston and Dallas go for the gold.

by Gregory Curtis

Business

Pop Art

How 7 UP is trying to win back its share of the soft drink market, one commercial at a time.

by Kathryn Jones

Texana

Wild Kingdom

Tucked away near tiny Murchison, Black Beauty Ranch is a refuge for injured, abused, or abandoned animals—even after the death of its guiding spirit, Cleveland Amory.

by Michael Blumenthal

Television

News Makers

Coming January 1 to a small screen near you: A round-the-clock, Texas-specific, CNN-style cable channel. Its creators will be watching. Will you?

by Helen Thorpe

Cities

Not Black and White

Fifteen years ago, in a PBS documentary, Bill Moyers declared that the East Texas town of Marshall was actually two towns divided by race. To some extent, it still is.

by Carol Dawson