Lori Heuring has a very pragmatic view of the very unpredictable world of show business: It’s a target, and right now she is in one of the large outer circles. “The bigger the circle, the more room you have to move around,” she says. “That’s where I am now—acting and
By Erin Gromen
The Austinites who founded the Collegestudent.Com Web site say the idea came to them as brilliant ones often do: over a beer. “We were griping about how hard it was to find housing, especially in the heat,” says Eben Miller, who at the time was a student at the University
By Erin Gromen
They could be Texas’ own Spice Girls—if that’s what they wanted. Destiny’s Child, the vocal quartet from Houston, clearly has what it takes to make hit records: This spring, their song “No, No, No” reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart. But unlike the “Prefab Five,” as wags
By Erin Gromen
Can a wunderkind pitcher—the youngest player in the majors this season—lead long-suffering Chicago Cubs fans to the World Series? Maybe, but if 21-year-old Kerry Wood is flattered by the hope, he’s weary of the hype. “I wasn’t expecting to be moved up so quickly,” says the Irving native, who was
By Erin Gromen
While other high school students spend their afternoons running track or singing in the choir, Diana Fox and Josh Zuniga are perfecting their cha-cha and two-step. Actually, the Missouri City duo is doing those other things too, but much of their extracurricular time is spent defending their title as Teen
By Erin Gromen
From location scouts to production designers, the most important people you’ve never heard of.
By Erin Gromen
Growing up in Harlingen, Cheryl Clark cooked for family friends, but only for fun. Then, at fifteen, she lied about her age to get a real job in a restaurant, and ever since, like a soufflé with extra egg whites, her star has risen to extraordinary heights. After attending New
By Erin Gromen
“When I was little,” Ara Celi says, “I used to watch TV and ask, ‘How do you get on there?’” At 19 the El Paso native set out for Hollywood to answer that question; once there, she quickly learned the three most important words in show business: audition, audition, audition.
By Erin Gromen
Calling Brandon DeLuca the Karate Kid would be inaccurate. Although he has won the North Texas Karate Association’s Grand Championship the past two years, and although he attended this summer’s Junior Olympic Games in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he earned medals in each of the twelve events he entered—including six
By Erin Gromen
Their mission is to save the world, not conquer it, but the stars of Xena: Warrior Princess are winning television-ratings battles from San Angelo to Slovakia. The two-year-old syndicated show airs in more than eighty countries, making Lucy Lawless, who plays Xena, the first leather-clad TV lead since the Fonz—and
By Erin Gromen
Like sadistic teenagers who introduce fire ants into an otherwise docile ant farm, the producers of MTV’s voyeuristic soap opera The Real World make casting decisions based not on avoiding conflict but on encouraging it. This season’s stereotypes are a jock, a poet, a comely lesbian, a city girl, a
By Erin Gromen
Growing up in Houston, J. C. Herz spent much of her time defending the city from incoming ballistic missiles. She accomplished this while sitting in front of her family’s television and playing Missile Command—just one of the many video games lovingly described in her second book, Joystick Nation (Little, Brown;
By Erin Gromen
Officially, Israel Hernandez is an aide to George W. Bush, but the 26-year-old is used to hearing all sorts of less-than-glamorous descriptions of his job, such as professional schlepper and purse carrier. But while it’s true he totes around the black canvas bag containing the governor’s stuff—personal numbers, signature cards,
By Erin Gromen
What in the world can make learning fun? Would you believe—the National Geographic Society? When the staid Washington, D.C., institution wanted to turn the database of questions from its National Geography Bee into a computer game that would appeal to parents and kids alike, it turned to Austin’s Human Code,
By Erin Gromen
“Sure, I miss having a locker and going to the prom,” says gospel-singing sensation Jaci Velasquez. True enough, the seventeen-year-old Houston native has not had what you would call a normal adolescence. At age ten she began traveling around the U.S. and Latin America with her family’s music ministry. Four
By Erin Gromen
In the youth-oriented world of Web page designers, calling someone young is really saying something—but these guys are young. Before any of them is old enough to drink, in fact, the cyberwunderkinder who run two-year-old Zero Factor Interactive (ZFI) have garnered an impressive roster of clients, including Who bassist John
By Erin Gromen
Austin’s most independent-minded director.
By Erin Gromen