January 1996 Issue

On the Cover

The 1996 Bum Steer Awards

A year of Anna’s antics, biker Barbara, capsized chiles, Davidians defined, expensive electricity, futile freebies, Gramm gossip, helpful hurricanes, insect ingestion, jousting jurors, king-size kindergartens, lottery litigation, Microsoft misprints, naughty nonagenarians, ostracized Oilers, punching princes, questionable quenching, romantic rhinos, sanctified shooters, topless trading, unfriendly unionists, vetoed vagrants, weird wine, X-posed X-presidents, yaklike yearnings, and zilched zoos.

Features


For Posterity’s Sake

Coming Soon: Groacho MarxThe Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum, Plano. Michael Bohdan, who calls himself Cockroach Dundee, runs the museum at his pest-control business, featuring such exhibits as H. Ross Peroach and Liberoche, a dead roach covered with sequins sitting at a miniature piano topped by a candelabra.If It’s Closed,

Gimme a Break

The Prairie View A&M Panthers. With a 64—0 loss to Grambling, Prairie View set an all-time collegiate football record by losing its fifty-first straight game, a streak that is now at 57 and counting. Jim Hightower. The former state agriculture commissioner and critic of corporations was dumped by ABC

Year of the Snake

At First the Count Was Ten U.S. Customs Service agents in Eagle Pass searched the driver and the passenger of a pickup and found eight live snakes wrapped in socks and pantyhose inside the two men’s underwear. Pass the Boysenberry Syrup or Start Saying Your Prayers Charles Bryant of Missouri

The Award Winners

Jeffrey Dahmer Would Have Loved It The Houston Chronicle food section offered a stew recipe that called for “1 1⁄2 pounds skinless, boneless children breasts or thighs.” At Least He Left the Punch and Cookies A robber hit a neighborhood branch of the Security State Bank of Abilene the same day that the

Spoils Sports

Oilers owner Bud Adams is hightailing it to Nashville; Drayton McLane may move the Astros too—or sell. In Houston and across the country, rooting for the home team is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Hot Potatoes

Is it possible to have a low-fat chip that tastes good? After three years of top-secret tinkering, Frito-Lay thinks it has hit upon the ultimate snacker’s delight.

Give and Take

TEXAS ROAD SIDE BEEF JERKY (“You Kill It—We Grill It”), available from Richter Enterprises in Hondo for $4.99. THE LION KING AND OTHER PAPIER-MACHE ART made from toilet paper by inmates of the El Paso County jail, priced individually. AGGIE CASKETS, in maroon fiberglass, available at Southwood Funeral Home in

Head Ache

LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND HIS FAMILY PAPER DOLLS, a cutout book featuring Lyndon and his family in their undies, published by Dover Books as part of its presidential paper doll series, $4.95. TRAIL OF FLAME: THE RED-HOT GUIDE TO SPICY RESTAURANTS ACROSS AMERICA, by Jennifer Trainer Thompson,

Lay’s of Our Lives

BESIDES THE TASTE OF ITS CHIPS, Frito-Lay’s advertising has had a lasting impact on Americans. Grown-ups can still sing all the words to “Ai-yi-yi-yi, I’m the Frito Bandito” and “Munch a Bunch of Fritos.” Only time will tell if the supermodels’ plug for Baked Lay’s will join the ranks of

Columns


Virtual Vittles

From chili to chiles, there’s a heaping helping of Texas food on the Internet, including cookoff schedules, mail-order info, recipes, and restaurant reviews. Dig in.

Smooth Operator

You might say Tarek Souryal is the most important Dallas Maverick: He doesn’t score or rebound, but he reconstructs million-dollar ankles and knees, and that makes him a real team player.

Drag.net

When futuristic felons invade their midst, Austin’s computer firms know whom to call: the city’s high-tech police unit, which is building its reputation chip by chip.

Rush to Justice

Kim Wozencraft meant to spend her life putting drug pushers behind bars—until she became an addict. Now, more than a decade later, she’s fighting against the justice system she once embraced.

Reporter


Domino Effect

This month at least two hundred Texans will converge on Hallettsville for the state championship of straight dominoes. The outcome is unpredictable, but one fact is not: Chances are that every player will tote a set of bones made by Waco-based Puremco, the only manufacturer of plastic dominoes outside mainland

Abra Moore

Abra Moore likes herself, a revelation that comes as she grooves to the music piping through an Austin cafe. It sounds good to her—the singer knowing and ethereal, the sound a jazzy, ruminative folk-pop with a fragile ache. But wait: It’s the sound of her own recent solo debut, Sing

Powers Boothe

I played a few sports at Snyder High School, but my big thing was football. I played quarterback and defensive back until my senior year, when I quit to start acting in plays. You know what a big deal high school football is: When I quit, some of the coaches

Walken Tall

If you can’t get enough of creepy character actor Christopher Walken, boot up The Darkening, one of this year’s CD-ROM releases from Austin’s Origin Systems. Walken, like John Hurt and Amanda Pays, plays one of the fifty characters who meet up with the game’s hero, an amnesiac who roams the

Web


Beef Tenderloin in Ancho-Bourbon Sauce

Recipe from Michaels, Fort Worth.Ranch Potato Wedges6 baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced 1/4 cup minced garlic 1/4 cup minced shallots 1 1/2 sticks butter 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese salt and pepper to tastePreheat oven to 350 degrees. In a heavy saucepan, sauté garlic

Ranch Potato Wedges Recipe

Ranch Potato Wedges

6 baking potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced 1/4 cup minced garlic 1/4 cup minced shallots 1 1/2 sticks butter 1 1/2 cups heavy cream 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese salt and pepper to tastePreheat oven to 350 degrees. In a heavy saucepan, sauté garlic and shallots in butter over low

Ancho-Bourbon Sauce

4 ancho chiles 1 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic 2 1/2 cups demi-glace 1/4 cup Jim Beam bourbon salt and pepper to tasteCore and seed chiles. Cover in boiling water and simmer for approximately 10 minutes, or until soft. Purée in a blender with enough water to make a

Miscellany


State Fare

“In another lifetime, I used to make this dish with a classic French Madeira sauce and specialty beef,” says Michael Thomson, the owner of Michaels (3413 West Seventh) in Fort Worth, “but it just didn’t seem indigenous.” So he switched to regular choice tenderloin, substituted bourbon (“our only native American

Good-bye to a Friend

He braved dangerous criminals, stalked wild wolves, waded into floodwaters, and chased a hurricane down the Texas coast into Mexico, but in a cruel turn of fate he was felled by a tiny insect. Photographer Doug Milner died November 13 after suffering an allergic reaction to a wasp sting at

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