January 1998 Issue

On the Cover

The 1998 Bum Steer Awards

A year of altered antlers, bawdy broadcasters, comedian corrections, dining detectives, emancipated emus, fossilized felines, gullible Gore, hemline harassment, insatiable igniters, jazzed-up jewelry, Kay’s kennelwear, lottery loonies, metric madness, numerous nudes, 007 oenophiles, poultry protesters, questionable quizzes, revengeful revenuers, Spam slingers, tie tirades, unallowed uniforms, variant videotapers, warning! water, x-humed x-mascots, yanked Yvonne, and zodiac zombies.

Features


Revoltin’

BUT YOUR BETTER HALF CAN COME, HONCameron County sheriff Omar Lucio did not invite district attorney Yolanda de Leon to a barbecue for law enforcement officials because the party was for men only.SORRY. I MEANT TRAILER GENTRYIn a TV interview during the Kerrville capital murder trial of Darlie Routier, Dallas

Rightin’

HE GOT NAILEDRound Rock mayor Charlie Culpepper apologized to “all of the purveyors of fasteners that operate in our city” after he was quoted in a newspaper article as saying “you couldn’t buy a nut, bolt, or screw in Round Rock without going to Wal-Mart.”NEXT TIME MAKE IT “HEALTHY BOVINE”A

Readin’

The Bleacher Bible By Chris Sneed, Cotten Publishing of Lubbock, $9.95. Heckling manual by a diehard Texas Tech Red Raiders baseball fan. “You’ve got jungle disease: you look like Tarzan but you swing like Jane.”Cigar Chic: A Woman’s Perspective By Tomima Edmark of Dallas, The Summit Publishing

The Bum Steer Calendar

JanuaryBEN BARNES Under fire by federal authorities, the former lieutenant governor gives up his $25,000-a-month lobbying contract for Gtech, the company that runs the Texas Lottery. Not to worry, though. Later it is announced that Gtech agreed to pay Barnes and an associate $23 million to buy out the contract.FebruaryTEXAS

Retailin’

RADIO GIRLS 1998 CALENDAR, featuring five women deejays from Texas, including (left) Cindy Scull of KEGL-FM, Dallas, from RML Productions of San Antonio: $12.95.PETMITT, a disposable pet-waste mitt for scooping up doggy doo, designed by Betsy Aberg and Virginia Prejean of Dallas, from PetMitt of Dallas, available by calling 1-800-PETMITT:

A Few Bad Boys

The slashing of a cadet’s throat at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen is only the latest incident of violence at a venerable institution under not-so-friendly fire.

Columns


Joan of Art

Less than a decade ago, she was a homemaker and an arts volunteer, but today the Arlington Museum of Art’s Joan Davidow is the most imaginative and adventurous museum director working in Texas.

Ku Klux Klowns

There was something comical about the plot by four Klan members to blow up a chemical plant in Wise County— and that was before their own Imperial Grand Wizard turned them into the feds.

Who killed the Texas Democratic party?

AT LEAST DAN MORALES knew that the mere proclamation he was going to have a press conference was not likely to stop the world in its tracks. The night before and all that morning, some supporters, as well as the attorney general himself, were busy calling around to say that

Life of Wiley

At his pool hall near White Rock Lake, on bar tables across the country, and at professional tournaments around the world, Carson “CJ” Wiley earns his keep by ramming balls into pockets. It’s that simple.

Reporter


Guy Mezger

HE’S BEEN A WORLD-CLASS practitioner of the martial arts and a champion of the famously brutal “ultimate fighting,” but these days Dallasite Guy Mezger gets his kicks from a sport that is somewhere in between the two. In pancration fighting, combatants can draw on any martial arts technique, and only

Mean Joe Greene

I played linebacker at Dunbar High School in Temple. It was an all-black school, but that only bothered me in the sense that we didn’t have a chance to play against the white schools. After my senior year, I was interested in a couple of colleges: A&I, Prairie View, Houston.

CD and Book Reviews

Hot CDsTalk about a “solo artist”: On You Coulda Walked Around the World (rainlight records), Butch Hancock is record label boss, co-producer, photographer, singer, songwriter, and lone musician. The Lubbock-born Hancock left Austin for Big Bend about a year ago, and the result is a casually haunted album that’s suffused

Pulpit Fiction

HE MAY LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning, but Robert Duvall also has a certain affection for Texas. Over the years, some of his best-known films have been made here, including Tender Mercies (1983) and Lonesome Dove (1989). Now the 67-year-old has returned to the state again for

President and Accounted For

BUSH VERSUS GORE: Is it the battle for president in 2000? No, it was the Houston mayoral runoff in December. When Vice President Al Gore, with his eye on the Democratic nomination two years hence, came to a fundraiser for eventual winner Lee Brown, Bill Clinton’s first drug czar, the

Web


Tuna With Wasabi Mayo Ginger Slaw

Ginger Slaw2 tablespoons chopped prepared pickled ginger 2 tablespoons juice from pickled ginger 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil 1/2 medium head red cabbage, thinly sliced 1/4 head napa or savoy cabbage, thinly sliced 1 carrot, peeled and thinly julienned 1 red bell pepper,

Miscellany


Around the State

A Western photographer’s retrospective in Fort Worth will leave you thinking, Holy Cowboy! Plus: Lounging around in Houston; listening to the tenor of the times in Corpus Christi; staging something Wilde in Dallas; and grooving to the joy of sax in Houston.THE MAIN EVENTRange InterludeErwin E. Smith’s artistic vision had

It Ain’t Over Till It’s Overbeek

FOR WILL VAN OVERBEEK, traveling from his home in Austin to Harlingen to shoot the Marine Military Academy (see “A Few Bad Boys,”) wasn’t anything new: Ten years ago he did the same thing (for a proposed photo essay that never got published). In fact, photographing cadets has been

Roar of the Crowd

Race MattersI was captivated by paul Burka’s observation in “What’s Black and White and Red-faced All Over?” [December 1997] that “the only way to open the door to more minority students is to broaden—that means reduce—the standards for admissions.” The real question for society is this: Shall we lower our

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