The Desert of the Dead
While politicians and bureaucrats endlessly debate the best ways to secure our borders, undocumented immigrants are dying to get into America—literally.
November 2006 Issue
Features
The Chop Is in the Mail
You want to send your granny a grapefruit this Christmas? Your bro a brisket? Your pop a pie? We’ve taste-tested more than four hundred foodstuffs that Texas companies will happily ship to your door, and more than forty are first-class.
Education
Acting Up
At the Giddings State School, violent teenagers come to terms with their horrific crimes—and learn how to avoid committing them again—through role-playing exercises in a jailhouse version of group therapy. This is what your tax dollars are paying for? Well, it works. For a while, at least.
Columns
Letter From Washington, DC
Soldier of Fortune
Just curious, Mr. Vice President: How did your old pals at Halliburton get that five-year, no-bid contract to clean up Iraq?
Reporter
Music Review
Trying to Never Catch Up
Your band can’t get going? Here’s some advice: Take a look at your singer. If his or her vocals lack character, there’s little chance of moving beyond the odd house party. There are many reasons the self-released debut from Austin’s WHAT MADE MILWAUKEE FAMOUS, Trying to Never Catch Up (Barsuk),
Music Review
The Californian
Being Sandra Bullock’s onetime boy toy as well as the leader of a scatological frat band known as the Scabs is not the résumé from which instant respectability springs. He’s no critic’s darling, yet Austin rocker BOB SCHNEIDER seems utterly unconcerned with such things (he once had the cheek to
Music Review
War and Peace
“Civilizations wearin’ thin/Like an old sad shirt.” BUTCH HANCOCK pulls no punches on his latest diatribe, WAR AND PEACE (Two Roads). Hancock emerges from his Terlingua exile with his first solo album in six years, and he’s obviously been brooding out in the desert. Those reticent to have another singer
Book Review
The Long Night of Winchell Dear
At a mere 158 pages, THE LONG NIGHT OF WINCHELL DEAR calls to mind that kvetch of the hoary Catskills resort patron: “The food is terrible—and such small portions!” To be fair, the latest from brand-name Hill Country novelist ROBERT JAMES WALLER is not terrible, but it is disappointing—slapdash and
Book Review
In a Special Light
It’s tempting to focus on ELROY BODE’s celebrations of life’s simple pleasures (birds, interesting strangers, barbershops) in this El Pasoan’s new collection of microscopically short ruminations, IN A SPECIAL LIGHT. But there is no denying the insistent melancholy (verging on depression) that gives the book grit and balance. Bode cuts
Book Review
The Lives of Rocks
Fort Worth native RICK BASS has loaded his earthy story collection, THE LIVES OF ROCKS, with three-way relationships of all stripes—platonic, romantic, familial, adversarial—and with characteristic economy of language, he mines a wide range of human emotion from these mélanges à trois. “Goats” is a gentle slapstick about two teenage
Author Interview
Douglass St. Clair Smith
The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon is—how to put this—the most unusual text most folk will ever encounter. Its Fort Worth–bred author-editor midwifed the birth of the for-profit Church of the SubGenius (“the only religion to pay its taxes”) more than 25 years ago and remains the wizard behind
Molly Ivins
“The newspaper business? I don’t mind being in a dying industry, but it really pisses me off to be in one that’s committing suicide.”
Artist Interview
Barbara Orbison
Barbara and Roy Orbison were married nineteen years before his death, in 1988. Just released are three of the legendary rocker’s classics, Crying, In Dreams, and Sings Lonely and Blue (Monument/Legacy), along with the new DVD documentary, In Dreams, which Barbara helmed as executive producer.The DVD is fascinating. It must
Web
Pat's Pick
Catalan
Juicy, very juicy. as my happily dazed friend remarked, perusing the tabletop, “There’s so much to dip your bread in that you hardly know where to reach next.” Consider yourself warned: The one thing you do not want to do at Catalan is run out of bread, lest you miss
Recipe
Seared Salmon Over Cauliflower Purée
Catalan, Houston1 large head of cauliflower, cut into pieces with stems removed 1 clove of garlic 2 cups milk 4 tablespoons olive oil salt and pepper juice from 2 preserved lemons, or use fresh lemons if you cannot find preserved 1 shallot, sliced 2 cups white wine 1 cup heavy
Books That Cook
Books That Cook
The women of the Junior League of Odessa believe there’s nothing better than “puttin’ on a pair of boots, meetin’ friends and eatin’ some good food.” And in The Wild Wild West: Cuisine From the Land of Cactus and Cowboys, the ladies show Texans how to celebrate the legends and
Web Exclusive
Douglass St. Clair Smith
The SubGenius Psychlopaedia or Slack: The Bobliographon is—how to put this—the most unusual text most folk will ever encounter.
Web Exclusive
Go Postal
Mail your friends and family holiday treats, from ham and cheese to apple cider and tamales.
Web Exclusive
Point of No Return
Senior editor Pamela Colloff on going to Sarita to see first-hand what hardships illegal immigrants face as they try to pass a South Texas checkpoint.
Web Exclusive
Playing for Keeps
Senior editor Katy Vine talks about visiting the Giddings State School, a juvenile detention facility where she observed therapists helping kids who’ve committed violent offenses wrestle their inner demons.
Web Exclusive
Mail-order Mania
Senior editor Patricia Sharpe and foodie Brooke Ferguson discuss the time, the tasting, and the tenacity involved in reviewing more than four hundred mail-order food items.
Web Exclusive
Aggieland
Senior executive editor Paul Burka on Texas A&M University president Robert Gates and his plans for change.
Miscellany
Around the State
Around the State
Jordan’s PickDallas OperaDallasLIKE SO MANY BABY BOOMERS warily approaching that milestone birthday—yes, you know which one—the Dallas Opera finds itself at the contemplative crossroads of half a century. Happily, there’s no midlife crisis in sight: Beginning this month, the venerated institution will be treating its guests to a star-strewn golden-anniversary
Editor's Letter
The Spy Who Loved Them
WHEN I MOVED TO TEXAS TO WORK for Texas Monthly in late 1991, the two words staring out at me from an upcoming cover were “Aggie Sex.” Was I on a different planet? I quickly got up to speed on what an Aggie was—sex I’d heard of—but it took me
Roar of the Crowd
Thin Ice
ABOUT YOUR SEPTEMBER COVER … As a lifetime Texan and hockey dad, I’m a bit offended. Okay, I’m over it. However, I’m wondering if you know that the state of Texas houses more pro hockey teams than any other state. I’m wondering if you know just how many kids
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