In nearly thirty years as a small-town Texas newspaperman—the last twelve as the owner and publisher of the Zapata County News—Bob McVey has survived a lawsuit, a bullet shot through his living room window, and a couple of attempted boycotts, but nothing compares with the time he was pummeled by an elderly sheriff. One morning in 1987 McVey dropped by the sheriff’s office to ask about a Mexican commercial fisherman who had been arrested the night before on the American side of the Rio Grande.

“THIS IS MY REWARD for living a good life having rich friends,” Liz Smith says, settling in after a butler-cooked breakfast at the Bel-Air, California, abode of her best friend, director Joel Schumacher. Things do, indeed, look good: Lemons are ripening on a tree in the garden, the slate-lined pool is glistening, and the sky is a smoky Los Angeles blue.

WHEN CHRIS ROBERTS STARTED his own computer-game design company, Digital Anvil, earlier this year, the news flashed across few screens outside the computer industry. But techies everywhere paid attention. Within the software world Roberts is a legend of sorts, having developed the popular Wing Commander series for his longtime employer, Origin Systems.

THE DEATH NOTICE of James M. “Jaime” Woodson III, 76, known to friends and relatives as the most extraordinary writer Fort Worth has ever produced, sparked a flurry of literary correspondence not seen in these parts since Clifford Irving fooled the world about Howard Hughes. Dallasite Blackie Sherrod clipped Woodson’s obituary from the May 11 Fort Worth Star-Telegram and faxed it to Dan Jenkins in Florida. Jenkins faxed it to Bud Shrake in Austin. Shrake faxed it across town to me.

IF MULTIMEDIA were a competitive sport, Archimedia Interactive would have a shot at the gold. The Dallas company recently released 1996 U.S. Olympic Team ($29.95), the official CD-ROM of the summer games, which can be purchased in stores or on the World Wide Web (www.olympiccdrom.com).

Call it MTV—as in Molly Ivins. Fans of the brassy Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist probably know that CBS has hired her for a slot on the weekly newsmagazine 60 Minutes, where she’ll pick over issues of the day with fellow flame-fanners P. J. O’Rourke and Stanley Crouch. Less well known, however, are her plans to conquer daily television.

WYATT ROBERTS, THE RADIO TALK SHOW HOST AND cultural watchdog, will tell you that he has been leading a crusade against sin and perversion, but to most of his critics, he simply has a thing about gays and lesbians. Certainly he has taken on the issue of homosexuality with particular vigor of late. His main target has been The Texas Triangle, a statewide newspaper for gays and lesbians. Last December, Roberts organized a boycott of the Triangle’s advertisers on the grounds that the paper’s content is offensive.

ON THE WEEKEND BEFORE Thanksgiving at San Antonio’s Rose Palace, Jerry Long waits for the green “go” light at Booger Barter’s World Championship Team Roping Finals, but he is at a bit of a disadvantage compared with the thousand other cowboys competing for a whopping $40,000 first prize: Long is blind, so he doesn’t even know where the go light is, much less if it’s green.

I FLATTER MYSELF THAT I KNOW A BIT about Texas food. I think about it all the time, I’ve been writing about it for more than twenty years, and I have judged everything from chili cookoffs to a cookie chill-off (it was refrigerated desserts — don’t ask). But during the past year, I discovered to my chagrin that a whole new area had opened up about which I was totally clueless: food on the Internet.