It was a year of aggrieved actors, banned boobs, Cuban commodes, DeLay denial, errant Elmo, frisky floaters, grouchy governors, hung hoopsters, immigration insensitivity, job-seeking judges, klobbered Karl, Longhorn lushes, miffed musicians, nude no-no’s, ousted Osteens, peeved passers, quarreling queens, riled Rangers, subpar sheriffs, tiny “terrorists,” unseemly URLs, vice presidential violence, wiseacre W., x-asperated x-wives, youthful yakkers, and zoo zeal.

Dan Patrick is causing nervous breakdowns of various size and duration—and he’s not even in the Texas Senate yet.

The best golf holes in Texas, according to the legends of the game.

Facing an energy crisis, Texas is on the verge of a solution that will belch about five billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the next forty years. Breathe deeply—while you still can.

Elections disappear into the history books, but the buttons and matchbooks and posters that exhorted us to vote for one candidate or another live on in our memories—and in the personal collection of the state’s biggest political junkie.

Most people from Dallas who make it big in the music business get out of town as soon as they can. “That’s what celebrities do,” Erykah Badu says. “I never wanted to be a celebrity.”

How my lifelong dream of writing a novel turned into a nightmare.

Texas versus Iowa State versus me.

What the Hispanic vote tells us.

Just a few years after nearly being written off the map, the region has become a roaring engine of growth and social transformation.

A brush with greatness.

Did The Texas Chainsaw Massacre really happen?

St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Austin.

Suzy Banks hits the roads less traveled.

Dim the Lights.

Immigration then and now.

Kenneth Cooper on getting—and staying—fit.

A few swings at Andy Roddick.

Grading the quarterbacks.

“If we advocate righteousness and if in the way we live our lives we exemplify righteousness, we are winning by doing our duty. But if we try to mandate righteousness, we are wrong.”