As he readies himself for this summer's Tour de France, the two-time winner is battling allegations in Europe and elsewhere that he uses performance-enhancing drugs. He insists he is clean. But proving that is turning out to be one of his toughest challenges yet. He doesn't use performance-enhancing drugs, he
From the moment he first held a guitar pick, Charlie Sexton was said to be on the road to stardom, but high praise and high cheekbones haven’t kept him from stumbling along the way.
The L.A. life of a girl from Burleson (or, You can take Kelly Clarkson out of Texas . . .).
What did Graham Greene observe about crossing the border into Mexico in 1938? Would you believe Molly Ivins was born in California? Here are my picks for the fifty greatest literary moments in Texas, plus a roster of leading lights who are from here—and some who aren't.
Dobie, Bedichek, and Webb were the leading Texas writers and intellectuals of their age. But as ribald raconteurs, they were ahead of their time.
Although some might consider the Kilgore Rangerettes an anachronism, every summer dozens of fresh-faced teens from around the state flock to East Texas to perfect a seemingly effortless hat-brim-touching high kick—and preserve one of the state’s great traditions.
Good, clean sex, brought to you by high-kicking, rosy-cheeked Texas gals.
“The only way you hit that next level in terms of film persona is to let go and accept the fact that, for better or worse, you’re all you’ve got . . . The camera’s not as concerned with what you are can do as who you are.”
When my friend Tom Huckabee and I were seventeen, we pooled our money and bought a new Kodak Ektasound Super-8 system. One of the first films we made was a black and white pseudodocumentary called Victory at Auschwitz, which we shot in the old train yard off West Vickery in
After more than two decades in the movie business—including star turns in Apollo 13, Twister, and now his own Traveller—Fort Worth’s Bill Paxton is finally getting what’s coming to him.
Most modern Texans are far removed from the land and legend of the West, but as the photos prove, they cherish it still.
The SeasonFor many hunters, Labor Day weekend is synonymous with the soft coos of the mourning dove. Every year, roughly 350,000 people in Texas are seduced by this avian siren song and harvest about five million of the four-ounce birds—that’s about 30 percent of the total number shot in the
Until he overdosed in November, he was one of the most influential cultural figures in Texas, the master of a scene fueled by drugs and his own brilliant, eccentric music.
Redford, shmedford: If you think the aging Hollywood hunk is anything like the prototypical horse whisperer, you haven’t met Del Rio native Ernesto Rojas Serna.
An ambitious, sometimes bewildering, debut novel about Czech Texas.
When a world-class athlete like Austin’s Lance Armstrong gets cancer, it’s a shock—for him, and for every man who has ever considered himself invincible.
“There are some places where it wouldn’t matter if Pope Benedict XVI was winning the Tour. They would kill him. They would say he cheats, he steals, he has sex with little boys.”
Whether or not Erykah Badu is the Billie Holiday of hip-hop, her uplifting songs and soulful singing are winning fans from coast to coast.
More than two decades after he arrived in Austin, Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson still reigns as the king of swing.
More Lenny Bruce than Jerry Seinfeld, Hicks wins fans by showing them his dark side.
Is Friday Night Lights the best TV show ever made about Texas? Or just the first one (sorry, J.R.! Sorry, Hank!) that’s tried so hard to get the details right?
Twenty-five years ago, Larry McMurtry published a novel called Lonesome Dove—and Texas hasn’t looked the same since. Listen in as more than thirty writers, critics, producers, and actors, from Peter Bogdonavich and Dave Hickey to Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Duvall, and Anjelica Huston, tell the stories behind the book (and
Barry CorbinGrowing up in Lubbock, I didn’t want to be a real cowboy, because I knew a bunch of them and they didn’t get paid anything and they were hurt all the time. But I wanted to play one in the movies. My favorite early on was Bill Elliott, and
“You have to have action, you have to have humor, and you have to have emotional situations. And you have no time to waste. You have to get it all in there economically.”
Lone Ranger.
An animated personality.
We used to be known for running backs, but all of a sudden, we’re famous for producing some of the country’s best passers, from Drew Brees to Colt McCoy. What turned our high school football programs into quarterback factories?
Texas football heroes Darrell Royal, Doak Walker, Sammy Baugh, and John David Crow are off the field, but they’re still having a ball.
Ty and Koy Detmer were South Texas high school football heroes. Now they’re NFL quarterbacks. They owe it all to their father, a coaching whiz everybody calls Sonny.
Texas high school football may be in decline, but filmmakers still want to play.
Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of integration, he was the football star at my mostly white high school in Wichita Falls. Not much has gone right for him since.
Die-hard fans of America’s Team are debating that very question as we speak—and also wondering if the kid from Wisconsin with the buxom distraction can take them to the Super Bowl any faster than, say, Gary Hogeboom did.
I wish I were in the land of Cotton (Bowl).
How did the University of Texas build the most successful college sports program in history? One visionary coach at a time. One world-class athlete at a time. One state-of-the-art stadium at a time. And with an ambitious, aggressive business model that’s the envy of its rivals everywhere.
A cool, brilliantly blue day in early February found me driving north from Austin on a sort of pilgrimage. I was going to see John Graves, the writer and gentleman farmer, now 73 years old, at his place on four hundred acres of rocky blackland prairie near Glen Rose.My visit
In this excerpt from Means of Ascent, the shy, withdrawn young wife of Lyndon Johnson reveals a presence and command that took everyone by surprise—including her husband.
You can lead a herd to water, but can you make a miniseries faithful to Larry McMurtry’s Texas classic?
The opening scenes of Lonesome Dove take place at the Hat Creek Cattle Company, a small ranch in Lonesome Dove, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande. Hat Creek is operated by two old Texas Rangers, the taciturn Woodrow Call and the talkative Augustus “Gus” McCrae. Among their hands are
Forty years after its publication, Horseman, Pass By is still one of Larry McMurtry's finest novelsand as groundbreaking as J. D. Salinger's masterpiece.
Wring your hands, cut your wrists, do anything, but just listen to how Kinky can sing.
“Kids used to be so excited just to have an opportunity to play. Now I see more of a mentality of entitlement: ‘I’m a tremendous athlete, so you owe me this.”
Rock and Country music met in Austin. That friendship may make the state.
The head of the Texas Film Commission hustles Hollywood movie-makers into putting more of Texas in the can.
A new collection of Keith Carter’s photographs captures the magical mojo of East Texas.
Photographer Keith Carter’s latest pet project reminds me of big Texas dogs I’ve owned—some clownish, some serious, but every one of them great.
Larry L. King is at work on a novel about minor league baseball in Texas in the fifties. Breaking Balls is a fictionalized account of his experiences covering the “miserable 144-game schedule” of the Midland Indians as a $55-a-week reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram in 1951. “I went to all
Our selections for some of the best contemporary Texas books.
As Sandra Scofield, Shelby Hearon, and Janet Peery are proving, you don’t have to live in Texas to be a Texas writer.
The moment that members of the tejano band David Lee Garza y Los Musicales saw a poster by San Antonian John Dyer, they knew they had found the photographer for their next album. “We wanted more than just a face on a cover,” says bassist Richard Garza, “and his poster
When Selena Quintanilla Perez was killed on March 31, Texas mourned—and around the world, the veneration began.
