All posts by John Bloom

John Bloom is an investigative reporter, essayist, and actor who was born in Dallas; raised in Little Rock, Arkansas; and attended Vanderbilt University on a sportswriting scholarship. Bloom began his writing career in Texas, earning two National Magazine Award nominations for Texas Monthly. He was later fired from the Dallas Times-Herald for writing (as “Joe Bob Briggs”) a parody of the then-popular song, “We Are The World.” Joe Bob Briggs began his television career on the Movie Channel, hosting “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater” for nine years. During this time, it became TMC’s highest-rated show, earning two ACE award nominations. He hosted TNT’s “Monstervision” program and is currently at work on an autobiographical screenplay.

January 21, 2013

Love and Death in Silicon Prairie, Part I: Candy Montgomery’s Affair

By Jim Atkinson and John Bloom

Urban refugees fleeing high-tech Dallas have created ersatz rural communities in the nearby countryside. This isolated, pastoral life sometimes erupts into adultery and murder.
January 21, 2013

Love and Death in Silicon Prairie, Part II: The Killing of Betty Gore

By Jim Atkinson and John Bloom

Candy Montgomery thought her affair with Allan Gore was over, until she found herself fighting for her life against Allan’s wife.
February 1, 2006

Home Movies

By John Bloom

From Red River to Rushmore, the 25 best Texas films on DVD.
November 1, 2004

They Came. They Sawed.

By John Bloom

And they most definitely conquered. The inside story of how a ragtag bunch of hippies made the wildest Texas movie ever (and spilled no more fake blood than was absolutely necessary).
April 30, 1982

Gimmie Silver

By John Bloom

Beyond Greed is the tale of the Hunts’ journey from silver spoon to silver lust. In Sing Me Back Home Merle Haggard takes a quick look at his life (too quick). Billy Clayton has Gavels, Grit & Glory--or so says his biographer.
March 1, 1982

The Writer Stumbles

By John Bloom

Celebrity is Thomas Thompson’s flawed venture into fiction; The Last Texas Hero deserves a twenty-yard penalty; Peeper is to be read only to find out who the real Tom is.
November 1, 1981

The Fundamentalist

By John Bloom

He’s the man with the Word, and the Word is for you.
September 30, 1981

Waste Makes Money

By John Bloom

In With No Fear of Failure you’ll learn how you, too, can turn rags into riches. Daddy’s Girl knows Southern discomfort. Petroleum Politics and the Texas Railroad Commission is the history of our own little OPEC.
August 31, 1981

One Woman’s Tiny Problem Confronts Dallas City Hall

By John Bloom

Vesta Cawley turned to the city bureaucracy for help with a problem that didn’t matter to any of the other 900,000 residents of Dallas. But it should have mattered more to city hall.
August 31, 1981

Carl Lewis and the Exquisite Science of Jumping

By John Bloom

All this twenty-year-old University of Houston student wants to do is jump father and run faster than anyone else ever has.