Jordan Mackay

Sep 17, 2015 — By Jordan Mackay

A decade and a half after I wrote about the poor quality of Texas wines for this magazine, Lone Star vintners are starting to turn heads.

Jan 20, 2013 — By Jordan Mackay

He’s no Seinfeld. He’s not even Jeff Foxworthy. But Galveston native Bill Engvall is a successful stand-up comic, and one day, just maybe, he’ll get a sitcom of his own.

Jan 20, 2013 — By Jordan Mackay

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…

Jan 20, 2013 — By Patricia Sharpe, Anne Dingus, Jordan Mackay, Pamela Colloff, Paul Burka, Suzy Banks and garrettwebergale

From a boutique hotel in hip South Austin to a bed-and-breakfast across the Mexican border, from fly fishing on the Llano River to bathing in the Chinati Hot Springs, 33 getaways the guidebooks don’t tell you about, courtesy of our intrepid staff of weekend warriors.

Jan 20, 2013 — By Jordan Mackay

Why Troy Aikman shouldn't retire.

Jan 20, 2013 — By Jordan Mackay

Hot hurdling in Giddings, super six-man football in Gordon: Ten towns that got game.

Feb 1, 2001 — By Jordan Mackay

This is the ninth and final installment of a series of updates on the Dallas Mavericks season.

Jan 1, 2001 — By Jordan Mackay

Thursday, January 18, 2001 After enduring a three-game losing streak—with two of the three coming at home—the Mavs bounced back Wednesday night with a big win at Charlotte. Notching the win took a three-pointer from Howard Eisley, a name we have not heard as much as we expected to this…

Dec 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Assisitant editor Jordan Mackay charts the Dallas Mavericks season - visit every week for updates and commentary.

Dec 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

The Dallas Mavericks have a new owner and a new attitude, but they have no real plan to make themselves the kings of the court. I do.

Nov 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Cedric Benson of the Midland Lee Rebels has a cause: He may just be the greatest running back in Texas 5A history.

Sep 30, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Two-four-six-eight, who do we appreciate? San Antonio businessman Jack DeVere, whose collection of Texas football memorabilia evokes a simpler, more innocent time.

Sep 30, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Test assistant editor Jordan Mackay's knowledge of Texas wine—his piece, "Sour Grapes," about the state of the Texas wine industry, ran in this issue.

Sep 30, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

For nearly 25 years the state's wineries have struggled to mature. Will Texas wines ever go well with anything?

Aug 31, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Producing results.

Aug 31, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Can SMU football come back from the dead by building a $56 million stadium?

Jul 31, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Texas high school coaches rush ahead for the big bucks.

Apr 30, 2000 — By Eileen Schwartz, Joe Nick Patoski, Jordan Mackay, Katy Vine, John Morthland, John Spong, John Ratliff and Michael Hall

The places, people and stories behind Texas music.

Apr 30, 2000 — By Eileen Schwartz, Joe Nick Patoski, Jordan Mackay and John Spong

Meet the senior class of what might be called Texas Music U. — four up-and-coming acts that should graduate to the big time.

Apr 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

Rashard Lewis may have left his Texas hometown for the NBA at a frighteningly young age, but he's no Leon Smith.

Mar 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

What two college track coaches in Houston are teaching speedsters there—and everywhere—about going for Olympic gold.

Jan 1, 2000 — By Jordan Mackay

A fraternity, a bid-night party, a random act of violence, an unnatural end: the life and death of Southwest Texas State University junior Nick Armstrong.

Nov 1, 1999 — By Jordan Mackay

Laugh not, wretch, at the man in the tights: Twenty-five years after George Coulam founded the Texas Renaissance Festival, it hath been a big success.

Aug 31, 1999 — By Jordan Mackay

This year’s model.

Apr 30, 1999 — By Jordan Mackay

Baylor University gets sued by one of its own.

Jan 1, 1999 — By Jordan Mackay

The New York Times takes on Texas—again.

Dec 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Soft drinks in our public schools.

Dec 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Texas seems to have a town named for every place in the world. There’s Paris, Turkey, London, Athens—you get the idea. But when we say that two illustrators featured in this month’s issue, Henrik Drescher and Olaf Hajek, are from New Zealand and Berlin, respectively, understand that we really mean…

Nov 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Bruce McGill played D-Day, the biker with the handlebar mustache, in the classic comedy Animal House. Twenty years later, he’s still a character.

Sep 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Brian Benben goes after men-men for CBS

Sep 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

In August 1973 Jan Reid was published for the first time in Texas Monthly in what was the seventh issue. On April 20, 1998, he was shot by bandits during a robbery in Mexico City. In between, he wrote countless articles for countless publications, earning his reputation as one of…

Sep 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Angie Harmon is disappointed to leave so many unpicked cherry tomatoes in her back yard in California, but she’s had to move to New York to tend to her own Miracle Grow–style success story. That’s where Law and Order films, and this season the 26-year-old Dallas native is the newest…

Aug 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Any NBA forward will tell you that it’s hard to get good position on Dennis Rodman, so it’s no surprise to hear the same thing from photographer Blake Little, who shot this month’s cover. From the moment the Chicago Bulls star arrived at SmashBox Studios in Culver City, California, Little…

Aug 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

He writes legal thrillers, he is a practicing lawyer, and he has been at it since 1990—one year longer than John Grisham. But even if San Antonio’s Jay Brandon hasn’t matched the success of the author of The Firm and The Pelican Brief, he logs remarkably good sales and keeps…

Jul 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

What kind of person would be best at figuring out how to spend $295,000? A poet, of course. That kind of money might be chump change to Charles Barkley, but to the prototypical starving artist, it’s a lot of stanzas. Or it will be for University of Houston English professor…

Jul 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

A professional photographer since the early seventies, David Stoecklein has devoted the past fifteen years to lovingly recording archetypes of the American West—and although he lives in Idaho, he has spent much of that time shooting Texas for coffee-table books such as Don’t Fence Me In, Images of the Spirit…

Jun 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Borgnine: The word itself is barrel-chested, glaring, grotesque. And has a name ever been so suggestive of a face? Known for cinematic classics like From Here to Eternity and Marty (for which he won an Academy award in 1955), Ernest Borgnine last worked in Texas in the mid-fifties, when he…

Jun 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

In ten years as a professional photographer for publications like the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Texas Monthly, Danny Turner has shot his share of heavyweight politicians, from Al Gore to Ann Richards, and they have often been tough to shoot. “Sometimes you can only take as good a…

May 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Things get woolly for the state’s mohair producers.

May 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

The first commandment of fiction writing is: Show, don’t tell. Rick Bass knows it well, though he still struggled through many drafts before finishing his first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be (Houghton Mifflin, $25), which will be published this month. “Paint the images and trust the readers to…

May 31, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

SUNBURNED AND HUNGRY after a day of tubing down the Guadalupe, you head back to Austin for dinner at one of your favorite Tex-Mex restaurants—a garish, festive joint called Chuy’s. You are seated and slurping on a margarita when you spot a striking man in a nearby booth. A little…

Apr 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Their film festivals are one of the state’s feature presentations.

Apr 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

The bigger you get, the more people complain about you. That’s the sad fact of life La Mafia is learning to accept. In February the Houston sextet won their second consecutive Grammy, for best Mexican American/tejano music performance, and they’ve just released La Mafia: Hits de Colección, Vol. 1 (Sony…

Apr 30, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

The first film Texas Monthly deputy editor Evan Smith ever saw was A Boy Named Charlie Brown. That was in 1969, when he was only three. But Snoopy, Lucy, and the gang must have had a potent effect because film has been a steady and powerful presence in Smith’s life…

Apr 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

We all know how great the World Wide Web is for snooping: In a few minutes online you learn Hollywood’s secrets from Harry Knowles’ site or get the latest dirt on the president from Matt Drudge. But did you ever consider that people could be looking over your shoulder when…

Apr 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Except for the time she spent as a police officer in Plano and Tyler—when she couldn’t get past the “emotional shutdown” required by the job—Kim Wozencraft has always been a writer. She kept a journal as a child, as a student at Richland College in Dallas, and later, during a…

Mar 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

The best Texas CEOs.

Mar 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

Is there a black cloud hanging over Fort Worth’s Toadies? You might think so based on the alt-rock band’s recent history. Their major-label debut for Interscope, 1994’s Rubberneck—a painfully angst-ridden record—went platinum after two years of incessant touring, but some strange stuff happened during all that time on the road:…

Mar 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

BEFORE SHE BEGAN putting together finely detailed service pieces for magazines like this one, Suzy Banks was occupied with another kind of construction. “I graduated from college in 1981 with a useless degree in film, but I didn’t want to leave Texas,” says the 39-year-old, who lives in Dripping Springs,…

Jan 1, 1998 — By Jordan Mackay

HE MAY LOVE the smell of napalm in the morning, but Robert Duvall also has a certain affection for Texas. Over the years, some of his best-known films have been made here, including Tender Mercies (1983) and Lonesome Dove (1989). Now the 67-year-old has returned to the state again for…