Contributors

Jordan Mackay

76 Articles

Profile|
January 20, 2013

TV or Not TV?

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.

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Books|
January 20, 2013

King of Diamonds

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

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Travel & Outdoors|
January 20, 2013

Great Escapes

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.

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Patricia Sharpe's Profile Photo
Patricia Sharpe

Patricia Sharpe writes a regular restaurant column, Pat’s Pick, for Texas Monthly.

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Sports|
January 20, 2013

Sports

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

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Eat My Words|
August 22, 2011

Secrets of the (Texas) Sommeliers

(Editor's Note: This guest post about last week's Texas Sommelier Conference comes from San Francisco food, wine and spirits writer Jordan Mackay, a James Beard Award-winning author for his 2010 book with Rajat Parr, "Secrets of the Sommeliers." But we

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Basketball Diary|
February 1, 2001

Basketball Diary

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

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Sports|
February 1, 2001

Drew Carries On

Sixteen years after a car crash ended his football career, former Cowboys star Drew Pearson is a team player again—in the XFL.

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Basketball Diary|
January 1, 2001

The Basketball Diary

Thursday, January 18, 2001After 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 year,

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Web Exclusive|
December 1, 2000

The Basketball Diary

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

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Sports|
December 1, 2000

On the Rebound

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.

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Sports|
November 1, 2000

West Texas Tornado

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

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Sports|
October 1, 2000

Get With the Program

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.

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Food and Drink|
September 30, 2000

Sour Grapes

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

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Reporter|
August 31, 2000

Horse Play

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

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Sports|
April 1, 2000

Straight Shooter

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

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Sports|
March 1, 2000

The Running Men

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

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Feature|
January 1, 2000

A Murder on Campus

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.

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Profile|
November 1, 1999

Renaissance Man

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.

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The Inside Story|
December 1, 1998

International Males

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

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Film|
November 1, 1998

Whereabouts Known

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.

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T V Talk|
September 30, 1998

This Year’s Model

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

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The Inside Story|
September 30, 1998

Reid All About It

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

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The Inside Story|
August 31, 1998

Little, Big Man

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

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Books|
August 31, 1998

Holding Court

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

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The Culture|
July 31, 1998

Day of the Ed

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

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The Inside Story|
July 31, 1998

Movers and Acres

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

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Film & TV|
June 30, 1998

Ernest Goes to Texas

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

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The Inside Story|
June 30, 1998

Oh, Danny Boy

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

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Books|
May 31, 1998

Bass, Master

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

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Books|
May 31, 1998

Bond Plays On

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

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Music|
April 30, 1998

Sour Grupos

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

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The Stand Up Desk|
April 30, 1998

An Evan Smithee Production

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

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News & Politics|
April 1, 1998

Snoop Dreams

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

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Books|
April 1, 1998

Arts and Wozencraft

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

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Music|
March 1, 1998

Toad Warriors

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:

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