January 2004
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Features
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The 2004 Bum Steer Awards
It was a year of altitude-adjusting actors, bird-flipping benevolences, chili charlatans, dastardly deejays, embattled educators, flying freighty-cats, gubernatorial gallivantings, hip-hop hostilities, insatiable Isoptera, Judaically jolting jamborees, Kloroxed Kings, loblolly Leatherfaces, methodological manure-men, neuterings non grata, olé-less objets d’art, piscatorial policemen, queso quarrels, rear-end rectifyings, showboating second bananas, trio-trashing tractors, unamused über-actresses, vituperative vixens, wool-pulled-over Wal-Marts, x-coriated x-millionaires, “Yeehad” yuks, and zinged Ziggyburgers.
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What Kind of Year Was 2003?
THE ACCOMMODATIONS WEREN’T BAD, BUT THE ALPO WAS SERVED COLD Curtis Lee Robin, of Vidor, after being convicted of abusing his eleven-year-old stepson by locking him out of the house at night, thus forcing him to sleep in a doghouse, agreed to a plea bargain under which he would sleep in a doghouse for …
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eBush
Tin Bush-in-the-box with lithographed scenes of the White House that plays “Hail to the Chief” when the crank is turned, from signals.com ($29.95). Clinger shooter, a tall shot glass with a comical cast-resin figure of the prez attached, from americastore.com ($6.50). Bush Cards, a deck of poker-size playing cards with mini-bios of 52 members of …
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Robert Durst
GEA GALVESTON EMPLOYMENT AGENCY Dear Robert Durst, Recently, following your acquittal on charges of murder by shooting your neighbor, hacking up his body, and dumping his torso into Galveston Bay in a plastic bag, you applied for work at our office. Below, please find a list of jobs from our files that seem suitable to …
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McKenzie Mullins Has Cow
Which means she’s an expert at reading bovine body language, and that makes her, at the absurdly young age of thirteen—only four years after overcoming her fear of horses—one of the world’s best practitioners of the art of cutting.
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Blazing Brushstrokes
Growing up, I read scores of pulpy paperback westerns with good-guy-bad-guy actionand it was their amazing covers in gaudy, manly hues that roped me in.
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Duke of Dunbar
That would be 75-year-old Robert Hughes, who has amassed more victories while coaching in Fort Worth than anyone in high school basketball history. For most people, that would be enough.
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Showdown at Waggoner Ranch
It’s the nation’s biggest spread within the confines of a single fence—more than eight hundred square miles extending across six counties. So it’s fitting that the family feud over its future is big too. And mythic.
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Jessica Simpson
TEXAS MONTHLY ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS/ Basic Overview Of Bum Steers NAME: Jessica Simpson Level 1 Reality Comprehension DIRECTIONS. Read the story. Then read each question and fill in the circle for the answer you choose. DITSY DOLLY Once upon a time there was a poor little Texas girl named …
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Columns
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Rio de Enero
When the San Antonio River’s downtown stretches are drained for a week each January, the crowds may ebb too. But it’s a perfect time to discover the waterway’s more natural side.
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Don’t Look Yao
Led by the NBA’s most inadvertently colorful coach, this year’s Houston Rockets are so much more than an excuse to see a certain ninety-inch-tall Chinese import.
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Stock Tips
After years of writing about chefs, I wanted to get a taste of what it’s like to be one—which is how I found myself browning veal knuckle bones at the fastest-growing cooking school in Texas.
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A Giant Void
Master of the Senate.
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Reporter
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Andy Roddick
Andy Roddick avoids Tracy Austin Syndrome.
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Eternal Flame
What do you do if your university’s administrators extinguish your Bonfire? If you’re Aggies, you take the show on the road.
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Web
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Books That Cook
Quite often, those of us in urban areas get so caught up in the race for trendy foodstuffs and recreating fancy restaurant meals that we forget about the simple things that taste great. The Junior League of Amarillo reminds us that the food we crave may start with a can of cream of mushroom soup …
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On The Road
CAT’S MEOW “Where the heck is that?” everybody said when I announced I was headed to Carol’s at Cat Spring. Good question. Physically, the historic German community (population: 76) is some fifty miles west of Houston. Spiritually, it’s in a world of its own. Winds rustle the live oaks, empty horse trailers go rattling by, …
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Zoë-Italian
The new Fort Worth ristorante Zoë-Italian is molto bene.
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Homemade Apple Butter
This recipe makes a tart, intensely flavored sauce that goes well with meats like pork chops. 6 pounds Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced 2 1/2 cups red-wine vinegar 2 cups brown sugar, packed 1 tablespoon minced lemon zest 1 tablespoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon allspice 1/2 teaspoon cloves 1/2 teaspoon salt In a saucepan …
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Bum Books
These titles are sure to get a laugh—or at least a smile—from even the most somber bookworms.
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Aggie Land
Senior editor Pamela Colloff talks about the typical A&M student, chivalry, and Aggie spirit.
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Bum Gifts
Twenty titter-producing trinkets and toys, from a Leatherface action figure and a Houston Texans Christmas Village to a Texas Shriner doll and a snap-on longneck top for boring ol’ cans.
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Rockets Man
Houston Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson on new head coach Jeff Van Gundy, Yao Ming, and the game.
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Whoop!
Photographer O. Rufus Lovett talks about capturing Aggie spirit on film.
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The Funnies
Senior executive editor Paul Burka and senior editor Anne Dingus discuss this year’s Bum Steer Awards.
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Texas Tidbits
San Antonio is home to the Alamo, which draws more than 2.5 million visitors a year, but did you know that the city also boasts the state’s first modern art museum?
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Open-Faced Ravioli and Balsamic Roasted Chicken With Black Olive-Tomato Butter
From Zoë-Italian, Fort Worth
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Texas History 101
The Alamo is a symbol of Texas’s independence, but it also was part of the largest concentration of Catholic missions in North America.
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Happy Trails
Comfort is surprisingly different from other Hill Country towns. In fact, it has a cosmopolitan feel. Maybe that’s why it has attracted so many urban refugees.
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La Mexicana’s Rosca de Reyes
We have adopted this recipe from La Mexicana Bakery for the home baker.
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Season’s Eating
A Moment Of Epiphany After you’re done with turtledoves, maids-a-milking, and the other ten days of Christmas, you can celebrate el Día de Reyes (Epiphany) on January 6. Commemorating the day the magi arrived bearing gifts for the infant Jesus, the Day of the Kings is observed in Latin cultures with the making and eating …
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Miscellany
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Portrait of a Lady
Nellie Connally, now and always.
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The Wanderer
My Jerry Jeff Walker.
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STRAIGHT TALK
THE DEFENSE NEVER RESTS Harvard law professor and criminal-defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, whose list of clients has included Patty Hearst, Michael Milken, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, and O. J. Simpson, will be speaking in Austin on January 15. There seem to be a lot of high-profile cases going on all at once: Kobe, Scott Peterson, …
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ON STAGE
PLAY DATE The last time I went to the theater? Well, that would have been for a production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—four years ago. I can hear the collective rolling over of dead playwrights in their graves upon an admission of such neglect. So, in the spirit of the New Year, when …
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GOING BATTY
POW! Funny that during the winter, when Austin’s famous colony of Mexican free-tailed bats has migrated to Mexico, allusions to the chiropterans take wing. On January 8, the Alamo Drafthouse, in Austin, will screen the original 1966 Batman movie, starring Adam West and Burt Ward. The Alamo hopes to show the film, which was released …
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A GREAT WEEKEND IN FORT WORTH
WOW TOWN It isn’t often that you find world-famous museums down the street from a high school football stadium. But that’s Fort Worth—it has something for everyone. And from January 22 through 25, the offerings are especially fine, beginning Thursday night with a concert by progressive-country rocker Jerry Jeff Walker at the Bass Performance Hall …
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