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March 2010

  • Features

    • Feature

      Hook’d

      By

      The Longhorns may have lost the BCS National Championship on the hallowed field of the Rose Bowl, but they gained something almost as important: a long-lost fan.

    • Feature

      The Bucket List

      By , , , , and

      63 things that all Texans must do before they die.

    • Feature

      Alex Jones Is About To Explode

      By

      Does the country’s most popular conspiracy talk radio host really believe that 9/11 was an inside job? That global warming is a plot cooked up by the World Bank? That an elite cabal wants to kill most of the people on the planet (including you)? Two million listeners think so—and they’re hanging on his every word.

    • Feature

      Three Chords and A Station Wagon

      By

      In the years before anyone had heard of Woodstock or Altamont, teenagers across Texas started bands in their parents’ garages, banging out earnest rock songs on cheap equipment and hoping to hit it big at the local skating rink or VFW post. For some, those dreams won’t fade away.

  • Columns

    • Letter From Houston

      Out and About

      By

      Annise Parker, the newly elected mayor of Houston, is ready to discuss any of the challenges facing her city. That will happen as soon as everyone else is ready to stop talking about her sexuality.

    • Behind the Lines

      Center of Gravity

      By

      Who can challenge Republicans on the State Board of Education? A different kind of Republican.

    • The Texanist

      The Texanist

      By

      The trouble with black beans, an unnatural attachment to Texas license plates, the perils of striking up a conversation in the restroom, and the discomfort of two men riding together on the same Harley.

    • John Phillip Santos

      Two Burials

      By

      Today my grandfather is buried in a family plot in Laredo. But to understand who he was and what his family was like, you have to know the story of his first burial, seventy miles away and nearly twenty years earlier.

  • Reporter

    • Street Smarts

      Amarillo

      By

      On (and off) Route 66, Amarillo.

    • Artist Interview

      Augie Meyers

      By

      The 69-year-old San Antonio keyboardist used his Vox organ to bridge the gap between sixties psychedelia and Tex-Mex and gave the Sir Douglas Quintet its signature sound. In 1990 he and his Quintet bandmate Doug Sahm joined Freddy Fender and Flaco Jiménez to launch the Texas Tornados, a band that lasted until Sahm’s death from …

    • Music Review

      Bare Knuckle

      By

      Contemporary blues is a bit of a wasteland, yet those chanting the “blues is dead” mantra should check out Guitar Shorty. Though his time in the state was brief, the seventy-year-old Houston-born, Florida-raised guitarist and singer (real name: David Kearney) was an early proponent of the kind of explosive, gritty Texas blues rock later championed …

    • Music Review

      Be Brave

      By

      Their 2009 debut album was the ultimate in hipster fodder, but Austin’s the Strange Boys instantly stood out from the garage-rock-revivalist hordes. Sure, they and their peers all dug the same sixties records and vintage gear, but The Strange Boys and Girls Club wasn’t slavishly derivative. It aspired to be nothing other than what it …

    • Author Interview

      A Q&A with Robert Perkinson

      By

      The author of Texas Tough on the state’s criminal justice system.

    • Book Review

      Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic

      By

      In 1929 Dallas teenager Virginia Thompson fell into a fevered sleep for 180 days. Eighty years later that familial legend helped inspire granddaughter Molly Caldwell Crosby’s book Asleep, an investigation into the baffling disease known as sleeping sickness (technically, encephalitis lethargica). The affliction’s symptoms are unnerving to contemplate: Victims may fall into a stone-faced catatonia …

    • Book Review

      Next

      By

      James Hynes’s unsettling fifth novel, Next, captures eight hours in the life of “melancholy middle-aged” Kevin Quinn as he sneaks away from Ann Arbor to Austin for a clandestine job interview. Quinn is a bundle of neuroses—he’s worried about a recent spate of terrorist bombings, stalled in his editorial position at the University of Michigan, …

    • Hollywood, TX

      Action Heroes

      By

      Four filmmakers to watch in 2010.

    • Object Lesson

      Michael Hsu’s Garage

      By

      Michael Hsu’s garage.

    • Working Life

      Andrew R. Espinosa Jr., Process Server

      By

      Espinosa, a lifetime Houstonian, has been serving legal papers—summonses, subpoenas, complaints, writs—to people facing court action for the past sixteen years. He is an owner and the director of civil process at Court Record Research. I kind of fell into this. Around 1989, I had picked up a job with a small company that did …

    • The Horse's Mouth

      Being a Rodeo Cowboy

      By

      Trevor Brazile on being a rodeo cowboy.

    • The Manual

      How to Tie a Texas Rig

      By

      Modern-day bass fishing owes its enormous popularity to two game-changing events. First, in 1949, Nick Creme rocked the angler community with the creation of the plastic bait worm. Roughly ten years later a fisherman on Lake Tyler, weary of snagging his hooks on submerged timber and vegetation, speared a plastic worm on his hook in …

  • Web

  • Miscellany

    • Contributors

      Contributors

      By

      Nate Blakeslee, Dan Cosgrove, and Lauren Greenfield

    • Roar of the Crowd

      DeLayed Reaction

      By

      After picking up the mail and happily opening Christmas cards, I looked down and saw Tom DeLay on the cover of texas monthly [January 2010]. I almost threw up. But as I read that it was time for the Bum Steer Awards, I just thought, “What a great choice.” Kudos to you all. Donna Kelly …

    • Editor's Letter

      Cover Me

      By

      Willie’s done it seven times. So has George W. Bush. Ross Perot and Troy Aikman have each done it four times. Kinky Friedman has done it three times (twice dressed as a woman). Lance Armstrong, Ann Richards, Rick Perry, and Selena have also done it three times (and pssst: Selena will do it again in …