Austinite Elizabeth Crook builds a sumptuous, surprise-filled third novel, The Night Journal (Viking), on six volumes of diaries by fictional New Mexico protofeminist Hannah Bass. The handwritten notebooks from the 1890’s have become the quiet battlefield in a cross-generational war between Bassie, the daughter who edited them into a
Living proof that moms shouldn’t take the SAT.
February—People, Places, Events, Attractions02.11.2006“TWO WOMEN LOOK WEST: PHOTOGRAPHS OF KING RANCH BY HELEN C. KLEBERG AND TONI FRISSELL,” a dual exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, takes us back this month to the glory years of the King Ranch, when it was the biggest, richest, and most glamorous
From Stephan Pyles Restaurant in Dallas.
Even though my mom never allowed us to eat at restaurants attached to gas stations, I figured she might make an exception for George W.’s hangout in Crawford.
The flagship Whole Foods store in Austin is very different from the new Cabela’s in Buda. They don’t sell the same merchandise, and they don’t target the same customers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some comparison shopping.
The Mier expedition was the most ill-fated of the raiding expeditions from Texas into Mexico.
Associate editor Katy Vine on writing about the Wernecke family’s struggles in court and their daughter’s fight against Hodgkin’s disease.
Associate art director T. J. Tucker on co-designing this year’s Bum Steer Awards.
Senior editor Michael Hall talks about researching DNA testing, visiting a DNA lab in North Texas, and pursuing justice.
Writer-at-large Jan Reid on entrepreneur Richard Garriott and commercial space flights.
Humorist Rich Malley on being clever, writing headlines, and putting together Bum Steers.
Read more letters about the November issue.
Texans for Lawsuit Reform responds to our November 2005 article; we respond to the organization’s response.
Name Crime Accused Of Year Convicted Idientified by Victim Year Exonerated By DNA Gilbert Alejandro rape 1990 Yes 1994 A. B. Butler rape 1983 Yes 2000 Kevin Byrd rape 1985 Yes 1997
Rethinking the way we do business—and government—down here.
Jason LeeYou might think that texas monthly deserves its own Bum Steer for not using a Texan to create this month’s cover image, but it’s hard to argue with the results of Jason Lee’s work. The New Yorker (by way of Rhode Island) used a computerized 3-D technique to
Everything I Could Ever Tell You About …
“Any idea you can think up and plan out isn’t going to be that good. There’s no way I could have thought up all of Holes beforehand.”
Your November 2005 article [“Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!”], ostensibly on tort reform, was disappointing in its limited and biased coverage of the litigation reforms of the past decade, the grassroots movement that generated those reforms, and the improvements in Texas law and society that the reforms
Last fall, Kim Wallace, of Brenner’s Steakhouse, in Houston, aced her exam to win the first-ever Texas’ Best Sommeliers Award, given by the Texas Sommelier Association. Did you grow up in a family that drank wine? Not really. My grandmother did not drink or smoke, and she would be spinning
When Dallas überchef Stephan Pyles ditched the daily grind in 2000, after selling his Star Canyon restaurants, fans wondered if they’d ever see him again. It’s been more than five years, but he is back, with a splashy new space—including a bar (pictured), where you can also eat—and a
1974BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS FLORAL BOUQUET To Janey Briscoe for her statement to the housewife whose Plainview home had been completely devastated by a tornado. Standing outside gazing at the only standing features, a chimney and a potted plant holding a wilted pansy, Mrs. Briscoe said: “I think you’ve been
We don’t have the money for an actual building yet, but maybe Ross Perot can empty the loose change from his pockets and pay for one. Or possibly Tom DeLay’s lobbyist friends can pony up; they always seem to. To the Aggies, we say: Don’t worry. You don’t have to
JUST LIKE HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT After his powerboat, The Rough Rider, sped through a 5-knot zone at a speed of 30 knots, Ross Perot was fined $300 in Bermuda Magistrates’ Court for operating “without reasonable consideration.” SHE ONLY HAD ONE CLIENT ANYWAY Prior to her withdrawal as a
Richard Garriott wants to experience space travel because it would be cool—and because his dad did.
For that matter, why can’t any incarcerated man or woman with a good reason get one?
Remember what Ronald Reagan said about Republicans not speaking ill of other Republicans? How quaint.
First in Kuwait, then Baghdad. Next stop, the desert.
Along a seventeen-mile stretch of Interstate 35 sits a theoretical dividing line between red-state and blue-state America. In Austin, the flagship Whole Foods attracts your typical wine-sipping, tree-hugging, Volvo-driving liberals. In Buda, the massive Cabela’s is a magnet for beer-guzzling, gun-toting, flag-waving conservatives. From these consumer preferences, voting habits are
It was a year of appalling Anna Nicole, babbling Bar, conspiring cheerleaders, déclassé DeLay, enraptured Eva, fecal funny business, gubernatorial gaffes, horrifying Hook ’Em, illustrious intoxicators, juggy Jessica, Kinky kocktails, lame lawmakers, misidentified ministers, noticeable nepotism, obnoxious Oberst, powerboating Perot, queer quotes, rude Redskin, stimulated sex offenders, titillating teachers, unwanted
Oil’s well that begins well.
Unfortunately, bad luck is often followed by more of the same. Take songwriter–guitar slinger Jon Dee Graham, whose son Willie was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating disease at the same time the family’s insurance company declared bankruptcy. Fortunately, Graham lives in Austin and has many talented friends, who contributed
Only being born too late kept Booker Ervin from becoming one of the original Texas Tenors. No one embodied the braggadocio of the Texas jazz sound like the Denison native; he cut into each piece with his sawtoothed tone, improvising with ferocity. Unexplained is how Ervin, who soared during his
The conservative case for gay marriage.
A review of Cooking With Texas Highways.
Don Haskins, the coach of Texas Western’s 1966 NCAA champion basketball team, professes to be a highly reluctant subject of Glory Road (Hyperion), his autobiography as told to Dan Wetzel. Which makes it doubly amazing that this average Joe wearing a clip-on tie (when he absolutely has to) emerges as
Devotees of Wonkette—the snarky political blog of Texas-bred Ana Marie Cox—will cotton to the elbows-propped-on-the-bar style of her first novel, Dog Days (Riverhead). And they’ll find a soul mate in young campaign flack Melanie Thorton, who can’t spin fast enough to keep Democratic presidential candidate John Hillman from catching a
The image of thirties “Exodusters” fleeing dirt storms and drought is imprinted on the American consciousness. But in The Worst Hard Time (Houghton Mifflin), Pulitzer Prize–winner Timothy Egan considers instead the nearly one million Dust Bowlers who stayed put—whether from stubbornness or circumstance—to scratch out a meager existence. Egan follows
The quest for the perfect author photo (or at least one I can live with).
Sweaty socks, cat urine, dead skunks: Three cheers for having no sense of smell.
January—People, Places, Events, Attractions 01.2006 Forget the holidays: As any college-football fanatic will tell you, the most wonderful time of the year is bowl season. It has certainly been the hap-happiest season of all (at least since 1970) for Texas Longhorns fans, whose undefeated team makes a return trip to
The pock-marked Dinosaur Valley State Park reveals an amazingly well-preserved (and somewhat checkered) prehistoric past.
Chapter 1Sally Hopkins gave up trying to find an NPR station. They didn’t make that kind of radio out here, not on the long road back home … and maybe that was just as well. She stopped twisting the dial when she heard the faint sound of country music coming
Musicians have been exploring the majesty of the electric-guitar sound almost since the instrument’s invention, but it’s only recently that a spate of instrumental rock bands has sprung forth in dedication to it. Friends of Dean Martinez (the “ez” was added at the behest of the Dean Martin estate) was
The long-running PBS show Austin City Limits has begun to loosen its grip on decades of peerless archives with a series of original broadcasts on DVD and companion CDs. Notable in the latest batch is Live From Austin TX (New West), a 1990 session with the short-lived supergrouping of Freddy
It’s hard to pinpoint why time has not built the reputation of Houston’s Johnny “Guitar” Watson. It’s not that Watson wasn’t influential—artists from Jimi Hendrix to Etta James gave him his due—and it wasn’t for a lack of hits. His seventies funk period, now collected in The Funk Anthology (Shout
Austinite R.J. Pineiro hits plenty of high notes in his near-future techno-thriller, Havoc (Forge). The year is 2009, and a spiffy military-strength robot orb stolen from the U.S. Nanosolutions compound in Central Texas is loose in Europe. It has switched into survival mode, replicating itself and resolving to wipe out
Ringside Seat to a Revolution: An Underground Cultural History of El Paso and Juarez, 1893–1923 (Cinco Puntos) is a horseless carriage ride back to the dawn of the twentieth century, when revolution seemed to be carried around the world on the wind. And as portrayed by David Dorado Romo in
An immigrant’s tale—the specter of a life abandoned, the perilous promise of a better future—can make for compelling drama. Author Farnoosh Moshiri’s forced flight from revolutionary Iran in 1983 (she would end up in Houston for a time) provides an intriguing back story for her searingly beautiful novel Against Gravity
