Texas Monthly articles from January 2008

Texas Monthly archives from January 2008

The capitol press corpse: is it really time to pronounce the body? Or is the slimmed-down way we report on state government not nearly as bad as the Austin worrywarts would have you believe?(Behind the Lines)
January 1, 2008... Perhaps the best place to start is with Thomas Jefferson. Not his famous statement about the importance of a free press as a government watchdog--"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or...

Twin peaks.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... Finally someone sees Jenna Bush as she is today ["Girl Gone Mild," November 2007]. She did nothing in her younger years that many other girls have not done--they just weren't the daughter of a president. Jenna has grown up. People who are...

Law and border.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... In the article "Keep Out!" Karen Olsson pretends to write about both sides of the issue of illegal aliens and the border fence [November 2007]. In fact, her story was biased against building a fence. I wonder how many Texans who have had a...

At wit's end.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... The article by Kinky Friedman recommending ways to reform Texas's political system is another example of the right words being spoken by the wrong person ["Reform Follows Function," November 2007]. Everything Friedman says makes perfect sense....

Prime minister.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... I just cannot understand why Joel Osteen would ever receive criticism [Texas Monthly Talks, November 2007]. It seems nowadays that anytime you try to be positive and happy and do something good, you have people who feel insecure and want to...

Bases loaded.(Roar of the Crowd)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... My favorite part of my favorite magazine is the Faith Bases column. That said, I was surprised at the change in tone in the November issue, which profiled a local ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While most columns have...

Bum Rap.(Editor's Letter)(designing the Texas Monthly cover)
January 1, 2008... The bar was set pretty high even before last year's Bum Steers cover was named one of seven winners in the American Society of Magazine Editors' annual Best Cover Contest. I mean, honestly: How to top Dick Cheney with a scowl and a shotgun?...

Straight Strait.(In the Chute)(George Strait )
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT'S A SCENE you know well: Aman ambles onto the stage. Screaming erupts. He tips his hat. More rapturous hysterics. You can't help but stomp along with the crowd, as if to prove to the man just how fervently you...

Stock character.(In the Chute)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE CATTLE BREEDERS who decided to gather along Fort Worth's Marine Creek in 1896 to drum up business for the local meat market would hardly believe that today's Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show draws...

March, they say.(In the Chute)(Martin Luther King March)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SAN ANTONIO'S MLK March and Commemoration is not a parade. "We're very adamant about that," a city representative explained recently. "Martin Luther King didn't hold any parades." The point might seem negligible, but...

Writing for a newsweekly.(The Horse's Mouth: EVERYTHING I COULD EVER TELL YOU ABOUT ...)(Karen Tumulty )(Interview)
January 1, 2008... Name: Karen Tumulty Age: 52 Hometown: San Antonio Qualifications: Thirteen years at Time, the past six as a senior writer and national political correspondent * Washington has a tendency to be an echo chamber. If you don't talk to people...

The old bowl game: why I'll always be in high Cotton.(The Cheap Seats: BRYAN CURTIS POPS OFF ABOUT SPORTS)
January 1, 2008... Any appreciation of the Cotton Bowl, the giant concrete mausoleum nestled in Dallas's Fair Park, is bound to sound like a eulogy. The Cotton Bowl is 78 years old, and like an aging ex-linebacker, it has staggered unevenly into the new...

Fred Garza, 52 tick rider.(The Working Life: STORIES FROM THE 9 TO 5)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A tick rider patrols the border, the Rio Grande River, on horseback every day. Our job is to see that we don't see any fever ticks on the native livestock or any Mexico strays coming in with fever ticks. I believe...

Town slogans: match the Texas city or town with its motto or nickname.(Pass/Fail: SHARPEN YOUR PENCILS FOR A QUIZ ABOUT ...)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... 1. Aransas Pass a. Paradise in the Pines 2. Brownsville b. The Little Alsace of Texas 3. Castroville c. The Branson of Texas 4. Comfort d. Where Everybody Is Somebody 5. Corpus Christi e. Small Town, Big...

The Texanist: offering fine advice since 2007.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Q: How high is too high to lack up a truck? And what are your thoughts on my wife's theory of a correlation between a person's road clearance and his IQ? Rodney Dudek ARLINGTON A: The Texanist is a...

Sorry, Charlie: Hollywood does our most notorious congressman wrong.(Hollywood, TX: CHRISTOPHER KELLY ON OUR STATE OF ENTERTAINMENT)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It's not the surprisingly listless central performance by Tom Hanks, who looks sluggish and indifferent playing the larger-than-life East Texas congressman Charlie Wilson. (The actor's Southern accent sounds even...

Casualty of War: in search of the real Afghanistan.(Hollywood, TX CHRISTOPHER KELLY ON OUR STATE OF ENTERTAINMENT)(The Kite Runner)(Movie review)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... It doesn't have any boozy Lufkin politicians or brassy Houston socialites; in fact, it might be the least Texas-centric movie of the year. But if one of the frustrations of Charlie Wilson's War is that it so casually ignores Afghanistan's...

The Struggle Continues.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] The best music has always been made by those who defy easy categorization, as exemplified by not one but two posthumous releases from Texas jazz giants. Fort Worth's DEWEY REDMAN was a glass-half-empty kind of guy...

Little Grey Sheep.(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's a quality--an easygoing, lyrical storytelling manner that eschews stridency or pretension--that all folksingers strive for and few attain. But DANNY SCHMIDT has it in abundance: With seductive simplicity, his...

Now on DVD: Ghostland observatory.
January 1, 2008... Maybe you love sequencers and robotic electronic dance beats. Maybe you don't. Yet how you feel about this Austin electro-rock duo, a budding national phenomenon whose ferocious energy explodes on Live From Austin TX (New West)--originally a...

Jesse Dayton.(Holdin' Our Own and Other Country Gold Duets)(Sound recording review)(Brief article)
January 1, 2008... The talented Beaumont-born singer has just released Holdin' Our Own and Other Country Gold Duets (Stag), a joint album with Austin's Brennen Leigh. Though it recalls a Nashville of yesteryear, it comprises mostly new material. He also recently...

The Memoirs of A Beautiful Boy.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We'll take ROBERT LELEUX at his word when he declares in THE MEMOIRS OF A BEAUTIFUL BOY that, growing up in tiny Petunia, he didn't know he was gay until he was seventeen and unexpectedly googly-eyed over his dance...

How Can I Talk If My Lips Don't Move: Inside My Autistic Mind.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Austinite TITO RAJARSHI MUKHOPADHYAY became a poster boy for the learning potential of autistic children with his first book, The Mind Tree, a collection of stories and poems he wrote between the ages of eight and...

Kathy L. Patrick.
January 1, 2008... This boisterous bookseller runs a Jefferson hair salon/bookstore, Beauty and the Book, that is a bastion of independent literary thinking-and egalitarian fun. She shares her Texas joie de vivre in The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara-Wearing,...

Taken for granite: I had no idea Llano was such a rock-solid town.(Go: SUZY BANKS HITS THE ROADS LESS TRAVELED)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Yes, the wildflowers of Llano County can be spectacular--sometimes. If the rains come in fall and spring. If the searing he at holds off until summer. If, when the blooms do appear, they aren't crushed by zillions of...

Twin Wells: chapter one: a stranger comes to town.(Texquisite Corpse: A STORY IN TWELVE PARTS AND TWELVE VOICES)(Short story)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] If the old car had been a horse with a broken leg, he would have shot it. It clanked and clattered as if its guts were falling out onto the highway. He pulled off to the side and cut the ignition. Clay Baldwin knew...

Dan Bartlett: "there's a difference between lying and being wrong. We were wrong. As were a lot of people and a lot of countries. We were wrong about the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. That's far different from saying that we purposely manipulated or intentionally lied to the American people.".(Texas Monthly Talks: EVAN SMITH SITS DOWN WITH ...)(Interview)
January 1, 2008... You leave the Bush White House and you come back to Austin? You couldn't find someplace a little more different? After being in Austin for a few days, it quickly reminded [my wife and me] of everything we loved about the city. I will say,...

What a Crockett! The crinkly piece of paper that the Texas Historical Commission is on the verge of buying for half a million dollars is not what it appears to be.(Davy Crockett's last letter)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On January 9, 1836, Davy Crockett sat down to write a letter to his daughter Margaret and her husband, Wiley Flowers. During Crockett's three terms in the United States Congress, he had written numerous letters and...

Bridge game: crossing the border used to be a ritual we tackled with strategy, patience, and ice-cold paletas. These days it requires different tactics altogether.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "American citizen?" [paragraph] In our post-9/11 world, this question looms in our consciousness as much as "Is the cost of gasoline up again?" Yet there was a time when it was familiar only to international...

The 2008 Bum Steer Awards.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You know it's been a weird year when Ron Paul runs for president and makes more sense than his Republican rivals. When Tom Craddick claims to have total power but a Speaker's race rages 24/7/365. When pro-life,...

"I think we got blown up for nothing": like an untold number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the brave young men of Bravo troop were lab rats in a slipshod military experiment. Theirs is the story of everything that's gone wrong in this great fiasco of a war.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A LITTLE MORE THAN HALFWAY INTO their year-long tour of duty, with one dead and more than a dozen others wounded by improvised explosive devices, the young men of Bravo Troop found themselves thinking about a quiet...

The fabric of our lives: long gone are the days when quilting was relegated to little old ladies. Today it's a billion-dollar industry with talented women of all ages creating vibrant, cutting-edge work. Many of them attended the world's largest annual quilting convention, in Houston, so I tagged along with one of the art form's biggest stars: my mom.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Quiltmaker Jane Hall--author of The Experts" Guide to Foundation Piecing, teacher of classes such as Pineapples Plus and Log Cabins Revisited, and the woman from whose womb I emerged fifty years ago--stood in front...

The unpublished Dan Winters: in his 23-year career, our most celebrated contributing photographer has captured all manner of luminaries--from Angelina Jolie and Bono to Lance Armstrong and the Dalai Lama--for myriad magazines. But many of his favorite portraits have never been printed. Here are ten of his unseen best.(Interview)
January 1, 2008... EVERY PHOTOGRAPHER IS LIMITED by certain constraints--the subject of a story, an art director's vision, a client's directives--so the images he produces are not truly his own. You might say, then, that his most genuine work, the work that best...

The devil Bob and Bullock: can a womanizing, alcoholic, emotionally unstable elected official become one of the most powerful and feared figures in State Government? A generation ago, before blogs, youtube, and the 24-hour news cycle, one did.(Reprint)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE CLOCK ON THE WALL of the comptroller's office said it all. It ran backward. "True story. The clock didn't run this way," Bob Bullock said in a 1995 interview, circling his index finger in a clockwise motion. "It...

North: Austin.(PAT'S PICK)(Restaurant review)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BEAR WITH ME--I'M TRYING to remember the olden days when a restaurant with more than two locations was by definition terrible. Nope, chains have changed. Sure, we'll always have mass feeders like Chili's and the...

Rebecca's table: Fredericksburg.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)
January 1, 2008... It's not often that a pastry chef opens a full-fledged restaurant, but Fredericksburg baker Rebecca Rather has taken her act up the road--specifically, a few blocks west of her Rather Sweet Bakery. Her new venture, Rebecca's Table, opened for...

So Vino Wine Bar & Bistro: Houston.(NEW + NOTEWORTHY)
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] So Vino's menu is a "greatest hits" roster of the past decade. There's hardly anything that most people won't like, and wild experimentation is out-of-bounds. Already popular, this bistro is helping colonize the...

The Filter: Dining: policies and definitions.(Directory)
January 1, 2008... The Filter: Dining is a service to our readers. The magazine accepts no advertising or other consideration in exchange for a listing. Reviews are written by resident critics in the cities that we list and are updated every three months. The...

What readers like you are saying.(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... I read your Bud Shrake/Gary Cartwright article while on a plane from Austin to Los Angeles and it literally brought tears to my eyes. As I read "Sarita's Secret" [about life on the border] I marveled at my hybrid heritage and hope you...

Home groan: I'm all for thinking globally and eating locally, but I draw the line at free-range squirrel pate.
January 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Not since Homo erecti were bringing down woolly mammoths with atlatls has eating been such an exhausting activity. No longer is it enough to never eat anything with a face or a carbohydrate; now you're supposed to...