Cheerleaders, cheerleaders everywhere

I hope you get a chance to listen to my “America’s Girls” podcast, or at least rate it five stars, or at least tell a friend, or at least don’t confuse it with the American Girl doll, which would be disheartening. Over on the Texas Monthly site, I’ve been writing “behind the pod” essays about […]

Why I’m Doing a Podcast on the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

I grew up watching women’s bodies. I think it started on movie screens, but it moved to television and locker rooms and swimming pools. I watched their suntanned shoulders in halter tops, I studied the parting waves of their tumbling hair, and I wondered if my body would ever have that kind of magic. There […]

His customary and legendary range: Larry McMurtry, 1936-2021

The Lonesome Dove miniseries rolled into town in 1989, when I was fourteen years old.* Back in the before-times of the late Eighties, computers were clunky green-screened things known to your serious nerd variety, and the television was the center of the household. We built cabinets around our televisions, we kept drawers underneath it,  in […]

Can’t Take the Texas Out of the Girl

In my fourth decade in this state, I finally became a real Texan: You Haven’t Driven in Texas Until You’ve Driven a Pickup Truck “When I first heard about this “car culture” issue, I knew what I wanted to write: an ode to my Honda Accord, which I’d driven across the country a half-dozen times. […]