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Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders NetflixEvery reality show promises some reward. Often these are explicit—a million dollars, a proposal, a recurring role on hit teen drama Glee—but even those without a formal prize offer a steady paycheck, and attention, which can be even more valuable to the aspiring star. For sixteen seasons, the CMT show Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team did both. Though it was canceled in 2022, a new Netflix docuseries, America’s Sweethearts, picks up the megaphone on June 20 and promises an even bigger audience for the women vying for pairs of blue and silver pom-poms.The show certainly checks two of the most important reality TV boxes: it’s got attractive people and cutthroat competition. “You need to look like a supermodel but perform like an athlete,” a woman says in a promo.But…

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Jeff Nichols/Bikeriders profileBelieve it or not, Jeff Nichols is tired of critics comparing his latest movie to Goodfellas. There are surface similarities between the Austin-based filmmaker’s sixth feature, The Bikeriders, and the Martin Scorsese Mafia epic that regularly places high on lists of the greatest films ever made. Both movies are sprawling character studies whose stories span years. The films both indicate the passage of time through era-specific music cues, use voice-over narration and freeze-frames, and ultimately accomplish the trick of glamorizing—then exposing the dark underside of—a subculture that’s long been romanticized in the popular consciousness. Nichols’s film spent the latter half of 2023 on the film-festival circuit, building buzz for its eventual wide release on June 21. At those festival screenings, critics largely took to the…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

We-Were-Illegal-Jessica-Goudeau-book-excerptAustin writer Jessica Goudeau’s second book, We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration, which was published this week by Viking, is a deeply researched examination of the lives—and lies—of Goudeau’s extended clan, who first came to Texas in the 1820s. When my classmates asked me, as a new fourth grader in Memphis, Tennessee, recently transplanted from San Antonio, if I knew any Texas Rangers, they were probably thinking of the baseball team. But the famed law enforcement agency that goes by the same name was the most Texas-y thing I had going for me. My great-uncle Frank Probst had been a Ranger, and I could tell them about the visits we’d made when I was growing up to his ranch, not far…

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Every Wednesday for the last eight years, Kerry Max Cook has gone to the website of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals at 9 a.m. to scan the list of rulings officially published that day. He was looking to see if the court—the highest criminal tribunal in the state—had issued a final judgment on his case, which was one of the longest and most harrowing in Texas history. The mild-mannered Cook had been tried for the murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler three times since 1978: he was found guilty that year, appealed the verdict and had a mistrial in 1992, and was found guilty again in 1994. Constantly proclaiming his innocence, Cook spent almost two decades on death row, where he was stabbed…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

The main dining room at McAdoos.As a child, I looked forward to the regular trips with my mom to our local post office in the Hill Country town of Boerne. I can still smell the cardboard boxes and recall the excitement of buying stamps to send letters to my international pen pals and shipping Christmas presents to my uncle in faraway Nebraska.Starting in the early 1900s, U.S. post offices served as a community hub. Texans would catch up with neighbors, pay taxes at the teller window, pick up food stamps, and check out the “Most Wanted” posters (just in case). Post offices no longer play a role in most Americans’ routines. Although my hometown post office is still open, thousands have closed across the country. But these buildings, from the…

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Netflix is Opening a Big Box Retail Store at the Dallas Galleria. Here’s What We Want From It.Back in the early days of the pandemic, Netflix provided a certain comfort to a nation unable to safely leave home. We gasped at the real-life exploits of Joe Exotic in Tiger King, savored the pluck of Anya Taylor-Joy’s self-destructive chess prodigy in The Queen’s Gambit, and thrilled to the conflict between the Kooks and the Pogues on Outer Banks. We whiled away the hours with Warrior Nuns and Teenage Bounty Hunters, Sneakerheads and Baby-Sitters Clubs. We accompanied Emily to Paris, the Bridgertons to the social season, and—so bored were we—occupied ourselves with something called Floor is Lava. But all of that was years ago, and the outside world has resumed, with the specific dynamics of 2020 largely buried in whatever deep hole most of…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Netflix is Opening a Big Box Retail Store at the Dallas Galleria. Here’s What We Want From It.Back in the early days of the pandemic, Netflix provided a certain comfort to a nation unable to safely leave home. We gasped at the real-life exploits of Joe Exotic in Tiger King, savored the pluck of Anya Taylor-Joy’s self-destructive chess prodigy in The Queen’s Gambit, and thrilled to the conflict between the Kooks and the Pogues on Outer Banks. We whiled away the hours with Warrior Nuns and Teenage Bounty Hunters, Sneakerheads and Baby-Sitters Clubs. We accompanied Emily to Paris, the Bridgertons to the social season, and—so bored were we—occupied ourselves with something called Floor is Lava. But all of that was years ago, and the outside world has resumed, with the specific dynamics of 2020 largely buried in whatever deep hole most of…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Senior editor Emily McCullar (center) with her parents, Mike McCullar and Katherine Wulff, and brother David, circa 1989.This month’s cover story, an oral history, explores the enduring impact of the Livestrong movement, once promoted by professional cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong to lend encouragement and support to others suffering from the dread disease. For the writer of our story, the topic hit close to home. Senior editor Emily McCullar was ten years old when she lost her mother to breast cancer, in 1996, eight years before Livestrong was born. Emily says, “My mother’s illness has very much informed my work on this story.”That work began late last year, when Emily noticed that 2024 would mark the twentieth anniversary of the Livestrong bracelet. She began talking with contributing editor Leah Prinzivalli about a possible pop culture–focused story, perhaps illustrated by photos of…

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The crunk slaw.Wade Elkins likes to mess around with the many ingredients in the Mimsy’s Craft Barbecue kitchen in Crockett. He opened the place with his wife, Kathy, in 2020. One day Elkins wanted a burger and a chicken strip for lunch, so Mimsy’s ended up with the Ranch House sandwich on the menu, which combines both on a bun with pimento cheese and ranch dressing.The couple had served a basic mayo-dressed coleslaw since opening, but Elkins wanted to make it more memorable. “I saw the fried onions on the line and had the Carolina sauce on the block for the pulled pork,” he said. He threw it all together and liked it, and made another bowl for Kathy. “She tasted it, and said, ‘That’s our new…

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Roar of the Crowd: Big TacoNo BuenoWhile I enjoyed the article on Velvet Taco and Torchy’s and their respective aspirations for craft-taco dominance [“Big Taco,” May 2024], I was disappointed by the passing mention of Abilene-born-and-bred Taco Bueno. While its offerings may not be as elevated or quirky as those chains, I dare you to find anyone who grew up in the Big Country, like me, or in suburban Dallas–Fort Worth who doesn’t prefer a Bueno Chilada platter or a Beef Muchaco to anything offered at comparable taco joints.  Mark Doty, Inglewood, California Dug It I was thrilled to see an article about Mason County topaz in the May 2024 issue [“The Last Blue Topaz Hunters?”]. I remember going with my parents and a gem and mineral group from Bexar County on a…

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