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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.

Willie Nelson performs at his 2024 Fourth of July Picnic in Camden, New JerseyHe’s on the road again.Nearly two weeks after bowing out of his Outlaw Music Festival Tour with an undisclosed illness for what turned out to be eight missed shows, Willie Nelson was back on stage making music with his friends (and Family), just in time for his annual Fourth of July Picnic.“How’s it going?” the singer, who celebrated his ninety-first birthday in April, said over a joyous din of high-pitched cheers from fans at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey, Thursday night. With Trigger hanging from the familiar red, white, and blue guitar strap, Willie sat down on a padded stool and got down to business: Whiskey River, take my mind. His voice was a bit rough-hewn at the start, his phrasing more deliberate and talky, but the guitar fingers were firing on…

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south padre island texas shark attacksShark attacks are vanishingly rare. The chance that any given American swimmer will be bitten is just 1 in 11.5 million, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File, which tracks shark-bite statistics. The odds are even lower in Texas, where only 48 people have been bitten in the past 113 years. “Over the last ten years, if anything, there’s been a slight drop in the number of unprovoked bites,” said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, noting that about 60 to 80 people are bitten worldwide each year. Still, the seemingly random nature of attacks and pop-culture portrayals of horror beneath the waves instill a persistent fear—which Texans may be feeling more strongly than usual this summer.On July…

The post Four People Have Been Bitten by Sharks in Texas in the Past Six Weeks. What’s Going On? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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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.

Meet the Fan Who Befriended Shelley Duvall Over Peach Cobbler in Johnson CityUpdate, July 11, 2024: Shelley Alexis Duvall, one of Texas’s most storied and beloved actors, died on Thursday, at her home in Blanco, of complications from diabetes. She was 75. After graduating with a degree in journalism, Sarah Lukowski moved to Austin in 2022 and started working in the marketing department of an engineering firm. During her downtime, Lukowski, 24, enjoys shopping at the Capital City’s thrift stores, reading books, and going to see the latest movies at Alamo Drafthouse. She also spends her free time doing research and conducting interviews on a subject that has fascinated her since 2016: actress Shelley Duvall.Lukowski is behind the internet’s Shelley Duvall Archives, a collection of social media accounts dedicated to celebrating the reclusive film star. Whether she’s addressing…

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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.

How bad are Texas drivers really?Driving in Texas has always been stressful. In the rural parts of the state, the distances between destinations can be vast, while in the cities and suburbs, highways are often choked with traffic. But since the pandemic started in 2020, you may have experienced even more stress on the road than usual. Maybe drivers seem more aggressive and distracted, and casual disregard for rules such as speed limits, stop signs, and traffic signals seems more flagrant than ever before.If all of that feels true to you, we can tell you this: You’re not imagining things. According to several studies, Texas drivers really have gotten worse over the past five years. But just how bad? That’s a bit of a complicated question. We’re worse than we’ve…

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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.

Competitive Eater corn dogs with medalsThe first time I entered an eating contest, I made a little girl cry. She was standing off to the side of the small deck attached to a Taco Joint in Dallas’s tony Lakewood neighborhood, and I was waving the wooden winner’s plaque over my head like an idiot, smears of beans and cheese caked across my face. This was back in 2013, and I’d just won the second annual Fourth of July “Big Kahuna” Taco Eating Contest, at which a handful of us had stood in the midday sun and eaten as many bean-and-cheese tacos as possible in eight minutes. As my friends screamed and laughed, the guy who’d come in second—the defending champ and middle-aged dad who looked more like he’d stepped off…

The post I Spent Three Years Inhaling Tacos and Corn Dogs in Eating Contests. Here’s Why I Stopped. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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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.

U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) speaks during a news conference on Medicare Advantage plans in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 25, 2023 in Washington, DC.Representative Lloyd Doggett, of Austin, on Tuesday became the first sitting member of Congress to call for President Joe Biden to step down as his party’s nominee. In his statement, he referenced Biden’s lackluster performance in last week’s debate against Donald Trump, somehow finding a delicate way to acknowledge the disconcerting frailty displayed. “President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump,” Doggett said. “I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”Doggett also, in imploring Biden to follow the example of former president Lyndon Baines Johnson, who…

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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.

mariachi de los texas rangersWearing bright red trajes with white embroidery and the traditional Mexican sombrero, the Mariachi De Los Texas Rangers fills the air at Globe Life Field with warm guitar strumming. Except the group isn’t playing traditional classics like “Cielito Lindo”; it’s treating fans to its own riff on Creed’s “Higher.”   The streaming feed of the Mets game just cut to a mariachi band playing “Higher” by Creed during the commercial.The vibes are wild right now 🤣 pic.twitter.com/20F6Ziu2sU— Just Mets (@just_mets) June 18, 2024 The video caught fire online during a game against the New York Mets on June 17, when a Mets fan account shared a thirty-second clip of the Creed cover on social media. Last season, Rangers players shared that they played Creed before each…

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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.

BBQ Gear GuideI was grilling some chicken a while back with the help of some newly purchased barbecue gear. I’d just picked up a new knife, a basting brush, and a handheld blowtorch for a little fun. It got me thinking about what other tools I could use to make grilling and smoking feel even less like work, so I spent a few weeks searching for new and interesting items. After trying them out, I wanted to share some of my old favorites along with a few that may be new to you for your own backyard cooking.XL Drip EZ BBQ Prep Tub ($50)Prepping raw meat can be a messy task with the dirty cutting boards and rub debris all over the counter. Then, if you want…

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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.

Bee Cave HOA green grass wateringWe had good intentions for our landscaping this past spring, like we do every year. Spring is a time of rebirth, after all. A time to cut down what died in the freeze and plant new things that’ll die in the heat a few months later. It’s the circle of $300-garden-center-purchases life.As soon as the weather warmed, my husband and I spent weeks working to shape up our lawn at our home in Bee Cave, just southwest of Austin. I raked leaves and picked up stray rocks and hummed. Chris inspected sprinkler heads and replaced mulch and cussed. We signed up for one service that does nontoxic weed control, another that aerates the lawn, and a third that mows it. We then tried to not…

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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.

Texans Love Air ConditioningMy boyfriend’s mother, a Boston chemist whose early career involved visiting oil refineries across the globe, has a saying about Texas: “There’s no place colder than Houston in the summer.” Of course, it’s not the outside temperatures she’s referring to, which regularly top 100 degrees in the summertime, but the aggressively air-conditioned indoor climate. As she is wont to note, the cold is intended for the comfort of those who wear suits—the sleeveless among us be damned.I was reminded of her adage in 2022, when I attended a Houston carbon capture expo amid a mid-June heat wave. Enviro-capitalists milled around a huge convention center that showcased the latest in technology that removes CO2 from the atmosphere or prevents it from being released, and promised to…

The post Air-Conditioning Has Made Texas Livable—And It’s Also Made Many of Us Big Wimps appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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