Subject: Amarillo

• The Year of Living Anxiously

  Are We Having Fun Yet? Or is it just the jangly buzz of advanced urban stress syndrome?

  December 29, 1994

• Texas' Own Joe The Plumber

  October 16, 2008

• Playbill

  August 12, 2004

• MySpaced Out: Gram Rabbit Stirs in the High Desert

  Gram Rabbit, "California Christmas" In case you're still in your holiday hangover mode like I am, here's one wonderful holiday YouTube video that our gallant Mr. Rocks Off left out of his holiday onslaught. Cute doesn't begin to describe this one. While we are on the subject, high desert California psychedelic art rockers Gram Rabbit are in the final stages of recording their fourth full-length. According to producer and good old Amarillo boy Ethan Allen, the new album will have more of "a high

  January 6, 2009

• Pop Moment

  February 9, 1995

• Press Picks

  March 16, 1995

• It began in the Panhandle with the promise of great riches, only to crash and burn in a Houston courtroom. The wreckage is still smoldering, and the truth is nowhere to be found.

  April 20, 1995

• The Toxic Tort Case

  April 20, 1995

• Postmarked Texas

  August 31, 1995

• Don't cry for me, Amarillo

  November 7, 1996

• Letters

  November 28, 1996

• What Really Happened To Rodeny Hulin?

  August 7, 1997

• Oprah Does Amarillo

  February 12, 1998

• R.I.P. Texas, Says Best-Selling Author (A Non-Texan)

  Texas, your day is done.That's according to Bryan Burrough, the Vanity Fair contributor and author of The Big Rich, a best-selling look at the oilmen who ruled the state and beyond for much of the 20th century.Burrough writes in an op-ed column in the Washington Post that, with the farewell of George Bush, Texas's influence on national matters has waned to perhaps its lowest level since before the Depression. "Now that George W. Bush has hightailed it back to Dallas, there is no Texan of any rea

  February 23, 2009

• Will the Real Texas Musician Please Stand Up

  The land of gee-tars and fiddles

  July 6, 2000

• Ant Farm 1969-1971: Early Underground Adventures with Space, Land, and Time

  Filmmaker Laura Harrison presents a work-in-progress documentary about going through fire (literally) for art

  January 8, 2009

• First Out of the Gate

  Now that he's got Mayor Lee Brown's attention, can Chris Bell win your support?

  February 8, 2001

• Punks, Jocks and Justice

  There was a killing and now a conviction. Even those can't stop the fierce war raging between the Panhandle punks and athletes of Amarillo.

  October 21, 1999

• Down-Home Brew

  Learning to speak wino, and other lessons from the road, with Eleven Hundred Springs

  November 14, 2002

• Up in Smoke

  The ban's arrival, from a Catbird's seat

  September 13, 2007

• Cold Case

  Woman found dead 17 years ago in Manvel remains unidentified

  September 13, 2007

• Swift Meatpacking Plant and Illegal Immigrants

  April 5, 2007

• Fadin' Renegade

  Doug Supernaw's long, sad spiral

  February 8, 2007

• Joe Ely and Double Trouble

  Joe Ely performs on Thursday, December 28, at Fitzgerald's, 2706 White Oak, 713-862-3838.

  December 28, 2006

• Bling Twango

  Big & Rich delivers country music without prejudice

  November 3, 2005

• Bringing Out the Farm

  Blaffer Gallery presents a retrospective of UH's most prolific art collective

  January 13, 2005

• This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

  August 14, 2003

• Slim Down in Houston

  May 29, 2003

• Downfall 2012, with Pimpadelic

  Friday, November 29

  November 28, 2002

• Ruffled Feathers

  The Dixie Chicks and other musicians are fighting for their rights -- and a bigger check

  February 7, 2002

• Hanging Up

  TDCJ finally halts monitoring of attorney-client phone calls -- sort of

  January 17, 2002

• World Class?

  Houston can't join the ranks of other cities until it has an anthem of its own

  June 14, 2001

• Playbill

  The Groobees

  March 22, 2001

• Left Return

  Once burdened by debt and internal politics, a rejuvenated Texas ACLU is back mixing it up with those who dare to trample on the U. S. Constitution.

  January 18, 2001

• Turning the Camera on Mark Seliger

  Mark Seliger

  August 17, 2000

• Wide Open Shot

  The Groobees piggyback on the success of a song

  June 15, 2000

• Fire and Ice

  Teen's police confession indicates he lied about how he killed a punker

  December 2, 1999

• The Strait Dope

  Gettin' jiggy with George Strait at his country music festival

  April 15, 1999

• Fourth and Long

  Dreams of Glory Die Hard in Semipro football

  April 11, 1996

• What We Lose, And What We Gain, If Texas Secedes

  Rick Perry, our governor, has taken a steep dive off the sanity cliff with his preachin'-to-the-Rush-choir talk of seceding from the United States.This may be hard to imagine, but we think Perry might not have thought the whole thing through so well. And not just because he's presented the image of a white, Southern-accented governor foaming on about "state's rights," but because there are certain things Texas would have to give up -- and put up with -- if we became an independent country.What w

  April 17, 2009

• Tennessee Pushers

  Old Crow Medicine Show's new CD of original material as rough-edged as their traditional covers

  May 7, 2009

• Road Trip!

  May 21, 2009

• Texas Traveler: Angleton's Mysterious House of the Century

  It all started with an obsession. And a blog post. The House of the Century was built in 1972 by the Ant Farm Art Collective, a group that included architects Richard Jost, a then-recent graduate of the University of Houston, and Doug Michels, founder of the collective and professor at UofH. (Ant Farm is best known for the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, which they built in 1974.) The House was meant to celebrate man's journey into space, and was completed just three years after Apollo 11 landed

  July 20, 2009

• Houston 101: "Amarillo By Morning," One More Goddamn Time

  ​Houston 101 is taking a bit of a road trip today in honor of George Strait. Our sister blog Rocks Off is counting down the days until Strait returns here for a non-rodeo appearance, and it put us in mind of the first time we'd heard a Strait song -- at the trial over one of the Texas political world's most notorious deaths.Price Daniel, Jr. was the son of a former Texas governor and U.S. senator. Junior got elected to the legislature and made a name for himself as one of the reformers who tri

  August 5, 2009

• Amarillo's Big Texan Steak Ranch

  Photos by Nikki Metzgar​Having seen the steak challenge at Amarillo's Big Texan on television, I had to drop by the restaurant when I swung through West Texas. For the unacquainted, the challenge touted on billboards hundreds of miles away requires you to eat a 72-ounce steak, a baked potato, two fried shrimp, a side salad and a roll within 60 minutes. (You puke, you lose.) If you win, you get girls, glory and a free meal. The restaurant is all about putting on a show. It provides a free

  August 6, 2009

• Christian Country Singer Cowboy Hat Amarillo Diner = Beating

  www.deanstrickland.com​ In about 45 minutes, Rocks Off will publish the first in our series of musical guides to post-secession Texas (you know it's gonna happen, y'all). Today we're focusing on the Panhandle-area state of "Palo Duro." This as-yet fictional state includes the city of Amarillo, about which - as our guide John Nova Lomax points out - Billy Joe Shaver once wrote "ain't worth passing through" and Bob Dylan simply called "the land of the living dead." No doubt God-fearing country s

  August 11, 2009

• A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas: "Palo Duro"

  View Five States of Texas in a larger map As any proud Texan can tell you, the Lone Star State is entitled constitutionally to split into five states if it so wishes. The scenario has rarely been more in the news than it has relatively recently, when Gov. Rick Perry played to the wingnut gallery in an attempt to outflank primary opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison on the right discussed secession as a viable possibility. But Rocks Off doesn't care a whit about any of that political BS. We do care abou

  August 11, 2009

• Lone Star Scorecard: How Accurate are Your Favorite Songs About Texas?

  ​Many songs about Texas are written by residents wishing to celebrate some part of their beloved Lone Star State. Others come from non-Texans who are unable to resist the je ne sais quoi of the place that produced both Walter Cronkite and Karl Rove. One thing that many of them have in common, however, is how much they get wrong. We at Rocks Off are committed to fighting ignorance wherever we find it, and will be examining the more egregious offenders in a new feature we're calling Lone St

  August 17, 2009

• HISD About To Hire Its Superintendent, And Some Critics Emerge

  ​We have word from HISD spokesman Norm Uhl that the district might officially name the new superintendent at 2 o'clock. If the choice is Terry Grier, as it's been reported, some people are already unhappy. (Update: It is.) "I'm very disappointed in the board," State Sen. Mario Gallegos, who serves on the state's Committee on Education, told Hair Balls. "It makes me wonder what kind of kool-aid they're drinking over there when they interviewed him."Gallegos says that Grier's history at his prev

  August 20, 2009

• Lone Star Scorecard: All Tanya Tucker Edition

  ​The history of country music - or any music until recent years, for that matter - is largely represented by men, with female artists popping up more and more frequently as time passed and concert/record promoters realized there was a market for women in the business. In country, you started with pioneers like Kitty Wells, who were followed by the next wave (Patsy Cline, Brenda Lee) and then the Big Three (Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette) before female artists became relatively commo

  September 9, 2009