Pet rocks died, as all pets eventually do–especially when they are just inanimate hunks of stone. Mood rings turned a permanent, dismal mauve. Leg warmers unraveled. The XFL, well, who really cares? All fads wind up their brief and pointless lives in landfills or antique malls or syndicated television. But…

Denny’s hasn’t changed much, according to Bridgette Goode. Back in 1991, 18 members of a black youth group attending a civil-rights conference in San Jose, California, tried to enter a Denny’s restaurant. The staff asked them to pay in advance for food service and to pay a cover charge–must have…

St. Patrick supposedly drove the snakes from Ireland many centuries ago. Naturally, Americans celebrate his feat by descending on bars and destroying brain cells en masse. It all makes sense, somehow. To do it up right, however, many celebrants spend part of the holiday in a pub. Of course, Dallas-area…

Does tipping the maÎtre d’ get you a better table? It works on television. Slip the maitre d’ a 20–or even some advice on cheap long-distance service–and voilà, you skip ahead 10 places in line, ahead of the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and the Modanos. Servers part and bow in servile…

Troy Tilley, a bartender at Sneaky Pete’s in Lewisville, states flatly that patrons running a tab should pay a tip of 20 percent of the tab. Of course, he prefers that they pay cash. “Your higher-paying bar positions are when people buy one drink at a time,” he says. “They…

George Bernard Shaw was an atheist, yet he observed Lent. Don’t scoff. He believed Lent a perfect occasion “for giving up reading other people’s books.” Every year at this time–between Ash Wednesday, when people empty ashtrays onto their foreheads, to Easter, when many Americans embark on their annual trek to…

When German scientists discovered a direct link between smoking and cancer many years ago, anti-smoking advocate Adolf Hitler was determined to ban cigarettes from the Third Reich. Yet even Hitler, an absolute dictator willing to murder millions, couldn’t pass anti-smoking laws. What hope, then, does state Rep. Glen Maxey have…

The study of human behavior has come a long way since men of science read bumps on the head or measured the distance between a person’s eyes. Now, we inquire into environment or research the human brain. Yet for more than a thousand years, scholars have deliberately ignored the predictive…

Where do you get good Texas food in Washington, D.C.? Put a Georgian in the White House and everyone makes fun of his accent. A Californian draws attention to dyed hair and plastic surgery. A president from Arkansas? Feel free to call him “Bubba.” Ah, but put a Texan in…

Let’s just dispense with the President Clinton jokes, the innuendo, and the pop psychology barbs right away. Most cigar smokers are not engaged in some bizarre subconscious dilemma between penis envy and fellatio, and only a few prefer flavored cigars. (Monica-flavored–get it?) Freud acknowledged as much when he said “sometimes…

“Ah, doughnuts,” Homer Simpson once said after a huge doughnut saved his life, “is there anything they can’t do?” It’s a rhetorical question, actually–one not meant to be answered. Doughnuts make a poor doorstop, substitute hockey puck, or objet d’art. On the other hand, they fit nicely over the spokes…

Stars are everywhere in Dallas. And that’s not just some really lame pun, either. At some point or other, everyone who eats out or drops by a bar in Dallas–this obviously excludes parents with young kids–eventually will bump into someone famous. From Troy Aikman at PF Chang’s to Emmitt Smith…

“When they walk in, they’re all prim and proper, but give them a couple of hours…,” says Scott Blythe, bartender at the Whisky Bar on Greenville, his voice trailing off into a knowing smirk. “It’s funny to watch.” Blythe is referring to the men and women who hook up after…

Is there such a thing as a free lunch? Mothers and presidents once dismissed the notion of a free meal as pure fiction. Yet a number of “gentlemen’s clubs”–topless bars to more honest people–around the Dallas area promise just such a thing. Billboards, marquees, and banners placed boldly along Northwest…

Beer occupies a spot of heady importance in our lives. It accounts for 88 percent of all alcohol–by volume–consumed in the United States. We bowl “beer frames,” see through “beer goggles,” and develop well-rounded “beer bellies.” We drink, on a per capita basis, about 340 bottles of the stuff each…

Deep in the snows of North Korea many years ago, a division of U.S. Marines, vastly outnumbered and almost surrounded, fell back toward safety. When asked about the retreat, a Marine officer reportedly snapped, “We’re not retreating. We’re advancing in the other direction.” The point is, of course, that no…

Decorum. Grace. Poise. Elegance. Manners. You can pick up the basics watching old movies–Henry Fonda in Fort Apache, Paul Henreid in Casablanca, films in which men dressed for dinner, sat upright, ordered precisely, and never belched. But that was then; this is now. Image and etiquette consultant (yes, such a…

The Varsity in Atlanta serves some of the greasiest fries this side of a school cafeteria. Their burgers taste like several pounds of burnt vegetable oil. The attraction of this landmark restaurant is the contrived rudeness of the restaurant’s staff, who shout “what’ll ya have, ain’t got all day” repeatedly…

Psychologists say football brings out our basest instincts, brutal and animalistic. Historians equate the sport with ancient Rome’s gladiatorial contests. Anthropologists find ritualistic behavior. Ah, to hell with them. If you want to discover the true meaning of football in American culture, you must examine the food we eat during…

Shaken, not stirred. The words reverberate through popular culture, requiring no explanation. But what do we like to have shaken, stirred, and ceremoniously sluiced into a martini glass, vodka or gin? “That’s an easy one,” assures Frank Buchalski, manager at Martini Ranch. “Vodka outsells gin by far.” Nationwide, vodka martinis…

Rudyard Kipling maintained a sense of straightforward, unadorned realism about things. His strongest writings–“east is east and west is west”–eschew ambiguity in favor of a world simplified. Rudyard Kipling never once said that anything tasted like chicken. Nowadays, of course, everything indescribable and new tastes somewhat like mass-produced poultry product,…

Gilbert Garza starts his day at Suze by clipping a wireless phone to his belt. He then slips on a lightweight headset–the kind that doesn’t disturb your hair–complete with mouthpiece. He looks vaguely like Tom Hanks in Apollo 13, if Hanks were a chef preparing for another 14-hour day. All…