Justice for “Dallas.” Vengeance for “Friday Night Lights.” Blood for “King of the Hill.” According to TV Guide, the most popular show set in the great state of Texas isn’t any of these small-screen institutions. And if you can’t trust TV Guide about what people are watching, who can you trust in this post-fact world?
Linda Gray and Larry Hagman portrayed Sue Ellen and J.R. Ewing on the hit television show Dallas. Credit: CBS
According to the TV programming experts, the most popular show set in Texas is “Game of Silence,” an NBC drama set in Dalton that was cancelled this year after one season. The pick is part of a countdown for each of the 50 states (plus Washington, D.C.).
So, that begs the question: What does TV Guide mean by “most popular”? The programming experts say that they analyzed data compiled from TVGuide.com users who use their “Watchlist” feature. There’s probably more than a little recency bias at play, considering that the big three of Lone Star TV shows listed above have been off the air for some time.
Also a surprise: The most popular show set in New York is “Blindspot.” Sorry, Rachel, Ross, Jerry and Elaine.
OK, Central Texas, we need to talk about kolaches.
CALDWELL, TEXAS: A selection of just-judged entries in the kolache baking competition are pictured at Caldwell’s annual Kolache Festival on Saturday, September 14, 2013. The streets were crowded with entertainment and vendors. Andy Sharp / For the American-Statesman.
Before we get started, take a peek at my last name. It’s as Czech as they come. The name Pšencík is actually a nickname for a peasant (I know, I know). It comes from the Czech word meaning “wheat.” I grew up in the heart of the “Texas Czech Belt.” So, trust me, I know a thing or two about doughy Bohemian pastries.
Texas is a pretty heavily Czech region, with immigrants from Bohemia settling in the Texas Czech Belt in the early 1800s. They brought with them one of the best pastries known to mankind, and even now kolaches are a pretty big deal around these parts. A “kolach” (that’s the singular form of the word, though colloquially people use “kolache” as singular and “kolaches” as plural, so that’s how I’m referring to it here) is a round or square-ish pastry made with sweet yeast dough and filled with fruit or cheese.
Notice I said fruit or cheese — not meat. The traditional kolache fillings include things like plums, prunes, poppy seeds, apricots and just plain farmer’s cheese, due to the availability of those tasty flavors in poor immigrant families in the 19th century. Later, those fillings were expanded to include cream cheese, blueberries, pineapples, nuts, cottage cheese, cherries…you name the fruit or cheese, and you could put it in a kolache. Notice, again, I haven’t mentioned meat.
At some point over the course of history, somebody started taking that sweet yeast dough and stuffing it with sausage, sometimes with cheese and jalapeno. Don’t get me wrong, these little pastries are delicious. But they are not kolaches, although many people refer to them as such. Kolache, for those of Czech descent, contain only fruit or cheese, never meat.
A little Czech lesson: Those sausage-filled pastries you’ve been calling kolaches for years actually were never brought over from the motherland. They’re called klobasniky, and they were invented by Czech families settled in Texas (The Village Bakery in West, Texas takes credit for the delicious treat). You may have heard of one of these delights referred to as a “pig in the blanket,” which is what I grew up calling them, although pigs in a blanket can include hot dogs wrapped in croissant rolls, which, let’s face it, isn’t exactly Czech. Slight difference there.
So now that we’ve had a little history lesson, I call upon you, people of Central Texas, to stop referring to these meat-filled delicacies as kolaches, and call them by their rightful name: Klobasniky, or klobasnek in the singular. The Czech community will thank you.
America may run on Dunkin’, as the slogan goes, but according to an article in The Battalion, Texas A&M University runs on Starbucks.
In this Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, photo, Starbucks holiday cups appear on display at a store in New York. (AP Photo/Joseph Pisani)
A recent story in the school’s student newspaper examining the increased intake of campus caffeine consumption around finals week found that the university’s three Starbucks locations sell 119 gallons of coffee a day. That’s the equivalent of 1,270 cups of tall-sized (12 ounce) cups of coffee.
The Battalion even made an infographic out of their findings:
Assistant director of Chartwells dining services Ben Walters said that number places A&M’s Starbucks locations first in revenue among college campus spots in the country.
“At the Hullabaloo location we do about 700 transactions a day,” Walters told The Battalion. “At Starbucks Evans, they do close to 2,000 and the Corps store being close to 1,000.”
And according to Walters, A&M students are consuming more and more caffeine as finals week draws near.
“We’re seeing more of, ‘I’ll have drip coffee with shots of espresso’ or, ‘Iced coffee with espresso in it.’ We’re constantly having people ask us how to get more caffeine,” he said.
Recently, Texas A&M health researchers released an infographic that listed eight reasons to quit drinking coffee. Among the reasons were increased stress hormones, which may not help when you’re cramming for that biology final.
But, no matter how much coffee Texas A&M students drink, Austinites can rest assured that they still live in Texas’ most caffeinated city (at least, according to WalletHub).
Waco real estate stars Chip and Joanna Gaines found themselves in the middle of an online controversy this week, one that was stoked by a Buzzfeed Entertainment post about the couple’s non-denominational church in Waco.
Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia House has begun booking reservations for 2017. The couple appears on the HGTV show “Fixer Upper.” (HGTV)
The Buzzfeed article asks if, like Seibert, the Gaines’ also believe that marriage “is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime,” as outlined in the church’s “Beliefs” section on its website. It also questions whether they believe that homosexuality is a sin, as Seibert claimed in a sermon on June 28, 2015, the Sunday after the Supreme Court of the United States legalized gay marriage. Seibert also believes in gay conversion therapy, according to the same sermon mentioned above. (The American Psychological Association declared conversion therapy “harmful” seven years ago.)
The article also mentions that “Fixer Upper” has never featured a same-sex couple on the show.
From Buzzfeed:
“So are the Gaineses against same-sex marriage? And would they ever feature a same-sex couple on the show, as have HGTV’s ‘House Hunters’ and ‘Property Brothers’? Emails to Brock Murphy, the public relations director at their company, Magnolia, were not returned. Nor were emails and calls to HGTV’s PR department.”
After the Tuesday publication of the piece, which does not include any firsthand quotes from Chip or Joanna Gaines, many Buzzfeed commenters derided the article as a “witch hunt.”
“[The story] validates everything that President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters have been saying about the media: that some journalists — specifically younger ones at popular digital publications — will tell stories in certain deceitful, manipulative ways to take down conservatives. (And really, I can’t for the life of me imagine any other intention of the Gaines story.)”
The author, Delaware writer Brandon Ambrosino, also writes in the same piece about planning his wedding to his same-sex partner.
In the wake of this controversy, HGTV released a statement concerning the original Buzzfeed article. A network representative, responding to a request for comment from the Huffington Post, had this to say:
“We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series.”
The Gaineses have not addressed their views on homosexuality since the controversy arose.
Some conservative publications have published their takes on the Buzzfeed article, and many people have shared on social media their agreement with the Washington Post opinion piece.
Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith has defended his website’s article on Twitter, claiming the burden of proof is on HGTV, not the Gaineses.
This is a story about a big company, HGTV, refusing to say whether they ban LGBT people from a TV show. They should just answer the question https://t.co/rxsbfV11mb
This isn’t the first time a Christian celebrity from Texas has caused conversation with gay marriage views. Earlier this month, Austin author Jen Hatmaker had her books pulled from LifeWay shelves after she claimed in an interview with the Religion News Service that she believes an LGBT relationship can be holy.
In this Feb. 28, 2016 file photo, actor Bill Murray attends an NCAA college basketball game between Xavier and Villanova, in Cincinnati. Murray was the first and last guest on David Letterman’s late-night show, and Letterman will return the favor by making a rare public appearance when Murray is presented with the nation’s top prize for humor. On Tuesday, Se[t. 14, 2016, The Kennedy Center announced the lineup of performers for next month’s celebration of Murray, who’ll receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)How do you get Lupe Fiasco to perform an encore? According to Lupe Fiasco, be Bill Murray and “force it.”
Bill Murray might be among the last people you’d expect to see at a Lupe Fiasco show, but if you made it out to his performance at the Belmont last night, that’s exactly who you saw (khakis and all).
Several concert-goers tweeted out pictures of the actor dancing along to what was apparently a show good enough to warrant a demand for an encore. Lupe Fiasco himself took to Twitter to excitedly announce that Murray made an appearance.
