Invitation to a Killing

Give people a prompt, a deadline, and a place to show the results, and somebody will round up a few semi-willing friends to see what they can produce. Waco Independent Film Festival’s Horrify: A Film Speed Run gave teams thirteen days to make a short horror movie, drawing participants who had little filmmaking experience—and, in two cases, weren’t even horror fans.The results—a zombie take on Office Space, nighttime ghost hunters, and Footloose: The Aftermath—leave host Mark Long questioning his fondness for bad movies. But hearing from their makers sends him back through the history of public performances. Even in the Middle Ages, when Greek plays were largely out of circulation in Western Europe, people nonetheless kept acting out stories. From staging Bible scenes thanks to medieval craft guilds to telling scary tales around a campfire, people keep finding occasions to perform for an audience.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

An invitation into someone’s home can supply plenty to watch without explaining what’s happening there. In Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything, each apparent revelation raises another question about who knows what, who controls whom, and whose account deserves belief.For their first wedding anniversary, host Mark Long and his wife Angela spend three hours watching Holmes and her partner Billy Evans—and leave delighted, despite understanding less than they expected. A dispute over a payment to Evans for participating in the documentary leads from suspicions about the couple onscreen to questions about relationships closer to home. An $11 matinee ticket buys an afternoon of examining other people’s behavior; accounting for your own may take longer.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

Plans to livestream a military execution at Fort Hood send host Mark Long back to childhood cockfights and photographs of Jesse Washington’s 1916 lynching in Waco. Photographer Fred Gildersleeve sold images of the killing as postcards, letting buyers keep—and share—the occasion. Later, the NAACP used the postcards in a campaign that helped turn public opinion against lynching.An invitation to watch someone be killed asks something of its audience. Authorities may call it a lesson in consequences, while spectators find reassurance, belonging, or disgust. The question is what follows after the thrill—or horror—of the moment is over.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

An organic lemon can cost $1.30 without proving Waco has become a luxury market, and a Waffle House can inspire civic delirium without saying much about affluence at all. The arrival of The Scout Guide business directory is making a different wager: that there are currently enough places selling expensive things to benefit from reaching an overlapping clientele.At Hotel 1928, a gathering for the forthcoming Waco edition of The Scout Guide leads to a conversation with a fine-art gallery owner, leaving host Mark Long with the impression that the gallery’s buyers are becoming more local—a small piece of evidence, not a census of people with disposable income. Downstairs, gold lettering on the “Gents” bathroom door by Mike MacDonald complicates the sense of being somewhere foreign: apparently, these different Wacos already share a sign painter.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

Developers and advocates for the homeless can look at the same low-budget motel and make two very different assessments. One sees redevelopment leading to affluent buyers, short-term rentals, and upscale retailers to transform the property; the other warns that removing cheap lodging will push precariously housed people into even worse conditions. Dottie Oaks advertised $695,000 townhomes that could approach $900,000 after being made habitable, and the complex has been sitting empty for years. Meanwhile, Mission Waco founder Jimmy Dorrell’s warning about Waco’s “invisible homeless” eventually helped inspire Creekside Community Village, a supportive-housing tiny home development near the edge of town.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

The first version of a dish you eat can become your standard for it. Years later, someone might tell you the recipe was all wrong. And maybe it was. But what does that verdict change about the meals you remember loving?At Lupita’s on 19th Street, host Mark Long unexpectedly orders what may be his first bowl of menudo, pig’s foot and all. He likes it but then Googles what makes a good menudo to see if he’s right.That search takes him back to his mother’s huevos rancheros, which appeared on mornings when the whole family seemed to be in a good mood. When he calls to ask how she made them, she says she did it “all wrong”: store-bought picante sauce and shredded cheese. He’d never thought to look up whether her version was good.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

Bad publicity is supposed to be bad. So why do people keep engineering spectacles that invite it? This episode looks at how a staged catastrophe draws a crowd and why the reaction can carry the story further than anyone imagined. In 1896, the Katy railroad sold excursion tickets to watch two trains smash into each other near Waco. At least two people died, and the railroad fired the man behind the stunt—and rehired him the next day. One hundred thirty years later, Texas railroad commissioner candidate Bo French turned a photo of University of Texas students celebrating a football victory into a claim about “foreigners” that generated millions of views and then made a fundraising pitch out of the resulting backlash. Only one train wreck was literal, but neither stopped at the point of impact.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

A price tag used to tell you how much something cost. Now? It doubles as a personality test. Pay for food without complaining and you appreciate quality, respect craft, and support local business. If you have a problem with a price, the problem is apparently you—and your cheap tastebuds.Host Mark Long visits Waco’s much-celebrated new Sprouts and encounters a $1.30 organic lemon and ten-dollar-a-pound ground turkey. Then, the comments beneath a photograph of a $97 tray of food from Terry Black’s Barbecue demonstrate what happens when somebody is impolite enough to question the arithmetic. Welcome to Wacomaxxing, where living your best local life may depend on paying the price—and possessing the good manners not to ask why.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

Traveling through Colombia offers abundance: mountain views, unfamiliar birds, cheap beer, and ripe mangos plucked from roadside trees. Waco has something less spectacular but more useful—driving your own car instead of relying on Uber, buying groceries without first rehearsing the transaction in Spanish, and knowing whether a place is really open without consulting three different social media accounts.The difference is not between adventure and boredom. It’s between discovering how another place works and already knowing how to live in your own.After four and a half months in South America, host Mark Long prepares to trade a cabin in the Andes overlooking Medellín for Texas heat, avocado toast with his wife, and impending jury duty. Along the way, a coffee farmer channels Barry White, and an openly resentful dog considers whether Mark’s household residency permit should be reinstated.-----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.

Fathers and sons can spend years trying to understand each other, usually with all the grace and precision of two drunks assembling patio furniture without instructions. Sons want to live up to their fathers while being terrified they’ll turn into them. Meanwhile, fathers pass down wisdom, damage, bad jokes, and assorted emotional contraband without bothering to label the boxes.In this episode, a 2014 film starring Waco-area country singer James Hand opens a door host Mark Long had been perfectly content to leave locked. Thank You a Lot becomes a way to consider estrangement, family humor sharpened into a weapon, and what happens when the explanation a son wants exists only in the movies. -----Hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of Your Waco Weekend—and visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠wacoinsider.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to sign up for The Weekly Dispatch newsletter.