On Saturday, Dec. 6, 7:30pm at FringeWare (2716 Guadalupe) Shannon Wheeler, creator of Too Much Coffee Man, will be signing the new release from Mojo Press of Wake Up and Smell the Coffee: The Early Work of Shannon Wheeler. He’s moving to Berkeley on December 12, so the event is also a farewell party for him. And the evening before that event, 7:30, FringeWare hosts Dame Darcy, author of Meatcake, a comic book published by Fantagraphics; the FringeWare folks describe her work as possessing a “neo-Victorian brand of humor, a strange sort of blending of Edward Gorey & Lizzie Borden.” They also say they’ll offer refreshments and such, so they want you to come early and stay late.
Sensational!
The American Drive-In Movie Theatre is a recently published coffeetable book written by a Dallas couple, Don and Susan Sanders, who will appear at Barnes & Noble Arboretum in conjunction with the Alamo Draft House Friday, Dec. 5 at 7pm. In the book, the authors take on the whole of drive-in lore and highlight little-known aspects of drive-in history, writing about drive-ins and segregation but also less weighty topics like the mechanics of how Elvis attended drive-ins and the various methods patrons would employ to sneak in without paying.
For those of you who suspect that we media people really only go for the most sensationalistic aspect of any story, I’ll provide you fodder by citing the most outrageous story from the book, told by Sam Kirkland, who operates the Sky-Vue Drive-In Lamesa and has been working there since he was 10 years old: “The strangest thing that happened at the Sky-Vue was back when I was about 12 or 13 years old and I had never seen a naked person before; we were real protective in my family… One night the cars all got to honking, and at an outdoor theatre when the cars start honking you know you’ve got a real problem. So grandma sent me over to the projection booth to check with the projectionist and see if there was anything wrong with the film. He said, `No, no there’s nothing wrong with the film. Maybe they’re having a fight out back!’… So I went running out back to about the middle of the theatre. I saw all these lights. So I went on up closer and there was a big ole’ van. And on top of it there was a boy and a girl…and they were stark naked — and you know what they were doing on top of that van….They were having their own show out there!”
Dead Books
UT’s Collections Deposit Library is where all those poor books neglected by students go to die. But before they die, they’re occasionally sold; so stop by the library, at the corner of MLK and Red River, on the following dates for their book sale: Thursday, December 4, 9am-7pm; Friday, December 5, 9am-4pm; and Saturday, December 6, 10am-3pm. Paperbacks will sell for $.50 with hardbacks priced at $1.00, prices which will be reduced by half the last day of the sale. Trust me — you’ll find some finds…As for living books and their authors, UT Press author and oral historian Thad Sitton will be discussing his From Can See to Can’t, Wednesday, December 3, 7pm, at Barnes & Noble Guadalupe. And on Thursday, December 4, 7pm, Ruth Lehmann, UT professor emeritus, signs her Blessed Bastard: A Novel of Sir Galahad at B&N Guadalupe
This article appears in November 28 • 1997 and November 28 • 1997 (Cover).