Volume 22, Number 39
features
Maybe astral projection is the best way to survive one of those nutty First Thursday thingies after all
BY WAYNE ALAN BRENNER
news
City Manager Toby Futrell says the budget won't balance without years of tax hikes and service cuts
BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON
BY AMY SMITH
BY JORDAN SMITH
The proposed Mexican-American Cultural Center may block fire access to the adjacent Villas on Town Lake.
BY LAURI APPLE
BY LAURI APPLE
Travis Co. GOP boss Alan Sager gypped his Supercuts workers out of thousands of dollars -- no matter what he says now.
BY MICHAEL KING
Headlines
BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON
The state budget crisis is only one piece of a much larger, distressing government puzzle.
BY MICHAEL KING
Are Brewster McCracken and Margot Clarke as far apart as Austin voters want them to be?
BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON
The Bushites lie about WMDs and media conglomeration.
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
food
From Freedom Fries to Fess Parker
Rebecca Chastenet de Géry reflects on Americans eating their words, and Wes Marshall drinks wine with Davy Crockett
Virginia B. Wood serves up some serious restaurant news in this week's "Food-o-File."
BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD
"Second Helpings" takes you on an Italian tour of Austin.
music
Houston, where the blues is almost as thick as the humidity
BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Takin' it to the streets with the Dixie Chicks, Real Heroes, Ash, and Onion Creek Crawdaddies
BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Phases and Stages
Laughing City
Turbinado
Live
Picture in a Frame
Continental Live, Live at Jovita's
Barn Burners & Bathtub Bourbon
Box of Ghosts
Fast Texas
Roots of Tex-Mex Music: Chulas Fronteras & Del Mero Corazon
Blame it on Love, Houston Guitar Blues, One Foot in Texas, You Had to Go, You Can Name It Yo' Mammy If You Wanna, Lookin' for Trouble
screens
With the exception of the era-specific music, what the kids like in Dazed and Confused is pretty much the same thing kids like now, which goes a long way in explaining why, 10 years later, the video's a staple in college dorms, owned by kids who weren't conceived yet in the Seventies and couldn't buy a ticket to the R-rated movie when it came out in the Nineties.
BY KIMBERLEY JONES
Three boys, seven years TK, and one heck of an homage -- a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark that earned the blessing of their hero.
BY SARAH HEPOLA
What are you laughing at? Cable network Trio -- will release "Uncensored Comedy," three meditations on the state of our sense of humor, in June, to help us figure it out.
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
Online resources for Austin's indie film community.
BY MARC SAVLOV
Screens Reviews
Ionesco's Rhinoceros is dark political humor at its least subtle, and these days it's wonderfully therapeutic.
Film Reviews
We're happy sweet, funny Nemo is back onscreen – 3-D or no.
arts & culture
Twelve of Austin's cultural heroes will be inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame at the 2003 Austin Critics Table Awards ceremony, and here is an introduction to them and some of their significant contributions to the local arts scene.
BY ROBERT FAIRES
More trouble at Austin Lyric Opera as it fires seven staff members and eliminates its Young Artist Program.
BY ROBERT FAIRES
Arts Reviews
"Embracing the Present: The UBS Art Collection" contains a broad sampling of contemporary sculpture, painting, and photography from the past 40 years, and among the jubilant range of concerns and expressions, the riot of form, scale, color, and style, it reveals again and again the tension that exists between the technological world and the human one.
To accompany the screening of Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein's 1938 epic film about the 13th-century Russian hero and the army he led to defeat a German invasion, maestro Peter Bay led his own army -- some 200 musicians from the Austin Symphony and Conspirare choir -- that performed Prokofiev's epic score with grandeur and a stirring power.
columns
The anti-smoking ordinance is an unconscionable social experiment in an already sketchy economic environment; the Place 5 run-off boasts two good candidates, so no need to get ugly; and we report the news, not slurs.
BY LOUIS BLACK
Our readers talk back.
BY MR. SMARTY PANTS
Is In in or is Out in? Is Out in In? Or is In in Out? Is In out? Out isn't even in Austin. In is. Why did we think of Out? This is about In. In is out. It is. Isn't it? Ouch.
BY STEPHEN MACMILLAN MOSER
BY GERALD E. MCLEOD
I'm hearing about carnosine as an "anti-aging" supplement. What else is it good for and can we get enough of it in our diet?
BY JAMES HEFFLEY, PH.D.
Within or Beneath the Din
BY MICHAEL VENTURA
Letters to the editor, published daily