Earlier last month, I received a call from Sahar Arafat-Ray, director of the Central Market Cooking School here in Austin, wondering whether I would like to teach a class based on food for Day of the Dead. Since Day of the Dead is one of my favorite holidays, and since the class will be a benefit for the Austin Children's Museum, I happily agreed.

BY CLAUDIA ALARCÓN

Food-o-File

Virginia B. Wood updates you on all the food news you need to know.

BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

Second Helpings: Japanese, Part I

music

Last Days of Rocktober

A sampling of local acts bring Rocktober to a close.

TCB

"TCB" gets in the van with Grand Champeen and encores at CMJ in NYC.

BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY

Tia Carrera Reviewed

Tia Carrera

The November Session

Paris

Sonic Jihad

Meshell Ndegeocello

Comfort Woman

RZA

Birth of a Prince

Ludacris

Chicken-N-Beer

Terell Stafford, Jeremy Pelt, Laverne Butler, Carla Cook, Geoffrey Keezer

New Beginnings, Close to My Heart, Blues in the City, Dem Bones, Falling Up

The Fat Man on Game Audio

George Alistair Sanger

Elliott Smith

Live Shot

Austin Record Convention

Live Shot

screens

Let the Work Speak for Itself

Yaphet Kotto, the First African-American in Space

BY MARJORIE BAUMGARTEN

Daringly Perverse

Death chess, incest, maggots, kidnappings, hippies, cannibals, undead babes, Kaufman as a killer, corndogs, and the birth of slash: Halloween home viewing

BY MARC SAVLOV

Mr. Creeptastic

Every day is Halloween when you're Professor Griffin.

BY MARC SAVLOV

Short Cuts

Lightning strikes twice for vid artists Jason Archer and Paul Beck; plus Helen Lee, Kier-La Janisse, and Lunafest.

BY MARC SAVLOV

TV Eye

Reverse psychology: ways for execs to wreck a promising sitcom.

BY BELINDA ACOSTA

Screens Reviews

Lost in La Mancha

It's not a Halloween movie, but Lost in La Mancha offers a glimpse into Terry Gilliam's own personal nightmare.

Film Reviews

Brother Bear

A young Inuit hunter learns lessons when he is turned into a bear.

In the Cut

Jane Campion's erotic thriller In the Cut dulls its cutting edge.

My Life Without Me

Unusual film about dying young avoids sentimentality.

Scary Movie 3

Third outing is 90% chaff, 10% wit, and pure Children of the Corny.

Sylvia

Sylvia Plath biopic is sad dirge.

arts & culture

Who Will Be the Arts Tsar?

The two finalists for the job of cultural arts program manager addressed the public Oct. 23.

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Piece of Work

Articulations

Leaders in the campaign to build the Long Center for the Performing Arts have decided to scale back the long-delayed project and build only two out of four theatres in an attempt to get it off the ground.

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Arts Reviews

The Taming of the Shrew

Choreographer Stephen Mills packed Ballet Austin's adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew with a rollicking physicality that spun ballet into slapstick and twirled slapstick into ballet and revealed an impressive grasp of Shakespeare's characters.

The Trojan Women: A Love Story

A Chuck Mee play is a veritable playground for young artists, but while they put a lot of thought and effort into the UT Department of Theatre & Dance production of The Trojan Women: A Love Story, the students behind it only scratched the surface of his work.

Miró Quartet

In their debut performance as the UT School of Music's faculty string quartet, the Miró Quartet repeatedly and impressively displayed its effortlessly immaculate, finely detailed sound and its sense of humor.

columns