Food-o-File
Providence smiles upon us on Sunday, April 30, from noon-4pm, when Amy’s Ice Cream and Mangia Chicago-Stuffed Pizza will be serving their majestic morsels free of charge to celebrate the local legends’ recent decision to shack up in a brand new location. The Amy’s First Unannual-Birthday-Welcome Wagon-Benefit also celebrates 10 tantalizing years of Amy’s Ice…
The Worst Is Yet to Come
A horror-stricken nation has watched for the past week as Oklahoma City rescue workers pull the injured and dead from the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. And as the grieving faces of parents and spouses invade our homes on the evening news, it has become easy to wonder, could it happen here?…
Environs
For the past six months, I have been trying to read Goodbye to a River by John Graves. There are others buried beneath magazines, last Sunday’s New York Times, newspaper clippings and press releases. Half a dozen books I was supposed to review last year still sit on my shelf. Another half dozen new arrivals…
A.I.S.D. Notebook
As usual, at this point in the yearly budget cycle, the AISD Board of Trustees listened to over an hour of citizens’ communications at their regular board meeting Monday night. One of the proposed cuts for 1995-96 – reducing librarians’ hours to part time at schools that have fewer than 450 students – brought several…
Lagniappe
In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff Knopf; $23 hard This slender volume may be one of the best Vietnam memoirs precisely because almost nothing happens to Tobias Wolff during his year in-country. Attached to a South Vietnamese battalion in the Mekong Delta as an advisor during 1967-68, Wolff was a…
Is AISD Ready for Disaster?
The Austin Independent School District (AISD) has an important role to play when disaster strikes. In conjunction with the Red Cross, high school gyms can serve as hurricane evacuation centers, and cafeterias can feed thousands. Even Toney Burger Center would be used in the event that Austin must harbor political or war refugees. The school…
Focaccia on the Frontier
Stelline Pastaria 2501 Parmer Lane, Suite 550, 339-8823 Open Monday-Thursday, 11am-10pm; Friday & Saturday, 11am -11pm I suppose that everyone’s concept of Austin is the city as it was when they first came to it. In my mind, Austin is a city that extends from Ben White Boulevard on the South to Anderson Lane on…
Killer Green Information Environmental BBSs
Basically, a BBS is a computer – usually with a lot of memory – that has one or more phone lines attached to it via modem. The BBS is set up to accept phone calls from other computers that are equipped with modems. Once on a BBS, computer users are usually led through a menu…
Public Notice
DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN: “It takes a lot of moral courage to step into the chilly political climate out there, filled with… hate mongering, finger pointing (trying to feed the kids turns out to be the cause of all the country’s problems!)… So cold in Washington, the cherry blossoms refuse to come out. Conditions perfect…
Bonus Tracks
Plugged (Fume) A re-release of their 1993 cassette, Plugged features the same six quirky tunes that tipped the scales toward the power end of the power/pop spectrum. With new art work, Plugged may lack some of the vitality of their live shows, but it’s a good invite into the Adult world. If you missed it…
Naked City
Edited by Louisa C. Brinsmade, with contributions this week by Andrea Barnett, Robert Bryce, and Amy Smith. PESTICIDE PARK: Austin city officials met last week with East Austin residents who live near Springdale Park, a 14-acre tract that has been found to be contaminated with unknown quantities of pesticide and lead, to talk about the…
Daytrips
The first colonial Thanksgiving in the United States occurred near El Paso, not in Plymouth, Massachusetts. According to an obscure 17th-century book, conquistadors celebrated their arrival at the Rio Grande by sharing a huge feast with local Indians 23 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Don Juan de Onate, the grandson-in-law of Spanish…
Polishing Elephants
When is a work of art finished? When the words “The End” are typed? When the brush is set down? When it’s first performed for the public? In some cases, yes. But in many instances, perhaps most, a work of art will be reviewed and revised many times before its creator considers it complete. The…
The Last Boy Scout
Looking Out for the Little Guy: You won’t find any special interest legislation among the bills he has filed. Unless of course, you count the sick, elderly, poor, and handicapped as special interests. Now in his third term in the Texas House, Rep. Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin) says he keeps one question in mind when considering…
Page Two
We’re running this week’s cover story by Suzy Banks not because it represents late-breaking news, a hot political issue, or an important cultural event, but because it is good writing, good storytelling, and great reading. Banks regularly dispenses building and home improvement wisdom in her weekly Chronicle column “Hearth and Soul,” back in our classifieds…
Far From the Land of Guinness
Ian McLagan sits in the late afternoon light at a window table in the Draught Horse, a fairly faithful approximation of an English pub on Medical Parkway. He takes a sip of his Guinness and recounts how this one-time keyboard player for English rock leg-ends the Faces (née the Small Faces) landed in Austin. “We…
Record Reviews
HOMEGROAN III (Reservoir) This new Deja-phooey disc is driving me nuts! The only cover song I can pick out is Flowerhead doing “Pump It Up” by Elvis Costello. Oh, wait, I forgot. Homegroan III returns to the format of collecting new, original material by Austin bands. It’s not a bad sampler, either. The relatively small…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Rabbits emit a high-pitched shriek upon reaching orgasm. Streptococcus mutans is the main culprit for cavities in our teeth. According to a University of Alabama study, the bacteria is usually passed from mother to child through saliva at about age two. Florida’s only Dade County nude beach is accessible to people with disabilities. According his…
Snake Blood
My dad has been anxious for me to write about our family and the snakes we have known, however briefly. “There was that one water moccasin at the house on Latexo, coiled up under the fence, half on one side, half on the other. I just sliced right through him with the shovel, like cutting…
Wet Paint and Natural Disasters
According to my new Dictionary of the Arts, landscape painting emerged in the West as a distinct genre in the early 16th century. Susan Whyne’s “Under the Sun” series and Lilian Garcia-Roig’s autumnal landscapes add to this tradition of painting real and imagined natural scenery, with idiosyncratic style. Bettie Ward, whose prints “visually discuss mankind’s…
Welcome to Our War
It would help if we stopped trying to make sense of things. Then we might see the world as it is. I always think of God as the one entity that never, ever tries to make sense of things. But being human we are addicts for meaning. Even those among us who say, “There is…
Gang Wars
Born to Kill: America’s Most Notorious Vietnamese Gang, and the Changing Face of Organized Crime by T.J. English William Morrow, $22 hard I had just finished readingBorn to Kill, a novel chronicling the rise and fall of the most feared gang ever to stalk the streets of New York’s Chinatown, when I decided to give…
Coach’s Corner
Some think the NBA season began on November 6. This is nonsense. The season, in fact,commenced on March 19, TDMR (The Day Mike Returned). Jordan’s return flipped the Eastern Conference, like a D-Con’d palmetto bug, right on its twitching back. It turned the Bulls, 13-4 since his return, from an average and, what’s worse, an…
Council Watch
Insubordination of the Unelected The city government just can’t catch a break, not even from its own state legislators. The first beating last week came from Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos (see Daryl Slusher’s column this week). The second: a scathing attack from Rep. Glen Maxey at last Thursday’s council meeting. Maxey, speaking after the council exited…
DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE
Now, how many bands would find it a drawback having hot-shot drummer (and this year’s Austin Music Awards winner in the skin-beating category) Barry “Frosty” Smith bringing up their backbeat? Well, for a while there, it looked like the Chris Duarte Band might have fit that category. Things were touch-and-go leading up to the band’s…
Kick Me, I’m From Austin
This week let’s rove around the local government and political scene, and see what we find. It won’t be pretty at all. Attacks on the city’s home rule powers at the Legislature continue. Our own state senator amended one of the anti-Austin bills so that it officially encourges a development agreement with Freeport-McMoRan. Consequently, Freeport’s…
