Cover Story
Listening to the Bones
Bones tell a story at world’s largest body farm
Where Are All the Paid Bloggers?
Council campaign finance reports in
New Wave Sing-Along! Totally Tonight!
Stop singing “Take on Me” in your bathroom already!
Living the Hiplife
Awesome Tapes from Africa gives unheard music a second life
Christmas Mountains Get Open(er)
GLO allowing access to remote property from Big Bend
Seasons Coming to a Climax
State high school championships are this Thursday through Saturday at the Round Rock ISD Sports Complex, 10211 W. Parmer. There are two local entries in the 4A bracket – the Dripping Springs girls (playing at 11am Friday, against Wichita Falls Rider), and Cedar Park Vista Ridge boys (6pm Friday, against El Paso Del Valle). Thursday:…
The Clinton Two-Step
Will the pro-superdelegate, anti-caucus logics of the Clinton camp trip them up?
Garrido Picks Up 500th Win as UT Coach
Congratulations to UT baseball Head Coach Augie Garrido for picking up his 500th win as the Longhorns head coach in a 5-3 victory yesterday against the Texas State Bobcats. Garrido’s record at UT is a more-than-impressive 500-241-1. His 1,651 overall Division I victories is good enough for best of all time. UT makes the trip…
Place 4 Conversation (Updated)
On the radio right now
Texas Relays Photo Gallery
Texas Relays photo gallery by Don Bender
Persepolis (in English)
Persepolis (in English) 2008, PG-13, 95 min. Directed by Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Chiara Mastroianni, Sean Penn, Catherine Deneuve, Gena Rowlands, Iggy Pop. In English; no subtitles. See review. ****
Kind of Blue
Otis Redding’s 1965 album re-emerges
Lehmberg Wins D.A. Race
Veteran A.D.A. beats Mindy Montford
Daniel Takes GOP HD-52 Nomination
Insurance agent beats out assistant county attorney for Republican nomination
Events, Contests, & New Chrontouragers
Things we have done recently: -Swamp Thing Crawfish Fest (George Clinton got the funk) -The Grind Extreme Sports & Music Fest (upstream to the extreme, photos here) -Colin Meloy at La Zona Rosa (sea shanty swooning) -Austin Poetry Slamoff 2008! at the Long Center (snap snap snap snap) -Ray Romano and Brad Garrett at The…
Lehmberg Ready To Take Home the Gold
The early numbers are in: Rosemary Lehmberg has a decisive lead over Mindy Montford in the race to be the next Travis Co. District Attorney. With a total of just 11,618 ballots cast during early voting, Lehmberg has nabbed nearly 64% of the vote, with 7,402 votes to Montford’s 4,216.
We Have Liftoff
The Austin Wranglers are off to a slow start on their ’08 campaign
‘Cort’-ing Disaster
Bud Cort’s got no love for Statesman critic Chris Garcia
Nice Timing
Meeker calls on Leffingwell to give back $9,300 from Lincoln Property’s lawyers
Farewell, PinkDome, Hello (Still) Austin Political Report
Lege blog closes, city hall watchers still posting
Snapshot: Rio Rita’s Record Player Party
There are two rules at Rio Rita’s Monday night Love and a 45 Record Player Party: 45s or 7-inches only, and no elitist DJs allowed! It’s simple: show up, sign up, and spin three songs. Sing-alongs and dance parties pop up throughout the night, as well as some songs you haven’t heard in a loooooong…
Red Dirt Country
Johnny Solinger’s pie in the sky
What’s in Bill Bunch’s Backpack?
Crime wave hits Zilker Neighborhood
Today Is Election Day
Run-offs for the March 8 primaries, including Travis County District attorney
Get Your E-Night Groove On….
To do list for Tuesday, April 8: Vote. Don’t forget. Then you can actually feel good about getting your e-night party on: You can join Travis Co. District Attorney candidate Rosemary Lehmberg’s supporters at Joe’s Bar and Grill at 506 West Ave., or you can slide on up to D.A. race contender Mindy Montford’s campaign…
Dobie Solves Your Bare Wall Crisis
The Dobie wants to right by your walls
Hotrod Honeys Victorious, Hustler Heads High
Hustlers shape up against Hotrod Honeys, Oklahoma City shows promise
i-Writhe
Good thing no music’s allowed on the bus
Tornado Alley in Texas
Oklahoma City face TX Rollergirls tonight
Valley of the Dolls: A Salute to Stephen Moser
Valley of the Dolls: A Salute to Stephen Moser 1967, PG-13, 123 min. Directed by Mark Robson, Starring Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward, Lee Grant. If you need me to tell you any more about Jackie Susann’s dishy doll dross, take it as a sign you’ve been locked in the closet too…
Getting Weak at the Bearings
The Lonestar Rod and Kustom Roundup vintage car event harks back to simpler, better-designed times
Sixty Children Removed from FLDS Compound
At least so says KWES, News West 9. According to the West Texas TV station, investigators removed 60 children under 17, mostly girls — half of whom, they report, are now pregnant — from the gated compound built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Schleicher County. KWES also reports that…
State Investigators Remove Children from FLDS’ Texas Compound
Child protection investigators with the Dept. of Family and Protective Services have reportedly taken a busload of children — mostly girls — away from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compound in the West Texas town of Eldorado, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. (Our calls to DFPS, requesting additional detail, have not…
Trimming Time
Central Texas Electric Lawnmower Program event this weekend
Explanation Please
UT’s baseball team can’t seem to hold onto – or hit – the ball lately
The King of King of Kombat
What Ron Hernandez has learned about being an MMA promoter
Flashpoint
Shine a Light
Toros Trading Fuqua for Former NBA Champion and Mavs Broadcaster Darvin Ham
If all goes well today, the Austin Toros will be completing a trade that will send longtime Toros Center Anthony Fuqua to the Albuquerque Thunderbirds for former Texas Tech Raider, NBA player, and Dallas Mavericks color commentator Darvin Ham. Ham, 6 feet 7 inches, 230 pounds, is 34 years old, and yet still outworked most…
DA Dust-Up Gets Dirtier
Montford goes heavy after Lehmberg, Keel targeting Fero
George H. W. ‘The Dude’ Bush
Do the foreign policy debacles of Bush 43 rehabilitate the career of Bush 41?
Sex Abuse Investigation Inside FLDS’ Texas Compound
State and local officers have set up a series of roadblocks around the Yearning for Zion ranch outside the West Texas town of Eldorado, home to several hundred members of the polygamist Mormon breakaway sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A girl living in the FLDS’ gated compound called officials to…
Mike Wallace: Before He Was a 60-Minute Man
Back in the early Sixties, when TV journalist Mike Wallace and the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center were both young pups, Wallace donated to the HRC some 16mm kinescopes of the interview show that catapulted him to prominence: the nationally televised program, The Mike Wallace Interview. The HRC, along with the University’s…
A Certain Ringing in the Ears
Rat Bastard’s noise caravan rolls into town
Readings
With her second collection of short stories, Jhumpa Lahiri further establishes herself as a master of quiet despair
Kick It Off
Keith Richards never bought a Ricky Nelson album, only James Burton’s LPs
TV Eye
The discussion of race in this country needs to continue, but who’s going to do the talking?
Changing Behavior One Bag at a Time
Down with plastic bags!
Chicago 10
The trial that resulted from the demonstrations outside the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago were a media spectacle that is well-captured here.
Readings
Martin Amis tries breathlessly to evoke the post-9/11 change in the zeitgeist and, less successfully, to find a moral ground from which to respond
The Hightower Report
FEMA Still at It; and A Library for Bush Groupies
Myth Steps
Trenton Doyle Hancock’s mythic creatures rise from the canvas, with help from Stephen Mills and Graham Reynolds
Dem Convention: Turning Texas blue
Travis County Dems have the spirit, yes they do!
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
This Brazilian film is set against the twinned, opposing backdrops of the explosive 1970 World Cup and the human toll of the country’s brutal military dictatorship.
Readings
This lovely, clearheaded collection should serve, for first-time readers, as a fine introduction to visiting professor and poet Marie Howe
Off the Record
Threadgill’s reopens its original location in historic fashion, Spoon gets remixed, and Neil Young’s Greendale takes the stage
Page Two: The Business of America
Solutions to the made-up immigration ‘problem’ would be an expansive and burdensome assault on both companies and individuals
Obama Takes Convention and Texas
For now, anyway …
Shine a Light
The Rolling Stones gather no moss in this Martin Scorsese-directed concert film that’s playing on both IMAX and conventional screens.
Readings
Coe’s latest is a somber work that unravels four generations of British women, each daughter curdled at an early age by the mother
Phases & Stages
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (Anti-) Took Lazarus himself to raise the best Bad Seeds disc since 1994’s Let Love In. Retrospect proves 1996’s Murder Ballads the Aussie/English marauders’ peak kill, after which Nick Cave came to rest at the penitent piano bench of The Boatman’s Call. 2001’s No More Shall…
‘Chronicle’ Endorsements
Primary Run-Off, April 8
District 52 GOP Crossfire
Gun-friendly unfriendliness among candidates
Readings
A new biography of Jack Kirby successfully evokes the proper mystique and respect for this creative giant while revealing his human side
Phases & Stages
The Raconteurs Consolers of the Lonely (Third Man/Warner Bros.) Written in only 10 days, the Raconteurs’ 2006 debut, Broken Boy Soldiers, was a snapshot of the quartet’s potential. With follow-up Consolers of the Lonely, recorded in Nashville and rushed into stores following its completion in the first week of March, everything coalesces, beginning with the…
Soccer Watch
Dynamo drop season opener, Man U steamrolling competition, and more
A Bloodcurdling Day in the Neighborhood: Candidates woo ANC
Candidates to ANC: Howdy, neighbor!
The Common Law
Tax Return – Can I Get an Extension?
Phases & Stages
Tony Trischka Territory (Smithsonian Folkways) For more than 40 years, Tony Trischka has explored all possibilities of the banjo. On Territory, he brings his search full circle with 21 tracks that not only showcase his mastery of the instrument but also the variety that banjo’s capable of, including (obviously) old-time folk and bluegrass, as well…
Playing Through
It was a tale of two talented center midfielders at the Austin Aztex U-23 tryouts
Panetti Sane Enough to Die
U.S. District Court rules (again) on the mentally ill Texas inmate
After a Fashion
Your Style Avatar is still squinting from all that glare from all those rocks at the Long Center opening
Phases & Stages
The Breeders Mountain Battles (4AD) Not that Kim Deal sounds tired on Mountain Battles, but the title of chiming opener “Overglazed” probably isn’t a coincidence. Deal; her sister, Kelley, on guitar; drummer Jose Medeles; and bassist Mando Lopez return from 2002’s Title TK in a mellow tone. On the cascading “We’re Gonna Rise,” she purrs,…
Day Trips
Robb Kendrick is a successful photographer, lavender farmer, and avid day-tripper
Terrorism Hardens Austin
Austin learns what to do when terrorists – and acronyms – attack
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Plato was an amateur wrestler, NASCAR inspirers were amateur bootleggers, and the characters in Twin Peaks were amateur coffee addicts: 216 cups (to go with their 42 slices of pie)
Phases & Stages
Lionel Loueke Karibu (Blue Note) Artfully marrying American jazz with an African pop sensibility, Benin-born guitarist Lionel Loueke’s Blue Note debut is a delight. Karibu means “welcome” in Loueke’s native Swahili, and he opens the door to his unique musical world on the sunny opening title track. The trio of guitar, bass, and drums is…
Naked City
Quote of the Week “I see a growing understanding that transit is about land use and how we shape a different future from business as usual.” – Capital Metro board Chair Lee Walker, announcing his retirement in a letter to state Sen. Kirk Watson, chair of Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization Headlines • Early voting…
Rolling Rebellion at Capital Metro
Budget cuts threaten transit services for the disabled
Events Menu
April 5-13
Phases & Stages
Willie Nelson One Hell of a Ride (Columbia/Legacy) That this 4-CD box set is the first to survey Willie Nelson’s entire career is surprising but also testament to the Austin legend’s prolific songwriting, as his 75th birthday approaches. Even with One Hell of a Ride’s 100 selections, Nelson’s catalog is so thick with hits that…
Beside the Point
Spring fever: Council members’ minds adrift
Crestview Wall of Welcome: Art bringing neighbors together
Neighbors cheered the dedication of the Wall of Welcome, a community mosaic five years in the making
Food-o-File
The James Beard Foundation and International Association of Culinary Professionals honor local cookbook authors
Phases & Stages
Two Tee Pees and a Hydra Head add up to an indie label three-way from last month’s South by Southwest. First notes cut the deepest: introductory toms, Tony Iommi tones, and a crying “hole in my soul.” These aren’t Santana’s “Evil Ways,” rather Graveyard’s beheading in the forest for the trees of Gothenburg, Sweden. The…
Point Austin: Following Ronnie
The next D.A. must meet a high standard
Superhero Movie
Superhero Movie is a tonally confused spoof, which, for once, doesn’t go far enough comedically.
Charles Umlauf: One last sale for the city’s sculptor
More than 100 works from the estate of an artist who embodied Austin are being offered for sale by his family
Wine of the Week: Albariño
The climate in the province of Pontevedra produces delicious Spanish wine
Reefer Madness
Medi-pot patient acquitted after 11-minute deliberation
Leatherheads
George Clooney’s latest (behind and in front of the camera) is awfully agreeable, but it lurches forward in fits and starts.
Long Center: Opening was, in a word, grand
In artistry and style, the gala opening for the Long Center was an evening worthy of a facility 16 years in the making
Restaurant Review
Fogo de Chão 309 E. Third, 472-0220 Lunch: Monday-Friday, 11am-2pm Dinner: Monday-Thursday, 5-10pm; Friday, 5-10:30pm; Saturday, 4:30-10:30pm; Sunday, 4-9pm www.fogodechao.com All over southeastern South America, diners flock to grilled-meat emporiums where they can act out their inner gaucho. Argentineans and Uruguayans call them parrillas, while the Brazilians call them churrascarias. These restaurants are as ubiquitous…
What is forensic anthropology?
The examination of human skeletal or decomposing remains in a legal setting to establish the identity of unknown individuals and to help determine the cause of death. What does a forensic anthropologist do? • Collect human remains at crime scenes • Prepare bones so they may be examined • Analyze bones to determine the victim’s…
@ Newsdesk
The Other McCain
Nim’s Island
This girls adventure story that stars Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, and Gerard Butler bears the reminder that we should all be the heroes of our own life stories.
Arts Review
Naughty Austin’s comedy doesn’t provide deep insights into Damon or Affleck, but it’s funny, with some darn fine acting
Restaurant Review
Golden Wok 500 Canyon Ridge, 228-3688 Daily, 11am-10pm www.golden-wok.com Golden Wok comes to Austin with two successful locations under its belt in San Antonio. It’s located in the sprawling shopping center on the southeast corner of Parmer and I-35, with its entrance facing the freeway. The interior is open and modern, faced with warm wood…
The Secret Lives of Girls
AFS Documentary Tour presents the six-part Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman
Happenings
April 3-9
The Grand
There’s some truly hilarious material (though not nearly enough) in this partially improvised movie about characters competing in a Las Vegas championship poker tournament.
Arts Review
The dancers in this performance evoke nothing so much as machinelike armatures slowly, intermittently, gorgeously going haywire
Restaurant Review
Join the Peacock the first Tuesday of each month for five-course dinner with cocktail pairings
His Dark Materials
David Gordon Green shines a light on love and loss in Snow Angels
Topless Tax Terminated
‘Titty tax’ stripped from topless joints
Planet B-Boy
The global revival of breakdancing is the subject of this documentary, which shows off the mad skillz of competitors around the world.
Arts Review
The eight drawings of baseball pitchers, all in the same balletic contortion, are all about the pleasure of looking
Don’t Look Back
Why the crush at the Hole in the Wall on Wednesdays?
Road Warrior
Self-distributing Hell on Wheels
Police Consolidation Not Recommended
Audit committee advises against police merger
One Two Three
A comedy of mistaken identities provides the plot of this new Bollywood comedy.
2008 Austin International Poetry Festival Preview
Not sure yet how to celebrate National Poetry Month? Why not sample the many and varied options the 2008 Austin International Poetry Festival has to offer? The fest – the largest nonjuried poetry festival in the world – kicks off Thursday, April 10, and runs through the weekend. Morning workshops are reserved for registrants only (the late…
If That Ain’t Country …
The wide-ranging acts that the Lonesome Heroes have drawn under their new alt.country banner hold little more in common than the Wednesday night Hole in the Wall slot and a touch of twang. Here’s a representative culture sample. The Electric Mountain Rotten Apple Gang Fronted by the harmonies of banjo-picker Adam Kobetich and the accordion/rhythm…
DVD Watch
This Chinese film dramatizing the Tiananmen Square massacre earned the director a five-year ban from making movies
World Court Ruling Not Enforceable
Supremes stiff death row inmate
Snow Angels
Filmmaker David Gordon Green guides his cast, headed by Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale, through a fumbling world of nursed grudges and blown opportunities.
Luv Doc Recommends: 15th Annual Louisiana Swamp Thing and Crawfish Festival
Crawfish look like dark, runty lobsters – exactly the type of desperate, freaky cuisine expressly forbidden in the Old Testament. It’s like the Lord was saying that if you’re willing to stoop that low on the food chain in order to survive, you weren’t looking forward to heaven anyway, right? Have some dignity, mortals. If…
