Shapleigh vs. the Budget
Democrat Sen. Eliot Shapleigh took a stand against a budget that he says values tax cuts for the wealthy over the children of Texas.
‘Shortbus’ Is Special
JCM is a genius. Shortbus is awesome.
That Smell
Dallas psych rockers Southwest F.O.B. on The Larry Kane Show.
Adrian McPherson Named AFL Offensive Player of the Week
Austin Wranglers quarterback Adrian McPherson was named the Arena Football League’s offensive player of the week by ArenaFan.com after leading his team to a tight 65-64 victory over the Utah Blaze in Austin last Friday. His stats: 18 of 29 completions for 271 yards and six passing TDs, 51 yards rushing on seven carries with…
FSN Southwest to Air Hooks, Express Games
Ryan Sanders Baseball – who own the Round Rock Express and the Corpus Christi Hooks – and FSN Southwest announced Wednesday that they’ve come to agreement on the terms to air several 2007 Hooks and Express games. Although the initial announcement only includes the broadcasting of three Express games, three Hooks games, and the 71st…
Second That Emo-Tion
Girlie Action revisits emo.
Wayne Coyne Gets All Homo-SXSW-aul, and Apparently Gay Is the New Fun-nay
Is “gay” the new funnay?
Proof that Cops Always Have the Best Stash
This is what happens when you turn a tanker truck into a stash box
Fairness Isn’t Enough for Dan
Why does Sen. Dan Patrick oppose shifting the property tax burden to make rich landowners and commercial property owners pay their share?
Exxing the Exes
Glamour hears from an ex-ex-gay recoverer.
Harm Reduction Hits the Capitol
Bill seeks to bring needle exchange programs out of the shadows
High School Soccer Championships in Round Rock, MLS Begins Regular Season, and More
The state high school championship tournament is in Austin this Thursday-Saturday, April 12-14, at the Round Rock Independent School District Athletic Complex, 10211 W. Parmer (north of 620, just inside the Austin city limits). There are four games each day, 11am, 1, 4, and 6pm; semifinals are Thursday-Friday, and finals are Saturday. Local teams made…
Protecting the First Amendment
Texas made a step closer to a journalism shield law today.
‘Out’ Goes Way Out
Out Mag grows balls.
Chronic Covers Gale
Look where Jennifer Gale popped up.
Something Beginning with ‘J’
Rep. Warren Chisum’s, R-Pampa, bill to get Bible classes back in school has hit a religious-holiday-related snag.
NFL Analysis 101: Messiahs, Little Women, and Birth Control
It’s been a shockingly quiet week since our last class. Until this was said: “I have made horrible decisions about who I am with or who I am going places with. … Two of my friends who had never driven a Bentley, I let them drive my Bentley one night just because. Not just to…
Gale Forces Hit Dallas
The Terror of Citizens Communications checks in from Big D.
We Don’t Talk About Chris: A Film Festival From New Milestones Foundation
We Don’t Talk About Chris: A Film Festival From New Milestones Foundation This new local film festival aims to expand awareness about the stigma and struggle of living with mental illness. Screening is a collection of short films including “Psychiatry in Russia,” made in 1955 by the esteemed documentarian Albert Maysles (who also curated the…
It’s a Planet!!! And It’s Full of UNICORNS!!!!!
Best. Video. EVAR.
SOS Files for Bankruptcy
The stalwart defenders of Barton Springs reorganize in face of court loss.
Revolution Ain’t Gonna Revolve Overnight
Getty at the Homo Revolution Tour 2007.
Lee Leffingwell Makes a Splash
Council member named Conservationist of the Year
The First of Any?
Texas Rangers have arrested two former TYC officials on sexual abuse charges.
Kevin Durant Is out of Here
After winning pretty much every major award at the college level, UT freshman phenom Kevin Durant announced that he is entering the NBA draft and will be hiring an agent. It is certainly Texas’ loss, but Durant’s value can’t really get any higher than it is right now, and look what happened when USC QB…
Death of the Fourth Estate
Statesman gets down to brass tacks.
Sheep Today, Monkey Tomorrow
Damn dirty apes invade City Hall.
April 12 Is Voter Registration Deadline
April 12 is the deadline to register to vote in the May 12 elections.
The Score Invades Minute Maid Park as Astros Pick Up First Win
On Saturday, April 7, a strong contingent of Chronicle sports bloggers (and nonbloggers) made the trek to the City of Syrup for the battle between the Astros’ Cy Young contender, Roy Oswalt, and the Cardinals’ less-than-stellar spot-starter, Anthony Reyes. Rooting for the good guys were accounting assistant Jenn Nuzzo, proofer and Music writer Darcie Stevens,…
Tune Up
Jana Hunter’s current playlist.
Cute Band Alert!
Times New Viking’s lo-fi nostalgia.
Senate Scuppers Speed Cameras
Two bills passing through Senate last week could deter city councils from putting up speed cameras.
State High School Soccer Championships in Austin This Week
The state high school soccer championship tournament is in Austin this Thursday-Saturday, April 12-14, at the Round Rock Independent School District Athletic Complex, 10211 W. Parmer (just north of Highway 620, just inside the Austin city limits). There are four games each day: 11am, 1pm, 4pm, 6pm; semifinals are Thursday and Friday; finals are Saturday.…
Forgoing the Plunge
The Mayor can’t make it to the docks
Smack Talking About the Police Chief Finalists
The news that Austin has announced a list of nine finalists for the chief of police job has traveled pretty quickly to the burgs from where the nine chiefettes hail. Case in point: It took less than 24 hours for the news that El Paso Chief Richard Wiles had made the Austin cut to travel…
NASCAR Busch Series Driver Brad Coleman Is in Town Today and Tomorrow!
A member of Joe Gibbs racing team, 19-year-old rookie driver and Houston native Brad Coleman will be in Austin Monday, April 9, and Tuesday, April 10, to meet fans and promote his sponsor, Carino’s Italian Grill, and Texas NASCAR week. This past weekend Coleman led the rookie class at the Nashville Superspeedway by placing 15th…
Spam, Spam, Spam
Who won this weekend’s Spam Cram at the annual Spamarama?
A Sense of History
People other than the president undertaking diplomacy with foreign nations? Not the first time.
Cruisin’ High
Cruisin’ High 1976, R, 102 min. Directed by John A. Bushelman, Starring David Kyle, Steve Bond, Kelly Yaegermann, Rhodes Reason. Juvenile delinquents set up shop in Santa Monica.
Wranglers Beat Blaze in Tight One, 65-64
The Austin Wranglers stopped their four-game losing streak Friday with a close finish against the Utah Blaze. QB Adrian McPherson threw for 271 yards and six touchdowns. He also ran one across the goal line from 17 yards out, securing his title as offensive player of the week. WR Derrick Lewis pulled in an onside…
Worst. Texas. Relays. Ever.
An unseasonal blast of winter weather in April is threatening to ruin the final day of the Texas Relays
Mickey to Donald: Girrrrrrl, It’s On!
Mickey, do you take Donald to be your lawfully wedded husduck? Donald, do you take Mickey…
Will Wynn Still Jumping Off Shit
Mayor takes to the water Monday.
Express Cruise, Astros Struggle, Clydesdales Clip-Clop Into Town
Houston Astros fans can sleep a little sounder this season knowing that, while the big club has had a little trouble notching its first victory, AAA club Round Rock is the class of the Pacific Coast League (and not just for its Playboy-endorsed ballpark). The Express, with several of Houston’s last-minute roster cuts in the…
Wal-Mart Returns to Council, Kinda
Debate over the contentious traffic impact of Wal-Mart at Northcross far from over.
Toby Futrell: Best City Manager in Country or World?
City Council sure loves them some Futrell
A Guide to the Works
This year’s New Works Festival runs seven days with performances beginning at 10:30am each day and ending around midnight. Works are being performed in a variety of spaces around the Winship Drama Building, 23rd and San Jacinto, some of them quite small and able to seat only 15 to 50 people, so it’s a good…
New & Noteworthy
Full Quiver Farms Farmstead Cheese
Texas Platters
Devin the DudeWaitin’ to Inhale (Rap-a-Lot) Devin the Dude’s fourth solo album takes seven steps into a cloud of smoke dating back to ’94’s “Smokin’ Dat Weed” by the Odd Squad. Devin’s singsong raps meander through humid Houston streets one sidesplitting crack-up after another. As “Just Because” and “Cutcha’ Up” tiptoe on the brink of…
Media Watch
Baby Boot Allegations at Clear Channel
The Playing of the Shrew
Ballerina Allysin Paino reveals more about taming Kate for Ballet Austin’s ‘Shrew’
Chez Gladys
At first, Lebanese emigrant Gladys Naufal shared her authentic home-style Middle Eastern dishes with family and friends
Developing Stories: Private Projects, Public Benefits
Could developers become Austin’s new benefactors?
City Gets Street-Smart About Bikes
Local task force formed at behest of Mayor’s Fitness Council and Urban Transportation Commission gets rolling
Ruth Denney: In Memoriam
Ruth Denney, one of the most influential arts educators that Texas ever knew, died March 26, little more than a week before her 93rd birthday
The Woodland
Opened in the waning hours of 2006, it’s housed in the site formerly occupied by the restaurant 7. And Lamberts. And Liberty Pie.
No Concord for Northcross?
RG4N directs its ire at the city manager’s office
Taxi Talk
Belabored creation of new taxi franchise continues this week as matter comes before council for possible first approval
Austin Shakespeare Festival: Playing in a theatrical mecca
A dream comes true for the Austin Shakespeare Festival when it gets to perform the Bard’s As You Like It in Richard Garriott’s replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre
Dog Almighty
Born of a few dirty-water carts at Second and Congress, it now boasts three locations
After the (SXSW) Party: Where’s the Fire?
Party shutdowns unleash backlash against SXSW
The Hightower Report
Family Values, and Inescapable TV Ads
Arts Review
My Child, My Child, My Alien Child reveals poet-performer Zell Miller III in Richard Pryor mode, spinning tales of fatherhood in richly comic, broadly accessible style
Food-o-file
Young couples keeping CSA fresh; plus, openings around town
Kealing: Equal but Separate Plans
Parents of magnet and comprehensive program students have differing visions for Eastside middle school
The Cinema of Possibilities
Low budget or big, the energy and imagination of the grind-house circuit is reborn in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s tribute
Arts Review
The 2007 Texas Biennial exhibition at Okay Mountain generates color and a communal spirit while raising questions about festivalism and appropriating sources
Event Menu
April 5-13
Point Austin: Hold That Bus!
New labor deal proposed for Cap Metro waits for willing riders
Carpenter’s Apprentice
Robert Rodriguez on “Planet Terror”
Arts Review
The 2007 Texas Biennial exhibition at Site 1808 boasts strong outdoor artwork, but the use of PODS didn’t quite realize its potential
Amber Current Flowing From My Mind
Drowning Johnny Bush’s spasmodic dysphonia in a “Whiskey River”
Beside the Point
City Council is showing classic old reruns this week
Austin Film Society Documentary Tour
Fish Kill Flea
Readings
It’s a noble inquiry, which makes the potential pitfalls of the endeavor more palpable to class-conscious readers.
Bush Bits
On today’s country music “Traditional country music is about real-life situations. Once you get away from that, what are you writing about ‘My Tractor Is Sexy’? Give me a fuckin’ break. They say people don’t want to hear that stuff anymore; they want to hear something positive. Then why is the divorce rate 50 percent?…
On the Lege: Itty Bitty Steps
Minority Dems savor a few budget victories, and other news from the Capitol
DVD Watch
The Mirror of the Soul: The Forough Farrokhzad TrilogyFacets, $29.95 (April 24) Imagining Anne Sexton in Iran, Westerners might get a better idea of her contemporary and the subject of Nasser Saffarian’s three-part documentary. God, I sound like a music critic writing something like that, and it’s probably unfair to Forough Farrokhzad, who would transcend…
Readings
Flight begins with its protagonist, our narrator who calls himself “Zits,” lamenting his tragic circumstances.
Johnny Bush Reviewed
Kashmere Gardens Mud: A Tribute to Houston’s Country Soul and Texas on a Saturday Night
TYC Update: Conservator Conflicts
The Senate voted 30-1 last Thursday to appoint Gov. Rick Perry’s nominee, Jay Kimbrough, as conservator of the Texas Youth Commission. The one nay vote, Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, is concerned that Kimbrough might have known about the abuse allegations as early as March 2005 – two years before the scandal became public –…
TV Eye
War and Remembrance: Part II
Page Two: The Heroic and the Holy
Grindhouse squeezes transcendent kicks from a classic form
Texas Platters
Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ray PriceLast of the Breed (Lost Highway) They sure don’t make ’em like Willie, Merle, and Ray anymore, but they didn’t when honky-tonk’s answer to the Three Tenors was young, either. Throughout 22 songs of Western swing, prewar pop, gospel, and meandering shuffles, the trio trades lead vocals like three old…
Reefer Madness
Anti-drug congressman turns pro-medipot lobbyist
TCB
Here comes trouble with Attack Formation, Peel, Waterloo Records’ silver anniversary, and a Brown Whörnet beat down
Meet the Robinsons
While Disney’s latest animated feature might not be a sign of the apocalypse, it’s at least a sign that Disney needs to find some decent writers.
Oops!
Our latest batch
Texas Platters
Dale WatsonFrom the Cradle to the Grave (Hyena) Austin’s honky-tonk troubadour has always been enamored with the greats – Johnny, Elvis, George, Hank – but who knew that 10 days in a Tennessee cabin once belonging to the Man in Black would peak Dale Watson’s self-coined Ameripolitan. Watson’s 12th proper LP, From the Cradle to…
Naked City
Quote of the Week “I thought this was the Year of the Child. I didn’t know this was the Year to Screw the Child.” – Rep. Joe Heflin, D-Crosbyton, responding to colleagues’ claims that easing eligibility requirements for the Children’s Health Insurance Program would be too expensive. Headlines• After years of trickling drainage, the city’s…
The Reaping
Pardon the pun, but audiences will reap little from this satanic backwoods juju thriller.
After a Fashion
Your Style Avatar discovers Voxtrot
Texas Platters
Bonfire of Roadmapsby Joe Ely University of Texas Press, 194 pp., $19.95 In the closing stanzas of Joe Ely’s Bonfire of Roadmaps, a collection of poems and drawings culled from the traveling journals of Austin’s Lord of the Highway, he writes from the Flatlanders’ 2002 tour: “How blessed we are to have the luxury to…
More Pet Food Recalled
Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy might contain contaminated wheat gluten, some Dingo brand Chick’n Jerky treats contaminated with salmonella
Grindhouse
Grindhouse, which was filmed in Austin, raises the bar for movie showmanship and the theatregoing experience.
Day Trips
The beautiful and peaceful Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Rio Grande City is steeped in history, religious and otherwise
Texas Platters
Billy Joe Shaver took his place early on as one of Texas’ songwriter laureates, reinforcing it with an astounding output over the years. The aptly titled Greatest Hits (Compadre) serves as the must-have refresher course in his leathery repertoire. Chestnuts such as “Georgia on a Fast Train” and “Old Chunk of Coal” meet with two…
Federal Family-Planning Honcho Resigns
Overseer of funds hits road after Medicaid officials initiate action against his private practice
Puccini for Beginners
A lesbian on the rebound falls for both a guy and a gal in this rom-com with roots in old Hollywood screwball comedies.
Soccer Watch
European Champions League quarterfinals highlight a busy week in soccer, and more
Texas Platters
The LaughingTiger Cry When faced with personal, unavoidable failure, it’s best to ease the awkwardness with an amusing aside or a whimsical witticism. Such is the case with Austin’s latest blog bust, the Laughing, a derisive local quartet that disguises its mediocrity and melodrama through a series of ill-fated gimmicks – an animal fetish, neon…
AMD Not So Clean?
Sediment-laden runoff spotted flowing from Southwest Austin construction site of company’s controversial Lone Star campus
The Hoax
Playing the con artist Clifford Irving, who notoriously forged the autobiography of Howard Hughes, Richard Gere has one of the best roles of his career.
The Laboratory of Playmaking
Artists from different realms join forces to concoct new strains of performance in UT’s New Works Festival
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Houston screws down the Texas Two Step
Texas Platters
Jana HunterThere’s No Home (Gnomonsong) Jana Hunter’s 2005 debut, Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, is akin to Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle: ghostly, engaging tales of death and anxiety. Her latest finds the paranoia sliding away slightly. Recorded at a home in Houston with accompaniment from brother John on bass and drummer John Adams of Fatal…
Plainview Estates to Finally Get Water
County signs off on connecting the 40 homes in low-income subdivision to water service
Nomad
This historical sword-and-sandals epic is set in 18th century Kazakhstan.
News Works Festival Schedule
Monday, April 9 6:30pm: Welcome to the festival, with opening remarks by Erik Ehn, Brockett Theatre 7pm: Keynote Artist Performance: Pretty, by Theatre of Yugen, Brockett Theatre 8pm: Kickoff party, Winship Atrium Tuesday, April 10 10am: Panel: My Life in Art – Performers, Winship 2.112 11:30am: People Watching, Winship 1.134 12:30pm: Ashes, Ashes, Brockett Theatre…
The Common Law
Tax return – can I get an extension?
Texas Platters
GradyA Cup of Cold Poison Grady’s second album of roughneck blues is a long way from Sunday school; as “One of These Days You’re Gonna Lie Down Dead” advises, “Your sweet chariot is a box of pine.” A farmer’s prayer for rain in “Rolling Thunder” comes in language better known as a Vietnam bombing run…
Happenings
April 5, 2007 – Wednesday, April 11
Luv Doc Recommends: Urban Music Festival
If you’re too young to remember the O’Jays, outstanding. You’re right in the Chronicle’s target demographic – or at least on the very fringes of it. If you’re old enough to remember actually dancing to the O’Jays, you’re probably wearing a Medic-Alert bracelet and living in Sun City. Congratulations on scoring a copy of the…
