Cover Story
No Mercy
The case of James Allridge raises familiar questions about the Texas justice system
Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut
Writer-director Kelly cuts the Gordian knot of 2001’s sleeper Donnie Darko with this extended cut. It doesn’t all quite hang together well enough to explain the original enigma, but the extra scenes do flesh out the family relationship and make more explicit the film’s interest in spiritual reasoning.
Hair
Hair 1979, PG, 125 min. Directed by Milos Forman, Starring John Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D’Angelo. Let the Age of Aquarius dawn again: that music, the great Milos Forman, the choreography by Twyla Tharp, and, perfectly, Nicholas Ray as the General.
Exhibitionism
All the elements come together to produce something truly magical in KidsActing’s revival of ‘The Velveteen Rabbit: The Musical’
Food-o-File
If it’s late August, it must be heaven for Austin chile heads; plus, paying visits to husband-and-wife teams living their restaurant dreams
Last Rites
What’s left in the clemency process for James Allridge
Back to School
From Dallas to the Border, Texas shortchanges its children and its future
Intimate Strangers
In this surprisingly romantic tale of confused identity and psychoanalysis, the doctor isn’t in, but the tax attorney is.
Exhibitionism
You’re not likely to enter a world as uniquely weird and vibrant as that of Physical Plant Theater’s ‘Not Clown’ any time soon
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
The 13th Floor Elevators’ ground floors – where are they now?
Mitigating Circumstances
James Allridge was sentenced under death penalty laws with no gray areas
Austin @ Large: Recall of the Mild
Want to dump Will Wynn? Be careful what you wish for.
Exhibitionism
Rob Nash’s ’12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Musical’ gives his troubled Smith clan something to sing about: a 4-year-old boy
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
Benny Thurman Age: 61 Location: Austin Instrument: bass Recorded: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own),” “I’ve Got Levitation,” Live “I wasn’t too much on bass, I was a fiddle player, violin. I couldn’t play bass worth a darn, but I said I’d learn. It was…
Letter From Death Row
Our condemned cover artist makes his case
The Hightower Report
The conventions offer TV-worthy news, if the networks would just look for it; and, teach English to foreigners! … so they can take your job
Readings
‘You might call Lawrence Weschler’s most recent collection of peripatetic musings, ‘Vermeer in Bosnia,’ a series of tangents or digressions,’ Russell Cobb writes, ‘but this would ignore the fact the tangent is often the tale.’
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
Danny ThomasAge: 56 Location: North Carolina Instrument: drums Recorded: Easter Everywhere, Live, Bull of the Woods “I was attending Trinity University in San Antonio in the fall of 1966, president of the freshman class. Previous to Trinity, I’d attended Culver Military Academy, so I was fed up with regimentation. Plus, I had the draft breathing…
Fire Contract Talks in Limbo
Despite voter approval in May, still no collective bargaining
Before Its Time
A fresh 35mm print of ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains’ plays the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Readings
Afro-Canadian political activist, poet, and playwright Minister Faust’s first novel, The Coyote Kings of the Space Age Bachelor Pad, begins at the end.
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
John Ike WaltonAge: 61 Location: Kerrville Instrument: drums Recorded: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own),” “I’ve Got Levitation” Not long ago, when John Ike Walton was working at Stan Morris’ Music Corner in Kerrville, a woman stopped in and asked if he had any old…
New Rival for ‘Daily Texan’
‘The Austin Student’ aims to the right of the UT campus paper
Starting Something
Storie Productions
Page Two
A First Amendment primer for Alex Jones’ faithful and others in need
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
Ronnie Leatherman Age: 56 Location: Kerrville Instrument: bass Recorded: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own),” “I’ve Got Levitation” The 13th Floor Elevators were well on their way to being a cult band when Ronnie Leatherman stepped into the lineup and replaced Benny Thurman on bass.…
‘All Systems Go!’ … Very, Very Slowly
Cap Metro proposes a rail plan that is much less than meets the eye
aGLIFF’s Opening Night
Twelve days, hundreds of films, millions of parties, and … Tanqueray! It must be the 2004 Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, the planet’s pre-eminent place to see the new boys and girls on the queer cinema block (not to mention the nude boys and girls, but really, don’t you think you should worry…
After a Fashion
Panties, heels, shoplifting, dog collars, and suffragettes
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
Danny Galindo Died: 2001, complications from hepatitis C Buried: San Antonio Instrument: bass Recorded: Easter Everywhere, Live, Bull of the Woods “Danny wasn’t a hippie. He wasn’t into peace and love. He was an addict. He was about fighting and fucking,” chuckles Bob Galindo as he reflects on his brother’s tenure with the 13th Floor…
Postcards From the Terrorists!
Be alert! People are taking pictures!
Short Cuts
Bob Ray’s ‘Hillbilly Doomsday’ has been found!
Day Trips
If Athens, Texas, hosted the Olympic Games instead of its Grecian namesake, we would see an entirely different lineup of sports
High Baptismal Flow: Part 2
Stacy Sutherland Died: 1978, from a gunshot wound sustained during a domestic dispute Buried: Kerrville Instrument: guitar Recorded: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, Easter Everywhere, Live, Bull of the Woods It was Stacy Sutherland’s guitar at the beginning of “You’re Gonna Miss Me.” The handsome guitarist-composer with dark, brooding good looks was…
Endorsements
‘The Austin Chronicle’ endorsements for the Sept. 11 Austin ISD bond election
TV Eye
Keeping one eye on television and the other on pop culture.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Deadly decompression, tired tuna, wolfberry the “red diamond,” and Stroganov in Siberia
She Lives
Clementine Hall was the 13th Floor Elevators’ hip, maternal Wendy, providing food and security for the band’s tribe of Lost Boys
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
TCB
Another Saturday night at the bookstore, and some really awful TV
Soccer Watch
Olympic soccer, featuring a chastened Chastain; and an open call for local stars
Clementine Hall on Janis Joplin
“Janis was a friend to us, a really, really good friend to me long before anyone knew who she was. I really, dearly loved her. I knew her when she when only 18 years old and horrifically shy about her singing. She’d never let us hear her sing. One day she took a reel-to-reel tape…
Rainey Street, Ready to Go
Neighbors weigh in on compromise plan to transform Downtown neighborhood
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie
Would that you could activate a “Dark Clown” card on this bewildering anime import.
Five for Fall
The season’s most anticipated games
To Your Health
How much selenium is enough and how much is too much in helping to prevent cancer?
Phases & Stages
The Fiery Furnaces Blueberry Boat (Rough Trade) Rodgers & Hammerstein, Gilbert & Sullivan, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Friedberger & Friedberger, threaded by lyricism, length, and success. Wait a second. Who are those last two? Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger destroyed a pedigree of hipster rock on last year’s debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark, by combining musical elements that had…
Lowe’s Loses, Once More
The retail giant’s now 0-for-4 at the Travis Co. Courthouse
Alien Vs. Predator
An asinine grudge match between two of the most memorable Eighties-era screen bugaboos
Backward ‘Spin’
Catherine Berry explains how to reverse engineer your very own musical
The Common Law
Can a landlord hold a tenant’s personal property?
Phases & Stages
Scissor Sisters(Universal) These bitches know how to rock. Beginning with the ELO “Mr. Blue Sky”-era walking piano of opener “Laura” and the rolling bass of “Tits on the Radio,” Scissor Sisters reeks of nostalgia and cool, descriptors that could easily spell unaccomplished retro fad. But musicianship hasn’t escaped this NYC sextet. The music’s so tight…
Perry’s Office Freezes Over
The governor has a compassion attack – or perhaps electoral indigestion
Without a Paddle
This yuck-fest gets its jokes from men’s fear of homosexuality and impotence.
Topping Out the Blanton
That tree on the roof? Means the new museum is A-OK.
About AIDS
What’s new in the HIV/AIDS world? As its next HIV education program, ASA will tackle that question at a free Dinner With the Doctor on Wednesday, Aug. 25. Bob Wallace, M.D., will be here from Miami to review what was presented at the biannual World AIDS Conference recently held in Bangkok, Thailand. With almost 20…
Phases & Stages
Brian EnoHere Come the Warm Jets (Virgin/Astralwerks)Brian EnoTaking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) (Virgin/Astralwerks)Brian EnoAnother Green World (Virgin/Astralwerks)Brian EnoBefore and After Science (Virgin/Astralwerks) One night in 1975, Brian Eno, recovering from a car crash, woke up in his hospital bed with the idea of “ambient music.” In that moment, Roxy Music’s snazzy glam rocker was instantly…
John Wooley Fights Back
The Schlotzsky’s Original takes to the Web and the warpath
Garden State
A mash note to love that speaks to Generation Y as powerfully as The Graduate did to the Boomers.
Hunger Isn’t Funny, But …
The comics of Stand Up Is Dead mount their first anti-hunger banquet to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank
Letters at 3AM
The White House resorted to scare tactics, terror alerts, and slander following the Democratic Convention in order to avert the public’s attention from newly released statistics documenting the country’s economic downturn
Phases & Stages
The CureCynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, the Woodlands, Houston, Aug. 15 “Yesterday I got so old. …” The Cure turns 28 this year, positively ancient for a rock band, but about the average age of the thousands on hand for Sunday’s Curiosa Festival in Houston, which rounded up a handful of Cure-spawned bands ranging from the…
Labor Backs AISD Bonds
District, unions reach agreement on prevailing-wage issue
Open Water
Is it wrong to root for the sharks?
Payne Pleasures 2004
Latest ACoT theatre-award nominations favor two Austin musicals
The Rules of the Game
How Hudson’s on the Bend captures the spirit of cooking fearlessly
Phases & Stages
Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the ClassicsJim DeRogatis & Carmél Carrillo, editors Barricade Books, 304 pp., $16 (paper) Killing your idols is a philosophical rite of passage. Forget the four-lane highway and take the road less traveled. Question authority. And yes, kill those idols. Kill Your Idols the book, however,…
Chum in the Water at Finance Trial
Dueling ‘adequacy reports’ liven up the courtroom
Zatôichi
Beneath its layers of epic detail, this Zatôichi is cinematic cotton candy.
Culture Flash!
A Flaming Idiot gets legit, the Cultural Arts Division gets kicked upstairs, Zilker Theater productions goes west, young actor, and Hyde Park Theatre turns Italian
Liquid Assets
East Side Cafe co-owner Dorsey Barger was on the phone, nearly breathless with excitement
Hospital District in County Hands
A courthouse exec will handle the interim reins
Grand Theft Parsons
This film version of the legend of Gram Parsons’ missing body lacks soul.
Luv Doc Recommends: Lone Star Country Dance Sport Invitational
After the embarrassing shellacking put on America’s dream team by a group of plucky Puerto Ricans last weekend, numerous pundits have waxed philosophical about the decline of Western civilization. It was solid ass-kicking no doubt, but for all our hair pulling and gnashing of teeth, it was a resounding victory for the world dominance of…
