Public Notice
Like M. Somerset Maugham said in Of Human Bondage: “It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the…
Why Should Anyone Care Now?
Doctor’s Mob circa 1987 (l-r): Don Lamb, Glen Benavides, Steve Collier, and Tim Swingle Famous for their motto “Show up drunk, show up late, or don’t show up at all,” Doctors’ Mob, along with other mid-Eighties local bands like Glass Eye, the Reivers, True Believers, Wild Seeds, and Texas Instruments, defined a short-lived musical movement…
Like It’s Going Out of Style
“I’m thinking of shaving all this off,” I tell my friend Sylvia, as I stroke my minor array of facial hairs. We’re sitting at the bar of a divey little coffeehouse on the fringe of downtown; we’ve been chatting for about three hours and by now we’re both so heavily caffeinated that it’s not, as…
After a Fashion …
“Bon jour, Mesdames, Mademoiselles. It gives me great pleasure to be your cicerone for our adventurous little voyage into Fashion Land.” — Introduction to the fashion sequence in The Women WWJD: When confronted with a question of style or taste, I often wonder what Jackie Onassis would have said about it. Unfortunately, she is no…
Reissues
Bossa Cubana (World Circuit/Nonesuch) Kids, it seems, will be kids. So little of the boilerplate tensions accompanying the Cuban missile crisis crept into the American pop charts that it seemed as though doo-wop and R&B sprung from another place; one where the friction between vocalist Tony Williams and his group the Platters meant a lot…
Working Worked Out
Jason Liebrecht as Johnny Rotten photograph by Kimberley Hewitt Ice Factory ’99, New York City, NY For a while, it looked like the City That Eats Its Young was also going to make a meal of three independent theatre troupes from Texas. As they prepared for their four-night stand at Ice Factory ’99, SoHo Think…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Some physicists fear that a nuclear accelerator in Long Island, NY could destroy the Earth. The city of Birmingham, England is planning to provide free trapeze lessons to would-be criminals and drug addicts as a means to raise their adrenalin levels and reduce their frustration and excess energy. Every 30 minutes, a goldfish thinks it…
Separation Anxieties
At the Historic Landmark Commission meeting in July, Stocklin presented six criteria from the Land Development Code which she feels pertain to the Buratti-Moreno building: It exemplifies “part of the development, heritage, or cultural characteristics” of Austin. It possesses a “relationship to other distinctive buildings, sites, or areas.” It exemplifies “cultural, economic, social, ethnic or…
Scanlines
D: Bill Karn (1961) with Johnny Cash, Vic Tayback, Merle Travis, Ron Howard, Midge Ware. (aka Door-to-Door Maniac) Johnny (Cash), a small-time hood, teams up with Fred (Tayback) on an extortion scheme. After thoroughly casing the routine of a bank president’s family, Johnny poses as a door-to-door pitchman selling guitar lessons. Once in the house,…
Beating the Heat Mythology
Ask anyone how to beat the fiery heat that’s left over from a mouthful of incendiary chiles and you’re certain to get a surefire remedy. The only problem is that you never get the same answer twice, and the remedies seldom work. Here, the Chronicle presents three of the most common reputed cures, with the…
One Block’s History
When the Buratti building (later named Buratti-Moreno) was erected in 1905, this E. Sixth Street block embodied the very concept of “mixed-use” through its intermingling of housing and businesses. By the end of the first decade, the Castillo Restaurant operated in the eastern half of the Buratti building, and David Buratti Sr. lived two doors…
Page Two
This Sunday afternoon, I’ll be standing in the middle of the field, the sun boiling down, with an idiot grin on my face. Heat stroke? Well, probably that too, but the Capital Area Food Bank and The Austin Chronicle will be presenting the Ninth Annual Hot Sauce Festival, Sunday, August 29, 11am-5pm at Waterloo Park.…
Queen of Condiments
When Gail Calder and former partner Barbara Hoover founded Two Women Cooking with the spicy “Hell of a Relish” in 1994, the longtime gardener and home canner didn’t necessarily plan to become the queen of local condiments. But over the years, circumstances conspired to thrust that position on Calder. In early 1997, Barbara Hoover sold…
The Man Behind the Plan
photograph by Jana Birchum Who is Jose Chavez and what is he proposing that has created such a flash point for dissent? Chavez served as an aerospace engineer on the AWAC program (America’s secret ears in the sky), and then came to Austin to work for CompuAdd computer manufacturers. Six years ago he began Micro-Media…
Articulations
The official word has yet to come from 719 Congress, but the State Theater Company is in the midst of its biggest artistic shift in a dozen years. Don Toner, Producing Artistic Director of the company since 1987 (when it was Live Oak Theatre), is stepping back from the role of artistic director to focus…
Product Lineup From Austin Kitchen Inc.
photograph by John Anderson These delicious local condiments keep the cauldrons boiling and the assembly line rolling at Austin Kitchen’s busy Southeast Austin foodcrafting facility. Look for them on the shelves at your favorite grocery stores. Stars (*) designate former Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Contest winners. photograph by John Anderson *Austin Grand Prize Hot Sauce…
Power Assist
First, a review of who’s done what since this council — which gelled two years ago with the election of Mayor Kirk Watson and freshmen Council Members Bill Spelman and Willie Lewis — became a 7-0 policy machine. That alignment created the cleanest, most energizing winds staff could have hoped for: Marching orders were writ…
Exhibitionism
Mexic-Arte Museum, through August 28 Upon first glance, Mario Rendon Lozano’s sculptures at the Mexic-Arte Museum look like pieces from a touring exhibition of newly discovered Aztec temple ruins. Deliberately arranged about the center of the gallery space, the large three-dimensional concrete figures and stone shapes sit like the severed fragments of an enormous public…
Hot Sauce Festival
Contestant Sampling Tables People�s Choice Ballots Festival and Chronicle T-Shirts Food and Drink Ticket Sales FOOD AND DRINK VENDORS 1 BBQ World Headquarters 3 Jim-Jim�s Water-Ice 4 Wheatsville Food Co-op 5 Ruby�s Barbeque 19 Botanitas Mexican Restaurant 22 Botanitas Roasted Corn 27 Austin Slow Burn 32 Shave This 33 Flamingo Cantina 36 O� Shucks Tamales…
Frenzied Rush
The most serious casualty of last Thursday’s overstuffed meeting was the scheduled public hearing on a plan that would have the city buying water from the Lower Colorado River Authority. With the hour nearing 10pm, and with hordes of budget hearing attendees waiting patiently (and with prompting from Garza that the “budget hearing is the…
Working Worked Out
Jason Liebrecht as Johnny Rotten photograph by Kimberley Hewitt Ice Factory ’99, New York City, NY For a while, it looked like the City That Eats Its Young was also going to make a meal of three independent theatre troupes from Texas. As they prepared for their four-night stand at Ice Factory ’99, SoHo Think…
Fire on the Range
This green sauce is one of the most popular table salsas in Mexico and Texas. It also makes a great sauce for green enchiladas. 1 pound tomatillos (about 13) 1/4 bunch cilantro, stems removed and leaves chopped 3 fresh serrano chiles, stemmed and chopped 1/2 cup thinly sliced scallions (about 5 scallions) 11/2 teaspoons minced…
Lay Of The Land
Department / Office Budget in Millions Employees Dept. Head Salary Mayor and City Council $0.8 16 Mayor Kirk Watson $35,006 Offices Reporting Directly to the City Council $16.1 213 Municipal Court $12.8 163 Court Clerk Paul Martin $78,998 Presiding Judge Penny Wilkov $69,992 City Clerk $1.8 23 Shirley Brown $82,493 City Auditor $1.5 27 Helen…
HIV and Hep C a Deadly Mix About AIDS
People who are infected with both hepatitis C and HIV are at dramatically increased risk for serious health problems from both diseases, and more likely to suffer sooner than a person who has only one of them. What’s more, a very substantial portion of the HIV-infected population in the U.S. carries both, and the potential…
City on Fire
Ten years ago, I wrote so many articles about chile peppers as the Food editor of The Austin Chronicle that Louis Black asked me to write about something else for a while. So I started sending my pepper articles to a funky little zine called Chile Pepper out in New Mexico. Last week, in one…
Naked City
Attorneys representing Gov. George W. Bush have filed a motion in state court seeking a hasty deposition of whistle-blower Eliza May,the former director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission. On Tuesday, Dona Hamilton of the Attorney General’s office asked a state court judge to allow her to take May’s deposition this Friday, August 27, to…
Off the Bookshelf
by Paul Graham Scalo, $45 hard If photographer Paul Graham is correct in his affirmation that the “best of time is always now,” that’s only because he’s probably slinking around some dark German disco at this very moment, snapping candid photos of sexy young revelers. The sweaty, cigarette-wielding socialites he presents in his collection End…
Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival Schedule
Key: TBA = To be announced D = Dobie Theater V = Village Theater A = Alamo Cinema Drafthouse P = Paramount Theatre H = GC Highland Theater Day Film Time Location Thu 8/26 Outdoor Screening dusk 4th & Guadalupe Fri 8/27 Trick 8pm P Sat 8/28 Growing Up Gay noon D Passport 99 2:30pm…
Evidence Buried?
A rundown of the TFSC’s history demonstrates that the agency is no stranger to controversy. A 1971 audit of the Board of Morticians (now the TFSC) found that the agency was paying a $500 per month retainer to Johnnie B. Rogers Sr. — who is now SCI’s attorney — while Rogers was lobbying for the…
The Huntress Captured by the Game
From Diana by Ir�ne Frain This may be the last time she still looks fresh to us. Another year or so and the hairstyles and fashions will have changed enough so that her lean, graceful appearance will take on a dated Nineties look. That’s when the books will have closed on the 20th century and…
Judges
At the heart of the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is the contest itself. The blind tasting competition for individuals and restaurants is conducted by some of the top chefs in the state of Texas. They take hot sauce seriously, and so do most of the people who enter. Five previous winners in the individual…
Cracks in the Veneer
Gov. George W. Bush’s well-orchestrated campaign for the White House is showing some cracks. A big one crept up last week during the governor’s Aug. 18 press conference at the Texas Capitol — the first chance in many weeks that the hometown media have had a chance to ask him questions. The videotape of that…
Royal Dish Deluxe
2 parts alcoholism 1 part homosexuality 2 parts adultery 1 part infidelity 1 part drug addiction 1/2 part bisexuality 1 part insanity 1/2 part revenge 1 part illegitimacy 1/2 part tragedy Pour all ingredients into a large bowl. Add ice and mix. Chill until frost forms. Garnish. Serves millions. The Royals by Kitty Kelly (Warner…
Producers of Piquant Pods of Perfection
Most chileheads have absolutely no concept of what’s involved in producing the peppers they crave so dearly. They go to the market and find an incredible selection of fresh and dried chiles, multitudes of different hot sauces, and salsas of every sort. Many are shipped in from far-flung locales, but there are several growers here…
Out at the Movies
He’s a high school quarterback whose throwing arm is the ticket to a state championship. He also wears plastic barrettes and red nail polish. Truth be known, this small-town boy is really a she, a woman literally trapped in a man’s body. And so goes the fanciful Equinox Knocks, a movie in which just about…
Postscripts
Last week, I wrote that Jan Jarboe Russell’s Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson is “convincing.” I was referring to the number of people Russell quotes as well as the biography’s feminist investigation of Lady Bird Johnson as a woman who was willing to put up with LBJ’s philandering and his tendency to mold…
Still Fired Up
Robert and Curtis Ischy photograph by John Anderson When I was growing up, salsa usually involved a simple combination of pur�ed tomatoes with a small quantity of chiles in a cold sauce used exclusively for dipping tortilla chips. It was something that we got when we went to the local Tex-Mex eatery, a trendy spot…
Short Cuts
Things are springing back to life as the summer nears its end (or so the calendar says). Dormant since even before the summer began have been the regular monthly salons of the local chapter of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF). Meetings are now resuming and will be held on the last Monday…
HIV and Hep C a Deadly Mix About AIDS
People who are infected with both hepatitis C and HIV are at dramatically increased risk for serious health problems from both diseases, and more likely to suffer sooner than a person who has only one of them. What’s more, a very substantial portion of the HIV-infected population in the U.S. carries both, and the potential…
Yankee Burn
Some folks can’t get their food hot enough, and others can’t abide the burn. To make it easy here in the United States, people are mostly organized by geographic region: Devotees of the chile are strewn across the Southern United States — gumbo, pozole, and green chile stew — while namby-pamby mushmouths stay up north,…
TV Eye
Davey and Goliath As a kid, when time moved much slower and a moment with nothing to do could be life-threatening, Sundays were blah-days. It really depended on the time of year. In the beginning of a new summer, there was no time to waste sitting still. At the end of summer, it was another…
Coach’s Corner
I was only a few minutes late. When I left my car in the parking lot, the score was 0-0. The Yankees had a man on first. Nobody was out. In the few minutes it took to get inside The Ballpark, the Yankees had scored six runs. Nobody was out. This was accomplished without benefit…
Tongue-in-Cheek Terror
Flush with success, 1986 (l-r): Gibby Haynes, Theresa Taylor, King Coffey, Jeff Pinkus, and Paul Leary photograph by Debbie Pastor It’s tough, mighty tough,to imagine a world without the Butthole Surfers. Sure, in the insular Austin music “scene” we’re often given to imagining that our favorite acts are known the world over. And in Texas,…
Waters’ Edge
John Waters is one of the most recognizable forces in the modern American cinema. He began making movies in the 1960s in his hometown of Baltimore, where he has continued to work ever since. He taught himself the mechanics of filmmaking and started reading the trade papers at the age of 12. He will perhaps…
Day Trips
photograph by Gerald E. McLeod The Frontier Time Museum. Saddles and chaps. A turn-of-the-century dentist’s chair. A shrunken head from Ecuador. What do they all have in common? They all reside in Bandera. The 72-year-old museum in Bandera combines the historic with the macabre for a one-of-a-kind collection. This palace of the unique is a…
Dancing About Architecture
Danny Crooks says that things are continuing apace toward his opening a new location for the soon-to-be displaced Steamboat by January 2000, but in the meantime, a strange new twist has turned up in the road to tomorrow. As of Friday, September 3, Crooks says that the Spot (across the street from Ruta Maya) will…
Cleaner Than a Handshake, Cleaner Than a Kiss
The 1990s is surely to be a decade of change — new technologies, new markets, new challenges, and new concepts replacing old ways. Overnight package delivery, anywhere in the nation? Americans preferring Hondas to Cadillacs? MCI long-distance sold through Amway? Many notions that were previously thought to be ridiculous or impossible are now fact, simply…
