Sat 7
Circle of Friends: A Celebration of Women in the Arts to benefit University YWCA, at Fiesta Gardens East, 2101 Bergman, 2-10pm. Cost is $10. 326-1222. TUE 10 Frida’s Fiestas II, a culinary fundraiser to benefit Mexic-Arte Museum, at Fonda San Miguel Restaurant. Cost is $60 ($50 museum members). 480-9373. The Chroniclebenefits database extends a year…
Remembrance of Watermelons Past
by Suzy Banks I made the mistake of sneezing when I was an infant. My allergy-happy pediatrician immediately diagnosed the culprits: milk, wheat, eggs, carrots, celery, apples, chocolate, air, water, stuffed animals, live animals, all my toys, dust, and mildew. Sugar and soybeans alone were deemed safe. I drank soybean milk mixed with copious quantities…
Chile Weather
Is this a chile lovin’ town or what? Over 1,000 hot sauce recipes have been judged in two hot sauce contests in rapid succession during a blast furnace of a summer. Last weekend, Market Master Hill Rylander debuted his brand new chile roasters at the Austin Chronicle Sixth Annual Hot Sauce Festival and this Sunday,…
Johnny Rodriguez
You Can Say That Again (HighTone) As far as comeback albums go, Johnny Rodriguez has done pretty well. His song selection is impeccable, having picked out gems by the cutting edge of modern country writers, such as Dave Alvin, Lucinda Williams, and Robert Earl Keen. Ironically, those songs are both a blessing and a bit…
Winning in the Rain
Before Sunday, August 25, there was no available data about the rain-inducing properties of hot sauce. Now it appears that all that was needed to break the drought was an outdoor festival celebrating Central Texas’ most revered condiment. Hundreds of chile heads braved torrential downpours, mud and soggy chips for the opportunity to tantalize and…
Todd Snider
Step Right Up (MCA) On his second album, Step Right Up, Snider manages to cover as much ground as Beck.In the latter’s line of work, though, it’s known as “sampling”; among those of Snider’s ilk it’s usually called “ripping off.” But he’s no lightfinger. Snider can be as folky and pointed as Dylan, as anthemic…
Eric’s New Johnson
When the G3 tour featuring Eric Johnson, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and Adrian Legg kicks off in Concord, California on October 11 most Austinites won’t be there to take note that Johnson’s rhythm section has changed. Instead of longtime trio-mates Kyle Brock and Tommy Taylor on bass and drums respectively, look for studio and tour…
Migrant Labor
The daily scene of day laborers flagging down pick-up trucks in front of Austin’s downtown municipal building, where councilmembers conduct their weekly televised meetings, was supposed to be temporary — at least according to Assistant City Manager Joe Lessard: “The idea of moving the day-labor site there next to the city annex was on an…
Also Playing
Friday: Limpopo, Saxon Pub Saturday: Chris Wall, Broken Spoke; Mason Ruffner, Pearl’s Sunday: Avail,The Queers, Voodoo Lounge Monday: Showoffs, Black Cat Tuesday: Sandblasters, Flamingo Cantina;Unsane, Soul Benders, Heterosexuals, Emo’s Wednesday: Sto Zvirat, Voodoo Lounge Thursday: Burning Spear, Liberty Lunch; David Allan Coe, Hang ‘Em High
Coach’s Corner
Two straight weeks weeks of solid sports with a third on the way. What’s come over me? Someone get out the vapors. So, finally we arrive at the NFC East. If you adequately explain how the ’95 Eagles — a pile of pigskin drek — won 11 games, I’ll use my influence and get you…
What Gives?
It just doesn’t seem to add up. It starts off making sense: The label is HighTone. Mm-hmm, good roots label. First song on the album: “Big Red Sun Blues.” Yep, a Lucinda Williams tune, just the sort of thing with which you’d expect a HighTone artist to lead off. Next track: “If I’d Left It…
Day Trips
The Marfa Lights have been confounding residents and visitors as to their origins for over a century of recorded history of the Big Bend. When I pulled into the viewing area off of US90, nine miles east of Marfa just before sundown there were already half a dozen cars parked in the area. It was…
The Real Y’Alternative
by Andy Langer “Hell, that’s alternative to alternative/ I feel stupid and contagious…” — Todd Snider “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” Although his name isn’t often bandied about in the same sentences as Son Volt, Wilco, or the Bottle Rockets, Todd Snider is perhaps just enough country, folk, and rock & roll to qualify as…
Page Two
Thousands came, despite overcast skies and intermittent drizzle, despite the confusion related to a new site, despite a day with precious little promise of sunshine. The periodic short outbreaks of rain seemed to drive very few away at first, and still more people kept coming. A public of hot sauce aficionados — drenched or dry…
Bully Pulpit II
Amid the flap of jowls and the rustle of cheap suits at the Capitol, over four years ago an accountability system for Texas public education was born. “Test those kids with a tough, standardized exam,” the policymakers at the Capitol barked, “and hold those teachers and principals accountable! And raise the bar every year!” But…
Public Notice
It’s Better Than Being Frowned Upon …that’s being looked up to, of course. What better way to feel like an honest-to-golly big shot than to help out a small fry? Here are a few community organizations that help kids get or stay on a sane path. They all need volunteers: * Texas Runaway Hotline is…
Bitch Fest
And the people spoke. They came in droves — bicyclists, health professionals, environmentalists. All focused on different issues — the helmet law, privatization of city clinics, SOS — but all were allies in their discontent. A false atmosphere of change filled the chambers early on. Dozens of protestors applied for their three-minute rations of democracy.…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Tom Brokaw once had a speech impediment. According to an article in The New Yorker, Lee Harvey Oswald’s old drinking buddy in Minsk was Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1928, British novelist Evelyn Waugh married Evelyn Gardner. Friends referred to the couple as He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn. The onion was very popular with the ancient Egyptians and Hebrews.…
In Black and White
Tragic Failure: Racial Integration in America by Tom Wicker Wm. Morrow and Co., $25, hard Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson by Marshall Frady. Random House, $28.50, hard However familiar and even tiresomely repeated a proposition by now,” writes Marshall Frady on the first page of Jesse, “it nevertheless remains the case that…
Day Labors – Night Falls
On the evening of August 12, when 19-year-old Ali Cokley was shot in the head at the city-owned lot on C�sar Chavez between San Antonio and Guadalupe, the trucks that routinely pull in to pick up day laborers had long stopped coming. Cokley was fatally wounded right next to a line of porta-johns that sits…
Bonus Tracks
A TRIBUTE TO STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN (Epic) The flow. “[Stevie] could go to that place when he was playing on stage. He’d walk on stage, pick up the guitar and within a couple of songs, he could go to that place — where he was receiving his inspiration. And then it would sort of take…
Duran Poster Signings
Now, you can have a little of the Parque Zaragosa Recreation Center for your very own. The East Austin Rotary Club has taken some of the artwork that muralist Fidencio Dur�n is using to adorn the Gonzales Street rec center and reproduced it as a poster, which the club is selling to help supplement the…
Bully Pulpit II
The man who brings intelligent, indignant populism to the airwaves and makes a hit of it will qualify as a hero. Even the addled males who now populate talk radio are beginning to suspect that there is a permanent corporate government, usually invisible, and that the visible, provisionally elected government is putting on a show.…
Live Shots
DWIGHT YOAKAM, DAVID BALL Erwin Center, August 15 Woo boy. Soul Train this wasn’t. This show was like Weight Watchers frozen yogurt: it never, ever went to your hips. Headliner Dwight Yoakam wiggled plenty — to the delight of every female in the crowd — but probably only because his beyond skin-tight leather pants were…
Art Transplant
by Brett Holloway-Reeves You would think that the simple fact of having lasted Threatened our cities like mysterious fires. — James Merrill, “An Urban Convalescence” The Downtown Austin Alliance’s “First Tuesday” program didn’t advertise a Battle of the Bands, but there it was, like something out of Eddie and the Cruisers. On the blistering sidewalks…
Off the Desk:
You heard it here first: U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt has decided not to list the Barton Springs Salamander as an endangered species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which Babbitt oversees, withdrew the 1994 proposal to list the amphibian that is found only in Barton Springs. According to the 41-page decision released �by…
Throwing Muses
“Hey, can you hold on?” Before I can answer, the sound of clunks, shuffles, and squeals peel through the receiver. “Sorry! His hair is drying all kooky!” Kristen Hirsch jumps back to conduct this oh-so-serious promotional interview for the Throwing Muses’ new album, Limbo, and the short, select-city tour accompanying it. The twice-over rock mom…
First Tuesday
The first “First Tuesday Downtown” on July 2 did just what it was designed to do. Couples, friends and families roamed around downtown from five o’clock until dark, collecting coupons, checking out retail stores, and soaking up various entertainments. I went wandering down Congress Avenue with my wife and her teenaged sister, who was in…
Clear-Cutting at Parks & Rec
Marla Evans bends over a mulch pail, scooping out the rich peat and bark onto the base of one of Congress Avenue’s many trees. Downtown pedestrians walk by, some stopping briefly to look, and then continue on. People waiting at the bus stop sit on the bench under the tree’s shade, and watch Evans and…
The Family
Richard Avedon LBJ Library through December 31 When Rolling Stone magazine, pop culture’s bible, asked renowned photographer Richard Avedon to photograph key figures of the 1976 presidential election, they probably didn’t guess that the results would end up at the LBJ Library, sandwiched between LBJ’s limo and Lady Bird’s evening gown. But this project, which…
Beyond the Closet Door
The Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) is celebrating its ninth year in central Texas with an expansion of its influence and focus. Instead of showcasing a preponderance of movies whose plots derive from the turmoil and poignancy attached to coming-out issues, the festival this year features an unprecedented number of films that…
Retreat for HIV+ Women
In early November, 40 women from Central Texas will come together at a secluded retreat center located on 32 acres of naturally wooded land north of Austin, to share their experience of living with HIV in a safe, nurturing, restful environment away from the cares of daily life. The 1996 Retreat will feature AIDS Medicine…
aGLIFF: The 1996 Austin Gay/Lesbian Film Festival
All screenings are at the Dobie Theatre, unless otherwise noted. Friday, 8/30 5pm Hustler White 7pm Wild Side 9:30pm Beautiful Thing 12mid The Art of Cruising Men Saturday, 8/31 2pm Boyfriends 5pm Midwife’s Tale 7pm Men, Men, Men 8pm The Celluloid Closet (Opening Ceremony, Paramount Theatre) 9:30pm Inn Trouble 12mid 3rd Annual Gay Men’s Safe…
The Unpraising of Appraisers
A house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. At least, that’s my simplistic notion. Real Estate appraisers have a more sophisticated approach; they think a house is worth what they think a house is worth. Oh, they’ll tell you they research comparables and attend thought-provoking seminars in Orlando each year on…
Sherman’s March:
A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation D: Ross McElwee. VHS Home Video Ross McElwee, fascinated with General William T. Sherman, set out to make a film about Sherman’s infamous march across the South. The $9,000 that McElwee received as a grant for the project instead funded…
6th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival Contest Winners
Individual Category Red Sauce 1st Place: Joe Morales III 2nd Place: Dennis Williams (Cedar Creek) 3rd Place: Lori Adams Green Sauce 1st Place: Joanna Shuckman (Round Rock) 2nd Place: Karen Peterman 3rd Place: Pamela Wells Special Variety 1st Place: Jimmy Williams 2nd Place: Michael Walters (Galveston) 3rd Place: Chris Buslett Restaurant Category Red Sauce 1st…
