Industrial Bodies
Industrial Bodies NR. Directed by Khmasea Hoa Bristol, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . This 15-minute experimental documentary by Khmasea Hoa Bristol examines the death of her Vietnamese grandfather.
Heathers
Sharply humorous but morbid satire of teen cliques.
Wise Blood
One of the last films in John Huston’s long career is this exceptional interpretation of Flannery O’Connor’s eccentric Southern tale of fringe fanatics.
Dark Side of the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz With Dark Side of the Moon
Dark Side of the Rainbow: The Wizard of Oz With Dark Side of the Moon G, 101 min. Directed by Victor Fleming, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Judy Garland, Margaret Hamilton. You’ve heard all those rumors about the synchronicity between Hollywood’s beloved The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd’s 1973 musical opus, Dark…
Articulations
An architect to design the next stage for the Zachary Scott Theatre Center.
Page Two
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. would call it a Wampeter.
Tiger, Tiger
Guests are kept safe by a row of barrier rail and a wall of heavy gauge cage fencing and can walk within mere feet of the noble beasts. It’s easy to see the changes tigers go through as they mature, as cats of just about every stage of growth live on this row. “We’re planning…
Natural State
San Antonio-based Presidian wants to enter into public private partnerships with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Exhibitionism
The Bad Dog Comedy Theater promised to bring the
best in sketch comedy to Austin, and with its
combination of clever intellectual comedy and
slapstick nonsense, the Upright Citizens Brigade
delivered on that promise in spades.
Public Notice
Public Notice notes a few great ways to celebrate the
Fourth of July holiday weekend by helping a good
cause.
Tiger, Tiger
John DeLeon, Noah’s Land’s park manager, seems to love his work. “What I enjoy the most is learning about each of our different species, looking up where they come from and what their habitats are like.” This knowledge is used to try to re-create an environment suitable for the animals, to accommodate their individual needs.…
Where the Money Comes From
Here’s a breakdown of the funding for the Canyon of the Eagles public-private venture on Lake Buchanan. $500,000 LCRA $500,000 TPWD matching grant $100,000 Burnet County (in-kind donation) $1,100,000 Total public funding $4,600,000 Presidian (lodge, docks, convention center and observatory) $5,700,000 Total for park and lodgeSource: Lower Colorado River Authority
Video Reviews
MAGNOLIAD: Paul Thomas Anderson; with Jason Robards, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, Phillip Baker Hall, William H. Macy, Melinda Dillon, Jeremy Blackman, Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Melora Walters. A strange coincidence, but these things do happen. It had not been 24 hours since I’d watched Magnolia once again that I found myself on the…
Exhibitionism
With its sleepy, dreamy atmosphere, repetitious
images, and low-key, self-referential presentation,
Jason Phelps and Stephen Pruitt’s
installation-cum-performance piece Invisible Moments
is one of those works that audiences are going to
either love or hate.
Letters at 3AM
Hot news about global warming.
Tiger, Tiger
“In the thousands of years we’ve been on the planet, if humans could’ve domesticated them, they’d be domesticated. There is a reason why some animals are referred to as ‘wild,'” says Cheri Watson.
Reclaiming the Land
“We definitely wouldn’t want the Texas approach applied to the national park system,” says Dave Simon, Southwest regional director of the National Parks and Conservation Association, discussing the potential for private developments in public parks. Currently, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. (TPWD) is debating whether to allow the San Antonio-based firm Presidian to build…
Exhibitionism
The musical version of Ragtime is a story of America
and of people in motion, and in the powerfully realized
national touring production, their journeys move us,
haunt us.
After a Fashion
Idol worshipping and Gucci goo.
Tiger, Tiger
“When a tiger is happy to see you, it makes a sound. It’s a greeting. They want you to know that they are happy to see you. It’s called ‘chuffling,'” Cheri says as she encounters “her babies” close up, with only a few strands of metal between her and the hungry carnivores. “It’s a good…
Domestic Bliss
As gays and lesbians gain acceptance in society,
more and more companies are offering health care
benefits to their employees’ domestic partners.
Love’s Labour’s Lost
Love’s Labour’s Lost 2000, PG, 95 min. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Kenneth Branagh, Alessandro Nivola, Geraldine McEwan, Carmen Ejogo, Emily Mortimer, Nathan Lane, Timothy Spall, Matthew Lillard, Adrian Lester, Natascha McElhone, Alicia Silverstone, Richard Briers, Stefania Rocca. Kenneth Branagh did such a great Woody Allen impersonation in Celebrity…
Two for the Road
Chronicle writers Dick Holland and Mark Busby on Larry McMurtry’s two new books.
Mr. Smarty Pants
Holy shrinking pyramids, Batman!
Tiger, Tiger
Sugar came from the Russian circus and lived for the most part off candy apples and cinnamon rolls. Life in a two-by-four-foot enclosure under the big top is no romance for a bear. Sugar was beaten regularly, severely enough to have become blind in one eye. One day she swatted at her keeper, an instinctive…
Meow Mix
When David Ramirez brought Simba home, it never occurred to him that the fuzzy 20-pound lion cub would measure nine feet long, weigh about 300 pounds, devour three packages of chicken a day, and die a gruesome, undignified death, all before its fourth birthday. Simba lived in a 10-by-22-foot cage behind Ramirez’s business, a country-western…
Space Cowboys
Space Cowboys 2000, PG-13, 123 min. Directed by Clint Eastwood, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Rade Sherbedgia, Courtney B. Vance, Loren Dean, William Devane, Marcia Gay Harden, James Cromwell, James Garner, Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood. Space Cowboys is exactly what it looks like: a lighthearted action adventure starring four of…
Two for the Road
Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways by Larry McMurtry Simon & Schuster, 208 pp., $25 Most of Larry McMurtry’s novels are structured by journeys of some type, often leading nowhere in particular except to the act of traveling itself. Even his epic Lonesome Dove with its apparently purposeful goal of getting the cattle up the trail…
Coach’s Corner
Golf Wars: Coach barely survives a brutal midsummer
struggle against Lions Muni Golf Course.
Tiger, Tiger
Most of the animals come right up to your car as you make the journey through this Texas version of the African savannah. Louie the Camel is a visitor favorite. It’s easy to forget how imposing these exotic beasts are, that is, until you encounter one face to face.
Local Ordinances on Exotic Animals
Since the state of Texas abandoned regulatory authority over exotic animals in 1997, cities and counties have been left to enact their own ordinances, although some municipalities are unaware that the state no longer regulates the industry. A database maintained by the Animal Protection Institute shows 36 cities and counties in Texas with ordinances that…
The Woman Chaser
The Woman Chaser 1999, R, 87 min. D: Robinson Devor; with Patrick Warburton. Some films are so far from left field that you end up with a crick in your neck for a week after watching them. The Woman Chaser falls (plummets, actually) squarely in that category, a rousingly bizarre, neo-retro melange of circa-1960 tough-guy…
Two for the Road
Still Wild: Short Fiction of the American West: 1950 to the Present edited by Larry McMurtry Simon & Schuster, 414 pp., $26 This anthology of short fiction set in the West is something of a mess, but it does have one thing going for it — Larry McMurtry’s unrelenting push to demythologize the region. Much…
Tiger, Tiger
Doodad the Aoudad comes up to get some food pellets. Along the safari, the goats and emus are shameless moochers, unabashed in their quest for visitors’ farm pellets, while the demure deer and impala would rather stand back and wait for the initial food grab to subside. Mother Nature works in mysterious ways. When the…
Naked City
Council will appoint nine members to the Mueller
Municipal Airport Implementation Advisory
Commission; city may implement new septic tank
rules; Suzanne Gamboa has left the Statesman; Brigid
Shea starts a new consulting firm; UT professor
Emerson Tiller has been nominated for the board of
…
Hollow Man
Hollow Man 2000, R, 114 min. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Elisabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin, Greg Grunberg, Kim Dickens, William Devane, Rhona Mitra, Steve Altes, Joey Slotnick, Mary Jo Randle. It’s the loaded question that has titillated libidinal teenage males since time immemorial: What if you were…
Postscripts
News on how to attend what is certain to be the
dumbest book reading in Austin all year long.
Throwing Down Love
The seven-year rise of Knolly Williams, the Master P of Christian hip-hop
Naked City
Hays County development continues apace,
squeezing out rural residents and exacerbating
water-use problems.
In Person
It probably seems a little unlikely. A 33-foot midnight blue tour bus rolls into town at dusk. And former Austin Poetry Slam Team member Mike Henry was on it.
Going Home Again
“East Side Cafe is obviously doing something right,”
Chronicle Cuisines writer Rebecca Chastenet de
Géry writes. “You don’t draw waiting crowds
continually for over a decade without conscious effort.
The cafe’s menu certainly isn’t Austin’s splashiest, but
for many, the cafe simply feels right. There’s…
Naked City
Austin looks to ways it can build its utility infrastructure
to accomodate new growth while keeping the
environment clean, avoiding the precedent set by
cities such as Dallas that have built infrastructure
without regard for where future growth will be.
Book Reviews
Ultima Thule by Davis McCombs Yale University Press, 52 pp., $12 (paper); $19 hardback Cutting across the strata of modern American poetry, the Yale Series of Younger Poets has been a kind of core sample, a way to track the shifting sands of poetic taste. If this year’s volume — 94th in the series –…
Food-o-File
Updates on the upcoming winery Harvest Festivities.
Naked City
Council comes back after a month’s hiatus with a
number of potentially divisive issues on its plate.
Book Reviews
Into and Out of Dislocation by C. S. Giscombe North Point Press, 343 pp., $24 This intriguing memoir, the first book of prose from poet-professor C. S. Giscombe, explores themes of geography, race, and family in an intentionally disjointed narrative continually passing back and forth in time and place. Various sections deal with the author’s…
Mini-Review
Bakehouse Restaurant and Bar 5404 Manchaca, 443-5167 Daily, 7am-midnight The Bakehouse restaurant is one of those diners that you would expect to find in a small East Coast town that recalls a time in America when beef Stroganoff epitomized gourmet cuisine. It is one of those places with a bakery case up front, containing a…
Dancing About Architecture
Jump on It skips a beat but keeps on keepin’ on; Solid Gold 40 gives up the ghost.
Dear Everyone …
Al’s question of the day, which he sends via e-mail to a group of people who share his obsession, is whether making a little money from their writing is contrary to the spirit of their genre. Almost instantly after the question shows up in the in-boxes of the list subscribers, the responses start rolling in.…
Book Reviews
Auslander by Mary Powell TCU Press, 304 pp., $24.50 Sex, lies, drugs, and incest — just another day in small-town Texas. Or, as Mary Powell sees it, just another day in three generations of a prominent German-American family from the fictional Hill Country town of Schoenberg. Spanning the early Sixties through the early Eighties, Auslander…
Mini-Review
Seasoning Savvy: How to Cook With Herbs, Spices, and Other Flavorings by Alice Arndt Haworth Herbal Press, 265 pp., $24.95 (paper); $59.95 hardback My favorite image for cooking, one that my friends are probably tired of hearing, is that of alchemy — the magical application of air, fire, and water to the fruits of the…
Live Shots
Patti SmithBackyard, July 21 From the sky deck of the Backyard, Patti Smith and band, lit in blues and greens, only looked like a typical group of twentysomethings. Dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, shaggy-haired, and without the requisite 20-lb weight gain aging rockers often sport, Smith planted her feet apart and launched into “Waiting…
Eight Prominent Online Diarists
With thousands of online diarists active today, this group of eight, culled mostly from the Diarist.net awards lists, barely scratches the surface of the vast array of folks baring their souls on the Internet. And though this list leaves out dozens of equally prominent, influential, or plain notorious diarists, the handful here are all people…
Off the Bookshelf
Oberammergau The Troubling Story of the World’s Most Famous Passion Play by James Shapiro Pantheon, 239 pp., $24 It seems only natural while reading Oberammergau to wonder if you’re reading Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” by mistake. Take, for example, the belief of the residents of the quaint Bavarian village of Oberammergau: According to legend, when…
Live Shots
The MuffsEmo’s, July 23 After opening sets by local punkers Ritchie Whites and Nashville-based three-chorders Teen Idols, the almighty Muffs took Emo’s almost-outdoor dampened stage. After a thunderstorm topped yet another 100-degree-plus day, the oppressive humidity felt like a hair-dryer-heated cave. Over a soft bed of feedback, Muffs frontwoman Kim Shattuck started with what everyone…
Greg Bueno: In the Land of oZ
September 19, 1999, Sunday: And yet factual truth is not and should not be the cornerstone of great writing nor great storytelling. Truth lies in as much in experience as in fact. Ophelia did not exist, this a true thing. But her experiences did. If they didn’t, then why did so many people feel emphatically…
Second Helpings: Nuovo Italiano
The weekly Chronicle feature “Second Helpings” offers readers the opportunity to sample tasty, bite-sized restaurant listings compiled from new and previous reviews, guides, and poll results. This week’s entries were compiled by Chronicle Cuisines writer MM Pack. When you need quick, reliable information about Austin eateries, check here. Italian Garden 14611 Burnet, 388-1062 Tues-Fri, 11am-2pm,…
Off the Bookshelf
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity by Paula Fredriksen Knopf, 320 pp., $26 Devout Christians struggling with their faith would best steer clear of Fredriksen’s Jesus of Nazareth, as should liberal humanists who fantasize that God is at heart a Marxist. Neither an enemy of the…
Tiger, Tiger
Baby Brutus shows his claws. He and his brother Caesar were born June 13. Their cousins Molly and Missy were born on June 5. In less than two months, these wild babies are already the size of full-grown beagles, though their dispositions are anything but. It’s clear that even at this early stage and even…
Live Shots
Ali Farka Touré, Afel BocoumWarfield Theater, San Francisco, July 26 To Western ears, the subtleties of world music are probably akin to the idiosyncrasies of the English language to someone not from these shores: hard to fathom. The polytonal musical palette exercised by these two Malian guitarists, in which there are twice as many notes…
Gwen Zepeda Effinger: Diva of the Doublewide
July 21, 1997, Monday: I don’t know why, but a lot of times I have nightmares about fish. … Dreams in which we have a bunch of ugly, spooky fish in our aquarium, and the lid is missing, and the fish float out of the top and through the air, because they’re like Wile E.…
Bad Dog’s Good Deeds
Contrary to its name, the new Bad Dog Comedy
Theater isn’t a mean spoiler on Austin’s comedy
scene. It’s about bringing things together, like improv /
sketch comedy and stand-up, two veins of comedy
that are almost always separate.
Off the Bookshelf
Teresa of Avila The Progress of a Soul by Cathleen Medwick Knopf, 304 pp., $26 Anyone who thinks a worldly New York editor is suspicious in the role of a medieval saint’s biographer doesn’t know Saint Teresa. With a gift for administration and an ecstatic devotion to Christ, Teresa of Avila, also known as Teresa…
Tiger, Tiger
Noah’s Land Wildlife Park, in Harwood, Texas, was acquired by Rick and Cheri Watson in August 1998. Previously run as a roadside zoo attraction, the sprawling 400-acre park began its tenure as an animal sanctuary when Cheri, with a decade’s worth of experience as Wildlife Rescue’s Deer Team Leader under her belt, began acquiring damaged…
Live Shots
Brian WilsonBackyard, July 27 One approaches a living legend’s concert with a mixture of love and cynicism, especially when the legend is as famous for mental instability as melody writing. Brian Wilson, also infamous for his inability to tour, walks onstage startlingly on time, as fans — half hipsters and half Hawaiian-shirted oldsters — dash…
Pamela Ribon: Sealed With a Squish
May 30, 2000, Tuesday: First the backs of your legs get a bit numb and tingly. This usually soars up into your bottom, and you feel like maybe you aren’t really sitting down or standing anymore, but rather floating around. You can’t feel your toes. Your chest gets a bit tighter, and you can feel…
Home for Heroes (and Others)
Transforming the storefront at 617 Congress into The
Hideout, a multilevel arts venue, has been a learning
process for proprietors Shana Merlin and Sean Hill.
But after $250,000 of investment, the developer’s
dance of securing permits, and many hours of hard
labor, they have created…
Local Bestsellers
Local bestsellers are based on recent sales at Austin bookstores selected to reflect varied reading interests.
Tiger, Tiger
Kasey Stirling lords over this romper room of nine baby cats. But despite her easy rapport with the cuddly beasts, she knows not to turn her back on them. As cute and snuggly as these babies are now, it is only a matter of time before they become large enough to kill. The Biblical metaphor…
Live Shots
DeftonesAustin Music Hall, July 28 Even from the comfort of the relatively roomy, air-conditioned Austin Music Hall balcony, the Deftones’ 90-minute set was exhausting. For the poor fan frontman Chino Moreno stopped the second song midway to lift out of the seething mosh pit, it must have been excruciating. “You guys have to help each…
More Local Online Diaries
Monstro! www.monstro.com Lane Becker’s site won “Best Personal Site” in the SXSW 2000 Interactive Web Awards.Bryanboyerdotcom www.bryanboyer.com Welcome to the New Austin: This nicely designed and well-written journal chronicles Bryan Boyer’s adventures with his Internet start-up company Deepleap.Welcome to My Neurosis www.disgruntledhousewife.com/neurosis/ Nikol Lohr’s infamous site Disgruntled Housewife includes a section devoted to her personal…
