Cream of the Crop
The first annual Homemade Ice Cream Contest was held at Central Market on Sunday afternoon, July 28. More than 30 hopefuls submitted their best efforts for the opportunity to win shopping sprees, engraved ice cream scoops and free cooking classes. Central Market employees competed too, for the right to judge the contest. Each one provided…
Mr. Dole Goes to Hollywood
There he goes again. Last week presidential candidate Bob Dole delivered his second speech to the entertainment industry on values and the corrosive influence of certain movies and musical styles on American culture. His first “Hollywood Address,” given many months earlier, had been a huge hit, stirring a national debate about the place of film,…
In Search of Suzy’s Peppermint
Homemade ice cream is a time-honored summer ritual. My earliest ice cream memories involve sitting on folded towels atop my grandparents’ manual ice cream freezer out in their back yard. I would take my turn at the crank with all the other cousins and then we’d share the delicious contents with the family. There was…
Austin on the Q.T.
Why not?” parries Quentin Tarantino every time someone asks him what he’s doing in Austin hosting a 10-day, 30-film marathon of movies from his personal collection of marginal (and largely forgotten) genre films and exploitation throwaways. It’s not that his appearances in Austin are without precedent; Tarantino has come to town at least twice before.…
7&7 is…
Call me a traditionalist, but I never liked the idea of singles playing at 331/3 rpm. Seems to me if you’re trying to eke out another couple of minutes on your single, you’ve already missed the whole point. One shot, one song (c’mon, the A-side) that’s it. Still, that may be the least of the…
The Fifth Wheel
It was 1961, or whatever year the song was “The Night Has a Thousand Eyes” and the song was everywhere I went: on my little tinny-voice transistor radio with the 9-volt batteries that last about a day, on the jukeboxes and car radios, just everywhere. My best friend Steve had his first steady girlfriend, but…
The Scene Is Gone But Not Forgotten
by Margaret Moser “Well, I used to go to Antone’s every weekend but all the good bands are gone.” That sweeping statement came recently from a longtime Antone’s patron. He wasn’t being mean-spirited, but rather was reflecting an unspoken sentiment among a number of Antone’s aficionados — that the white blues scene that gave Austin…
Coach’s Corner
Against a back- drop of Olympic brotherhood, frivolity and rampant nationalism, I’m reminded of a sad time in our history. A place and time of inverted morality. A period of bleakness, when humanity, forgotten entirely in much of the world, was on the run. The time is Germany in the mid-Thirties. This subject matter is…
Servicing the Public or Public Service?
Just for the exercise, let’s recall a few of the more prominent government types from the city and state levels who have become lobbyists/consultants after leaving public service: * Ann Richards does more than hawk potato chips. She lobbies. In February 1995, she signed on with Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, a powerful Washington,…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Some experts contend that certain bats will purr when they are happy. Gen. Daniel Sickels, of Gettysburg fame, had his leg shot off in that action. He had the amputated leg preserved by morticians and sent to West Point, where he would visit it regularly until his death in the early 1900s. According to a…
Off the Desk:
The Edwards Aquifer Authority (EAA) wouldn’t declare a drought emergency for the Southern end of the aquifer last week, despite pressure from a federal judge to come up with an immediate conservation plan to keep the aquifer from continuing to decline. The EAA vote on July 31 was close — seven members to six –…
Public Notice
But Lars Eighner isn’t, and he needs your help. Three years ago, the Austin novelist charmed Austin and America with his tale of life on the streets of the Capital City and the Southwest, with only his dog for companionship, in Travels with Lizbeth. The income from that allowed Eighner to get a roof over…
Return to Chicago House
It all started with a mysterious fax, sent to the Chronicle and addressed to no one in particular: “Witness the feel-good transplant miracle of the decade! Party at Chicago House! Details to follow…” Well, follow there have, albeit slowly. Peg Miller, owner of the former/future theatre/acoustic music haven, confirms that the grand opening of a…
Day Trips
Everywhere you go in the Balmorhea State Park you are reminded of the 20 million gallons of water a day pouring out of the springs. In the dry, low lands of the Chihuahua Desert west of Fort Stockton where cacti are the primary vegetation, San Solomon Springs turns the West Texas park into an oasis.…
Record Reviews
STORYVILLE A Piece of Your Soul (Atlantic/Code Blue) The blues is dead and all the Ian Moores, Chris Duartes, and Storyvilles in the world won’t change that. It died on a on a foggy mountainside with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and it hasn’t been seen since. SRV wasn’t the first and he wasn’t the best, but…
Food-O-File
If there is a more common or beloved pop-culture icon from late 20th-century America than Lucille Ball, I’d be hard pressed to name it. Who doesn’t recall Lucy pitching Vita-Meta-Vegamin, dipping chocolates on a candy factory assembly line, or in the vineyard, stomping grapes? Wouldn’t it be great to join Lucy in her grape-stomping? Fall…
Doomed to Repeat Itself?
The past is the past. That, and other truisms of great philosophical weight, are currently making the city hall circuit, in some kind of Orwellian campaign to erase the grotesqueries of yesterday. What some want run through the mental paper-shredder are those wanton years of the go-go Eighties, when the Chamber of Commerce handled, or…
Therapy?
Two years ago, when Therapy? played Liberty Lunch, I sat for an hour at the feet of singer/guitarist Andy Cairns while he howled a mixture of pleasure and pain up into the mike like Lemmy Kilmister. In his sky-blue eyes was the same look found on the face of saintly icons: pious vulnerability. By contrast,…
Hay Stops Playing Awake
Choreographer Deborah Hay is calling a halt to one of her signature contributions to Austin cultural life and to dance in general. She is ending the Playing Awake large group workshops which she has conducted every spring for the past 15 years. In the Playing Awake format, Hay worked with trained and untrained dancers for…
SOS Dooms City, Part II
It’s deja vu all over again. When the Save Our Springs Ordinance was being debated, pro-growth forces said the ordinance would stop growth, ruin the city, and might even cause bad breath. Last week, after years of legal battles, a state appeals court ruled that Austinites were justified in creating and voting for a law…
AISD Notebook
Much of Monday’s school board meeting was consumed with discussion of a proposal from the Seton Health Care Network, which now runs Brackenridge and the Children’s Hospital of Austin, to manage and operate health services for AISD. Briefly stated, the plan would keep all 30 or so registered nurses who currently have contracts with AISD,…
Raving About Theatre
You’ve been out in it. The heat. That blister-raising, synapse-frying Austin August heat. It’s ghastly. It presses on you like some mammoth sweaty gator perched on your back. It chars the little hairs on your arms and neck. It makes pit bulls weep. It can drop a Dallas Cowboy quicker’n you can say “subpoena.” I…
In Through the Out Door
Curtis Seidlits was an up and comer, a potential Speaker or even Lieutenant Governor — admired for his intelligence and command of the issues. John Hall was praised for his integrity while he was chairman of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. Dan Shelley’s legislative acumen was tapped extensively by Governor George W. Bush during…
Extreme Exposure
Various artists Laughing at the Sun Gallery through September 7 Photography just doesn’t get the respect or recognition it deserves. All too often, photography is viewed as either a hobby or a job, rather than an art form. This view probably stems from a too-common perception that photography is so simple — just point and…
Back ~ In Black?
It’s a huge victory for the city.” No, those are not the words of environmentalists Bill Bunch, Robert Singleton, Mary Arnold, George Cofer, or even Al St. Louis. They’re not even the words of the city’s attorneys, the city council, and of special note, not the words of the daily paper of record. They belong…
Potpourri for $100, Please…
Health Online by Tom Ferguson Addison-Wesley, $17 paper Little has generated more hype of late than the Internet. Entrepreneurs and corporations, in a mad frenzy to pick the bones of this medium clean, have marketed all manner of internet-related drivel, supplying cyber-skeptics with plenty of grist for their mills. But even the most steadfast skeptics…
Notebooks on Cities and Clothes
D: Wim Wenders; with Wenders and Yohji Yamamoto. VHS Home Video In this spare but provocative documentary, German director Wim Wenders explores new terrain in both form and content as he profiles minimalist Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto. Working in film and video, Wenders’ movie is as much about his own experience with a new…
I’m HIV-positive — Doing Okay — What Now?
If you know you are HIV-positive, that means at some time you answered “Yes” to the question, “Should I take the HIV antibody test?” It’s likely you’ve been grappling with questions ever since. Perhaps you’ve asked yourself, your friends, or your doctor whether AZT, ddI, Zerit, 3TC, the protease inhibitors or combination therapy is right…
Shortcuts
“Once you’ve lived through one of our performances, survival takes on a whole new meaning,” says Mark Pauline, founder/director of Survival Research Laboratories. Billed as “art for the wired world,” SRL’s mission is like any good parent (or Dr. Frankenstein for that matter), to “let their robot creations play in the world they’re about to…
Pool Hardy
Dear Suzy, I bought a house that came with a 14,000 gallon swimming pool. I hate the pool. It costs me more time and money than I want to invest. What can I do with it? Who can I call in Austin who is experienced in digging up a pool or turning it into a…
Sitting Around on “The Corner”
I was surrounded by people desperate for their 15 minutes of fame, and all I wanted was 12 seconds — the average time it takes me to get in and out of a 7-Eleven with a new pack of Marlboro Mediums. Only this time, I hoped my daily routine would be captured forever on film…
Page Two
is Dead.” That was the working title for this issue, but, well, in the immortal paraphrase of Mark Twain, reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Not that that doesn’t make a good, catchy title, but the fact is, Austin blues is alive and well, as you can read in Margaret Moser’s story, beginning…
Standing Around on “The Corner”
Behind the saw- horses and police tape, onlookers fidget. A child whines, and the sound mixer’s head whips around, fixing on the disturbance. All other eyes are locked on the two twentyish boys lounging against the store wall. The gang of four (director Richard Linklater, director of photography Lee Daniel, first assistant director Jim Hensz,…
