Eat It, You Flake!
If you thought Cheerios were for kids, you’d better wake up. Cerealizing America: The Unsweetened Story of American Breakfast Cereal milks the 100th anniversary of the “invention” of the cereal flake for all it’s worth. Authored by Scott Bruce and Bill (Stevie Ray Vaughan: Caught in the Crossfire and Border Radio) Crawford, Cerealizing America cracks…
Doin’ the Turnaround
by Alex de Marban If Austin were a mid- dle-aged man, the urban core, frequently shunned by developers in favor of the suburbs, would be the bald spot. The solution to the baldness, if Councilmember Eric Mitchell is correct, would be CURE. Not a CURE as in Rogaine, but as in Central Urban REdevelopment, Mitchell’s…
Graphic Delight
by Edward Kim When I told one of my anime-loving friends that I wanted to review Rumiko Takahashi’s work, he said, “No, don’t. You’re going to look like a fool.” I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that; maybe it was because at the time I’d only had minimal exposure to manga (Japanese comics),…
Naked City
Despite UT Chancellor William Cunningham’s stubborn silence, jaw-dropping information on his ties to Freeport-McMoRan, Inc., continues to grab headlines. The Daily Texan uncovered the news Tuesday that Cunningham, who earns $40,000 per year as a member of Freeport’s board of directors, holds options for 47,369 shares of company stock, possibly worth a million dollars. Cunningham…
The Horror,The Horror!
Nightwalkers by Bruce Lanier Wright Taylor Publishing $17.95, paper Anyone who was fortunate enough to pick up a copy of Wright’s previous book Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Golden Age of Science Fiction Movie Posters (and if you haven’t, do so) which illuminated the SF film cycle of the Fifties and early Sixties in a remarkably informative…
Short Cuts
Nationally recognized, local writer Spike Gillespie, who graces our pages frequently with thoughtful essays on topics from pain to Playboy centerfolds, was recently hired by Prodigy to be the new Madonna of the Infobahn. She is authoring a weekly online column about women’s issues, bringing her opinionated (and humorous) slant on femininity and motherhood to…
Substance Abuse and HIV at the Crossroads
Some studies indicate that approximately 30% of the lesbian and gay population are chemically dependent (Lesbian & Gay Substance Abuse Planning Group, 1991). Abusing substances increases the risk of HIV infection in at least three ways. First, persons who are intoxicated have a greater propensity to engage in unsafe sex practices. Secondly, IV drug users…
Bonded for Life
by Patrick Taggart The respirator can be unplugged, but let’s keep him in intensive care a bit longer. 007 isn’t quite yet out of the woods. Granted, the most durable of all secret agents has rallied strongly in his latest iteration. But few would dispute the notion that his condition over the last several years…
A Tree Hugger Confesses
Hi Suzy, I’m working on a storage shed in the backyard. I’d kind of like to use some wooden siding. I’m not fond of those 4′ x 8′ sheets of pressed board. Do you have any advice for materials? Frame it up with pine, and put some redwood siding up? Where’s a good place to…
Me and My Truck
Auto Love by Suzy Banks I dispassionately bought a car today: a six-year old, black Mazda pickup truck, 88,000 miles, mechanically perfect, with multiple contusions on its glossy body. I can easily remain aloof, I thought, as I drove the work truck home. As I inched towards MoPac, I made up exciting histories to explain…
Page Two
by Louisa C. Brinsmade In Wimberley, about 45 minutes west of here, there’s a little tourist spot called Pioneer Town. It attempts, in a somewhat crude and commercial way, to recreate the boomtown feel of the Old West. Clapboard buildings with wooden sidewalks on a grid pattern head out to nowhere in the wind’s four…
Dadbeat
The Bucks Don’t Stop Here by Bill Crawford It was the moment that every parent waits for, the defining moment when an infant becomes really, truly human. Our daughter was struggling to say her first word. “Muh, muh, muh,” the baby began. “`Mummy,’ she’s going to say `Mummy,'” my wife and I whispered. How perfect.…
A Day With Heart
It’s become as regular a reminder of mortality as the smudges of Ash Wednesday. Once a year, shops, galleries, public art displays don sack cloth (black shrouds) over works of art, to honor those dead of the AIDS virus. A Day Without Art & World AIDS Day, Fri., Dec. 1, is observed by these local…
Coach’s Corner
Capon: n. “A male chicken castrated when young to improve the quality of its flesh for food.” — American Heritage Dictionary I’m not crazy about the holiday season. My personality, normally as stable as a ball of Silly Putty, sinks into a predictable trough. However, it’s been a lot worse. Only a few years ago,…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows…
Abe Lincoln was an accomplished inventor. New York City’s largest ticker-tape parade — measured by the amount of ticker tape picked up — was for John Glenn on March 1, 1962, weighing in at 3,474 tons on a seven-mile route. About 8,000 people visited Antarctica last year. The credit card was invented in 1949 by…
Day Trips
Rick and Donna Wilson have reopened what was once the oldest honky tonk in Texas. After a four-year absence, the new Riley’s Tavern is a combination of the old and the new. After Prohibition in 1933, J.C. Riley was first in line to get a beer license for his little saloon in Hunter halfway between…
Sore About the Score
As of Monday, November 20, KTBC Channel 7 has suspended their weekly Restaurant Scorecard feature wherein they broad-cast the five lowest and highest scores on the Austin/Travis County Health Department restaurant sanitation reports. A concerned group of more than 60 local restaurateurs, members of the Austin Restaurant Association, requested a meeting with station representatives to…
Cafe 290
East Highway 290, 272-4212 6am-10pm Mon-Sat, 7am-10pm Sun The average driver on a two-lane highway spends about 70% of their time looking for speed traps. If you’re smart and/or hungry, you’ll invest the other 30% searching for road diners. Now that plastic burger franchises have spread to most small towns, independent diners should qualify for…
Beyond Black and Green
By Pableaux Johnson Up until a few years ago, olives were traditionally encountered on combination pizzas or in 1930s RKO movies depicting martini-swilling urbanites. One rarely found them in real life, and when you did they were available in only two types: green and black. That one jar of Spanish olives stuffed with lazy, discolored…
Aisd
For the first time since Jim Fox became superintendent of the Austin Independent School District (AISD), the board of trustees conducted its meeting and a bond issue work session very late, until 1am. Trustees devoted considerable time for discussion on a matter that has also hung up the board in the past — whether or…
What’s Left of the Dial
by Ken Lieck The times, they are a-changing. Oh, sure, that line may be the most clich�d opening sentence in music journalism, but in this case, it’s justified. Everybody knows the source, the title of the song, and the artist who wrote and sang it, but do you know of anyone under 40 who was…
Scanlines
Maniac D: William Lustig; with Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Gail Lawrence, Tom Savini. Laserdisc Elite Entertainment Generally reviled by horror fans and critics, Maniac may seem an unusual choice for a special edition laserdisc, but Elite Entertainment has gone ahead and done their usual excellent job of bringing it to home video. Maniac, starring the…
Broadcasts Vol. 3
(107.1 KGSR/Radio Austin) Another winner, and really, was there ever any doubt? Again, the kind folks at the home of Adult Alternative programming have made sure that every musician passing through their doors straps on an acoustic and gives the musical genre known as “unplugged” a one-shot whirl. The results are remarkable not only for…
Rock and a Hard Place
by Andy Langer “If you think it’s easy doing one-night stands/ try playing in a rock & roll band/…Geting old/ getting gray/ getting ripped off/ underpaid/ getting sold second hand/ that’s how it goes playing in a band/ it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock & roll” — “Long Way to…
Rhapsodizing,
rhyming, warbling, and chiming, they’re coming. The Ralph Rackstraws, the Patiences, the Mabels, the Deadeye Dicks, the Kings of Barataria, the Nanki-Poos, and those very models of the modern Major-General, are coming to town. All the fanciful figures who trill and patter their way through the world’s most popular comic operas are coming, each in…
Where’s Lucinda?
Wasn’t Lucinda Williams’ new album for American Records supposed to be out by now? I seem to recall that it was set for a fall ’95 release. A rep for American says that “we don’t have any info” as to when the album is going to appear, but adds that “there’s no such thing at…
Gilbert & Sullivan Convention Schedule
Friday * Betty Switzer, Texas Commission of the Arts, speaks on government funding. * Informal G & S “open mike” (without the mike). Saturday * 1pm, G & S quiz, videos, and demonstrations. * 7:30pm, Holiday Season Gilbert & Sullivan All-Star Revue, The G & S Society of Austin and Trial by Jury, The Texas…
Recommended
edited by Raoul Hernandez LUCINDA WILLIAMS Electric Lounge, Tuesday 5-Thursday 7 First Ed Hamell and now Lucinda Williams? Now these are “road shows.” These are the locals you wish had never left, and with Lucinda plucking heart strings for three, middle-of-the-week early shows (8-10pm), it’s like she never moved to Nashville. Man, it’s just been…
What a Tangled WWWeb
Shakespeare at Winedale is the latest area arts institution to pop up on the World Wide Web. A page for Dr. James Ayres’ class is up at http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/engl/special/winedale.html, offering brief histories of the 25-year-old program and the Winedale Center and info on class efforts, the work of Ayres’ incomparable aide, Madge Darlington. Visiting it reminded…
City of Dreams
by Mike Clark-Madison In the beginning, there was mud, an unruly river fed by unpredictable creeks, and hills and “fertile and gracefully undulating woodlands” whose beauty was remarkable even then, and General Burleson’s tiny settlement of Waterloo. Then Mirabeau Lamar, vice president of the Republic of Texas, came by on a buffalo hunt, liked what…
