‘Madden NFL 2003’ for the PlayStation2
He’s back, this time with Al Michaels and Melissa Stark in tow. Pigskin ballers have grown to drool over the latest Madden game in the same fashion as Mr. Madden salivates over his Thanksgiving spread. This game offers a delicious main course with an assortment of tasty sides that will satisfy even the pickiest of…
Mr. Smarty Pants
Harley Earl designed the Chevrolet Corvette. They are all made in Bowling Green, Ky.James “Book ’em Danno” MacArthur wears a size 8.5 EEEE shoe.People who spit chewing gum at Tienanmen Square will be fined between 20 and 50 yuan (U.S. $2.40-6). The Dongcheng District’s Urban Administrative Commission has more than 10 inspectors in place to…
Phases and Stages
The Rolling StonesThe ABKCO Reissue Series (ABKCO) This fall, ex-Stones manager Allen Klein and his ABKCO label reissued the first 22 Stones albums. Great pains were taken to find the master tapes for the finest possible sound (remastered regular and SACD layers on each disc), with all the fake, reprocessed stereo tracks replaced by either…
Homeowners Insurance
The much-publicized package of bills authored by Republican senators Troy Fraser (who helped broker the Farmers deal) and Mike Jackson (SB 14 and SB 125-131) foretell the likely range of outcomes of the homeowners insurance debacle. There will be some re-regulation of homeowners’ policies (most having escaped altogether in recent years via the “Lloyds” loopholes)…
Naked City
Dec. 7 marked the 20-year anniversary of using lethal injection as the favored form of execution. On Dec. 7, 1982 Texas inmate Charlie Brooks became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by injection. Since then 644 others have faced the same fate nationwide, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. This…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Once and Again: First SeasonBuena Vista Home Entertainment ($59.98) Except for loyal fans, few may realize the former ABC series Once and Again has enough episodes to include in a six-disc DVD collection. Poor scheduling and constant pre-empting eventually caused its cancellation, perplexing fans and critics alike. Creators Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick (My So-Called…
Drumline
Drumline 2002, PG-13, 118 min. Directed by Charles Stone III, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Nick Cannon, Orlando Jones, Zoë Saldana, Earl Poitier, Jason Weaver, Leonard Roberts, Gq, Candace Carey, J. Anthony Brown, Shay Roundtree. Would that marching band had been regarded as half as cool when I was tromping around my high…
The Image-Maker
Former Chronicle “Cover Master” and legendary tattoo artist Michael Malone’s aka Rollo Banks’ career has always on been in ink; now it’s on paper.
Day Trips
Texas Christmas tree farms are just a short jaunt over the hills and through the woods. It might not be Grandmother’s house, but wandering a field to select a perfect holiday centerpiece and sipping hot apple cider when the job is done could easily become a family tradition that the whole family can enjoy. According…
Phases and Stages
PavementSlanted & Enchanted: Luxe & Reduxe (Matador)PavementSlow Century DVD (Matador) Stumbling into “the year punk broke,” 1991, Pavement made a truly special album in Slanted & Enchanted, the demented art-pop stepchild to Nirvana’s Nevermind. A decade of underground rock had built a pillar on which a band so spastic and peculiar could succeed without ever…
The Social Agenda
Since there will be little money to spend on anything, and certainly on anything new, our elected leaders will surely spend a good deal of time devising ways to impose “mainstream” (i.e., orthodox conservative) values on the population at large. In the recent past, moderates from both parties who wanted to accomplish substantive state business…
Naked City
Not so long ago, our neighbor to the north balked at joining the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve and cracked jokes about cave bugs. But now, Williamson Co. has its own designated karst preserve system — part of a long-term conservation for three endangered cave-dwelling invertebrates. Why? Roads. The preserve is a federally approved mitigation measure that…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
The Producers Special Edition DVDMGM/UA Video ($24.98) Thirty years prior to The Producers being canonized on Broadway, there was a young drummer with a yarn about a theatre producer who romanced little old ladies to fund his (ahem), craft. “I knew there was a good story in the adventures of this producer I was working…
Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Trek: Nemesis 2003, PG-13, 117 min. Directed by Stuart Baird, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Levar Burton, Gates McFadden, Michael Dorn, Marina Sirtis, Tom Hardy, Ron Perlman, Dina Meyer. The end of an era or the error of the end: Say what you must about Star…
The Way We Were
On the eve of his move to New York City, playwright and Austin Script Works Artistic Director John Walch reflects on the development of Austin’s theatre scene during his time here.
After a Fashion
This week in Fashion: What kind of advice would Amy Fisher give Lizzie Grubman? And who has the hottest Underoos?
Phases and Stages
The FallA Part of America Therein, 1981 (Castle/BMG)The FallTotale’s Turns (Castle/BMG)The FallPerverted by Language (Castle/BMG) The Fall came out of the Manchester art-school scene in 1977, played a handful of gigs, spit out a 7-inch or two, then went on to be extremely popular in Europe while being absolutely ignored stateside. This trio of discs…
Waving the Billy Club
By a long shot (no pun intended), not only Republicans get caught up in the urge to grandstand on “law and order.” Laredo Democrat Judith Zaffirini’s SB 44 would dramatically expand police powers by legalizing random sobriety checkpoints on Texas’ roadways. (Rep. Todd Smith, R-Bedford, filed the companion HB 226.) Ostensibly the bill creates a…
Austin @ Large: Running Scared
Time waits for no one — especially not the Downtown Austin Alliance or the Austin Music Network — at the City Hall sausage factory.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
The Young Ones: Every Stoopid EpisodeBBC Home Video ($59.98) This mid-Eighties BBC import (and later MTV staple) gave Monty Python a run for its lunacy and introduced a generation of gobsmacked yanks to the concept of bogeys, Motörhead, and the obscure Cockney comedy of Alexei Sayle via the misadventures of a quartet of student flatmates…
Articulations
If you’re still looking for the perfect gift for that arts lover on your shopping list, you have until Dec. 18 to get a 2002 Porsche 911 Twin Turbo Carrera for a mere $100, courtesy of Arts Center Stage’s raffle to raise funds for the Long Center.
To Your Health
I keep hearing about omega-3 fatty acids. What are they, where do they come from, and what good are they?
Phases and Stages
They Might Be GiantsDial a Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants (Elektra/Rhino) It’s hard to fathom that They Might Be Giants have been around for 20 years. Dial a Song is proof that the years just keep flying by, and for the two Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell), it has been a productive couple…
Bad Bills with a Bullet
In addition to the bills mentioned in the main text, here’s a handy selection of most odious, preposterous, comical, or simply incomprehensible bills filed as of mid-December. — M.K. HB 38 (Chisum, R-Pampa): The Defense of Marriage Act, Warren Chisum’s perennial determination to prevent the state from recognizing same-sex marriages or “civil unions” is a…
The Hightower Report
Bob Dole scolds us from his taxpayer-funded penthouse; and, “This police rescue is brought to you by: Hooters!”
Reindeer Games
Giving the gift of joystick jollies
Second Helpings: The Other America
“Second Helpings” gets South American this week.
Exhibitionism
Dave Steakley’s version of Smokey Joe’s Cafe at the Zachary Scott Theatre Center sets ablaze dozens of familiar hits from the musical catalog of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller by shifting the setting to a Playboy Club circa 1962 and rekindling the flames of desire that burn in the team’s songs.
About AIDS
Get Tested? It Could Save Your Life! A major challenge in HIV care and prevention is “delayed detection” of infection and disease. In 2000, almost 35% of HIV-related deaths in the U.S. occurred among patients who got their first diagnosis within six months of dying. About half of those never had a chance to seriously…
Phases and Stages
John ColtraneA Love Supreme Deluxe Edition (Impulse!) Saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones had already formed the brightest constellation in the jazz universe when they cut their most revered and enduring masterpiece in under four hours during December 1964. Spearheaded by Coltrane’s dazzling, exploratory virtuosity and the quartet’s…
Texas’ ‘Lethal Indifference’ Blasted in New Death-Row Report
A new Texas Defenders Service study charges the state Court of Criminal Appeals ignores death-row inmates’ rights and its own legal mandate.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
New DVD sets of film classics and beloved TV shows: already boxed, they just need a box on top.
Reindeer Games
The Lord of the Rings: The Two TowersEA Games ($49.99) PlayStation2 Warning: Contains spoiler. Not this review, but the game itself. EA’s Two Towers action game is actually a fusion of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, with the first half of the game’s 12 (listed) levels based on scenes from the…
Exhibitionism
While each of the seven bedroom dialogues in Aidan’s Bed, Blake Yelavich’s tight comic subversion of melodrama, relates to a deadly sin, the play as produced by Naughty Austin, is harmless at worst and titillation at its best.
Letters at 3AM
You don’t think that this whole thing with Iraq could have anything to do with the fact that Iraq sits on 10% of the world’s oil reserves? Naw. It’s gotta be them weapons of mass destruction.
Phases and Stages
N.W.A.Straight Outta Compton (Capitol/Priority)N.W.A.Niggaz4life (Capitol/Priority)N.W.A.Niggaz4life: The Only Home Video DVD (Priority/Ruthless)N.W.A.The N.W.A Legacy: The Video Collection DVD (Capitol/Priority)Eazy-EEazy-Duz-It (Priority/Ruthless) In 1986, N.W.A., with virtually no radio or MTV play, surged straight outta Compton as the seminal West Coast gangsta rap gang. Telling a raw, firsthand narrative of life in the L.A. ghetto, the foul-mouthed MCs’…
City vs. Seton: Coming to a Hospital Near You
Negotiations between City Hall and the Seton Healthcare Network, beginning this week, could determine the future of public health care in Austin.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Herzog/Kinski Collection Anchor Bay Entertainment ($89.98) A brilliant concept brilliantly done, this six-disc collection features all five of the film collaborations between Werner Herzog and his mad muse Klaus Kinski, including Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde, as well as the poignant and disturbing documentary My Best…
Reindeer Games
NBA 2K3 Sega Sports ($49.99) PlayStation2NBA Live 2003 EA Sports ($49.99) PlayStation2 NBA players are the greatest players in the world, and not just because of their offense. They’re also the best defenders in the world. That’s why no NBA team ever shoots 50%. Based on most high-scoring NBA video games, this has been a…
Exhibitionism
The Austin Playhouse-McCallum Fine Arts Academy co-production of Dickens’ seasonal fable A Christmas Carol may be wafer-thin in substance, but the abundant goodwill of the entire company, from youngest to least-young, gives the show the warm, sweetness of a traditional holiday brew.
The Culinary Library
The Food staff suggests some worthwhile gift choices from Santa’s book bag.
Phases and Stages
Rahsaan Roland Kirk The Man Who Cried Fire (Hyena)Cannonball Adderley Radio Nights (Hyena) Les McCannLes Is More (Hyena)Eddie HarrisA Tale of Two Cities (Hyena) Former disc jockey turned Atlantic producer Joel Dorn continues founding new labels even after his 32 Records and M Records both went under. Undaunted, he now launches Hyena, with inaugural releases…
Summit for the Aquifer
At the close of last week’s first regional environmental summit, Kent Butler, a UT planning professor, was asked to summarize the range of thought growing out of the day’s small-group discussions. Butler paused a moment. “I’m blown away by so many fantastic ideas,” he said, looking genuinely impressed. But ideas are only part of the…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
The Mary Tyler Moore Show: The Complete First SeasonTwentieth Century Fox Home Video ($49.98) “This is my favorite line in the history of the show!” shushes MTM co-creator Allan Burns in the commentary track to the hallmark series’ first episode/pilot: “We never got better than this — which frustrates me.” That said line is Lou…
Reindeer Games
Madden NFL 2003EA Sports ($49.99) PlayStation2 He’s back, this time with Al Michaels and Melissa Stark in tow. Pigskin ballers have grown to drool over the latest Madden game in the same fashion as Mr. Madden salivates over his Thanksgiving spread. This game offers a delicious main course with an assortment of tasty sides that…
The Culinary Library
Bacchus & Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar by Jay McInerney Vintage, 278 pp., $13 (paper) Writing about the experience of flavor is like trying to taste Hemingway. The two different sensory inputs have the potential to obfuscate more than enlighten. Only a small number of writers have crossed the boundary between description and bringing…
Phases and Stages
Sir Douglas Quintet1+1+1=4/The Return of Doug Saldaña (Raven) This November marks three years since Doug Sahm’s heart gave out on him, and these two albums, reissued on one CD by Australian label Raven, document maybe the most important musical moment in his life: when he came home to Texas. 1+1+1=4, from 1970, was Sahm’s swan…
Downtown Deadly for Bikes?
Austin activist Keith Vick, aka “Slave,” died last week after being hit on his bike by a truck at the corner of 10th and Guadalupe. He was 36. Vick had helped lead the October 2000 protests against the Fortune 500, was involved in Radio Free Austin and other radio projects, and was one of the…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
My So-Called Life (Complete Series)Ventura Distribution ($89.99) Eight years after the lavishly praised but little-seen My So-Called Life got canned by the alphabet network after one slim season (here, in a no-frills five-disc set), the high school heartbreaks of one Angela Chase (Claire Danes) still feel, like, so true. So true, in fact, it’s a…
And May All Your Christmases Include Extravagant Song & Dance Numbers
Dreaming of a white Christmas in Austin is a little like leaving the porch light on for Ed McMahon and his Publishers Clearing House cronies — sweetly optimistic, but pretty damn deluded, too. That’s OK. General Thomas F. Waverly can commiserate. He owns the ski lodge in Vermont (central to Michael Curtiz’s 1954 White Christmas),…
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
Maria Hong finds that everyone is adapting everywhere in her review of three of the year’s most powerful photography collections.
The Culinary Library
The Japanese Kitchen: 250 Recipes in a Traditional Spirit by Hiroko Shimbo Harvard Common Press, 384 pp., $16.95 (paper) Hiroko Shimbo’s first work, The Japanese Kitchen, brightly illuminates the dark and mysterious world of Japanese cuisine. There have been few references written in English that have tackled the subject at all, much less with the…
Phases and Stages
Making Singles Drinking Doubles (Bloodshot) For their 100th release, the folks at Bloodshot Records decided to do something a little bit country and a little bit rock & roll. Making Singles Drinking Doubles is a compilation of tracks from long-out-of-print singles and EPs that the Chicago-based label has released over the years with some unreleased…
Defending the Arts at AISD
On Monday, 30 or so parents showed up at the Austin ISD board of trustees meeting to weigh in on a curriculum debate that, at its heart, asks the most elemental question — what do we need more, body or soul? Or, to be more exact, physical education or art and music? Responding to increasing…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
The Lord of the Rings — The Fellowship of the Ring: Platinum Series Extended Edition New Line Home Entertainment ($24.99) Still no Tom Bombadil. There’s more than 30 minutes of extra footage added to the theatrical release, but still there remains the myriad episodes skipped from the book between Brandybuck Ferry and Bree, including Tolkien’s…
Fangs for the Memories
Shopping & sucking with erstwhile vampire Udo Kier
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
“Judging from the places he visited in Texas, he is clearly one New Yorker who believed, or at least wanted to document, the myths Texans tell themselves,” writes Clay Smith of Garry Winogrand’s photographs in Winogrand 1964.
The Culinary Library
Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich Knopf, 432 pp., $35 I am not a big fan of “television personality” chefs. I find most of them gimmicky (can you say, “bam!”?), artificially “funny,” and not particularly interesting. I do, however, like Lidia Bastianich and enjoy watching her television series because of her warm personality and…
Phases and Stages
Bob Dylan & the Rolling Thunder RevueThe Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Live 1975 (Columbia Legacy) Coming off what many consider — wrongly — the best album of his career (Blood on the Tracks) and prepping the release of what remains one of his most popular (Desire), Bob Dylan’s incendiary confidence at these concerts — recorded…
Trash of the Titans Offends Neighbors, City Board
Neighbors rack up more complaints about Northeast landfills — and the city Environmental Board joins the fray.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Sunset Boulevard (Special Collector’s Edition)Paramount Home Video ($24.99) Norma Desmond would be pleased with this museum-quality DVD edition of Billy Wilder’s Tinseltown masterpiece. The goodies include “Sunset Boulevard: A Look Back,” a fine making-of featurette with comments from Andrew Sarris, star Nancy Olson, and film historian Ed Sikov, who explains the photographic sleight of hand…
Calling All Lonely-Hearts
IMAX movies and swingin’ singles meet up, make out, at i-mixers.
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
Fred Rogers knows how to communicate with kids. Let him help you.
The Culinary Library
The Craft of the Cocktail: Everything You Need to Know to Be a Master Bartender, With 500 Recipes by Dale DeGroff Clarkson Potter, 230 pp., $35 Dale DeGroff is a fanatic about cocktails. He wants to make drinks the old-fashioned way. Ban all mixes. Make everything from scratch. If a drink has morphed over the…
Dancing About Architecture
Noise Ordinance meeting is postponed, as is the ultimate fate of the Austin Music Network. Happily, the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar is back.
Paying the CPPP Way
The elephant in the Capitol parlor is not the new GOP majority but the state budget — just how are lawmakers going to make ends meet with a deficit of $5 billion or more? Last week the Center for Public Policy Priorities took up the challenge, issuing a report titled The Texas Revenue Primer: Finding…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Sports Night: The Complete Series Boxed SetBuena Vista Home Entertainment ($59.99) Perhaps the best way to chart the course of ABC’s tragically short-lived Sports Night is to look back at some of the headlines it drew during its 1998-2000 career: “Sports Night makes you think” (Cincinnati Post); “Sitcom or Tragedy? High drama and low ratings…
Short Cuts
England welcomes Harry Knowles — and his Underoos — with open arms.
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
Taylor Holland goes behind the curtain in his review of three of this year’s most intriguing art books.
The Culinary Library
The Glorious Foods of Greece: Traditional Recipes From the Islands, Cities, and Villages by Diane Kochilas William Morrow, 496 pp., $40 The Glorious Foods of Greece is a landmark work that completely covers the fascinating variety of the true terroir, regional cuisines of Greece and its islands. It perfectly illustrates how the foods of Greece…
Business, As Usual
Texans feeling curious — or apprehensive — about what the 78th legislative session will bring might consider the narrative arc of the Farmers Insurance Group melodrama. In Act One, a great shadow fell across the land, in the form of skyrocketing homeowners insurance rates imposed by the handful of major firms that dominate the Texas…
Live Nun Witnessing
The Singing Nun passed through Austin this week — no, not that one — rather Sister Helen Prejean, author of the 1993 best seller Dead Man Walking and legendary for her campaign against capital punishment. Prejean was in town for a UT symposium on the opera adaptation of her book, to be presented by Austin…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Ciao! ManhattanPlexifilm ($24.95) In case you were still wondering what the hell this underground oddity was actually about, directors John Palmer and David Weisman explain it all (at least what they can remember) in the audio commentary of the film’s 30th Anniversary Edition on DVD. (Wesley Hayes, the loopy naif who portrays himself in the…
Video Reviews
If the point is to see if Miss Swank can act in a dress, the jury’s still out. Otherwise, this historical drama is just shy of fabulous.
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
“With its interdisciplinary focus, multicultural breadth, and assumption that cultural images are essentially powerful social constructions,” writes James McWilliams of Martha Sandweiss’ “handsome” new book on the West, “Print the Legend lays bare a trove of historical photographs”
The Culinary Library
Texas Titles to Consider Fresh: Healthy Cooking and Living From Lake Austin Spa Resort by Terry Conlan (Favorite Recipes Press, $30) Terry Conlan’s flavorful, eclectic cuisine is a major attraction at the famed lakeside destination spa as well as at regular sold-out cooking classes around the state. This lovely new volume features dishes known to…
The Budget
Estimates of the state budget shortfall for the 2004-2005 biennium — to fund existing programs — are ranging from $5 billion (the quasi-official figure) to $12 billion (the glum speculation of GOP budget maven Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington). Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander will release her official revenue estimate Jan. 15. In a state budget of…
Railing at the Rail Yard:
Capital Metro runs into (surprise!) angry neighbors as it contemplates redeveloping its Eastside rail yard.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Gorillaz Phase One: Celebrity Take DownZombie Flesh Eaters/Parlophone DVD ($29.95) When Brit-pop icon and Blur frontman Damon Albarn teamed with Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett to create a nonexistent, animated pop band à la the Archies on Ecstasy, the world laughed. Two years later Albarn has sacked Blur’s guitar player, Hewlett’s old Tank Girl collections…
TV Eye
The face of change looks like … Janeane Garofalo?
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
What most befits you vis-a-vis ageless Ray Bradbury this season? His new one and an illustrated look back at all the old ones.
Food-o-File
Virginia B. Wood brings the wine and tamale news, just in time for the holidays!
Capital Punishment Capital
Dramatic change in the state’s national ranking as the Death Penalty Champion is unlikely, but a bit of tinkering is always in order. Austin GOP Rep. Terry Keel’s HB 11 would add “terroristic threat” to the list of circumstances that turn plain murder into capital murder. Multiple murders are already capital offenses, so the pragmatic…
Do You Feel Safe? A Chronicle Questionnaire
Test your patriotism with our attempt at Total Information Awareness.
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Glengarry Glen RossArtisan ($26.98) In his vaguely “Look what I made, Mommy!” audio commentary, director James Foley uses the word “fuck” a couple of times and calls the Glengarry Glen Ross set “filmmaking heaven.” How else could it be? With David Mamet’s best play adapted as his best screenplay, along with the ensemble cast of…
Analyze That
Analyze That 2002, R, 100 min. Directed by Harold Ramis, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Cathy Moriarty-Gentile, Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Lapaglia, Joe Viterelli. This obviously titled sequel to 1999’s mobster-in-therapy comedy may have seemed like a sure thing during the initial round of production meetings but director Ramis…
Rectangular Packages With Ribbons
“Like the films themselves, Tony Nourmand’s collection from the Eon Productions vaults offers much in the way of leggy villanesses and naughty, naughty sidekicks, and enough martinis, models, and megalomaniacs to sate the most cadlike of raffish rakes,” writes Kate X Messer.
Nowhere but Texas
A long, lost cosmic country artifact resurfaces.
Taxes
Perry campaigned to “wait and see” on taxes; Craddick has declared any new taxes unnecessary; and Dewhurst — well, Dewhurst, the outgoing land commissioner who has (with more energy than accuracy) trumpeted his fiscal prudence at the General Land Office, did not even respond to Perry’s budget letter. (He punted to Commissioner-elect Jerry Patterson.) Thus…
Naked City
News Briefs from Austin and elsewhere
Look Ma, No Wrapping
The Curse of Frankenstein & Horror of DraculaWarner Home Video ($19.98 each) 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein and 1958’s Horror of Dracula remain significant as much for what they ushered in as for what they were. Horror films had been dead for years, relegated to TV skits and reruns, when Hammer Studios put horror back…
Maid in Manhattan
Maid in Manhattan 2002, PG-13, 105 min. Directed by Wayne Wang, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jennifer Lopez, Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson, Frances Conroy, Bob Hoskins, Tyler Garcia Posey, Stanley Tucci, Chris Eigeman, Marissa Matrone, Amy Sedaris. Ever since the out-of-left-field hit of My Big Fat Greek Wedding this year, everyone has been…
Page Two
I think the Republican and right-wing true believers (occasionally, but not necessarily, the same folk) are in for a real shock at what happens politically in DC and Austin over the next two years. Many of them feel like they’re participating in a revolution — a takeover of the government from the bad guys by…
Local Reissues
Freda & the Firedogs(Plug)Supernatural Family BandLubbock Lights (Akashic)The Contenders(Gadfly)Greezy Wheels”Finding Happiness”/”Monkey in the Church” (Tana) Four recent local reissues here, each one a milestone of Austin’s progressive country era in its own inimitable way. Freda and the Firedogs is the legendary lost recording from Atlantic Records, capturing the beloved local band at its 1972 zenith.…
Health Care, etc.
Q: When is an insurance crisis not a crisis? A: When the people without insurance are poor working stiffs. That’s another lesson to be learned from the Farmers dust-up, which primarily concerned 700,000 middle-class homeowners threatened with having to find new residential property insurance. That’s a real problem — but how does it compare to…
Naked City
Seven activists were arrested at Dobie Mall Tuesday in a protest against military recruiting and war against Iraq at the UT-area hot spot. A group of more than 150 protesters signed up recruits for peace for more than two hours before Dobie management called the cops. Organizers called the event a successful act of civil…
Look Ma, No Wrapping
Felicity: The Complete First SeasonBuena Vista Home Entertainment ($59.98) Ben or Noel? Noel or Ben? How could a curly-haired girl forever swaddled in alpaca choose? Luckily, Felicity Porter (Keri Russell) never really had to; this first season presents plenty of the hopscotching between partners who would define her next four years at the New York…
The Hot Chick
The Hot Chick 2002, PG-13, 101 min. Directed by Tom Brady, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Rob Schneider, Anna Faris, Rachel McAdams, Robert Davi, Eric Christian Olsen, Matthew Lawrence, Melora Hardin, Angie Stone. Even when decked out as an 18-year-old high school girl, Rob Schneider is just as funny as he ever was.…
