Cover Story
Urban Rail: Which Way to Connect?
Project Connect recommends a rail corridor – and transit advocates board opposing trains
’Tis the Season
Santa Claus to serve up Winter Warmers at Drink.Well
Supplicating Beyoncé
Visual LP – biggest mic drop of ’13, not that Wikis got it
The AggreGAYtor: December 19
What happened today in gay? Here’s your QILTBAG recap of queer news.
Dave Van Ronk and a Bitter Chill
Remembering the folksinger who inspired ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’
Teens Still Smoke Pot
Would legalization lead to a decline?
What Is Chaos Cooking?
Building friendships, one chicken pot pie at a time
Austin Techxas
The latest buzz from Silicon Hills
The Roost
Wells Branch Parkway venue to serve far north Austin
Swift’s Attic Team Planning Chinese Concept for the Year of the Horse
Wu Chow is on the drawing board for Downtown in late 2014
The AggreGAYtor: December 18
What happened today in gay? Here’s your QILTBAG recap of queer news.
Early Christmas: WWE Raw in Austin
WWE’s annual pre-holiday taping plays both naughty and nice
Catching Up with City Council
Council enters holiday break bearing a handful of presents
Twitter Has a Heyday With Shia LeBeouf
Some highlights from the dissection of ‘HowardCantour.com’
Mo’ Music: December 17
The last Mo’ Music of the year
The Austin Film Critics Have Spoken
AFCA announces its favorites of 2013 … ish
Brenner’s Top 5 Interviews of 2013
Because these people said some, we mean, surprising stuff.
Film Flam
Festival fever relapse, plus awards and a local shoot
The AggreGAYtor: December 17
What happened today in gay? Here’s your QILTBAG recap of queer news.
Ray Price, 1926-2013
‘Now blue ain’t the word for the way that I feel’
Deadly Statistics
38, 55, 500 … TCADP recounts the grim toll of capital punishment
Fantastic Fest 2014 Open for Submissions
Plus two Drafthouse flicks take FF tour audience awards
Nancy Coplin Retires from ABIA
Airport booker celebrates tonight at Antone’s Blue Monday
The AggreGAYtor: December 16
What happened today in gay? Here’s your QILTBAG recap of queer news.
DVDanger: Crawlspace/Sightseers
This week’s horror lesson: Can’t stay home, don’t dare risk leaving
UPDATED: Chain Reaction
Social Cycling Austin debuts ‘Pilgrims and Indians’ theme
Through the Google Glass
Take the computer for your face on a test drive
Austin’s Dot on That Great Golden Globe
‘Before Midnight’ and ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ get some HFPA lovin’
Cheer Up Charlie’s Out, La Corsha In
East Sixth game-changer faces a new owner and lease non-renewal
Drafthouse Launches the Alamo 100
League and company create the ultimate desert island viewing list
The AggreGAYtor: December 13
What happened today in gay? Here’s your QILTBAG recap of queer news.
Farmers’ Market Report: Dec. 14-15, 2013
Nutty cheese balls, roast beasts, and other holiday fun
Ruby’s BBQ: Where Austin Music & Barbecue Legends Intersect
Campus-area mainstay celebrates its silver anniversary
Drop In, Have Drinks, Hang Out
From the folks who brought you Black Sheep Lodge comes Haymaker, the second recently opened Manor Road pub geared toward sandwich-loving beer drinkers. One of Haymaker’s claims to fame is the poutine ($7.49), a Canadian dish featuring french fries topped with cheese curds and drenched in gravy. Haymaker offers two varieties of poutine: traditional, with…
Rock & Roll DVDs
Dio Finding the Sacred Heart: Live in Philly 1986 (Eagle Vision) Black Sabbath Live … Gathered in Their Masses (Republic) Given Ozzy Osbourne’s uneven performances fronting Black Sabbath on this year’s album/tour cycle for 13, the inevitable live DVD arouses suspicion. Damned if the Melbourne-filmed Gathered in Their Masses doesn’t find the old devil staying…
Hornography
Damn near all of Austin got thrown for a loop Tuesday afternoon when Chip Brown of OrangeBloods.com came forth with the news that Mack Brown plans to resign as head coach this week after 16 seasons at the Longhorns’ helm. Brown and the university denied the report. “If I had decided to step down,” the…
Lehmberg NOT Removed: Déjà Vu All Over Again
Long list of dignitaries testify in defense of D.A.
Drop In, Have Drinks, Hang Out
A bright yellow schoolhouse with a flashing traffic light and a bell tower: It’s difficult to miss this recent addition to Manor Road’s restaurant row. Opened in August by experienced restaurateurs Edgar and Christina Torres, School House Pub offers 20 Texas beers on tap, custom cocktails, and a selection of burgers, sandwiches, and plates for…
Rock & Roll DVDs
All the Labor (High Plains Films) Endurance stands as the central theme in All the Labor, which focuses on Austin’s beloved Gourds and feels flimsy in the wake of the group’s recent hiatus. The roots-groove quintet, which formed in 1994 and tapped out this fall, arrives as a gang of fun-loving road warriors who built…
Soccer Watch
The World Cup draw announced Friday put the United States in the Group of Death with Germany, Portugal, and Ghana – two of the top five teams in the world, plus the African power that’s knocked the U.S. out of the last two WCs. National team coach Jurgen Klinsmann and his team put a good…
Council: Dem Ol’ Railroad Blues
City takes on Project Connect but punts on Auditorium Shores
Drop In, Have Drinks, Hang Out
South of the river, near the railroad tracks, and nestled under giant trees on a two-acre lot almost entirely hidden from the street, lives Austin’s newest beer garden. We spotted the on-site brewery, but it was not until we parked and walked up to the building that the spacious, welcoming watering hole fully revealed itself.…
Rock & Roll DVDs
Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (Kino Lorber) Early in Jacob Hatley’s 2010 documentary of Levon Helm, the singing, drumming backbone of the Band shuffles uneasily through his Woodstock farmhouse, home from tour for a couple days, tired and hurting. The image is striking in the revelation of Helm’s gaunt,…
Gay Place
Sun Ra dancer and vocalist signs her book and does a reading
2013 Politics Gift Guide Part II
Ideas for the armchair pundit
Letters at 3AM: If We Make It Through December
Everywhere I looked for a merry Christmas, I found contradictions too disturbing to ignore and paradoxes too entrenched to resolve
Rock & Roll DVDs
Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me (Magnolia Home Entertainment) During their brief, cultish lifespan, Seventies power popsters Big Star failed to find a large audience, and visionary co-frontmen Chris Bell and Alex Chilton each paid a considerable price in the wake of that commercial failure. One of the many heartening facets about Drew DeNicola’s soulful…
All Over Creation: Nativity
A new musical by the ‘Urinetown’ team is born on the 40 Acres, and the chorus line craves bra-a-ains
The Luv Doc: Really Rude
Dear Luv Doc, I go out to lunch regularly with a group of co-workers. Some of us are friends and we do things together outside of work. I love my friends, but they have a really annoying habit of discussing things we do or people we know outside of work without giving any background or…
Ready and Abel
Drafthouse Films unleashes Abel Ferrara’s ‘Ms. 45’ on Austin and NYC
Rock & Roll DVDs
Roy Orbison The Last Concert (Roy’s Boys/Sony Legacy) Roy Orbison Black & White Night (Roy’s Boys/Sony Legacy) From a company founded by his sons to preserve the legacy of rock’s greatest operatic talent comes a pair of releases from the end of Roy Orbison’s timeline (1936-88). The self-explanatory Last Concert CD/DVD package remasters the sights…
La Pastorela 2013: A Sheperdela’s Storia
Time again for the shepherds’ quest for the Christ child, with old songs and new jokes
Out of the Furnace
The writer/director of Crazy Heart returns with an all-star cast for his sophomore effort, which takes place amid the rusted-out lives of America’s steel belt.
The Good Eye
Your new style columnist, alas, is not the world’s most stylish woman
Rock & Roll DVDs
Graham Parker & the Rumour This Is Live (Shout! Factory) Judd Apatow’s 2012 comedy This Is 40 featured a performance by Graham Parker & the Rumour. Reunited after 31 years and fresh off the release of new studio album Three Chords Good, the UK sextet – some of the angry young men of the late-Seventies…
Then There’s This – Poor People to AE: We’re Not Deadbeats
New ordinance gives needy ratepayers a payment plan they can work with
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Superior in nearly all ways to its predecessor, this second film in the prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a welcome surprise.
Rock & Roll DVDs
Tribute to Ron Asheton (MVD Visual) April 19, 2011: Friends and fans of Stooges guitarist/bassist Ron Asheton gather at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater to pay tribute to the late punk pioneer and benefit his recently founded foundation working with animals. Besides the reunited Raw Power-era Stooges lineup, which dragged guitarist James Williamson out of the…
Civics 101
Thursday 12 SAVE OUR SPRINGS HOLIDAY PARTY SOS promises the most rockin’ holiday party and silent auction yet. 6pm-12mid. Mercury Hall, 615 Cardinal. Free. www.sosalliance.org. Friday 13 CAN END-OF-YEAR CELEBRATION The Community Advancement Network awards Travis Co. Judge Sam Biscoe. 3-4:30pm. Free. www.caction.org. FACES OF AUSTIN COMPETITION Annual contest is looking for films inspired by…
Rock & Roll DVDs
Jimi Hendrix Hear My Train A Comin’ (Experience Hendrix/Legacy) Hear My Train a Comin’ isn’t the first documentary on Jimi Hendrix, but it may be the best. Originally produced for PBS’ acclaimed American Masters, the film continues that series’ tradition of artistic, dignified storytelling. With creative use of graphics, including samples of Hendrix’s handwritten lyrics,…
Point Austin: Lehmberg’s Scarlet Letter
County Attorney Escamilla has disgraced his office
Rock & Roll DVDs
Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival (Rhino) Almost five hours from Madison Square Garden in April erases any need to have been there. The first disc begins as leisurely as “Lay Down Sally” by the host, but the murderers’ row of Clapton, Austin’s Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Cray, and B.B. King on “Everyday I Have the Blues”…
Quote of the Week
“I was more intoxicated than I could believe.” – Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg recounting the night of her DUI arrest.
Exhibitionism
Street Corner Arts’ dark comedy stumbles on its way to the revolution, but the show is worth seeing
Rock & Roll DVDs
’83 US Festival: Days 1-3 (Unuson/Icon/MVD Visual) A pop-culture joke now for those who remember it at all, the 1983 US Festival assembled an ambitious undertaking. Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak threw “a big party in the middle of nowhere” (ultimately Southern California’s Glen Helen Regional Park near San Bernardino), while introducing the masses to…
Headlines
› Should be quite a bit of fur flying at City Council today (Dec. 12), although if the Auditorium Shores improvement plan (complete with restricted off-leash area) is likely postponed. See “Council: Dem Ol’ Railroad Blues.” › On Friday, the Central Corridor Advisory Group (under City Council, Capital Metro, and CAMPO) recommended the East Riverside…
Exhibitionism
Zach Theatre faithfully re-creates the beloved holiday film onstage, though it lacks part of the original’s shine
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
During his childhood, Nelson Mandela ate traditional Mvezo dishes – simple, corn-based meals like umphokoqo, maize seasoned with sour milk. Michelle Dockery, the actress who plays Lady Mary Crawley on Downton Abbey, is also a jazz singer. She has occasionally sung with Sadie and the Hotheads, a band formed by Elizabeth McGovern, the actress who…
Big, Beautiful Books
Adorn your coffeetables with these hardbound masterpieces
The Hightower Report
Congressional victims of alcoholism … and hypocrisyitis
Exhibitionism
This unsettling dance by Kathy Dunn Hamrick seemed a companion piece to her shattering work, The Big Small
Big, Beautiful Books
Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions by Guillermo del Toro and Marc Scott Zicree Harper Design, 256 pp., $60 Born in the Renaissance, a cabinet of curiosities contained the weird, the arcane, and the uncategorizable. Its purpose was to draw the outlines of cosmic mysteries. That’s a pretty fair…
Brown and Eckhardt Make Some Distinctions
What’s the difference between the Dem Travis County Judge candidates? It all comes down to personality.
From Unknown to Throne
Sugar and spice from Austin’s Jelly Queens
Gaming by the Numbers
Who needs reviews when we have pure data?
Big, Beautiful Books
Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz by Juan Ortiz Titan Books, 112 pp., $39.95 The question answered in this book is “What if every Star Trek: The Original Series episode had its own cinema-release-type poster?” We can imagine a collection of diverse artists’ works filling page after page with vivid graphics in service to…
Parks Board Supports Shrinking Off-Leash Area
Suggested plan would require new Downtown housing to provide dog play areas
Food-O-File
In-N-Out has landed
Rock & Roll DVDs
The Rolling Stones: Crossfire Hurricane and Springsteen & I
Big, Beautiful Books
The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz Harry N. Abrams, 336 pp., $40 We love a good Wes Anderson film as much as the next guy – possibly even a little more, what with that University of Texas alum/hometown hero thing he’s got going. So we understand how you might be concerned about how…
Candidate Filings
The 2014 primaries looked set to be a snoozefest, until a last-minute deluge of candidate filings on Dec. 9. Yet out of the 21 races on the March 4 ballot in Travis County with a competitive primary, only seven see incumbents fighting for their seats. Statewide, the Democrats saw filing day close with an unexpected…
Food Events
Dec. 13-19
Sad, Bad Santa
Wild Bill’s ‘Honky Tonk Holidaze’ – ‘Bad Santa’ gone Cheech & Chong
Big, Beautiful Books
The Great War: A Photographic Narrative by Mark Holborn and Hilary Roberts Knopf, 504 pp., $100 My generous Texan public education, like so many others’, took painstaking time and effort to help me understand the settlement of the 13 colonies, to hear the battle cries at the Alamo, and to grasp the remarkable schism between…
ACC Throws Book at Affordable Care Act
Administrators trim adjunct faculty hours to avoid providing health coverage
Drop In, Have Drinks, Hang Out
New neighborhood hot spots
Rock & Roll DVDs
Released! The Human Rights Concerts 1986-1998 (Shout! Factory) Overshadowed by Live Aid, the Human Rights Concerts were perhaps a greater achievement. Presented by Amnesty International to raise money and awareness for its struggles worldwide, the more than two-dozen gatherings began in the U.S. in 1986, starring U2, Sting, Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel,…
Day Trips
Belly up to the longest bar in Texas at the Esquire Tavern in San Antonio
AISD: Carstarphen on the Hot Seat
Trustees discuss superintendent’s future
