Cover Story
The Writing’s Not on the Wall Yet
Austin’s print culture gets a boost from a new batch of indie presses and literary magazines
A Home for ‘Progress’ (and ‘Border Crossing’)
The Blanton acquires a pair of Luis Jiménez sculptures
Danny Malone’s Backyard
Special Magic Barn Fantastic Show comes off as billed
Esme Barrera Murder Case Closed
Austin Police believe James Loren Brown was indeed responsible
The AggreGAYtor: December 20
Your daily dose of LGBTQIA news
Former ‘SNL’ Writer Tom Schiller on His TV Roots
‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ director recalls his favorite sketches
Book Review: ‘Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties…’
Astonishing and encyclopedic, a necessity for wine lovers
Nothing Could Be Finah: Texas Trounces Tarheels
Horns withstand North Carolina flurry to win by 18
In Memoriam: Phyllis Slattery
Remembering the longtime director of Dance Umbrella
Book Review: ‘Learn To Cook’ by Hilah Johnson
Austin Internet star delivers a ‘down and dirty guide to cooking’
Human Remains Found in East Austin
Police say making an ID could take a while
Elementary, My Dear Dramatist
Third graders’ tales come alive on the Paramount stage
Lala’s Christmas Bar
Cozy, smoky, quaint, and a magnet for fines
Record Roundup: Last Gasp 2012
Buddy Miller, Iris Dement, Jason Isbell & Paul Kelly
Alamo South Pulls Out All the Stops For Closing Bash
Cramming everything you love about the Drafthouse into one night
The AggreGAYtor: December 19
Your daily dose of LGBTQIA news
Ranger’s Small Batch No. 4 Is Released
Commence Christmas shopping
Slacker Added to National Film Registry
‘Slacker’ and works from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image selected
Santa Claus said WHAT at Half Price Books?
Austin’s top bibliophilic re-sellers go all jingley for you.
GOP Politics Only at State Water Board
Employee fired for emails about Shea campaign
DVD Watch: When Horror Came to Shochiku
Criterion box set restores a lost corner of J-horror
Toros Split Two Against Skyforce, Beat Legends
Austin holds D-League top record
Making Music from the Sound of Speech
Austin’s JoySpeak Project brings light from conquered darkness.
Bringing New Flavors to Mulberry
Chef Kristine Kittrell takes over the kitchen
The AggreGAYtor: December 18
Your daily dose of LGBTQIA news
Texas Still Leads Nation in Executions
New death sentences continue to decline & exonerations keep coming
Computer Chess & Sexy Tech
Monofonus Press explores early computers and the games they played
Local Critics Pick ‘Zero Dark Thirty’
Austin Film Critics Association names P.T. Anderson Best Director
Mother Falcon Takes Flight on Radiohead
‘OK Computer’ for the holidays
AISD Cancels IDEA Contract
Trustees split 5-4 but Allan heads back to community
Hitch Renewed
Remembering Christopher Hitchens and his call to contrarianism
The AggreGAYtor: December 17
Your daily dose of LGBTQIA news
AISD to Consider Charters and Communities Tonight
Agenda a complex dance between trustees, neighborhoods and employees
‘BBQ Pitmasters’ Returns on a New Network
Aaron Franklin back as a judge on reality cooking competition show
Third Fiddle Horns Beat Texas State by 12
Lethargic b-ballers improve record to 6-4 before Tarheels come to town
Bill of the Week
Senate Bill 72’s biggest flaw is that it’s too practical
Chrontourage picks for NYE 2013
Kick off the New Year right.
Louis C.K., Killin’ It
Standing O’s for the comedian’s last of four shows in Austin
‘The NFL Beat’: God Bless Commissioner Goodell
Protecting the shield
Farmers Market Report: December 15
Let’s take a look at the Sunday markets!
He Will Go and He Will Shine
‘Billy Elliot the Musical’ reviewed
Rating the VH1 Divas
This year’s crop prepare to lipsync for their lives
27 Dead, Including 20 Children, In Connecticut School Shooting
Gunman identified as Adam Lanza
‘El Mariachi’ to Perform Sundance Encore
Robert Rodriguez’s 1993 debut to be honored with a Sundance screening
Organ Transplant
The pipes, the pipes are callin’ again in Jessen Auditorium
An Evening with Jesse Griffiths and Jody Horton at BookPeople
Narrated slideshow plus tastings, craft beer, and a contest tonight
Franklin Barbecue and Rye Whiskey
Franklin’s and Knob Creek throw a private party for local bartenders
TV Review: Eugene Mirman Comedy Central Special
Alt-comedy hero misses the mark in an uneven standup show
Texas State’s First Year in Big-Time Football
Good news and bad
The AggreGAYtor: December 14
Your daily dose of LGBTQIA news
Obama: Policing Legalized Pot a Low Priority
In interview with Barbara Walters on TV tonight
Meal Times
� December Food Drive Donate nonperishable food items for the Capital Area Food Bank at Avant Salon & Day Spa during December, and leave with an Aveda gift bag. 507 Pressler #800, 472-6357. � 12 Days of Driskill Austin’s most historic hotel concludes 12 Days of the Driskill, Dec. 13-15, with Holiday HAAM Sessions Thursday…
Letters at 3AM: Did Abraham Lincoln Deserve a Second Term?
In 1864, Lincoln would have seemed more in favor of war than peace
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to a study being published in Jan. 2013, male bosses pay themselves significantly more once they become fathers. The logo of the Royal New Zealand Air Force is a kiwi, a flightless bird. Their badge/crest features an albatross. For every 100 U.S. $1 bills in circulation, there are 78 $100 bills, but only about…
Boxing Day
Roxy Music The Complete Studio Recordings (EMI) Like Athena springing from Zeus’ forehead, Roxy Music arrived in 1972 fully formed and sounding like no one else. Musicologists can pick out the bits of psych pop, Motown, and pre-rock standards, but the resulting structures remains unique. The 10-CD Complete Studio Recordings blends the distinctive ingredients of…
Restaurant Review
No frills, just consistently excellent Chinese food
Exhibitionism
Sky Candy’s latest production piles on so much spectacle that it’s difficult to see the story
Civics 101
Thursday 13 ‘I AM: THE SHIFT HITS THE FAN’ screens, and then Hollywood director Tom Shadyac (Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, Patch Adams) speaks about ways to improve the way we live in the world. 7pm. 5604 Manor Rd. $5 minimum donation. www.workersdefense.org. Friday 14 STUFF THE BUS FOOD DRIVE Fill a Cap Metro bus with…
Day Trips
4.0 Cellars near the banks of Grape Creek east of Fredericksburg represents the finest aspects of the Texas wine industry. Three of Texas’ most innovative wineries cooperated to create a tasting room on Wine Road 290 to showcase their wines. It was as if an occult hand reached down and combined the best traits of…
Home Entertainment for the Holidays
Best bets for DVD and Blu-ray
Exhibitionism
Ready|Set|Go! transmutes leaden limbs to golden motion
Headlines
› After last week’s marathon session, City Council meets today (Thursday), the last formal meeting of the year, with plenty to consider: renewed action on affordable housing, potential tweaking of the Barton Springs Zone redevelopment ordinance, and more. See “Council Stoked for Last Meeting of Year.” › On Tuesday, Comptroller Susan Combs announced that Circuit…
Gay Place
Holigays are upon us, people. Have you mapped out your calendar?
Home Entertainment for the Holidays
The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy Shout! Factory, $89.93 (DVD) Just how irresistible you find this grab bag of odds and ends from Mel Brooks’ six decades of making the funny may depend on how you view, of all things, Broadway Danny Rose. Remember that modest little showbiz comedy from Woody…
Will Texas Do Better?
Lege preview Part II – the wonders and the horrors
Point Austin: Tools for Lege Watching
Considering Texas’ future – a few things to keep in mind
Soccer Watch
St. Ed’s players sweep conference awards, and more
Home Entertainment for the Holidays
Francis Ford Coppola 5-Film Collection Lionsgate Home Entertainment, $39.99 (Blu-ray) Included in this new Coppola collection are the films Apocalypse Now (1979), Apocalypse Now Redux (2000), One From the Heart (1982), Tetro (2009), and The Conversation (1974). Coppola, one of the certifiable masters of modern cinema, provides an audio commentary track for each film, along…
Budget: Manufacturing a Bogeyman
If there’s a more thankless task in Texas than building the state budget … you can keep it. Last session, in the turmoil of the recession and the Tea Party revolution, Texans saw government spending plummet while needs rocketed upward. The 2013 session seems doomed to follow the same path. In 2009, Texas lawmakers planned…
Quote of the Week
“We cannot, and we will not, stand idly by while the unborn are going through the agony of having their lives ended.” – Gov. Rick Perry, speaking at The Source for Women’s new clinic in Houston, on a “fetal pain” bill that would outlaw abortion after 20 weeks
Page Three: Council Follies Are No Joke
A late addendum to this week’s City Council agenda, added precisely 72 hours before Thursday’s meeting, is a resolution “authorizing the Circuit Events Local Organizing Committee to act on the city’s behalf for purposes of submitting applications to the Texas Comptroller for Texas Event Trust Fund” for monies for the following events at the Circuit…
Food-O-File
This week’s food news
Jesus Christ: The Loony Bin
Picking up where former Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, left off in 2011, GOP Rep. Dan Flynn has filed House Joint Resolution 43, which would amend the Texas Constitution to protect against the enforcement of any religious or cultural law. After Berman got roundly mocked for filing his bill – which he said was necessary to…
Then There’s This: AE: The Plot Thickens
City manager and consumer advocates finally agree on something
The Writing’s Not on the Wall Yet
Austin’s print culture gets a boost from a new batch of indie presses and literary magazines
Home Entertainment for the Holidays
The Carol Burnett Show: The Ultimate Collection Time Life Entertainment, $199.95 The last vestiges of old vaudeville in mainstream entertainment were the variety shows of the 1970s, which shared an almost identical m.o. – sketch comedy, popular athletes, movie stars, and musical acts. The broadcast menu of the day was extensive: The heady (read: charmingly…
Labor: Playing Defense
Thus far only a handful of formally labor-related bills have been filed for this session, and a couple are predictably punitive. Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, has filed House Bill 181, which seeks to prohibit local governments from operating “day labor centers,” although it’s selectively aimed at centers “used to facilitate the employment of aliens not…
How to Enjoy Movies Without the Eyestrain
More gifts for film fans
Health and Human Services: Screw Medicaid – We Need Drug Testing!
Despite Gov. Rick Perry’s declared opposition to Medicaid expansion, there is little doubt that the topic will be much-debated under the Dome in 2013. According to a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Urban Institute, expanding Medicaid – as enabled by the Affordable Care Act – would reduce Texas’ uninsured population by as…
Boxing Day
Box sets dwindle but not in scope
The Luv Doc: How Much Spirit Do You Like in Your Christmas?
LuvDoc, The Christmas party season is about to get into full swing and I am dreading it because my husband always ends up drinking too much, and we either a) end up leaving parties too soon because he’s too drunk to function, or b) we end up staying until the very end when there are…
Law and Order in the Land of Pixels
Web series ‘Bit Parts’ finds inspiration in gamer errata
Water: Rising to the Surface
Texas was deep into a record-breaking drought when the Legislature closed out its 2011 session without even a hint of direction, much less debate, on how the state would manage the challenges of a diminishing water supply in a region that’s projected to grow drier and more populous in coming decades. (You’ll recall that abortion,…
Boxing Day
Sufjan Stevens Silver & Gold (Asthmatic Kitty) Sufjan Stevens doesn’t simply love Christmas. It’s one of his most fruitful muses. Succeeding 2006 minibox Songs For Christmas, the Detroit native’s second 5-CD set, Silver & Gold, collects an abundance of ephemera: DIY tree ornament, a large and rather frightening poster, stickers, temporary tattoos, and an 84-page…
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
There’s little about this return trip to Middle-earth that feels “unexpected” or fresh.
After a Fashion
Neo-hippie aerialists have Your Style Avatar beside himself
Environment: Don’t Hold Your Breath
The bulk of environment-related legislation has yet to be filed, but there appears to be little hope that the new Lege will make broad, sweeping reforms that would make Texas a healthier place to live. Still, environmental groups are poised to push even harder for a reduction of coal-fired power plants, as well as more…
Boxing Day
William Basinski The Disintegration Loops (Temporary Residence) In the early Eighties, New York composer William Basinski constructed a series of ambient loops, clips of sound broken off from an adult-contemporary station and balled into gelatinous, murky circles. Each of these loops lived on magnetic tape, part of Basinski’s personal archives for decades – until 2001,…
In Our Nature
Writer/director Brian Savelson’s feature debut is a study in fine gradations of resentment in the great outdoors.
Apocalypse Now, Then MoMA
Game developer Adam Saltsman pairs Mayan panic with Dikembe Mutombo
Playback: Pachuco Hop
Hanging with Joe King Carrasco in Puerto Vallarta
Boxing Day
Blue Öyster Cult The Columbia Albums Collection (Sony Legacy) At the wane of CDs – in these latter stages of the album era – the digital paradigm fulfills its new millennial covenant with Blue Öyster Cult’s 17-disc The Columbia Albums Collection. Pity its all-under-one-roof aesthetic didn’t survive the fall of major labels. In 1980, as…
The Other Son
Palestinian and Israeli baby boys are accidentally switched at birth, and that discovery in adulthood creates many repercussions.
Community-Backed Charter in Travis Heights Goes to the Board
As AISD considers dumping one charter, a new one is floated
Boxing Day
Woody Guthrie Woody at 100 (Smithsonian Folkways) Oklahoma’s quiet prophet, the godfather of protest folk, would’ve turned 100 this year, so it’s hard not to consider all the magnanimous, demigod glamour that Woody Guthrie might have enjoyed today if Huntington’s disease hadn’t sapped him dry back in 1967. Woody at 100 doesn’t aim to be…
Khiladi 786
This Bollywood action comedy is the eighth entry in the popular Khiladi film franchise.
Give ‘Til It Helps, Part 1
They ain’t too proud to beg: But why should they have to?
WTP4: What’s $15 Million Among Friends?
One expects Council will be more vigilant the next time around
Boxing Day
Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals 1959-1966 (RockBeat) Singers? Who needs singers? Not these forgotten bands, which collectively make the case for instrumental surf music’s pivotal role as pump-primer for the Sixties garage rock explosion. Since onetime Rhino Records producer James Austin already delivered the grail with 1996’s Cowabunga! The Surf Box, his mission on…
Thirty Years of Texas Wine
Fall Creek Vineyards celebrates a milestone
Studio Visits: Autumn Ewalt
In an airy South Austin studio, Autumn Ewalt makes space for individual and collaborative work
Hightower Report
Obama won’t play ball with Boehner
Boxing Day
Preservation Hall Jazz Band 50th Anniversary Collection (Sony/Legacy) Meet trad jazz’s James Bond: iconic, indestructible, inevitably in flux. Early patriarch/businessman/rhythm section anchor Allan Jaffe and subsequent PHJB members embrace a 007-worthy mission of proselytizing America’s signature cultural achievement. Since the early Sixties, the French Quarter’s 726 St. Peter Street has remained a mecca for lovers…
Home’s a Brewin’
A beer enthusiast’s guide to Christmas gifts
‘Awakening’
Blue Lapis Light takes youth away from risk and on a journey
10-1: If It Ain’t Baroque, Let’s Fix It
Strict requirements may yield a small, homogenous pile of applicants
Boxing Day
Duke Ellington The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection, 1951-1958 (Sony Music) Charles Mingus The Complete Columbia & RCA Albums Collection (Sony Music) The Thelonious Monk Quartet The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection (Sony Music) By the time Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk landed with Columbia Records in the Fifties and Sixties, each had…
Tips and Techniques From a Kosher Cooking Expert
Cookbook aims to free readers from cookbooks
‘The End’
‘Cantanker’ meets its end
Council Stoked for Last Meeting of Year
Agenda lineup: affordable housing, Barton Springs Zone, PUD, and more
Boxing Day
Blur Blur 21: The Box (EMI) Not only was Blur four albums and a jukebox full of singles into its career by the time Oasis dropped Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? in the span of 15 months during 1994/1995, but the aforementioned London quartet had already morphed successfully from a late-Eighties collegiate…
