The Little Books of Christmas
The barrage of coffee table books aside, Christmas (and Valentine’s Day) is the time for cute little books — the smaller the better. These books have a specific purpose. They are designed to make list-weary and mall-frazzledshoppers snatch up the titles and say, “Ah-ha! A good book will work.” Most of the time they are…
“RIGHT THIS WRONG”
The U.S. Border Patrol helped aim the gun that killed Esequiel Hernandez Jr. near the Texas-Mexico border. That’s the conclusion of a scathing report on the 1997 shooting by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio. Smith’s 249-page report concluded that the surveillance mission was poorly conceived and hastily planned. The young Marine who killed Hernandez…
Happy Holidays … and Thanks for Your Many Gifts All Year
About AIDS At this time of the year we are bombarded by messages and news coverage supposedly related to the joyous religious events of Jesus’ birth and the new year. Unfortunately, for many people this ho-ho-ho-ing often seems hollow, as we are swamped by crass commercialism and phony sentiment. For those of us working in…
Who’s on First?
Thus far, serious challenges to council incumbents are conspicuous by their absence, less than six months out from the election. This is probably due to the perception (which is in large part correct) that the Watson council, along with its leader, is not only united but on a roll, and difficult to beat. But one…
Coach’s Corner
“Sleigh bells are jing-jing jingling, ring-ring ringling now!” I have problems with the “holiday season.” Happy-happy-happy, everyone’s happy as that pig who won the lottery. The family, sledding over the pure, driven snow to grandma’s house, in the Miller Lite commercial, are oh-so- happy. Dads are happy in Sears commercials. Though a poor child dies…
Naked City
As Dec. 25 draws closer, it seems less likely that Lacresha Murray’s supporters will get their holiday wish — that the 14-year-old convicted for the death of two-year-old Jayla Belton be out of jail and home for Christmas. Supporters were set to rally Tuesday outside the Price-Daniels Building, where the Third Court of Appeals meets.…
Day Trips
A Titanic Celebration at the Messina Hof Wine Cellars’ Vintage House Restaurant on New Year’s Eve re-creates the meal served in the first-class dining room on the ocean liner’s last night. Each guest will receive an alias and biography of one of the original Titanic passengers. 409/778-9463. Texas Exotic Feline Foundation in Boyd has changed…
Preaching to the Converted
Or NPR Talk of the Nation host Ray Suarez, author of the upcoming The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration and probably the best-received speaker at the conference: “We talk about what happened to the cities, about their wholesale abandonment, as if the citizens’ reasons for leaving were as individual as…
Page Two
Amazingly enough, this is our last issue of 1998. Next week’s issue will be dated January 1, 1999. Before you know it, SXSW ’99 will be here and then it’ll be summer, as we go tumbling into the next century. Just finished writing a piece for this issue on Robert Rodriguez after seeing The Faculty.…
Have Yourself an Animated Christmas
Jessica Rabbit: �I�m not bad, I�m just drawn that way.� “The challenge,” a reader named Mike wrote in to me, “is to spend one day during the holidays watching nothing but animation. The catch is that you can’t just leave your TV on the Cartoon Network, rent videos, or watch previously taped programs.” Whee! Chunk…
Public Notice
There was an Old Person whose habits, Induced him to feed upon Rabbits; When he’s eaten eighteen, he turned perfectly green, Upon which he relinquished those habits. Brilliant nonsenstitian Edward Lear nailed the nature of excess precisely. Do we have to gorge ourselves silly before realizing that our “habits” of consuption can lead to an…
Cozying Up to The Faculty
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Robert Rodriguez is onstage in front of a packed Paramount Theatre introducing the first public showing of The Faculty, produced by his wife and partner Elizabeth Avell�n. This is a benefit for the Austin Film Society’s Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund, which means not only is the event glitzy, but it…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Ravel and unravel mean the same thing. Telegraphers once used Prince Albert cans wedged against the telegraph sounder to render a distinct pitch to an individual’s dot-dash code. When you eat a fig, you are eating a flower, not a fruit. Big Bertha, the large German gun that fired on Paris in 1918, was nicknamed…
Short Cuts
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Last Wednesday was one of those special nights in Austin film lore: Robert Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avell�n’s first public presentation of their new movie The Faculty at the Paramount Theatre in front of an appreciative hometown audience. The screening was a benefit for the Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund (TFPF), and…
Warning: Bible Lesson
illustration by Jason Stout T he earliest writing we have about Jesus comes from Paul. His letters were written circa 50 AD, about 20 years after Jesus was executed; they constitute the bulk of the New Testament. Paul relates that he met and had extensive conversations with at least two men who knew Jesus and…
A Net Gain for the People
One is tempted to write one of those sweeping, throat-gagging New York Times lead about how Ana Sisnett, executive director of Austin Free-Net and Elnita Fennell, account manager for Southwestern Bell, are changing the flow on the Austin information superhighway. Both would wince at the brightness of such a floodlight on their work and the…
Burst Bubbles
illustration by Jason Stout I used to make fun of fools who tried to impress their friends by wasting their money on laughably expensive vintage Champagnes. Clicquot Orange Label (or Yellow Label as the colorblind French insist on calling it) was my brand. I held it up as shining example of money well spent. It…
Art From the Heart
The homeless were always there. On subway grates. In doorways. Heloise Gold grew up with the homeless hovering on the edges of her landscape in Queens and New York City. “We didn’t call them ‘the homeless’ then,” recalls Gold. “They were tramps. And the message from adults was to ignore them and pretend they weren’t…
Articulations
Ever since the Austin Museum of Art announced that Richard Gluckman had been selected as architect for its new downtown facility, those of us on “Museum Watch” have been breathlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop, i.e., for the name of the architect for that other major museum in the Austin arts pipeline –…
The Word from the Experts
We collected picks and descriptions from winebuyers at Fielding’s, Reuben’s, the Austin Wine Merchant, and Wiggy’s. Wines that were specifically recommended by more than one store are noted as such. A store not being listed after a description does not necessarily mean that a wine isn’t available at the other stores. Sparkling Wines Under $10…
Lawyers Who Really Care
When I came to Austin in the summer of ’76, I lived in a duplex on W. l3th Street in a spot where there is now a brick apartment building. One of the many things I loved about my neighborhood was a little shack on West Lynn called Murray’s Bagels, where a nice Jewish guy…
A Cultural Hero
photograph by Kenny Braun It just kinda happened,” says Sam Coronado about his new studio space in the East Austin neighborhood of Montopolis. Sitting among the many boxes and equipment scattered around the freshly painted building, he explains, “There was an opportunity to buy this place. A lot of people helped me out, giving me…
Din Ho Chinese Bbq Restaurant
8557 Research, Ste.116, 832-8788 Daily, 11am-10pm We were eight strong, strapping folk — professional eaters one and all — embarking on a culinary journey to Hong Kong, without ever leaving the dining room of Din Ho Chinese BBQ Restaurant. The vehicle for our sojourn was the “House Special Combination Dish” menu, a lavish assortment of…
The Spirit of Volunteerism
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … ” This phrase keeps running through my head. It’s the day after Art From the Streets, the annual art show and sale of work by clients at Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (A.R.C.H.) and this phrase is running through my…
Exhibitionism
Zachary Scott Theatre Center, through January 17 Running Time: 2 hrs, 30 min Like Alfred Uhry’s best-known work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo is keenly aware of the Southern belle, her learned helplessness, the ridiculous endeavors she undertakes to secure her footing in society. It is also aware of…
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
With the holiday season comes an inevitable and familiar blanket of mood and emotion that settles onto society like a wintry snowstorm, bringing sentimentality and depression, joy and melancholy, hope and despair to stand off in quiet conflict. Nowhere are these emotional extremes more evident than in the public houses. Bars morph and turn tenuous…
Living With the USA
One October day in 1997, Peg Kramer read a newspaper article with her son, and nothing — for her or the University of Texas — has been quite the same since. Kramer, a longtime single mom, former insurance professional, lifelong sports nut, and dedicated UT staff member, was the new president of a very sleepy…
In Person
David Bennahum at Book People David Bennahum’s reading for his new book Extra Life: Coming of Age in Cyberspace (Basic Books, $23 hard) was more like a reunion of an Eighties computer users group than a literary interchange. That’s entirely appropriate, though: In Extra Life, Bennahum, a staff writer for Wired magazine and the publisher…
Dancing About Architecture
Taiter flinched when he saw the Yankee fella ambling towards him. The skinny Northerner had been gettin’ quite a few looks from the local gals that night, and that stuck in Taiter’s craw. He glanced over at Porkchop, winked, and took a swing. Yankee-boy went down like a swaller of premium corn likker.” Yep, what…
Chances Are
In 1982, when Sandra Dee Martinez bought the club she would turn into Chances, she had no idea it would lead to local fame for her and national recognition for her business. Certainly, she couldn’t foresee how bar ownership would lead her to become one of Austin’s most active and appreciated volunteers. Mostly, she noticed…
Postscripts
Wishes Here’s how to give someone that big, ineffable gift of knowledge, or at least the necessary first steps on that road: Become a tutor at Literacy Austin. Literacy Austin is a nonprofit dedicated to helping adults 17 years or older to read and write by providing one-on-one basic literacy and English as a Second…
On the 12th Day of Christmas
It was a day so big, the music industry gave it a name: “Super Tuesday.” Well, actually, they stole the name from the quadrennial political sweepstakes, but Tuesday, November 17 was no less important to Tommy Matola, president of Sony Music, and Ahmet Ertegun, president of Atlantic Records, than the next presidential primary version will…
Cranking Good Vibes
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson It’s not a stretch to imagine Wisdom Ogbor as a little boy learning to ride a bicycle. Even now he smiles and laughs large as he mimics the day he stretched his arms up to grasp the handlebars, wobbling and peddling fiercely until he finally took off. “Oh, the happiness,”…
Lies, All Lies
by Clive James Random House, $23 hard In the past few months, several journalists have been busted for fabricating news articles. Clive James is a popular journalist and TV personality in Britain, often described by his countrymen as a “great wit.” One gets the feeling he is so popular and expert a journalist he would…
Christmas Records
(Windham Hill) L’ENSEMBLE CHORAL DU BOUT DU MONDE No�ls Celtiques: Christmas Music from Brittany (Green Linnet) We claim snobbery about Christmas music in the Moser household — and the sheer number of Celtic Christmas music discs strewn under the tree warrants it. There’s a lot of Celtic crap out there, which is why it’s a…
Food-O-File
Recently, I’ve been thinking about what gifts I’d bequeath to the local food community if it were within my power to grant them anything at all. Here’s what’s in my bag. 1.Reliable line cooks and production bakers for everyone who needs one. Low unemployment numbers may be great for the overall economy, but every restaurateur…
The Tasting
In his relentless pursuit of the best of everything to eat and drink, Robb Walsh has been a student of Champagne for many years, traversing the globe to hobnob with winemakers at Champagne houses in France, and Champagne-style sparkling winemakers everywhere else. In years past, he’s used this information to help him report on locally…
Fatal Error
Hernandez’s days were numbered since 1989, the year then-President George Bush waved a bag of crack on TV. Seated in the Oval Office with pictures of his family behind him, Bush held up the clear plastic bag and told the nation that it was crack cocaine seized in the park located directly across Pennsylvania Avenue…
Scanlines
This year was a transitional one for the video industry, at least as far as home viewing options go. A number of video entertainment formats are currently available, although some are likely to dwindle and die in the near future. Others may reach what is lovingly called “critical mass,” a state that guarantees big profits…
