Cover Story
Movin’ on Up
Melissa Villareal’s life was changed by Ballet East
The Lineup
Recommended music for the week of December 12-18
City Settles Rocha Case
City approves $1 million settlement for the family of Daniel Rocha
Ready Teddy
Teddy & the Talltops reunite at Ginny’s
And Kuempel Makes Twelve
Speaker candidate list swells as Seguin Republican files paperwork
Council Chooses Library Team
In a surprise, it’s Lake|Flato
What’s Happening At Council Today?
Quick hits
Forrest J Ackerman Remembered
Forrest J Ackerman, 92, passed away last Friday and it seems the entire blogosphere — or at the very least those parts that have even the slightest interest in filmmaking and, more specifically, genre filmmaking — is in mourning. We know we are. Ackerman’s influence on the world of fantastic films, fiction, and fandom simply…
Aztex Youth Camp and Pro Signing; Dallas in the NCAA News
News round-up: An Aztex youth soccer camp, plus NCAA tournament results and preview, and news from the European Champions League
Hust FM: Waxing McCracken
The City Hall Hustler on the mayoral race, what’s happening at City Council, and more
Speaker Race Update
Byron Cook wants gavel for Xmas
Final Curtain?
Attention: Congress! Broadway bailout? Please?
Camping at the Cactus
UT gets the goods this week
Ain’t a Damn Thing Changed
Banner and Bun put some Bs on it
The Bad News on Bettie Page
Bettie Page in coma following heart attack
Capital Convictions Decline in 2008
Capital convictions are down, but the death machine is still busy
City Hall Hustle: What’s McCracken?
Illuminating the race for mayor
Team Perry 2010
Governor announces top re-election campaign consultants
Kevlar for Rudolph
Bush administration gives NRA what it wants: Guns in national parks
Another Senate Entry
Former Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams also wants Hutchison’s seat
De Nada
Review of Omara Portuondo’s “Gracias”
Day Without a Gay
Take the day off work, queer.
Pedal Powered Christmas Tree
The contemporary artist Bob and Roberta Smith (one person, I know, it’s confusing) has installed a bicycle powered Christmas tree in the rotunda of the Tate in London. The tree itself is made out of recycled materials, and each of the eight bicycles grounded at its base are connected, via generator, to a set of…
NoDak Hempsters Moving Forward
Although it is unclear whether farmers in North Dakota will be able to cultivate industrial hemp next year, the state’s agricultural commissioner, Roger Johnson, is now accepting applications from farmers interested in receiving a state license to grow the plant. Hemp, the non-narcotic cousin of marijuana is a sustainable addition to crop rotation and is…
Texecutioners Pluck Rose City
Texas Rollergirls finish 2008 flat track derby season with laughter
Supreme Court of BCS Declares OU Victory!
Has the elevation of Oklahoma to the national title game assured Texas of a great 2009 football season?
McCracken Hits the Campaign Circuit
Mayor Pro Tem announces run at solar panel plant, but Leffingwell supporters still wax sunny
Sharp: I Am Running for Senate
Democratic former comptroller wants Hutchison’s seat
Harper Brown Holds On
House stands 76-74 after final Dallas Co. recount
Comfort and Joy
Loreena McKennitt and her spirit animals
Tweens v. Twinks
Tweens and twinks alert: Here comes one surreal homoerotic biopic.
Baby Daddy
Live review of Anthony Hamilton at the Austin Music Hall, 12.5.2008
Supremes Let Stand California Medi-Pot Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from Garden Grove, Calif., challenging a lower court ruling that a medi-pot patient should get back his seized stash
Manfest 2008 & Astronautalis
After attending Manfest 2008 yesterday I am trying to decide if I feel like more of a man or if I should feel like less of a man after seeing so many astounding displays of manliness over the course of the day. The good people at Bird’s Barbershop and Party Ends.com put together a fantastic…
H.W. Brands at Scholz Garten
Local biographer dishes on FDR
Roses in Texas
Final bout of the ’08 flat track derby season tonight
Bettencourt Resigns
Controversial Harris County voter registrar accused of vote suppression
Brewster’s Big (Pre-)Announcement
Place 5 council member to confirm mayoral run Monday
Buy Curious
Curious who supports the gays and who neighs the gays?
Welcome to the Bungle
A review of Guns N’ Rose “Chinese Democracy”
The River Revolution Party
11/14/08 The CD release party for The Story Of’s new album “Until the Autumn”. Shot on the banks of the Colorado River in Austin, TX. The River Revolution Party from Austin Chronicle on Vimeo.
“YOU”????? Really?
Rachel Maddow second-persons us. Her. We. The gays. WTF?
Home for the Holidays
A local lineup helps Austin’s homeless
Tax Bills Mailed Out
Don’t blame us, we’re just telling you
Ethics Commission Fines Hecht
Texas Supreme will have to pay $29,000 fine for accepting a donation larger than the law allows, and for failing to report it
Aztex Home for 2009: Nelson Field
Austin Aztex sign a contract with AISD to play at Nelson Field in 2009, House Park the next
Compatible Partners? Thanks, eHarmony.
Compat THIS, you homophobic dating service.
Vestige Group
This December, Vestige goes ape for an offbeat rock musical with a hairy hero
Rock & Roll Books
The Hit Charade: Lou Pearlman, Boy Bands, and the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in U.S. History by Tyler Gray Collins, 287 pp., $24.95 If it weren’t for the flimflammery of imprisoned con man Lou Pearlman, Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync might never have existed. Music history is littered with managers hustling their acts, but that was…
Everything but the Elves
Santa’s bag is full of books for cooks this Christmas!
Everything but the Elves
The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking for aficionados by Diana Kennedy Clarkson Potter, 512 pp., $30 One complaint often lodged against Diana Kennedy’s cookbooks is that the recipes are too difficult and feature too many “obscure” ingredients. With all due respect to such naysayers, they have missed the point of her life’s work.…
Slipped Discs
In this Very Deadwood Christmas, stop only to drink eggnog every time a character says “cocksucker” or gets stabbed in the chest
Lake City
A heavy-handed melodrama that features a young, brooding antihero and Sissy Spacek as his emotionally paralyzed mom.
Slipped Discs
Death to the laugh track
Rock & Roll Books
Suzy, Led Zeppelin, and Me by Martin Millar Soft Skull Press, 222 pp., $13.95 (paper) It happens time and again: Boy hears Led Zepplin II, boy realizes girls exist, and by the time John Bonham’s halfway through “Moby Dick,” boy’s making some pretty irrational decisions. Martin Millar’s recount of the sequence is unique because he…
Day Trips
Galveston is open for business despite being pummeled by Hurricane Ike just a few months ago
Everything but the Elves
The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg Little, Brown & Co., 392 pp., $35 Few food books in recent memory have excited me as much as this one – perhaps because it really isn’t a cookbook at all.…
Res Publica
There are all kinds of ways to be a good citizen this week, Dec. 4-10
Milk
Gus Van Sant’s deeply heartfelt Milk, which features a magnificent performance by Sean Penn as the crusading gay activist, is a finely wrought yet fairly standard biopic.
Jim Gaffigan
Pack up the kids: Comedian Jim Gaffigan is back, taping his Austin shows for cable
TV Eye
TNT’s Leverage serves up justice week-to-week and in one tidy hour
Gay Place
Gay Place is calling in gay
Everything but the Elves
The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar J. Mazzeo Collins, 265 pp., $25.95 The title refers to Barbe-Nicole Clicquot Ponsardin and the titular Champagne is Veuve (French for widow) Clicquot. Barbe-Nicole was a widow at age 27. Her husband left a successful winery, but Barbe-Nicole…
Naked City
News briefs from Austin, the region, and beyond
Slipped Discs
That terminally genial Brit-wit goes on a global journey that has spanned nearly two decades and seven award-winning documentaries
Rock & Roll Books
Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside the Rock and Roll Business by Danny Goldberg Gotham, 320 pp., $26 Bumping Into Geniuses is an especially apt title for Danny Goldberg’s stories of his life in the music business. At the beginning, he covers Woodstock because no one else at Billboard had any interest in attending. From…
Headlines
• Austin American-Statesman owner Cox Newspapers will close its Washington, D.C., bureau April 1, 2009, as part of a series of cost-cutting measures that includes unloading the Statesman. There’s still no word on whether the daily has a potential buyer. • Shop Local: The city has launched a new website and interactive map, ExploreLocalAustin.org, highlighting…
Everything but the Elves
Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink edited by David Remnick Random House, 608 pp., $30 Since its inception under the watchful eye of founding Editor Harold Ross, The New Yorker’s raison d’être has been maximum intelligence dished up with minimum words and served with healthy seasonings of irony and anomie. Ross…
Point Austin: Bernanke Speaks
The Fed chairman visits, and the news is very mixed
Slipped Discs
One of the most original and emotionally/comedically satisfying series in Adult Swim’s already prodigious back catalog
Rock & Roll Books
Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor Grand Central Publishing, 324 pp., $26.99 “I had always said I wanted to be in a band like AC/DC, but fortunately I was either astute enough, or skint enough, to join Duran Duran!” Andy Taylor stiff-arming some serious downstroke on the Power Station’s 1985 cover…
Letters at 3am
A bounty to getting older is that you grow tired of the uselessly dramatic aspects of yourself, and most of your fears evaporate
Everything but the Elves
Eat Me: The Food and Philo�sophy of Kenny Shopsin by Kenny Shopsin and Carolynn Carreño Knopf, 288 pp., $24.95 I always assumed that the character of the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld was based on a real person, but I didn’t know whom. In New York City, however, everybody apparently knew that Seinfeld was poking fun…
TCEQ Paves the Way for Shit Creek(s)
State environmental agency rejects science in favor of allowing sewage in creeks
Off the Record
Reunion fever hits close to home: Faces, the Kinks, the Jesus Lizard, and more
Rock & Roll Books
Just as Jack Kerouac and David Amram fashioned the paragon of spoken word by fusing jazz with poetry in the East Village in 1957, Orville Gibson forever changed the modern guitar in 1896 with his only patent. Using one large piece of curved wood instead of several smaller ones for the sides of his carved…
Arts Reviews
Michael Mitchell’s paired one-acts depict characters with a lot bottled up inside
Everything but the Elves
The Fireside Cook book: The Classic Guide to Fine Cooking for Beginner and Expert by James Beard Simon and Schuster, 336 pp., $30 Is there anyone on your list who is inclined to appreciate the unbelievably, gorgeously kitschy? Or even just the unbelievably gorgeous? Because this cookbook, in addition to being one of the tried-and-true,…
Busted in Aspen, Sued in Denver
Kirk Mitchell of SOS sued for battery in federal court
Slipped Discs
Just the thing for the hyperactive adult on your Christmas list
Rock & Roll Books
He Is … I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond by David Wild Da Capo Press, 203 pp., $25 There’s a fine line between fanboy and rock critic, and David Wild lets it be known upfront he’s a former Rolling Stone writer. He then fixes his googly eyed gaze upon…
Arts Reviews
These busy abstracts create visual fields that are active, festive, and seductive
Everything but the Elves
Peace Meals: A Book of Recipes for Cooking and Connecting by the Junior League of Houston Ingram Book Co., $39.45. The Houston Junior League, an 83-year-old women’s service organization, has an illustrious history of publishing a terrific cookbook about once a decade. Stop and Smell the Rosemary won numerous prizes in 1996, and the group’s…
TWG Considers Green Line
A rail line along the Austin-Manor-Elgin corridor could decrease traffic congestion and minimize air pollution
Slipped Discs
Witness Derek Jarman’s powerful use of spectacle – it’s no wonder everyone steals from him
Rock & Roll Books
A Wished-for Song: A Portrait of Jeff Buckley by Merri Cyr Backbeat Books, 176 pp., $22.95 (paper) A decade has passed since Jeff Buckley’s ill-fated swim in the Mississippi River, and that tragic Memphis night has since spawned a feeding frenzy of posthumous releases eager to cash in on the late musical heartthrob’s lingering legacy.…
Here Comes Mr. Achewood
Chris Onstad tours with his Great Outdoor Fight book
Everything but the Elves
Sauces: Classical and Contemporary Sauce Making by James Peterson Wiley, 640 pp., $49.95 Know someone who longs to attend culinary school but can’t take the time away from life to do so? Well, for the truly motivated, here’s alternative access to some of that instruction. Weighing in at 4 pounds and 600-plus pages, James Peterson’s…
Firefighters Give Contract the Axe
The contract would’ve helped the chief diversify the department – a bad thing, apparently
Rock & Roll Books
Who Are You: The Life of Pete Townshend by Mark Ian Wilkerson Omnibus Press, 642 pp., $29.95 (paper) As Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder astutely posits in the foreword, Pete Townshend is perhaps the most introspective and insightful songwriter of his generation, channeling his spiritual and musical devotion through destructive R&B and high-concept rock operas. In…
The Common Law
Child Support – Trouble Getting Paid?
Everything but the Elves
The Top 3 baking books on the market this holiday season
Klingler on Republicans in 2010
Where Texas Republicans went wrong, and what it’ll take to go right
Slipped Discs
An equal emphasis on the blood and the lust
Rock & Roll Books
The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia by Michael Gray Continuum International Publishing, 756 pp., $24.95 (paper) One would expect to find Allen Ginsberg, the Band, and Joan Baez in any reference book about Bob Dylan, but not necessarily Bertolt Brecht, Wyclef Jean, or Mortimer Snerd. With an unparalleled legacy closing in on 50 years, Dylan has touched…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Health vs. length, Texas vs. New York, and more
Event Menu
Your local foodie events for Dec. 4-31
Craddick Foes Prefer Secret Ballot in Speaker’s Race
House members try to outsmart Craddick in laying ground rules for choosing a speaker
Rock & Roll Books
Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia Norton, 448 pp., $27.95 A provocative parallel finds Delta Blues published at roughly the same time as Alan Govenar’s Texas Blues, given that the two books stand in opposition on where the blues began. The question isn’t difficult…
Rock & Roll Books
I Shot a Man in Reno: A History of Death by Murder, Suicide, Fire, Flood, Drugs, Disease, and General Misadventure, as Related in Popular Song by Graeme Thomson Continuum International Publishing, 253 pp., $18.95 (paper) Analyzing the myriad forms and functions of death in popular music in less than 250 pages is somewhat hubristic, but…
After a Fashion
Stephen’s gratitude is sincere, and we may thank some great news for it
Food-o-File
Celebrating Eat Local Week, clearing up some sub shop confusion, and more
Texas House: Balance of Power Hangs in the Balance
There’s a 50-50 chance of seeing a 75-75 split in the House
Indelible
The lasting power of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
Rock & Roll Books
It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music by Amanda Petrusich Faber and Faber, 290 pp., $25 It figures that someone who’s best known as a staff writer for online music magazine PitchforkMedia.com would attempt to “discover” the roots of American music and get it all wrong. Ostensibly…
Teens in the Kitchen at Central Market
Forget the gadgets, and gift your teen with Central Market cooking classes
True Blues
Alan Govenar’s blues tome doesn’t need to correct blues mythos. Blues is myth and vice versa.
Holiday Gift Guide
Shopping ideas from the Chronicle News staff
Rock & Roll Books
The Way I Am by Eminem Dutton, 205 pp., $40 (with accompanying DVD) Eminem earned his reputation by spraying violent, often funny fantasias across hip-hop culture, so it’s disappointing to find the rapper often contrite and relatively buttoned-down in this memoir-cum-scrapbook. With a translucent, blood-red dust jacket that announces across the back, “The Biggest Rapper…
Rock & Roll Books
Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death, and Country Music by Dana Jennings Faber and Faber, 257 pp., $24 “Country profoundly understands what it’s like to be trapped in a culture of alienation: by poverty, by a shit job, by lust, by booze, by class,” writes Dana Jennings. As an editor for The New York Times…
Mail-Order Gifts
Send those out-of-towners a little taste of Austin for the holidays
Revving Up for Slow Times
How local entrepreneurs plan to weather the recession
Playing Through
Four reasons to jump on the Austin Toros bandwagon
David Ohlerking
The whirlwind force behind Austin Figurative Gallery is spinning away to Jersey
Rock & Roll Books
Clublife: Thugs, Drugs & Chaos at New York City’s Premier Nightclubs by Robert “Rob the Bouncer” Fitzgerald Harper Entertainment, 246 pp., $13.95 (paper) Like the lifespan of the clubs retired bouncer Rob Fitzgerald checked IDs at over the last three years, Clublife is a touch-and-go operation with no regard for the events of the past…
Rock & Roll Books
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die: A Listener’s Life List by Tom Moon Workman Publishing, 1,007 pp., $19.95 (paper) Thumbing through this publisher’s sequel to 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, informed fans can dig up enough errors – Fugazi concerts cost $5, not $15, and “the first great blast of L.A. punk”…
Everything but the Elves
The Williams-Sonoma Cookbook: the Essential Recipe Collection for Today’s Home Cook Free Press, 463 pp., $34.95 Williams-Sonoma has had its pulse on American food trends for more than five decades. For much of America, the name has come to embody taste, not only in terms of kitchen aesthetics but also with respect to culinary arts.…
The Hightower Report
From Ugly Political Ads to the Beauty of Return Day; and Link Up With the Obama White House
Page Two: Fuel and Frost
Nixon film and doc review response offer different kinds of surprises
Slipped Discs
In which the geeks inherit the earth
Rock & Roll Books
The Hardest Working Man: How James Brown Saved the Soul of America by James Sullivan Gotham Books, 272 pp., $25 “His was a self-confidence so supreme it bordered on the absurd,” James Sullivan writes of James Brown. After all, what other entertainer was called on to stave off riots? The book tells the story behind…
Rock & Roll Books
How to be a Producer in the Digital Era by Megan Perry Billboard Books, 246 pp., $18.95 (paper) How to Be a Producer in the Digital Era isn’t the book you expect from the title. The Digital Age has democratized recording culture, birthing an explosion of home studios while countless professional spaces have closed their…
Everything but the Elves
A Day at elBulli by Ferran Adrià Phaidon Press, 600 pp., $49.95 For those in the dark, elBulli (pronounced Boo-yeé), on the Costa Brava just north of Barcelona, is perhaps the best and most creative restaurant in the world. Open for six months of each year and for dinner only, it is definitely the most…
History Circles Its Tail
Gus Van Sant on the life of Seventies crusader Harvey Milk and the parallels between then and now
Rock & Roll Books
I Want To Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly & The Family Stone by Jeff Kaliss Backbeat Books, 210 pp., $24.95 In his classic book Mystery Train, rock critic Greil Marcus brilliantly integrated Sylvester Stewart, aka Sly Stone, into the deeper fabric of Americana by suggesting that the creatively outsized, eccentric superstar…
Rock & Roll Books
The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Favorite Folk Songs by Peter Yarrow Sterling, 48 pp., $16.95 The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Sleepytime Songs by Peter Yarrow Sterling, 48 pp., $16.95 I was dubious about the intended audience for these illustrated songbooks of folk songs, spirituals, and lullabies, with an accompanying CD by famed folkie Peter Yarrow (of Peter,…
Everything but the Elves
The Book of New Israeli Food: A Culinary Journey by Janna Gur Schocken Books, 304 pp., $35 Author Janna Gur is the founder and editor of leading Israeli food and wine magazine Al Hashulchan – The Israeli Gastronomic Monthly. In her Book of New Israeli Food, Gur chronicles the relatively recent progression of Israeli cuisine…
Punisher: War Zone
Marvel Comics’ Frank Castle again comes to the screen as a one-man vengeance machine in this stylishly violent and gory opus.
Clink Clink, Swampy!
Hey. Homo. This one’s for you.
Luv Doc Recommends: A Night of Music From Around the World
Living atop the monolith of American superiority, sometimes it’s hard to remember that there are nearly 200 other sovereign states living in our prodigious shadow. Some are tiny places like Monaco, Lichtenstein, and San Marino, countries you could literally pee across on a full bladder, but there are also sprawling giants like China, Russia, India,…
