Public Notice
What’s love without loss? Love without loss isn’t love, it’s loss in the making. Who hasn’t felt that deep, searing devil way down in their gut? Who hasn’t stood “on a station platform in the rain with a comical look on his[/her] face, because his[/her] insides had been kicked out”? What’s Valentine’s Day without a…
On The Lege
It was Pete Laney’s first major defeat of the season. Seated in a section of die-hard Texas Tech fans, wearing his brightest red shirt, the House Speaker was at the Erwin Center Saturday night to see the Red Raiders women’s basketball team fall to the underdog Lady Longhorns, 74 -70. Laney, never one for emotional…
Articulations
The woman who has been pioneering local efforts to make Austin arts accessible to all the city’s culture lovers has been wooed away to do the same in our nation’s capital. Betty Siegel, administrator for the local service organization Austin Access Arts, has accepted the post of Director of Accessibility at the John F. Kennedy…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The ballpoint pen ink in a typical signature might have a mass of 6 x 1019 u. The “wave” was first observed as a fan phenomenon in Husky Stadium, in Seattle, Wash., on Oct. 31, 1981 during the third quarter of a football game between the University of Washington and Stanford University. It takes two…
Top Guns
Winstead, Sechrest & Minick, P.C. *$200,000-$999,999 Aon Corp. $200,000-$999,999 Entrecorp $100,000-$149,999 Association of Electric Cos. of Texas $50,000-$99,999 Boys & Girls Club of Greater Fort Worth $50,000-$99,999 Credit Union Coalition of Texas $50,000-$99,999 Fasken Oil & Ranch Interests, Ltd. $50,000-$99,999 Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. $50,000-$99,999 Texas State Technical College Foundation $50,000-$99,999 Household Financial Group Ltd.…
Exhibitionism
Bass Concert Hall February 7 While some of you were out spending hundreds of dollars at the Erwin Center on the obese Italian guy who can’t quite hit his high notes like he used to, those of us whose classical music sensibilities run toward the exquisite and the refined took in one of Earth’s greatest…
Aphrodite: a Memoir of the Senses
by Isabel Allende Harper/Collins, $26 hard “Appetite and sex are the great motivators of history … All of creation is one long interrupted cycle of digestion and fertility.” With this thesis in mind, acclaimed Chilean writer Isabel Allende set out to write a book celebrating aphrodisiacs, the commingling of food and love. The fruits of…
Spinning Out of Control?
This legislative session, billions of dollars are riding on issues like electric deregulation, telephone regulation, and tax breaks for high-tech business. Simply put, the government business is big business. “When I came to the Legislature in 1962, our biennial budget in 1963 was just over $1 billion,” says Clayton, who recalls that in those days…
The Last Hurrah
Theatregoers of Austin,we have hit The Wall. In the annual performance marathon known as FronteraFest, this is that point when we break past the blurry vision and fatigue and soreness brought on by four solid weeks of stage work. Somehow we’ve endured all the deeply personal “get-to-know-me” monologues and interpretive dances and esoteric verse and…
The Year of the Rabbit
photograph by John Anderson The Chinese word “Nian” in modern Chinese language means “year,” but more importantly, it was the moniker of a horrible dragon-beast that terrorized and ate the people and domestic animals of ancient China every evening before the arrival of a New Year. Nian had a cavernous mouth and could swallow hordes…
The Local Lineup
Lower Colorado River Authority Joseph Lynn Nabers $25,000-$49,999 Robert M. Saunders $25,000-$49,999 Michael Toomey $25,000-$49,999 Stan Schlueter 0-$10,000 Randy Schlueter 0-$10,000 Ellen Williams 0-$10,000 Patricia A. Shipton $0 Jerry B. “Nub” Donaldson* $0 * Donaldson says the LCRA has not yet paid him for 1999. In last year’s report, Donaldson reported the agency paid him…
SOUND & VISION ’99
Margery Segal If you know FronteraFest, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre’s annual orgy of performance, word of a companion performance festival might seem like a dessert buffet after a meal of sweets: After six weeks of showpieces encompassing drama, sketch comedy, spoken word, dance, conceptual performance, and all manner of mix-‘n’-matches of the above, what kind of…
Chinese New Year Celebrations in Austin
The University of Texas will host a Lunar New Year Festival, Saturday, February 13, in the Texas Union Ballroom. The evening features live performances of music and New Year’s Festival dances, as well as a banquet of foods from all over Asia. Doors open at 6pm, dinner is at 8pm. Tickets are $15 for the…
The News From Here
Ross McElwee is a “personal” documentary maker, that self-described obsessed guy with a camera on his shoulder, who takes us along with him as he simultaneously lives and shoots his autobiography. For instance, we were there, feeling a bit out-of-place perhaps, as he dated his way through his Southern homeland in 1986’s Sherman’s March, his…
Painting With Sound
Walter Thompson (r) leads Joshua Taylor and Jason Phelps in a “sound painting.” As another year’s successful FronteraFest draws to a close, you’d think our friends at the Hyde Park Theatre would want to close up for a month and get some well deserved sleep. That’s not going to happen. Directly on the heels of…
Drink Away That Valentine’s Day: Wine for Lovers
As a child, Valentine’s Day held little appeal for me. I remember the annual drudgery of hunting through piles of candy hearts and fold-and-seal Valentines, deciding who will receive which cheesy message. Who gets the whimsical and unambiguous “Pooh knows lots of ways to say, ‘Have a happy Valentine’s Day!'”? And which desirable soul receives…
Scanlines
D: Randa Haines (1998) with Chayanne, Vanessa L. Williams, Kris Kristofferson Think Dirty Dancing with a more passionate soundtrack and Strictly Ballroom with less smarts, and you get a dance-romance that’s as captivating as it is cheesy. Set in Houston (an unlikely choice of cities for a romp like this), we met Rafael (Chayanne), who…
Two Bios of Barbara
Barbara Jordan: The Biography by Austin Teutsch Golden Touch Press, $9.95 paper Mary Beth Rogers’ biography of Barbara Jordan, Barbara Jordan: American Hero, is what a biography of Jordan should be: tinged with awareness that any life story of so stoic a woman, whose ability to cohesively school the nation, and yet who could be…
Food-O-File
If your love life is about to be sabotaged because you neglected to make those all-important dinner reservations, don’t despair. Doug Driskell (656-7796) at Speakeasy (412 Congress, 476-8017) may still have a table left. For this special occasion, he’s teamed up with the creative cooks at 2 Dine 4 Catering (658-8719) to offer a Valentine’s…
Short Cuts
The SXSW Film Festival and the Austin Film Society have announced plans for a special premiere screening of Matthew McConaughey’s new movie EDtv on Wednesday, March 17, one day after the film’s Los Angeles premiere. The film is directed by Ron Howard and stars McConaughey as an unambitious video store clerk who is plucked from…
Status of the Original
Craig Jensen and “Anger” from Seven Deadly Sins. photograph by John Anderson Local book artist Craig Jensen opened his own bookbinding facility, Jensen Bindery, in his garage in 1984, and four years later, with the help of two business partners in Massachusetts, opened BookLab, a much larger facility specializing in bookbinding and the photocopying of…
Dancing About Architecture
You’ve Got Mail On the Liberty Lunch watch, the mayor’s office confirms they’ve received phone calls and e-mails in response to last week’s Chronicle plea to not tear down the venerable venue. So did the Chronicle, for that matter, most notably one well-thought-out note which emphasized the Lunch’s importance to the centralized nature of Austin’s…
Do a Little Dance
Ask several thousand people to define “independent cinema” and you’re liable to come away with several thousand answers. Is it a monetary definition? A budget under $10 million? Five, or one million? Or is it possible to define independent filmmaking by its aesthetic, attitude, or sensibility? Maybe the form is predicated by its funding source,…
A Book for Bibliophiles
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making by Adrian Johns University of Chicago Press, $40 hard In The Nature of the Book, Adrian Johns transports us to northern Europe during the first 200 years of the printing press and in so doing raises questions about every modern assumption we have about…
Live Shots
Flamingo Cantina, February 3 Time to empty the buzz bin again? In dumping said receptacle, one would surely come across the sugar-encrusted, punk-pop hooks and harmonies of Weezer. These were the sickly lads who introduced terms like “nerd-core” into prevalence with the aid of MTV in 1994, and like any good pop band, Weezer’s mission…
Fool for Love
Miranda Richardson and Josie Lawrence in Enchanted April. Please don’t talk to me about NBC’s sweeps entry The Sixties. My snazzy new VCR isn’t set up properly, I discovered unhappily last Sunday night upon returning home from seeing Luciano Pavarotti. I was bitter but quickly distracted by Weezer bearing The X-Files on tape, as he…
Postscripts
Texas Writers Month, which is May, is a bit like Black History Month; there’s never really been one particular office people can call to plan events or to gather information about the occasion. But now an organization that has been in the works for some time, the Texas Writers Project, is official. It’s the nonprofit…
The Full Monte
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Joe Ely’s 1982 Tornado Jam in Lubbock was an auspicious event for 14-year-old Monte Warden. The Lubbock Hilton was abuzz with the names of Tornado Jam guests like Bill Payne of Little Feat and Linda Ronstadt, who was said to be toying with the idea of releasing Ely’s “Honky Tonk…
The Breast Things in Life
illustration by Jason Stout With February comesthe inevitable midmonth celebration of romantic love and the concomitant cloud of hearts, lace, and chubby cherubs hovering over us like mosquitoes on a scum-covered pond. For the single, the cynical, the socially maladjusted, what better time could there be to talk about a subject close to our hearts?…
About AIDS
The OZ Parties, singles socials for HIV-positive people, is having its next large quarterly event on Friday evening, February 12, 5-9pm. The Forum, located at 408 Congress Avenue, is generously hosting this social in their upstairs tented bar, offering special drink prices for all event guests, accompanied by appetizers. A $5 contribution toward The OZ…
The Wisdom of Years
To hear Willis tell it, the only thing more personally traumatic than her years as a square peg in Nashville’s round hole came when her parents divorced in 1977. Until that point, she had enjoyed a typically all-American, Army brat life; born in Oklahoma, Willis attended elementary school in North Carolina and high school in…
Naked City
A local political action committee is launching a petition effort to open Austin Police Dept. disciplinary records and facilitate public monitoring and investigation of police abuse cases. The Sunshine Project for Police Accountability will hold a press conference at 12:15pm today, Thursday, Feb. 11, in front of the downtown police station to announce its effort…
Nouveau Hugo
Whether Berlanga’s clear advantage — access — will be enough to overcome his clear disadvantage — lobbying inexperience — remains a question for his clients to judge. In many ways, the point is moot. Increasingly, lawmakers are seeking to capitalize on their experience by peddling influence in the Capitol after they retire, making the Texas…
Measuring Your Assets
1. The best thing about my butt is a.it looks so good in a thong. b.guys are crazy for it. c.it is comfortable to sit on. d.it is in a place where I rarely see it. 2. When I was a child, people made fun of my a.little sister. b.lunch box. c.beautiful red hair. d.butt.…
Berlanga’s Clients
1999 Clients Compensation AT&T $50,000-$99,999 City of Austin $50,000-$99,999 City of Corpus Christi $50,000-$99,999 Driscoll Children’s Hospital $50,000-$99,999 DuPont Pharmaceuticals $50,000-$99,999 Sagem Morpho* $25,000-$49,999 Waste Control Specialists $25,000-$49,999 Advanced Practice Nurses $10,000-$24,999 TOTAL $310,000-$625,000 *A welfare fraud-detecting company; holds contract with the Texas Department of Human Services. SOURCE: Texans for Public Justice
Coach’s Corner
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” — Rick Majerus After a week of marriage, Kelly drives off to her mother’s house, 120 miles away. The cause of her flight isn’t me, I trust, but the impending prospect of a Friday night sleepover party planned by Janie, my 15-year-old daughter. A…
True to Their Cause
For the local group, teamwork is the key concept. That may sound like a rather obvious goal, but it wasn’t all that long ago that agencies in this community largely worked at odds with one another, engaging in turf battles and demonstrating an unwillingness to share information. That situation began to change in 1990 following…
Day Trips
Paint the town red in Georgetown for Valentine’s Day when downtown merchants will have a jar of chocolate kisses in their stores — guess the number of kisses in the jar and win a prize, Feb. 12-13. 800/436-8696. Polka Fest at the K.C. Hall in New Braunfels brings out the accordions and dancing shoes, Feb.…
Travis Co. Child Fatalities Listed by Cause of Death
1995 1996 1997 Natural Causes 99 81 98 Accidental Death 32 26 36 Homicide 11 10 4 Suicide 0 0 1 Unknown 7 0 0 Total 149 117 139
Page Two
In October 1991, the Chronicle featured a mask of “The Developer of the Black Lagoon” for our Halloween cover. It looked surprisingly like Circle C developer Gary Bradley. We figured he would find this more flattering than disconcerting; Bradley seemed to relish his larger-than-life image and didn’t seem to care what fed it. The step-by-step…
Ye Olde Can-Do Spirit
Libraries were the order of the day last week when councilmembers set about spending some of the money approved in the November bond election. The council approved $1.79 million to buy land for three Austin Public Library branches: A new Montopolis library will serve both the Montopolis and Riverside communities once the city closes its…
