Cover Story
Aural History
“I don’t know him,” admitted Jeff Lofton of Hannibal Lokumbe a few weeks before this issue’s cover shoot. “That’s somebody I’d like to connect with and play with, because he’s a great player and he’s played with some great people.” The photo op, by all accounts – Lofton and Lokumbe blowing their trumpets – was…
Will Gov. Perry’s Cancer Concern Extend to Queer Boys?
HPV vaccine Gardasil may prevent some anal cancers
The Joseph Stack Manifesto
Reprint of pilot’s suicide note
The Totally Awesome AusChron Newscast Takes Off!
APD’s street closure conundrum, tire updates, plus some primary intelligence
Plane Crash Update
City holds first press conference
Links to the Casual Revolution
You’ve read the feature story, now click the blog
A Queerbot by Any Other Name …
Use your words carefully
Team Shami 3.0
Dem gov hopeful picks sides after staff walk-out
From the Dept. of Weird-Ass Press Releases
How to anti-sex your pet without the snip-snip
Shoot the Messengers Before They Quit
Shami’s campaign staff collapsing after email debacle
A Reason to Get Up on Saturday
UT President Powers will speak on Domestic Partner Benefits
A Perfect Day for Talking About Bananafish
Austin’s hip lit gathers to pay tribute to J.D. Salinger
A Campaign Divided
Weird email exchange purporting to be from Shami staffers hits in-trays
Rick Perry vs. the EPA
Which is the bigger danger, climate change or our governor?
Sacrificing Seniority
Conservatives could cost Republicans committee appointments
Goodbye Mystique
Drag Race Week Three recap!
You Say You Want a (R)Evolution…
Vogue Evolution, NYC’s premier voguing crew (America’s Best Dance Crew), and queen supreme Sahara Davenport, (RuPaul’s Drag Race) sashay into UT.
Hey Southwest, It’s ‘Silent Bob,’ Not ‘Too Fat to Fly Bob’
Southwest Airlines kicks director Kevin Smith off flight for being oversized
Mother Falcon’s Still Life
Austin’s animal collective
Sore Muscles? Put Some Tape on ‘Em!
Austin Marathon runners learn about kinesiology tape
Who Dat Rollin’ on Dat Float?
Mardi Gras 2010: There’s still some time to get out and revel!
The San Antonio Shimmy
Texas Supreme Court to review stripper surcharge
Boys Beware
Homosexuals are more accepted now than ever, but will we ever not be “different”?
El Paso Resolves to Stand by Ciudad Juarez
Council member argues war on drugs explains violence in sister city
Arts Review
This pairing of works by Ed Lindlof and Sharon Kyle Kuhn gives old materials new life
‘Cribdeath: Bellocq’s Girl’
Second-place winner
Texas Platters
Johnny Gimble Celebrating With Friends (CMH) He may be nearing his 84th birthday, but Johnny Gimble is proof that music can keep you young. Affectionately produced by Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson, Celebrating With Friends is a straight shot of the hot jazz and Western swing that the fiddle great is known for and,…
Soccer Watch
The Austin Aztex announced their 2010 season schedule on Monday; they play St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Miami, and Puerto Rico four times each, and each of the other seven teams in the USSF Division 2 twice. The season stretches almost a month longer than last year’s USL-1 season, though it’s again 30 games. Of the…
Forklift Danceworks
Five choreographers join the company in making work that undefines dance
‘Rendezvous’
Third-place winner
Texas Platters
Reckless Kelly Somewhere in Time (Yep Roc) Reckless Kelly’s 2008 album, Bulletproof, proved its most mature and substantive offering to date, the local quintet brandishing its polished Red Dirt roots-rock with purpose. There was perhaps no better time, then, for the Braun brothers to pursue the long planned tribute to their former hometown hero, the…
University of Texas Softball
UT hosts Texas Invitational
The Ransom Center
UT’s research center lands the archives of the storied Magnum Photos agency
Primary Intelligence
Local races
Texas Platters
Collin Herring Ocho Collin Herring has finally met his production match. While the Austin-via-Fort Worth songwriter’s previous three efforts have been solid, serving up electric-honed alt.country in the vein of Son Volt, Ocho finds its intensity through subtlety. In large part due to Will Johnson’s production, whose own work echoes throughout the album, Herring’s songs…
Page Two: The Long Scream
The endless Republican nightmare casts its shadow on health care reform
‘A Brief Narrative of an Extraordinary Birth of Rabbits’
How C. Denby Swanson developed a historical hoax into a drama of the fantastic
Political Dust Clouds 201st: Patterson vs. Meachum
Is the candidate with most experience also a liability?
Texas Platters
Speak Hear Here (Playing in Traffic) R.E.M.’s earliest recording, 1982’s Chronic Town EP, revived the truncated platter format successfully during vinyl’s last hurrah with punk and disco. The five songs within were dark and different, a bellwether of the changes ahead as the Georgians shaped indie rock’s future. Believe it if it feels like Austin…
Naked City
News briefs from Austin, the region, and beyond
Event Menu
This week, cigars and chocolates meet Foodways of Mexico
Innovative Justice: Lipscombe vs. Seelig
Both candidates push alternatives to incarceration
Texas Platters
Midlake The Courage of Others (Bella Union) Like Thoreau at Walden Pond, Midlake’s 2006 breakthrough, The Trials of Van Occupanther, retreated into a romanticized past, weaving a timeless folk narrative of saints and stonecutters. With long-awaited third LP The Courage of Others, the Denton quintet delves deeper into winter contemplation and 1960s British folk, except…
Point Austin: And the Winner Is …
What we think about when we think about endorsing
2010: Year of the Tiger
If ‘Year of the Golden Tiger’ doesn’t sound like ‘prosperity’ to you, you’re not trying
The Baird Successor: Crowded Field Jockeys for 299th
Criminal court opening draws several hopefuls
Texas Platters
A Monument Carved With Serpents Taking cues from Liars’ Drum’s Not Dead and Beach House’s recent Teen Dream, the eponymous 2009 debut from A Monument Carved With Serpents includes a DVD with videos for each of the LP’s 11 songs, but that’s where the similarities end. The ambitious local duo – Tim Gerron on drums…
City Hall Hustle: A Little Night Music
City Council takes yet another look at updating the sound ordinance for festival season
Chinese New Year Festivities in Austin
There will be two major festivals this year, and in the traditional spirit of good will to all, they won’t be competing in the same time slot. Instead, the festivities are staggered, allowing the celebration of the New Year to be extended, as it is in China, where festivities can continue for up to 15…
County Commissioner Precinct 4: New Guard vs. Old
Two generations square off for Precinct 4 county commissioner
Texas Platters
The Gary Logan (Cedar Fever) On 2009 debut EP Chub, local trio the Gary elbowed out room at the bar, espousing everydude-isms within its own brand of “slop rock.” Its full-length debut delivers a slightly more sober version of the Gary. Take opener “QSB,” a tangle of thick-stringed downstrokes and sinewy minor keys, under which…
Headlines
� Early voting in the Democratic and Republican primary elections starts Tuesday, Feb. 16, and runs through Feb. 26; read up on the candidates in “Primary Intelligence,” and consider the Chronicle’s endorsements. � The other election: Austin ISD board Vice President Vince Torres became the first elected official to confirm he will run in the…
Dude, Sweet Chocolate
Katherine Clapner’s incredible chocolate confections mix sweet and savory ingredients in unexpected flavor combinations
Reclaiming Education: Hoping for Sanity at the SBOE
Will it take a miracle to oust the religious right bloc?
Off the Record
A closer look at the closing of the Cactus Cafe, Beerland’s Casual Victim Pile, and Watchtower’s Control and Release
Res Publica
Citizens’ calendar, Feb. 11-18
Wine of the Week
Bonny Doon’s Le Pousseur The last decade has seen a huge increase in American consumption of Syrah. Whether one of the big, burly, bad guys of the east Washington dryland; the more elegant style from France’s Rhône; or the teeth-blackening Australian version – called Shiraz by the natives – the grape is finding lots of…
Day Trips
Saint Arnold Brewing Co.’s new cavernous tasting room harkens back to the days of big German beer halls where families gathered to talk and laugh and enjoy fresh beer
Developing Stories: The Promise of Planning
Can the city deliver on East Riverside?
After a Fashion
Who dat? Why, it’s Your Style Avatar!
The 18th Annual Short Story Contest
How we made it from 620 stories to one
Heritage Tree Ordinance Takes Root
Tree lovers stand their ground – and win
From Paris With Love
Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays an American diplomat in Paris who is paired with a wise-cracking, trigger-happy CIA maverick (John Travolta) to stop a terrorist attack.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Turkish business cards, Poe, headscarves, and more
Food-o-File
Enjoy this week of celebrations, congrats to Nau’s Enfield Drug, condolences to the County Line family for its loss, and more foodie bites
Gay Place
Valentine’s last test and proof
Texas Trademark War
A new app makes life easier for UT students – but not for UT’s lawyers, apparently
Valentine’s Day
Aggressively unfunny and unromantic, Valentine’s Day’s chief concern appears to have been the corralling of its cast of a thousand stars.
Letters at 3AM: Open Letter to Sharon Doubiago
The reason I can’t read Sharon Doubiago’s book is that I, like she, was shaped by incest and rape
The Winners
First Place: ‘Deliver Me’ John Roberts is a graduate of the University of Texas who lives in Virginia. He was a finalist in the 2006 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest. His fiction has appeared in Word Riot, Monkeybicyle, and in the short story anthology See You Next Tuesday. He lives on a small farm where…
Aural History
Hannibal Lokumbe and his trumpet stand at the crossroads of jazz, blues, and Jimi Hendrix
Media Watch: The Rag in the Modern World
Olde Austin Ragsters revive in a digital age
The Wolfman
This monster reboot disappoints terribly, making up in blood and entrails what it lacks in heart and soul.
The Hightower Report
Agribusiness, Mutant Germs, and Us; and A GOP Leader’s Economic Plan
The Judges
Jim Lewis is the author of three novels, most recently The King Is Dead (Knopf). He has written short fiction, essays, and journalism for numerous journals and magazines, among them The New York Times Magazine and Sunday Book Review, Granta, Tin House, Wired, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Slate. Erin Pringle lives in San Marcos. Her…
Aural History
Jeff Lofton, son of an Army drill instructor, sure doesn�t play trumpet like one � or does he?
In Search of the Missing Time Capsule
It ain’t easy keeping track of Austin’s history
The Last Station
This nimble movie about Tolstoy’s last days stars Christopher Plummer as the author and Helen Mirren as his high-strung wife, Sofya.
Never Coming to a Theatre Near You
Stephen Romano’s continuing adventures in fake movies
DVD Watch
You the Living charts an unrelated series of tiny dooms, culminating in one big bang of one; not since Dr. Strangelove has a film so perfectly married gallows humor to horror
Record Review
Hannibal Lokumbe Dear Mrs. Parks (Naxos) America’s civil rights struggle has long proved a fertile source for artistic expression, as this stirring and ambitious endeavor will attest. Acclaimed trumpeter/composer Lokumbe was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra to write an homage to heroine Rosa Parks. Recorded live last year in the Motor City, it’s largely…
UT Budget Cuts
Few are claiming responsibility for the decision to shut down UT’s Cactus Cafe and informal classes
Saint John of Las Vegas
Although the film sounds like a sure bet on paper, this comedy starring Steve Buscemi sadly comes up solid snake eyes.
Arts Review
Penfold Theatre once again mounts a chamber musical that’s heartfelt and true
Mining Laughs From Questions, Comments, and Concerns
Austin filmmakers get into the online act with the Web series Call Center
TV Eye
Forget Lost: The British Survivors starts with a disaster scenario, too, but skips all the hinky stuff
‘Chronicle’ Endorsements
Our recommendations for the March 2 primaries
My Name Is Khan
In this Bollywood film, a boy with Asperger’s syndrome grows up to become a husband trying to reunite with his wife after the events of 9/11.
Arts Review
A production that makes Shaw’s century-old ideas feel current – and very human
‘Deliver Me’
First-place winner
Texas Platters
Broken Teeth Viva la Rock, Fantastico! (Perris) Peak recording plateaus, a one-time occurrence for most musical acts, are giddy audience worship. Broken Teeth’s fifth album since 1999, Viva la Rock, Fantastico! follows up the local hard rock quintet’s career high Electric CD in 2007 with even greasier lightning, which given the previous disc’s steel horns…
March 2 Joint Primary Elections
Voting information and locations
Preacher’s Kid
A minister’s daughter wants to experience more of life, so she runs away with an actor appearing in a touring gospel play.
Luv Doc Recommends: Dudley & Bob’s Pleasure Fest
It’s still not too late to break up with your significant other in order to avoid dropping a lot of coin on a Valentine’s present. In these tough economic times, buying lavish gifts that symbolize your love seems a bit irresponsible when you could just write a haiku or maybe shave off your ironic Rip…
