Dance:
BILL T. JONES/ARNIE ZANE DANCE COMPANY presents Still/Here, a program examining how terminally ill people face their own mortality and celebrate survival. Fri & Sat, Feb 16 & 17, 8pm, $7-$40. McFarlin Auditorium, McFarlin & Hillcrest, Dallas. 214/528-5576. Tue, Feb 20, 8pm. $8-$15. Lila Cockrell Theatre, 200 E. Market, San Antonio. 800/225-6516. Fri & Sat,…
So Buy Some Wristbands
The list of SXSW bands and their showcases finally sees the light of day this week, and you can see it on page 15 of this issue. As usual, some of the smoke has cleared since that initial list, but you’ll still find Iggy Pop and Joan Osborne on the outside stages, and Son Volt,…
Mercedes Wanguemert-Pe�a’s Grand Obsession Stuck Inside Cuba
Cuba’ is printed a zillion times or more on newsprint paper used to wrap palm trees, luggage, a bed, a refrigerator, a family altar, several life-sized naked female bodies — one giving birth — and all the partitions in the primary gallery at Women & Their Work (W&TW). CubaCubaCubaCubaCuba. The paper lays flat and smooth…
Country Doctor
I’m not the kind of scholar who likes spending endless hours in the dusty back reaches of a library somewhere,” says Rod Moag. No, he’s the kind of scholar who likes spending endless hours in the smoky back reaches of pool halls, bars, and rib joints, pickin’ his mandolin and singin’ old country music. You…
Another Eye on Cuba
Paul Margolis, whose photographs of Jews in Cuba are featured this month at Pro-Jex Gallery, has, in fact, visited Cuba. He shares Mercedes Wanguemert-Pe�a’s fascination with the place, which, he says, has changed very little since she left as a child. The root of Margolis’ obsession has to do with recording little-known aspects of Jewish…
JULIE & SHELLEY BENEFIT
Liberty Lunch, Saturday 17 Hurtbox drummer and Chronicle editor Julie Weaver sits across from my desk here at the paper and tells me to fuck off all the time. Shelley Lucksinger, Hurtbox guitarist and Weaver’s fianc�, has been my teammate/opponent on our volleyball court for many moons. They were both seriously injured in a car…
The Austin Writers’ League Writer’s Resource
What do James Michener, a Bosnian refugee, Texas First Lady Laura Bush, a Parisian screenwriter, and a Mexico City study group have in common? They all belong to the Austin Writers’ League, the local literary guild that’s come a long way from its inception in 1981. The League’s current membership — 1,600 strong, with writers…
This Ain’t No KOA
Michael Urubek says the city council is dreaming if it thinks the new encampment ordinance will succeed in solving the homeless problem. His view may not sound radical until you know who he is: Urubek is the Austin police lieutenant in charge of fielding questions about the city-wide camping ban. As spokesman for the municipal…
Literary Lone Stars Ten Best Texas Books
The longer I live and the more I read of the strange and fabulous saga of this state, the more I am obsessed by it. I have the tired eyes and bulging bookcases to prove it. These are the 10 books of and about Texas I treasure most. * A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years…
Temporary Coup
Things started off wild and ended the same way in the most raucous display of democracy since last year’s Freeport vote. Just minutes after the opening invocation, 40 advocates of the disabled hijacked the council chambers with protests of both the verbal and paperwad sort. The council beat a hasty retreat into a two-hour executive…
You’re Gonna Need An Ocean of Calamine Lotion
Dear Suzy, I just moved to my parent’s 40-acre paradise east of Austin. My husband and I are lucky enough to have wonderful parents/in-laws and soon 4 acres of those 40 will be ours. Our piece covers half of a long-neglected pecan orchard. The orchard is filled with nasty stuff like mesquite, various small woody…
Offering
I believe in five elements I believe the serpents were created from a darkness that wanted something ugly to hide; the quadrapeds from fire that would devour; swimming creatures rose from water that wished to lift something up; flying creatures blew out of a wind wanting to carry. And the two-footed animals were generated from…
The Vicious Cycle
“Bicycles don’t belong on the road.” How many Austinites would agree with that statement? More than you would suspect, says Tim Cookingham, owner of a bicycle tour business and a longtime cycling commuter. Though he credits the majority of Austin motorists with sympathetic treatment of cyclists, he says the idea persists that bicycles are toys…
Day Trips
At Alamo Classic Car Museum and Showcase, “We got it all, Hupmobiles, REOs, and Studebakers,” says Frank Kalson, manager of the collection and part-time mechanic. In the warehouse on I-35 south of New Braunfels are over 150 vehicles, everything from motorized bicycles to tanks. Most of them are owned by Carl Van Roekel, who started…
Lars Eighner Profiled
Travels with Lars by Jeremy Reed Austin writer Lars Eighner is having a raise-money-for-the-rent party, and I am invited. Eighner lives in Hyde Park along with his dog, Lizbeth, whom he tells me will be 11 in March. It was in the early Nineties, with Lizbeth as a traveling companion, that Eighner made national headlines…
Home, Sweet Home
The dirt is flying at The Meadows at Trinity Crossing. More than a hundred workers are busily digging trenches, hammering, sawing, painting, and fixing up dozens of homes that used to be located at Bergstrom Air Force Base. Austin desperately needs the product the work will provide: affordable housing. The Meadows could provide more than…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The late Georgia Clark Gray was the first woman to be U.S. treasurer. Her name appeared on $30 billion of currency. Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced her with Ivy Baker Priest — the second woman to be treasurer. According to his daughter, Beatrice, Orson Welles was once a bullfighter. Sharks will eat another shark that is…
Book Review
Pawn to Queen Four by Lars Eighner St. Martin’s Press, $21.95 hard Long after Grapes of Wrath, long after establishing himself as one of America’s greatest storytellers, John Steinbeck took a vacation. At the time, somewhere around 1960, Steinbeck was happily married and highly praised as an author. But that summer, Steinbeck decided to leave…
Snowjob
According to the Austin Police Department, the brief bout of winter weather that gripped the city in the first few days of February produced more than 600 automobile collisions. Almost 400 of these fender-benders occurred between around 4am and noon on Thursday, February 1, when a thin coating of ice on area roadways threw Austin…
Food-O-File
Cookbooks published as fundraisers by non-profit community organizations have been a popular American tradition since the Civil War, providing dollars for charities, civic projects and cultural institutions. I value my collection of community cookbooks especially, because they provide me with insight into the local culinary history and traditions of the cities and regions they represent.…
Love Nest
Who needs hard drugs when you’ve got Austin in July, a central nervous system depressant as powerful as any ever sucked into a hypodermic needle? The normally laid-back population of the Texas capital slips in summer into a citywide swoon. Laziness, procrastination, and most varieties of decadent behavior are broadly indulged; swimming and napping in…
Deep Six
1. No sweat. A February 7 Channel 42 “in-depth report” examined the effect of stress on four different Central Texas residents: a housewife, a heart surgeon, a basketball coach, and (conveniently enough) K-EYE anchor Neal Spelce, whose pulse never once wavered during a potentially tense on-air scenario. Great, but is this news, or one more…
Terry Allen
Human Remains (Sugar Hill) Welcome back, Terry — it’s been too long. Twelve years, in fact, since Bloodlines. But true artists don’t feel compelled to crank out product for product’s sake, they put it out when it’s right. And Human Remains is definitely right. “Gone to Texas” is, after an 18-year wait, the followup to…
Parenting with HIV/AIDS
When dealing with HIV or AIDS it’s often difficult to remember all that is needed to take care of your children’s needs, in addition to taking care of yourself. Parenting with HIV/AIDS is a support and educational group for mothers and fathers who are dealing with HIV/AIDS and are taking care of their young children…
Off The Desk:
Early voting for the March 12 primary begins next Wednesday, February 21, and lasts through Friday, March 8. The following is a list of some of the state- and county-wide races that are of local interest. Incumbents are identified by an asterisk (*), and only contested races are listed. (For info regarding early voting polling…
Rod Moag
The Pickin’ Singin’ Professor (Diploma Disc) The amazing thing about Rod Moag isn’t the variety and scope of the songs on The Pickin’ Singin’ Professor; it’s how well he does them –even more impressive considering that there’s nary a hint of bluegrass on the record. Bluegrass is Moag’s stock and trade, and there’s none of…
he glowing, blue
LED readout on my alarm clock reads 5:18am. I’m lying here wide awake. This is not unusual. Some things I’m good at. Sleep isn’t one. I can attribute many causes to my mini-insomnia; too much to drink, a growling dog, the wind or the craving for a cookie. Never, however, have I bolted awake, eyes…
The Staccato Purr of CineFestival
Emerging Latino and Chicano filmmakers shared divergent voices and agendas at the 19th annual CineFestival in San Antonio two weeks ago. As the longest-running Latino film festival in the country, the five-day event attracts film enthusiasts worldwide from Los Angeles to Peru, and Mexico to Germany. A total of approximately 80 films, five of them…
Sons of Hercules
When making 45s, you take a glob of petroleum poison, and squash it flat with the silver master-recording. Voila! Instant record, which means they crank these babies out faster than hand-bills. This is precisely what we expect from San Antonio’s Sons of Hercules, who were born to crank out buttloads of exciting, two-minute rave-ups, and…
Page Two: In the very beginning, there
is the music and the clubs. In this town, those two are one and the same as though they were a single word — musicandclubs. They feed off each other, creating a living entity. The music sustains the clubs, the clubs the music, and once a year we gather for the Austin Music Awards show…
Rhythm Thief Rap Sheet
Matthew Harrison makes movies. He makes movies because he enjoys working with images, and actors, and stories, and emotions. And he’s good at it, and what makes him good at it may be that what matters most to him is the process, the work. When the work goes well, he has described it as feeling…
AISD Notebook
The AISD Board of Trustees on Monday quickly moved through its agenda, approving an Army JROTC program at Lanier High School (Air Force JROTC programs currently exist at Bowie and Reagan high schools), a contract for drug abuse and violence prevention for middle schoolers with Austin/Travis County Advocates Programs, and three applications to the Texas…
The Cast of “Friends”
Okay, that headline is a manipulative ploy to lure you TV junkies off the sofa and to an important event (which has absolutely nothing to do with the silly sitcom). Well, come to think of it, one of the show’s plotline’s did involve a lesbian marriage, so maybe there is a connection. “Allies, Friends, &…
Scanlines
Music Central ’96 CD-ROM for Mac Microsoft Clearly a work in progress by the CD’s own admission (it directs you to a Web site where you can download updates), this CD-ROM is a perfect example of the encyclopedic possibilities this technology possesses. On one CD, there are over 8,000 artist bios, 60,000 album discographies, and…
My dictionary defines
“throb” as “to pulsate or pound, esp. with abnormal force or rapidity.” Exactly what my heart was doing. In Vegas, on the 19th floor of the Rio… A room in which the entire wall is your window… Lighting a cigarette, taking a puff, putting it out (my heart throbbed harder with even one drag)… Not…
Sally Jacques’ Book of The 64 Beds Project Under the Covers
It’s 7:30am. Twenty men are outside my window, laughing, coughing, speaking Spanish. I am hung over. I am thirsty. Hungry. I did not eat enough yesterday. I am not dreaming the intermittent pounding on the roof of my parents’ house. I equate it with the intensity of being in labor, where the contractions are now…
Just Desserts
Lovers who dined out for Valentine’s Day earlier this week were no doubt impressed with the tantalizing and delightful desserts available. Restaurant business growth in the late Eighties and early Nineties attracted and nurtured an extremely talented and diverse group of pastry cooks and dessert makers in this area. This is not to say that…
Swim Judgment
Two years after his sculpture “The Heart” was pulled from an exhibition in the Municipal Building, sculptor David Swim has won his lawsuit against the City of Austin. On January 26, a judgment was rendered affirming that the city, in the person of Art in Public Places Program Coordinator Martha Peters, violated Swim’s First Amendment…
Conflicts and Contradictions
by Lee Nichols “Yeah, I don’t wear no Stetson/But I’m willin’ to bet son/That I’m as big a Texan as you are/Cause there’s a girl in her barefeet/’Sleep on the back seat/An’ that trunk’s full of Pearl… an’ Lone Star” — Terry Allen, “Amarillo Highway” Those words were among the first I ever heard Terry…
