by Kate X Messer Buff Your Consciousness
Nothing turns our knobs tighter than a big heart. Well, maybe a buff babe with a big heart. While body consciousness is not nearly as appealing as social consciousness, everyone knows a big heart functions better when it’s healthy. The Discover Fitness Program, a for-profit business which is promoting a two-month, multiple-facility fitness pass, has…
On Death & Dying
It’s amazingly super- ficial, always stressing style over substance. Preferring simplistic generalities and first-impression conclusions, it avoids in-depth investigations, and rarely skimps air time or manpower when covering bloody homicides or grizzly auto accidents. Not everything is so macabre; other favorite topics include cute human interest stories and heartwarming pet ditties. Of course, local television…
BY MICHAEL VENTURA You’d think a town
would hesitate to call itself “The Gateway to Death” — okay, it’s “The Gateway to Death Valley,” but I can’t absorb the “valley.” “Death” and “gateway” are so strong, they’re all I see. Maybe it’s just me. The town is Baker, California, situated 60-odd miles south of the hottest place on earth; 85 miles west…
Deep Six
The Best and Worst in Austin and National Media 1. Independence Day. We love reading the West Austin News, but are a bit puzzled by an item in the January 18 edition tagging it “your only locally owned and operated newspaper.” Oh, really? And when did the rest of us get bought out? 2. Noam…
Charitable Cuisine
The spring fundraising event calendar is filling up fast. Granite Cafe’s Eddie Bernal, this year’s chairperson of the Share Our Strength Hunger Relief fundraising cocktail party and dinner, reports that preliminary planning meetings suggest the 1996 fundraising goal of $50,000 is a realistic one. Jeffrey’s executive chef David Garrido has been hard at work pairing…
Big Fish,Small Bowl
On November 16 of last year, Mike Moses found out what it means to be a public figure — with a group of about 30 students clamoring outside his office at the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the new Commissioner of Education decided to do what many a public figure has done: stay out of sight.…
Holy Mole
by Patrick Earvolino Mole poblano, or “mole” (pronounced “molay”) as the name is abbreviated in Texas, is arguably the most exalted gastronomic delight in Mexico. Regarded as the country’s unofficial national dish, the rich pur�e of chiles, nuts, chocolate, and myriad secondary ingredients was invented in a Conquest-era monastery in the state of Puebla (poblano…
Moses Speaks
Texas Commissioner of Education Mike Moses granted the Chronicle about 45 minutes of his time last week for a Q & A session on his short tenure as commissioner and the recent controversies his appointment has brought about. Here are the highlights of our interview with him. The Austin Chronicle: You are compared with your…
Ascension of an Icon
Blazing a trail down Guadalupe, a pack of street kids who appear to be under the influence of Perry Farrell panhandle to support their alternative lifestyles. While passing on foot, the hope that these have-nots will find a positive outlet to direct their feelings of alienation and subsequent rebellion crosses my mind. Reaching my destination…
Off the Desk:
The fallout continues from last month’s shake-up in the city’s bureaucracy, with the resignation Tuesday of Austan Librach from his position as director of the Planning, Environmental and Conservation Services Department. Librach’s abrupt exit comes on the heels of a decision by City Manager Jesus Garza to put former Parks and Recreation Director Mike Heitz…
Walser Keeps the Top Hand
Don Walser’s heard his share of comments lately about how he should dump his weekly shows at Jovita’s and Babe’s and concentrate on fewer, larger (and more profitable) shows. Walser will have none of that, however, claiming that “I don’t care about being overexposed — if I was in it for the money, I’d be…
The Celling of Sundance
“And please turn all your cellular phones to `off’ and put your beepers on `vibrate.'” Thus began every screening at this year’s Sundance Film Festival — with some spoken variation of this silly reminder just prior to the dimming of the house lights. This is what it has come to in this festival’s 11th year…
Sam Moore
Top of the Marc, Friday 2 Had Dave Prater not been killed in a car accident in 1988, Sam & Dave would’ve probably kept up their vocal sparring until reaching the same emeritus status that the Everly Brothers have achieved. Sadly that won’t happen, but the soul duo’s terrific Stax stomp lives on in that…
Day Trips
County jails on the Texas frontier were often ornate on the outside but grim on the inside. A perfect example of this is the old Austin County Jail in Bellville (pictured above). Completed in 1896, it housed prisoners until 1982. Built of red brick accented with chiseled white limestone trim, it looks like a castle,…
Another Rotten Day
‘Ere we go!” smirks the thick cockney accent. “Johnny’s version of ‘istory: It never sounded so good!” After a few seconds of what the radio biz terms a “musical bed” (background music), the sneery working class British voice welcomes you to “another Rotten Day.” Yup, Johnny Rotten — the man who, as vox of the…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
There are 103 question marks on a Monopoly board. According to Paul S. Taylor in his book The Great Dinosaur Mystery, man’s sin caused dinosaurs to eat meat and become violent creatures. Fred Flintstone’s grandfather reached the rank of lieutenant. At the turn of the century, there were more native Italians in New York City…
Camp Wannabeheard
I spent a sunny week- end trailing my big sister, Cindy, at the National Issues Convention. She was one of 459 delegates from across the United States who gathered at the University of Texas January 18-21 for this “experiment in democracy.” When reporters asked her what she thought of the event, she answered, “It’s like…
Casa de Luz
1701 Toomey Road, 476-5446. Lunch: Monday-Friday, 11:45am-2pm ($7.50). Dinner: Monday-Friday, 6-8pm ($7.50; $11 Wednesdays when fish is served). Brunch buffet: 11:45am-2pm, Saturday and Sunday. Casa de Luz is about more than merely food. The restaurant, tucked unobtrusively at the end of a flower-lined path, doubles as the city’s macrobiotic community center and offers cooking classes,…
Theatre Town Meeting
Would you like to have a bunch of RATs invade Austin this August? That’s RATs as in Regional Alternative Theatres, or Raggedy Ass Theatres, or Raving Anarchic Thespians, or whatever you call the national network of artists and independent theatre companies that’s been building over the past two years and gathering in conferences in Iowa…
My Deep Political Insights
* First, Phil Gramm was coming. Then he wasn’t. Then he would come via satellite. Then he was late. When his grinning image finally popped up on the big screen, I still wasn’t sure he had come; I thought he was a Muppet stand-in… or Yoda. Cindy, with her zoo background, initially thought he was…
Hank’s Roadhouse Cafe
1000 S. Lamar, 707-2665 11am-2am Monday-Friday, 8am-2am Saturday and Sunday A couple of years ago, the Trudy’s organization closed their Southern Star outlet at this location. Some of the staff members chose to stay and open a restaurant of their own, and Hank’s Roadhouse Cafe was born. When people talk about South Austin and what…
Capitol City Comedy Club’s Grab for Bigger Laughs Restarting the Stop
Back when I began writing about Austin’s comedy scene four years ago, my kid was so little and my bank account so small that I could rarely afford to venture out to watch the folks I wrote about. That wasn’t a huge handicap, though, as the scene wasn’t terribly expansive. Basically, the town had two…
What I Learned About Being a Political Correspondent
* I’d never seen a Media Filing Room, which I assume is a place where hard-nosed correspondents plug in a laptop or commandeer the fax machine and dash off their late-breaking stories in a flurry of competitive chaos. At the NIC, this enormous room would have been a quiet spot for a nice snooze. *…
7 & 7 Is
Critic Richard Meltzer made an entire career out of reviewing record covers, which can often tell you more about the records at hand than the music! For instance, if you were to look at the safety-pinned, bullet-split Iron Cross on the front of The Chumps’ Russian Roulette EP (No Lie Records), or even the photo…
Puerto Rican Literature The Land of the Brave Lord
Boricuas: A Puerto Rican Anthology of Literature edited by Roberto Santiago One World/Ballantine, $15 paper Here is a collective ethnic American voice that has been systematically silenced and shoved aside by the mainstream of American letters, even as those same teachers, professors, and critics scramble to hear the wakening wail of Asian, African-American, and female…
If It Were Up to Me…
With all due respect to Dr. James Fishkin — who looks like a very nice man and for whom I sort of feel sorry because he threw this big party and the presidential candidates and the press didn’t come and people keep criticizing his idea — if my sister Cindy and I ran a National…
Blur
Liberty Lunch Sunday, February 4 I pity the fool who craves rockstardom in America. Who wants to be championed by a populace that has so little taste or sense of humor? And to be heralded by the cool crowd — even worse: The alternative brats are a moody, cannibalistic lot, eating their own, then puking…
Workplace Issues for HIV+ Employees
Many people with HIV and AIDS continue to be productively employed in the workplace for years, even after their health has become less than perfect. They pose no risk of infection to co-workers, but there are physiological, psychological, legal, and practical concerns with which they must deal. Several years after infection, the average HIV-positive person…
Agreeing to Disagree
Still smarting from last year’s whipping by the Texas Legislature, the City of Austin may be setting itself up for another beating. Only this time it could be worse. On February 8, city lawyers go to court to challenge the constitutional wisdom of state lawmakers’ intervention in a land dispute between Austin and one of…
Scanline
Wine Guide CD-ROM for Mac Microsoft Home This private class with wine expert Oz Clarke is more like a lecture since you can’t ask him questions. You can, however, appreciate his quaint British accent as he swirls, sniffs, and sips his way through 6,000 individual wines without so much as a slur. The wine guide…
The Juniper Shuffle
Ever since my father jokingly told me he could hear a tree scream when he cut off a branch, pruning has been a traumatic experience for me. Cutting down an entire tree, even a juniper, is devastating. That’s why the junipers were so thick at the last place we lived, you couldn’t see our hot…
The Gift of Giving
Christmas cards were all over the walls and on councilmembers’ desks, stamped with the signature of consulting firms or engineering companies. There were boxes of fresh gourmet cookies, hand-delivered to each office courtesy of the law firm of Bickerstaff, Heath, & Smiley. Strasburger & Price, Freeport-McMoRan’s representative in zoning cases, gave each councilmember a brass-wire…
Postcards From America
Postcards From America 1884, NR, 93 min. Directed by Steve Mclean, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring James Lyons, Michael Tighe, Olmo Tighe, Michael Imperioli, Michael Ringer, Maggie Low. Based on the autobiographical writings of the late, gay author and artist David Wojnarowicz, Postcards from America is a memory play, a remembrance of how…
or three weeks,
my friend Dick has been talking about chili dogs. “You gotta come to my Super Bowl Party,” says Dick. “We have great people, a lucky ball, and then everyone eats these great chili dogs.” Although my daily diet would make even a pig reach for the Rolaids, I consider a chili dog extreme. Still, my…
Burnin’ Rubber!
Last Wednesday, despite the protests of environmentalists, a Buda cement plant began burning shredded tires to produce energy. Currently using about a ton of tires per hour, the Texas Lehigh plant, located 20 miles south of Austin, may eventually use three times that amount. Opponents of the tire burning complain that the plant got a…
Dead Man Walking
Sarandon won an Oscar for her performance as Sister Helen Prejean in this nuanced story about capital punishment.
Page Two: Education, one of the key
elements for any reasonable future, is an area deserving far greater concern than such voodoo crap as the balanced budget and flat tax. A committment to genuine education excellence and not some politically sensitized agenda is crucial to improving our world. Yet everywhere we turn, from the religious right to the politically correct left and…
While Kilns Burn, a Recycler Smolders
In 1992, Mike Radovanov thought he was smart to move his company to Austin. Texas had lots of used tires, he reasoned. And with two decades’ worth of experience in manufacturing, Radovanov had the expertise and equipment to take advantage of them. He knew the TNRCC pays shredders 80 cents for each tire they shred,…
Restoration
Restoration 1996, R, 118 min. Directed by Michael Hoffman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Robert Downey, Sam O’Neill, Meg Ryan, Ian Mckellan, David Thewlis, Polly Walker, Hugh Grant. The redemption of the wayward man is a favorite theme in the popular arts; in countless books, plays, and films, the arc of the hero’s…
