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Cover Story

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

According to Nick R. Martin at Talking Points Memo, during his time hosting The Tonight Show, Jay Leno told 4,607 jokes about Bill Clinton. Dob’s Linn, near Moffat, Scotland, is home to the end-Ordovician extinction, which happened some 440 million years ago. Had the list of survivors been only a tiny bit different, we would…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

The Menuhin Competition 2014

Of course, the focus of the Menuhin Competition are the competition rounds, taking place Saturday-Wednesday, and the finals concerts, taking place Friday and Saturday nights (Feb. 28 & March 1). But the 10 days of the competition also include a number of masterclasses with competition jurors, panel discussions and presentations, and concerts featuring competition jurors,…

by Chronicle Staff

Phases & Stages

Beck Morning Phase (Capitol) More is more. Over an 11-album arc beginning in 1993, that’s Beck in a phrase – campy, bombastic, and capped with an elusiveness that makes you wonder if you missed something in the digitized melée. Morning Phase disrupts that discourse. Discounting 2012’s interpretive Song Reader, his first album in almost six…

by Abby Johnston

Exhibitionism

City Theatre travels unexplored territory in this Civil War drama in which both slaves and masters are Jewish

by Robert Faires

Phases & Stages

Bruce Springsteen High Hopes (Columbia) Last time a monument act took outtakes and re-recordings to No. 1 with such Midas nonchalance might well fall to 1981’s Tattoo You, the Rolling Stones’ final studio masterpiece. Where the latter’s vaults uncovered the single rifle crack among three-dozen reggae takes of “Start Me Up,” Jersey’s boss of bosses…

by Raoul Hernandez

Exhibitionism

The music of Philip Glass in the three works of Ballet Austin’s program provided more thread than theme

by Jonelle Seitz

Phases & Stages

Rosanne Cash The River & the Thread (Blue Note) Rosanne Cash produced some of her best work over the past decade, songs wrought in the specter of grief and memory after the loss of her mother, outlaw father, and step-mother. 2006’s Black Cadillac grappled with those deaths, while 2009 covers LP The List is a…

by Doug Freeman

Quote of the Week

“I can’t help but recall the old saying, ‘Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.'” – Texas Democratic Party chairman Gilberto Hinojosa, concerning Attorney General Greg Abbott campaigning for governor with racist rocker Ted Nugent

by Chronicle Staff

Live Shots

Iris DeMent Cactus Cafe, Feb. 16 Midway through the 90-minute set of her second sold-out night at the Cactus Cafe last weekend, Iris DeMent admitted she expected to have a backing band, but that recent bad weather on the East Coast prevented them from traveling. Not that it made any difference. DeMent last appeared here…

by Jim Caligiuri

Live Shots

Neutral Milk Hotel ACL Live at the Moody Theater, Feb. 17 Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 sophomore LP, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, was made by a band that until last year had been broken up since just before this millennium. No website, no promotion, no offshoots, no hint of new music. Plus a singer…

by Luke Winkie

Headlines

› At a special called meeting at 1:30pm today (Feb. 20), City Council considers economic development packages proposed for tech firms Websense and Dropbox. Next week’s draft agenda includes the proposed settlement agreement with the Dept. of Justice on Austin Fire Department hiring, a hearing on use of lakeshore parkland by the Radisson Hotel, and…

by Chronicle Staff

Food Events

National Margarita Day Both locations of Santa Rita Cafe & Cantina are offering happy hour prices all day long, while Z’Tejas Grill will offer $2.22 Little Larry margaritas at all three locations and a chance to win free food from Z’Tejas for a year! Sat., Feb. 22. › Monkey Nest Anniversary Deals This quirky midtown…

by Chronicle Staff

Texas Rollergirls Double Header

Last year’s Texas Rollergirls champion­ship bout was one for the ages. The Honky Tonk Heartbreakers had the reputation as the nicest team on the track, but for years that hadn’t translated into championship gold – until 2013, when they took down the seemingly unstoppable Hotrod Honeys in a nerve-wracking 204-199 victory. That meant the Honeys…

by Richard Whittaker

Soccer Watch

It’s not soccer, but the Gaelic Games, this Saturday at Onion Creek Soccer Complex, should be fun. Men’s teams will be practicing the ancient Irish sport of hurling (the kind with a ball and wooden bats), while our Celtic Cowboys Ladies Gaelic Football team takes on “a bunch of wenches from Dallas who need to…

by Nick Barbaro

Spray Paint Record Review

Spray Paint Rodeo Songs (S.S. Records) Equal parts avant-punk stridency and sun-basted lysergia, Spray Paint cultivates a strangely alluring equilibrium on its second album. Once the initial system shock of the road-hearty Austin trio’s frayed guitar machinations, corrugated tin shack reverb, and salvage yard percussion subsides, the whole sonic package slithers toward sensibility one short,…

by Greg Beets

The Luv Doc: Snarky Comments

Luv Doc, I have a male friend who is always making jokes about people he doesn’t know when we’re together. He makes snarky comments about people’s hair, or tattoos, or clothes, or the type of car they drive, or the way they behave. I told him it is bullying behavior. He disagrees. He says he…

by The Luv Doc

Oops!

In last week’s First Plates Award for Quality Seafood Market, we got the price wrong on Quality’s weekly Taco Tuesday specials; tacos cost $3, not $2. (Still a bargain!) The Chronicle regrets the error.

by Chronicle Staff

Like Father, Like Son

In this movie from the always perceptive Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, two families are uprooted by the belated knowledge that their babies were switched at birth.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

‘Chronicle’ Endorsements

Here are the Chronicle editorial board’s endorsements for the March 4 party primaries. Travis County Races County Judge: Sarah Eckhardt Eckhardt’s greatest strength is that she has been knee-deep in county work for many years, first as an assistant county attorney, and then for six years as Pct. 2 Commissioner, working on all kinds of…

by Chronicle Staff

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