The Erudite Thaw
I’m not sure I like gardening, but I love gardening books, especially in weather like this. (A little weathered irony: It usually takes a cattle prod to get me off my home turf, but now that I can’t leave — the hill out of our subdivision is a bob sled run — it seems I…
The Mayor’s Gift of Gag
Despite the icy road- ways, the city council refused to cancel last Thursday’s meeting. The turnout was minimal, but with the humbling weather and small gathering, a general sense of togetherness prevailed, spreading beyond the lobbyists and city officials to touch even the few homeless persons in from the cold (fearful of the mayor’s new…
Workplace Issues Need HIV+ Employees’ Attention
Through the course of an HIV-positive person’s journey with the virus, a variety of practical concerns must be addressed, whether serious disease occurs or not. Many of those aspects relate to the workplace — discrimination, confidentiality, disclosure, insurance, disability. The relative rights and responsibilities of the employee and the employer are outlined in various statutes…
Eco-Education 101
Mike Heitz was appointed as administrator of the city’s environmental and water-quality programs because he has experience. It’s just that it’s not environmental experience. “Do I have expertise in those areas?” asks the former city Parks & Recreation Department director. “Point-blank, no.” Needless to say, environmentalists, including two councilmembers, are incensed with the man who…
Concerning the
forward pass, Woody Hayes once observed, “Only three things can happen. Two are bad.” The eccentric Ohio State coach wasn’t a pioneer of the West Coast offense. It was a perilous weekend here in the River City. According to the local media, only two things could happen if you left the toasty hearth, for anything,…
Naked City
AISD trustees have set the date for a $369.4 million bond election: Saturday, April 13. Early voting will be March 25-April 9. The package is divided into three sections for your consideration: $120.5 million in renovations throughout the district, $177 million to build new schools and classroom additions, and $71.9 million for safety and security…
Our area of the world here
at the Chronicle is aswirl with tabulation. Music Poll ballots are being added up, Musicians Register entries being prepared, and entries to the various South by Southwest events being juggled. The annual Musicians Register will be published in the February 23 issue as a separate section, of which extras will be printed and inserted in…
Main Street, U.S.A.
With its high lime- stone walls and cozy low-porticoed storefronts, Main Street in Round Rock — particularly the length between Mays and Sheppard Avenues — verily shouts Small Town, Texas. But murmuring beneath are whispers intimating that this might not be what it seems. You can tell from the artful arrangements of yaupon on the…
Page Two: Our area of the world here
at the Chronicle is aswirl with tabulation. Music Poll ballots are being added up, Musicians Register entries being prepared, and entries to the various South by Southwest events being juggled. The annual Musicians Register will be published in the February 23 issue as a separate section, of which extras will be printed and inserted in…
Leaner, Cleaner PR?
Slapped with an un- flattering evaluation of the manner in which it handles and disseminates “public information,” the city has been advised to trim down and streamline their operations. A recent analysis of the Public Information Office (PIO) from Laurey Peat + Associates, a Dallas-based public relations firm hired last August to evaluate the current…
Show Us Your… uhh, Hearts
Holidays, schmolidays. Sure New Year’s was okay, but the Epiphany came and went and Groundhog Day was a total bust. That miserable Punxsutawney rodent saw his shadow and now we’re supposed to endure six more weeks of dreary cold. Fortunately, the double whammy of Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras guarantees an early thaw faster than…
Bonus Tracks
CARLA OLSON Wave of the Hand: The Best of Carla Olson (Watermelon) Carla Olson isn’t the best songwriter, yet when she does songs by Mick Taylor, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Eric Johnson, and has guests Johnson, Ry Cooder, Percy Sledge, and Kathy Valentine (her old mate in the Textones) on several cuts, it’s hard…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows…
When the Devil takes your soul he takes it from the back of your head. The 1939 Nash was the first automobile in history to have air conditioning. Offered as an optional installation, it was called the “Weather-Eye.” The German city Kapzenellbogn means “cat’s elbow.” When doing a computer search of United States Code Annotated,…
Ben Folds Five
Electric Lounge, Sunday, February 11 It’s soooooo crucial to have a favorite new band. In a world that’s rife with undependable boys and fickle friends, a favorite new band is a rapturous new lover that simply can’t let you down. The record always plays the same way, and the more time you spend with it,…
Our Place, Chez Nous
With a name like Chez Nous, “our place,” Austin’s veteran French restaurant could be mistaken for an exclusive location catering solely to the city’s French community and resident Francophiles. Instead, this tiny downtown haunt has for nearly 15 years welcomed Austinites (both those in the know and those completely at a loss when it comes…
Operation: Weather
Disaster CD-ROM for Mac* and Windows Discovery Channel Local actor Bill Wise is the real saving grace in this educational adventure, wherein “your” mission is to work with a group of kids and a cheerful robot (bad actors all) to learn enough about weather (or use your extant knowledge) to save the world from the…
Our Place, Chez Nous
With a name like Chez Nous, “our place,” Austin’s veteran French restaurant could be mistaken for an exclusive location catering solely to the city’s French community and resident Francophiles. Instead, this tiny downtown haunt has for nearly 15 years welcomed Austinites (both those in the know and those completely at a loss when it comes…
Trailer Trash
First they took our car- toons, and now they’ve taken away our previews!” complained a friend after a sneak preview screening of a now-forgotten film many years ago. Well, no, they hadn’t taken away those precious previews. My friend just didn’t realize that the usual gob of previews, theatre “policy” trailers (shut up, and use…
Food Pantry Phased Out?
Though there is never a lack of community-service opportunities in Austin these days, I’ve come across a new one. Oscar Lopez, Coordinator of an operation called Project PHASE (a program of education, health care, and street outreach servicing the needs of Austin’s homeless teens), informed me that they recently lost the portion of the financial…
Wooden Hearts, Slight Return Texas My Wild Heart
Remember the Survival Kit? My husband Rollo made it for me as a present one Christmas; the contents of the candy-pink pencil case spoke endearingly about his screwball sense of gift-giving. But the nail clippers, Superglue, razor blade, miniature Swiss Army knife, and other eclectic little objects aside, a tinny-sounding, 13-note keyboard on the lid…
Eat, My Sweet
“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…” — Dean Martin What better way to express undying love than to present the object of your affection with a taste-tempting, soul-satisfying, orgasmic bite to eat? Austin chefs, bakers, confectioners, and pastry chefs are ready to entice you with their most exquisite…
Day Trips
The Houston Brewery was voted “best brewpub” in Houston, but you must take your own tour of local establishments to taste for yourself. The West Houston brewpub is in a red brick building at 6224 Richmond Ave. that resembles a small bank. Brewmaster Tim Case offers a wonderful selection of hand-crafted brews, and the kitchen…
Eat, My Sweet
“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore…” — Dean Martin What better way to express undying love than to present the object of your affection with a taste-tempting, soul-satisfying, orgasmic bite to eat? Austin chefs, bakers, confectioners, and pastry chefs are ready to entice you with their most exquisite…
Hootie and the Reivers?
You didn’t know that Hootie & the Blowfish recorded a Reivers song? Well, neither did the song’s author, John Croslin, until Spoon’s Britt Daniel happened to run Croslin’s name through an Internet search and found himself directed to the Hootie page. Daniel then called Croslin and Croslin called Bug International, his publisher, only to find…
RATs A-Comin’
Austin will indeed host some gathering of independent theatre companies and artists in August. Seventeen people attended a meeting at Hyde Park Theatre on February 3 to discuss the idea and their conclusion was, “Let’s do it!” Playwright Erik Ehn, a seminal force in developing a network of regional alternative theatres — aka RAT –…
Dick Dale
Steamboat, Saturday 10 A fortnight ago it was The Mermen (whom Dick Dale has written kind words about) who grabbed their boards and ran down to our shoreline. Now — now, boys and girls — it’s the Big Kahuna, the progenitor of surf guitar who’s waded into the water, playing the ‘boat, where no guitar…
How Austin’s Theatrical Couples Keep Romance Alive Love’s Labors Won
They might as well put a sign over the stage door that reads “Love Shack.” Because the theatre is one of those places — like summer camp — that gives rise to romance. Get within the walls of a playhouse and, as at camp, you’re outside the boundaries of daily life, of the usual rules,…
Nice Guys Not Finishing Last
It’s an old, yet savvy, media trick: air your dirty laundry before somebody else does. A couple of Austin musicians have video of two 13-year-old boys folks would no doubt like to see. In it, a pair of Beaumont youths don cock-rock attire and lip-sync to classic Ratt. The pair spin, strum, and sing like…
Before Ann, There Was Ma Miriamana
Miriam: The Southern Belle Who Became the First Woman Governor of Texas by May Nelson Paulissen and Carl McQuery Eakin Press, $27.95 hard Goosebumps seized the flesh of the governor of Texas as she hid out in her daughter and son-in-law’s mansion on Rio Grande Street. But this wasn’t Ann ducking the pursuit of Claytie…
Twisted Williemania
Mother never said there’d be days like these. She never said that 12 years of professional rock journalism wouldn’t be enough preparation for this spectacle: sitting in the driver’s seat of the sort of deluxe tour bus strictly reserved for Nashville’s royalty, waiting to do an interview, watching a near-Beatlemania crush of humanity outside on…
