Benefits
THU 22 Chiapas Refugees Benefit featuring The Pancakes, the Blimp, Johnny Degollado, DJ Tres, Missing Ingredient, Tammy Gomez, The Mush Boilers, at Las Manitas, 211 Congress, 8pm-midnight. $5. 416-8885. FRI 30 El Ni�a Club Skirt party for women to benefit Cornerstone Gay & Lesbian Community Center, at Zilker Clubhouse, 200 Zilker Clubhouse Rd., 7pm. $10.…
Waller, Waller Everywhere
illustration by Doug Potter I’ve been saying Waller Creek would have its day any day now, every day since 1977,” jokes real estate developer Perry Lorenz. His remark was in response to Councilmember Beverly Griffith’s announcement last Thursday of a new push to revitalize the creek, which snakes through the city just west of I-35.…
Coach’s Corner
My girlfriend stands on the edge of the court at the United Center in Chicago, a green press pass dangling from her jeans. As the house lights go down, just before the player introductions, I try, unsuccessfully, to get her off the court. She ignores me. She’s not moving. We’re about to have these credentials…
Don’t Let Her Off, Rich
illustration by Doug Potter In his column on Jan. 4, local daily newspaper editor Rich Oppel wrote a brief defense of former governor Ann Richards, who now works as a lobbyist. Richards had been assailed a few days earlier in a column written by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. As governor, Richards toiled “for…
Day Trips
by Gerald E. McLeod photograph by Gerald E. McLeod The H.E.B. Science Treehouse at the Witte Museum in San Antonio makes learning fun. For the under-12-years-old crowd, the building is a giant playhouse. For the 12-and-over visitors, the playhouse is a discovery zone of experiments and illustrations of the amazing world of science. Most of…
Going Whole Hog
illustration by Doug Potter Even after getting butchered at the Williamson County Courthouse last week, the City of Austin hasn’t given up its fight to skewer the Hog Farm. And it looks like both the State of Texas and Bill Pohl might finally join them at the table. The 446-acre tract known to everyone as…
Page Two
Lecture time here: We are currently running the Austin Music Poll Ballots in this issue and the next. This is your chance to let the world know what you think of the Austin music scene. The results are published in the special Chronicle Music Awards issue, which is published during South by Southwest week (so…
The Last Picture Show
photograph by Jana Birchum The obituaries offered no mention of it as a notable death. But as the semester wrapped up, a University of Texas institution passed away. The fatal prognosis was delivered last September when UT administrators announced that euthanasia was the cure for what ailed the Texas Union Film Program. It had been…
Public Notice
Easy, Tiger! Power! Courage! Will! We Tigers are rebels with a cause. We are aggressive, courageous, and candid. We are big softies at heart. We are romantic, passionate, playful. We love life and want to live it to the fullest. Look out, 1998 is the Year of the Tiger! January 28 is the official day…
The Applause Sign
Watching a rerun of Designing Women recently, I heard myself laughing in the audience. I have always felt sure that the sound engineers practice voodoo on the tapes of audiences at live tapings of TV programs but no, I could definitely hear myself over everyone else. It’s the Halloween episode where the girls and Anthony…
Homage To An Old Marquee
illustration by Jason Stout We take for granted now that we can rent or buy tapes and discs of virtually any movie, or borrow them from a library; that we may click our remotes through a hundred channels, at any hour; that we have legions of books about film, and can cruise the Internet for…
On the Edge of the Edge
photograph courtesy of Photofest As the Austin Film Society begins a new series of screenings devoted to the films of John Cassavetes, we asked “Letters at 3AM” columnist Michael Ventura, who is currently working on a book about Cassavetes, to offer his insights into this great filmmaker. Ventura is also the writer and director of…
Food-O-File
Joe Sullivan, owner of House Park BBQ (900 W. 12th, 472-9621), called last week to say that he’s back on his feet and pain-free for the first time in years after successful hip replacement surgery, and House Park BBQ is smokin’ once again… The day after Christmas was the last retail business day for J.P…
Film Series Schedule
The Austin Film Society’s John Cassavetes Film Series will screen on Tuesdays at 7pm in the Texas Union Theatre. Admission is free. Shadows photograph courtesy of Photofest SHADOWS (Jan. 27) with Lelia Goldoni, Ben Carruthers (1959, 87min.) Cassavetes’ first time out as director proves to be a hand grenade of a film. Cassavetes takes on…
Satay Surprise
Satay photograph by John Anderson Satay, The Asian Cookery 3202 W. Anderson, 467-6731 Mon-Fri, 11am-2:30pm, 5-10pm; Sat, 5-11pm; Sun, noon-3pm, 5-10pm For some ridiculous reason, I let the offhand comment of a fastidiously picky friend – “The food is fine but the interior is totally underwhelming,” or some such nonsense – override curiosity and keep…
Scanlines
D: Robert Zemeckis (1997) with Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Skerrit, Angela Bassett, John Hurt, James Woods Matthew McConaughey assures Jodie Foster all will be well in Contact, if they’ll just quit playing the Spice Girls in outer space. Contact may be the most thought-provoking video of the year, and not necessarily for the reasons…
Bonus Tracks
KEVIN FOWLER One for the Road With an album that owes more to Clint Black than Back in Black, ex-Dangerous Toy guitarist and Thunderfoot frontman Kevin Fowler has gone country – not alt-county, but full-on KVET country. And only partially because this self-released, self-written, and self-orchestrated CD probably cost a hundredth of the average Nashville…
Short Cuts
Whoosh… the holidays must be over. One sure sign is that activity in the film community is suddenly picking up again after the temporary quiet spell that allowed everyone to travel about visiting friends and family, spend time in movie theatres catching up on the overwhelming barrage of end-of-the-year releases, and/or stay home curled up…
Articulations
That cultural bunker at 1705 Guadalupe known as the ArtPlex continues to be a draw for local arts organizations looking for a room of their own. A theatre company and a visual arts gallery are the latest to join the roster of arts organizations stationed in the ArtPlex. The gallery is the onamatopoetic Eeka Beeka,…
Naked City
Don’t cry for Jesus Garza. Although the city manager failed to inspire a majority of council to back a salary increase beyond 3.5% at last week’s annual review, the extra $4,750 brings his annual pay to a cool $140,553. Mayor Kirk Watson said from the dais that he would have been comfortable with a 5%…
Ben-hur (1926)
D: Fred Niblo; with Ramon Navarro, Francis X. Bushman. What Titanic is to the modern ultra-budget movie spectacle, Ben-Hur was to the silent film era. Made for a then-record $4 million, this 1926 release is an extravagant action epic. Its chariot races and sea-battle footage are immortal classics, and Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman…
A Commitment to Playwrights
Compiled by Adrienne Martini David Deming, David Mark Cohen, and Connie McMillian I wish I didn’t have to write this piece. I wish I knew that I would see David Cohen at the next theatre opening or Critics’ Table meeting. I wish there were a way to make David’s death disappear and I could write…
Won’t Get Schooled Again
It’s detention for Kelly Willis, Charlie Robison (standing) and Bruce Robison photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Few things are certain about Austin’s Music Class of ’98, those local artists releasing albums this year on major labels or major indies, but one thing is abundantly clear: Enrollment is up. Although only a handful of this year’s…
Exhibitionism
I’M NOT RAPPAPORT: SKILLFUL SQUABBLES State Theatre, through February 8 Running Time: 2 hrs, 10 min George Burns and Gracie Allen. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Groucho and Chico Marx. The first half of this century was blessed with comedians who could take a common conversation and transform it into…
According to Soundscan…
Although few local musicians will probably want to take this report card home to their folks, the raw sales data for Austin’s Music Class of ’97 releases is once again something of a reality check. Mostly, the numbers speak for themselves, but remember, these SoundScan figures – the same numbers that drive the Billboard charts…
Postscripts
Larry Wright’s new book, Twins and What They Tell Us About Who We Are, has an official release date of January 23, but if you didn’t know that, its appearance might have easily slipped past you. Many readers and local literary folk have been awaiting the local author’s book, which is an expansion of the…
Dancing About Architecture
It continues to blast towards us like the juggernaut it has become, and now South by Southwest is less than two months away. Much more immediate is the event that kicks off the festival, the 1997-98 Austin Music Awards on March 18. Actually, they’re not really closer, but this week marks one of your last…
“Stick a Cowboy Hat on ’em”
For five of the 11 years he’s been the art director at Texas Monthly, D.J. Stout, who will be named one of the 100 most important people in photography the May issue of American Photo magazine, has been planning a three-part visual celebration of the magazine’s 25 years in print. This month sees the publication…
Recommended
Friday: Red Steagall, LBJ Library Theater Saturday: Doyle Bramhall I, Doyle Bramhall II, Antone’s; Waylon Thibodeaux, Tropical Isle Sunday: Less Than Jake, The Impossibles, Liberty Lunch; Geno Delafose, Continental Club; Monday: Mobtown, The Allentones, Black Cat Tuesday: Supercharger, Flock of Hillbillies, Stubb’s Wednesday: Lucy Kaplansky, Cactus Club Thursday: Stuck Mojo, Electric Lounge
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
According to one source, Christopher Columbus was known for smoking cigars by inserting them into one nostril. There were so many photos taken during the Civil War that it became commercially impractical to publish all of them. Some of the exposed glass plates were later sold to farmers who used them as panes in greenhouses.…
Texas Platters
THE CORNELL HURD BAND Texas Fruit Shack (Behemoth) What else is there to say about the Cornell Hurd Band that hasn’t been said? We’ve already told you that they’re the most underappreciated band in Austin’s country scene, the “cool” bands all sing their praises, honky-tonk legend Johnny Bush has been recording with them (including on…
Federal Medical Marijuana Studies Finally Move Forward
Few more controversial topics have revolved around the AIDS epidemic than whether using marijuana medically is an appropriate therapeutic path. The U.S. electorate (or at least what passes for its leadership) seems panicked about even discussing the idea, lest they be seen as “soft on drugs.” Finally, however, a group of University of California at…
Road Shows
JANUARY FRI 23 John Gorka, Cactus Cafe FRI 23 Slave State, Bates Motel FRI 23 Derek Trucks Band, Mercury Lounge FRI 23 Suspects, Emo’s FRI 23 Red Steagall, LBJ Library Theatre (UT) FRI 23 Hot Club of Cowtown, Continental Club FRI 23 Susie Ibarra, Assif Tsahar, 33 Degrees SAT 24 Joe McPhee, Arthur Doyle, 33…
