Bambi, the Buck Stops Here
Hunting season ended last week and we know what you’re thinking… “When is Sears having a sale on freezers?” Sorry, it’s not in our mission statement to post home appliance sales, but maybe we can still help out with all that left-over meat. Law-abiding hunters in the State of Texas are probably aware of the…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Dynamite and barbed wire were both invented in 1867. The former by Alfred Nobel and the latter by Lucien Smith. People who have received faxes and e-mails from the dead claim the deceased have told them heaven is a planet in the spiral galaxy ngc4866 and it’s a wonderful place, exactly as imagined. 350,000,000 years…
In With the New
If you’ve just recently come to Austin, you wouldn’t remember a time when Mexican restaurants only served one variety of hot sauce with tostada chips, and handmade tamales could only be purchased at the little, old Tamale House on the corner of First Street and Congress Avenue or on the east side of IH-35. With…
Food-O-File
Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival President Leon Cikota of Block Distributing announced January 17 that internationally known chef and cookbook author Paul Prudhomme will head up the “Celebrity Chef” line-up for the annual event, which is set for April 11-14 this year. Prud-homme will be joined by the Indian chef, cookbook author, and…
SXSW — A List at Last!
Okay, now, don’t get too fired up about the list of bands you see below, and especially don’t panic if you’re not on it. This is only a partial list of bands who have been invited to showcase at this year’s Music Conference. The bands named below, culled from the complete list in a frenzied…
7 & 7 Is
Something about CDs just isn’t very “punk rock.” It starts with the price tag — and the fact that their initial marketing push was made to yuppies — but ends up slightly more intangible; something having to do with digitized music, neatly stored and catalogued on a shiny aluminum coaster. It’s all too anal, too…
Junior Franklin 1931-1996
Thirty-four preachers from California to Mississippi and some of gospel music’s brightest voices came to St. James Baptist Church Tuesday to honor and remember the Rev. Ermant M. Franklin Jr., one of their own. As many of them said repeatedly, they were not there to mourn his death but to celebrate his “home-going.” And three…
Bonus Tracks
PAYNE Like the folky version of Alice in Chains, their obvious influence, Payne seem to buy the notion that the insinuation of power can be more powerful than the actual display, and, at their best, actually manage to prove it in a convincingly dark semi-acoustic haze — teasing but, to their credit, never delivering full-on…
The Hard Line
If punk rock were a religion, and it might as well be for all the stupidities committed in its name, the Hormones would serve the Austin diocese as the puritan deacons who fight with zeal to keep parishioners from forgetting where the music came from. If Rancid fans forgot to do their homework, the Hormones…
Roadkill
The Pharcyde Austin Music Hall Tuesday, January 30 “I feel most relaxed when I’m smoking a blunt and reading, that’s a great feeling.” Strange words from Imani Wilcox, a member of one of hip-hop’s most seafaring acts, The Pharcyde, and today’s band representative who’s kind of buggin’ on the other end of the line. “Smoke…
Ac/dc, the Poor
Erwin Center, Friday 26 Once upon a time, back in my youth, I was lucky enough to score tickets to see the Police and AC/DC on the same weekend. Because I was an impressionable high schooler, a big, bad upper classman convinced me that taking mushrooms (see “Roadkill”) at the Police concert would be a…
AISD Notebook
The “Six Point Plan,” created by Trustee Loretta Edelen, took up much of the AISD Board of Trustees meeting on Monday. Among other things, the plan calls for “full restoration of funding for the lowest socioeconomic level schools” and for the contracts of principals and teachers at those schools to be tied to the academic…
Grumpy Old Punks
Writing about a hard-working, long-suffering band like Jesus Christ Superfly is cause for a journalist to pretend he has no conscience. After all, I’ll be making more money for this piece than the band does per gig — while spending much less “rehearsal” time and about as much “performance” time on it as the band…
Scanlines
Van Gogh’s Starry Night by Albert Boime CD-ROM for Windows or Mac* Voyager Ever wish you could study the seductive painting of the swirling night sky for hours, look carefully at each section, into each crevice formed by the paint? Return to Van Gogh’s Starry Night as many times as you’d like with Albert Boime,…
The Wrench Is Back
With numerous proposals shelved until a later council meeting, Brigid Shea’s return from a six-week maternity leave provided most of last Thursday’s drama. Having lost none of her potency to motherhood, Shea provided the key fourth vote to Max Nofziger’s homeless shelter proposal and resumed her role as the council’s wrench in the works. Though…
Cowboys & Critters
He says it’s more im- portant to save eagles and grizzlies than warblers and salamanders, believes the federal government is “invading” the lands of property owners in Texas, and once compared the freeing of the slaves to an unconstitutional taking of property. Whether or not one agrees with Marshall E. Kuykendall, Sr., the flamboyant, country-talking,…
If You Can Make It There
New York, New York will have a chance to savor the talents of a Central Texas musical ensemble this Saturday when the Southwestern University Chamber Soloists perform at Carnegie Hall. The six-member group, which includes percussionist Hsueh-Yung Shen, violinist Alejandro Mendoza, clarinetist Raymond Schroeder, pianist Kiyoshi Tamagawa, cellist Hai Zheng, and vocalist Virginia Dupuy, will…
Off the Desk
The nonviolence training is over and activists for the homeless are ready, but anyone against the city’s camping ban is invited to bring their bedrolls to the Southwest grounds of the Capitol for a candlelight vigil from 5-8:30pm. Afterwards political humorist Molly Ivins will join musician Steve Fromholz for a night under the stars at…
The Connection of Merce Cunningham and John Cage Chance
You know how random things are always happening to Chance Harper on the Fox TV show Strange Luck? But by the end of the show, all those strange, random happenings connect in one event? I like to think that if Chance were a fan of new art, he’d really like the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.…
The TPWD Brain Drain
Marshall Kuykendall’s property rights agenda has caused ripple effects throughout state government. Perhaps no agency has been affected more than the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). Formerly active in endangered species protection, the agency now appears more interested in squelching employees who support endangered species research than in providing protection to rare non-game species.…
Bill Adler and the Drug Underworld Innocence and Savagery
Atlantic Monthly Press, $22 hard “I knew if I were caught I would go to the chain gang. But was not my life already a kind of chain gang? What, really, did I have to lose?” — Richard Wright, Black Boy As I sit with Bill Adler in the happy-hour hubbub of G�ero’s, I distance…
Making Joyful Noises
by Patrick Taggart It was just a pulse — a bassoon — sounding like a rusty squeezebox! And then, suddenly, high above it, an oboe — a single note hanging there unwavering, until a clarinet took it over and sweetened it into a phrase of such delight… this was music I had never heard! Filled…
Recommended:Michael Connelly
“Death is my beat. I make my living from it.” These lines kick off The Poet (Little, Brown, $22.95 hard) and they set the tone for Jack McEvoy, the narrator-protagonist of the book. McEvoy, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, is no stranger to the dark side of life. Nor is his creator, Michael…
The Price of a Free Trip to Trinidad Liar’s Flight
On the flight from Austin to Dallas, I traveled with a homogeneous group of folk apparently headed for the Anglo-Saxon Heritage Festival. They contrasted sharply with the other travelers packed in the Miami airbus, who looked like they were all answering a casting call for a Benetton ad; shockingly blond Germans with thin lips squeezed…
Let’s Talk Positive
Women who test positive for HIV infection fear loss of control over their lives, possible loss of their children and housing, and the ultimate loss of social supports. For this reason, many women who are tested and who test HIV-antibody positive, keep the information secret. Women who are infected tend to isolate themselves and often…
Whoopi-Ti-Yi-Yo, Git Along, Little Kiddies! Driving Dad Crazy
A hundred years ago, cowboys rode through the fields and mesquite-choked river bottoms just east of Austin, driving herds of cattle along the Chisholm Trail from the flat plains of South Texas. Today, the old cowtrails have been transformed into interstate highways. But being a Dad is a lot like being a cowboy. We still…
Rat Tales
When we lived in Tarrytown, a neighborhood with dense vegetation and old houses, we had rats. Every evening we enjoyed watching one fat, fluffy specimen as it gorged itself in our birdfeeder. When it showed up a few weeks later with its fuzzy babies we were as delighted as if we were watching a family…
Day Trips
Don’t Mess With Texas turns 10 years old this month. Studies estimate that 96 percent of you reading this will recognize the anti-litter slogan, which has become the most recognized state slogan besides “Remember the Alamo!” Between 1979 and 1985, the cost of picking up litter along roads reached a peak of $24 million. With…
It could be any
Sunday, any weekend. The only constant is the time. It must be late, usually an hour until a child’s bedtime. I’m tired. Both children have spent endless, aimless hours gazing at the television or whining about being bored. Neither was in any hurry to do anything for the past 48 hours. At this propitious moment,…
Page Two
There used to be a different page two to this issue but there also used to be a different cover. That doesn’t really matter though, because Audrey Duff’s superb piece on Marshall Kuykendall is one that doesn’t tell you what to think, so I’m not going to try to tell you either. In other news,…
