Going by the Rules
illustration by Doug Potter Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock was talking tough on water. “Forty years ago, the predecessor to the Texas Water Development Board was given authority to come up with a water plan,” Bullock pointed out at a press conference last Wednesday. Since then, he noted, no action has ever been taken by the…
Benefits
Toma Mi Coraz�n Silent Auction to benefit La Pe�a, at Miguel’s La Bodega, 4pm (preview), 6pm. 477-6007. Mardi Gras Masked Ball Gala to benefit the Jack Sansing HIV Dental Clinic, at Four Seasons Hotel, 8pm. Cost is $75. 478-8040. SUN 9 Silent Auction to benefit Austin Girls’ Choir, at Parque Zaragoza, 2608 Gonzales, 1pm. $15…
AISD Notebook
During the course of Monday’s regular meeting of the AISD Board of Trustees, a couple of thoughts occurred: Has the board been relegated to the “B” list of invited guests to participate in making the district’s annual budget? And secondly, isn’t the 1997-98 budget cycle off to a rather late start — in direct opposition…
Naked City
Last week, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept. became the second state agency to officially oppose the addition of the Barton Springs Salamander to the Endangered Species List. They join the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, which voted last month to intervene in the case known as Save Our Springs Alliance and Dr. Mark Kirkpatrick…
Coach’s Corner
Last week, after a Texas victory over Oklahoma, Tom Penders complained about the lack of fan support for his basketball team. In particular, Penders singled out late-arriving, unenthusiastic fans, the lack of student support, and too many empty seats. The Oklahoma game had an announced attendance of over 12,000. This is quite misleading. UT, along…
The Last Don
Writing about Bob Bullock bears an unnerving resemblance to reporting a story on a Mafia don. Everyone has an anecdote, a legend, or an opinion about Bullock, but very few people want to be quoted. The Democratic Lieutenant Governor, who began his political career in 1957 (the same year the Soviets launched Sputnik), is the…
Bush Tackles Taxes
There were no surprises on Tuesday when Gov. George W. Bush delivered his long-awaited State of the State speech to a joint session of the Texas Legislature. Bush did what everyone expected. He talked about education, crime, and welfare. He talked about God. “It’s time to seek, not shun, divine help,” he told the standing-room-only…
Day Trips
Bill and Bonnie Hearne are a part of a network of journeyman minstrels who travel the land playing the music they love. Bonnie’s sweet vocals and barrelhouse piano playing provides sweet complement to Bill’s gruff cowboy voice and fantastic guitar picking. Together with a sideman to round out their sound (John Egeness is pictured above…
Bullock on Austin
Bullock on why Austin gets targeted by the legislature: “I’ve never noticed it a whole lot… You know, legislators come to town. You come down here from a small community, or from a large one, it’s like coming to Hollywood. They come down here and sometimes legislators, they lose perspective, and I’ve heard legislators over…
Scanlines
D: Marleen Gorris; with Willeke Van Ammelrooy, Els Dottermans, Jan Decleir, Veerle Van Overloop, Marina De Graaf, Mil Seghers, Thyrza Ravesteijn. VHS Home Video Vulcan Video, 609 W. 29th This little Dutch film about a big family paints a sentimental portrait of European rural life after World War II. The story coaxes us to admire…
Page Two
This issue is your last chance to fill out The Austin Chronicle Music Poll ballot. Although it may seem like an intimidating task, you can fill out as much of it or as little as you want. Over the last 15 years, the music scene has grown and changed, sprouted and shrunk, matured and ruptured:…
Shortcuts
by Jen Scoville Hill Country resident and big-time Hollywood producer Lynda Obst may split her days between two locales, but stretching her time certainly isn’t compromising her Texas ties or her reputation as a worthy player, the same rep that got her rated among the top women in entertainment in the December 10 issue of…
Public Notice
Yeah, yeah… the socio-political aspects are intriguing, but just give us the down-and-dirty dish…. Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia, is an “off-beat love story” of author and San Francisco Chronicle reporter David Tuller’s “quasi-romance with a charismatic Russian lesbian.” Off-beat, indeed, even for us poly-pan-gender-bender-blender types, considering the fact…
Land of 1,000 Dances
In her festival coverage for Cinemania Online, Sheila Benson is the first to report a new trend in independent films: lawn-troll snatching. Witnessed in at least four festival films, she first noticed it in subUrbia with Steve Zahn. Have you seen anything good?” That was the most frequent conversation starter at the 1997 Sundance Film…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
GM’s new electric car, the EV-1, has self-sealing tires in case of flats. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In the King James Version of Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is “shake” and the 46th word from…
The Birth of Paranoia
illustration by Jason Stout That moment in which you discover that they are out to get you came for me in third grade. I was a baby boomer. In a way, the system was stacked against baby boomers. We stretch the infrastructure of all the institutions we encounter. When we were born, modest maternity wards…
My Grandfather’s Hamlet
illustration by A.J. Garces Where my grand- father Vincenzo Ventura found the time or inclination for Shakespeare, I don’t know. Born in Sicily in 1883, he arrived in New York around 1905. He worked with his hands all his life, until his final illness in 1970. Soon after he came to this country, he was…
Bagel Schmagel
illustration by Penny Van Horn I cannot find a place to eat a bagel. How can that be, you may wonder, with bagels having joined espresso and salsa as the newly ubiquitous ethnic foods of our time. No longer a secular symbol of diaspora Judaism, no longer a cosmopolitan delicacy associated with New Yorkers, this…
Food-o-File
by Virginia B. Wood The beginning of every new year brings with it the consideration of emerging trends. On the national scene, the buying public is considering low-fat, low-cholesterol meat alternatives that are not heavily treated with hormones and antibiotics. Game meats such as venison, wild boar, antelope and ostrich are growing in recognition and…
Art of the State
KIMBELL ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH presents “Michelangelo and His Influence: Drawings from Windsor Castle,” an exhibition of 22 drawings by the Renaissance master, plus 51 works by his contemporaries and successors, through March 30; “Georges de La Tour and His World,” a major exhibition focusing on this 17th-century painter — the first in 25…
Subtle Sophistication
HighLife Cafe 407 E. Seventh St., 474-5338 Sun-Wed, 9am-midnight; Thu-Sat, 9am-1am HighLife Cafephotograph by John Anderson Imagine a slightly off- the-beaten-track location with a low profile — one of those places you wish there were more of in town, but love precisely because there exists no other spot like it. Those of us who’ve discovered…
Why, a Duck!
Clown (Ha Ha Ha), by the Art Guys How many ducks does it take to make an Art Guys exhibition? “Wildlife,” the recent exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria, contained the work of Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, the fearless duo from Houston who call themselves the Art Guys. The subjects/objects…
Korea House
2700 W. Anderson Lane (in the Village Shopping Center), 458-2477 Mon-Thu, 11am-10pm; Fri, 11am-11pm; Sat, noon-11pm; Sun, noon-10pm photograph by John Anderson Location, location, location. The same old maxim that applies in real estate also applies in the restaurant business, except when it doesn’t. Most restaurateurs would steer clear of a location nestled in the…
Articulations
A towering figure in the Austin arts scene and a man of global achievements has died. Walter Ducloux, a music professor at the University of Texas for 28 years and the co-founder of Austin Lyric Opera, passed away Saturday, January 25, at the age of 83, of complications from cancer. Ducloux, a native of Switzerland,…
Where There’s a Bill…
“I’m just a bill. Yes, I’m only a bill, and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill.” — “I’m Just a Bill,” Schoolhouse Rock! illustration by Doug Potter If you’re Senator Judith Zaffirini’s D-Laredo) “bill” attempting to keep minors out of establishments that sell alcohol, you’re not actually a “bill.” You’re “draft legislation.” If you’re Representative…
Why a Duck?
Fuck a Duck, by the Art Guys The Art Guys are troubled. It is Thursday afternoon, January 9, three days before their show “Wildlife” is set to open at the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria. The Art Guys — Houston artists Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, who use that name for their creative…
The Musical Middle Class
“If the next level comes to me then it’ll come to me, but I’m not going to go to it. That may be one of my downfalls actually, because I don’t have the ambition to be a huge, huge artist. There’s an ambivalence there that can’t help me.” Shawn Colvin is in the musical middle…
Postscripts
by Lee Nichols & Margaret Moser * THU, JAN 30: UT English professor Peter LaSalle will read from and sign his book, Hockey Sur Glace, at Book People at 7pm… Alice Borchardt appears at Borders Books in support of her latest book, Beguiled, 7:30pm. Beguiled is the sequel to Devoted; both historical novels are set…
Dancing About Architecture
This is it — the last week of the Chronicle music poll and the Musicians Register form. Fill out the poll to see your favorite local acts recognized, and the register form to get your band noticed (and to land that free chicken-fried steak at Threadgills). The Austin Music Awards and SXSW are on their…
Me No Kissy Ass
Bullock began to understand the power of the press, particularly newspapers, during his years as comptroller. He rarely gives television interviews, but he and his staff comb through four papers every morning and meet briefly to discuss the stories of the day. Yet while he depends on the press for a lot of his information,…
Redd, Write, and Blues
photograph by Jana Birchum Louise Redd is not what I expected. Surely, I thought, the creator of a character like Lacy Springs — a white survivor of childhood abuse who has an affair with an African-American blues musician, spends a weekend in the Harris County jail for kidnapping a student, and experiences epiphany at Graceland…
Live Shots
THE GRASSY KNOLL, HOLLOWBODY Liberty Lunch, January 18 J.T. Van Zandt at the Cactus Cafe, January 22nd tribute to Townes Van Zandt One would think that a group led by guitarist Bob Green, the mastermind behind The Grassy Knoll, would be a sonic cavalcade of guitarscapes. One, of course, would be wrong. After all, Green,…
Personal Politics
Bullock, in his 1996 Christmas card, flanked by his wife Jan (seated on his left) and his family. Robert Douglas Bullock was born on July 10, 1929 at 504 Craig Street, a plain wood frame house located a dozen blocks east of the ornate Hill County Courthouse in Hillsboro, Texas. It is in a middle-class…
About AIDS
While some issues of being HIV-infected are common to everyone with the virus, there also are some issues which are, or are perceived to be, different for different groups. Sexual orientation, race, gender, or age may present unique circumstances with which an HIV-positive person must deal. “Straight Voices” is a six-week support group for HIV-positive…
Also Playing
Friday: Galactic, Stubb’s; S.I.M.S. Fundraiser, Liberty Lunch; ThaMuseMeant, James McMurtry, Chicago House (Austin Music Hall) Saturday: Sonny Burgess, Joe “Ducktail” Clay, Continental Club; Carnival Brasilero, City Coliseum; Asleep at the Wheel, La Zona Rosa Sunday: Gerre Hancock, Bates Recital Hall Monday: Ted Roddy’s Tearjoint Troubadors, Ego’s; Blue Monday, Antone’s Tuesday: Peter Keane, Slaid Cleaves, Cactus…
Out-Gunned?
illustration by Doug Potter It wasn’t a win and it wasn’t a loss. Instead, it was a bit of both. Last week, the three members of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) ruled that nine opponents of the radioactive waste disposal facility in Sierra Blanca, outside of El Paso, will be able to retain…
Hearth & Soul
Dear Suzy, I have a concrete patio out back that I would like to cover with a mosaic � la Constantinople, Pompeii, etc. I believe the ancients used pebbles or tiny, marble cubes. Do you know some suitable material and/or process for the accomplishment? Some micro-tile? The constraints are: 1) I am not rich and…
Bobby “Blue” Bland
Antone’s Friday, January 31 Bobby “Blue” Bland’s smooth, sophisticated R&B — where big-band, swing-style horns are as important to the sound as guitars and harmonicas — stands today as one of the paradigms of popular music. It’s the original New Jack Swing. And after over 40 years of playing it, Bland is finally getting some…
