Page Two
One day at the start of the summer of 1968, my mother woke me, told me to get packed and get out, I was going to work that summer at Madison-Felicia, a camp for underprivileged kids in Peekskill, New York. My uncle was on the board of directors, some kid had dropped out, I was…
Media Clips
Fighting was the name of the game in Austin media this year. Levy vs. Oppel, liberals vs. Sammy & Bob, and the staffs of KOOP, The Texas Observer, The Daily Texan, and Fox-7 within themselves. About the only people who really got along in 1997 were major media powers, as they swallowed one another like…
Public Notice
Directors of Volunteers in Austin (DOVIA) presents Vicki Clark of The Points of Light Foundation on Thursday, January 15, 7:30-9am in Town Lake Center on Barton Springs Road. Clark’s presentation will explore the recent national focus on volunteerism and its impact on communities and quality of life, providing insight into trends in volunteerism across the…
Naked City
For more than a decade, the proposed Austin Museum of Art was little more than a swank blueprint of a Robert Venturi design. Now, organizers have scrapped the old plan and are moving ahead on a more palatable layout for the 75,000-square-foot structure at Third Street, between Guadalupe and San Antonio. Museum Chair David Gold…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
The 1915 Reeve’s Octo Auto featured eight wheels instead of four. It didn’t sell very well. The frog, Epipedobates tri-color, exudes epibatidine, a chemical with analgesic qualities that are 200 times as powerful as morphine. Some say that dreams about falling come from the fact that our ancestors may have lived in trees. One added…
Cyber Top Tens
1. Supreme Court rules on Communications Decency Act. “The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.” So saying, the Supremes rejected a law intended to sanitize the global Internet, restricting content to material suitable for minors. The Supremes reaffirmed a lower court decision that…
Disappointments, Indoctrinations, Desperations
illustration by Jason Stout Disappointment of The Year: Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, wanting to like it, trying to convince myself it’s as good as “they” say it is. I revere Dylan, but… ah, Maestro, they’re praising you again because (temporarily, I trust) you’ve slid down to their level. You’ve sung something that neither…
Top Tens of 1997 Council Watch
1) “In fact, we have a two year old named Cooper who is living proof — and it wouldn’t take a DNA test to figure out that Cooper is Kirk’s son. All you have to do is see how short he is to see the relationship.” — From a letter written by Mayor Kirk Watson’s…
Top Ten Food Stories of 1997
Bumper Crop of Texas Cookbooks: Angela Shelf Medearis and Miguel Ravago photograph by John Anderson 1. Changes and Transitions in the Local Restaurant Biz The transition traffic in the restaurant business this year made it hard to keep the players straight. It was enough to make you dizzy, what with some high-profile closings — Coyote…
The Year in Politics
1) Annexation Frustration. The kingdom of Austin has not witnessed such tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth, weeping and wailing, and righteously indignant protest since former UT football player Jim Bob Moffett tried to make an end run at our beloved Barton Springs. Suburbanites who had hoped to remain free from the clutches of our…
Articulations
Just over a fortnight ago, on the first night of Chanukah, a traffic accident claimed the life of one of the most versatile and valuable individuals in the Austin theatre community. David Mark Cohen, playwright, dramaturg, educator, and critic, was killed as he and his partner, economist and monologist Steven Tomlinson, were traveling to Oklahoma…
Everything Old is New Again
By the winter of 1977, when the Rolling Stones entered EMI’s Path� Marconi Studios in Paris to record what would become Some Girls (and parts of Emotional Rescue and even Tattoo You), the Sex Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, and Elvis Costello had already released that year’s most important albums — all debuts that would more or…
Family Matters
A film critics compile their year-end lists, they might include a new category: least likely movie star. One candidate is Oscar Berliner, a cranky, reclusive, and ostensibly unremarkable man who received an impassioned standing ovation at the 1996 New York Film Festival. As the central character of the experimental documentary Nobody’s Business, the 79-year-old retired…
Exhibitionism
Electric Lounge, December 20 Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit. Heavin’-humpin’-hippos-in-a-hot-rod shit! Man, that felt good. Sometimes letting yourself go — giving up all those inhibitions, cutting completely loose, letting it all hang out — can be soooo liberating. It flushes the system of all your petty grudges and aggravations, all the ill will and spite that’s gotten backed…
The News Gets Better
photograph by Fred Plaschek January Eventually all living legends become just plain old legends. So it happened to Townes Van Zandt. On January 1, Van Zandt is found dead of a heart attack at the age of 52. The news is better for Junior Brown, Eric Johnson, Shawn Colvin, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore (any news…
The Year in Gaming
Asked to summarize the year in adventure gaming, I thought what you’re thinking: Who cares? I make my living writing for trade magazines about games like Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering, but the hobby of card, board, and paper role-playing games raises barely a blip on the pop-culture radar. In North America we…
Top Ten Art
(IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) by Rebecca S. Cohen Out of Bounds: New Work by Eight Southeast Artists at Hunington Art Gallery. “In Search pf the Face of God,” by Dawn Deveax Out of Bounds: New Work by Eight Southeast Artists (UT’s Huntington Art Gallery) Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, the Huntington’s new Curator of American and Contemporary Art,…
Dancing About Architecture
“Why should Central Texans find the faces at the Grammys familiar this year?” asked one local TV station on their evening newscast this week. The answer, after the usual interminable wait through weather, sports, and commercials, was a 10-second listing of the three or four locally familiar names that were announced by the National Academy…
Short Cuts
Because I can… In the Top Ten grid all the critics were permitted one “wild card” category to express whatever they might like about the year in film. I’ve devoted the rest of this column to indulging a few more of the wild cards up my sleeve. One of the year’s most welcome trends was…
Top Ten Stage
1. Ruthless! The Musical (Zachary Scott Theatre Center) This bastard love child of All About Eve and The Bad Seed may be just some pleasurably bitchy fluff, but it was so splendidly realized by Dave Steakley and company that it attained a sort of camp transcendence. The cast’s comedic style was impeccable, as precise and…
Critics Poll
Beets: Guitar Wolf, Waterloo Records, Tony Bennett, Austin Music Hall, and the Frogs, Liberty Lunch — all in one night. Bertin: Link Wray, Dieselhed, Electric Lounge Gray: De La Soul, Liberty Lunch Hernandez: Friends of Dean Martinez, Continental Club Hess: Kenny Garret, State Theater Langer: John Fogerty, Austin Music Hall Moser: John Fogerty, Austin Music…
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Compiled by Marjorie Baumgarten (M.B.) with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.), Robert Faires (R.F.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith (R.S.) Title Stars Author Reviewed 187 1.5 (M.S.) 6/6/97 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG BOMB (M.S.) 4/18/97 A ABSOLUTE POWER 3.0 (M.S.) 2/14/97 ADDICTED TO LOVE 3.0 (M.S.) 5/23/97 ADRENALIN: FEAR THE…
Townes Van Zandt
Randy California Keith Ferguson Tim Taylor (Brainiac) Glen Taylor (Dicks) Ronnie Lane Il Duce Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) Jubal Clark Jeff Buckley Doc Cheatum Harold Melvin Johnny Copeland Lawrence Payton (Four Tops) Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan Allen Ginsberg Luther Allison Jimmy Witherspoon Jimmy Rogers Fela Kuti John Denver Michael Hutchence Michael Hedges Stephane Grappelli Nicolette…
Recommended
Friday: Bobby Breaux Band, Funner, Plum, Liberty Lunch; Asleep at the Wheel, Broken Spoke; Soulhat, Slobberbone, Stubb’s Saturday: Marcia Ball, Antone’s Sunday: American Standards, Git Gone, Bates Motel; Reckless Kelly, Morningwood, Continental Club Monday: Chris Gage, Donn’s Depot Tuesday: Quatropaw, Hole in the Wall Wednesday: Phil Pritchett, El Kabong, Black Cat Thursday: Stephen Doster &…
Control Freaks
Boogie Nights Say it loud and say it proud: In these here parts, we like it Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. Errol Morris’ unique documentary essay about the glory and folly of human endeavor (among other subjects) grabbed the number-one spot in the Austin Chronicle’s cumulative tally of the Top Ten Films of 1997.…
Postscripts
Despite the increasingly tinsel-obsessed nature of book promotions, whereby publishing houses, particularly the large ones, invest their promotional gusto in star literary names and titles, it’s gratefullly inarguable that the publishing world is still dependent on its creators, its authors, many of whom do not like trekking the country reading the same passage time and…
Road Shows
THU 8-SAT 10 Tom Braxton, Ringside@Sullivan’s FRI 9 Joe Louis Walker, Antone’s FRI 9 Slobberbone, Stubb’s SAT 10 Joseph Hill & Culture, Liberty Lunch SAT 10 Millencolin, Pulley, Emo’s TUE 13 Richard Buckner, Electric Lounge FRI 16 The Drifters, Top of the Marc FRI 16 The Jesus Lizard, Emo’s FRI 16 Mighty Diamonds, Liberty Lunch…
Sports Top Ten
1) Out With the Mack. In With the Mack. Don’t know what the pollsters saw in the Fiesta Bowl butt-kicking last January that led them to believe Texas was deserving of a Top Ten ranking to start the ’97 campaign, but pre-season expectations were high. Then Texas played UCLA. Despite the nine games left on…
The Year in Books
1. The passing of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. This is perhaps the most significant year for loss in recent contemporary spoken-word history, for not only were Ginsberg and Burroughs two of the most notable graduates of the Beat movement, but many contemporary spoken-word artists have used these two writers’ works as an entrance to…
Top Tens of 1997 Local Top Ten
1. Robert Earl Keen, Picnic (Arista Austin) 2. Jon Dee Graham, Escape From Monster Island (Freedom) 3. Silver Scooter, The Other Palm Springs (Peek-A-Boo) 4. The Derailers, Reverb Deluxe (Sire/Watermelon) 5. Wayne Hancock, That’s What Daddy Wants (Ark 21) 6. Bad Livers, Hogs on the Highway (Sugar Hill) 7. Ana Egge, River Under the Road…
Food-O-File
Toward the end of 1996, the movie that inspired theme dinners was the charming little independent film Big Night, directed by and starring Stanley Tucci. On the absolute opposite end of the financial spectrum, this year’s cinematic inspiration for theme dinners could be director James Cameron’s $200 million epic Titanic. Dinner hosts inspired to re-create…
about AIDS SRAIGHT TALK
Support Group Begins Monday, Jan. 3 AIDS Services of Austin is pleased to offer STRAIGHT TALK, a six-week support group for heterosexual men and women living with HIV or AIDS. The group begins January 26 on Monday evenings from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. Men and women living with HIV/AIDS can experience feelings of isolation, fear,…
National Top Ten
1. Radiohead, OK Computer (Capitol) 2. U2, Pop (Island) 3. Loreena McKennitt, The Book of Secrets (Warner Bros.) 4. Erykah Badu, Baduizm (Universal) 5. Richard Buckner, Devotion + Doubt (MCA) 6. Volebeats, Sky and the Ocean (Safe House) 7. Whiskeytown, Stranger’s Almanac (Outpost) 8. Old 97s, Too Far to Care (Elektra) 9. Yo La Tengo,…
Benefits
THU 8 Elvis’ Birthday Bash featuring Dale Watson, Kelly Willis, Don Walser, the Derailers, Ray Benson, Reckless Kelly, Chris Wall, Damon Bramlett, the Hollisters, Bruce Robison, Shaun Young, Alvin Crow, Cornell Hurd, Susanna Van Tassel, Memphis Mafia, and the Horton Brothers to benefit Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH), at Babes, 9:30pm. Cost is…
Corner to Corner
1) Northwest Corridor. People are selfish, and “community” is an almost meaningless word in today’s age of entitlement. Such the annexation fracas has taught us, if we didn’t know it already. Sadly, the Northwest Corridor is the last place we, as a “community,” can afford to have endless mistrust and conflict, or else the whole…
Coach’s Corner
I’m not at all certain where this incongruous seepage began; silently and insidiously, to be sure. Like discovering, after 30 days of avoiding the scale, that the low-fat egg nog you’ve been swilling since before Thanksgiving didn’t have the desired effect. Or, how about that bare spot on the top of your head. What’s that…
A Murky Crystal Ball
illustration by Doug Potter It’s hard not to take personally, I’ll admit. On December 16, two days before the final city council meeting of 1997, I e-mailed this invitation to each of the councilmembers and their aides: I am hoping that each of the council offices will be eager to participate in my “Council Watch”…
Day Trips
A lattice formed of 1,700 steel struts waits for installation of the 91 hexagonal mirror segments that form the 433-inch Hobby-Eberly telescope at McDonald Observatory. The telescope opened in 1997 as the second largest telescope in the world. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod Looking back on 1997, it is easy to see many events that…
Environs
1) Drought closes the Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold mine in Indonesia. The Ok Tedi mine in Papua, New Guinea has already closed due to lack of water. The Grasberg mine is feeling the same effects of El Ni�o. Until normal rains return, the mine will be in dire straits. 2) Gary Bradley takes bankruptcy. Bradley,…
