Page Two
We’re in the middle of this too-perfect, crystal clear lake in the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal on a clear and ringing day. As we lazily swim across the lake, there are two rowboats circling. A group of friends have gathered at this house, including old friends who have spent time together before, and some…
Radio Bullies
Okay, hang on to your cowboy hats for this revelation — Sammy & Bob are funny. That’s right, sometimes they tell decent jokes, and Sammy Allred’s sense of timing and delivery is a gift to admire. And who can deny chuckling every so often when the pair banters with and/or insults callers? Of course, they’re…
Public Notice
Say, what abridgement have you for this evening? What masque? What music? How shall we beguile the lazy time, if not with some delight? The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals, perhaps? Perhaps not for this night, but for Sun, Jul 20, 8pm? What more delightful than this Midsummer Night’s International Cinema Sound Circus, Dollar Arcade…
Naked City
While City Manager Jesus Garza is widening his net in search of more police chief candidates, there suddenly seems to be renewed interest (from somewhere within city hall) in one of the original candidates — Gerald L. Williams, a think-tank type from Huntsville who is well versed in community policing and is the former police…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
Pancho Villa sold his rights to images of the Mexican Revolution and even staged battles for the camera. The Statue of Liberty stood in Paris for two years before it was shipped to the U.S. Originally intended to be a lighthouse, it has enough copper sheeting to make 30 million pennies. The seven spikes jutting…
Scanlines
(“Scanlines” wishes to thank Encore Movies & Music, I ™ Video, and Vulcan Video for their help in providing videos and laser discs.) Billy Bob Thorton wrote, directed and starred in Sling Blade. Then he won and Oscar for it. Then came the dirty laundry. Sling Blade D: Billy Bob Thornton (1996) with Billy Bob…
Patterns of Love
illustration by AJ Garces In the architecture of our lives, pattern is everything. Or almost everything. Pattern, and what breaks a pattern. Even love suffocates or flourishes within a pattern. And that usually looks something like this: It begins with your basic, daily life — a life that’s more or less adequate, depending on the…
Short Cuts
Amidst all the razzmatazz and Hollywood glam surrounding last Thursday’s fun, fun, fun premiere of Contact at the Paramount and its attendant parties at the new Austin Film Center and the also-new Antone’s, it was easy to overlook the reason for the event. It was a benefit to raise money for both the Austin Circle…
Food-o-File
To enjoy most movies, there is some point where suspension of disbelief is a necessary element. The conscious mind makes a decision to just go where the filmmaker wants to take it. From the opening scene of My Best Friend’s Wedding, I had a severe problem suspending disbelief. Julia Roberts as a food critic? Give…
Articulations
The major change-ups in the Austin arts scene continue. On top of the news of the departures of General Manager Paul Kaine from Ballet Austin, Chief Executive Officer Sid Mallory from Austin Museum of Art, and Artistic Director Alice Wilson from the Zachary Scott Theatre Center comes word that Eva Paloheimo, managing director of Frontera@Hyde…
Getting the Shakes
What’s not to love about a milkshake? Done right, it’s a kid’s dream on so many levels: creamy, sweet, thick, and cold. A shake (or malt, if that’s your preference) is the perfect complement to a burger dinner and doubly so during long, hot summers. We all know the recipe by heart (nine scoops ice…
Exhibitionism
NOISES OFF: SOMETHING’S ON Utopia Theatre, UT campus through August 2 Running time: 2 hrs, 40 min There’s nothing like a good farce well done. And Noises Off by Michael Frayn has long been known as a good farce. This hysterical homage to the theatre and its surrounding insanity has long been screamed about as…
Central Market Homemade Ice Cream Contest
Sunday, July 27, 2-6pm, Central Market, 4001 N. Lamar Are you hungry for ice cream all year round? Do friends sample your homemade ice cream and swear you’re likely to be the next Amy, Ben, or Jerry? Every time you discover a new sweet treat, do you wonder how it would taste in ice cream?…
A Theatre Mecca?!?
illustration by Robert Faires When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, there was an advertising campaign that showed lovely aerial shots of the city coupled with a nifty little jingle about the “feeling in the air that you just can’t get anywhere.” In hindsight, that feeling may have been the soot from all of the…
Dancing About Architecture
Newly appointed Austin Convention & Visitors’ Bureau Music Liaison Gavin Lance seems to be wasting no time getting some new ideas into action — or at least working towards that point. Lance says his current order of business is getting with the “highbrows” — the opera and symphony types in town — and letting them…
Of Mercy and Mississippi
The first novel by Houston writer Kathleen Cambor, The Book of Mercy (Farrar Straus Giroux, $22 hard), centers around the notion of change: the alchemy that individuals practice to better their lives. In alternating chapters, Edmund, an elderly father and retired firefighter, and Anne, his grown daughter who is a psychiatrist, narrate their past of…
Flashback, Cash Back
Doing “The Safety Dance” at Paradox’s “Retro Rage” night. photograph by Minh Whoever coined the phrase, “Everything old is new again,” must have been from Austin, because increasingly, local radio programmers and clubowners are saying this town’s prevailing sound has become “Oh Wow” — as in “Oh wow, I haven’t heard that in a while.”…
In Person
Jennifer Harbury: Book People, Saturday, July 19 Despite the soothing sound of the soul’s own four-letter word, love incites and raises some mighty powerful, hell-raising hackles: like the desperate need to wail and gnash and rend and howl; or the all-consuming desire to hurtle oneself into the void; or the sole vein left to tap…
Live Shots
Willie Nelson and Derek O’Brien at Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic GRAHAM PARKER Cactus Cafe, July 5 Youth is a very forgiving thing. When you’re young and spewing bile, they call you enraged and celebrate your strength. Do it when you’re old(er), however, and those same people label you crusty and deride your churlishness. Graham…
About AIDS
Couples Who Care is a new support group sponsored by AIDS Services of Austin. To be eligible, you must be in a male/female relationship or marriage with one partner HIV-positive and one HIV-negative. Sexual orientation is not a criterion. The group begins July 28th and will run on Mondays from 5:30 to 7pm for eight…
Recommended
Friday: Sixteen Deluxe, Trail of Dead, Bunny Stockhausen, Emo’s Saturday: Shoulders, Jo Carol Pierce, Cactus Cafe; Golden Arm Trio, Ruta Maya Sunday: Third Eye Blind, Abra Moore, Coward, Liberty Lunch; Jazzaholics, Elephant Room Monday: Cactus Smack Conspiracy, Powersquid, Wobble, Flamingo Cantina Tuesday: Hen House, Continental Club Wednesday: Roky Erickson’s 50th B-day, Antone’s Thursday: Alex Coke…
Postscripts
Garry Mauro read, or at least was scheduled to read last Wednesday from his recently published book, Beaches, Bureaucrats, and Big Oil at BookPeople. But something happened on the way to that event that prevented its occurrence, namely a group of protesters, about 10 in number, who were upset with Mauro’s role in the recent…
New Wave Schtick of the `90s
It’s hardly a typical night at the Hole in the Wall when the Prima Donnas come to play. In place of the usual chattering clutch of people sitting, sipping their beers, and occasionally looking up to acknowledge a particularly nifty solo or lyric, there’s a large crowd packed all the way to the rear of…
Hearth & Soul
Dear Suzy, When I went away to college, my dad gave me the keys to a ’79 Mustang and waved goodbye. I knew absolutely nothing about cars and the experience was purely trial and error. Every now and then I would take it to a full service station and pop the hood. No one ever…
Roadkill
As of several years ago, there were exactly 49 isolation tanks commercially available throughout the world. Best known for their star turn in Ken Russell’s hallucinatory salute to Darwinism, Altered States, isolation tanks, according to one NASA psychologist, can cause hallucinations as well as out-of-body experiences because of their sensory deprivation aspects. At the very…
Benefits
Hike for Humanity to benefit the Humane Society & Faith Home, at Barton Creek Greenbelt, 9am. 837-7985. Sat 26 Disability Rights Awards & BBQ to benefit ADAPT of Texas, at South Austin Recreation Center, 1100 Cumberland Rd., 7pm. Cost is $15. 552-0252. Sun 27 Reggae Haze to benefit Humane Society at Auditorium Shores, 1-10pm. 837-7985.…
Road Shows
JULY FRI 18 Dressed to Kill, Custard Pie, Back Room FRI 18 Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Elephant Room FRI 18 Gregory Boyd & Vos, Dan McCluskey’s FRI 18 The Liberation Band, Flamingo Cantina SAT 19 Lazy Lester, Angela Strehli, Antone’s SAT 19 The Blasters, Liberty Lunch SUN 20 Third Eye Blind, Coward, Liberty Lunch SUN…
Coach’s Corner
Q: Why can’t men just share their feelings? A: Do we look like women to you? Why is it so hard to understand we’re different? How are we supposed to share what we feel when we have no idea how we feel? Drop a brick on my foot. I’m mad. The Bears covered the spread?…
D�j� Vu Development
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: An oddly shaped parcel of state-owned land in Central Austin, currently undeveloped, is poised for imminent large-scale development. Concerned locals fear the project’s impact on their lives and neighborhoods. Some elect to work with the developer, others work on finding a completely different kind of project, or…
Day Trips
San Antonio for free is not advertised in the tourist brochures, but it’s there if you look. The ninth largest city in the U.S. is full of ethnic diversity that makes it unique and tourist attractions that make it inviting. Here are four things to do in San Antonio for free. Visit the visitors center.…
Keeping Industry Out
Illustrating the ultimate irony in a debate already layered with oxymoron, Gardens neighborhood resident Janie Rangel came to last week’s council meeting to save her neighborhood’s environment by refusing to recycle. Rangel presented her “Big Blue” recycling bin to council and leveled her protest at the state of her East Austin neighborhood. “We have a…
