Cover Story
My Migas, My City
As Downtown development explodes, Las Manitas Avenue Cafe and its neighbors face an uncertain future
Verdict in Italy; Arena Out; Barca in Houston
The Italian match-fixing scandal boiled over last Friday, as Juventus, Lazio, and Fiorentina were demoted to the second division, while Silvio Berlusconi’s AC Milan avoided demotion but got a 15-point penalty for the coming season, and a ban from European play. Juve was also stripped of its last two Serie A titles, and given a…
Slam Planet
Slam Planet 2006. Directed by Kyle Fuller, Mike Henry. In this documentary, rival poets from Austin and New York City prepare for the 2004 National Poetry Slam in St. Louis, Missouri. The film was the runner-up for the Lone Star States Audience Award at the 2006 SXSW.
Favela Rising
Eye-opening film documents Brazilian Anderson Sa’s AfroReggae movement rise with gritty, powerful grace.
The Dark Side
The Dark Side 2006, NR, 90 min. Directed by Michael Kirk. This Frontline documentary tells the story of the Dick Cheney’s role as the chief architect of the war on terror, and his battle with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for control of the “dark side.”
Fire in the Water
Fire in the Water 1977, NR, 90 min. Directed by Peter Whitehead, Starring Nathalie Delon, David Hockney, John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg. An alchemical allegory in which a filmmaker reflects on his career in the highlands of Scotland while his girlfriend (Delon) roams the countryside alone. Includes appearances by David Hockney and John Lennon and music…
New and Noteworthy
Farmer Russell’s natural Piedmontese beef
Texas Platters
ShearwaterEmo’s, July 14 Anyone who hasn’t caught a Shearwater show in the past couple of years was in for a big surprise Friday night, as the once-sleepy Austin-based quartet revealed its fierce side. The set’s most transcendent moment occurred early on during “Red Sea, Black Sea,” when the rhythm opened up behind Jonathan Meiburg’s banjo…
WilCo Lawsuit
Judge rules for third time in favor of Williamson Co. over Gary Griffin, granting motion for summary judgment in 368th District Court
Just an Old-Fashioned Cat
Eartha Kitt is one funny dame
Wine of the Week
A little bubbly for poolside?
Texas Platters
The Bellevue JubileeDeep Dark South Local “21st century vaudeville noir” troupe Bellevue Jubilee is more of a Broadway musical than a rock band. The six-member troupe led by Waitsian throat Ken Burchenal (aka V.K. Mountebone) and Masonic singer Eryn Gettys (Miss Kitty Wompus) plays in character, sings corny songs, and dresses in costume. Recorded by…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
An Arabian Midsummer Night’s Dream
Tongue and Groove Theatre and Ararat Restaurant launch a new outdoor theatre space with some belly-dancing, scimitar-wielding Shakespeare:’An Arabian Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Food-o-File
Walgreens, what will you think of next? Plus, Hi.
Texas Platters
Dawn Over Zero (R. T. W. O.) Austin fourpiece Dawn Over Zero does what it takes to get noticed: They play relentlessly. While that ambition has crossed over on album with their debut – a slick, eponymous EP – it hasn’t made this brand of hard rock any more interesting. That’s not to say they…
A Fetus Is a Fetus, or Is It?
Will AG buy Texas District and County Attorneys Association’s claim that changes in law, instituted by legislators during the last two legislative sessions, mean doctors who perform some abortions are now eligible to face capital murder charges and possibly a death sentence?
American Repertory Ensemble’s Dialogues
With American Repertory Ensemble, a company of artists from both music and dance, choreographer David Justin and composer Rob Deemer hope to start a new dialogue between their two disciplines
Driskill Grill
We like this place. A lot.
Texas Platters
GhostwriterDarkest Hour (End of the West) Being a one-man band is akin to being self-employed: There’s no one to credit or blame but yourself. Steve Schecter’s Ghostwriter is deep and gritty, his voice as guttural and road-worn as his guitar lines. Despite his raw passion, Ghostwriter’s third LP is a one-trick, truck-stop pony better enjoyed…
Another Weird FLDS Update
Younger brother of fugitive polygamist prophet Warren Jeffs sentenced to three years probation and fined $2,500 for hindering law enforcement efforts to find his bro
Summer Youth Theatre’s ‘The Visit’
Kill Schill?
Lee’s Kitchen
Viet-licious
Texas Platters
The Lonesome HeroesDon’t Play to Lose (Floodwater) Balancing on the slide of Landry McMeans’ lap steel, the Lonesome Heroes’ sad and forlorn country cry walks the dirt road from West Texas desert to a poor man’s urban dwelling. Singer Rich Russell’s Brooklyn upbringing marries Willie Nelson to Will Oldham on the Heroes’ debut EP, and…
Taxi Lotto No Go?
Urban Transportation Commission searching for new system for approving taxi franchises
TCB
The golden ears of producer Erik Wofford, ambitious redesign plan of the Austin Music Hall, continuing adventures of Rockstar: Supernova contestant Patrice Pike, and bad-boy musicians of DontDateHimGirl.com.
Arts Review
St. Idiot Collective’s ‘Vaudeville Vanya’ ambitiously seeks to explode a great old play with a great old medium, but it ends up a sheen of vaudeville brushed over a hellbent staging of Uncle Vanya
La Onda Chicano
Tejano music, as a genre, might be on the ropes, but Sunny Ozuna – one of the genre’s architects – is anything but
Texas Platters
Magnet SchoolCrush What a tease! Local rock quartet Magnet School is huge. Not in Japan, but on album. Layers of hooks and chorused guitar interrupt jagged beat and rhythm until it explodes beautifully. With this three-song EP, Mark Ford, Michael J., Brandon Tucker, and Jason Ferguson provide a glimpse into what they do: magnetize, throb,…
Point Austin: Blue Goes Red
The GOP-proposed redistricting map takes another nasty shot at Travis County voters
Arts Review
The Dirigo Group production of Daniel MacIvor’s ‘In On It,’ with two actors in multiple roles, succeeds beyond an exercise in acting and becomes a heartbreaking wound that feels good to receive
Texas Platters
Scott H. BiramGraveyard Shift (Bloodshot) The yellow/orange sticker, usually an announcement toward the end of the liner notes, is here part of the album cover art: “This record sounds best when turned up LOUD!” A de rigueur suggestion, of course – not to mention erroneous – but that’s hardly the print which matters most. “Produced,”…
Texas Platters
This Life ElectricLetters to the Muse There are two basic categories of rock fans: those who go to Bonnaroo and those who go to Coachella; those who love Ani and those who love Kurt. It’s the smooth and the rough, the pretty and the jagged. Local quintet This Life Electric (formally the Van) is the…
Beside the Point
City Council summer cheat sheet
Arts Review
“Making It Alone” Creative Research Laboratory, through July 29 How much information is too much? How can we tell when information is being withheld? Entering the Creative Research Laboratory, artist Aron Johnston has two works welcoming you to the gallery. On the wall hangs a painting with three distinct sections. The top diagrams knot-tying instructions,…
Texas Platters
Los Lonely BoysSacred (Epic/Or Music/One Haven) If Los Lonely Boys have their way, music will have to make room for a new genre: “Texican.” That’s the cross-cultural identity the San Angelo-based Garza brothers clutch in their collective fist, thrust like a Lone Star rosary to their audience. For their sophomore effort, Sacred, the multiplatinum Grammy…
The Hightower Report
The Government’s Sick War on Marijuana; and Pumping Out More Advertising
Readings
Despite Bill Minutaglio’s admirable approach, many interviews, and access to a wide range of documents, the attorney general rarely comes into focus in his first biography.
Texas Platters
Buttercup, Pink Nasty, Darling New NeighborsHole in the Wall, July 15 Picture a bar in the Midwest circa 1991. It’s the dead of summer, the AC’s broke, and they have Schlitz on tap. That same feel permeated the Hole in the Wall like bong water on a dorm room floor. Not that any of the…
Dear Mayor
Paige Robbins’ correspondence with city officials
Blank Generation
Amy Sedaris on ‘Strangers With Candy’
Page Two: Things Blow Up for No Reason
Still weekly, free, and a little stunned, we enter our 25th year
Texas Platters
Beyond summer’s glut of local releases, there’s a few choice shortcuts. I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness proffer a three-song EP titled According to Plan (Secretly Canadian). While its title track, the single off this year’s Fear Is On Our Side, is Chosen Darkness at their danceable synth-and-bass-gorged best, “Close to Here” is beautiful…
Higher Ground
Two more Congress towers
A Convenient Truth
Kevin Smith on ‘Clerks II’
Letters @ 3AM
Ban what you please, although the current campaign against secondhand smoke will not prevent the 21st-century universe from killing us. It merely provides the illusion of safety.
Texas Platters
Tacks, the Boy DisasterOh, Beatrice Software can now deconstruct songs to determine their “hit” ability. Feed it “Frozen Feet.” From the mid-Sixties and for roughly a decade after, if you’d fed Top 40 radio the leadoff track of this young Austin quartet’s debut – presto! Communal love song (everybody loves it). Today, there’s the FOX…
A Downtown Plan
Who decides?
DVD Watch
The end of an era on six discs
Little Man
If you can accept the very idea of Shawn Wayans’ face on the body of an infantilized baby-man in diapers, who’s to care about the quality of anything else in the movie?
After a Fashion
Austin designer Jerri Kunz on plastic trees and the shoeless
Texas Platters
Chris BlackJericho (Shamrock) The dark crunch of strings rips through the speakers as a warning to all passersby. This is no ordinary musician. Reaching beyond the boundaries of genre, delving into theatrical representations of hot and cold, Chris Black debuts his solo album, a collection of more throb than beat, instruments churning and bleeding all…
Homemade History
Las Manitas, the Pérez sisters, and a usable past
TV Eye
The other woman
Lady in the Water
The performances are bang-on, and there are moments of great beauty throughout, but Lady in the Water ultimately capsizes under the weight of its own goofy story.
Day Trips
The Rio Chama is a beautiful day-trip destination in nearby New Mexico
Texas Platters
Meat PurveyorsSomeday Soon Things Will Be Much Worse! (Bloodshot) It’s been nearly a decade since the Meat Purveyors arrived on the Austin music scene full of beer and tequila and with a decidedly different idea of what bluegrass could be. Someday Soon Things Will Be Much Worse! is their fifth album, but those who think…
HD 48: Where’s Ben?
Considered the favorite six months ago to capture the House District 48 seat vacated by Todd Baxter, Republican Ben Bentzin has all but disappeared from the playing field
Clerks II
Kevin Smith is on solid footing with this sequel, which finds the filmmaker and his raunchy protagonists at the precipice of maturity but moving ahead with cautious baby steps.
To Your Health
Laboratory testing is one of the most important aspects of modern medicine
Texas Platters
Eric HisawThe Crosses (Saustex Media) When you consider the number of roots-rock acts emerging in the last decade, it’s a short-jump conclusion to assume the genre’s sheer playability. Very few, however – John Fogerty and Jay Farrar come to mind – have done it with anything approaching the dazzling electricity and personal style necessary to…
EMS: Let ’em rest
In an effort to reduce fatigue, Austin-Travis Co. EMS begins a new, more flexible work schedule.
Monster House
This animated tale of a carnivorous, haunted house and the band of neighborhood kids who decide to put it out of commission feels maddeningly unfinished.
The Common Law
Protective orders – how can they help?
Texas Platters
The Gospel According to Austin Vol. 5 (KGSR) As the Bells of Joy exemplify on “In the Morning,” gospel has the ability to transform the most basic concepts into epic adventures of spiritual cleansing. Spirited by local acts of country, blues, folk, and bluegrass backgrounds, this fifth volume of KGSR’s The Gospel According to Austin…
GOP Redistricting: Hosing down the ballot
The implications of three Republicans – Henry Bonilla, Lamar Smith, and Michael McCaul – all based somewhere else and representing Travis County, aren’t merely about the county’s representation in Congress. In a world of old-fashioned partisan politics, changing of guard also has down-ballot implications.
Strangers With Candy
The high school comedy of co-creators Dinello, Colbert, and Sedaris is completely over the top in its audacity and absurdity.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Try Domino’s reindeer sausage pizza … in Iceland.
Texas Platters
Butch HancockCactus Cafe, July 13 The first of two nights celebrating Butch Hancock’s 61st birthday was a mash-up of Kerrville campfire and an all-too-brief appearance by the Flatlanders. Introduced as “the West Texas Wonder,” Hancock is still best known for his wry, intricate wordplay and a deep love of the songs of Townes Van Zandt.…
Weed Watch: Goose Creek Police Geese
Nearly three years after police in Charleston, S.C., suburb made guns-drawn high school raid, ACLU announces federal court has approved ‘landmark settlement with students who sued school officials and police
Luv Doc Recommends: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Doing a live production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in July in Austin is like doing Beach Blanket Bingo in Siberia in December: You gotta have some world-class thespians to sell that kind of incongruity. Flannel is hot enough in the winter, but flannel on the Zilker Hillside Stage in the dead of summer…
