Little Fleshlets, On the Run
illustration by Jason Stout In my back-pocket black notebook I wrote the date numerically without punctuation: 111999 The first day of the last year of the last century of this millennium. Then I wrote the place and time: Terlingua — Texas — 2AM. Terlingua’s a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, near the Rio Grande.…
Same Old Song
This much is a certainty: Phil Corriveau is out as the general manager of KUT, the University of Texas-owned public radio station. Why he is out depends on whom you ask. And the harder part is trying to separate fact from spin, rumor, and speculation. The July 8 edition of Dale Smith’s radio column in…
Automat
Taco Arriba & Chelo Kabob 2525 W. Anderson (Northcross Mall Food Court), 459-4595 Mon-Sat, noon-9pm; Sun, noon-6pm One-stop shopping — Persian cuisine and tacos at the Northcross Mall. Named for the national dish of Iran, Chelo Kabob is a place to people-watch and share with a friend a platter of beef, chicken, or ground beef…
Naked City
OK, here’s a little good news/bad news for you: The good news is if the City Council approves a proposed taxicab fare hike today, July 22, the next time you have to take a cab less than two miles, you probably won’t be yelled at by the driver about the length of your excursion, as…
Food-o-File
The area of the Texas Hill Country along Hwy 290 from Johnson City into Fredericksburg is changing rapidly, with new restaurants, antique stores, B&Bs, wineries, and other small businesses designed to appeal to the tourists and new residents in the area. While attending the Lavender Festival at Becker Vineyards (off 290 W. on Jenschke Lane,…
There’s Something About Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick, 1964 From the time of his sudden death on March 7 to the opening last week of his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been the subject of innumerable essays and conversations. A cult director to the cinephiles, a chilly stylist to his critics, Kubrick was always an original. An…
Searching for Bargains
1.Mike Zinni: Westlake’s Cab Cali-Way;manager ofThe Cellar (3520 Bee Caves Rd). Close to a decade of wine experience, including some experience with Block Distributors; has ripened under the influence of Cellar owners Sue Carter and Leonard Joseph; loves big California Cabs. 2.John Roenigk: La Salle of the South; owner and manager of The Austin Wine…
Scanlines
D: Robert Wise (1963) with Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn. Watching the theatrical coming-attractions trailers for 1999’s The Haunting unnerves me. Director Jan De Bont’s 1999 remake of Robert Wise’s 1963 classic adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, features a cast as strong as the original. Where once…
Flight 1: Light- to Medium-Bodied Whites
1997 Bollini Pinot Grigio ($8.99): light, clean Italian white with almond and citrus flavors 1997 Wairau River Sauvignon Blanc ($19.99): perky, tropical, and exotic New Zealand S.B.; RINGER 1998 Chateau Haut Rian Bodeaux Sec ($9.99): fragrant, herbal and floral blend of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc; brightly acidic 1997 Mont Clair Cuv�e Vielle Reserve Chardonnay ($9.99):…
Short Cuts
What do The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies and videotape have in common? Both films will prove to be landmarks in the changing landscape of independent film exhibition. In 1989 Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies was one of the first films to prove that a modestly budgeted movie that was picked up for a song…
Exhibitionism
Dougherty Arts Center, July 16 Running Time: 1 hr, 50 min “Time, Time, Time, see what’s become of me.” Whether or not playwright Preston Jones was actually grooving to the Simon & Garfunkel album Bookends as he wrote the script for Lu Ann Hampton Laverty Oberlander, this middle work in Jones’ reputation-making “Texas Trilogy” shares…
Dancing About Architecture
This should have been a banner week for punk rock — after all, when’s the last time the Dead Kennedys got a new member? — but overall, the sad state of the local music scene continues to degenerate. You’ve no doubt already noticed this issue’s near-complete coverage of Liberty Lunch as that legendary venue enters…
TV Eye
Of all the networks, the WB is the most aggressive (and generous) with their promotional material, though reviewing a tape with caveats attached doesn’t make the work easy. Notes about re-casting or re-shaping roles — sometimes major ones at that — causes a reviewing dilemma. In other words, why bother previewing a tape if the…
A Museum Comes of Age
Traditionally, in Mexico,when a se�orita becomes 15, or quince a�os, she is considered “of age” and presented to the community in elaborate religious ceremonies and receptions. She has 14 maids and escorts and, of course, the prerequisite padrinos — or sponsors — for everything from seemingly insignificant details, like the young girl’s shoes, to important…
Fast Times at Liberty Lunch
We come to praise Liberty Lunch, not to bury it. The gathering of tribes happens too often after something has died, that familiar groundswell of emotion unleashed. We mourn the passing of our bands and our clubs as we would our heroes, our friends, our family, our sons of beloved presidents. And why not? You…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
St. Patrick is the patron saint of Nigeria. Al Nino of Nipomo, California, received more than a 100 phone calls from strangers who reproached him for 1998’s various storms. Yankee baseball great Tommy Henrich’s restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, was converted into the first Wendy’s hamburger stand. According to producer Sherwood Schwartz, Robert Reed once stormed…
Off the Bookshelf
by Steve Stern Graywolf Press, $14 paper A flying rabbi, a seducing succubus, and a voyeuristic prophet are among the surreal characters who populate The Wedding Jester, a collection of stories that brings to vivid relief the superstitions, customs, and experiences of old-world Jewish immigrants against the bustling and often disaffecting American landscape. Stern writes…
Peaceable Kingdom
Liberty Lunch was always a magical place. From the first day we opened, December 6, 1975, the smell of Chef Emil Vogely’s gumbo lured artists, students, city employees, transients, and the curious to this out-of-the-way former tortilla factory on West Second Street. We discovered the name Liberty Lunch while scraping paint off the front of…
Postscripts
One consequence of the proliferation of memoirs is manifested in reviews of them; there’s now a necessity, if a reviewer wants to recommend a memoir, to say that it “rises above all those other memoirs” or to stress that it isn’t one of those whiny, weepy confessionals. It’s worth repeating after reading Elva Trevi�o Hart’s…
Long Live Liberty Lunch
With the final nights at the old Liberty Lunch creeping slowly around the corner, we called up a small herd of local music industry veterans and asked them for a few choice words about the club and its closing. Almost all were happy to oblige. Some of these words were spoken with anger, a few…
Future Near, Future Dear
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson A Good Old-fashioned Future by Bruce Sterling Bantam Spectra, $6.99 paper It’s obvious from reading A Good Old-fashioned Future, Bruce Sterling’s new collection of seven previously published stories, that the author has struck a deal with his Muse. “You give me license to use all sort of words no one…
Live at Liberty Lunch
Liberty Lunch, Always Burning Spear’s Winston Rodney photograph by John Carrico It was a hot Sunday afternoon late in the summer of 1978. Having arrived in town only two weeks prior, I ventured for the first time down to an otherwise deserted section of West Second Street for some kind of music and egg cooking…
Book Reviews
The Marx Family Saga by Juan Goytisolo, translated by Peter Bush City Lights Books, $10.95 paper At this late point in the century, the most fresh and wrenching images left by the Communist world are those of a great dismantling and collapse. Colossal statues toppling toward the ground. Empty shelves once stacked with loaves of…
This Old House
One of the main tenets of the interviewing process is that oftimes the best quotes occur when the tape recorder is switched off. This isn’t so much the case with Mark Pratz, primary architect behind everything that Liberty Lunch has come to represent in its 24-year history as Austin’s premier live music venue. Everything he…
About AIDS
“Grandpa has AIDS?” Such a concept is probably unthinkable to most Americans, but recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control suggests that this may be true more often than anticipated and also true with increasing frequency. They document a 22% rise in the number of people over age 50 diagnosed with fully developed…
A Very Select (and Edited) List of Bands Who Played Liberty Lunch
Flaming Lips, Elliott Smith, Sean and Julian Lennon, Verve Pipe, Smashing Pumpkins, Shoulders, Wannabes, Wilco, Son Volt, Steel Pulse, Joan Jett, Twinkle Bros., Scratch Acid, Toadies, Butthole Surfers, Dash Rip Rock, Oasis, Luscious Jackson, Poco, Wallflowers, Ricky Nelson, Dolly Parton, Joe Ely, Big Boys. Nirvana for only a $7 cover. The band that peed on…
Coach’s Corner
Once most of my columns began with anecdotal tales on the Life of Coach. There was no end of material. My two young boxers always caused column-quality problems — some social (one’s maniacally aggressive toward others of her ilk), others of a more practical nature. In time, solutions arose. The social problems ended when I…
Light Headed?
Up until now, Rae, Walker, and Cap Met have positioned themselves in listening mode, getting big-picture input in focus groups and neighborhood meetings and through the little AIM survey cards that seem to be everywhere. The latter ask “If you had $100 to spend, how much would you spend on each of the following four?”…
Day Trips
Dinosaurs roam the state park photograph by Gerald E. McLeod [Ed. note: This “Daytrips” was originally supposed to run in Vol. 18, No. 45.] Dinosaur Valley State Park outside of Glen Rose provides rock-solid proof that the prehistoric monsters were the original Texans. Frozen in the white limestone, the footprints make it look like the…
Alternatives for Getting From Here to There
The light-rail Red, Green, Orange and Blue Lines are the same, but the terms are different. Back in 1997, they were proposed for construction in that order; now, any of them could be Austin’s first, last, or only light-rail line, if we have rail at all. We now have different versions of each — two…
Page Two
Welcome to The Austin Chronicle special Arts Venue Guide issue. An army of people worked on this (special thanks to the interns), but it was masterminded by Robert Faires, who deserves all praise. This was a real labor of love, a chance to give our readers an on-going, useable guide to Austin’s art venues. This…
The People (562 of ’em) Have Spoken
Here are some highlights of the AIM market study, conducted by NuStats International for Capital Metro, among a sample of 562 Austinites, during May: � Seventy-three percent of the respondents think Austin is a “much better” or “somewhat better” place to live than other U.S. cities. Only 5% thought Austin was “somewhat worse” or “much…
Public Notice
When we were wee, we used to play in Jean S.’s playhouse, a rickety but functional number fashioned by her father out of leftover construction materials from his many gigs as a building contractor. It was cool. It had (probably asbestos) siding, real window wells, and real roof shingles, even. We spent many an afternoon…
The Good Earth
City staff presented a smorgasbord of transportation improvements competing for federal TEA-21 (that’s Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century to you) money. The Texas Department of Transportation doles out the money, which this year totals about $128 million, funding up to 80% of what it deems to be worthy projects across the state. (The…
