Cover Story
The Miller’s Tale
Swinging across the century with Ernie Mae Miller, ‘a little blues, a little bawdy’
More Sweaty Republican Goodness!
Florida House representative almost caught with someone else’s pants down.
Anthrax in Texas (The Good Kind)
Will San Antonio be the new home to Homeland Security’s new bioterrorism research facility?
Express Midseason Report
The 40-50 Round Rock Express headed into the AAA All-Star break with a firm hold on last place in their division and seven games behind the first-place New Orleans Zephyrs. Their 23-24 home record has to be a source of frustration for skipper Jackie Moore. Still, seven games back is not unmanageable, and there is…
Did Miers Leave a Forwarding Address?
The White House keeps up its sterling record for file management.
If Harriet Won’t Go to the Committee …
Will the Miers’ no-show lead to new court woes for the administration?
The Mayor Wears Prada
Will Wynn continues his sartorial, headline-grabbing excesses.
Lady Bird: Funeral Arrangements Confirmed
Austin will have a chance to say farewell to the former first lady and noted advocate for the environment.
News on the Copa América, Under-20 World Cup, Asian Cup, Austin Lightning, and More
The Austin Lightning are on the road this weekend in Laredo. Their next home game is July 29 against the DFW Tornados; still waiting for news on rescheduling the two games rained out in June. The U.S. beat Brazil, 2-1, to finish atop their group in the Under-20 World Cup. They face Uruguay in the…
Spurs to Own Toros
In a great bit of news for the Austin Toros and for basketball fans around the city (and even in the Hill Country), the reigning NBA champion San Antonio Spurs have agreed to purchase our local D-League affiliate from Southwest Basketball, LLC. As the owners of the Toros, the Spurs will be overseeing all aspects…
Lady Bird Johnson, R.I.P.
Former first lady dies after battle with illness.
Terry Nelson and that TRMPAC Thing
McCain loses an old buddy of Tom DeLay’s.
The Numbers: Caritas Releases Its 2006 Annual Report
Caritas of Austin is fighting the good fight against poverty, one year at a time. Just released is the agency’s 2006 annual report, which marks 43 years of service and documents the agency’s ever-expanding mission. Caritas assists families in avoiding eviction and homelessness, feeds hundreds of people each day, and advises job-seekers as they become…
CAMPO to Hire Consultant for Cap Metro
Members of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s new peer review committee are preparing to hire a consultant to review the governance, financing, and planning of Capital Metro. The biggest looming issue at Cap Metro is finances. At a CAMPO work session this week, Cap Metro’s Chief of Staff, Andrea Lofye, told the subcommittee that…
Negotiations Under Way Over Gasoline-Holding Tanks
County leaders have sent Sun Coast Resources back to negotiate with neighbors over a plan to put six 20,000-gallon gasoline-holding tanks on the company’s property on Johnny Morris Road. Neighbors, who still remember the Springdale tank farm fiasco, are not satisfied with the company’s assurances the tanks are safer than most gas stations. A community…
Lakes Latest: Barton to Open, Travis Stays Closed
Will Lake Travis be open for the weekend?
McCain’s Snit Over Knits
Ooooooh, John McCain is such a He-Man!
Murder Statistics
News on double stabbing slaying, and Austin murder stats.
Noriega: Inching Toward Senate
Rick Noriega is officially thinking about thinking about running against John Cornyn.
The Tori Party
Tori Spelling “Rev”s it up.
Comptroller’s Cupboard Not Bare
Texas confirms it actually has the money to pay employees the raise it promised them.
Who Steals a Faucet?
Armed rep highlights the big copper theft problem.
The Rapture of Annie Clark
Annie Clark takes over the Parish as St. Vincent.
Toby: Part II
Statesman draws first blood in Futrell fracas.
July Is for Lovers (of Screaming and Feedback)
Mohawk’s Tuesday July residency is a good’un, I tell you what. Ume, led by whirling dervish Lauren Larson, knocks down the hive tomorrow night (and July 24) along with Ringo Deathstarr, and Horse + Donkey feeds back to black next Tuesday. And this Wednesday night, a certain sea-faring group from the Northwest will perform a…
Roy Williams, B.J. Johnson, and Sloan Thomas Host Youth Football Camp
Roy Williams, B.J. Johnson, and Sloan Thomas will be hosting a noncontact football camp this weekend that’ll focus on the skills and fundamentals that make for a good football player. They’ve also invited Michael Griffin, Nathan Vasher, Derrick Johnson, Michael Huff, and several other current and former UT and NFL stars. Talk about star-studded. Participants…
The Long Awaited Toby Futrell Post
Thoughts on the nepotism allegations against the city manager.
From the Snake Oil Files
AG Greg Abbott files suit against a half-billion dollar nutritional supplement scheme that he calls a sham.
Texas Rollergirls Host WFTDA Tournament in September
Mark your calendars now: During the last weekend in September, Austin’s own Texas Rollergirls will host the second annual Women’s Flat Track Derby Association Championship Tournament. Defending their title as 2006’s WFTDA champion, the Texas Rollergirls’ top team will compete with seven other flat-track Roller Derby teams. The list of competitors comprises the Top 4…
Andy Brown Wins Scoot Inn Beer-Bobbing Contest
The Eastside’s Scoot Inn and Attack Formation’s Ben Webster hosted the fourth annual July Fourth Beer Bob (this year benefiting the Crack Pipes’ Billy Steve Korpi) with live music, a beer-bobbing competition, and free jambalaya from Gene’s Poboys. Here’s the haps on beer bobbing: 1) Inflate a children’s pool; 2) fill said pool with water,…
Troy Patton Looks Sharp in AAA Debut
Troy Patton looked great Friday night in his AAA debut with the Round Rock Express allowing only four hits and one earned run over seven innings as the Express defeated Omaha 3-1. Patton picked up the W. The 21-year-old is the youngest player currently on the Express’ roster and looks to be a solid candidate…
More Places to Splash Around
More lakes to re-open after flooding.
Now Where Do We Know That Name …
Ex-senator Drew Nixon’s in trouble again. At least this time it doesn’t involve hookers and guns.
Gay Bomb Explodes
Dr. Strangelove takes on gay male porn.
More Proof Homeland Security is Trash
News team hits dumpster diving jackpot.
Joey Chestnut Becomes Hot-Dog-Eating World Champ
OK, so we’re a little late in reporting it (we had to digest!), but Joey Chestnut unseated six-time winner Kobayashi Wednesday during the annual Nathan’s Famous Hot-Dog-Eating Championship on Coney Island, finishing with 66 hot dogs to Kobayashi’s 63, and earning the title of world’s fastest eater. Sixty-six hot dogs is also a new world…
Healthcare District Report
Funding for children’s health insurance is up, as are hospital reimbursement rates for Medicaid.
Break Out the Paddles
The lakes are re-opening, but the process could be very slow.
Cardiovascular Blues (Inner Secrets)
“I’m going to have to shave you,” nodded the nurse, holding up a little white Bic razor. We both looked at my chest. Standing there on a treadmill, soon to sport more electrodes than William Hurt in Altered States, I sighed. It took me 30 years to grow that! “One Way Out,” an Elmore James/Sonny…
Matisyahu: Making, Taking You Higher
First, the folks at the Backyard need to be applauded for the solution they’ve come up with to the horrible parking situation. They’ve arranged with a local Home Depot and a church on Bee Cave Road for offsite parking, where you can hop a shuttle bus to the venue. It’s the route I took, and…
Day Trips
The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame & Tex Ritter Museum honors and remembers state luminaries
Texas Platters
Ray PriceThe Essential (Columbia/Legacy) Although he found his greatest success with the later pop orchestrations of countrypolitan hits like “For the Good Times,” Columbia’s new 2-CD compilation spanning the Country Music Hall of Famer’s quarter-century career with the label demonstrates by default that Ray Price’s early work reflects the fullest extent of his influence. His…
Developing Stories
Neighbors file similar suit to RG4N’s
TV Eye
Can’t live with it …
Vertigo Ramp: Inclined toward humor
In the improv created by Craig Kotfas and Ted Rutherford as the duo Vertigo Ramp, the unintentional chaos in the patterns is often as delightful as the patterns themselves
Soccer Watch
Looks to be three and out for the U.S. team at Copa Am�rica, and more
Texas Platters
Guy ForsythUnrepentant Schizophrenic Americana (Small and Nimble) Two hundred twenty-two minutes. That’s how much Guy Forsyth & Co. cram onto the two live platters of the well-named Unrepentant Schizophrenic Americana. Pick a weapon – harmonica, composer’s pen, saw, bandleader baton, voice, guitar – and Forsyth will display his formidable skills, particularly onstage, where the Austin…
Point Austin: Getting Wello
Join the fight for universal health care
Biodiesel Comes to Central Austin
Biodiesel is now available in Central Austin at Juniors Beer and Wine, 705 W. 29th, just west of Guadalupe. Here, John Zamora Jr. fills up one of Juniors’ King-Daddy Ice delivery trucks. Local retailer Austin Biofuels kicked off sales of B99 (99% biodiesel and 1% petroleum diesel) there last week. ABF’s biodiesel is made in…
Austin Lyric Opera: Pittsburgh Opera’s Kevin Patterson takes the reins
Kevin Patterson of Pittsburgh Opera has been hired to serve as Austin Lyric Opera’s new general director
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The argument against ties and flip-flops
Texas Platters
MonahansLow Pining (Undertow) Although named after the Permian Basin town, population 6,800, called the “oasis of the West Texas desert,” post-Milton Mapes endeavor Monahans (same band, different name) swaps the smoldering Southwestern vistas of 2005’s The Blacklight Trap for the marine melancholy of ocean-themed debut Low Pining. As two of the most desolate, hostile, and…
Reefer Madness
Apparently, the mere mention of drugs justifies suppressing student speech
Barbara Jordan Statue: Standing like she stood up for the Constitution
After a second national search, a design for UT’s proposed statue of Barbara Jordan has been chosen, this one by California sculptor Bruce Wolfe
The Common Law
Class-action lawsuit – should I participate?
Texas Platters
Mr. Lewis & the Funeral 5Murder and the Art of Dance (Chicken Ranch) If it’s closing time, and a circus barker trapped you in the circus freak-show tent, fear not. Let Mr. Lewis & the Funeral 5 be your soundtrack to escape. Such is the Austin act that acknowledges Ennio Morricone, Esquivel, and Alice Cooper…
Naked City
Quote of the Week “It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals.” – Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, expressing his displeasure at the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence by President Bush Headlines• On Monday, President Bush commuted the felony sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, preserving…
Transformers
What matters most about Transformers isn’t subtext (this is Michael Bay after all), but what happens when big, loud, heavy things bang into other differently colored big, loud, heavy things.
Austin Script Works: Swanson steps down as artistic director
After three years as artistic director of Austin Script Works, playwright Colin Denby Swanson is leaving her leadership post at the organization to focus full-time on her writing
La Traviata
Not only does Marion Gilchrist make great food, day after day, but the restaurant is actually better for every year it has been open
Texas Platters
Scott AdairLiquidation (Bunkhaus) The majority of the songs on Scott Adair’s debut, Liquidation, were written, but never released, almost a decade ago for the band the Royal Towers, and most of them have aged well. The claustrophobic breakdown in “Everything Is Fixed” accents the song’s bleak subject matter, as do the country-fried guitar and percussive…
Stalled at the ‘Y’? Sounds Familiar
Proposals to move traffic go nowhere
License to Wed
A couple seeks connubial advice from a celibate with an affinity for Popeye impressions.
Forte at Forty
Thriving under Jack Allen’s leadership, KMFA endures as Classically Austin radio
North by Northwest Restaurant & Brewery
A longtime team on top of their game
Texas Platters
A. RexMoving Backwards In this cruel world of immediacy and complacency, the sophomore slump remains prevalent. Local duo A. Rex isn’t immune. Andrew Espinola means every word, and second Andrew Jones keeps time like a pro. What’s missing on Moving Backwards is the pizzazz. Opening track “Determined” is college radio from the early Nineties: lo-fi…
Another Springs/Aquifer Development Fight
Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District finds itself on wrong side of environmental fight as its board continues determining whether it should build new headquarters on donated parcel inside aquifer recharge zone
The Mouse That Roared
The Mouse That Roared 1959, NR, 83 min. Directed by Jack Arnold, Starring Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg. th
KMFA’s History
KMFA first burst on the air Jan. 29, 1967, using the rousing “William Tell” overture to alert Austin – then a city of just 250,000 residents – that classical music was back on the radio and here to stay. It wasn’t the city’s first classical station; that was KHFI-FM, which was also the first FM…
United Plates
Andrew F. Smith at Central Market
Texas Platters
Most folks recognize Jack Saunders from his longtime association with Shake Russell. Living for the Sunshine (White Cat), his third solo disc, offers a sturdy sample of the San Antonian’s brand of folk ‘n’ country. Too earnest at times and clichéd at others, Saunders continues earning respect for keeping at it and giving the flavorful…
Happenings
July 5-11
Arts Review
Different Stages has put together a production of Somerset Maugham’s The Constant Wife, which makes for an elegant, enjoyable, urbane evening of theatre
The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accompaniments
by David Lebovitz Ten Speed Press, 246 pp., $24.95 As an avid amateur ice-cream maker, I’m thrilled to recommend David Lebovitz’s newest cookbook to liven up your summer. Written in his characteristic chatty, witty voice, The Perfect Scoop starts with the basics of ice-cream making. It includes a review of ingredients and their purposes, descriptions…
Texas Platters
Scandinavian Friends: A Tribute to Roky Erickson On the eve of his 60th birthday, Roky Erickson is getting one heck of a present from some Scandinavians. This northerly tribute picks up where 1990’s genre-defining Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye left off, recasting 15 Erickson classics while still retaining the psychoactive spirit of the originals.…
Lege News: Keel named chief parliamentarian
Embattled House Speaker Tom Craddick taps Austin criminal defense lawyer and former state representative to serve as his chief parliamentarian, a move suggesting deepening resolve to fight further attempts at his ouster
Arts Review
Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney’s Parallel Lives was a cult classic in the Eighties, but in the City Theatre production, it still feels fresh
Food-o-File
El Gringo morphs into Molto, and chef Kristine Kittrell couldn’t be happier
Texas Platters
Clap! Clap!You Love This! Capturing a Clap! Clap! live show promised to be an unlikely endeavor, but the unruly Austin octet’s debut LP compensates for the corporeal experience by revealing surprisingly intricate compositions normally lost amid the sweat of the dance floor. Although debts to neo-dance-rock mainstays the Rapture, the Faint, and !!! are unavoidably…
Plug-in Hybrids Get Jump Start
House Ways and Means Committee approves first-ever federal incentive bill for plug-in vehicles
Arts Review
Artist Whitney Lee has taken cute farm animals and adorable house pets – icons of traditional domestic crafts – and postered them across the streets of Austin
Event Menu
July 6-12
Texas Platters
PAILThe Last Soundtrack The promise of brand-new life is usually as popular a topic in the industrial universe as rainbows and daffodils. Even Skinny Puppy fans reproduce, however, so Pail’s Mike and Rachel Titsworth can be forgiven for penning The Last Soundtrack opener “OMG” about their new offspring, especially since the steamrolling song recalls KMFDM…
Police Seek Help Finding Killer
Police are asking for help finding the person who shot and killed 22-year-old Ricky Lynn Shepherd Jr.
Readings
In the early Nineties, for women and girls looking for an alternative to waxy, vanilla-scented teen mags, there was really one choice
Texas Platters
The Bulemics… Still Too Young to Care (Scarey) This odds-and-more-sods CD/DVD from the Bulemics resonates with all the slapdash irreverence of a hurriedly-assembled burn mix. If the decade-spanning Italian import doesn’t always present the venerable Austin punk quintet in the most positive light, that’s sort of the point. Sporting 36 tracks of foul-mouthed negation, the…
The Hightower Report
Why Not ‘Drink Local’?; and Clogging Up Congress
Readings
These interviews catalog lost opportunities that could have brought Iran closer to America peacefully and headed off the rise of the reactionaries
Off the Record
Promoters square off on Red River, Daytrotter comes to Austin, Explosions goes international, and live music in Austin continues grinding
Texas Platters
Spencer ThomasVoodoo Dream As the Solid Senders’ smoky-voiced vocalist, Spencer Thomas made the girls swoon and the guys wanna play in his band. The 11 originals on Voodoo Dream prove he’s lost none of that style, stitching bluesy Texas shuffles with enough swampy Louisiana soul and Chicago punch to ensure this CD will be one…
Sound Decision
The Austin Film Society Documentary Tour: Hear and Now
Page Two: Grand Illusions
The only problem with wide-ranging, all-encompassing conspiracy theories is that they’re wrong
Texas Platters
Li’l Cap’n TravisTwilight on Sometimes Island (Glurp) Who said no band is an Island? Brian Wilson’s voices are one inside Li’l Cap’n Travis, the Austin institution’s progressive roots and pedal-steel-induced psychedelia flying eight miles high as the ’68 Byrds. “My Life in Amarillo,” from LCT’s 1999 debut, set the pace: slack. Lonesome and Losin’, 2001,…
Paying the Piper Online
Stations, labels, and musicians wrestle over new Web royalties
Studio Involvement
Catherine Parrington and the future of the Austin film industry
Oops!
Our latest batch
Texas Platters
The MonstasMeet the Monstas You’ve met the Monstas before. Ernie Durawa is a fixture on the Texas-drummer scene, having played with Doug Sahm, the Texas Tornados, Los Jazz Vatos, and countless others. Brian Mitchell is the first-call keyboardist whose credits include Bob (Dylan), Al (Green), and Levon (Helm). Add weighty pros Matt Smith, Rich Stanmyre,…
Dying Alone in Williamson County
Animal shelter conditions draw outrage and accusations
Coming Next Week
Nine people who have never made a film make one in a weekend
Letters @ 3AM
The craziness of this country is that our public and private discussions have almost nothing to do with each other
Texas Platters
Kelly WillisTranslated From Love (Rykodisc) Since 2002’s Easy, Kelly Willis has discovered unconditional love. The honeyed twang of the Austin songbird remains a hallmark on Translated, but the songs are forged with a more mature fire and relaxed tone. “Nobody Wants to Go to the Moon Anymore” sets the gamboling pace atop a cosmic steel…
Melanie Sobel’s Letter
Former Williamson Co. animal shelter director Melanie Sobel’s open letter defending her record and recounting her experiences with Williamson Co. government
iPhone Fodder
SXSWclick announces finalists in fourth annual competition
After a Fashion
Summer fashion no-no’s
Texas Platters
Rodney HaydenDown the Road (Palomino) Pleasanton, Texas, native Rodney Hayden possesses a voice made for singing country. With his ability to write gushing ballads, hard-charging rockers, and unadulterated honky-tonk, it’s bewildering more people don’t know his name. Yet the 27-year-old remains unfamiliar to all but those attuned to so-called Texas music. Down the Road, his…
On Death Row: Texas’ ‘Law of Parties’
Kenneth Foster’s capital case highlights arbitrary state law
Illegally Parked?
Robosaurus sighting
Luv Doc Recommends: Freestyle Jump Contest for Barton Springs
Barton Springs is without a doubt one of Austin’s most beloved and memorable landmarks; Beloved because for centuries it has been the coolest place in Austin (in recent years just barely edging out places like Emo’s and Kenichi); and memorable for anyone who has ever been in the public, open-air showers at Barton Springs and…
