Exhibitionism
Zachary Scott Theatre Center Whisenhunt Arena Stage, through June 27 Running time: 2 hrs, 10 min Athol Fugard penned My Children! My Africa! during an escalation of violent interaction between two worlds: the world of dominant white South Africans to which he belonged and the world of apartheid-hammered black South Africans. This period of renewed…
Blame Star Search
Blame Star Search. It was the Ed McMahon-hosted talent show that elevated karaoke stars to pop heroes and planted the seed of superstardom in the mind of every little runt who should have been happy eating Play-Doh. Whether they actually appeared on that fabled contest (two did), each teen star reviewed here started as a…
Book Me, Danno!
Each summer, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of vintage Hawaiian shirts. This is troublesome for me, as it only brings up memories of watching Hawaii Five-0 as a child. I admit it. I’ve been a Hawaii Five-0 fan for most of my life. At first, just the thrill of being allowed to stay…
Postmodern P.I.
Dennis Lehane has published five mystery novels in a hard-boiled P.I. series set in Boston. The first one, A Drink Before the War, published in 1994, became an instant classic. Bibliophiles consider $100 and upwards a bargain price for a first edition. More importantly, Lehane’s follow-up novels, Darkness, Take My Hand, Gone, Baby, Gone, Sacred,…
Dancing About Architecture
You’ve heard the slogan “June Is Jazz Month,” right? Well, for the past few mornings, the Mercury’s Mark Collins has most likely been thrown awake in a cold sweat with that phrase ringing in his ears. The Sixth Street club’s manager was the promoter of last weekend’s broadly titled Austin Music Festival, the first half…
Swearing Oath
illustration by Roy Tompkins Shit, I’ve got to stop swearing. I’ve been muttering about this to myself since my daughter was born 14 months ago. It’s a real problem. I’m an unapologetic swearer. I say “shit” and “fuck” in all their nominative, predicate, and adjectival forms. I regularly use interjections about God and His Son,…
Postscripts
Dispatch from dementia: Having stayed up most of the night reading Hannibal (Delacorte Press, $27.95), Thomas Harris’ sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, I’ve been looking over my shoulder to stare down the type of people routinely investigated by the Behavioral Science section of the FBI, the type of people who have been following…
Record Reviews
(World Circuit/Nonesuch) ELIADES OCHOA Sublime Illusion (Higher Octave) The Buena Vista Social Club recordings of the last two years, featuring some of Cuba’s great, older musicians, have been so well-received that naturally more have been cut. Top-notch vocalist Ibrahim Ferrer, who was neglected in Cuba during the Fifties, has finally gotten some props. The 72-year-old…
Off the Bookshelf
Local bestsellers are based on recent sales at Austin bookstores selected to reflect varied reading interests. This week’s list of bestsellers is from Toad Hall Children’s Bookstore, 1206 W. 38th St. 1. Eloise in Paris by Kay Thompson 2. Frank Was a Monster Who Wanted to Dance by Keith Graves 3. Goodnight Moon by Margaret…
Book Reviews
by Nathan Englander Knopf, $22 hard At a glance, young Nathan Englander seems to have it all: a wildly hyped debut collection of short stories published by Knopf, a pad in Jerusalem, and yards upon yards of a frizzy rock-star hairdo. Not to mention the most compelling and strangely pleasing book title to be put…
Downtown Mishmash
The council vote to relocate the day labor site to a site near I-35 and 50th St. was one of the ugliest in recent memory, with neighbors in a state of outrage and council members firmly divided on whether to go with the proposed site or take a desperate last stab at finding another one.…
About AIDS
You remember Nushawn Williams, whom this column has discussed before. An HIV-infected drug user, last year Mr. Williams had unprotected sexual intercourse with numerous young women in Chatauqua County, New York, allegedly infecting at least 13 of them. Although genetic testing was not used to prove that the infections indeed came from him, this spring…
Naked City
So what’s the big secret? Seems theAustin Independent School District Board of Trustees will be interviewing superintendent candidates this weekend, but the district is keeping the names of the contenders under wraps. A letter from AISD President Kathy Rider Tuesday announced that the firm the district hired to aid in its search for a permanent…
Coach’s Corner
Reflections on an outstanding weekend in sports: Friday: The Stars and Spurs. In the last half of the last year of the 20th century, two Texas teams attached only by 300 miles of concrete and an unfortunate history of winning games that don’t matter will play for championships. The Dallas Stars were pushed to seventough…
Collision Course
Wherever it’s routed, SH130 will likely remain unpopular with Austin residents who thought the point was to get rid of suburban sprawl, not to relocate it into the Eastside Blackland prairies. The highway has always been incompatible with the vision of Austin as a “city within a park.” And now, right along Sprinkle Road, the…
Day Trips
Chisholm Trail Round-Up in Lockhart harkens back to the day when the town was a staging point for cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail with fun in City Park, June 10-13. 512/398-2818. Book Fair at the Wimberley Village Library sells new and used books to benefit the library, June 12, 9am-5pm, and June 13, 2-5…
Traffic Stop
With increasing volumes of traffic threatening to raise the accident numbers higher, TxDOT officials say they have little choice but to try to fix the problem — even if it means creating more congestion in the process. So what do residents in central city neighborhoods think of the impending I-35 debacle? They aren’t thrilled. Scott…
Page Two
Late in the afternoon, laterthan we had planned, we set out from the villa in Seillans, a small French town about 40 minutes from Cannes. The drive through rural France to the highway was pleasant, and the highway fast. Things changed, though, at the Cannes turn-off; heading down to the beach where the film festival…
I-35: Rebuilding the Lower Deck
Fasten your seatbelts. The lower level of I-35 is slated for a dramatic makeover, and nobody’s promising an easy ride during the process, scheduled to begin in August 2000. TxDOT will close parts of the roadway between Airport and Manor to create safer entry and exit lanes. Here are the major elements of the plan:…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The book Green Eggs and Ham contains only 50 words. According to one source, the expression “whole nine yards” comes from concrete mixer trucks, which held nine cubic yards of concrete. When ordering concrete, one would say, “I’d like the whole nine yards” if they wanted as much as the truck could hold. Jimi Hendrix…
Road Block
A recent U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air quality regulations has the Texas Dept. of Transportation (TxDOT) scrambling, though you wouldn’t know it from listening to the top brass at the agency. On March 2, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court (normally the most conservative in the nation)…
Public Notice
Southern Living presents its Idea House to the general public this weekend. Tours of the 4,000+ square-foot dream mansion named “Travis Ridge,” in West Austin, will commence at the Grand Opening this Sat, Jun 12. The house with a name is located off of Hwy360 in Davenport Ranch, one of those “master-planned” deals right in…
Sayles Assistant
Maggie Renzi and Nancy Schafer About two years ago, at the Toronto Film Festival, I was driving around in a van with two people I met through Louis Black, my friend and boss at South by Southwest. The two people were Michael Hollett, publisher and editor of NOW Magazine in Toronto, and Maggie Renzi, producer…
Food-o-File
Home meal replacement appears to be the hottest food concept in River City this summer. We hear that 1,000 rotisserie chickens a week are flying out of Central Market Westgate (4521 Westgate, 899-4300), and customers are snatching up 50lbs of roasted garlic to accompany grilled sirloin tri-tip steaks and fresh tortillas or items from the…
Scanlines
D: Alan J. Pakula (1990) with Harrison Ford, Brian Dennehy, Raul Julia, Bonnie Bedelia, Paul Winfield, Greta Scacchi, John Spencer. We’re on the plane, coming back from our vacation. They’ve just shown Shakespeare in Love, which I had never seen before. It was historically savvy, structurally impressive, lyrical, and great fun. Next they show Presumed…
Can’t Hear Your Mama Call
Say you’re a kid in Brooklyn in the spring of ’55. Saturdays you go to the Star Theater — 25� admission, a nickel for Coke, a dime for popcorn, and the program goes all day: 10 cartoons, a Western, and a sci-fi picture in which there’s always an atom bomb and it always causes things…
Short Cuts
Break out those laminators. The fake ID business is in for a real boost according to the latest NATO accords. No, not those “peacemakers” in the Balkans — the National Association of Theatre Owners. It was announced this week by President Clinton that the trade group, which represents about 65% of the nation’s theatres, has…
A Pinch of History, A Dash of Memoir
by Kevin Zraly Sterling Publishing Company Inc., $24.95 hard Wine is confusing. Like trying to pick a winning team in Fantasy Football, there are just too many variables. That’s what makes wine hard to purchase, and that’s also what makes it enjoyable as a hobby. You can spend your life learning the various intricacies and…
To Be Seen and Heard
Ricky Martin became an American media darling following his Grammy performance. I have a convoluted view of the entertainment industry. I’m reminded of this after conversations with like-minded friends and particularly un-like-minded folks. I’m reminded of it when observing the machinations of the entertainment industry in general and the television industry in particular. Actually, that’s…
Nothing Succeeds Like Access
illustration by Robert Faires So you want to go out — perhaps to the movies or the theatre. If you’re like me, at most you decide to go only hours before the show. You jump in the car, careen to the theatre, and slide into your seat with a few minutes to spare. Imagine having…
The Singer Not the Song
There was one brief and somewhat tarnished moment during my adolescence — somewhere around 1966-1967 — in which I couldn’t distinguish between the inherent value of the Velvet Underground versus the Monkees or Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention and Paul Revere & the Raiders. That confession is not alarming in view of my…
Playing on the Past
Gorf. QBert. Zaxxon. Kaboom. Yar’s Revenge. Hunt the Wumpus. Dig Dug. For anyone who’s ever played them, just hearing the titles of these vintage masterpieces can trigger an overpowering flood of sense memories — the look of the chunky two-dimensional graphics, the hypnotic repetition of boinks and bleeps, the dull ache in your button thumb…
Austin Access Arts Summer Events
If you wish to volunteer for Access Austin Arts, want more information on its programs, or wish to be involved in the video project, check out AAA’s Web site at: http://www.main.org/accessarts/ or call 454-9912. Upcoming events are listed below. JUNE Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace(AD): June 12 at Barton Creek Cinema; June 26…
Confessions of a Boy Band Groupie
In my youth, I took a strong anti-boy band stance. Recently, however, I’ve discovered something truly icky about myself that I cannot rationalize as ironic posturing. My rather unsettling epiphany struck one afternoon as I tore into the cellophane flesh of three new purchases by Robby, Ricky, and Jordan. Here’s the deal: I dig boy…
Bonus Round
The word “atari” is taken from the Japanese board game, Go. When you are about to win at Go, you say “atari,” just as you’d say “check” in chess. Atari was originally going to be called Syzygy, but that name was already taken. According to Webster’s, a syzygy is a “straight-line configuration of three celestial…
Articulations
Calling all artists who want a voice in the full-body makeover of Palmer Auditorium! This coming week, project consultants will be in Austin to talk to local performing arts groups about their needs and dreams for the renovated facility. To date, the arts companies most often associated with the renovation have been the handful of…
America Circa 1999
“Teenage girls now control the world’s economy.” — SPIN, July 1999 “Sometimes you say you’re not going to scream, but you do.” — Karen Lopez, 14, in Times Square to see ‘N Sync on MTV’s Total Request Live (The New York Times, December 28, 1998) illustration by Jason Stout The scream has become deafening. Building…
High Scores
Old, new, and unreleased video games: http://www.angelfire.com/ma/hozervideo/ Unused, unopened Atari, Coleco, and Intellivision systems and equipment: http://www.telegames.com Atari cartridges for 80 cents apiece: http://www.oshealtd.com/ ATARI 2600 Nexus: http://2600nexus.atari.org James Hague’s Giant List and his book Halcyon Days, featuring interviews with the fathers of gaming: http://dadgum.com Atari Historical Society Virtual Museum: http://www.atari-history.com Activision re-releases: http://www.activision.com Infocom…
