Cover Story
Serious GAME
For the Austin Outlaws, the game is the only thing
Nacho Libre Lucha Libre Extravaganza
Nacho Libre Lucha Libre Extravaganza 2006, PG. Directed by Jared Hess, Starring Jack Black. A preview of the new Jack Black comedy with director Jared Hess in attendance. Also wrestling, masks, Mexican food, and more.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Reunion
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Reunion 1970, NC-17, 109 min. Directed by Russ Meyer, Starring Dolly Read, Cynthia Myers, Marcia McBroom, John LaZar, Michael Blodgett, David Gurian, Edy Williams, Erica Gavin, Phyllis Davis. Attending in person will be film stars Erica Gavin, Cynthia Myers, and John LaZar to toast this enduring Russ Meyer classic…
Funniest People
The merry month of May was a big month for Austin’s mirthmasters, with three contests determining who among us can provoke the biggest laughs
Taverna
At the corner of Second and Lavaca, Taverna is the newest eatery to grace the latest ‘hippest-spot-in-town’ and the current see-and-be-seen Downtown dining scene
Rock & Roll Books
Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be: A Rock & Roll Fairy Taleby Jen Trynin Harcourt, 354 pp., $23 The music industry has changed since the Nineties. General distrust of major labels has brought indie-label prestige and smaller expectations. Every musician still dreams of being a rock star, but the financial and emotional reality is clearer.…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
Arts String
The 2006 class of the Austin Arts Hall of Fame
Bass Concert Hall
The UT Board of Regents has upgraded the fire and safety upgrade of Bass Concert Hall to a $14.7 million renovation of the 3,000-seat hall
Oaxacan Tamaleo
The tamales are superlative: the best in town
Rock & Roll Books
Let’s Get To The Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silverby Horace Silver University of California Press, 248 pp., $29.95 Pianist/composer Horace Silver’s legacy of artistic stature and commercial success spans a half century and includes, not only some of the greatest small jazz groups ever, but also a fair share of the music’s most…
Special Transit Users Fear Cap Metro Cutbacks
Transportation agency wants to tighten eligibility; advocates for disabled worry that vital services will be slashed
TCB
Austin’s weeklong goodbye to Clifford Antone, while the club he left behind ponders its own future
Austin Playwrights
Four Austin playwrights are getting the opportunity to develop and showcase new work in the Big Apple
Wine of the Week
Hook and Ladder
Rock & Roll Books
Rock & Roll Archaeologistby Peter Blecha Sasquatch Books, 207 pp., $16.95 In 2000, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen opened the Experience Music Project, a 140,000-square-foot Seattle museum dedicated to the rise of rock and the history of Northwest music. At the time, few realized that beyond Sub Pop and Nirvana, the Jet City had been home…
Weed Watch
Fox reconsiders drug legalization; and Beavis and Butt-head spike the teachers’ brownies
The Break-Up
Thirtysomething icon Jennifer Aniston grieves a failed relationship in one half of the movie, while thirtysomething icon Vince Vaughn grows up in the other.
Arts Review
In the provocative new drama Minus Tide by Austin playwright Kimberly Burke, distance can make it hard to tell clouds from mountains and abuse from love
Food-o-file
FINO is only getting better; plus, Starlite’s descendants and the Eastside Cafe’s new marketing strategy.
Rock & Roll Books
Little Money Street: In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France by Fernanda Eberstadt Alfred A. Knopf, 242 pp., $24.95 Ben Harper walks into a bar but is refused service because he’s black. Deep South? Yep, deep south France – Perpignan – near the Spanish border. It’s one of the interesting…
Point Austin: Hanging Up on AT&T
My boss is suing the phone company – bully for him
Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont
Joan Plowright stars in this bittersweet yet predictable story about an aging widow’s new friendships.
Arts Review
Though the shows Talent Show 1989 and Catastrophe Theory aren’t related, the Getalong Gang’s spoof of junior high talents and Stephen Pruitt’s account of his career path both offer much in the way of entertainment
DIY Queer Community
Can�t relate to what Austin�s gay scene has to offer? Make one of your own!
Rock & Roll Books
Great Pretenders: My Strange Love Affair with 50s Pop Musicby Karen Schoemer Free Press, 241 pp., $25 What began as an aimless project that threatened to get sucked into a research vortex almost a decade ago finally morphed into Great Pretenders, former Newsweek critic Karen Schoemer’s tracing of the much-maligned genre of American music in…
Beside the Point
Council ponders where to set the property-tax rate, and which health care package should cover city employees and their partners
District B13
Set in the near-future of 2010, this French import is not big on plot exposition, instead focusing on its finely wrought action momentum, which moves ever forward with rushing exhilaration.
Arts Review
With the exhibit ‘Sugarcoated,’ co-curators Lisa Choinacky and Katherine McQueen have assembled an energetic mix of drawings, paintings, sculpture, textiles, and mixed media by female artists
gAyTX Fun Guide
Hot, gay fun in the ATX
Rock & Roll Books
Nashville Radio: Art, words, and musicby Jon Langford Verse Chorus Press, 144 pp., $29.95 Honky-Tonk Heroes and Hillbilly Angels: The Pioneers of Country & Western musicby Holly George-Warren, illus. by Laura Levine Houghton Mifflin, 32 pp., $16 Apple For The Teacher: Thirty Songs For Singing While You Workby Jane Yolen Harry N. Abrams, 120 pp.,…
The Hightower Report
A Little Something for the People; and Long-Distance Burger Orders
Clean
With an award-winning performance by Maggie Cheung, Clean is one of the most emotionally honest movies about drug addiction ever made.
Readings
A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Escape, Faith and Forgiveness
Rock & Roll Books
Summer reading
Rock & Roll Books
Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Leeby Peter Richmond Henry Holt and Company, 464 pp., $30 In Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, the subject reclines in the good company of mostly blonde, white girl singers – Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney – that accompanied the best…
Shooting Loose, Long or Short
The Duplass Brothers discuss how they found ‘The Puffy Chair,’ and where they’re headed now as it hits theatres
An Inconvenient Truth
Al Gore’s zeal for spreading knowledge about global warming is inspiring and this documentary about his efforts also showcases the new, improved Gore.
Readings
Anthony Trollope remarked that a satirist did best to write little, “or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.” Well …
Rock & Roll Books
America’s Musical Lifeby Richard Crawford W.W. Norton, 992 pp., $23.95 America’s Musical Life isn’t simply a history of music in the United States. It’s a history of the country, with music as the central character. People and personalities take a backseat to art and entertainment, a business and form of worship. Author Richard Crawford demonstrates…
Rock & Roll Books
Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Rollby Rick Coleman Da Capo, 400 pp., $26.95 Since rock & roll history books tend to favor Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Rick Coleman’s first-of-its-kind biography of Antoine “Fats” Domino restores the legacy of a colossal musical and cultural…
Beyond Big Tex
‘Ride Around the World’ IMAXes cowboy culture
The Puffy Chair
In their first feature, former Austinites the Duplass brothers have made a near-perfect relationship-trauma comedy.
Page Two: More Stars Than There Are in Heaven
Honoring those who helped create, and now tend, the legacy of Clifford Antone
Rock & Roll Books
Going Underground: American Punk, 1979-1992by George Hurchalla Zuo Press, 318 pp., $24.95 Hurchalla gets it right for using Idle Timer Dixon Colbourn’s blazingly punk rock, Cash-esque photo of Randy “Biscuit” Turner, late of the Big Boys and this earth, as his cover shot. This second edition is dedicated to both of those Austin punk icons…
Rock & Roll Books
Marley Legend: An Illustrated Life of Bob Marleyby James Henke Chronicle Books, 64 pp., $35 Why did James Henke boil down the biblical life and times of one of the 20th century’s most important musicians into the equivalent of a pop-up children’s book? Because he can. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s chief curator…
De/Re:Constructing the Narrative
Tuesdays, June 6-July 25
Down in the Valley
Sadly, this is less the epic modern Western it aspires to be than a muddled melodrama about a delusional drifter played by Edward Norton.
After a Fashion
Stephen’s lists of things to do, places he went, and people he dished
Rock & Roll Books
You Can’t Stop a Comet: My Friends and Buds We’ve All Been Somewhere Twiceby Cutter Brandenburg 318 pp., $60 The long, awkward title could’ve been recast as Mr. Cee’s Wild Ride. Cutter Brandenburg, better known to friends and associates as “Mr. Cee,” jumped aboard the Stevie Ray Vaughan train in the early days, first as…
Original Alamo Will Survive … as a Nonprofit
Downtown Drafthouse will assume nonprofit status
To Your Health
Although it has been recognized for more than a century, failure to gain weight, or ‘failure to thrive,’ still lacks a precise definition
Rock & Roll Books
Hotel Californiaby Barney Hoskyns Wiley, 336 pp., $25.95 It was such a lovely place: Los Angeles in the mid-Sixties offered a refuge from suburban America in the grip of war, a dwelling for kindred spirits. Brit rock crit Barney Hoskyns’ Hotel California recounts the genesis of the “denim navel-gazers” of Laurel Canyon, inhabited by the…
NWFA Southern Conference Standings
Southwest Division OKC Lightning: 6 / 0 / 1.000 Austin Outlaws: 4 / 1 / .800 Dallas Rage: 2 / 3 / .400 Shreveport ShockHers: 1 / 5 / .167 South Central Division St. Louis Slam: 5 / 1 / .833 Kentucky Karma: 3 / 2 / .600 Nashville Dream: 0 / 5 / .000…
DVD Watch
On January 31, 1971, more than 125 Vietnam veterans gathered in a conference room at a Howard Johnson’s in Detroit for a reckoning
The Common Law
Same-sex relationships & incapacity
Rock & Roll Books
Book of Longingby Leonard Cohen HarperCollins, 232 pp., $24.95 Leonard Cohen’s new collection of poetry finds him not, as some fans might imagine, wandering frozen plains in search of salvation, but rather a mere mortal, trapped in a room with “the remote lost somewhere in the bed.” Book’s tone is best captured by the words…
Schroeder v. APD
Latest police shooting case raises retro question: Why not Glasgow?
TV Eye
Turnoffs
Rock & Roll Books
I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heardby Tom Reynolds Hyperion, 271 pp., $12.95 East Texas DJ turned writing/producing Hollywood TV hybrid Tom Reynolds investigates what takes a song from mildly dispiriting to barrel-swallowing suicidal (sorry, Kurt), employing both profuse sarcasm and better-than-average musical analysis. A depressing song…
Day Trips
Indianola might have become a modern gateway to Texas if elements of nature had not conspired against the port city. Weather, disease, and fire all had a hand in the demise of what was the state’s second busiest seaport for nearly 40 years. FM 316 ends 14 miles southeast of Port Lavaca on the shores…
Rock & Roll Books
Rock en Español: The latin Alternative Rock Explosionby Ernesto Lechner Chicago Review Press, 258 pp., $16.95 The only thing lamer than the collected works of rock critics not named Lester Bangs are their leftovers. Argentine Ernesto Lechner, who covers the Latin beat for Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and Rolling Stone, among others, began covering…
Chartering Middle School
Hoping to reach middle-schoolers who could go off track in a regular school setting, district moves forward with charter school plans
Rock & Roll Books
Becoming Almost Famous: my back pages in music, writing, and lifeby Ben Fong-Torres Backbeat, 272 pp., $16.95 Anyone who’s ever wondered how writing about rock music has progressed in the last 30 years needs to read Becoming Almost Famous, the latest from former Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong-Torres. A collection of the veteran writer’s best…
Soccer Watch
The U.S. squad’s lineup is set for the impending WC kickoff, and more
Rock & Roll Books
Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles by Geoff Emerick and Howard Massey Gotham, 400 pp., $26 As a 15-year-old recording assistant at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London, Geoff Emerick was fortunate enough to be assigned to the first Beatles recording session there in 1962. Making the most of…
Media Watch
GMs sent packing at KEYE and KXAN
Rock & Roll Books
Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rockby Andrew Beaujon Da Capo, 291 pp., $16.95 People seeking religious freedom, we learned in history class, founded America. Puritan principles and morals still drive the ideology of our culture, and there’s no better evidence of that than in pop culture. Almost everyone of a…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Pat Robertson pumps ungodly amounts of iron, rumba for women’s rights, and more
Rock & Roll Books
Is Rock Dead?by Kevin J.H. Dettmar Routledge, 208 pp., $19.95 No, rock’s not dead, but do we really need 200 pages to tell us that? English professor Kevin J.H. Dettmar set out to perform an arduous task, putting on the detective’s cap and pounding the pavement in search of clues, bodies, distraught parents, and dangerous…
Maxey Goes Statewide?
Is an openly gay Austin liberal the answer to rebuilding the state Democratic Party?
ColdTowne
In just months, New Orleans improv troupe ColdTowne has become deeply involved in Austin’s comedy scene, and now it’s close to getting its own venue
Oops!
Last week in “Another One Bites the Dust,” a news story about the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office, we wrote that Elizabeth Peacock has been with the TCME for 14 years. She has actually been with the office for 10 years. The Chronicle regrets the error.
Rock & Roll Books
Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviewsedited by Jonathan Cott Wenner Books, 447 pp., $23.95 For Bob Dylan at 65, The Essential Interviews surely ranks right up there as a worst nightmare: 31 handpicked instances of somebody catching him unaccompanied and on the record. Four decades’ worth of outsmarting and being outsmarted, of connecting and misdirecting, all…
The Hubris at Enron
Rarely have convictions been more deserved than those of former executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling
Luv Doc Recommends: Gynomite “Breaking the Cherry” spoken word performance
Porn isn’t for everyone, but apparently it does the trick (if only temporarily) for millions of people across the globe. If you believe what you read on the Internet (on those rare occasions when you’re not surfing porn), the gross revenues of the porn industry worldwide are somewhere around $57 billion per year, $12 billion…
