Cover Story
CSI: Travis County
Why Is the Medical Examiner’s Office so screwed up?
Semifinals Preview
With three upsets out of four quarterfinal games (well, depending on who you listened to coming in), this is not the set of semifinals most anyone expected. But it promises to be a great pair of games. As for the suggested menus, as we eat our way through the WC schedule, it’s basically breads, cheeses,…
Quarterfinals Report
Down go the pre-tournament favorites. Down go the favorites coming out of the first round. And suddenly, we’ve got all-European semifinals. Germany 1, Argentina 1 (4-2 in PK shootout) It’s always disappointing to see a game decided on penalty kicks, but for the most part, the marquee matchup of the round lived up to its…
The Grace Lee Project
This award-winning documentary follows Lee as she tracks down as many Grace Lees as she can. Her meditation is personal, linguistic, anthropological, and stuffed throughout with little curiosities.
Pirates of the Caribbean Feast
Pirates of the Caribbean Feast 2007, PG-13, 168 min. Directed by Gore Verbinski, Starring Johnny Depp. The new film and a sweet and spicy Caribbean meal from the the captain of the kitchen. See www.originalalamo.com for menu.
Clerks II Premiere
Clerks II Premiere 2006, R, 97 min. Directed by Kevin Smith, Starring Brian O’Halloran, Jeff Anderson, Rosario Dawson, Trevor Fehrman, Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith. Could it be? Have Dante, Randal, Jay, and Silent Bob grown up? Ten years after Kevin Smith sprung his dirty-mouthed dialogue demons on the screen, the director revisits…
Woman Is the Future of Man
Woman Is the Future of Man 2004, NR, 88 min. Directed by Hong Sang-soo, Starring Yu Ji-tae, Kim Tae-woo, Seong Hyeon-a. In this acclaimed South Korean film, two college friends meet up after a number of years. One is a struggling filmmaker, the other a successful art professor. Among their many festering rivalries, both have…
Look Both Ways
This indie ensemble film from Australia examines big issues such as life and death but it’s really at its best when probing smaller interactions.
Climate Change News
Safe Climate Act introduced to Congress; and National Academy of Sciences releases climate change report requested by House Committee on Science chair
Arts Review
Capital T Theatre Company’s ‘A Brief History of Helen of Troy’ depicts a lot of brutality in a teenage girl’s world, but ultimately it’s about caring, connection, and love
Boomerang’s
You’ve got to try these Australian meat pies
Reed Appeal Shot Down
Judge says witness testimony challenging state’s version of facts in capital murder case against Rodney Reed during a March evidentiary hearing wasn’t credible, the testimony probably wouldn’t have helped Reed at 1998 trial, and no evidence exists that the Bastrop Co. District Attorney’s Office committed misconduct by withholding potential evidence from Reed’s defenders
Arts Review
Art Palace’s exhibition ‘Summer Fling’ offers a look at that ever elusive ‘real thing’ that is at once as disturbing, pleasurable, and seductive as art in Austin can get
Food-o-File
Off with our heads on some misreporting of the Lazy Fork Barbecue legacy; plus, an Independence Day Event Menu
Supremes Navigate Water Law
What is a navigable waterway? Court’s latest weighing of limits of Clean Water Act portends future of additional regulatory battles and likely talk of amending the act
Arts Review
With ‘I Love My Dead Gay Son: The Musical!’, the energy-to-burn Yellow Tape Construction Company turn this cult film ‘Heathers’ into a loud, amped-up send-up of everything Eighties
Return to Sin City
Gram Parsons, back in a big way even if he never left
Strayhorn Blasts Foster Care System
Comptroller releases findings of two-year investigation
Readings
VandeerMeer first introduced Ambergris in an intriguing series of novellas, collected as City of Saints and Madmen. This is his first full-length novel set in the mythical city.
Gramography
International Submarine Band, Safe at Home (Shiloh), 1968 His first recorded work, considered one of the first country-rock records. Most interesting if viewed as a rough draft for what is to follow. Farther Along: The Best of the Flying Burrito Brothers (A&M), 1988 A definitive single-disc overview of FBB with a handful of rarities and…
Point Austin: Blue Spectre
The ‘Statesman’ discovers a sinister plot to take control of city government. The culprits? Those union goons, of course
Readings
Maybe it’s because Americans so instinctively put British folk on a pedestal of erudition, but it’s a welcome relief to find one who, however book smart, is a complete social imbecile
In Print
Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, by Ben Fong-Torres, Pocket Books, 1991 Gram Parsons: A Music Biography, by Sid Griffin, Sierra Records & Books, 1985 Desperados: The Roots of Country Rock, by John Einarson, Cooper Square Press, 2001 Grievous Angel: An Intimate Biography of Gram Parsons, by Jessica Hundley & Polly Parsons,…
Cuisines String
Thank you, Mexico, for family-run fruterías and juguerías
Phases & Stages
Bruce Springsteen We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (Columbia) While his live shows have always been near-religious musical celebrations, Bruce Springsteen has rarely captured that undiluted fervor in the studio. What sets We Shall Overcome apart from his other albums, however, is its combination of unadorned performances and boundless energy. Folk patriarch Pete Seeger wrote…
The Coy Report
An assessment of the airport police, park police, and city marshals
Page Two
The debate over illegal immigration is nearly perfect for Bush’s core voters
Gram Parsons: Mission Accomplished
One of Austin’s best-loved musicians, pianist Earl Poole Ball, played with Gram Parsons on the International Submarine Band’s Safe at Home album, as well as the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo. After discussing Parsons, Ball shared the following via e-mail. – J.C. “The young man came from out of the South – full of purpose…
TCB
The Back Room’s curtain call after almost 33 years, live music crosses the gay divide at Chain Drive, and a sore groin foils Beck’s secret Continental Club show
Beside the Point
Jennifer Kim fights a lonely battle to get the new Green Water Treatment Plant built
After a Fashion
With a successful 30th high school reunion under his tunic, Stephen proves that you can go home again
The True One
The Byrds’ fifth dimension, Gene Clark, eight miles high and as wide as Americana
Travis County ME: Who’s on First?
Lots of finger-pointing over who’s to blame
The Hightower Report
Ad Creep Advances; and Congress Does It Again
To Your Health
Hypokalemia and regulating potassium levels
Phases & Stages
Julieta VenegasLimón y Sal (Norte/Sony) The honeymoon’s over, but the loving just gets better. Julieta Venegas’ fourth album, named either for dos cantina food groups or that which you’d rub into an open wound, seesaws between ardor and exile atop a melodically buoyant bed of Latinismo. Imagine getting hitched and ditched in Cancun on the…
AISD Budget
District may have resources to reverse cuts if it can muster the courage to raise taxes
The Latest From Z Zeitgeist
‘Pathogen’ and ‘Zombie Girl: The Movie’
The Common Law
Annulment – as if the marriage never happened?
Phases & Stages
Badi AssadOne World Theatre, June 23 Dream that a triumvirate of single-named female artists – Tori, Ani, Björk – fashion one diminutive Brazilian dynamo, and you’ll begin to fathom Badi Assad (Bah-jee ah-Sahj). The guitarist/singer/percussionist possesses Amos’ emotive power, DiFranco’s strung intensity, and Gumundsdóttir’s experimentalism, yet clearly follows her own muse. Able to tour internationally…
Katrina’s Aftermath
As the end of the primary federal housing program keeping roofs over the heads of area hurricane evacuees gets closer, local homeless advocates and social service providers try to prevent evacuees from falling through affordable housing cracks
I’ve Had a Wonderful Evening …
Marx Brothers Month at the San Antonio Street Cafe
Day Trips
Aloe King: Soothing the Lower Rio Grande Valley for four decades
Phases & Stages
Song for My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and Whiteby Tom Sancton Other Press, 305 pp, $24.95 What kind of father encourages his white, preteen son to befriend elderly black men in barely desegregated New Orleans? With Preservation Hall serving as a backdrop for prolonged cross-cultural interaction, Tom Sancton recounts frequent trips to…
Superman Returns
Superman returns to Earth seeming more like a humbled prodigal son than an invincible superhero.
Will the Nuke Mushroom?
The long-reviled South Texas (Nuclear) Project might actually expand.
DVD Watch
Greenaway: The Early FilmsZeitgeist Video, $35.99 “I have grown to believe that a really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter, for painting requires a certain blindness, a partial refusal to be aware of all the options,” Mrs. Talmann tells Mr. Neville in 1982’s The Draughtsman’s Contract. This is that awkward moment when someone looks at…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Deadly doctors and dentists’ drills
Phases & Stages
NardwuarThe Human Serviette: Doot Doola Doot Doo … Doot Doo! (Alternative Tentacles) There’s a moment when Nardwuar, the hyper Canadian journalist and radio personality, is interviewing the White Stripes, and he pauses his high-pitched barrage of questions to unveil a gift – a wall-sized poster of Bob Seger, circa Stranger in Town. It’s the look…
Waist Deep
An ex-con in Los Angeles gets pulled back into the gang wars when he has to rescue his son, who was in his carjacked vehicle.
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
TV Eye
Neighborhood Watch
Soccer Watch
WC quarterfinals preview, and more
Phases & Stages
EvangelicalsSo Gone (Misra) Great pop music is little more than melody, bounce, and jubilation. Norman, Okla.’s Evangelicals multiply those elements and add a spacey, surreal counterpart not far off from scenemates the Flaming Lips. Psychedelic echo reverberates through “Another Day (And Yoor Still Knocked Out)” along with the refrain, “You’re only dreaming,” and that’s what…
The Devil Wears Prada
A fresh and caustic take on the fashion industry is hobbled by a threadbare plot about a girl learning that it’s wrong to sell her soul for designer shoes.
Airline Discrimination?
Burundian author and runner Gilbert Tuhabonye has check-in trouble at Denver airport
Are You Experienced?
In a new ad campaign, the Blanton redefines ‘art,’ raising questions about what it means
Oops!
Last week’s Naked City story “Hurricane Evacuees Take a Legal Blow,” incorrectly stated that “housing and utilities aid FEMA has been paying to thousands of evacuees across the country through their local governments is currently slated to end in most places at the end of the month.” Aid for evacuees in most cities ended at…
Phases & Stages
Sufjan StevensThe Avalanche (Asthmatic Kitty) Saul Bellow wrote, “I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos,” which is an appropriate metaphor for what Sufjan Stevens has accomplished on this “outtakes and extras” follow-up to last year’s unspeakably excellent Illinois. An avalanche is the epitome of…
Lady Vengeance
The South Korean master of revenge dramas, Park Chan-wook, offers another entertaining puzzle of emotional nuance, riotous color, and bloody hell.
Border Militarization Update
Perry authorizes use of Texas National Guard at border; and El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says will temporarily cease holding immigration stops and raids
Fat Pig
To present an in-your-face play about weight as your first show requires real intestinal fortitude, so consider the Vestige Group, making its debut with Neil LaBute’s ‘Fat Pig,’ a gutsy bunch
New and Noteworthy
New flavors take us to the top of the taste mountain, but also to the valley of agony and despair
Drawing Restraint 9
Iconoclastic artist Matthew Barney and his paramour Björk flood the screen with arresting images and sounds, and though little of it makes ordinary sense, it’s compelling nevertheless.
Section 8 Wait List Opening Soon
Housing Authority of Austin’s wait list open July 11-13, 2006[*NOTE]
The Music Man
TexARTS’ highly anticipated version of ‘The Music Man’ brought Meredith Willson’s classic musical to life with charm and verve and a fullness of character that’s eluded many a production fully tricked out in period costumes and sets
Award-Winning Summer Refreshment
Martine Pelegrin’s L’Alhambra
Twelve and Holding
This disturbing but emotionally authentic story about adolescent life treats its subjects with bravery and compassion.
Serving Global Warming
New report claims that between 1960 and 2001 global warming increased more in Texas than in any other state
Austin Chamber Music Festival
As the Austin Chamber Music Festival marks its 10th summer of celebrating the intimate joys of chamber music, it will be the last for Felicity Coltman as Austin Chamber Music Center director
Watching, Breathing, and Eating the World Cup 2006
The quarterfinals definitely mean high-caliber matchups; hopefully, they also mean high-caliber cuisine.
Luv Doc Recommends: The Heart of Texas Red White & Blues Festival
If you’re lucky, Friday begins a five-day weekend. That’s a mess of slack time for the average American. Unlike our 35-hours-a-week French counterparts, Americans get antsy when we don’t have anything to do. We’re not especially good at leisure time. We tend to work even when we’re not working. This Fourth of July, millions of…
