Cover Story
When the Sun Rises
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, a group of teenage filmmakers galvanize the tales of their island
Half-Way Gay
The Fitness Challenge continues…
Video: Pack of Wolves “Concession”
Wolves in the throne room
The Lineup
Recommended music for the week of June 12-June 18
Comprehensive Planning: Insights from CNU
Live from CNU 17 in Denver
Sonic Boomers and Bizarros
Hole in the Wall’s anniversary weekend reunites the Bizarros
C3 Presents Beats Brentwood Donkeys, Wheatsville
Brentwood Donkeys represent the true sandlot softball attitude
This Week’s Waste of Time
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Text-Based Adventure Gaming
‘Top Gear’: Ten Years, Mostly Accident Free
Three idiots drive fast cars, proving the genius of the BBC
Aztex Advance in U.S. Open Cup
Second-round U.S. Open Cup Game Coming up Tuesday
Video: Loxsly “As the Constellation’s Arms Uncurled”
A closer look at Tomorrow’s Fossils
Laubenberg the Low-Spender
Empower Texans release Fiscal Responsibility Index to put percentages on conservatism
Ante Up!
First of three town halls discussing $45 million in possible cuts to city budget tonight
Forty Years Later
Back to Max Yasgur’s farm
A Progressive Pilgrim’s Progress
Robert Jensen’s new memoir is an extended meditation on his tentative return to the Presbyterian church of his youth.
AGLCC Post-Pride Shitstorm
AGLCC president resigns! No, wait! He was dumped! WTF?!??
Leffingwell Unveils Staff
Gives it a stroke in press release
Flat-Out on the Track
Make-or-break bouts give Hustlers, Hotrod Honeys season advantages
Week Two: Boom!
The Gay Place continues to work. those. glutes.
Special Times Ahead
Perry confirms the inevitable with special session comments
The Sound of Silents
The Harry Ransom Center’s Orientalist Film Series
The Georgetown Gamble
Controversial lege administrator Milton Rister considers House run as Gattis Senate rumors rumble
Omaha, Somewhere in Middle America
The Horns advance to the College World Series … again
Aztex in U.S. Open Cup Play Tonight
Aztex host Brilla at Nelson Field
About Face!
If DADT is a bus, gays are still “invited” to sit in the back.
Math be Hard
Republican Party of Texas needs to recalculate budget claims
Off the Record – 33 RPM
Surveying the aftermath from the Red River shoot-up outside Spiros
Thwack!
Dead Pyrates and Sonic Boomers
Repression’s Children
Why context matters, and why I hate your flashing penis veil.
Queer Music Moment
Something to watch while recovering from Pride
And Taylor Makes 106
Speaker Straus makes tactical gains in race to be speaker again
Throw Me Somethin’ Chronicle!!!!!
Come out to the Pride Parade and catch our beads!
Annie: A review
Roadshow at Bass Concert Hall, June 5-7
Back in Home-Team Colors
After dominating on the road, intraleague flat-track action returns to Playland this Sunday
Gay Place Rulez the Rusty Spur
Come two-step with the GP krewe
‘Dazed and Confused’ ‘spiritual sequel’ put on hold
The Hollywood Reporter says the economy has scotched plans for Linklater’s new film
Keeping Softball Alternative
Local creative types battle it out on the diamond
The Lineup
Recommended music for the week of June 5-11
Medi-Pot Roundup
Reefer Madness fills you in on the latest in medical marijuana news
Austin Coke Traffickers in Federal Pokey
Chief Art Acevedo takes sideways shot at Travis Co. attitudes towards drugs
Big Range Austin
A new-to-town dance duo pushes movement–music fusion further
Phases & Stages
Ben Harper & Relentless7 White Lies for Dark Times (Virgin) Every great artist should take Ben Harper’s cue here, cutting an album with Austin ringers, in this case Relentless7: guitarist Jason Mozersky, bassist Jesse Ingalls, and drummer Jordan Richardson. The Southern backdrop begets the gritty, gutbucket churn of opener “Number With No Name” and Harper’s…
Oops!
In last week’s story about the life and death of Nathaniel Sanders II, we incorrectly reported that the American YouthWorks charter school has been in operation for 30 years. As a nonprofit, AYW is three decades old, but the charter school has only been in operation since 1996. We also ran the wrong photo with…
Session Ends With Finger-Pointing, Unfinished Business
Perry says he has no immediate plans to call legislators back to Austin
Tony Awards
Local song-and-dance wunderkind David Bologna is up for a top stage honor
Phases & Stages
Grizzly Bear Veckatimest (Warp) Grizzly Bear’s proper 2006 debut, Yellow House, made bloggers weak in the knees, breathless from flowery adjectives. Thankfully, the NYC quartet’s third album is a lot less flowery. String arrangements by boy wonder Nico Muhly shift coolly rather than in a hot blast as piano and guitar flirt with drums and…
Page Two: A Higher Court
Rash judgment and vitriol don’t validate simplistic morality
Topless Tax Dies in Maneuver for More Money
3rd Court of Appeals will rule on existing surcharge at sexually oriented businesses
The Hangover
The Hangover is deliciously darker than Todd Phillips’ previous comedies, Old School and Road Trip, but it isn’t as thick with malice or drenched in the “bromance” creed of the present.
Conspirare
As Conspirare’s choirs all come together in song, its executive director departs
Phases & Stages
Elvis Costello Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (Hear Music) Now that T Bone Burnett’s spun platinum out of Raising Sand, classic rock has reverted back to its roots. Elvis Costello’s country oeuvre, 1981’s Almost Blue and 1986’s King of America, gains an in-law in his bluegrass album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, more spontaneous creation from another…
Of Barflies & Allies
The story of Austin’s straight allies and gay bars
Point Austin: The Capitol Circus Decamps
Did we learn anything more than the meaning of ‘chub’?
Land of the Lost
Will Ferrell’s remake of the beloved Sid and Marty Krofft TV show lacks virtually everything that made the original series so memorable.
Book Review
Exploring the “notland”-scape and the human condition all at once
Phases & Stages
Allen Toussaint The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch) Piano patriarch evacuates the Big Easy for the Big Apple, where like-minded sessionistas young (Nicholas Payton) and old (Marc Ribot) mean Ellington standard “Day Dream” almost doesn’t miss Johnny Hodges and closer “Solitude” compliments Dr. John’s inspired Duke Elegant. Don Byron reeds his best Sidney Bechet for the professor,…
Can I Touch the Tender Button?
An interview with UT professor and archive expert Ann Cvetkovich
Creationist McLeroy Booted From SBOE Chair
Senate Dems successfully block Perry’s nomination
Lemon Tree
This moving Israeli film tells the fraught story of a Palestinian widow whose lemon grove is threatened when the country’s defense minister moves next door.
The Common Law
High Property Taxes
Phases & Stages
Booker T. Potato Hole (Anti-) Vintage Stax fries up T.’s organ-donor program starring Neil Young leading the Drive-By Truckers. OutKast’s “Hey Ya” cooks Shakey’s bio-diesel, while his brief solo on “Native New Yorker” buffs a thoroughbred coat, and Tom Waits’ “Get Behind the Mule” pushes the heated end of the beast. Title cut misses another…
The Homophilic Bibliophile
Homo up your house with these gay history titles
Beside the Point: Solid Waste: Willie Rhodes Slides Sideways
When Wells “Hustler” Dunbar left on vacation last week, he confidently assured us that with the city elections concluded and City Council not meeting this week, there would be little breaking news from City Hall. Ha. Dunbar had barely left the building when the long-anticipated reorganization of Solid Waste Services was announced, by means of…
My Life in Ruins
Nia Vardalos, who hit pay dirt with My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is on shakier ground with this clichéd story about an American tourist guide in Greece.
Restaurant Recyclers
From earth to table and back again
Superlatives
The 2008-2009 Austin Critics Table Awards
Phases & Stages
Leela James Let’s Do It Again (Shanachie) Kanye West, Raphael Saadiq, and Wyclef Jean endorsed this 26-year-old L.A. native’s 2005 debut, A Change Is Gonna Come, but her self-produced second effort stars Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman,” seven-minute ownership of Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” and a bit of Badu on “Miss…
The Business of Pride
AGLCC’s Jimmy Flannigan ponders the pitfalls of a complacent gay place
Bill Keeps TVs Out of Texas Landfills
Don’t put your television set in the garbage
Every Little Step
This pleasingly meta documentary about the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line intersperses clips from Michael Bennett’s original interviews with key players with scenes from the exhaustive search for a new cast.
Recycling Fanatic at Work
Eastside Cafe co-owner Dorsey Barger readily admits it might never have occurred to her to begin a recycling program when she and Elaine Martin bought Carla’s Restaurant in East Austin 21 years ago, if a system had not already been in place. “Carla was already doing some recycling, so we just kept it up,” she…
Day Trips
Post-Katrina New Orleans is returning to form as a tourist destination for people from across the globe
Phases & Stages
Carl Carlton Everlasting: The Best Of (Hip-O Select/Geffen) Detroit’s “Little Carl” Carlton bore a marketable vocal resemblance to Little Stevie Wonder in the late 1960s (“Sure Miss Loving You”), but he covered and hit with “Everlasting Love” for Houston’s Don Robey in 1973 before stalling out and reappearing in 1981 with the Grammy-nominated “She’s a…
Pride 2009 Grand Marshals
Lee Manford From the beginning, for all intents and purposes, AIDS Services of Austin’s Lee Manford has been the man with the plan. He was the first board chair at the organization’s founding in 1987, and on World AIDS Day 1997, he became the executive director. Through his continual outreach work for AIDS and poverty…
So You Want to Be in Pictures
Lege gives creative industries incentive to live
After Last Season
Opening this week in only 4 U.S. cities, this self-described psycho-thriller has selected Austin as one of the lucky few.
Letters at 3AM
Anthony Powell is the least known of the greatest 20th century novelists
Event Menu
Local food events, June 4-11
Phases & Stages
Brian Blade Mama Rosa (Verve Forecast) Beatmaster to the gods reveals his inner singer-songwriter, the Shreveport, La., drummer taking sonic cues from Daniel Lanois on their infrared “Mercy Angel” and hosting electric stringers Greg Leisz and Kurt Rosenwinkel. Blade vocalizing Milton Nascimento (“Brother”) neither offends nor defines, which isn’t true of “You’ll Always Be My…
Home Is Where the Heart Is
Gayborhood? What gayborhood?
Headlines
• The 81st Legislature adjourned Monday in a welter of confusion and mutual recriminations and no certain continuing legislation for the Texas Department of Transportation, the Department of Insurance, and three other state agencies. Gov. Rick Perry says he has no immediate plans to call a special session. See “Session Ends With Finger-Pointing, Unfinished Business.”…
TV Eye
Yep, it’s another show about a pill-popping health-care professional with chronic pain. But Nurse Jackie gets it right.
Food-o-File
A new burger joint opens, and Kerbey Lane offers incentives to ‘eat local’
Phases & Stages
Amadou & Mariam Welcome to Mali (Because Music/Nonesuch) 2005’s Dimanche a Bamako percolated more like a mic-check to producer Manu Chao’s own La Radiolina than this blind Mali couple’s much ballyhooed Western outage, and though Damon Albarn opener “Sabali” swings London, A&M’s follow-up bottles their joyous West African boogie. Dancing desert blues refract Parisian pop…
Playing Through
The sports world is rife with dickish behavior
LegeLines
Kuempel bounces back, and Maldonado takes home a prize
The Hightower Report
Soft Landing in Rough Times; and The Price of Pie
Boost
Dripping Springs-based Genesis Today has come out with a line of bottled drinks that are unusually healthy and nourishing
Phases & Stages
The Marvelettes Forever: The Complete Motown Albums, Volume 1 (Motown/Hip-O Select) Despite “Too Many Fish in the Sea” and “Beechwood 4-5789,” Motown’s mold-setting girl group remains something of a one-hit wonder outside the label’s first pop No. 1, “Please Mr. Postman.” Its sponsoring LP, plus The Marvelettes Sing, Playboy, and The Marvelous Marvelettes, augmented by…
Crunch Time
The Austin Aztex are thrust into the gut-check portion of their season this week: Three home games in five days kick off a brutal month’s schedule – as the USL-1 playoff race starts to shape up and the prestigious U.S. Open Cup gets under way – with its midweek games shoehorned into the regular schedule.…
School Reform Bills Headed to Governor
House Bill 3 holds a glimmer of hope for Pearce Middle School
The Cowboy Song
Thin Lizzy’s ‘Cowboy Song’ comes alive in rodeo vet turned Red Dirt ranger Ryan Bingham
Lucky J’s
Lucky J’s chicken is both greasy and salty; this is not a criticism
Will the Real Norma Khouri Please Stand Up?
AFS Documentary Tour presents Forbidden Lie$
Austin Pride 2009
Event listings
Law Improves Compensation for Exonerees
Making up for lost time on the wrongful-conviction front
Country Roads
New Braunfels “I had a Dodge truck with a camper and a dog at the time. I went out to visit Doug Moreland and some of those guys who lived out behind the River Road Icehouse. All they did was hang out on the river and play music. I pulled up and plugged in right…
Off the Record
Surveying the aftermath from the Red River shootout outside Spiros
Film News
It’s raining cash for film in Texas … but not a drop leftover for Waco
Sanders Family Files Suit
Family says officer who shot Nate Sanders didn’t follow protocol
Naked City
• BIG BUDGET CUTS AT AISD The long-awaited Austin Independent School District efficiency study was delivered to the board of trustees by MGT of America on June 1, and district staff are bracing themselves for the public response. Although AISD has more than $100 million in fund reserves and an AA+ bond rating, the study…
Record Review
Ryan Bingham & the Dead Horses Roadhouse Sun (Lost Highway) Black Crowes are harbingers of Southern rock, so Ryan Bingham’s second disc produced for Nashville indie Lost Highway by the Atlanta flock’s former guitarist Marc Ford doesn’t just fly the stars ‘n’ bars of 1992’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion incidentally. Bingham and his…
Tech Talk
A guide to some of the terms and concepts in redeveloping the city website
APD Shooting: Chief Responds to Community Concerns
Acevedo apologizes to family of Nate Sanders II
Res Publica
Citizens’ calendar, June 4-11
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Squirrel-flavored potato chips, John Lennon’s Elvis, and more
The Genius of the Crowd … Source
Austin programmers look to create a public redesign of the city’s website
Arts Review
Ar Rud’s production is how O’Neill’s study of family and fragility is supposed to be
Event Street Closures: Compromise Ordinance Doesn’t Solve Barricades
Stakeholders agree on a proposal for closing streets for special events
History’s Closet
We are history. Some of us freshly minted, others sepia with tattered edges. We are stories, ripe with turns of phrase and twists in the denouement. We are memory, sometimes sure in our details but most often unconfirmable. Forty years after Stonewall is where we are. A random night in late June 1969 is a…
After a Fashion
Stephen rests then divests
Phases & Stages
Sonic Youth The Eternal (Matador) Sonic Youth’s had very distinct mood swings through the decades – 1980s, noise; early 1990s, rock; the slowed-down melodies of the late 1990s; and the sonic slump that followed in the early Aughties. After nearly two decades on Geffen and three as a band, SY’s first album for Matador settles…
Arts Review
A lovely, loving tribute to the Eastside’s Blackland neighborhood and playtime past
Holly Street Hoopla
An attempt to develop a Neighborhood Plan Contact Team for Holly Street went down in flames – again
Behind the Bars
Why are gay bars not counted within Austin club histories?
Book Review
Bachrach’s first book is a funny and raging memoir about her bipolar mother
Phases & Stages
Green Day 21st Century Breakdown (Reprise) Whereas the blunt force of Green Day’s 2004 American Idiot proved a powerful, provocative state of the union address, its follow-up, 21st Century Breakdown, both thrives in and succumbs to the chaos and confusion left in the wake of the Bush regime. Essentially an hourlong classic punk spectacle, the…
Arts Review
In his second Art Palace solo show, Green throws a powerful punch of relentless joy
U.S. Senate: Sharp on Sharp
John Sharp explains why he’s the best man for the job of filling Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat
Final Attraction
“We’re creating an alternate world of country music,” T Bone Burnett told the Chronicle last September in regard to his work with the late Stephen Bruton for the Robert Duvall-produced film Crazy Heart, which is slated for national release later this year. “Country music as you would like it to be.” Fitting, then, that Ryan…
Luv Doc Recommends: Who Is Your Daddy? Little Lounge Lizards’ June Dance Party
Every once in a while you come across an event that is so fucking crazy that you just have to go check it out, if only to make sure you didn’t dream it. Austin has more than its share of them: Chiggerfest, Spamarama, Eeyore’s Birthday, Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-a-Thon, O. Henry Pun-Off. Austinites aren’t particularly scared…
