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The Luv Doc: Gender Issues

Luv Doc, When is it OK to ask a man/guy on a date? Should he buy dinner? – The Initiate Generally, if a man/guy is conscious and sentient, it’s OK to ask him on a date. There are some notable exceptions however, and since you asked I should probably outline a few of them. If…

by The Luv Doc

Spy

The Paul Feig/Melissa McCarthy comedy onslaught continues with a Bond parody

by Marc Savlov

Masss

Masss 2015, NR, 151 min. Directed by Venkat Prabhu, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Suriya, Nayanthara, Parthiban, Samuthirakani. Not reviewed at press time. In this Tamil film, a man finds that he can communicate with the dead, and must decide whether to act on their advice.

by Marjorie Baumgarten

Texas Platters

On 1983’s Pancho & Lefty, Austin and Bakersfield collided head on. Atop Townes Van Zandt’s epic title tale about the mercenary survivor of a pair of desperadoes, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard topped the country charts for seven nonconsecutive weeks. It also forged a chemistry between the Texan and southern Californian revisited a fourth time…

by Tim Stegall

Soccer Watch

In a third-round U.S. Open Cup shocker, USL teams won all seven matches against NASL teams last Wednesday, bolstering the third division USL’s claim to be considered at least equal, if not ahead of, the second-division NASL. That includes the USL’s Austin Aztex, who beat the NASL’s San Antonio Scorpions for the second time this…

by Nick Barbaro

Texas Platters

Austin trumpeter Pete Rodriguez here pays tribute to his late father, renowned singer and percussionist Pete “El Conde” Rodriguez, a member of the New York salsa ensemble Fania All-Stars and headliner in his own right. From the album’s title to the handful of tunes previously recorded by Pete Sr., it’s a beautiful set from start…

by Jay Trachtenberg

Texas Platters

Punk rock wasn’t built to age gracefully. Yesterday’s sneering contrarian is one shaken fist away from becoming tomorrow’s cranky old man. Leave it to Austin’s venerable Pocket Fishrmen to negotiate a third way by putting prurient lyrical wit and stunt-car guitar solos in service of a studio suite about the demise awaiting us all. Like…

by Greg Beets

Education: Failure to Invest

When it comes to public and higher education, the 84th Legislature will be remembered as much for what it didn’t manage to do as what it did. Put aside for a moment the always pressing issue of money. According to Texas Amer­ican Fed­er­ation of Teachers president Louis Malfaro, there’s a chance this session will be…

by Richard Whittaker

Texas Platters

One part Doctors’ Mob and Balloonatic, and two parts Wannabes, the Rite Flyers pay tribute to the more aggressive end of Austin’s New Sincerity movement of the late Eighties and early Nineties through their mere existence. On Electromode, the locals’ third album, there’s little evidence initially of the Mob’s bar rock, Balloonatic’s six-string acid webs,…

by Michael Toland

Labor: Failure to Thrive

Labor bills weren’t high on the Legislature’s agenda this session: None of the bills mentioned in the Chronicle’s Lege preview – from those that aimed to increase minimum wage to those that aimed to curtail employment of the undocumented – made it out alive. However, the Lege came very close to passing SB 1968, authored…

by Amy Kamp

Environment: Hydrocarbon Rules

As in many years, the environmental fights at the 84th Legislature were mostly not to do good things, but to prevent bad things from happening – and at best, it was a split decision. The headline disaster was House Bill 40, often described as the Legislature’s attempt to stop local bans on oil-and-gas “fracking.” In…

by Michael King

Transportation: Diverging Roads

At the center of several transportation squabbles in the 84th Legislature was the pesky issue of funding the department itself. The sticking point between the House and Senate was a philosophical difference on where highway funds should be pulled from: The Senate and Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jack­son­ville, wanted money diverted from the vehicle sales tax…

by Nina Hernandez

Reproductive Health Care: Same Story, New Target

As if the notoriously anti-choice Legislature had anything left to destroy after eviscerating both women’s health care funding and abortion access over the past two sessions, they somehow managed to chip away at reproductive rights even further. In their perennial quest to make abortion “a thing of the past” GOP lawmakers this session turned to…

by Mary Tuma

Criminal Justice: Weed and Weapons

Open carry and campus carry dominated, but there were other smaller policy shifts, as well. Pot The tone for new marijuana initiatives was set March 2014, when Tea Party favorite Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, declared support for “deregulating” it. “I recognize the innate goodness of everything God made and humanity’s charge to be stewards of…

by Chase Hoffberger

Quote of the Week

“This is not a constitutional issue. This is an issue of ensuring our young people have a safe place of higher learning as they grow from childhood to adulthood.” – State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, on the passage of “campus carry,” SB 11

by Chronicle Staff

LGBTQ Rights: Hate Defeated

The 84th Legislative session started out with a record number of anti-LGBTQ measures – likely the most ever filed by any state government – meant to further erode rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens. Around two dozen bills sought to allow state-funded agencies and businesses to discriminate against gay residents based on “sincerely…

by Mary Tuma

Headlines

High on the agenda of today’s City Council meeting (June 4) is a decision concerning a homestead property tax exemption; there’s also a proposal for Flood Mitigation Task Force, the cab franchise regs are back, and plenty of contracts to parse. See “Council: Do I Hear Six Percent?,” June 5. K2’s back! The synthetic marijuana…

by Chronicle Staff

Texas Platters

Southern Rock still lives in pockets here and there, but few do it with the panache and soulfulness of Uncle Lucius. Fourth album The Light finds the local quartet as resourceful and adventurous as ever, making all sorts of music associated with the American South, not just rock, but gospel, blues, soul, and country. The…

by Jim Caligiuri

Mr. Smarty Pants Knows

The Prison Policy Initiative has identified 21 counties in the United States where at least 20% of residents are prisoners. Super Dave Osborne (whose real name is Bob Einstein) is the older brother of director Albert Brooks (Albert Einstein). Their father was Harry Einstein aka “Parkyakarkus” on the radio. Pandas spend up to 14 hours…

by Mr. Smarty Pants

Texas Platters

On the follow-up to 2012’s Last Summer 7-inch, Travis McGuire and company amplify their preposterous power-punk in showcasing furious musicianship on minute-long roller coaster “Let’s Get Ripped” and toying with tempos to re-create the sound of an atomic bomb on the title track. Imagine Canadian noise trio Metz harnessing silliness instead of nervy aggression. They’ll…

by Kevin Curtin

Texas Platters

Making her first audio appearance post-tenure as keyboardist/vocalist in erstwhile indie rockers the Couch, Sara Houser lets her singing soar and guitar roar fronting moody hard rockers Löwin. Hovering above Queens of the Stone Age-like amp alchemy, her ethereal alto assails blowhards (“Big Mouth”) and more (“Move It Football Head”). Such poetic reflections seem tailored…

by Kevin Curtin

Texas Platters

Weapons-grade folk rock peaks at the outset of Town Hall Devils’ debut disc with “Always on the Run,” a sludgy, somber ballad where unwieldy guitar feedback erupts over three sparse chords as bassist/singer Micah Hayes growls cryptic Midwestern poetry. The local trio’s Americana laced with riffs and heavy rhythms drinks from the same fountain as…

by Kevin Curtin

Texas Platters

Any last words? October’s Rock Bottom EP became an unexpected swan song for rock & roll hucksters Berkshire Hounds, who committed seppuku in May. Succinct counterpart to 2013’s interlude-ridden Are Not Amused, this focused five-song disc finds the group at peak power, funneling classic rock tactics into the jaded millennial mindspace. In coruscating opener “I…

by Kevin Curtin

Budget: Heavy on Tax Cuts, Light on Services

It’s easy to pretend you’ve got a surplus when you spend years cutting services. That lesson was learned while lawmakers passed House Bill 1, the state budget for the 2016-17 biennium. After the great gouging of 2011, when Republicans slashed spending, the talking point was that this hamstrung spending was “the new normal.” Even with…

by Richard Whittaker

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