Cover Story
Be Real
Sound Team’s major label debut has Capitol
“The River” and “River of Innocence”
“The River” and “River of Innocence” Pare Lorentz filmed “The River” (1938, 31 min.) as a New Deal project to help promote the efforts of the Resettlement Administration. The poetic depiction of the streams and tributaries that merge with the Mississippi makes a strong cause for the importance of the Tennessee Valley Authority and, moreover,…
Nacho Libre Mexican Wrestling Feast
Nacho Libre Mexican Wrestling Feast 2006, PG. Directed by Jared Hess, Starring Jack Black. East what Jack Black’s Nacho Libre serves the poor orphans. See www.originalalamo.com for complete menu.
A Place To Land
With ‘A Place To Land,’ dancer Leticia Rodriguez realizes a longtime dream of producing an event that encompasses the idea and meaning of home inside an actual residence
Summer Reading
Texas Monthly on Texas Women by the editors UT Press, 229 pp., $18.95 (paper) When I was a 10-year-old girl in the colorless Houston suburb of Spring, I liked to sneak Gary Cartwright’s collection Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter off my parents’ bookshelf and read his observant and painstakingly researched essay about Candy Barr, the…
Parsing the Permits
Dunkerley compromise could be both too little for new franchise but too much for the market
A Curiosity, Tough to Crack
The AFS Texas Documentary Tour: Don Bernier’s ‘In a Nutshell: A Portrait of Elizabeth Tashjian’
In Memoriam
Austin juggling sensation Warren “Red” Ryder Schwartz, who opened for Esther’s Follies for almost 20 years, was stabbed to death on Sunday, May 28
Summer Reading
Illuminations What with X-Men 3, Superman Returns, and Art School Confidential brightening movie theatres across the globe even before the solstice rolls around, it looks to be another summer spangled with entertainments cobbled from comic-book source material. All the more reason, perhaps, to eschew the silver screen (and the hyperbolic exploits of those first two…
Sound Team Reviewed
Sound TeamMovie Monster (Capitol) As its title suggests, the major label debut from Austin’s apocalyptic pop collective Sound Team is both cinematic and fierce. The keyboard-driven sextet’s compulsive zeal for an ever-changing array of sonic textures dances on the edge of falling overboard, yet it always reined in before devolving into gee-whizardry. This volatile concordance…
Blind Leading the Sighted
Yellow Cab of Austin has become an employment option for people who are visually impaired
Going ‘Beyond’ With John LaZar and Erica Gavin
Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow, June 10
Arts Review
Hyde Park Theatre lets Ann Marie Healy’s short plays ‘Lonely’ and ‘You’re No One’s Nothing Special’ stand alone and creates a fully satisfying evening of theatre
Summer Reading
Further Illuminations: More comics for your Summer Reading pleasure GET A LIFEby Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian Drawn and Quarterly, 144 pp., $19.95 MAYBE LATERby Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian Drawn and Quarterly, 136 pp., $16.95 When Americans talk about European comic books, they’ll sometimes refer to them – for reasons of precision or of…
Texas Platters
Antone’s Home of the Blues (Koch) Clifford Antone is alive and well. So, too, are Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Rogers, Eddie Taylor, Luther Tucker, Albert Collins, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Doug Sahm, vintage footage of all a precious portal into Antone’s everlasting blues. “I didn’t choose it,” swears the big teddy bear, Antone. “It chose me.…
Yogurt Shop Reversal
The CCA overturns Springsteen murder conviction
Film News
Touchdown! Cue the band and fireworks or whatever; plus, all ‘Quiet’ on the Burnt Orange front, and more
Arts Review
David Leonard and Christopher St. Leger both make very precise paintings of the essential aspects of our urban environ, and they bring them together in a great show at Davis Gallery
Page Two: Constitutional Conventions
A document birthed in controversy is understood by few and respected by fewer
Texas Platters
“The days burn like cigarettes,” sings San Saba County on second disc It’s Not the Fall That Hurts, but they’re not talking about the weather. The Arkansas travelers, guilt-racked Catholics, and impatient brides-to-be of these rural goth missives shoulder enough grief to make a feller pine for simpler days back in the big city, which…
The Lame, the Halt, and the Parking Thieves
Crusading against handicapped-parking violators
DVD Watch
As much codas to childhood as preludes to manhood, each of these films have a different cross to bear
Summer Reading
Sarah Bird, Dupuy and Berberian, Karen Finley, Keith Graves, Amy Hempel, Carlo Lucarelli, Louise Welsh, and more
Letters at 3AM
The history of Mary Magdalene is more mysterious than any pulp yarn
Texas Platters
The MoonhangersHome Grown (BCR) Walter Daniels with Chili Cold BloodTrashcan Parade (BCR) Chili Cold Blood ladles Bloodchili Music – two Fritos packets’ worth. The local trio’s publishing company copyrights a dozen originals as its shit-kicking country alt.ego, the Moonhangers. Consider the group’s Waylon Wednesdays at the Hole in the Wall a tip of Home Grown’s…
Libertarian Ganders Goosed by Aleshire – 216 Times
After filing multiple campaign-finance complaints against others, Libertarians get slapped with their own
TV Eye
Seasons’ greetings
Arts String
The 2005-2006 Austin Critics Table Awards
Summer Reading
The Flamenco Academyby Sarah Bird Knopf, 381 pp., $25 The Flamenco Academy follows the friendship of two young women drawn together as teenagers by their fathers’ untimely deaths and their mothers’ abandonment – Rae’s for a cultish group of “Amish wannabe” Christians, and Didi’s for eBay and soup-bowl quantities of margarita. Rae’s role as the…
After a Fashion
Stephen remembers when his life was simply an orgy of sex and drugs and rock & roll… No, silly, not last week…
Texas Platters
Steve Arceri The Entire City (Distress Signal) A former hardcore kid from Dallas goes solo, grabs an acoustic guitar, and makes an album. That was 2003’s Reverse Vision, but Steve Arceri’s no whiny tear factory. With a little help from locals Jason Brister and Colin Swietek of Cue, cellist Caitlin Bailey of Pompeii, and Elizabeth…
Ethanol Usage, Production Heat Up in Texas
Production of renewable fuel source still pollutes but offers longterm potential for clean energy
TCB
TCB shields his eyes from the still-vampiric Bauhaus, says so long to Jay Clark and Clifford Antone (again), and counts down the decade’s definitive songs … so far
Summer Reading
The Bullet Trickby Louise Welsh Canongate, 363 pp., $23 As in her 2002 debut The Cutting Room – winner of an award from the Crime Writers’ Association – Welsh’s second novel follows a situationally ethical protagonist into a seamy underworld of lawlessness, greed, drink, and deception, with a mysterious photograph as its point of entry.…
To Your Health
Is mangosteen really a more powerful antioxidant than blueberries?
Texas Platters
Darling New NeighborsEvery Day Is Saturday Night Charmingly scrappy and well-at-ease with near-constant stylistic hopscotch, Austin’s Darling New Neighbors exude the same sense of kindred endearment as a favored thrift-store shirt. The multi-instrumentalist trio’s debut dabbles in indie-pop, country, folk, and disco with a freewheeling mindset that doesn’t break boundaries so much as pay no…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
The Omen
Julia Stiles is miscast, although Mia Farrow delights in this unnecessary remake of a perfectly good child-as-Antichrist movie.
Summer Reading
The Cantor’s Daughterby Scott Nadelson Hawthorne, 257 pp., $15.95 (paper) The characters in Scott Nadelson’s collection of stories don’t fare particularly well down in the emotional trenches of their relationships. Despite efforts to the contrary and usually with the best of intentions, there always seem to be inherent flaws, careless omissions, and irretrievable miscalculations that…
The Common Law
Protesting High Property Taxes
Texas Platters
ButtercupHot Love (Bedlam) Let summer begin. Let the sweat drip from your face, the Popsicles melt in your hands, and the grass grow brown and brittle. Buttercup’s sophomore LP, Hot Love, is the mood swing of a Central Texas heat wave: patient, longing, bouncy. The San Antonio quartet is more art than pop – as…
Anarchist Soccer Rules
Local anarcho-athletes to travel overseas for Anti-Racist World Cup
The Proposition
The Western is alive and well in the Australian outback, as this gritty film with a screenplay and score by musician Nick Cave demonstrates.
Summer Reading
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempelby Amy Hempel Scribner, 432 pp., $27.50 Though Amy Hempel’s “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolsen Is Buried” may be one of the most widely admired and anthologized short stories of the last 20-odd years, Reasons to Live, the 1985 volume of her own work in which it is collected,…
Day Trips
McKinney recycles an aging courthouse making a performing arts center
Texas Platters
Household Names Picture in My Head The second album from this highly stylized local pop trio is precision-tuned and oversoaked with hooks. Cynical chin-scratchers might quibble with the notion of always aiming for the universal chord, but it’s rare to find capital-P Pop pulled off with such a slick punch, particularly in an organic-leaning nape…
Kinky News
Independent gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman announces seven-point political reform agenda designed to get politicians out of politics and to open political process “to the people”
Cars
Muscling for rank in the crowded box-office speedway, this Pixar contender takes an early lead but loses momentum in the middle third.
Summer Reading
George & Martha by Karen Finley Verso, 108 pp., $15 (paper) If you know performance artist Karen Finley’s work at all, you probably suspect that the title of her new book, George & Martha, doesn’t refer, except metaphorically, to the father and mother of our country. Its more immediate referent is Bush, George W., and…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Prison populations and a Polish pope
Texas Platters
Radney Foster This World We Live In (Dualtone) Since going solo in 1992, Radney Foster has been remarkably consistent at making albums filled with high quality roots rock and Texas-style country. This World We Live In, his fifth studio work, is no big leap for the Del Rio native, but it’s nearly as satisfying as…
Can the Y Be Fixed?
“Community alliance” of Oak Hill residents, anti-toll activists, and Austin environmentalists gets first shot next week at convincing CAMPO to reconsider TXDOT’s plans for the “Y”
A Prairie Home Companion
It’s been a very long time since any Robert Altman film has been as enjoyable as A Prairie Home Companion.
Summer Reading
Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American Westby Jonathan W. Jordan Potomac Books, 381 pp., $35 Here’s a multiple-choice question to test your Texacentric knowledge quotient: Texas would have never earned its independence from Mexico in 1836 if not for: A) the brave (if foolhardy)…
Soccer Watch
World Cup fever!
Texas Platters
Slaid Cleaves Unsung (Rounder) Never one to hurry an album just to have something new to sell, Slaid Cleaves’ latest is a surprise in that it doesn’t feature any of his own songs. Instead, Unsung collects the work of other singer-songwriters, and, like its title, announces – with the exception of David Olney, Ana Egge,…
APD’s Follmer Fired
APD’s Follmer Fired Rookie officer let go for role in September official oppression arrest.
One Perfect Day
This earnest, soulful, and jarringly melodramatic rave-culture love story is from Melbourne, Australia.
Summer Reading
The Unexpectedly Bad Hair of Barcelona Smithby Keith Graves Philomel Books, 32 pp., $16.99 Barcelona Smith does not have bad hair. The boy’s got hair straight out of Easy Rider. Blueberry blue too. And prudent, like its bearer: no monkey bars or slobbering dogs. Smiling’s out of the question, really – might catch a bug…
It’s Noon. Do You Know What Your Children Are Eating?
Fernando Saralegui is, as usual, at the center of a whirlwind of activity. A self-described type-A personality, the Austin cookbook author is always on the move, driven by his involvement in one project or another with an array of local organizations. In his spare time, he is Tarrytown’s Mr. Mom, cooking for the family, participating…
Texas Platters
Lisa LoebThe Very Best of Lisa Loeb (Geffen) The “Lisa Loeb Is Single and Looking” juggernaut continues with The Very Best of Lisa Loeb. And truly, this should be a single, the Dallas native’s crowning achievement to date being the 1994 hit “Stay.” This collection, on the heels of #1 Single, a reality show about…
Radnofsky Talks
Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Barbara Ann Radnofsky Courts Austin
Keeping Up With the Steins
This story about one-upmanship while staging a bar mitzvah in L.A., should, by all rights, be very funny, but, sadly, it is not.
Summer Reading
Pissed Off: On Women and Angerby Spike Gillespie Seal Press, 257 pp., $14.95 (paper) “So what is forgiveness, if not some religious command that we let people stomp on us as we smile politely and allow them to do it?” Austin writer Spike Gillespie’s third book, Pissed Off: On Women and Anger, is not just…
Full Circle
PBS TV shows have a tendency to be so well-done that we seldom stop to think where they came from. Sure, we all know someone had to work on them, but many of them have such a seamless quality that we are liable to just sit back and let the learning flow through us rather…
Texas Platters
T Bone Burnett The True False Identity (Columbia/DMZ) T Bone Burnett Twenty Twenty: The Essential T Bone Burnett (DMZ/Columbia) By releasing his first album of new material in 14 years simultaneously with a 2-CD retrospective of his previous work, Fort Worth native T Bone Burnett looks both forward and backward, closing one door while stepping…
Abortion: Louisiana’s Punching Bag
Governor Blanco says would sign ban on abortion that is moving through hurricane-battered state�s senate
Summer Reading
This Book Will Save Your Lifeby A.M. Homes Viking, 372 pp., $24.95 Homing in on America’s spiritual crisis – a present day where people are more concerned with voting for American Idol than for their own government, where reality television has filled a gaping personal void with fluffy, marshmallow-flavored nothingness – A.M. Homes’ fourth novel…
The Omnivore’s Dilemma
The decisions we make regarding what foods we buy, where we buy them, and how we eat them have implications that touch on environmental, political, economic, moral, health, and agricultural issues
Texas Platters
Roy HargroveNothing Serious (Verve) The RH FactorDistractions (Verve) Roy Hargrove keeps his ear to the street. Even as the Waco-born, Dallas-bred trumpeter has released a successful string of straight-up, hard-bop LPs, he’s also recorded with Erykah Badu and D’Angelo and toured through Austin frequently with a deliciously funky quintet. In this light, it’s no surprise…
Point Austin: Budget Time
Running all the numbers, we have to pay for what we need
Summer Reading
Carte Blancheby Carlo Lucarelli Europa, 108 pp., $14.95 (paper) If it was anxious West Coast dystopia that bred American noir, then it was war in Europe that sealed the deal overseas. The exchange, though, ends up roughly the same: When you’re helpless, what can you do? When you’re confused, who do you call? And what…
Watching, Breathing, and Eating the World Cup 2006
Saturday June 10 – Sunday, June 11
Texas Platters
Horse + Donkey, Baby RobotsThe Parlor, June 3 There’s something voyeuristic and comforting about the Parlor on North Loop that makes it feel like a scene in a Tom Waits song, an anything-goes aesthetic. A homeless man wanders in pumping his fist to the music; bikers converge out back; children squeal with past-their-bedtime delight as…
Beside the Point
Bond package continues taking shape, and the McMansion ordinance’s day of truth arrives
Requiem
When site-specific dance maker Sally Jacques was told that she could use the concrete shell of the Intel building for her latest production, she leapt at the opportunity
Summer Reading
Riley’s Fireby Lee Merrill Byrd Algonquin, 261 pp., $19.95 When our children come into the world, we marvel at their 10 tiny fingers and toes, wonder what color their eyes will be, and debate whether their noses favor Mommy or Daddy in shape. So what happens, then, when our children set themselves on fire and…
Food-o-File
The nature of nonprofits; plus, the scoop on this week’s culinary calendar
Fare Fight
The pending sale of Roy’s Taxi company raises a host of Austin memories
The Hightower Report
The Ruby Red Cocktail; and An Appeal to Evangelical Voters
Luv Doc Recommends: Texas Pride Festival
This week George W. Bush outed himself…as being against gay marriage. It’s not like he had a big gay fan base anyway. Even Log Cabin Republicans are wishing their log cabins had closets these days. With Bush’s approval rating hovering somewhere around thirty percent, Republican strategists took aim below the Bible belt, sucking up to…
