Like Beer and Chili
Joseph Skibell Love fest. Those are the first two words that spring to mind when describing the relationship between director David Yeakle and playwright/author Joseph Skibell. These are two creative guys who savor creating together. Yeakle loves Skibell’s scripts; Skibell loves Yeakle’s directorial touch. It is a match made, if not initially in heaven, then…
Insurgence From the Heart
Asleep at the Wheel and the Derailers The continued insurgence of country music into radios and album collections across the U.S. has been a sporadic charge, mounted in small factions from the far corners of the Pacific Northwest clear across to the east coast and on down, of course, into Texas. Though the attack on…
What a Dump
by Nate Blakeslee photograph by Alan Pogue On the first Thursday of February, the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Jesus F. Reyes-Heroles, paid a visit to Austin to meet with governor George W. Bush. They met to discuss the state’s plan – endorsed by the governor – to construct a radioactive waste dump less…
Is That a Biography in Your Pocket…?
On page 69 of Emily Wortis Leider’s biography Becoming Mae West (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30 hard), a vaudeville circuit manager notes in a report on a Mae West performance that “she is not volcanic in style and manifests no inclination to whoop things up. She is quiet in style and the `Nonchalant, Unique Artiste’…
1997-98 Austin Music Awards
Wednesday, March 18 Austin Music Hall, 7:55pm sharp 7:55pm MALACHI 8:30pm DERAILERS 9:05pm MC OVERLORD & HOT BUTTERED RHYTHM 9:40pm TRISH, KACY, ANA w/special guest Jon Dee Graham 10:25pm DAMNATIONS/GOURDS 11: 05pm ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL w/special guests All times subject to change
All That’s SXSW
Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers and the legendary Roky Erickson at the Austin Music Awards. Even if you weren’t there, you got to see it courtesy of the Austin Music Network This too shall pass, this beast known as SXSW, but not before you’ve gotten a good dose of it via local television. As…
Black to Africa
Keynote speaker Maryse Conde. Why should you care about African literature? Quite simply, “because it is there,” explains Aklilu Gebrewold, spokesman for the African Literature Association, which holds its annual conference March 25-29 in Austin. “Multiculturalism and Hybridity in African Literatures” is its appropriate title this year, “because in it you find profound and great…
Dancing About Architecture
After poking fun at Abra Moore’s SPIN and SPY magazine appearances, I was asked to teach her how to pose properly for the camera, as seen in this shot (Raoul: Don’t use the one where she’s flashing that “Get this leper away from me” look). Actually, with all the bands and record company types in…
Real Austin Stories
Clockwise from left: Ellen Spiro, Kyle Henry, Richard Lewis, Don Howard, Ramona Diaz, Hector Gal�n, and Paul Steckler. photograph by Kenny Braun First things first: Can we finally agree to remove the phrase “third coast Hollywood,” and all its implications, from our vocabulary when discussing the Austin film scene? It bespeaks the terminology of the…
In Person
Ron Hansen at UT Writers are complex folk, I suppose, given to irony and ambiguity, and the best among them are surely well-exercised in the arts of personal contradiction. Consider the color-filled pages of Atticus (Harper Collins, $12 paper), Ron Hansen’s prodigal-son mystery novel in which a quiet Colorado rancher finds both guilt and forgiveness…
Sticking it to the Fat, Lazy Americans
Cornelius WEDNESDAY WALTARI (Helsinki, Finland): Waltari’s 1996 release was titled Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die!: Death Metal Symphony in Deep C. It’s just what the name implies – a full metal symphony – and it was composed by Finns K�rtsy, Janne, Jariot, and Roope; not Nigel, David, and Derek. (Back Room, 10pm) ALTAN (Donegal, Ireland): When…
The Write Stuff
Shane Meadows, writer and director of TwentyFourSeven The most essential people to the storytelling process are often the most anonymous. The Mavericks are here, or rather they are over there, but they are coming here, to change that. Founded and run by Irishmen Gerry O’Boyle and Frank Murray, Mavericks is a writing and film festival…
Postscripts
UT art history professor John Clarke has a friend, an artist, who says of his own artwork that “What I’m trying to do is make this art seem strange to you.” That’s exactly what Clarke attempts in his new book from University of California Press, Looking at Lovemaking: Constructions of Sexuality in Roman Art, 100…
Only the Beginning
Last year, as the Austin Music Awards were kicking off South by Southwest at the Austin Music Hall, the Wednesday night showcases being tried out around town for the first time were confined to 17 venues and approximately 85 acts. This year, with the experiment an apparent success, there are 30 local clubs putting on…
Mavericks Screenings
Noose and “Amazing Grace”: 3/17, Convention Center, 7pm; 3/18, Convention Center, 4pm. TwentyFourSeven and “Where’s the Money, Ronnie”: 3/13, Convention Center, 7:45pm; 3/17, Convention Center, 2pm. I Went Down and “Flying Saucer Rock ‘n Roll”: 3/17, Convention Center, 4:30pm; 3/20, Convention Center, 7pm. Program of Irish Shorts: 3/16, Dobie 2, 7:30pm; 3/21, Dobie 2, 10:45am.…
Returns to Sender
Publishing has always been a chancy business; indeed, it has even been called the “worst business in the world to be in.” But rarely has it been as undesirable as in recent months. The book industry writhes in well-publicized turmoil as Ken Auletta and other media worthies ask “Is Publishing Alive or Dead?” Wall Street,…
Music Recommended
Friday: Sugar Shack, The Fells, 1-4-5s, Emo’s; Scarlitt, Silver Scooter, Diaz Bros, Hole in the Wall; Smokin’ Joe Kubek, Speakeasy Saturday: Billyclub, Econoline, Super Sluts, Blue Flame; Polk, Barton & Towhead, Waterloo Ice House Sixth; Reckless Kelly, Hollisters, Stubb’s Sunday: Shawn O’Connor’s Irish Fest, Backyard Monday: The Shmides, All Normal Society, Under the Influence, Blue…
Scanlines
D: Orson Welles (1942) with Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead Few people have visited as much turbulence on cinema as Orson Welles. By age 27, Welles had already made the greatest American film ever, Citizen Kane, and had characteristically served as the undoing of another would-be masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons. Based on the Pulitzer-winning 1918 novel…
About AIDS
Pets provide such wonderful positive and non-judgmental support to people living with long-term chronic illnesses. To help with pets, Animal Companions is one of the many volunteer-driven services AIDS Services of Austin offers to its clients. It is our mission to help people keep their pets at home, well-fed, groomed, and healthy. We can offer…
SXSW Record Reviews
LAZY K Life in One Day (Mutant Sound System) Basehead were so far ahead of the curve that seven years after their debut we still can barely see where Michael Ivey was coming from. Ivey’s spent those years doing the lonely work of making bohemian hip-hop: music that’s race-conscious, happy to talk about the pleasures…
Short Cuts
The 1998 SXSW Film Festival and Conference begins today, Friday, March 13. Panels and workshops at the Convention Center continue through Tuesday, March 17. The Film Fest continues through next Saturday, March 21. The Interactive Festival takes place Saturday, March 14-Tuesday, March 17. Film Fest passes are now available for $45 (including tax and service…
Benefits
SAT 14 Texas AIDS Ride Open House to benefit area AIDS services organizations, at The Cornerstone, 1117 Red River, noon-6pm. 482-8386. Plant Sale to benefit Austin Community Gardens’ low-income, youth, and senior programs, at Sunshine Gardens, 4814 Sunshine Dr., 9am-5pm. 458-2009. SUN 15 Shawn O’Connor Irish Fest to benefit Youth Options, at The Backyard. Cost…
Roadshows
MARCH FRI 13 Martin Sexton, Cactus Cafe FRI 13 Buddy Simmons Band, The Mercury Lounge FRI 13 Come, Electric Lounge FRI 13 Rat Dog, Sixteen Horsepower, Austin Music Hall FRI 13 Sugar Shack, Emo’s FRI 13 Smokin’ Joe Kubek, Speakeasy FRI 13 Zao, Embodiment, Kill Ratio, 1066, Voodoo Lounge FRI 13 Harold “The Lewd Balladeer”…
Robyn Hitchcock’s Moving Pictures
Apart from a passing snapshot image of “black Fellini sails” in his 1989 semi-hit “One Long Pair of Eyes,” there’s little in Robyn Hitchcock’s work to suggest any special cinematic preoccupations. Not unless you read his “I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl” (“…so I could off myself in the shower”) as some kind of…
Coach’s Corner
Obscure dots on a highway map. Lonesome places, conjuring up images of a Texas before the interstate highway. Where Hank Williams heard lonesome train whistles blow. Places where, even today, tumbleweed rolls down a main street, distinguished as main only because of the stop sign. Names reminding us we lived once, not that long ago,…
Badder Than NAFTA
illustration by Doug Potter If you had a problem with NAFTA, wait until you see what’s coming next. With a congressional okay and a stroke of the presidential pen, multinational corporations could have the same legal standing as nation-states, including the power to sue national governments for passing legislation thwarting the corporate bottom line. The…
Am15’s Live Shows and New Programming for Sxsw ’98
SUNDAY, MARCH 15 9:30pm Best of the South Stage: K-JAZZ Festival, 1997 (replays 3/16, 4pm; 3/17, 10:30am) 10pm Check This Action (replays 3/16, 4:30pm, 10:30pm) MONDAY, MARCH 16 7:30pmSoon to be Seen: Dexter Freebish, 1997 11pm Alternative 15, video clip show TUESDAY, MARCH 17 noonReality (replays 7pm) 7:30pmSoon To Be Seen: Tunji, 1997, (replays 3/21,…
Day Trips
Footprints, hoofprints, and bicycle tire tracks mix on the trail at Lake Somerville State Park, one of the longest trails in the state park system. The lake is also known for its fishing and wildlife. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod Lake Somerville lies hidden off the beaten path south of Bryan, preserving a wilderness cross…
Corporate Takeover
Monthly, in an article titled “Was Democracy Just a Movement?,” author Robert D. Kaplan points out that 51 of the world’s largest economies are corporations. The 200 largest corporations employ less than 1% of the world’s workforce, but account for 28% of world economic activity, he says, and the 500 largest corporations account for 70%…
10 in Focus
In works of documentary cinema, the proximity between subject and audience falls on any particular point within a broad spectrum. On one end are the types of historical documentaries you might find on themed cable channels, in which the viewer can be distanced from the subject matter by 200 years of time and “voice-of-God” narration.…
Page Two
The phone rings. It is 6am in the morning, mid-March 1987. I am 36 years old. I’m still living like a graduate student, a bed, a chair, a homemade table for a desk, cinderblock-and-raw-board bookcases. Records are stacked in every direction, sprawling across the floor – it is 1987, before CDs. I’m sleeping in this…
Looks Matter
illustration by Jason Stout When does perception become reality? For Malcolm Pirnie, Inc.- a consulting and engineering firm – it was the moment when approval of its $2.6 million contract to oversee the construction of water and wasterwater (W/WW) lines to the city’s newly annexed areas fell under the city council’s purview. Awash in allegations…
Featuring Texas
Finding North As in previous years, South by Southwest ’98 boasts an impressive lineup of native works ranging from the sublime to the sublimely silly, and from the elegiac to the explosively energetic. Leave it to Texans to come up with everything from pistol-packin’ grannies to an intimate portrait of father-daughter relations amid Houston’s landed…
Public Notice
Two quick things before we slap down the first of our two-part Volunteer Opportunities List: — We screwed up last week. Must’ve been high on Irish Whiskey. We said that Sean O’Connor’s Irish Fest to benefit Youth Options needed volunteers for their party on Tue, Mar 17. Duh. It’s Sun, Mar 15. 441-8336. — Our…
Wasting Away
illustration by Doug Potter Waste Management Incorporated is in the midst of what can only be called a stinking mess. Normally, Austinites would have no reason to care about the ongoing turmoil within the world’s largest waste disposal company. But as the City of Austin prepares to enter into a 30-year contract with WMI for…
Texas Feature Times
American Cowboy: 3/13, Dobie 2, 7pm; 3/16, Dobie 2, 10pm; 3/21, Union, 7pm Antone and the Blues: A Story of Obsession: 3/14, Dobie 2, 11:30am; 3/19, Dobie 2, 7pm Barbecue… a Love Story: 3/13, Alamo, 7:15pm; 3/17, Dobie 3, 4pm; 3/20, Convention Center, 9:30pm Dancer, Texas Pop. 81: 3/13, Paramount, 7pm; 3/19, Paramount, 10pm Detention:…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
The frog is the part of a horse’s hoof that is the center of blood circulation. Messner/Vetere/Berger/McNamee/Schmetterer/Euro RSCG, a large advertising agency in New York, recently landed the Intel account. The agency uses more than 600 Macintoshes. The average elevator has 28,000 parts. According to author Kimberley Cornish, it was philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who led…
Shooting Spelce in a Barrel
illustration by Doug Potter With all the fluff that takes up space on local television news broadcasts, it would be easy to get excited over a station which chooses to sit down for an interview with not one, but two of the most powerful political figures in the state – and the world. But then,…
Texas Shorts
Animated Shorts/Music Videos (3/15, Dobie 2, 11:30am; 3/16, Dobie 2, midnight; 3/19, Dobie 2, 9:30pm): Radioactive Crotch Man, Clusaki, “Helix Theorem”; Wammo: “There Is Too Much”; Recliners: “Back in Black” Shorts 1 (3/14, Dobie 2, 2:30pm; 3/16, Dobie 2, 5pm; 3/20, Dobie 2, 3:45pm:) Barbacoa Shorts 2 (3/14, Dobie 2, 9:45pm; 3/17, Dobie 2, 4:45pm;…
Articulations
By the time you read this, the Great Turtle of Auditorium Shores may be one baby step closer to becoming a 21st-century home for the performing arts in Austin. Or its mottled shell could be even more firmly secured as the dome of choice for the crafts shows, trade shows, and other sundry events that…
Austin Over Easy
Laura’s Bluebonnet Kitchen photograph by John Anderson I inherited an appreciation for going out to breakfast from my cowboy uncle Charles Walden. Whether he came to visit us in Midland or we encountered him at the home of one relative or another, he’d gather us all up in his big white Lincoln and take us…
Naked City
Motorola took its “good corporate citizen” motto to heart this week with its decision to pull out of Circle C and lay down stakes for a new office building in the city’s Desired Development Zone of Northwest Austin. The company had proposed constructing a new office site in southwest Austin’s recently annexed Circle C, but…
Why I Moved Back
by Gretchen Phillips illustration by Jason Stout Moving to San Francisco was like going to graduate school out of state; it seems I’ve completed my degree. So I’ve moved back home after 18 months of being away. But while I was gone, I thought a great deal about how much Austin has changed; there’s no…
Breakfast Anytime
Katz’s Deli & Bar 618 W. Sixth, 472-2037 Have latkes and knishes for breakfast no matter when morning comes for you. Kerbey Lane Cafe 3704 Kerbey Ln., 451-1436 2700 S. Lamar, 445-4451 12602 Research Blvd., 258-7757 Legendary pancakes and homegrown produce. Magnolia Cafe 2304 Lake Austin Blvd., 478-8645 1920 S. Congress Ave., 445-0000 Perennial favorite…
Mexican Breakfasts
Hernandez photograph by John Anderson Mexican breakfasts can save your body from late night schmoozing or even just boozing during SXSW. Here’s a glossary to aid the uninitiated in – M.P. Breakfast taco: your choice of fillings in a soft, usually flour tortilla. Choose from bacon, chorizo, egg, potato, refried beans, migas, or machacado. Migas:…
March 10 Primary Election Results
(contested races only) *denotes winner **dentoes a runoff ***denotes incumbent Statewide Primary Results State Travis Governor (R) *George Bush*** 96.6% 97.3% R.C. Crawford 3.4% 2.7% Attorney General DEMOCRATS: *Jim Mattox 68.4% 66.0% Morris Overstreet 18.2% 27.7% Gene Kelly 13.4% 5.7% REPUBLICANS: **Barry Williamson 38.1% 35.1% **John Cornyn 32.2% 40.3% Tom Pauken 29.7% 24.6% Land Commissioner…
Exhibitionism
Mary Moody Northen Theatre, through March 15 From the vibrant opening sequence to its last dark doo-wop, this campy, vampy musical about a man-eating plant takes root and won’t let go. Meet Seymour (Christopher Barrett), a brainy botanist whose heart throbs for good deeds, plant life, and Audrey (Tara Battani), the dingbatty sales clerk whose…
Food-O-File
One of my favorite things about this job is getting tips from readers about new places to eat that they’ve discovered and want to share. Recently, however, I’ve received correspondence from readers indicating some confusion out there about how we decide which restaurants to review in print. It’s convinced me that it’s time to outline…
Primary Colors
Lora Livingston celebrates her victory with her mother, Hazel Livingston and supporters. Livingston won with 57% of the vote over opponent Karen Parker. photograph by Mary Sledd You could almost see the tumbleweed blowing across the city coliseum floor as news crews and scribblers waited impatiently for something of interest to happen at Tuesday night’s…
