Cover Story
Restaurant Service: A Discussion
Twelve Austin professionals come to the table in an effort to define, demystify, and defend the most controversial aspect of dining out.
Arts Review
Lance Letscher’s works in the D Berman exhibit ‘Index’ are at once sublime, profound, mesmerizing, gorgeous, subversive, and encompassing
Phases & Stages
Hard-Fi Stars of CCTV (Atlantic) They come from a town called Staines, which is better than Malice, but not as fascinatingly dreary as The Office’s headquarters in Slough. Still, there’s the taste of a grimy industrial backwater, chip stains, and grease that won’t come out in the bath no matter if you called your dad…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
TV Eye
Testosterone on tap
Readings
CHALLENGER PARKby Stephen Harrigan Knopf, 393 pp., $24.95 It’s tough being a writer. The ghosts of legendary ones float around your head as you set out to produce the impossibly perfect story. Meanwhile, the world keeps telling you the novel is dead. And how do you top your last, critically-acclaimed effort? Perhaps remind yourself that…
Phases & Stages
The Complete Motown Singles Volume 4: 1964(Hip-O Select) The first five years make or break most start-ups, but in 1964, Motown Records “exploded.” As put into perspective in this fourth installment of Hip-O Select’s Internet-only accounting of Detroit’s most dependable assembly line, 1964 also witnessed the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Martin Luther King…
Local Woman Comes to Aid of Orphaned Ethiopians With HIV
Fundraiser for Gift of Love Asko orphanage this weekend
Go for Zucker!
As two German families collide, the film explores its characters’ shared history to unravel the challenges of political and personal reunification.
Page Two: Life, Fiction, and Selling Out
Life, fiction, and selling out
Phases & Stages
Metallurgy Remember several years ago when metal and hardcore bands all had short hair and neck tattoos? Well, those same bands now have long hair and beards, and the sounds are a little stranger. Featuring J Mascis on drums, Vermont quartet Witch does this switch well. From the flashback-inducing psychedelic cover art of their eponymous…
Officers Cleared in Clark Death
Chief Knee declines to discipline any of the nine involved in arrest of 33-year-old who died minutes after taken into custody
Thank You for Smoking
This snarkily playful little comedy gets so wrapped up in its own barbed witticisms that it fails to land even the lightest sucker-punches on the institutions it aims to skewer.
Letters at 3AM
No matter if it’s an unknown young singer like 17-year-old Sahara Smith in a little club on South Lamar (the “unknown” part won’t last long in her case), no matter if it’s in the room of an unknown poet destined to remain unknown, no matter – there are acts of creation, however desperate, that cannot…
Phases & Stages
Saul WilliamsBookPeople, March 24 “Hip-hop allows history to catch up with the present,” Saul Williams explained as he expounded on his latest poetry collection The Dead Emcee Scrolls. “The book is meant to read like scripture.” Time-shifting righteous ideals from prior precedents of clarity, the slam figurehead and outspoken rapper addressed a roomful of fans…
More ‘Am I McMansion’ Action
Two more weeks to submit photos for our “Am I McMansion or Not” contest; and your top 10 McMansion comments
Ice Age: The Meltdown
An exercise in the superfluous, this sequel lacks the original film’s geniality – and all of its pro-environment stumping.
After a Fashion
Stephen takes on ‘Project Runway’
What’s at Stake at City Hall?
City elections bring debate over people, priorities, and propositions
Weed Watch
Rowdy West Coast Raid; and Poll Indicates Populace is Mellowing About Pot
ATL
Wicked smart examination of black kids in modern Atlanta features talented young actors navigating the circuitous path to adulthood while spending their downtime at the local roller rink.
Deal Him In
Two weeks later, the band landed in Memphis, playing at the famous Cotton Festival. Jesse posed with Carl Perkins (l) backstage.
To Your Health
Useful tips on counteracting the side effects of Fosamex
Council Candidate Carousel
MayorJennifer Gale has become less a perennial than perpetual candidate, filing incessantly for any open office, from Congress downward. She derives a little ink therefrom to amplify her regular appearances during citizens communications, where she sings a little and declares herself in favor of nice things. Gale is reportedly homeless and semi-employed as a temp…
Energy Lotto Update
GreenChoice renewable energy drawing raffled off the program’s remaining 1,400 residential and 200 business subscriptions. Now What?
Basic Instinct 2
This wholly unwarranted sequel is so outrageously preposterous (and chockablock with bad dialogue) that the end result achieves a basement grandeur of near-epic proportions.
TCB
TCB sees dead people, lots of them, and one extremely live band
The Common Law
Listen up – illegal downloads & copyright law
What’s at Stake in Austin’s Schools?
Austin ISD faces a spring election and a brace of persistent problems
Eastside Neighborhood Garden Uprooted
A more-than-25-year tradition of community gardening in Central East Austin’s McKinley Heights neighborhood has come to an end, some fear for good.
Find Me Guilty
Like the criminal justice system it portrays, Find Me Guilty (starring Vin Diesel in the dramatic lead) ultimately works a great deal better than you might expect.
Author? Author?
Who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays? Writer Amy Freed plays the question for laughs.
Day Trips
Jaree Basher helps emerging talent find a voice at the Garland Opry
Candidate School
District 1 (Northeast)Cheryl Bradley (incumbent, unopposed): Former vice-president of the Austin Council of PTAs, Bradley is an outspoken voice for equity in AISD schools and has fought, sometimes in isolation, for greater resources for the Eastside – sometimes more rhetorically than effectively. The turnover on the board may help her efforts.District 4 (Northwest)Vincent Torres (unopposed):…
Dentures Anyone?
Texas Ethics Commission spits out one of its few existing teeth in determining that public officials don’t have to disclose the dollar amount of checks given to them as gifts
The Passing Show
This rock documentary about musician Ronnie Lane can be described in one word (or is it three?): Ooh la la.
Austin on Authorship
In connection with this story, the Chronicle sought out the views of some Austinites on the authorship debate. Although the brief, distinctly nonscientific sampling failed to turn up any anti-Stratfordians, it did produce some worthwhile observations, particularly regarding the collaborative nature of theatre and its influence on the canon. Lana LesleyCo-producing artistic director, Rude Mechanicals…
Soccer Watch
Italians fair to middling; and the return of MLS
ACC
Five candidates battle for three open spots on the Austin Community College Board of Trustees
Point Austin: Greens vs. Greens
Charter election rhetoric begins rising all around
Trudell
John Trudell, the Native American rights activist and spoken-word artist and musician, is the subject of this reverential biographical portrait that feels more like a press package than a full-fledged biopic.
American Fiesta
The American Theatre Critics Association has awarded Steven Tomlinson’s American Fiesta its 2005 M. Elizabeth Osborn New Play Award
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Redefining “going postal,” and dirty, dirty Americans
The Candidates
Place 7 Barbara Mink (incumbent, unopposed) serves as dean in the Fielding Graduate University, which offers distance-learning graduate programs; she was first elected in 2000. The current board chair, she is also on the board of Envision Central Texas and president of her neighborhood association. Her priorities are educating voters about the advantages for communities…
Beside the Point
It’s trump and counter-trump in the council vs. charter wars
Joyeux Noël
The title suggests a seasonal release, but this remarkable film is very much of the moment, suggesting the futility of war by depicting the “Christmas truce” of 1914 from three sides in the battle.
Director’s Choice
With her choreographic achievements being showcased in Ballet Austin’s ‘Director’s Choice / Evolution,’ Gina Patterson explains what makes a choreographer
Endorsements
Democratic and Republican Primary Runoffs, April 11 Note that both Kinky Friedman and Carole Keeton Strayhorn continue to collect petition signatures for the governor’s race, and because of the restrictive Texas election law, anyone who votes in the Republican or Democratic run-off cannot sign a petition for either one. – The Editorial Board DEMOCRATIC PRIMARYU.S.…
The Hightower Report
Turning Cookies Into Armor; and A Regime of Injustice
Ask the Dust
The legendary screenwriter and occasional director Robert Towne here adapts and directs John Fante’s Depression-era novel about a first-generation Italian-American novelist and his life in Los Angeles.
In Memoriam
Alfred King, one of Austin’s greatest cultural benefactors and advocates, has died at age 89
At the Table
Johnny Guffey, Jeffrey’s server: Undoubtedly Austin’s most famous waiter, Guffey is a career practitioner of the hospitality arts who has worked at Jeffrey’s for 27 years. He’s so well-known, in fact, he was one of the quintessential Austin characters profiled in Zachary Scott Theatre’s recent Keep Austin Weird production. He has a long list of…
Elementary School Limbo Continues
Decisive vote on whether to close two AISD elementary schools comes down to indecisive 4-4 tie at Monday’s board of trustees meeting
Merchant of Death
Director Jason Reitman spins his feature, ‘Thank You for Smoking’
Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
A movie so exasperating it’s driven our reviewer to escape into song.
Bad Dates
The day after opening in the solo comedy ‘Bad Dates,’ actress Helen Merino broke her foot, forcing director Dave Steakley to bring in Jill Blackwood as a ringer
Food-o-File
El Mesón gets some competition – from itself; plus, an extended Event Menu
Hidden Evidence?
Reed’s attorneys insist evidence unavailable to him during his 1998 trial casts serious doubt on his guilt of the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, and strongly supports the defense theory that another man was the killer
Blue Screen Has Austin Studios in the Green
And what John Walsh catching more crooks has to do with it
Stay Alive
Contrary to the hopes of geeks everywhere, Stay Alive is not an all-zombie musical remake of Sly Stallone’s 1983 Saturday Night Fever sequel, but instead a fatuous and dull horror film about gamers.
OilBash
Literate, greasy ladies throw down on the Eastside
Jesse Hercules Taylor
Words and images to preserve Jesse ‘Guitar’ Taylor
Connecting the Food Dots
What the war in Iraq has to do with tomatoes and the Red-Headed Stranger
In Print
‘Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute’
Arts Review
As staged by Hyde Park Theatre, Rebecca Gilman’s ‘The Glory of Living’ walks a tightrope between offensive slurs and comical jabs over solemn social issues
Freight Train Outta Town
My story of Jesse Taylor doesn’t all fit together chronologically, and I want to call him and ask what happened when. It’s hard to look at from here, in places. There’s wreckage I regret and will probably gloss over, things I never took into account at the time. My story is full of myth, because…
‘Mother Earth’
Oh, Mother Earth, With your fields of green Once more laid down by the hungry hand How long can you give and not receive And feed this world ruled by greed And feed this world ruled by greed. Oh, ball of fire In the summer sky Your healing light, your parade of days Are they…
Three Women Abroad
Tuesdays, April 4 through May 16, Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Arts Review
Dying and the worth of individual lives are treated with a refreshing and uplifting respect in Zell Miller III’s family drama ‘Kissing the Goodbye’
Phases & Stages
Arab StrapThe Last Romance (Transdreamer) There comes a point in many terminal romances where their instability can only be expressed by sex. “Burn these sheets that we’ve just fucked in,” spits Aidan Moffat in his thick Scottish brogue, first line of The Last Romance, and from that cold wet spot, Arab Strap’s sixth burning dysfunction…
For Their Eyes Only
TWP says there isn’t enough money to give them all canes
‘The Passing Show’ Comes to Town …
Ronnie Lane doc opens up at Alamo South Lamar
Luv Doc Recommends: Southpaw Jones’ First Annual 29th Birthday & CD Release
Here’s a dirty, filthy, shameful little secret: Austin is lousy with poets – not the free-versing, in your face, theatrically emotive, gangsta-gesticulating slam poets. They’ve already outed themselves. They’re upfront about their embarrassing little literary obsession. No, more insidious and pervasive are the poets who attempt to deny the intrinsic dorkiness of their craft by…
