Cover Story
The New Rage
Voxtrot finally conquers the LP
Bikes, Babes, and Burlesque: Republic of Texas Biker Rally Roars Through Town (Updated)
Tips and info on the upcoming ROT weekend.
AFSCME Says Bargaining Will Be Back
City union mourns hatchet job on meet and confer legislation, says they’re not finished
God in the Schoolroom, God in the Lege (Part 2)
More Bible rumblings from the Lege.
God in the Schoolroom, God in the Lege (Part 1)
Do you really need the Bible to be a constitutional lawyer? Sen. Estes thinks so.
Delay of Game for Green
Council wants to redevelop Green Water Treatment Plant – but they’ll have to wait.
Lightning to Strike; Anarchists to Benefit; Europeans About Done
Just four games into a 16-game season, a very young Austin Lightning squad faces a big test this weekend, hosting the top two teams in their PDL Mid-South Division. A tough loss last weekend in Dallas knocked the Lightning out of U.S. Open Cup qualifying; now it’s time to concentrate on the league race, as…
Stacked Horns Hit the Bricks
Stacked Horns Hit the Bricks: UT Baseball Storms the Big 12 Tourney
Tool’s San Antonio Schism
Tool’s San Antonio make-up date breaks hearts.
It’s a Boy!
Mary Cheney had a baby…
Slow Ride
Foghat rides, slowly, into Texas.
Hot Carl
Are the city’s budget priorities screwed up this season? Does a homeless guy shit in a stairwell?
Larry Dierker Enters the Blogosphere
As of Tuesday, May 22, Astros great Larry Dierker has officially entered the blogosphere with his Dishin’ With Dierker weekly blog hosted on the Round Rock Express Web site. Dierker’s resume is more than impressive. He’s an ex-MLB pitcher (with a no-hitter to his credit) signed by the Houston Colt .45s in 1964, two-time All-Star,…
Leo Berman: Full of Shit
No shit, right?
Superbowl XLV Is Coming, Start Driving Now
Superbowl XLV is on the road to Arlington: but will those roads be built in time?
Wade in the Water
Yet another shirtless mayor sighting, on the shores of Town Lake.
Do They Know Something We Don’t Know?
Four representatives have now filed papers to challenge Speaker Tom Craddick. Can he last the five day to Sine Die?
When Is a Landlord Not a Border Patrol Officer?
The failure of the Farmers Branch immigration ordinance sends out a strong message to local and state lawmakers.
The Incredible Expanding Record Store
End of an Ear to expand.
Our Brand Is Crisis
Budget policy discussion officially pushed back – why?
Unhappy Perry
First Craddick, then Dewhurst, now Perry looks unhappy with the Lege.
Lessons in Civility (Con’t)
Did Dewhurst really get a telling off from the Senate? Seems so.
About That City Council Agenda …
Where’s the Budget Policy Discussion?
City Council Notebook
What’s council jamming out to this week?
Don’t Pack That Gavel Yet
Can the toll road conundrum be solved before the end of the session – or at all?
The Saints of St. Paul, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Start Loving ‘Fun Is Good’
Ham Solo. Bud Squealing. Hammy Davis Jr. Kevin Bacon. Squeal Diamond. The Notorious P.I.G. – Piggy Smalls. These are just six of the former and famed “Ball Pigs” the St. Paul Saints have employed over the past 15 years. The Ball Pig, a small swine in a light blue tutu, is a featured attraction at…
Why They Hate Us
Former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia makes verbal blunder at UT commencement.
Deals to Deal With TYC
The last negotiations over reforming TYC have been completed: will they mean an accountable management?
Who Is Bozo Texino?
Who Is Bozo Texino? 2006, NR, 56 min. Directed by Bill Daniel. Daniel, the former impresario of Austin’s long-gone Funhouse Cinema, returns to Austin to screen his latest film. Peripatetic (like the subjects of his documentary) Daniel shines light on hobo culture, specifically the mystery of the unknown identity of the boxcar artist Bozo Texino.…
Wranglers vs. Predators Sunday at the Erwin Center
The Austin Wranglers (3-7) face division rivals the Orlando Predators (6-4) for the second time this season at 3pm Sunday at the Frank Erwin Center. The Wranglers lost this season’s first meeting, 45-30, largely due to then QB Adrian McPherson’s three interceptions. The Wranglers have dumped the turnover-prone McPherson now, in exchange for still unproven…
Glen Hansard’s One-Night Stand
Just Once with the Frames’ Glen Hansard.
Stations of the Northcross
“Acres of parking on the rolling meadows of a once sacred Comanche burial ground”
Friday Morning Council Quarterbacking
What happened at Council yesterday?
Made in Texas
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Should Texas have seen this coming?
Lessons in Civility
What would Miss Manners say to Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst?
The Valet
This flat French farce has a couple of likable characters, one or two decent jokes, and a lot of missed opportunities.
Notable Upcoming (as in Tonight) Event of Interest
The chain gang
Phases & Stages
TravisThe Boy With No Name (Epic/Independente) Break Fran Healy’s heart, and still he massages yours. “3 Times and You Lose” sets an ominous tone with its first line (“I had a nightmare I lived in a little town”), but doom and gloom are relative terms where Travis is concerned. On their fifth album and first…
Yellow Bike Project Turns 10
Although Yellow Bike boasts more volunteers, community-benefiting programs, and grassroots momentum than ever, a cloud of uncertainty looms over group’s East 51st shop, set for demolition by early 2008
Away From Her
Based on a short story by Alice Munro and confidently directed by actress-turned-director Sarah Polley, this drama starring the stunning-as-ever Julie Christie is a penetrating story about love’s mysteries.
Page Two: A Personal Journey, Part 1
Smelling the jasmine with Vince Martin and Fred Neil
Phases & Stages
Miranda LambertCrazy Ex-Girlfriend (Sony/BMG Nashville) Elizabeth CookBalls (31 Tigers) Gretchen WilsonOne of the Boys (Sony/BMG Nashville) Avril LavigneThe Best Damn Thing (RCA) Times may be tough in rock & roll, but country gals are rollin’ in clover … and packing heat. Don’t cross East Texan Miranda Lambert, or she’ll pump you full of “Gunpowder &…
The Hightower Report
Who’s joining Bush’s war?; and Why import so much food?
Journey From the Fall
The fall of the title refers to the fall of Saigon – which is just the beginning for these Vietnamese characters whose stories of re-education camps, exile, and relocation are movingly portrayed in this drama.
Oops!
Our latest batch
Writing the Climate
Flannery and Kolbert on the accelerating pace of global warming
Boots and Suits, Scheming and Dreaming
The Wilson Brothers on The Wendell Baker Story
Chalk
Made by teachers for teachers, this local indie offers no easy answers to its statistic that 50% of teachers quit within their first three years on the job.
After a Fashion
A note from Stephen’s brother sparks dreams of peace and Buffy Sainte-Marie
Racism Alleged at TCEQ
Lawsuit filed by two former Texas Commission on Environmental Quality employees accuses agency of racial discrimination, contends agency denied them promotion because they are black.
Teaching Themselves
The filmmakers, cast, and crew of Chalk learned valuable lessons with little in the way of a plan or a budget
Day Trips
P.J. Hornberger’s Folk Art Gallery looks like a doll house beside U.S. 290 in Carmine
Election Lowdown
Results from a variety of elections
‘Flatland: The Movie’
World premiere, Sunday, May 20
Soccer Watch
Lightning win exciting home debut, and more
Developing Stories: Neighbor Power
Why neighborhood plans work better in Seattle
Not Going to Use ‘Time Warp’ in the Headline … Oops, Too Late
Austin Rocky Horror group celebrates birthday
TCB
Freescale’s Road to Austin is paved with good intentions, Lions get ready to roar on Guitar Hero 3, the Parish thinks locally, and the Texas Music Museum’s barely-tapped treasure trove
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Mike the Headless Chicken Days, and more bloody tidbits
On the Lege: Freshman Watson Thrives in Senate Environment
Lege is preferable to City Hall for former mayor
Inner-Inner City
Charles Burnett on Killer of Sheep
Outstanding!
Nominations for the 2006-2007 Austin Critics Table Awards
The Common Law
Real estate and title issues
Capitol Briefs
• “Republicans Unglued” could be an apt title for the near-anarchy state of the House this session. Persistent rumblings of an attempted ouster of Speaker Tom Craddick rose to the surface Tuesday with GOP leader and ex-Craddick loyalist Jim Keffer announcing his intentions to run for speaker in 2009. The response from members was, well,…
DVD Watch
MahoganyParamount, $14.99 Imagine: You are Diana Ross. It’s 1975, and you’re fabulous. Very rich people are applauding your collection of off-putting Kabuki-inspired fashions, and your glamorous Italian attaché (schlock actress Marisa Mell) is shouting in your ear: “You’re a real success! Success!” The word echoes, and you stumble backward, wall-eyed, remembering how you abandoned soul…
Mel Ziegler: The exit interview
As he prepares to leave Austin, internationally recognized artist and former Arts Commission Chairman Mel Ziegler reflects on the city and the arts over the past decade
Top Chef (and Taqueria and Takeout and Place to Take Kids and …)
The 2007 Austin Chronicle Restaurant Poll
Media Watch: The Incredible Disappearing Telecom Committee
Two years after Lege passed sweeping reorganization of competitive landscape for delivering telecommunication services to homes, community groups wonder what happened to committee that was supposed to monitor law’s impact
TV Eye
The End of the Cardigan-Clad Wise Man as We Know Him
Fandango!: Double the plucking, as guitar and harpsichord wed
It may seem a strange marriage, a union between guitar and harpsichord, but when harpsichordist Keith Womer and guitarist Susan McDonald play together, all doubts fade away
Point Austin: Budget Puzzles
Before your eyes glaze over, a few matters for consideration
Austin Bike Month Activities
Get your rear in gear
The Ex
Zach Braff and Amanda Peet play husband and wife who deal with a new child and an old flame in this featherweight comedy that never steps outside its comfort zone.
Arts Review
In staging Wallace Shawn’s famously unproduced and pornographic A Thought in Three Parts, it’d be so easy to stumble or misjudge, but Rubber Repertory has gotten almost everything stunningly right
Tosca: Indie Rock’s Orchestra
“If you work with them, you can’t go back,” grins Voxtrot frontman Ramesh Srivastava about the four professionals in Tosca String Quartet. After recording a track for the band’s Your Biggest Fan EP, Tosca returned to the indie-pop quintet and splayed beautiful depth all over their debut full-length. The emotion evident on Voxtrot wouldn’t be…
Beside the Point
Funky day care the latest gentrification victim
Delta Farce
In this multination offender, Larry the Cable Guy and two friends are Army reservists who are shipped off to Iraq but mistakenly wind up in Mexico – and can’t tell the difference.
Arts Review
The deep pleasures in the sketch show Winning Dirty come from character comedy and the way that the members of the Frank Mills troupe are old-school comedians
Voxtrot Reviewed
Voxtrot (Playlouder) Having staked out their indie-pop reputation since 2005’s Raised by Wolves EP, Voxtrot finally bare their teeth on their first LP. Ramesh Srivastava’s self-reflective, lyrically dense verses still remain at the fore of the songs, but Victor Van Vugt’s production gives the rhythm section more force, exploding songs like “Firecracker” with a thick…
Naked City
Quote of the Week “You know, I haven’t had to listen to a single zoning case, and so by definition I may be having more fun right now.” – Former Austin Mayor Kirk Watson, now a state senator, on why he prefers the Lege to City Hall (see “On the Lege: Freshman Watson Thrives in…
The Wendell Baker Story
The Wilson brothers deliver this shaggy comedy – which was written and directed by Luke and Andrew and co-stars Luke, Owen, and seasoned pros Harry Dean Stanton, Seymour Casssell, and Kris Kristofferson.
Arts Review
In her new work, Austin artist Jennifer Balkan takes up certain surrealist painters’ penchant for self-portraiture and dense symbolism, with intriguing results
Phases & Stages
WilcoSky Blue Sky (Nonesuch) Wilco is a band born of conflict, and whether creatively or from Jeff Tweedy’s depressed addictions, those tensions manifest themselves in exquisite abstractions and provocative, distortion-strafed production. With Tweedy now clean and the group at its most cohesive, however, Sky Blue Sky, Wilco’s sixth studio effort, lacks both the substance and…
Child Fatality Report: Reasons for attention
County releases 11th annual report documenting causes and trends of children’s deaths in Austin area.
Shrek the Third
The big, green cash machine has finally run dry, perhaps not of box-office power but most assuredly of the caustic wit that made the first two films so winning.
Culture Flash!
Ballet Austin’s Dance Education Center gets some financial help to the finish line, and UT’s Ransom Center gets an extra helping of Samuel Beckett materials
Phases & Stages
The Stanley BrothersThe Definitive Collection (1947-1966) (Time Life) Ralph Stanley, 80, finally became a household icon with 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but who’s actually heard the work he’s best known for, as the Stanley Brothers, with his elder sibling, Carter? There have been label-specific compilations of the Stanleys over the decades, but the…
Immigration News
Some Central Americans catch a temporary break; and lawsuit filed against LAPD on behalf of organizers of May 1 rally in Los Angeles
Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
This first feature from Bosnian director/writer Jasmila Zbanic offers up a slice of life after hell in which a widowed mother and daughter still veer perilously between fear and hope.
Readings
The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets edited by Dominic Luxford McSweeney’s, 211 pp., $14 (paper) In his introduction to The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, David Orr writes, “Readers … are notoriously unfair to anthologies – they skip around, get bored, spill Fritos crumbs on page 15, and read some poems fifty times…
Phases & Stages
Bright EyesBass Concert Hall, May 13 Closing out the 25th season of UT’s Performing Arts Center and Bass Concert Hall’s final show before the 3,000-seat venue undergoes an 18-month, $14.7 million makeover, it took only two songs for Bright Eyes to unseat the crowd. As Oberst shouted, “I’ve made love, yeah, I’ve been fucked, so…
Porn Punishment at APD
Four Austin Police officers are off the job and on suspension in connection with a finding that each violated city policy by looking at porn or other “inappropriate” material on Web or e-mail while at work
Fay Grim
The lunatic charm of Parker Posey is the best reason to see this wild, borderline-screwball sequel to Hal Hartley’s 1998 film, Henry Fool.
Readings
Pornology: Noun – 1: A Good Girl’s Guide to Porn; 2: The misadventures of the world’s first anthroPORNologist; 3: A Hilarious Exploration of Men, Relationships, and Sex by Ayn Carrillo-Gailey Running Press, 238 pp., $13.95 (paper) In Pornology, Ayn Carrillo-Gailey places herself high in protagonist heels while trying to debunk the “pornophobic” reputation draped upon…
Phases & Stages
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Baby 81 (Sony BMG) The third time – 2005’s rootsy Howl – really was the charm for S.F. trio BRMC. Baby 81 takes those gospel-infected shuffles and merges them with Robert Been’s churning basslines and drummer Nick Jago’s furious percussion to create a streamlined squall doubling as a politicized epic. “I…
Happenings
May 17-23
Luv Doc Recommends: Benefit for Peter Stopschinski
Yes, the world is a beautiful place, but the next time you’re standing dumbstruck, misting up over the pulchritude of that polyethylene shopping bag that’s dancing around in the whirlwind in the corner of the parking lot, give at least a little credence to the idea that someone in the bar might have slipped you…
