Coach’s Corner
So, I’m leaning on some sort of barricade in downtown Austin, trying to decipher the sporting event unfolding over and over and over again in front of me. It’s a ghastly, hot, muggy, smoky night, in a hideously hot, muggy, and smoky “spring,” at the start of a summer which never really ended. My girlfriend,…
The Numbers Game
illustration by Doug POtter Austin’s annual budget season opened last week with a bang (“We’re rich!”) followed by a promise (“No new taxes!”). The local economy is apparently so strong that nothing – from increased demand for city services, to an estimated 15% increase in property tax valuation of local homes – will require the…
Border By Bus
Greyhound, 800/231-2222 Greyhound can take you to every major border town starting as low as $51 round-trip (Laredo) to $208 (El Paso). Greyhound is in cahoots with most other buslines, which means that tickets purchased from other companies often involve a transfer to a Greyhound bus at some point. Greyhound offers small discounts to seniors…
Day Trips
Saradora’s offers quality coffee, teas, snacks, and meals unusual to small towns. “Why shouldn’t Round Rock have a place to get a good cup of coffee?” asks Sarah Roberts. photograph by Gerald E. Mcleod Saradora’s Coffeehouse and Emporium in Round Rock is a quality of life thing, according to owner Sarah Roberts. Hers, yours, and…
The Salt of San Marcos
Juan Palomo and David Barton of The Salt Journal photograph by Jana Birchum Although San Marcos has been home to Southwest Texas State University since 1903, it’s just now starting to get a reputation as something of an intellectual haven. Last week, the Chronicle “Books” section profiled SWTSU’s nationally ranked creative writing programs. But there…
Isla Mujeres
llustration by Penny Van Horn Some husband I am. My wife of five days is back in the hotel room, red rear end thrust high in the air to ward off the debilitating pain of acute hindside sunburn, and here I am floating face down in champagne waters, hobnobbing with the parrotfish. Languidly casting my…
Page Two
The thick heat of an early summer highlighted by the surrealistic haze has made May the strangest month. Literally, this is no poetic metaphor being spun. As someone just back from Los Angeles commented to me, they had gone there for the fresh air. Last night, there must have been a stunning rain; even inside…
Naked City
After knocking around for a couple of years with odd jobs and pass-the-hat singing gigs, Max Nofziger is now gainfully employed. Okay, okay, it’s part-time and it’s temporary, but it’s a job. The former city councilmember and unsuccessful mayoral candidate is working for The Man – the Austin Police Dept. – as a liaison to…
Mexico or Bust
As close as we Texans are to Mexico, many of us still find her mystifying, romantic, inspiring, confounding. Remote, isolated villages exist within mere kilometres of bustling cities and posh tourist resorts. The coexistence of First- and Third-World realities right in our own backyard is compelling enough without even factoring in Mexico’s natural bounty of…
Public Notice
…to come to the aid of their Austin Community Gardens. Cuts in funding have seriously taken the wind out of many of the Garden’s programs, including the youth and educational programs, and the food pantry gardens which help feed the needy. We hope, it won’t be a case of too little, too late. Unfortunately, ACG…
Sub Mission
Substitute teacher Amy Batiz photograph by John Anderson When it comes to getting respect, somewhere near the bottom of the list (perhaps after Rodney Dangerfield) are substitute teachers – those temporary souls whom students perceive as pushovers, “fake teachers” who don’t know the rules of the game. With no respect, much less pay incentive, it’s…
Tuxpan
illustration by Penny Van Horn Slowly, carefully, she opened her hands. The bird emerged, jittery but ready to take flight and claim the afternoon sky once again. Nic smiled as the tiny trembling hummingbird fluttered into the air. Just a few days ago, Nic and I had no idea where we’d be or what we…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
One old Jewish superstitition is to rename someone who is sick and near death. This will confuse the Angel of Death. World War II airmen used the Flying Fortress to make ice cream by placing a prepared ice cream mixture in a large can and anchoring it to the rear gunner’s compartment. The mixture would…
Revival of Spirit
Dr. Larry Bethune, right, of University Baptist Church, stands with Rev. Sid Hall, a UBC supporter and pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church. photograph by Jana Birchum Open the Yellow Pages some time to “Churches – Baptist.” Though they are often viewed as a monolithic mass of ardent Bible-thumpers, the fact is that there is…
About Nick Hornby
It was a scene right out of High Fidelity. Barreling down Guadalupe with a fierce, determined look on her face, the young woman was several long strides ahead of her boyfriend, who was struggling to keep up and look as serious as his single-minded mate. She’s a blur past the storefront window of Technophilia, a…
Exhibitionism
PAINTINGS BY STELLA ALESI AND DANIEL DOVE: GOLDEN PEAR/ FLUORESCENT BULB Tarrytown Gallery, through June 4 Alesi and Dove are painters who explore light and its various effects in photo-realistic works. Yet despite the harmonic qualities, these artists’ paintings couldn’t be more different. Where Alesi’s colors are warm and inviting, Dove’s are subdued and sparing.…
The Guilt of Frank Sinatra
illustration by Jason Stout It is now some days since the death of Frank Sinatra. The frenzy of hyperbole is done. Who was he singing to? “To me,” many of us felt. Often it seemed he was singing in our place – voicing us. In the sphere of Tin Pan Alley music, with its peculiar…
Timeline of Ubc Events
1992: Hans Venable and David Stahl join UBC. June 1994: Venable ordained as a deacon of the church. October 1995: UBC kicked out of the Austin Baptist Association. January 1998: Baptist General Convention of Texas meets with conservative splinter group, Southern Baptists of Texas, for nine hours to discuss UBC. The Convention informs UBC by…
Short Cuts
Hope Floats I Love You, Don’t Touch Me Opening this week in Austin are two new movies with local ties: Hope Floats and I Love You, Don’t Touch Me. Hope Floats, the Lynda Obst production (that was co-executive-produced by star Sandra Bullock) was shot in Smithville early last summer. (Come to think of it, that…
Art of the State ’98
Windows of Remembrance at Josef and Edith Mincberg Gallery, Houston That road trip itch — it creeps up on me every year about this time. Even though Texas between the days Memorial and Labor is a wretched place to be on the road, that nagging urge to put the pedal to the metal is so…
Food-O-File
This week’s first hot bite concerns southwest Austin’s Onion Creek Bakery (1807 Slaughter Ln., Ste. 450, 280-6399). Pastry chef Scott Teal opened his own shop barely two months ago and is already building a loyal clientele with his pastries, artisan breads, pies, cakes, tarts, and tortes. Teal has been baking in Austin since 1989, putting…
The Bible Tells Us So
The academic debate over what the Bible has to say about homosexuality focuses primarily around five different areas of the text: Genesis 19; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Romans 1; 1 Corinthians 6:9; and 1 Timothy 1:10. Genesis 19 is the Sodom and Gomorrah story of a town so wicked that it was destroyed by God.…
Articulations
Most of the time, news about a personnel change at an arts institution involves personnel leaving. It’s rare to see news about personnel coming back. That’s why we did a double take when the latest Ballet Austin press release crossed our desk. The notice trumpeted the return of three – count `em, three – veterans…
El Paso Perseverance
photograph by Rebecca Cohen Whatever became of Becky Duval Reese? Some of you may remember her as co-curator (along with Patricia Hendricks) of the landmark “Century of Sculpture in Texas” exhibition at UT Austin. Or perhaps as acting director of the UT Archer Huntington Gallery, from 1989 until she was hired away by the El…
The Flavors of Mexico
illustration by Penny Van Horn Mexico has long been a popular American tourist destination, offering sunny beaches, fascinating pre-Columbian culture, quaint old cities, lovely folk art, and affordable shopping. In the last 25 years, however, the multifaceted cuisine of Mexico has become a unique tourist attraction, drawing hungry foodies south of the border to experience…
R Is for Rerun
Larry Sanders (Garry Shandling) and producer Arthur (Rip Torn) squabble over whether or not Larry should sleep with his guests. It’s truly remarkable how un-great the world is when the seasonal network ratings sweeps are over. Bye-bye to season finales and publicity-hungry guest stars. No more police chases, surveillance tapes, cutesy home footage, or videos…
Tennessee: Lost – and Found – In Texas
Call it buried treasure. For years, lying deep within the vast holdings of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, sitting among the many papers and artifacts like a rare coin under a heap of sand on some out-of-the-way island, was a play by Tennessee Williams, a play that had never been produced. It was an…
The Cook’s Tour
There is an economical alternative for travelers who are tantalized by the prospect of sampling authentic Mexican cuisine in local fondas and mercados without the benefit of high-priced instruction. After 25 years of visiting Mexico, California graphic artist and author Nancy Zaslavsky spent the entire year of 1993 touring regions of Mexico and gathering information…
Cybernistas!
illustration by Roy Tompkins Back when this whole World Wide Web thing was just getting off the ground, there was a lot of talk about the Internet’s revolutionary potential. Uncensored, far-flung, inherently democratic, there was the gathering notion that the Net just might be the vehicle to finally unite the masses (the broadsheet seeming to…
Rollers Refined
“Rev. Kathy Russell” photograph by Bruce Dye In a perfect world, the Spice Girls would have already been relegated to shoveling suds at a Bristol bistro and Austin’s Rollers Redefined would be a global sensation, touring for die-hard jungle fanatics, managed by Goldie, and debuting their new A-Team ripoff show, Fox Force Four, on (where…
Dancing About Architecture
Continuing to snowball, and I don’t mean the promotional snack the band’s label sent out last week, is Fastball’s “The Way” single, which has risen to Number 9 on the Top 40, and shows no signs of peaking. Featured in the Beverly Hills 90210 season finale, the song is everywhere, as is anything having to…
Scanlines
(“Scanlines” wishes to thank Encore Movies & Music, I Luv Video, and Vulcan Video for their help in providing videos and laser discs.) The Full Monty D: Peter Cattaneo (1997) with: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy 20th Century Foxlaserdisc A film about unemployment that opens with a painfully boring short touting the wonders of…
In Person
Michener Fellows at Borders “Government money makes government art,” or so the saying goes. And while government and college are not exactly the same thing, neither is famous for churning out truly resonant art and literature. With this in mind, I went to Borders on Saturday and saw the drawn-out, two-hour debut of five eager…
Two Turntables and a Microphone
Jacqueline Specht photograph by Bruce Dye If 1997 put forth the question “Is Electronica the Next Big Thing?” then the Propellerheads’ sold-out, overflow-only, “you’re-sweating-in-my-Heinekin” showcase at South by Southwest ’98 was a resounding, “Yes.” It was a watershed moment for SXSW, whose previously limited success in the guitarless world of techno and electronica had resulted…
Watch This
“70 More Cable Channels on Their Way From Time Warner,” blared the Statesman headline of May 20. That’s room for an awful lot of new, specific content, in a cable-viewing world already rife with such vertical-interest programming choices as The Golf Channel, Home and Garden, and CSPAN-2. Just a few weeks ago at the National…
Postscripts
It’s time to submit entries to the eighth annual Austin Writers’ League and Barnes & Noble’s Violet Crown Awards with the June 30 deadline a month away. Three $1,000 awards will be given in the following categories: fiction, nonfiction, and literary fiction (aka poetry and essays, but not limited to those forms, which is a…
Quaquaversal
photograph by Bruce Dye Quaquaversal is unique in the Austin electronic scene, owing more to experimental music than to the club or rave cultures that occupy the bulk of the electronic music landscape. Their self-titled debut, released last year on Whirling Pool, is an ambient sonic soundscape that lends itself more readily to spacing out…
Akumal con Kids
illustration by Penny Van Horn My parents never took us anywhere. Their yearly vacation was an adults-only affair, usually conducted in Aruba, Puerto Rico, or some other island locale, while my sister and I were left at home with the maid. To be fair, we did actually go to the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal,…
Slamming Toward August
I arrived in Austin in 1991, a sometime poet too paralyzed by a sudden, devastating case of stage fright to give public readings. Odd circumstances, though, and a challenge from a friend, pushed me. I stumbled, in 1992, into a poetry slam at the High Time Tea Bar and Brain Gym (at the time located…
Claude 9
photograph by Bruce Dye Claude 9 is among a handful of Austin electronic musicians who focus primarily on “drum and bass.” As the esoteric stepchild of techno, drum and bass has its roots more deeply rooted in reggae and dub than techno itself. Ergo, it’s a natural extension musically for Claude 9 (ne� Claude McCan)…
Cabo San Lucas
llustration by Penny Van Horn Pano kept one hand on the steering wheel while the other toyed with the frequency on the CB. There were about four other fishing boats out that day, all appearing as tiny white specks tracing the horizon. We coasted at a slow speed through the calm waters of the Sea…
The Genial General
photograph by John Anderson The two worlds of Barbara Bonds Thomas, by her own acknowledgment, would dizzy the most stable mind. One day she’s in Austin, surrounded by wide-eyed kids sprawled out across rubber alphabet mats listening to Noisy Nora, the next surrounded by members of the ACLU, part of a press conference defending a…
Live Shots
Kimmie Rhodes, La Zona Rosa, May 22 photograph by John Carrico MODEST MOUSE Emo’s, May 17 Talk about your eclectic bills. Califone, a Red Red Meat side project, would have been an eclectic bill all by themselves, what with two drummers, Cold War-era synthesizers, something that looked like the offspring of a banjo and a…
Copper Canyon
ilustration by Penny Van Horn We set out from Divisadero around 11am and an hour later we had walked along the rim of the canyon and started down into it on a backbone ridge. Already we had lost the trail once on the rocks and had to backtrack to pick it up again. The trick…
Survey: Teens Feel Pressure to Have Sex About AIDS
A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 650 13- to 18-year-olds confirms again that the majority of teenagers will have had sexual intercourse by age 18, and nearly half of them reported feeling pressured into sexual relationships at some point. Many worry about pregnancy and disease, including HIV, yet 58 percent reported that they did…
Recommended
Friday: Hot Buttered Rhythm, Coolbone, the Mercury Lounge, Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Continental Club; Burn Version, Blue Flame Saturday: Joe Ely, Dessau Music Hall; Jeff Healey Band, Chris Duarte, La Zona Rosa; The Lazy Cowgirls, Mullens, Slick, Hormones, Emo’s Sunday: India Taylor, Zilker Hillside Theater Monday: Sean Green Benefit, Continental Club Tuesday: 2…
So Many Guidebooks… So Little Time!
Wherever you’re at, there you are. Perhaps a guidebook would help tell you exactly where that is. Not all guidebooks are created equal – which does not necessarily mean better or worse. Different travelers have different needs. Here are a few books to consider filling them. illustration by Penny Van Horn My favorite so far…
Benefits
SAT 30 Benefit Garage Sale to benefit Austin Family House, at 2604 Paramount, 8am-noon. 441-2086. SUN 31 Brook Mays/H&H Music TSSEC Golf Tournament to benefit the Austin Symphonic Band, at Blackhawk Golf Course, Pflugerville, 8am. 345-7420. MON 1 La Cage! Follies with Paul Parkinson to benefit Project Transitions, at Top of the Marc, 8pm. Cost…
Road Shows
MAY FRI 29 Big Sandy & Fly-Rite Boys, Continental Club FRI 29 Sportsguitar, Emo’s FRI 29 Rutabega, Electric Lounge FRI 29, SAT 30 Coolbone, The Mercury Lounge SAT 30 Gipsy Kings, Backyard SAT 30 Delphines, Liberty Lunch SAT 30 Lara y Reyes, Elephant Room SAT 30 The Lazy Cowgirls, The Mullens, Slick, Emo’s SAT 30…
Sunday Evening
illustration by Penny Van Horn Sunday evening in Mexico is a time when people all across the land come out of their homes and into the streets. Gathering in the smallest town squares and the largest city plazas, they celebrate one week that is ending and another about to begin. It is an age-old tradition…
