Cover Story
Iron Chef
By the time Caritas’ Velda Melendez finally realized that cooking could mean a career, she realized it also meant 450 lunches five days a week – and not just during the holidays
Marooned in Iraq
Marooned in Iraq 2002, NR, 108 min. Directed by Bahman Ghobadi, Starring Shahab Ebrahimi, Faegh Mohamadi, Allah-Morad Rashtian, Rojan Hosseini. With the competing sounds of jet planes and boomboxes, Marooned in Iraq is a mordantly funny road movie by the director of A Time for Drunken Horses and Turtles Can Fly.
No Art Left Behind
New campaign fights for the arts in Texas schools
Contacting Caritas of Austin
Caritas is located at 611 Neches and is open Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, 8am-5pm; Tuesday, 8am-7pm, and Friday, 8am-noon. Lunch is served Monday-Friday, 11am-12:30pm. For info, refer to www.caritasofaustin.org, e-mail info@caritasofaustin.org, or call 472-4135 for client services and 479-4610 about making donations or volunteering. Caritas is delighted to accept food donations any time of year,…
Diagnosed With Greed?
Drug dealers seek out Downtown homeless – with money and marketing
Austin @ Large: Wheels Down
The Great Big Mueller Deal finally hits the runway
Restoring ‘Pastorela’
Five of Austin’s Latino theatre companies joining forces to revive one of the community’s yuletide traditions: ‘La Pastorela’
Food-o-File
In memoriam: The Central Texas barbecue family lost one of its most accomplished pit masters on Nov. 6. Laron Morgan, co-owner of Elgin’s Cross Town Bar- B-Q, died of an apparent heart attack at the age of 51.
Under Not So Healthy Texas Skies
Report on Texas health comes up mostly snake eyes
The Hightower Report
Some elections are clean, but the GOP campaigns dirty
Arts Review
Different Stages’ ‘Arms and the Man’ is an honest attempt at entertainment with a political edge, but it swallows or ignores the complex interpretation that this script deserves
Holiday Wish Lists 2004
Thank you. So easy to say. So difficult to embrace. Thank you. Thanking God is big these days. As in: Thank you, God, for delivering us from the maw of death at the hands of _____________ . (You may fill in blank with whatever natural disaster, economic downfall, or imagined or real bogeyman tweaks your…
Healthiest and Unhealthiest States
1) Minnesota 2) New Hampshire 3) Vermont 4) Hawaii 5) Utah 6) Massachusetts 7) North Dakota 8) Connecticut 9) Wisconsin 10) Maine 35) Texas 40) Oklahoma 41) North Carolina 42) Florida 43) Alabama (tie) 43) West Virginia (tie) 45) Georgia 46) Arkansas 47) South Carolina 48) Tennessee 49) Mississippi 50) Louisiana Texas’ Ranks: Not No.…
Just Like Old Times
The Drafthouse’s ‘Degrassi’ marathon is almost as effed up as the show itself
Culture Flash!
Stephen Mills makes a dance for ABT, and Elizabeth Crist wins an honor from ASCAP
Into the Heart
U2 drops the ‘Atomic Bomb’
Trouble on the Longhorn Pipeline?
Pipeline work proceeds in Bastrop Co. following rumors of a leak, extensive reconditioning
Film News
Austin movie crews are coming home for the holidays and should quickly unpack for frightful film fun
News/Print
Look into my eye. Look into my other eye. Rub noses!
Me and My Friends
Walking on the wild side with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ guitarist John Frusciante
Will AISD Crack Down on Special Ed?
Advocates decry district’s trend from ‘disability’ to ‘discipline’
TV Eye
There is someone I would like to thank this holiday season, as she won’t be sitting at my Thanksgiving Day table. She is the unnamed senior producer for CBS’s overnight broadcast who dared to do something very, very brave – or very, very stupid, depending on your point of view.
Page Two
The right’s most troubling victory may be its brilliant subversion of the language of political debate
Six Albums in Six Months
All titles released on Record Collection (www.recordcollectionmusic.com).The Will to Death(June 22, 2004) Peels the sheen off Shadows, but not the ringing heights (“A Doubt”), melodicism (“Loss”), or piano ballads (“Far Away”). Frusciante hits his (a cappella) notes.Ataxia, Automatic Writing (Aug. 10, 2004) Frusciante, Josh Klinghoffer, and Fugazi’s Joe Lally: five songs, 45-treated minutes, in the…
Weed Watch: Senate Mulls Med-Mari Defense
Bill would allow medical use claims in drug cases; mandatory sentencing slagged
DVD Watch
Period horror comedies were virtually unheard of in 1967, and although all of Roman Polanski’s work up to that year had shone a flair for blacker-than-pitch grave-digger humor, this would be the first time he had experimented with outright comedy
Letters at 3AM
The numbers tell a different story than the pundits: The next election will again be the Democrats’ to lose if party members don’t learn to talk plainly and with respect to people who are different culturally, and are uneducated, left out, or left behind
Phases & Stages
Live Aid(WSM) Held July 13, 1985, in London and Philadelphia, Live Aid was an extraordinary triumph of technology and goodwill. Beamed to 98% of the world’s televisions, the concert raised $80 million in one day for African famine relief. Phil Collins became the first artist to perform on two continents in one day (the real…
City Loses Its Mala Sangre Brain
Outside counsel Lowell Denton – both attorney and witness – is disqualified from the case
After a Fashion
MATRON MAMA MARTHANow that Martha Stewart is spending the holidays in the pokey, we’ll all soon find out how well she copes with incarceration. She’ll be out in March and confined to her home for five months after that. Home confinement. I love the way that sounds. Why if I had been convicted of committing…
Phases & Stages
EminemEncore (Interscope) Somebody should tell Eminem it’s OK for his albums to be less than 80 minutes long. Then maybe his creative needle wouldn’t hover so precariously close to empty. Case in point: where 2002 smash “Without Me” was bitingly clever, Encore’s carbon copy “Just Lose It” is puerile and embarrassing, even though he quotes…
A Happy Ending for Historic Saga
City staff backs as existing tax exemptions preserved
Moog
An admiring documentary about Robert Moog, the inventor of the music synthesizer.
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Advice from Butterball and Thanksgiving history
Phases & Stages
GVSB: niñas vs. niños, beginning with the Latin león of Judah, Santana. Columbia/ Legacy’s Legacy Edition of the guitarist’s debut repackages the 1969 classic with a second disc of “Fried Neckbones,” a catalog-milking concept copped from Universal’s Deluxe Edition series. The vintage add-ons cement the upgrade gracias to the fact that the original Santana LP…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
Christmas With the Kranks
Holiday pap and circumstance.
About AIDS
Each year, thoughtful people all over the world observe a day of awareness, caring, and remembrance of AIDS on Dec. 1. This year’s World AIDS Day theme is “Women, Girls, HIV and AIDS” to reflect the increasing, disproportionate impact that the epidemic is having on that segment of the globe’s population. Interfaith Care Alliance will…
Phases & Stages
Duran DuranAstronaut (Epic) When it comes to hunger, wolves have got nothing on Duran Duran fans. The band hasn’t recorded an album with all five original members since 1983’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Listeners have been teased with six mediocre LPs and one fine “Wedding Album” in varying group incarnations since then. Astronaut is…
Baptists Get the Garage?
Appellate court upholds church’s victory against city, neighbors
Alexander
Oliver Stone has achieved the impossible: He’s made the life of Alexander the Great seem boring.
To Your Health
Is my ‘natural’ shampoo damaging my hair?
Phases & Stages
Jimmy Eat WorldFutures (Interscope)The DonnasGold Medal (Atlantic) After career albums Spend the Night and Jimmy Eat World, the Donnas and Jimmy Eat World each find themselves asking, “What now?” Long gone are the halcyon days of hand-to-mouth van tours, as both bands’ new albums are clearly informed – and, to a lesser extent, impeded –…
Council Votes on Trash Clash
City moves ahead with negotiations on controversial landfill contract
Kinsey
Kinsey enshrines the scientist at the expense of a more rigorous and more profound scrutiny.
The Common Law
Directive to physicians and family (living wills)
Phases & Stages
IsisPanopticon (Ipecac) Ambient metal? No telling what that means, unless you were privy to Isis’ 2002 breathtaker Oceanic. To put it differently, Isis is Mogwai gone doom metal, Sigur Rós gone black metal. Panopticon, like its predecessor, is as deep and meditative as Kant, as overwhelmingly voluminous as Niagara Falls. The difference is Panopticon is…
DeLay: Ethics, Shmethics
The Bug Man gets a helping hand from the GOP caucus, ethics committee
The Machinist
Christian Bale lost 60 lbs. in order to play the unsettling title character, a man who has maybe shed his sanity along with his weight.
Day Trips
San Gabriel Gardens Christmas Tree Farm packs a lot into a few acres on the San Gabriel River east of Georgetown
AISD Goes Global
Michael Martinez walked to the United States from his native Mexico, enduring the cold nights and coyote howls of the desert. He lives in a small Austin apartment with his mother and works about 35 hours a week at McDonalds. He sends every cent he can to his sisters and brother back in Mexico, along…
Charters Still Not So Hot
Despite their fans, charter schools clearly underperforming in Texas, nationally
TCB
‘Almost Famous,’ part two, starring What Made Milwaukee Famous, the Murdocks, the Good Looks, Gibby Haynes & His Problem, and Endochine
Soccer Watch
The Lady Longhorns were ousted from the NCAA playoffs on Friday night; a 2-0 loss to the University of Portland ended the careers of perhaps UT’s best senior class ever, led by all-time leading goal-scorer Kelly McDonald and all-time everything-else leader Kelly Wilson. At least the Horns are in good company. Overwhelming tourney favorite North…
Bilingual Alternatives
The 170 students at the international school are just the tip of AISD’s Titanic-sized bilingual iceberg. Roughly 17,000 of AISD’s 78,000 students – more than one in five – are classified as limited-English proficient, requiring some form of English as a Second Language class, sheltered instruction, or other accommodation. As this population grows, many in…
Texas Parks Get Drilled
Sierra Club files suit over Bush loosening of oil-and- gas rules
New Elf in Town
Flaming Idiot Rob Williams trades his torches for the pointy little slippers of David Sedaris’ department-store elf in ‘The Santaland Diaries’
‘Balancing’ the Homeless
Proposed laws would recriminalize the usual suspects
Insurance Rates, Round 2
State regulators aren’t done yet with Farmers and State Farm
Rob Williams’ Other Show
As if he didn’t have enough to do preparing for Santaland, Rob Willliams is simultaneously launching a live talk show at Zach on Mondays. My Show, debuting on Nov. 29, combines conversation and original sketch comedy in a mix that Williams says reflects his friends’ highbrow-lowbrow sensibility. “So many of my friends can tell you…
Caritas’ Hearty Soup for 450
Although chef Velda Melendez usually doesn’t know just what ingredients she’ll have to put in her 40-gallon soup kettle, this was the recipe she made one day I visited the kitchen. Caritas’ communications associate, Sunny Kim, says they get compliments on the soup from the clients. It’s easy to see why. 30 lbs. ground beef…
Quality of Life Ordinance
Summary of changes proposed to homeless ordinance.
The Price of an Education
As the Lege looms, don’t bet the house on new money for schools
Luv Doc Recommends: W.C. Clark’s 65th Birthday Celebration
Now that the monsoon season is drawing to a close, we can all sit down to a big, bland, starchy American meal and thank the Almighty for giving us one day a year where we can literally eat ourselves comatose. What could possible be more American than unabashed gluttony topped with a little shameless sloth?…
