Mr. Smarty Pants
Athletes can be at a higher risk of stress fracture because they can lose calcium through their sweat.The Taliban declare anyone who admits to the possibility that men walked on the moon to be an infidel.Robert Todd Lincoln, the president’s oldest son, was at his father’s side when he passed away. Years later, he was…
Phases and Stages
Stars of the LidThe Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (Kranky) Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride are now thousands of miles removed from their Austin beginnings. Wiltzie is in Belgium, McBride in Chicago, yet together as Stars of the Lid, they’ve released their finest work yet, a 2-CD tour de force that resonates with…
Naked City
Longtime State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, pled no contest Tuesday before Travis County Judge David Crain to one count of Driving While Intoxicated, a Class B misdemeanor. His penalty: one year of probation, one year of counseling, 40 hours of community service (still unassigned), a $500 fine ($1,500 was also probated), and a 90-day license…
Behind Enemy Lines
Behind Enemy Lines 2001, PG-13, 105 min. Directed by John Moore, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Owen Wilsonield, Gene Hackman, David Keith, Vladimir Mashkov, Gabriel Macht, Joaquim De Almeida, Charles Malik Whitf. “I didn’t sign up to be a cop,” says Navy flyboy Lt. Burnett (Wilson), “and I sure didn’t sign up to…
Day Trips
The Plaza Wax Museum and Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum in San Antonio combine for a tour of the weird and unusual. Visitors come face to face with realistic wax reincarnations of celebrities in one museum and then wander the corridors of Ripley’s Odditorium that makes the guests on The Sally Jessy Raphael Show…
Phases and Stages
RadioheadI Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (Capitol) For a band that six months ago seemed to hold the answers to everything except what happened to Atlantis, it sure didn’t take long for Radiohead to drop off the radar screen. Circumstances beyond their control, to be sure, but suddenly creeping dread and pervasive unease aren’t quite…
Naked City
While the legal dispute simmers, the public relations battle over air pollution at Alcoa’s Rockdale plant remains on a high boil. Earlier this month, Alcoa responded to a Notice of Intent to sue the company issued by environmental groups Neighbors for Neighbors, Public Citizen, and Environmental Defense with a full-page newspaper ad defending its record.…
Out Cold
Out Cold 2001, PG-13, 90 min. Directed by The Malloys, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jason London, Lee Majors, Willie Garson, Zach Galifianakis, David Koechner, Flex Alexander, A.J. Cook, Caroline Dhavernas, Derek Hamilton, Victoria Silvstedt. The white powder seen everywhere in Out Cold is not anthrax, but its effect is nearly as deadly.…
After a Fashion
Thanksgiving? What with the day-after mall mania and less-than-stellar eating experience we had on Turkey Day proper, at least we can be thankful for Austin’s cool fashion shows and celebrity sightings.
Phases and Stages
Kid RockCocky (Lava/Atlantic) “Red, white, and Pabst Blue Ribbon.” One nation, under God, with liberty and lap dances for all. Stars and Stripes and middle fingers flying, the Pimp of the Nation is back with a multiplatinum shit-eating grin, poised to plunder the politically correct and bitch-slap a few terrorists along the way. Has he…
Naked City
Citing potential, across-the-board 30% wage cuts, unsafe working conditions, and union-busting tactics, the AFL-CIO has added official Major League Baseball cap manufacturers New Era Cap Co. to its “Don’t Buy” list. Since July 16, members of the Communications Workers of America (Local 14177) who work at New Era’s Derby, N.Y., plant have been on strike…
To Your Health
My sister, who is schizophrenic but doing better on medication, is beginning to exhibit some odd behaviors. It started with her blinking a lot, and now she arches her eyebrows, makes chewing motions, and grimaces for no reason. Is this part of her mental problem?
Phases and Stages
Merry Christmas From The Family By Robert Earl Keen Rutledge Hill Press, 96 pp., $16.99 In 1994, just before Robert Earl Keen released Gringo Honeymoon, I asked the local singer-songwriter whether or not he’d ever written any fiction or movie treatments. His songs possess a vivid cinematic quality, even if they are related in a…
Naked City
For the past couple of months, Clear Channel Radio — the nation’s most massive radio conglomerate — has been billing the Austin station it owns at 96.7FM as “KISSFM.” Strange, considering the station’s legal call letters are KHFI, not KISS. The real KISS-FM, owned by Cox Communications (which also owns the Austin American-Statesman), is located…
About AIDS
Again this year, World AIDS Day, December 1, will focus on the role of men in spreading HIV, with the theme “I Care … Do You?” The goal is to get men — especially young men — to look at their masculine, often macho, attitudes and behaviors that perpetuate the epidemic worldwide. Men definitely have…
Phases and Stages
One of the best kept instrumental secrets of 2001 has been the Friends of Dean Martinez’s Wichita Lineman, a steely, full-length follow-up to last year’s scorching A Place in the Sun. Only available through Teutonic indie label empire Glitterhouse Records, Wichita Lineman transforms Jimmy Webb’s melancholy pop standard into the soundtrack centerpiece of some silent-era…
Naked City
On Dec. 4, activists in Austin and 20 cities nationwide will load up backpacks with all the spoils of a good lunch and head to their nearest Drug Enforcement Administration offices, hoping to share their lunchtime nosh with DEA employees coming and going during their lunch break. All the good eats — veggie burgers, cheese,…
Second Helpings: Latin American
Latin American restaurants in this week�s Second Helpings.
Coach’s Corner
Nebraska and OU both had their seasons ruined on the same weekend, but Coach saw it coming — now, if he’d only foreseen this global warming thing …
What I Learned at the Dot-Bomb Revolution
Robert Bryce recounts his short, happy career in the Internet wave
Naked City
What pleasures await Mayor Gus Garcia at his first City Council meeting? On top of a truckload of divisive and obtuse neighborhood issues (see “Austin@Large,” p.24), the council will consider the following: Selling three tracts in the Barton Springs zone acquired with money authorized in the May 1998 bond election by Prop. 2. The funds…
When the Dog Bites
Richard Rodgers knew well the dog’s bite, the bee’s sting, plagued as he was by inner demons, personal trials, and psychic pain. Yet he was able somehow to produce from this dark world music of sweetness and light.
Lightning Strikes
Austin’s food scene hits the big time.
Saving the Ten Percenters
AISD merges Liberal Arts and Science and Math Academies
Capitol Chronicle
Federal judges denounce gerrymandering, but then leave us with the same old bunch of white guys.
Richard Rodgers: These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things
Three artists from Austin Musical Theatre’s production of The Sound of Music share some of their personal observations about Richard Rodgers and his musical legacy.
Lightning Strikes
Alex Kahn’s Excellent Adventure It was a dark and stormy night. Torrential rains and deadly tornadoes battered Austin, disrupting many scheduled events on Thursday, November 15. However, 200 well-heeled Texas food lovers had paid $100 each to attend the Texas Book Festival’s Bon Appetit, Y’all party, and they were not about to be dissuaded by…
TDH Cuts the Egret’s Cheese
TDH shuts down cheese production at White Egret Farm.
Austin @ Large: Austin at Large
The City Council greets the Gus Garcia Era.
Articulations
A weekly rundown of the latest news in Austin’s visual and performing arts scene.
Lightning Strikes
Charlie Trotter Teaches Philosophy at Central Market Fans of Charlie Trotter braved thunderstorms and tornadoes last Thursday to attend a cooking class taught at Central Market. Kicking off the Texas Book Festival, the Chicago-based chef and owner of the internationally renowned Charlie Trotter’s restaurant demonstrated recipes from his new cookbook, Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home.…
RTP: Been There, Haven’t Done That
The Rapid Transit Project tries to win voters over with its workshops.
The Hightower Lowdown
Bush goes easy on mining companies; his new drug czar is doomed to repeat history; and his energy policy lacks vision.
Exhibitionism
In the Bedlam Faction’s production of the Restoration comedy The London Cuckolds, “rubber-faced” is a highly appropriate way of describing the majority of the cast, and that’s a problem. Rather than telling a funny story, the actors are begging for laughs at the expense of the script and the characters they play, and it leaves…
Food-o-File
How to help the Boggy Creek Farm recover from the November 15 storm, and the latest culinary news in Austin
Reed Defense DNA-Deprived?
A citizen sleuth raises new charges in the Stacey Stites murder case.
Short and Sweet
The Texas Documentary Tour showcases the work of three MFA students from the University of Texas’ Radio-Television-Film Department, whose documentary program faculty member Paul Stekler calls, completely without bias of course, the “best in the country, bar none.”
Exhibitionism
With Mr. 80 Percent, director Blake Yelavich and crew do their damnedest to entertain their audience, serving up James Sherman’s loopy comedy of romance among roomies in a New York apartment with a lively energy that’s winning even when the show works it a tad too hard in the “love me” department.
Imagine
The music business in a post-911 world
Subsidizing Smog
A new report from the Sierra Club shows that while new roads may get traffic moving, air quality will continue to suffer.
Film Feast
The cascade of events beginning with the September 11 horror shaped the theme of Cinemaker Co-op’s December festival of Super-8 films. Initially, they wanted to give filmmakers the opportunity to respond to September 11 and other world events. “Film has always been such a powerful forum for those kinds of responses and for filmmakers to…
History by the Tape
The news to come out of Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964-1965, presidential historian Michael Beschloss’ second volume of a planned three-volume study of Johnson, is that the president knew that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which North Vietnamese torpedo boats allegedly attacked two U.S. destroyers, may have been a…
Mountain Style
Chatting with Dr. Ralph Stanley, a pioneer of bluegrass music before there was such a thing
Glore Case Sparks Legislation
Virginia Glore’s case has convinced one local legislator that rape kit tests should be given to all who ask for them.
Harry Backlash
A brief survey of the inevitable, yet extremely varied, Harry Potter backlash sites on the Web
Novel Writing: America’s Latest Extreme Sport
National Novel Writing Month now competes with Veterans Day and Thanksgiving as the November celebration — except that it lasts all month long and demands 50,000 words, or one novel, from its participants.
Dancing About Architecture
More clubs closing: Will the Hole in the Wall be one of them?
Naked City
The U.S. House Republican leadership has scheduled a Dec. 6 vote on Fast Track trade legislation and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Describing the measures as “another example of the free-market fundamentalism … threatening the environment, families’ livelihoods, human rights, and democracy,” local opponents ask citizens to call their congressional reps and request…
Short Cuts
Out with the old, in with the new … or maybe in with the old again, too.
Postscripts
Austin’s literary news
Oaxaca bin Hiden
Q: Why are we worried that the CIA, FBI, and U.N. will never catch terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden? A: Because he looks so much like Dan Del Santo, who managed to hide in Mexico long enough to die a natural death without getting caught by U.S. authorities — and he was evading the much…
Naked City
Stovy Bowlin has resigned from his general manager’s post at the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, leaving behind a nearly three-year contentious relationship with the district board’s majority. Sources familiar with both sides say Bowlin was forced to resign because three out of five board members — President Craig Smith, Jim Camp, and Jack Goodman…
TV Eye
Holiday television fare
Page Two
Light rail is coming, sooner or later, because it’s a necessary part of our long-term traffic solution.
Our Ears Are Burning
Reviews of Texas artists from outside Austin: Kim Wilson, live performance: “Kim Wilson’s swooping, careening harmonica licks were an integral part of the original Fabulous Thunderbirds sound. He’s [now] singing with far more confidence and authority than at any time in the past decade or so.” (Nashville Scene, 11/1/01) Pat Green, Three Days:”Green, a pack-’em-in…
Naked City
A rumor that former state ag commissioner, radio personality, and populist scribe Jim Hightower is running for governor on the Green Party ticket is false, says Hightower spokesman Sean Doles. “He’s too busy running his mouth,” Doles said, “and he remains a Democrat.” Yet earlier this week, the cowboy-hatted commentator’s name appeared on www.politics1.com’s list…
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Animated Japanese sequel about the legendary bounty hunter.
Letters at 3AM
Our president and attorney general have turned the protection of our civil liberties into the new national crisis.
Phases and Stages
Broadcasts Vol. 9(107.1 KGSR Radio Austin) Number nine, number nine, number nine … Number nine in KGSR’s annual compilation of live recordings from their broadcast studios is notable for its numerous bull’s-eyes on the musical year that will be recorded as 2001. ‘Tis the season for Best Of lists, and when all the votes and…
Naked City
The State Board of Education has been in the news again during the past few weeks, adding new items to its already distinguished record of intellectual bankruptcy and absurd public policy. The most recent headlines concern its ideological rejection of several environmental science textbooks on the putative grounds of “factual errors.” In the past, the…
Sidewalks of New York
Sidewalks of New York 2001, R, 100 min. Directed by Edward Burns, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Callie Thorne, Stanley Tucci, Brittany Murphy, David Krumholtz, Heather Graham, Dennis Farina, Rosario Dawson, Edward Burns. For his fourth feature, quadruple threat Burns (who writes, directs, stars, and produces) lightens up. This wispy, cosmopolitan slice-of-life is…
