Public Notice
Kids dressing funny? Now there’s a twist. Those young whippersnappers nowadays … who can keep up with ’em? Last week was baggy: this week, pants applied with spray paint. Last week George Clooneys: this week Phreaky ‘Phros. These kids nowadays … Oi! We can’t pretend that we didn’t get grief from our elders for our…
The Literary Side
Outside of politics, Combs published her first and only romance novel in 1990. A Perfect Match told the tale of Ross, the bodyguard, and Emily, the cryptanalyst from the National Security Agency who knows too much. Combs earned $6,000 from Meteor Publishing Corp. for writing lines like: “He could feel her mouth and hands tormenting…
Journey Toward a Novel
Obsession re-mains price the of creation,” wrote Nelson Algren, “and the writer who declines that risk will come up with nothing.” Two years overdue at the publisher’s, finally this novel, my fourth, is done. (It concerns a Marilyn Monroe impersonator in Vegas.) For some of us, to delve into our obsession is to go where…
Is No News Good News?
KVET/KASE general manager Dusty Black’s reasons for the switch were predictable enough — this is what the market demands. Unfortunately, he seems to be right. Is there really a demand for discussion of local issues and news? The ratings certainly don’t indicate it. Neither does Austin’s voting record — our citizenry has an image of…
Food-O-File
October brings a full slate of gourmet charity events and a steady deluge of cookbooks from the fall catalogs of major publishers. The UPS man and I are now on a first-name basis. The bulging bookcases with ever-growing stacks of cookbooks piled in front of them are visible through the open door. He hands me…
Naked City
The Texas Commission on a Representative Student Body will unveil its much-anticipated report on improving ethnic diversity at Texas colleges and universities 10am today (Thursday, Oct. 15) at the Capitol. The commission, chaired by former Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby, has been meeting since January, searching for legal ways around the 1996 Hopwood ruling that eliminated…
Sweetish Hill Bakery
1120 W. Sixth St., 472-1347 Mon-Sat, 6:30am-7 pm; Sun, 6:30am-5pm Other locations: 922 Congress Ave. (477-2441); 98 San Jacinto Blvd, Ste. 160 (472-2411). For three years now, I’ve made my home in Clarksville. From an incongruously ramshackle apartment on an alley behind West Sixth Street, I’ve been spoiled by having all the essentials in walking…
Farmers First
Standing by a flickering backyard torch light in his jeans, crisp white button-down shirt and tie at a pot luck supper at Austin’s Boggy Creek farm, Patterson spoke recently about the key to saving rural Texas — “supporting the ‘kiddos'” in farming. In some rural areas, he says, the chief source of income for residents…
Winning Pho-mula
215 E. Sixth, 236-8878 Sun-Wed, 11am-9pm: Thu-Sat, 11am-2am photograph by John Anderson It all began in 1983, with a hefty pot of beef shin bones boiling away in a San Jose, California, kitchen. Within hours, the bones yielded a deep amber broth that was layered with fresh rice noodles and selected cuts of beef, then…
Sugar and Spice
Television biographies are somewhat specious undertakings. If the subject is alive, the spin is almost always a gosh-things-were-bad-but-ain’t-life-grand-now. If the subject is dead, it gets worse. There are BravoProfiles, a marginally arty series, Lifetime’s Intimate Portraits, invariably about women, VH1’s rocking Legends and Behind the Scenes, and the granddaddy of them all, A&E’s Biography. My…
Articulations
If you had to condense the history and scope of opera in Austin into two words (a pretty outlandish concept, but work with me), those words would likely be Jess Walters. This esteemed singer, director, and teacher has done more to present operas, develop artists, and generally further the operatic arts in this city for…
Free Jazz, Thin Margin
The 33 Degrees record store has centralized air conditioning, but the apparatus isn’t built to handle a Texas heat wave — at least not when nearly 300 people are crammed into the place. On a night like that, 93 Degrees is more like it. Pedro Moreno photograph by Kenny Braun Such a night was July…
Vampire in a Box
The desire for eternal life permeates religion, science, and mythology. Vampire tales embody the dark side of this quest for eternity and provide an inversion of the three Abrahamic religions’ promise of life after death. The best that vampires can offer is life in death. Surrounded by the soul-searching stories and rich imagery of Catholicism…
Exhibitionism
HOUSE: TRANSCENDING THE RANT Hyde Park Theatre, through October 17 Running Time: 1 hr, 5 min “Hey, pal, listen up! This is the skinny on what’s screwed up about the world…” This is the Age of Rants. Our air is clouded with them: loud, agitated monologues bitterly denouncing the shattered state of our society and…
Dancing About Architecture
House of Blues? In Austin? What about Antone’s? Those were the first thoughts of most local live music scenesters when they heard that a new blues club was opening on Sixth Street — a mere few blocks from Austin’s venerable “Home of the Blues,” Antone’s. Colsten Bergher, who set up the original House of Blues…
Scanlines
D: Lloyd Bacon, 1940 The Longest Yard D: Robert Aldrich, 1974 with Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert North Dallas Forty D: Ted Kotcheff, 1979 with Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Charles Durning, Dayle Haddon We know, by now, that baseball is a beautiful game. We know this because we have been told so, many times, by very…
Postscripts
from Texas Sky The Austin Writers’ League’s annual fundraiser happens this weekend; it’s the Kinked-Up Follies, with Kinky Friedman, Mayor Kirk Watson, and the Esther’s Follies troupe. See the “Calendar” page or call 499-8914 for more information… An inordinately bounteous crop of photography books about Texas have come out lately: Photographer Wyman Meinzer will present…
Family Ties
Hobby’s Republican opponent, Carole Keeton Rylander, obviously has the most hay to make by ferreting out Hobby’s shortcomings. So far the Rylander camp has charged that Hobby overstates the value of his business experience, and that his performance in public office does not match his political rhetoric. Rylander also claims that former Lt. Gov. Bill…
Short Cuts
Is it already that time of year again? That build-up period to the 1999 South by Southwest (SXSW) Film and Interactive Festivals in March? Seems it’s so. Both festivals are soliciting entries for their upcoming competitions. Early deadline for submissions to the upcoming Film Festival competition is November 16 — exactly one month off. Entry…
Snapshots on Photography
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (October 2, 1998) identifies a hot new category of collectibles: “vernacular photography.” According to the Journal, collectors are paying $1-450 for snapshots — photographic snippets of stranger’s lives taken by anonymous amateurs. The first ever “Vernacular Photography Fair” has already come and gone this year, and the…
Luminous
The pulse of drums prompts a ripple of chimes punctuated by the crystal tone of a small bell. Following several fast rolls across the timbales, a pause hangs in the air just long enough to foreshadow the brooding piano, marching arm and arm with its accomplice the bass. Trumpet and trombone join the procession as…
Searching for The Man
It seems but a scant time ago that I took to these pages with a fevered pen, up in arms and bleeding at the ears, eager to relate the woolliest details of my disparate, desperate search for Revolution on the Internet. Comrades and apparatchiks among you may recall that the search was grounded in the…
In Person
Robin Troy at Book People Remember when MTV stood for Music Television? Now, who knows what it stands for except the ever-elusive Generation X and short attention spans, but the network has branched into publishing. Their first book — This Book Sucks, by Beavis and Butthead — is more or less what you would expect…
Jazz Sides
YESKA Skafrocubanjazz (Aztlan) Ska and Afro-Cuban jazz. Yes, ska. It’s all in the name. It’s also all in the Caribbean-style piano flourish that opens this Los Angeles octet’s debut. Kicking off with an instantly recognizable piano progression that surely lights up the dance floors of Miami nightly — inviting all to samba! — “Fideo (para…
The Man for Munchkins
Supposing you want to introduce the wee ones to the, um, investigative branches of our government, but worry about exposing them to such “grown-up” topics as cocaine trafficking, political assassination, and J. Edgar Hoover’s personal life. No problem, parents — Uncle Sam is a step ahead of you, with (Web)pages full of propaganda — er,…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Hugh Hefner owns the crypt next to Marilyn Monroe. A designer drug based on the bacterium used to ferment salami and sauerkraut may be offered as an alternative to antibiotics. Instead of killing off bad bacteria, the tiny bug, lactobacillus plantarum 299V, encourages healthy microbes to grow and squeeze out the unwanted ones. A demijohn…
Congruent Angles
photograph by Kenny Braun The most important element in any community of jazz musicians is its elder statesmen, players who have seen the world and who have been around the significant minds of their own generation before returning home to pass on those experiences to the next ones in line. The forerunners’ presence makes for…
States of Distinction
illustrations by Penny Van Horn My father tells the story of a certain Tennessean — possibly Davy Crockett, probably not — who ranged far from home to alight in Texas land. When time came to report to his loved ones back East, he gave this assessment of his new home: “Good for men and dogs,…
Between the Lines
When Christopher Dickey was eight years old, his father, the poet James Dickey, took him aside and told him a story. He had been married to someone else, an Australian woman whom he had met during the war. She had died of blood poisoning, he said, and then he had come home and married Christopher’s…
New Urban Sagas
It’s hard to argue that the redevelopment of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport is small stuff. The New Mueller will, rather, be the largest urban development project in the history of this city, aiming to be the buckle in the Smart Growth belt, the sustainable NewUrb mixed-use ped-friendly neo-trad public-private incarnation of what is fast becoming…
About AIDS
One-half of U.S. high school students are sexually active, and of those, one-third have had four or more partners. These are among the findings released August 14 by the Centers for Disease Control in its new Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance report for 1997. The implication for HIV infection and AIDS, as well as for pregnancy…
Colorblind Arts
illustration by Doug Potter Austin is a city whereleaders line up to express their commitments to social justice — where diversity is celebrated, the keeping of the peace is valued highly, and healing is actively sought for the wounds of the past. The city has long been sensitive about the implications for ethnic diversity in…
Coach’s Corner
How many times have I wailed and bemoaned the evils of talk radio? Only a few weeks ago, I rated the rise of talk radio high on the list of the worst occurrences of the last half-century. I’ve reviled callers as buffoons and hosts as the worst sort of muckraking, semi-ignorant rabble. What kind of…
Endorsements
In a couple of weeks, we face an election as confused as it is crucial. Right now, in this country, no one wants to talk politics, and the whole situation is messier and even more nauseating than usual. Politicians are running as “businessman” rather than “politician” and you can’t blame them. In Texas, the election…
Day Trips
Billy Ray Mangham will be one of 23 potters showing their work at the Texas Clay Festival in Gruene, Oct. 24-25. His dog Bugger will have to stay home. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod Billy Ray Mangham would like you to know about a not-so-secret rendezvous of potters and clay sculptors in the village of…
Lone Stars Rising
Of the two candidates, Combs is a lot more appealing than Rylander. Barring some major misstep in her campaign against Democrat Pete Patterson (see story), Combs, 52, will be the next agriculture commissioner. And that’s not all bad. Combs is personable. She’s straightforward and appears honest. She’s about four times smarter than current Ag Commish…
Page Two
A few weeks ago, the Austin Museum of Art ran a Sally Mann photograph promoting her show at the Museum in an ad. I got a call from a concerned reader who thought the photo unnerving and pornographic. She asked around her office and everyone agreed, the photograph by Sally Mann of her three children,…
Where’s Carole?
In September of 1990, Carole Keeton Rylander got lots of press coverage when she launched the “Ann Watch.” Rylander was the campaign co-chair for Republican gubernatorial candidate Clayton Williams, whose opponent was Democratic state treasurer Ann Richards. Complaining that Richards was “campaigning for higher office at the same time she’s milking the taxpayers for $74,698…
