In Person
“I’m 38; I have to write a dozen more books before I die.” So declared Ethan Canin, the author of the newly released novel For Kings and Planets, at Book People September 25. This ultimate deadline is the one Mr. Canin has established for himself now that he has recognized his rhythm: It’s three-and-a-half years…
Pocketbook Politics
With unemployment at its lowest level ever — 2.8% as of August, according to the Texas Workforce Commission — one might ask, why now? Minimum wage issues tend to surface in times of economic downturn, not relative prosperity. But with the cost of living skyrocketing out of proportion with wages, coalition members say, that “typical”…
Postscripts
“Good history doesn’t necessarily make good drama, and good drama doesn’t necessarily make good history.” That’s one of the realizations author Carl Sferraza Anthony voiced last week when he was in town visiting his friend Liz Carpenter and speaking at the LBJ Library. Anthony is most recently the author of Florence Harding: The First Lady,…
Saturday Night Live
.footnote { vertical-align: super; padding-left: 2px; font-size: 12px; color: #d6121a !important; font-family: ‘Gotham A’,’Gotham B’; font-weight: 800 !important; } photograph by Todd V. Wolfson No one has been more active or more vocal about the future of Austin’s downtown than Mayor Kirk Watson. But after 16 months of discussing the many overlapping events in downtown…
About AIDS
As recent news stories suggest, the needs of people with AIDS are changing, yet many needs stay the same. Volunteers are still critical in providing quality services to the people from all walks of life who come to AIDS Services of Austin every day for help. Direct Care Volunteers serve in many capacities: *Some help…
The Palmer Proposal
If it passes, Proposition 12 of the Nov. 3 bond election will demolish City Coliseum and build a $26 million civic center to house the current users of Palmer Auditorium. Proposition 12 will also make it possible for Palmer Auditorium to be refurbished as a performing arts venue with $50 million in private donations. The…
Day Trips
Stillhouse Hollow Lake glistens in the sunlight with foggy blue hills marking the distant shores. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod Stillhouse Hollow Lake glistens in the sunlight with foggy blue hills marking the distant shores. In the bright sun only a couple of slow-moving fishing boats break the calm surface. From Overlook Park, between the…
Downtown Development
These parcels of land (A, B, C) are slated for residential development near existing music venues (1, 2, 3, 4). A= The Pole Yard B= Privately -owned AMLI property C= City -owned AMLI property 1= Electric Lounge 2= La Zona Rosa 3= Austin Music Hall 4= Liberty Lunch Next year the city of Austin will…
Page Two
Few recent mayors have so galvanized the city as Kirk Watson. Our mayor and his fellow councilmembers not only offer a coherent vision for the city of Austin and its future, but damn if they aren’t going after it, full speed ahead. This week, Kayte VanScoy takes the mayor on a walking tour of downtown…
Austin Heart Of Film Festival Schedule And Information
Waking Ned Devine The Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference (AHFF) is the first national conference to be devoted to the art of the screenwriter. Now celebrating its fifth year, this annual gathering has grown more impressive than ever. The Screenwriters Conference takes place Thursday, Oct. 1-Sunday, Oct. 4 at the Driskill Hotel and will…
Public Notice
Let’s get one thing straight: We think Star Power is great. When local groups pull out the big guns (national and international celebs) to highlight one of their fundraisers, it not only lures more folks to the (often pricey) events, but also clicks in the heads and hearts of those who might not be able…
Season’s Greetings
Charmed(WB, Wednesdays, 8pm; premieres 10/7): The Craft meets Sisters in the land of Bewitched, only Aaron Spelling is the devil. Alyssa Milano and Shannen Doherty are already Spelling-tested but the pilot I saw had not yet cast Milano into the brew. Its main ingredients of X-Files-like special effects and three witchy sisters seemed suitably contrived…
Report From L.A.
It’s been 20 years since I came to Los Angeles as part of an Austin writers’ immigration wave that included BigBoy Medlin, Ginger Varney, and Bill Bentley. We thought we’d be back “in a couple of years,” but around the 10-year mark here we had to admit L.A. had become home. Texas was now our…
Ida Lupino, Actress
Large, luminous, and widely setapart, Ida Lupino’s eyes were her greatest asset in creating screen personas. In many films her eyes reveal abrupt shifts in thought and emotion. For instance, in They Drive by Night (1940), she sits with her besotted husband in an idling car inside their garage. She wants his money but not…
Food-O-File
Dining for Life The sixth annual Dining for Life fundraiser takes place all day Monday, October 5. It’s the most painless charitable donation you’ll ever make. Just grab a group of friends and go to breakfast, lunch, or dinner at one of the participating restaurants (see the ad on page 45 in this issue for…
Ida Lupino, Director
“I never planned to become a director. The fates and a combination of luck — good and bad — were responsible.” — Ida Lupino, 1967 Between 1949 and 1954 Ida Lupinobecame a film director, producer, and screenwriter, even as she continued her acting career. In five of the six films she directed during these years,…
Oktobeers
This month in Munich, locals and tourists alike will descend on the southern German town for Oktoberfest, the Bavarian capital’s world-famous festival of frantic fluid fun. In the Teutonic equivalent of St. Patrick’s Day, thirsty crowds gather for hearty beers and endless choruses of off-key singing with an oom-pah beat. Iron-gripped bierfraus schlep impossibly huge…
Scanlines
D. Brian LeVant (1994) with John Goodman, Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, Halle Berry, Rosie O’Donnell, Kyle McLachlan, Elizabeth Taylor The Beverly Hillbillies D. Penelope Spheeris (1993) with Jim Varney, Cloris Leachman, Diedrich Bader, Dabney Coleman, Lea Thompson, Lily Tomlin The Addams Family D. Barry Sonnenfeld (1991) with Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Dan Hedaya,…
Deft Touch at the Wok
2414 Exposition, Ste. D-108, 322-0344 Daily, 11:30am-3pm; 4:30-9pm (4:30-9:30pm only Fri & Sat) Formosa Restaurant photograph by John Anderson Tucked away in a strip center in the very heart of tony Tarrytown lies Formosa Chinese restaurant, the sort of lively neighborhood spot that loyal regulars don’t tell just anyone about — they don’t want it…
Bryan Singer’s Apt Pupil
Beginning with 1993’sindie/Sundance hit Public Access, New Jersey native Bryan Singer has embarked on a directorial career that continually explores the darker facets of human nature, whether it’s the unseen, relentless evil of criminal mastermind Keyser Soze in 1995’s The Usual Suspects (which garnered two Academy Awards) or the sickly pull of decades-old horrors embodied…
Life of the Party
Two years ago, Charlie Robison thought he had it made. He was two tracks away from completing his major label debut for Warner Bros. Nashville when the record company deemed it not commercially viable. So they dropped him. You’d think a guy from a hardluck town like Austin would have known better than to get…
Short Cuts
FringeWare’s quarterly film festivals are becoming quite the local events. The next one, the F3 Film Festival, is scheduled for Saturday, October 24, and curator Vincent O’Brien is currently soliciting entries of short films on VHS that must be no longer than 15 minutes. The deadline is October 19 and there is no entry fee…
Dancing About Architecture
Changes are in store for Antone’s nightclub in the near future. No, the club isn’t moving, changing its booking policies, or selling out to a big chain. A long time in the works now, there’s a deal on the table for the Antone family to buy out some of their partners. Clifford Antone, never the…
From Southerners to Seventh Grade
Feisty old women who presume to tell everyone what to do and how to do it (and are usually right) are as commonplace in Texas lore as horses and bad weather. Yet modern-day readers — with appliances, air conditioning, cable TV, and superstores — know little about what made such women. As my grandmother used…
Son of the Circus
photograph by John Carrico Getting Ely into a chair, finally, isn’t quite as arduous as two lifelong friends and musicians battling a poisonous serpent in a cramped toilet, but when he’s finally seated, going through a mental check-list of everything he’s done since the April release of his 14th album, Twistin’ in the Wind, it’s…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to Barbara Walters, Fidel Castro likes to cook for his guests. Janis Joplin dated Peter Tork before he was in The Monkees (he was a busboy at the time). She also once dated actor Michael J. Pollard, who, in turn, once played in a band with Bobby Sherman on the TV show Honey West.…
Articulations
While that headline may not generate goosebumps among the general populace the way that old pronouncement with Garbo did, among Austin’s visual arts aficionados I wouldn’t be surprised to see it give their flesh a rise. It heralds the arrival of the architect newly selected to design a permanent facility for the Austin Museum of…
Bauhaus
State Palace Theater, New Orleans, September 20 Perhaps it was some sort of tempestuous millennial fluke that brought the feuding members of what was originally called Bauhaus 1919 back under one roof, but as with the decade’s earlier (yet equally unfathomable) Sex Pistols reunion, the impossible has apparently, suddenly, become the norm. It’s been 20…
Coach’s Corner
It was, by all accounts, a remarkable week for the sports fan. Average citizens (i.e., football fans) were talking about and watching baseball. Mark McGwire finished an unlikely season with 70 home runs. Speaking of remarkable, Sammy — and everybody now understands who Sammy is — hit 66 … and finished second. The once-reviled Yankees…
Exhibitionism
Zachary Scott Theatre Center, through November 22 Running Time: 3 hrs “To face loss with grace is key, I think,” notes Prior Walter, a protagonist in Angels in America. “But it’s impossible.” In Perestroika, the conclusion of Tony Kushner’s seven-and-a-half-hour epic, we bear witness to the agony of loss — loss of life, loss of…
Do-It-Yourself Lawyering
At long last, the annoying Susan Powter show is gone from KVET-AM’s (1300AM) 9am-noon morning talk slot, replaced by a show featuring veteran KVET city hall reporter Eric Blumberg. So that’s good news, right? Well, maybe. The first few days of the new Blumberg show have been a mixed bag. Powter, a syndicated host from…
The House That PAC Built
In the children’s rhyme that takes its name from a domicile erected by a productive fellow called Jack, we’re presented with the title structure, then are introduced to a host of characters, one by one, with each introduction establishing a relationship between two of the characters. If we follow this chain of connections all the…
Naked City
There’s an election Nov. 3, with state and county offices and a $672 million city bond package up for vote, so you don’t want to be left out. Voter registration deadline is Monday, Oct 5. Early voting begins Oct. 17. Registration forms are available at Travis County Voter Registration Office, 1010 Lavaca, or your local…
