Java Amping
by Joe Mitchell Coffee is my god, my goddess, my Buddha and every other deity graven or otherwise ever raised from man’s collective soul. Coffee and I consume each other with an extremist fanaticism that makes the Ayatollah and National Front skinheads look like poster children for the League of Mellow. Pleased to meet you,…
Film Reviews
THE PLUTONIUM CIRCUSD: George Ratliff. This is a reprint of the Austin Chronicle review that ran in March when this film premiered in Austin at the SXSW FIlm Festival. Texas mystique will receive a boost as big as anything since the Dallas heydays if The Plutonium Circus gets the audience it deserves. Ratliff opens his…
The Fellowship of the Tortilla
by Stephen McGuire Even for Austin’s super- charged music scene it’s an unlikely time for a show: Sunday afternoon. But when I open Chicago House’s oblique door and step inside, it could be a Saturday night. The two bleachers are filled, kids sit on the floor, others stand where they can. Applause repeatedly erupts for…
Film: Showtimes
Film listings are updated Friday mornings. Showtimes listed below start Friday, October 20 and cover the week ending Thursday, October 26. An asterisk (*) before a title means that no passes or special admission discounts (apart from matinee discounts) will be accepted for any screening. Parentheses indicate weekend showtimes for Saturdays and Sundays only, unless…
Dancing About Architecture
by Ken Lieck If last week’s column raised any hopes, however slight, about the future of Chicago House, I hope you didn’t get too worked up over it. The last hurrah at the club’s just-off-Sixth Street location will be on the 29th of this month, and if the club is to find another home (which…
The Annual Haunted House Guide Speak No Evil — Live It!
by Julie Weaver I don’t just like Halloween, Ilove Halloween. For a variety of reasons, yes, but one being the fact that it’s the one day of the year that no one looks at me side- ways because of the way I dress – everyone looks like a freak. But people, I’ve noticed a disturbing…
Music Recommended
Pay attention kids, because the shows are coming at you like a meteor shower and there’s only one place to go for cover; the clubs. Electric Lounge is one of several shelters that has a couple of hot ones on its hands on consecutive nights. Friday,ex-Spaceman 3 astronaut Jason Pierce flies in from another galaxy…
Awake in the Dark Across the Great Divide
by Patrick Taggart With the outcome of the O.J. Simpson verdict still a moving target in the news – will he or will he not talk?; is he moving to Mexico?; etc. – it’s still too early to say that his trial and the swirl or controversy surrounding it serves as a snapshot of race…
Roadkill
The Back Room, October 20 After seven years of being grossly underheard, Monster Magnet’s fortune literally changed in minutes – the time it took songwriter/frontman Dave Wyndorf to pen “Negasonic Teenage Warhead,” last spring’s alternative-radio hit. Wyndorf says he wrote the song as a throwaway anthem for the soundtrack to the theatre disaster SFW. “I…
Under Covers
It’s tempting, in writing about the collection of bite-sized short stories, Moses Supposes by Ellen Currie (Scribner, $10 paper), to say something about the black humor of the Irish, the particularly Gaelic way of salting gaiety with tears, or some other poetic nonsense like that. And I started to – but then it struck me…
The Clarksville Effect
by Mike Clark-Madison “Most African-Americans over 45 came from a community similar to central East Austin. Many of those neighborhoods are either in decay or wiped out by gentrification -like Clarksville.” Thus wrote Austin American-Statesman editorialist Susan Smith Richardson about a month ago, under the headline “East Austin should not become second Clarksville.” Richardson goes…
Dixie City Delights
by Virginia B. Wood Mardi Gras Cafe 2531 W. Anderson, 451-2200 Bourbon Street Cafe 11835 Jollyville, 258-6120 The Old Alligator Grill 3003 S. Lamar, 444-6117 McGowan’s Cajun Kitchen 1101 W. Pecan, 990-8206 Gumbo’s Restaurant 14735 Bratton, 251-1606 After all the Cajun food I’ve eaten in the past few weeks, it’s a good thing I don’t…
He Came and He Went Longhorns, Liz, and Damn Good Food
by Andrea Barnett If his press aides are to be believed, President Bill Clinton stayed up until 3:30am preparing for his speech Monday at the Erwin Center. Then, as hundreds of people lined Red River before 7am, Clinton put the finishing touches on an address aides say he largely wrote himself. Instead of speaking on…
Pantex: Ground Zero
The massive 25-square-mile Pantex plant near Amarillo has become one of the most enduring symbols of the post-Cold War era. Owned by the Department of Energy and operated by an independent contractor, the plant is responsible for dismantling thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles. While the federal government shrinks other DOE facilities, Pantex is thriving.…
Council Watch
The council’s holiday season officially began last week, the first of six off-weeks in the last quarter of 1995. Still, members of the housing subcommittee met on Tuesday to try to guide the city safely into the next seven days. For Jackie Goodman, chair of the subcommittee, that means pouncing on a recently discovered, $2.5…
Men in Tights
by Marene Gustin On most any given day, they can be found in the top floor dance studio of the former fire-house on Guadalupe: sweaty, muscular men in tights, bike shorts, and aging sweat pants. They burst across the floor to the tune of a lone piano, leaping into the air while beating their legs…
Deep 6
1) Shameless network programming plugs. In a rather stunning display of its allegiance to NBC, KXAN plugged Dateline’s supposed O.J. interview as its top news story on Wednesday, October 11. At least they had the guts to display the telephone number for viewers to voice their complaints to the higher-ups in New York City. 2)…
Post Scripts
* THU, OCT 19: UT philosophy professor Tara Smith will be at the University Coop bookstore to sign her new book, Moral Rights and Political Freedoms, 4-6pm… Adrienne deWolfe, author of Texas Outlaw, will address the Austin Writers’ League on “Chilling Out: The Writer’s Cure for Burn-out,” 7pm at the First Unitarian Church. Call 499-8914…
Media Clips
by Hugh Forrest Throughout the Simpson trial, I stubbornly clung to the belief that news could still be divided into two basic categories – real and junk. The first category encompassed current events and issues of national and international importance, things like Bosnia, AIDS, health care, and tax reform. Into the second category would then…
An Amarillo State of Mind
by Marc Savlov George Whittenburg Ratliff is not the kind of guy you would peg for one of the most talented filmmakers around these days. Tall and lanky, with an unruly shock of dirty-blond hair and large piercing blue eyes that seem to take in everything and everyone at once without alarming you, he’s soft-spoken…
Naked City
Edited by Audrey Duff, with contributions this week by Roseana Auten, Andrea Barnett, Nelson England, and Alex de Marban. AUTONOMY’S JUST A WORD: Besides a very public loss of face, the October 9 expulsion of University Baptist Church (UBC) from the Austin Baptist Association means that the 74-year-old church is “cut off from a number…
Closing a Kinder, Gentler Art Space
“Chicago House is as much an idea as a place,” says Peg Miller who, along with co-owner Glynda Cox, will no longer have a home for her idea come November 1. “This most likely isn’t the ultimate end,” she says, “just the end at that location” on Trinity just north of Sixth Street. Miller cites…
Hearth & Soul
Passionless Pursuits Hello, students, and welcome to my class, Dream Home 101. I’m assuming you enrolled in this course because either you have an interest in living in your own abode, rife with all your personal embellishments or you heard this was an easy “A”. Well, let me tell all you backpack monkeys something: the…
Scanlines
NEXT STEP, MARS? AN EXCITING LEARNING ADVENTURE ABOUT SPACE Macintosh CD-ROM; with Patrick Stewart. IVI Publishing The scenario is this: You are a seeker from Earth who has been chosen from oblivion by some wise men from Mars (who look surprisingly like actors in futuristic period costumes) concerned with Earth’s inability to live in peace,…
About AIDS
Upcoming Training for Caregivers If you have concerns or feel you lack information about your partner, friend, or family member who is HIV infected, this may be the opportunity for you to gain knowledge and find support through the upcoming training HIV at Home: Skills for Caregivers. AIDS Services of Austin and Christopher House are…
Doing the Bret Thing
by Marion Lisa Winik When I get in, there are messages on the machine. Three of them are for a drug dealer who used to have my phone number before me but one is from Russell, a publicist at Vintage, and I call him back. He says Bret Easton Ellis has a new book, he’s…
Coach’s Corner
by Andy “Coach” Cotton A Nice Girl and I go out. No chemistry. A few months later, she tells me of a sister. She’s wonderful, beautiful, pretty much perfect. My kind of girl. Nice Girl will set up one of those happy hour things. Many close calls but it never happens. One morning, a chance…
Day Trips
Ira Kennedy and Enchanted Rock are two defining symbols of the Texas Hill Country. The pink granite mount’s rugged beauty has endured for centuries, while Kennedy left a career in the city to pursue a dream in the hills like the pioneers. Enchanted Rock Magazine has become Kennedy’s western frontier. The 48-page monthly publication is…
