Road Shows
OCTOBER FRI 3 Quincy Punx, Bates Motel FRI 3 The Call, Atomic Caf� FRI 3 Rusted Root, Liberty Lunch FRI 3 Poster Children, Electric Lounge FRI 3 Karp, Young Pioneers, Manor Rd. Cofee House FRI 3 Boxcar Satan, Emo’s FRI 3 Gib Droll Band, Mercury Lounge FRI 3 Venice, Steamboat FRI 3 Delbert McClinton, Dessau…
1997 Austin Film Festival Schedule
$25 Film Passes (good for all films except U-Turn) on sale at Star Ticket Outlets, or charge by phone (469-7469). $5 Individual Tickets sold at all theatres prior to showtime (space permitting). $175 Weekend Passes (good for Saturday and Sunday films and special panels). Call 478-4795. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2 Austin Music Hall 7:00pm Beyond Belief…
The Documentary Craft
photograph by Kenny Braun At age 44, Hector Gal�n may not yet fall under the “Elder Statesman of Documentary Filmmaking” heading, but he’s on the verge. Since 1972, when he joined the San Angelo CBS affiliate straight out of high school, this inspired and inspiring Texan has created some of the best documentaries around. Starting…
Live Shots
And the winner of the Oasis vs. Blur sweepstakes is . . . Damon Albarn of Blur at Liberty Lunch, September 30 photograph by Minh LIVE, LUSCIOUS JACKSON, MANBREAK Southpark Meadows, September 20 Opening with “Rattlesnake,” the first song on their most recent album, Secret Samadhi, Live wasted no time in setting their favorite theme…
Articulations
VORTEX Repertory Company is heading into its tenth season (I know what you’re thinking, “Gee, time flies when you’re presenting controversial performance artists and experimental work with lots of nudity.”), and it’s kicking it off with a party. Enjoy free food and beer, the “Fire and Brimstone Awards,” and get the skinny on the company’s…
The Art of Film Producing
Hollywood producer Lynda Obst is the author of Hello, He Lied: And Other Truths From the Hollywood Trenches, a non-fiction book published last year and now out in paperback with a new afterword added. The book is a witty and incisive survival manual that’s chock full of observational advice and wisdom about navigating the power-dominated…
Recommended
Friday: Quincy Punx, Blanks ’77, Lower Class Brats, Ignorance Park, Bates Motel Poster Children, Drums & Tuba, The Hamicks, Electric Lounge Tony Campise, Ringside @ Sullivans Saturday: John Denver, Bass Concert Hall Chris Gaffney, Jovita’s Janis Ian, Cactus Cafe Sunday: Alamo City Jazz Band, Donn’s Depot Monday: 99 lbs., Die Laughing, Emo’s Tuesday: Groove Collective,…
Summer of Laugh
illustration by Robert Faires It was the essay that struck fear into the heart of every young student. “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” entailed hours of drudgery, particularly for those poor innocents whose parents never took them to Disneyland, who were forced to spend hours mowing the lawn or watching their kid sister. There…
ScanLines
Wizards of the Coast, 1997 Boxed, $12.95 It’s based on Scott Adams’s megahit comic strip of corporate lunacy, so the Dilbert card game must be all about — say it with me — unfairness! The object is to get rid of all your cards, but high-ups on the company org chart have it easier than…
Roadkill
Bill Frisell Bates Recital Hall Saturday, October 4 Bill Frisell can’t stop moving. His recent projects alone include composing scores to several Buster Keaton films, an album of country music only he could create, and a just-completed session with bassist Victor Krause and rock drummer Jim Keltner. And after years of being backed by the…
Laura House
Laura House spent her summer soaking wet. “It’s a lot of sweating,” recounts House. “But it’s really cool to get to meet so many cool people. No one is really just an extra.” House, of course, is one of the Austin Stories stars and has spent her summer tooling about Austin, standing in the blazing…
Shortcuts
You’re living under a rock if you’re not already aware of the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference and Film Festival that’s underway this weekend. Check out these “Screens” pages for a complete film screening schedule or call 478-4795 for more conference info… If that weren’t enough to keep us occupied, there’s a slew of…
Highly Contagious
photograph by Kenny Braun One of the most troublesome stumbling blocks on the road of pop songcraft is subjugation. With few exceptions, a three-minute slice of pop heaven is not the domain of guitar heroes and deep thinkers. The pop ideal is a collective one in which individuals voluntarily conscribe themselves to the greater service…
Dancing About Architecture
“If Mike Nesmith makes it to any of the [U.S.] shows,” Davy Jones of the Monkees is said to have told fans, “it’ll be the Austin one.” Well, no such luck, but then I wasn’t really expecting him anyway. Nevertheless, I was as surprised by how much I enjoyed the remaining trio’s performance last Saturday…
Downtown’s Promise
San Francisco architect Charles M. Davis (above) returned to Austin last week as R/UDAT team leader to ponder downtown revitalization. In medieval Italy, the various city-states had to borrow their judges from other cities, because local politics were so fractured and violent that no actual citizen could be trusted to render impartial judgment upon his…
Silver Scooter
The Other Palm Springs (Peek-a-boo) It’s possible there’s no greater proving gound for pop music than the car stereo. If a CD can stay in the deck and keep you singing and moving for a long haul, then it’s truly a work of art. In that sense, Silver Scooter are artists worthy of the highest…
Exhibitionism
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Zilker Hillside Theatre, through October 5 Running time: 2 hrs, 45 min. An invitation to dinner. A midnight conversation at a window. A mild insult from a stranger. Viewed by themselves, just for what they are, such occurrences are minor, inconsequential… nothings. Set in certain contexts, though,…
Into the Groove
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson Last month, unbeknownst to either party, the recorded legacies of Stevie Wonder and Silver Scooter became inextricably etched in vinyl. No, the local pop band didn’t simply cut a B-side cover of “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” By the principal of six degrees of separation, Wonder’s 1973…
In Person
The business of selling books gets trickier all the time. That’s why bookstores more and more resemble clubs these days; rare is the bookstore that does not design or adapt space for what is fast becoming the standard for selling books: author appearances. It’s not just doing Oprah, either. Authors are often being booked on…
No Pity for Our City, Our Choice
If council meetings were basketball games, then the proposed amendments to the city’s charter would be the big, orange balls, and Mayor Kirk Watson would be Michael Jordan hanging off the rim. Come to think of it, a sports announcer’s enthusiastic play-by-play would not have been out of place at last week’s council meeting. About…
Live and In Person!
illustration by Jason Stout Worldcon in San Antonio Aug. 28-Sept. 1 I was a science fiction convention virgin. Fear had kept me so pure for so long. I’ve been reading speculative fiction, both the hard and the soft stuff, since I discovered that Animal Farm was about more than talking animals. Friends of mine went…
Tunnel Vision
The Williamson Creek tunnel, (pictured above next to I-35) contains no pollution controls whatsoever, even though one consultant predicts that the outflow will result in twice the amount of lead, about a third more nitrogen, and about a third more suspended solids than currently flows into the creek. photograph by John Anderson The Williamson Creek…
Postscripts
Two UT grad students, one, Tara Fatemi, an M.A. candidate in poetry, and the other, Maribel Sosa of the Texas Center for Writers program, have come together to plan a series they’re calling the Backyard Fiction and Poetry Series. While grad students in creative disciplines are constantly reading and writing and critiquing one another’s work,…
Coach’s Corner
Last week, a lurid, sleazy courtroom drama concerning another public figure captivated the news media and thus Us. As a nation, I wish we all had better things to do and talk about, but apparently we don’t. One of the best and most recognized sportscasters, Marv Albert, allowed himself, his family, and his friends to…
Oct. 7 Public Hearing
Before finalizing the language of a proposed regulation that could affect the construction of the Williamson Creek Tunnel, the Environmental Protection Agency will hold a public hearing at 7pm, Tuesday, October 7. The hearing will be held at the Commissioners’ hearing room at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission building on the southbound I-35 access…
about AIDS
Human Vaccine Testing: Not Ready for Prime Time One of the most difficult challenges of the AIDS epidemic has been the search for a vaccine against HIV infection. One group became so frustrated that last week they offered themselves as human guinea pigs for vaccine testing. As a media event it was great theatre, but…
Day Trips
Bill and Bridget Hauser at Sunset Canyon Pottery work with their hands. He takes care of the shipping and packing while she oversees the production of the handmade pottery. Together they have taken over one of the most famous Austin pottery lines and moved to the Hill Country outside of Austin to start a new…
Freeport’s Stronghold
Members if the Culberson County Road and Bridge Department who lost their jobs on October 1 hue to a tax dispute with Freeport-McMoRan. (l-r) Raul Balcazar who has worked for the county for five years; Pete Soliz, 12 years; Antonio Reyes, 12 years; Arturo Sanchez, six years; Ram�n Carrasco, 15 years; Antonio Lopez, 15 years.…
Appearing in October
The publishers’ practice of sending out authors to read at bookstores across the nation is by now an established one; for the publishers, reading and booksignings increase an author’s visibility, though the real benefit of author events is the reader’s. Author events (always free though the reader is often required to purchase a book at…
Page Two
We’re sitting around talking, which is the basic way we work around here. The talk is of music, culture, film, celebrity, and what we might be expecting for lunch — a fairly typical Chronicle combination. Someone suggests that in the way Austin used to be so seductively famous in the underculture of the country for…
Culberson Vs. Freeport: a Comparison
1996 Revenues 1996 Profit Employees Highest Paid Employee in 1996 Freeport McMoRan & FM Resource Partners LP $1,900,000,000 $222,400,000 514 $41,000,000: Jim Bob Moffett, Chairman of the Board Culberson County $1,200,000 $0 22 $29,000: Oscar Espinosa, Justice of the Peace, Pct. 1
1997 Violet Crown Winners Announced
On Sunday, September 21, at the Robert W. Hamilton Awards Banquet at the Four Seasons Hotel, the Austin Writers’ League announced the winners of their 1997 Violet Crown Book Awards. The envelope, please… Fiction: * D. Marion Wilkinson of Austin, for Not Between Brothers (Boaz Publishing), a first novel about the birth of Texas. Fiction…
Public Notice
A very special visit from Father Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest imprisoned for peaceful protests against the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA), is highlighted by a number of events this week. Father Bourgeois seeks to gather support to shut down the facility which has graduated many of the most notorious names of U.S.…
Naked City
Shortly before heading out the door last week for a two-week vacation, Betty Dunkerley, director of the city’s Financial and Administrative Services, sent one of her department heads packing. David Healey, whom Dunkerley hired in March 1996 to head up the city’s troubled Fleet Services division, is officially on administrative leave. No word yet on…
Hearth & Soul
The Search for Imperfection While researching an article I’m working on about living cheap and well, I discovered an aphorism: People despise perfection. This notion has been twinkling around in my gray matter since I was a little kid and my aunt Dot told me that her beautiful Turkish rug wasn’t perfect, that the weavers…
Mister Smarty Pants Knows
On Nov. 31, 1966, Robert C. Weaver became the first African-American cabinet member — LBJ’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The “macaroni” in the song “Yankee Doodle” (“stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni”) refers to an American regiment during the Revolutionary War called “The Macaronies.” Its members wore showy uniforms.…
Natural Born Leader
by Kayte VanScoy A Kirkquirk: Watson often presides over the council meeting while standing behind his chair like the conductor of a political symphony. photograph by Jana Birchum One hundred days after his swearing in, the rookie-dominated council Mayor Kirk Watson leads has been treated to one of the most difficult initiations imaginable. For both…
Benefits
FRI 3 50th Annual Ben Hur Shrine Circus will be held through Sun, Oct 5 to benefit Shriner Children Hospitals, at Travis Co. Expo Center, 7311 Decker Ln. 454-4631. Austin Whole Life Expo will be held through Oct 5 to benefit AIDS Services of Austin and the Center for Battered Women, at Palmer Auditorium, 400…
Food-O-File
After 17 years of serving fresh vegetarian food to health-conscious Austinites, Martin Brothers’ Cafe (2815 Guadalupe) has closed its doors. September 30 was the last day of business for the restaurant, founded by brothers Carl and Jeff Martin as a little counter cafe selling salads, entr�es, homemade ice creams, and wonderful smoothies in the original…
Shades of Camelot
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to discover that Kirk Watson draws his strength from family ties. Born in Oklahoma City in 1958, the first child of an electrician and a registered nurse, Watson points to the family’s 1968 move to Virginia as a turning point in his young life. After completing an…
Back in the Season Again
Eriq LaSalle plays the usually somber workaholic Dr. Peter Benton. He’s caught here smiling, on a break from ER’s live-action season opener. It’s heeeere! The 1997-98 fall television season is rolling across the screens nightly and don’t we all know how it will be remembered: for ER’s live-action season opener. It was a calculated gamble…
No Noodlin’ Around
Sea Dragon 8776-B Research, 451-5051 Mon-Fri, 11am-2:30pm, 5-10pm Sat-Sun, 11:30am-10pm Sea Dragon photograph by John Anderson Don’t get me wrong. I love Vietnamese noodles. They’re one of this city’s bona fide dining bargains, rivaled only perhaps by a well stuffed breakfast taco. The problem is that at most of Austin’s Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants noodles are the…
Fade In
Programmer Jason White and co-founders Barbara Morgan and Marsha Miller photograph by Kenny Braun Now as ever, the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference is driven by a singular passion for (imagine at this point the hushed, incantational tones of Steven Spielberg) the word… the written word. And once more, in the nooks and crannies…
Cinematexas Award Winners
The second annual CinemaTexas International Short Film + Video + New Media presented an impressive selection and number of short-form works during the event, held Sept. 24-28 on the University of Texas campus. Jurors included Kim Flores (filmmaker, Vocessitas); Don Howard (documentary filmmaker, Letter From Waco; Marian Luntz (curator of film and video, Museum of…
