El Dia De Los Muertos
Mexic-Arte Museum, Friday, October 30 Octavio Paz, the great Mexican author who died this year, wrote that for the people of his country life is as much defined by death as it is by how one lives. “Tell me how you die and I will tell you who you are,” he wrote. In other words,…
Dancing About Architecture
For all the talk about Propositions 11 and 12, coming up for vote next week, you’d think it was a ray of light shining down from heaven: City agrees to let private money pay for spanking new Performing Arts Center at no cost to taxpayers. Since nobody else seems to have mentioned the Prop’s possible…
Scare Fare
What are you doing? asked my editor. “Looking for scary movies on TV,” I told him. This, after spending a couple of days working on video reviews of horror movies, which should have burned me out on the subject, but really just made me look for more. Yikes! Star 80! There’s a really scary film.…
Other Spook-taculars
Despite our best efforts, the crack Chronicle team of theatrical ghostbusters wasn’t able to hit every haunted stage by press time for this issue. To our readers and the artists whose work we missed, we offer our apologies and these “treats” regarding the rest of the stage “tricks” taking place around town this weekend. Dracula:…
America’s Ethnic Music Mantle
photograph by Wendy Weeks “Polka serves the need for people to have a music that, at least to some degree, just represents an escape from all other things in their life. Pop music doesn’t do that anymore. Country music never did it. These are musics that just sort of reflect your misery constantly — you…
The Buzz Heard ‘Round the World
Gunnar Hansen as Chainsaw’s Leatherface In the 24 years since its initial release, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has achieved legendary status in the Pantheon of the Intense. Directed and co-written by Tobe Hooper, the low-budget film was shot in and around the Austin area. Since 1974, Chainsaw has been graced with the ironic distinction of…
In Person
Katherine Ramsland at B&N Arboretum “Okay, I’m lost. Tell me again who Anne Rice is?” Thanks to a number of unwitting foils in the sparse audience for Ramsland’s recent Austin stopover, the Princeton, New Jersey-based psychologist and author had her hands full, not only in filling in the background details but also defending a trio…
N�vemberfest
Just about any weekend you care to look for it, there’s polka in the heartland — the heart of Texas, that is. Here’s a taste of some of what’s out there in the next couple of weeks: 10/30-11/8: Wurstfest, New Braunfels. New Braunfels’ very own “salute to sausage” is a 10-day celebration of all things…
Screamlines
The notion of extend-ing “Scanlines” for Halloween seemed like a good one before it turned into a monster project. With writers vying left and right for their favorites, there are still so many gaps. No one mentions Vincent Price, whose role in The Pit and the Pendulum scared the bejesus out of me as a…
Murder, Mayhem, and the Underbelly of Life
by Claiborne Smith When she was alive, Regina Hartwell would greet her eventual killer by saying “What up, Jay?” even though the killer’s actual name is Justin Thomas. Regina wasn’t overly concerned with calling people by their rightful name.For Justin, it doesn’t matter now what he was called. Convicted in 1996 for “stabbing Regina Hartwell…
Republicans’ New Best Friend
The struggle for Hispanic voters among the parties is starting to look less like a battle of wills and more like a fight to the death. For Republicans, gaining the support of the growing Hispanic community — a group that is projected to account for 46% of Texas’ population within the next 30 years –…
Short Cuts
Austin loves its stars … and deservedly so. We love the celebrities among us and the way their presence, more and more, blurs the borderlines separating Austin from Hollywood — or Silicon Valley or the New York publishing centers. The celebrities are easy to spot and fame always seems to attract more fame. (Though we…
Postscripts
Hitting the Airwaves Book People has plans to end its radio ad campaign next week, according to Valera Stroup, the new marketing director at Book People. Stroup says that “the focus of the ads was to personalize the store”; although she senses the ads were effective in achieving that goal, she says “readers read newspapers”…
Launching Pad
In recent years, the question of influence has led candidates to suggest downsizing or eliminating the commission altogether; in 1996, all three challengers who sought to unseat incumbent Rylander ran on variations of such a platform. Although Henderson agrees that, ultimately, the public would best be served by merging the commission with the Public Utility…
Theatre des Vampires
photograph by Todd V. Wolfson In the summer of 1996, in New York City, a 36-year-old exotic dancer and aspiring journalist by the name of Susan Walsh vanished while investigating the city’s myriad vampire groups. Although in the weeks before her disappearance Walsh had been particularly vocal in regards to her belief that “they” were…
About AIDS
Recent research suggests that HIV-infected people taking antiviral therapy believe that safe sex practices are less important because their virus levels have dropped. Of those taking anti-viral therapies, about 20% of respondents believed that disease transmission was less likely. The more aggressive the therapy, the more convinced the individuals were that they are less dangerous…
Down and Dirty
Cornyn began slinging the mud early and often. In one of the most curious attack ads in recent memory, he attacked Mattox for his verbal salvo at a fellow Democrat eight years ago. “Remember his opponent, liberal Jim Mattox?” says the ad. “Known as the junkyard dog of Texas politics, Mattox called Ann Richards a…
Coach’s Corner
“Sports�writ�er: a person who writes about sports, especially for newspaper.”– The American Heritage Dictionary Well okay, I guess I fit the bill. But I’d amend this by adding, “a person who writes about sports for a living.” I’m a mongrel hybrid. For me, it’s a hobby. A real sportswriter wakes up and goes downtown to…
Day Trips
Many mysteries lurk in the swampy forest of the Big Thicket in Southeast Texas. photograph courtesy of The Texas Department of Transportation The Saratoga Lights flicker at the end of a sandy road tunneling through the tangled forest in East Texas. Some say it’s swamp gas or headlights reflecting off the mist rising in the…
Life After Sierra Blanca
illustration by Doug Potter Most people weren’t expecting the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) to deny approvalof the Sierra Blanca low-level nuclear waste dump. Conventional wisdom went that as soon as the November elections were safely passed and all repercussions for governor and proto-presidential candidate George W. Bush nullified, the deal would be rubber-stamped…
Texas Platters
VALLEJO Beautiful Life (TVT) Kicking off Beautiful Life with “Classico,” a Santana-inspired open invitation to “let it go,” Austin hard rock favorites Vallejo fail to do just that on their sophomore effort — cut loose. At the go-for-broke point of the tune, “Classico” starts into overdrive, the same sort of explosive outburst that characterizes Santana’s…
Page Two
Monday at noon, we have a regular issue meeting, at which we absolutely cement what is going into each issue and at what length. In the middle of this week’s meeting, while noting that our annual Halloween mask cover was the governor as an Oompa-Loompa, Nick Barbaro commented that he had rented Willy Wonka and…
Soul Searching
The party fell victim to the complacency that came from being the only show in town, politically speaking, for over a hundred years, according to State Democratic Chair Molly Beth Malcolm, a former Republican who switched parties in 1992. “Democrats believed that Texans knew what Democrats stood for. What the Republican Party did was came…
Public Notice
No, that’s not exactly what we mean to say. What we mean to say is, enjoy this All Hallow’s Eve/Dia de los Muertos Weekend, be good, be bad, stay safe, and all that rot… yada yada, blah dee blah … and do check this week’s “Community Listings” for a thorough descent into the halls of…
Republican Party Platform
Economy Local Control –The Party supports the concept of choice in education and believes that quality education is best achieved by encouraging parental involvement and maximizing local control of public schools. The Party calls upon Gov. George W. Bush to honor his 1994 pledge to abolish the regulatory authority of the Texas Education Agency and…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The Irish used to re-bury suspected vampire corpses face down so that they would dig themselves to Hell. The Halloween tradition of bobbing for apples originated with the Druids, who would practice it as part of a divination technique. It was believed that if one could successfully fetch an apple, they would be guaranteed a…
Endorsements
Propositions 1-5 (G.O. Bonds): YES. To turn them down because you don’t like “destination parks” or the Mexican-American Cultural Center serves nobody’s interests. Too many of these projects — from street repairs to the Shoal Creek Trail, from branch libraries to flood control on Williamson Creek — have been needed, and promised for years. We…
Godawful for 25 Cents
God: a word of unverifiable significance — can mean everything, nothing, or both; also, used as an expletive. For awful my dictionary gives a dissonance of definitions: “inspiring awe; extremely disagreeable.” Those meanings are strangely linked, for one doesn’t merely feel awe; if it’s truly awe, one is possessed by it. Awe cancels out everything…
Out to Vote
But does the number of gay voters matter to the major political parties and their candidates? It depends on who you ask. Clearly, many Democrats across the country have worked hard in recent years to court gay voters. The Clinton administration has appointed a number of openly gay officials to key government posts. It also…
Gold Medal Muggin’
Earlier this month, a group of Austin brewers headed north for America’s biggest brew competition � the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) � and returned with a glass full of gold. Held annually in Denver, the GABF brings together hundreds of breweries and countless beer lovers from across the U.S. for a long weekend of…
Making Hay Out of Gay
Glen Maxey Fred Ebner One might think that this year’s general election contest for the District 51 seat in the state House of Representatives is proof of how far the state’s gay and lesbian community has come politically. Both incumbent Democrat Glen Maxey, and Fred Ebner, his Republican challenger, are gay. But the fact that…
Hole-o-ween
Doughnuts are a chill-in-the-air, sweater-wearing, spare-tire food, and the fact that it’s easier to conceal a third chin with a turtleneck than it is with a tubetop may explain a lower level of local reverence for the holey doughnut here than in my native New England, where you’ll find a Dunkin’ Donuts on every third…
Land Mine
Democrat Richard Raymond stumps at the courthouse in LaGrange photograph by Kayte VanScoy I said a hip hop the hippie to the hippie the hip hip hop and ya don’t stop…” Richard Raymond, the Democratic candidate for state land commissioner, is delivering his rendition of “Rapper’s Delight” from the back of a rattletrap school bus…
Articulations
AMOA Gets Big Green That unusual sound you heard earlier in the week was the clink of a lot of cash — I mean, a heap of green — landing in the coffers of the Austin Museum of Art. As of Tuesday, AMOA was the recipient of $13,000,000 in pledges from five Dell Computers executives…
Food-O-File
Wise raw oyster lovers have always followed the admonition that the succulent bivalves should only be consumed during months that end in “r,” even if they didn’t know exactly why. Even after technological advances made it possible to identify the usual culprit, a bacterium that occurs naturally in warm Gulf waters called vibrio vulnificus, it…
Coddling George
Perhaps the most basic lesson any journalist must learn is that if you are going to smear someone’s good name in public, you should at least call them and offer them the opportunity to defend themselves. This opportunity certainly would have been appreciated before I personally was smeared as a homophobe in the pages of…
Exhibitionism
WARS OF THE ROSES: BODIES AND LANGUAGE The Public Domain, through November 14 Running Time: 2 hrs Distilling 60 years of power struggles into a smart, two-hour cutting, Robi Polgar has created a play that goes for the jugular, whisking us through the sexiest parts of Shakespeare –deceit, ambition, betrayal, murder –while remaining grounded in…
7 & 7 IS
It’s been too long since local pop/punk stalwarts in Stretford committed themselves to vinyl. Although we’re still waiting on their second full-length, Long Distance, the new three-song Vice EP (Framed!) ends the dry spell with panache. The title track, penned by saxwoman Cynthia Sadler, is a walk into the decadent world of meet-market one-nighters that’s…
Naked City
It sounds like an illegal voter registration scam, more fitting of Chicago or South Texas, but there’s nothing shady about the “Raise the Dead to Vote” events Sunday, Nov. 1, at Las Manitas Avenue Cafe, 212 Congress. The eclecticDia de Los Muertos activities start at 4pm with the “Prop 4: Get Out the Vote” rally.…
Stage Frights
As Soul Brother No. 1 might say of October, “It’s a ghoul’s, ghoul’s, ghoul’s, ghoul’s world.” You know what I’m talking about. Once we pass beyond the ninth month, the land is overrun with ghosties and beasties and things that go bump in the night. Jack-o’-lanterns leer from every porch. Vampires and witches glower from…
A Mission From God
photograph by David Bedrich Jake and Elwood Blues are probably the last people who should come to mind as you watch Austin’s Dancehall Boys. After all, the Blues Brothers were about classic R&B — the ultimate form of hip, funky coolness. The Dancehall Boys, on the other hand, are about polka — a music that’s…
Image Over Substance
Before Rick Perry was agriculture commissioner, before he was even a Republican, he was a friend of the pesticide industry. As a Democratic state representative from Haskell County, a farming region near Abilene, Perry challenged Hightower’s zealous enforcement of pesticide regulations, introducing to the legislature a provision that would have gutted the department’s pesticide authority.…
