Cover Story
Sausage Shrines
A pilgrimage
Free Night of Theater: The List
These Central Texas theatre companies are offering free tickets as part of the national Free Night of Theater campaign
Serious Business
The first Texas Barbecue Festival
Sheet Music
Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop By Rob Jovanovic Chicago Review Press, 333 pp., $16.95 (paper) It’s no picnic writing the definitive history of an underdocumented band when one of the principals is dead and the other won’t talk to you. Nevertheless, Jovanovic does a…
Bus Driver Standoff Going Nowhere
Cap Met and union hurl editorial barbs
Tony Takitani
This adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s eponymous short story is a delicate little curio, lighter than air and gravely philosophical at once.
The Faces of Austin: Face-Off
City Hall gets more artsy this week with the debut of Faces of Austin, a new program that features 25 works by Central Texas filmmakers celebrating what makes Austin Austin
Texas Barbecue Festival Info
Sunday, Oct. 9 at Austin’s Historic Farmers’ Market
Sheet Music
Guided By Voices: A Brief History – Twenty-one Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock & RollBy James Greer Black Cat Books, 320 pp., $16 (paper) Guided by Voices: A Brief History – Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock & Roll is deceptively thin. Yeah, it clocks in at…
Point Austin: Tased and Confused
When the APD falls in love with Tasers, it’s the Eastside that gets shocked
Thumbsucker
The plot realistically mimics a teenager’s adriftness and tendency toward hairpin-turn mood shifts as it bounds from the wonderfully affecting to the decidedly idiosyncratic to the occasionally absurd.
Austin Lyric Opera: Breaking Glass
For Austin Lyric Opera’s 20th season, artistic director Richard Buckley has lined up the American premiere of Philip Glass’ opera ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’
Stopping the Nonsense
The No Nonsense campaign gears up to derail the national anti-gay crusade
The Hightower Report
Firefighters put to work as FEMA publicity agents; and poor, desperate Bushites look to the American people to pay for their mess in Iraq
Waiting …
This frequently offensive and doggedly disgusting film about working in the restaurant industry is technically inept and wholly crude.
Arts Review
Ed Begley Jr.’s ‘Cesar and Ruben,’ a play with music, is a respectful and warm tribute to the life and work of United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez
Sausage Shrines
Claudia Alarcón in Elgin Meyer’s Elgin smokehouse 188 Hwy. 290 E., Elgin, 512/281-3331 Monday-Thursday, 10am-8pm; Friday-Saturday, 10am-9pm; Sunday, 10am-7pm www.meyerselginsausage.com The Meyer family has been making sausage in Texas for more than a century. German immigrant Henry Meyer arrived in Texas in the late 1880s with a few possessions and his family’s recipe for sausage,…
Where Can We Marry? The U.S. Legal Landscape
Gays and lesbians enjoy full legal marriage in only one state
Really Over There
The Texas Documentary Tour: Garrett Scott and Ian Olds’ ‘Occupation: Dreamland’
Green Street Hooligans
The psychotically testosterized world of British football hooliganism, with its crimson tide of fist-in-mouth male bonding and lager-lout bad manners, is captured in this post LOTR Elijah Wood movie.
Arts Review
Yellow Tape Construction Company’s self-styled indie folk musical ‘Come Home’ plays out like a quaint indie film with Midwestern melancholia and harmony
Get It All Over Ya: County Line on the Hill Celebrates 30 Years
Every region contains a handful of iconic eating spots that somehow manage to embody the spirit of the locale. Through elusive qualities that both elevate and transcend the food itself, these places evoke fond memories of past good times and convey to newcomers an important sense of place and local history. It bears thinking about…
Saving HeteroTexas: God and the GOP
God – or rather, those who claim to speak in his name – works in mysterious ways this election season
It’s Alive!
The founders on Fantastic Fest I
Proof
As with many film adaptations of stage successes, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about mathematics and madness loses something in its translation to celluloid.
Arts Review
Ballet Austin’s bill of ‘One / the body’s grace’ and ‘Carmina Burana’ provided a living spectacle of sound and motion that evoked the pleasure in what it means to be human
True ‘Cue: Eat, Drink, Watch Movies
What better way to kick off the first Central Texas Barbecue Festival than to partake in barbecue with all five senses? Enjoy a finger-lickin’-good Eat, Drink, Watch Movies screening of three distinctive barbecue documentaries while chowing down on combo platters from Austin’s homegrown, 30-year-old County Line Bar-B-Q at 7pm on Saturday, Oct. 8. Documentaries on…
Proposition 2 Plus 8
In addition to sexual obsessions, we get to vote on railroads and mortgages too
The Grassy Knowles
‘Domino’ premieres in Austin with Richard Kelly in attendance
Bard Ambition
Stephen Greenblatt on ‘Will in the World’
Food-o-File
7 runs aground, while Dot’s Place rises from the ashes; plus, ‘Sideways’ at Spicewood and HerbFest
Death Puts Tasers in Spotlight Again
Officers quickly returned to duty, ME’s report still out
‘Not Lost’ to Premiere in Austin
From South Sudan to North Texas
Page Two: Look Who’s (Still) Talking
Miers nomination pushes right-wing spin machine into disturbing, delicious overdrive
Home Is Where the Hatred Is
Dialoguing with ‘Souled American’ author Kevin Phinney
Is the Hammer Nailed?
Yet another indictment of DeLay, this time for money laundering. Will it reverberate for other politicos?
‘SXSW Presents’: ‘Frontier’
‘Frontier’
After a Fashion
Stephen sure is getting around, hobnobbing with the bigwigs and taking in all of the faboo fall fashion fetes
People Get Ready
Excerpt from Kevin Phinney’s ‘Souled American’
Parents Playing High School Redesign Hooky?
Austin ISD’s proposed high school redesign needs more parental involvement
DVD Watch
Musicians make uneasy actors. With his directorial debut, 1970’s ‘Performance,’ Nicolas Roeg characteristically tossed convention out the hotel window by casting Mick Jagger as one of the leads. He would follow up with David Bowie and Art Garfunkel.
TCB
Rocktober dawns with some troublesome cartoons, another round of Hall of Fame voting, and the Black Angels’ delicious drone
About AIDS
Campaign to end AIDS moves to fall
That’s Entertainment!
Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen: ‘We’ve still definitely got it’
Illegal SoCo Cafe Deck 86ed for Now
Restaurant’s lawyer claims he didn’t know permits were needed
TV Eye
With the proliferation of shows featuring aliens out to conquer the Earth, I thought I would come up with a thought-provoking column. Then I heard the call of George Clinton.
Sausage Shrines
Rachel Feit in Taylor Taylor Cafe101 N. Main, Taylor, 512/352-2828 Daily, 9am-11pm Vencil Mares has been coming into work at the Taylor Cafe every day for almost 60 years. After returning from World War II, Mares, who grew up in Cistern (Fayette County), settled in Taylor and began working at a local meat market. In…
To Your Health
Is it OK to give worm medicine to children if you only suspect worms but don’t have evidence of it?
Sheet Music
Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legendby Jean Pierre Lion Continuum, 348 pp., $26.95 Legendary jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke was the model in literature and film for the “Young Man With a Horn”-type, a psychologically troubled, immensely talented musician who drank himself to death. Beiderbecke has been cited as the originator of cool jazz;…
Naked City
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
Bard Ambition
Stephen Greenblatt on ‘Will in the World’
Sausage Shrines
Mick Vann in Gonzales, Marble Falls, and Llano Gonzales Food Market311 St. Lawrence, Gonzales, 830/672-3156 Daily, 8am-7pm www.gonzalesfoodmarket.com When you’re heading down Highway 183 and you get to Gonzales, look for the courthouse and you’ll find Gonzales Food Market on the northwest corner of the square. Opened 46 years ago by Lopez family patriarch “Chano”…
The Common Law
Child support – how can the attorney general’s office help?
Sheet Music
4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Landby Daniel Wolff Bloomsbury, 288 pp., $24.95 Runaway American Dreamby Jimmy Guterman Da Capo Press, 246 pp., $15.95 (paper) Amazon.com lists more than 80 books under the subject of Bruce Springsteen, including one written by the man himself (Songs). None, however, have used Springsteen, his…
City Beautification for Public, Darker Matters Behind Closed Doors
City Council notes
Sausage Shrines
Virginia B. Wood in Austin Smokey Denmark Sausage3505 E. Fifth, 385-0718 Monday-Friday, 7:30am-4:30pm www.smokeydenmark.com Though Smokey Denmark Sausage has been an Austin fixture for more than 40 years, there are still some popular misconceptions about the company. The product isn’t Danish in origin; Denmark was simply the founder’s surname, and his friends and family nicknamed…
Day Trips
Joe Cotten’s Barbecue in Robstown serves brisket, sausage, ribs, sliced pork, but no birds
Sheet Music
The Best of No DepressionEdited by Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden University of Texas Press, 288 pp., $19.95 (paper) There was a time not so long ago when Lucinda Williams, Wilco, Gillian Welch, and Alejandro Escovedo looked like they would toil forever in obscurity. So before we take aim at No Depression’s founding editors Peter…
Taser TV’s Electrified Guinea Pigs
Who needs Tom DeLay when zapping reporters is so much more fun?
Oliver Twist
Some may doubt the need to once more bring Dickens’ tale to the screen, but Polanski’s deft adaptation proves that there’s still life in that well-worn story of a boy who beats the odds.
Sausage Shrines
Wes Marshall in Luling and Lockhart City Market633 Davis St., Luling, 830/875-9019 Monday-Saturday, 7am-6pm The City Market has been making their all-beef sausages with the same recipe since 1958, when the place first opened. Joe Capello, the market manager, explains the process: “We make it ourselves from scratch. We have a sausage crew that makes…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Slurpees, Texas slaughterhouses, Tina Louise, and helicopters
Sheet Music
Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country MusicBy Chris Willman The New Press, 256 pp., $25.95 Since 9/11, the most politically charged genre in American music has been country. While most major rock, pop, and hip-hop artists chose to stay outside the fray, country-produced singles like “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” “Courtesy…
Culture War: How to Fight the Right
Texas academics and politicians discuss the how to revive progressivism
In Her Shoes
Even if these Shoes are not perfectly stitched, the fit is nevertheless comfortable and the look is polished.
The Dish on Desire
In ‘American Fiesta,’ Austin’s favorite economist / playwright / actor has plenty to say about what makes us want
Soccer Watch
Gerrard and Lampard prove fair-weather friends
Sheet Music
The B.B. King Treasures: Photos, Mementos & Music From B.B. King’s Collection By B.B. King with Dick Waterman Bulfinch Press, 160 pp., $40 B.B. King’s extraordinary life story is as quintessentially American as the music he plays. A rags-to-riches tale of how a literally dirt-poor, orphaned Mississippi sharecropper named Riley B. King, through talent, hard…
Polygamous Police Under Scrutiny
Arizona AG alleges that FLDS police enforce laws selectively
Two for the Money
Pacino again plays another Mephistophelean type who mentors McConaughey’s ex-jock in the intricacies of his tout service, offering tips to betters on the Vegas line, but the film is about as fresh as a day-old betting slip.
Austin Theatre: Free for All (At Least for a Night)
A national audience development campaign that’s offering a free night of theatre on Oct. 20 has cast Austin in a starring role for its national premiere
Oops!
The Sept. 30 issue’s “Katrina Aftermath Radio: A Brief, Dysfunctional Life” [News] misstated that Democracy Now! purchased thousands of transmitters for the LPFM radio station. The group actually purchased thousands of receivers. Also, Houston Independent Media Center’s Tish Stringer was incorrectly referred to as Trish. The Chronicle regrets the errors.
Sheet Music
Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi HendrixBy Charles R. Cross Hyperion, 384 pp., $24.95 The more we learn about Jimi Hendrix the person, the less we’re able to lean on his public image as the embodiment of black macho iconography. As Cross points out in Room Full of Mirrors, Hendrix claimed homosexuality in…
Dyslexics Rule, at Least in October
How to get help parenting a dyslexic child in Austin
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
This new animated comedy is a brilliantly conceived and executed bit of Brit wit, perfect for both kids and their parents and anyone even remotely interested in laughing themselves silly.
Luv Doc Recommends: Texas Barbecue Festival
“People who enjoy eating sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made.” – Otto von Bismark. Simpsons fans will probably confuse Otto von Bismark with Otto Mann, Bart and Lisa’s hard-rocking, fast-driving, slow-witted bus driver. That’s OK. The quote sounds pretty cool when you read it in that voice anyway. Otto von,…
