George W. wants you to get a job, but won't pay for training; and, like his father, he's trying to get us into another oil war; also, drug companies use cash to get your doctor's recommendation.

BY JIM HIGHTOWER

food

Unsung Heroes

Chefs get the credit; sous chefs get dinner on the table.

BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD

How It All Began: A Brief History of the Kitchen Brigade

BY MM PACK

Second Helpings: Water's Edge

Satay, Java Noodles, Saba Blue Water Cafe, Bistro 88, Habana, Gilligan's, Cafe Josie, Bahama Breeze

music

Songwriters and Spirit Chasers

Resentments Jon Dee Graham and Stephen Bruton go mano a mano about their new albums.

BY MARGARET MOSER

Dancing About Architecture

An ode to Waylon Jennings, even as SXSW O2 builds to a boil.

BY KEN LIECK

Phases and Stages

Blues Box

Jake Andrews, Texistentialism, Big Delta, Twang Bang, Fire Power, s / r, Blind Pig, V8, Deep Eddy

The Exorcist

Mexican filmmaker Jaime Hermosillo thrusts his personal life into the public domain of cinema.

BY CHALE NAFUS

Short Cuts

The Alamo Drafthouse goes kung fu fighting with live dubbing and a new Golden Arm Trio score.

BY MARC SAVLOV

TV Eye

What's so funny about being fat? Lots, if you're Jiminy Glick.

BY BELINDA ACOSTA

Screens Reviews

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

Herzog's film is an impossible, epic vision of death and despair and hideous beauty in a faraway place, and one of the most visceral depictions of self-manufactured doom ever seen.

Film Reviews

Donnie Darko

This unnerving, electrifying film provides a unique take on the teen psyche in modern suburbia.

The Mexic-Arte Museum exhibition "Brazilian Visual Poetry" is an ambitious attempt to trace a history of visual poetry among Brazilian artists since the Fifties, but the show feels fragmentary, defining poetry in the broadest of terms and presenting the work in an inconsistent manner.

BY MERCHANT ADAMS

Articulations

Ships coming in for Scott Thompson and Richard Byron, who get to stage Dames at Sea at the Goodspeed Opera House, and for Lynn C. Miller and Laura Furman, who will have their play Passenger on the Ship of Fools performed by legendary actress Irene Worth.

BY ROBERT FAIRES

Arts Reviews

Luminarias

Teatro Humanidad's production of Evelina Fernandez's play Luminarias has a hip, urban style and flair, but more importantly, it has characters who are individuals, distinct personalities who draw us into their lives with the feelings and thoughts they express.

Lion in the Streets

In its staging of Judith Thompson's play Lion in the Streets, the tale of a ghostly girl who wanders the streets searching for her life, Kia Productions mines some deep material, with a passionate cast that takes the work to the edge -- and sometimes, unfortunately, too far over it.

Giants Have Us in Their Books

There are moments of magic in Shard Live Performance Collective production of Giants Have Us in Their Books, Jose Rivera's five-play take on human vices and virtues, but they are few and far between in an evening filled with urban and suburban angst, folly, and outright nastiness.

columns

Postmarks

Our readers talk back.

Letters at 3AM

War movies are back ... but they don't make them like they used to.

BY MICHAEL VENTURA

Mr. Smarty Pants

BY MR. SMARTY PANTS

Daytrips

BY GERALD E. MCLEOD

After a Fashion

Your Style Avatar travels the www-dot-ether for fabulous fashionable foibles, brings it home with Mega's Miss Kitty, and remembers iconic designer Pauline Trigere.