Volume 23, Number 36
ON THE COVER:
features
SUMMER FUN
Instead of renting twenty videos per week and melting your kids' brains this summer, try some of these more active activities
BY DIANA WELCH
news
APD's new North Central Area Command force is bringing community policing to blighted north central neighborhoods
BY JORDAN SMITH
Civic unrest erupts in the southwest Travis County village
BY AMY SMITH
Will developer's bankruptcy case end with a split decision?
BY AMY SMITH
The Texas Center for Actual Innocence is open for business at the UT Law School
BY RITA RADOSTITZ
The UN weapons inspector blasts Bush at the LBJ School
BY LEE NICHOLS
Headlines and happenings from Austin and beyond
BY MIKE CLARK-MADISON
The House Bill on public school finance goes to the floor, and it's all about tax cuts and slot machines
BY MICHAEL KING
The Lege special session gets down to business, and it's woefully business as usual
BY MICHAEL KING
Social Security: It ain't broke, so don't fix it; and, productivity has gone up so why hasn't your paycheck?
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
food
The Mandarin House's stellar reputation has followed it out to Lakeway why haven't you?
BY MICK VANN
WINES OF CHILE AND ARGENTINA
Chile and Argentina
BY WES MARSHALL
Mario Batali has discovered Austin's Matt Lee, but not in a good way; Hoover's has a new breakfast; and the Alamo Drafthouse finds food on the tracks
BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD
music
'Hot Smoke & Sasafrass' (and its backstory) returns via the reissue of A Gathering of Promises
BY GREG BEETS
Thirty Three Degrees announces it will be shutting its doors. Out the door, too, is Associate Music Editor Michael Chamy.
BY CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Reissues
Illmatic 10th Anniversary Platinum Edition
Grooving Kingston 12
Night Train to Nashville: Music City Rhythm & Blues 1945-1970
Delta Lady: The Rita Coolidge Anthology
Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, Tusk
Caricature: The Box
The Long Road Home 1963-2003
The Bootleg Series Volume 6: Bob Dylan Live 1964 Concert at Philharmonic Hall
Carry it On
The Singles Box Vols. 1-6
Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets From the WEA Vaults, Come to the Seventies: Soft Pop Nuggets From the WEA Vaults
All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, Suffer, No Control, Against the Grain, Generator
The Best of the Early Years, Preservation Hall Hot 4 with Duke Dejan, Shake That Thang
For All Time
Black Box: the Complete Original Black Sabbath (1970-1978)
Metalogy
screens
UT and AFS team up for a Doc Tour deviation: 10 films under 10 minutes long made for less than $10.
BY ANNE S. LEWIS
The Nudge Micro Digital Film Fest
BY COURTNEY FITZGERALD
Greg Pak's 'Robot Stories' is ap-pealing to just about everyone, seven years after his appeal to the Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund launched his career.
BY MARC SAVLOV
BitTorrent
BY WELLS DUNBAR
Press 1 for English
BY MARC SAVLOV
A spoonful of censorship
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
Film Reviews
An engaging chamber comedy cum lavish period piece set in France at the beginning of WWII.
Director Barry Levinson tackles the human vice of envy in this comedy starring Ben Stiller and Jack Black.
A shy office drone orders a life-sized plastic doll off the Internet, to predictably disastrous results.
Hindi movie full of plot and song.
A winking, disingenuous farce from the Olsen twins.
This bewitching Icelandic film mines frozen veins of resentment and quirky, black-ice humor.
A short film collection billed as "science fiction from the heart," with an emphasis on the heart part.
Hugh Jackman's mysterious monster hunter is pittefd against nearly the entire pantheon of Universal’s classic monsters, including Dracula and and the Wolf-Man.
arts & culture
The gypsy feet of playwright Ruth Margraff keep wandering back to Austin, and we're fortunate that they do
BY CYNDI WILLIAMS
The music community mourns the loss of professor of piano Danielle Martin
BY ROBERT FAIRES
'Portraits'
BY MOLLY BETH BRENNER
Texas high schoolers act; Deborah Hay lectures; Bill Wittliff and Julie Speed read; and you learn about Duchamp
Arts Reviews
The Rude Mechanicals' Stadium Devildare, from a script by Ruth Margraff, offers a muscle-bound riff on reality game shows and superpatriotism, but its torrents of text eventually leave the brain numb
The Texas Early Music Project's concert rendering of this Baroque gem L'Orontea left no doubt as to the opera's musical pleasures
The Bedlam Faction's production of Wayne Alan Brenner's Screwed Into the Book of Love is an ambling journey through a maze of situations built upon the effects and circumstances of love
columns
The overwhelming need for a Travis County hospital district should be obvious
BY LOUIS BLACK
Our readers talk back.
So many purse designers, so little talent
errrrrr, time, time! We mean time!
BY STEPHEN MACMILLAN MOSER
A beautiful area of Texas, Wharton County has hundreds of stories to tell
BY GERALD E. MCLEOD
Isn't it worth taking 30 seconds to say you've learned something new today?
BY MR. SMARTY PANTS
Which is the 'better quality' protein: whey or rice?
BY JAMES HEFFLEY, PH.D.
A relative passed away recently and the duty has fallen to me to wind up her affairs. She left a will. Where do I start? Can I do this without a lawyer?
BY JOE MARRS
Free Lunch 'n' Learn on May 12: HIV Basics
BY SANDY BARTLETT AND TIM BYRNE
Fiesta Gardens, Thursday, May 6, 2004
BY THE LUV DOC
Letters to the editor, published daily
sports
The Austin Lightning kick off their season and more
BY NICK BARBARO