Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > January > 28
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Jaston Williams’ Lubbock Tony inflation
So don’t go looking for an under-the-table Jaston Williams dig here.
Yet when I received a press packet from the Lubbock Community Theatre advertising the debut of Williams’ “Blame It on Valentine, Texas,” I was taken aback by the line above the title for the coming attraction at the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center Theatre show — “4-Time Tony Award Nominee.”
How do we say this? Jaston probably deserves a Tony Award nomination, but Broadway voters have not wised up to that fact yet.
I rifled through the press material and I think I see where the theater’s publicity department went wrong. He’s a 4-time nominee for the Helen Hayes Award, given in the Washington D.C. market, where the “Tuna” series is almost as popular as in Austin.
I know Jaston is cringing right now. And the LCT is wishing it could recall the mail. Only Jaston could come up with the appropriate, half-indulgent West Texas joke to insert here, maybe about the psychic distance between Lubbock and Broadway or the Kennedy Center being roughly equal.
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Your A-List: Best Improv Group
To tell the Lord’s own truth, we’d heard of only three of the following companies receiving votes in the A-List poll for best improv group.
Two mobs out-muscled the others in the voting: Midnight Society (45 percent) and Flying Theater Machine (40 percent). Nothing. Nada. No memories of either from me. Which can only be my fault.
ColdTowne Theater, one of the three I’ve witnessed, came in third with 4 percent, virtually tied with Girls, Girls, Girls, another familiar to me.
The aspirationally named Parallelogramophonograph led the troupes with 2 percent or less of the tally. They included Knuckleball Now, Heroes of Comedy, Look Cookie, Mr. Bossman, Improv for Evil, Murphy, Get Up and Starter Kit.
Time to hit the improv clubs.
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Your A-List, Best Place to Spot a Celeb
This is an A-List category we know something about. Not that we spot celebs every day. But we know where they cluster, because readers let us know.
Next in the vote was the University of Texas sports games with 20 percent. That’s logical, too, since UT games represent the greatest concentrations of Austinites in one place anyway. The Four Seasons Hotel and South by Southwest, the first a celeb watering hole, the second our biggest festival, tied with just over 13 percent of the vote.
Guero’s, the venerable South Congress Tex-Mex spot, gobbled up fifth place with 7 percent. The Austin City Limits Music Festival — our town’s No. 2 fest — earned 6 percent, while Whole Foods cashed in 5 percent. Taking 3 percent or less were Hotel San Jose, Continental Club, Chuy’s, Uchi and Jo’s Hot Coffee.
As a professional social columnist, I have to say this is a pretty darn good list.
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Cissi’s Wine Bar makes more converts
The Harrimans were skeptical. Kip was skeptical. Would the portions exceed the dainties served by most wine bars and, thus, satisfy our appetites? Would the atmosphere be too chilly, modern for an icy night on South Congress?
Chef Deegan McClung’s intense tapas — ruffled chips caked in powdered cheese and dates wrapped in bacon — brought huge smiles to my companions’ faces. (We’re sad McClung is leaving our neighborhood, but delighted he will move up the culinary pecking order to Jeffrey’s.)
The deli soup and sandwiches, however, held the key. The poblano soup with pecans proved just hearty and hot enough to please everyone. And our sandwich orders were shared with relish. Desserts and americanos topped off a marvelous meal — garnished with Harriman conversational nimbleness — at another very Austin establishment that manages to feel urban as well.
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Time for Science & Technology
We’ve got the perfect spot: The state-owned, block-sized surface parking lot at Congress Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, opposite the Bullock Texas History Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art. Perhaps the state could collaborate with private donors and the University of Texas to complement the sweet and graceful, but painfully undersized and inaccessible Texas Memorial Museum (right) by building on this prime and very public location.
In the past couple of years, we’ve visited the reconfigured science museums in New York and San Francisco. Both are huge attractions. In a city like Austin, where a good third of the economy is dependent on technology — and another thick slice on tourism — that we offer no charismatic center for saluting science, engineering, etc. is nigh on scandalous.
Recession? A good time for a public works project.
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Andy Roddick back in American news
By upsetting defending champion Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open, Austin’s Andy Roddick — darling of the international press, but apparently less intriguing to the vast majority of Americans — has set up a semi-final round with perennial nemesis Roger Federer.
It also moves Roddick’s name higher in the Google Reader feeds, so that the top spots for the tennis champion’s news mentions are not sites titled “Muscle Jocks” or “Top Gay Sports Icons.” (The latter is a function of his large fan base, not his personal proclivities. And hey, I don’t choose what sites Google samples.) My personal hope: Roddick rocks Australia then returns to Austin in triumph again.
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Obama Day Memories 8
Austin word-spreader Karen Frost, a former DC resident, remembers:
The energy in our nation’s capital was so light, I think there was a moment at the Lincoln Memorial concert when Bono was singing “In a City of Blinding Lights” that the town actually started to levitate.
Upon exiting our booth and applying the multiple layers of sweaters, scarves and gloves necessary for warmth while walking around our nation’s capital, I chatted with them … and it was the smiles of my new friends that touched my soul to its core. It was the life’s journey behind those smiles that generates this foundation of the hope, change and joy overwhelming a town often draped in skepticism, not just a city, but a nation levitating in blinding lights.
Send your Obama Day memories to mbarnes@statesman.com.
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Ear Candy: Jonathan Sacks, Jon Lord, Cameron Carpenter
Three micro-reviews that don’t fit into any category:
Jonathan Sacks “Fifth (S)eason” (Navona) I was thinking: This sounds like high-end soundtrack music. Then I remembered Sacks writes for the movies. Craggy and spare at times, orchestrally fulsome at others. The seriousness of the packaging is a little off-putting.
John Lord “Boom of the Tingling Strings” (EMI Classics) The Deep Purple artist pulls from whatever disparate sources — musical and emotional — that his life has provided. The title composition and accompanying “Disguises” pull more from classical than blues/rock.
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