Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > August > 29
Saturday, August 29, 2009
An Inside History of Antonio’s TexMex
One of the reasons I relish reporting the results of the A-List “Best Of” contests each week is that I learn something every time, often from readers. Few responders, however, have been as thorough and gracious as John Cortez, who saw that I’d never been to any of the Antonio’s outlets. The TexMex restaurant group — almost four decades old — won for Best Margarita in the A-List vote. So I decided to quote his message in full (with minor editing).
Thank you
John V. Cortez Antonio’s Tex-Mex
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Food
Meet the new entertainment bloggers
The Entertainment Journalism class at St. Edward’s University once again impresses. We’re meeting each Monday night for three hours. We’ll cover news reporting, feature writing, blogging, social media, interviewing, editing, celebrity journalism and other subjects related to entertainment.
Class members are posting away on their entertainment blogs, some freshly minted, others already underway when the semester began. As in the past, I’ll re-post some of the best entries here on Out & About as well.
Meanwhile, a directory:
James Bingham: Working Title
Phillip Bradshaw: A View from Austin
Trisha Corona: Trisha’s Blog
Mary Fisher: Redmusi’s Blog
Carly Hallman: Chairman Wow!
Ryan Lester: Musings on Music
Cilla Longoria: Cilla’s 1127 Blog
Kaitlin Meilert: Kaitlin’s Entertainment Blog
Sara Ortiz: A Little Bite of This, A Little Bite of That
Jules Ramirez: Twenty Fresh
Chris Saad: Got Entertainment?
Others to be added.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment Categories: Education
Ear Candy: Austin Music Vol. 8, The Flatlanders, Porterdavis
For our freshly revived “Ear Candy” micro-picks series, we offer more Austin music, some of which has been out for many weeks …
The Flatlanders. “Hills and Valleys” — Weatherbeaten West Texans Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely never sounded more trustworthy than under producer Llloyd Maines’ guidance in this New West blend of politics, guts and rootsiness. (References to Woody Guthrie can’t be ignored.)
Porterdavis. Self-titled. I’ve worn down the digital coding on this deep imprint of Austin Americana from this five-year-old act. I can tell, too, from this and MP3 downloads that they are a dynamite live act. But I still haven’t seen them! Missed the listening party at the Gibson Guitar Showroom and the CD release gig at Saxon Pub, both by my own fault. The omission will not be repeated.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment Categories: Music
Bullet-fast, blade-sharp Paula Poundstone at One World Theatre
At age 49, Paula Poundstone still thinks faster on her feet than the next 10 comics. (Dame Edna’s ad libs are equally fast, but she slows down the delivery pace for effect.) Poundstone’s improvised chats with audience members do not disintegrate into easy insults, as with so many comics, although she comes close to offending her conversation mates with the relentless attention.
Poundstone does not let up, however. She interviews. She repeats answers. She willfully mishears them. She comes close to heckling her fans, but the smile disarms. Eventually she launches into an extended rant, having found a topic for which she can argue the audience’s side.
To an architect, she posed: “Haven’t all the buildings been designed?” For a couple of government workers from College Station, she asks if they “stand guard against any ideas that might intrude.” To a brain surgeon, she suggests an extra year of medical school to teach scheduling. “Now you have a patient at 10. No you can’t have two. OK, 10:15 for the next appointment. Will it take you only 15 minutes to take care of the first patient? No? Well, you see …”
You bet the audience liked that line of questioning. Poundstone also free-associated about child-rearing, obsessive-compulsive disorder, aging bodies, politics and educational systems in Texas, California and Alaska, and the failure of CNN to maintain serious news standards (“That’s why there’s a FOX”).
Unabashedly Democratic, Poundstone professes the standard liberal openness to other ideas, but her partisanship is blade-sharp. Which plays well in Austin.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Arts
