05/24/04-05/28/04

From: Michael Barnes e-mail me

Reaching critical mass

So, I'm off.

You won't spot me at the usual number of Austin entertainment events for the next three weeks. That's because I'm headed to two conferences in a row. (I will be so informed when I return.)

The first is in San Francisco. (I know, rough assignment.) It's the national confab of the American Theatre Critics Association. What do critics do when they congregate?

You can guess: Talk. A lot.

We see theater. We listen to guest speakers. We eat. We hold long business meetings. And we talk. About theater. About criticism. About our publications. (Who has the worst editor? Oh, I can't join that conversation any more, since I joined the dark profession.)

We also talk to — and about — each other. Which is more crucial than you might think. There are only so many of us in any market, so networking with the other several hundred theater critics in the country is an opportunity without equal. How many people really understand your job?

This is my last conference as chairman. Which means that, after six years on the board of directors and three years running the national outfit, I can relax a little.

But not too much, since I am deeply involved in the planning for the first-ever National Critics Conference, which gathers the art, dance, music and theater critics for the first time in one location, happily in Los Angeles in May 2005. Should be a whopper. With a lot of chatting.

The following week I am off to balmy Pittsburgh for the first National Performing Arts Convention. This is primarily a meeting for representatives from the service organizations for opera, symphony, theater, dance and other disciplines. But I am going with my critic's cap on (my last duties as chair, also among my first with the music critics).

Among the shows we'll sample there is another staging of "Dead Man Walking," this time at the Pittsburgh Opera. I still get goosebumps when I think of the San Francisco and Austin productions, so I don't mind seeing it again.

Pittsburgh is actually a cool place. Not like Austin. (It does not rock, despite what Esquire magazine might say.) But it maintains a fairly firm sense of itself and is home to numberless arts, sports and educational standouts. I'm psyched about returning.

Then it's over. No more leading a national critics group. That's fine. I did what I set out to do — created more training programs for young critics, upgraded communications, cemented an alliance among the various critics groups.

Soon, I can rest.

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From: Sarah Lindner e-mail me

Lovely recovery from the post-wedding-lit hangover

You really, really do not want to read a half dozen wedding-themed books, one right after the other.

Only one of the books I reviewed for today's Life & Arts section is absolutely irredeemable, but the cumulative effect kind of got to me. When I was my friend Kim's maid of honor in February, we had a running joke about the bride-ism "It's my special day." "You have to have it because IT'S YOUR SPECIAL DAY!" I would bleat at her. "What is wrong with people? Don't they know IT'S MY SPECIAL DAY?" she'd shriek if we got caught in traffic.

Now imagine that without the friendship and the irony. That's what the bride books started feeling like. I got a little cranky.

I realized I was like that guy in "Super-Size Me." His liver was turning to fat; my brain was turning to buttercream frosting.

So when I got done with the books, I was happy to re-enter the outside world — friends, movies, poetry, wine, staying up late and reading news Web sites. Friends, life is beautiful.

The doc "Stupidity" at the Alamo Village made me laugh and clued me in to the Web site fark.com. (Where have I been? Where?) Not bad at all for a movie that looked like it cost about $12.75 to make.

The next night I made my first visit to the Ransom Center. I'm ashamed it took me that long. That's just sorry. Before the wine-tasting event (my friend had won tickets, I graciously freeloaded), we took a quick spin through the exhibits, where I got giddy as an undergrad over "20 X 20." I'm making plans to go back and stare and stare at the papers touched by Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes.

The wine part of the night was all-out excellent as well, although it's cruel to ask people trivia questions after plying them with that much alcohol.

All the indulgence didn't head off a trip to Kerbey Lane, where that night's discovery was chipotle Tabasco sauce. I think you need this. I think you need to buy a lot of it and then maybe have me over for Bloody Marys.

Wednesday brought a great lunch at the lovely Thistle with a lovely friend. Someone who knows you well enough to suggest both Thistle and "Parking Lot" knows you very well indeed.

All right, I'm going to settle down because I think I've hit the legal limit on effusion.

Just think how I'll be if I ever get married.

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From: Omar Gallaga e-mail me

Married ... with HD-TiVo

Distractions, distractions.

We went on a ride to a restaurant and watched the first half of "The Fog of War" on DVD, which had just arrived in the mail from Netflix. The movie played on dual screens mounted on the backseats of our lunch host's car.

We listened to Robert S. McNamara talk about nuclear bomb victims and exit strategies on our way to a delicious meal at Hoover's.

Last weekend we went to see "Kill Bill 2," a movie we'd been meaning to catch since before the wedding. We liked it.

We'll be watching the "American Idol" and "24" finales this week and this week's episode of "The Sopranos" blew our minds. (Though not in the same way that the previous week's extended dream sequence did. I loved the throwback to "Twin Peaks." My wife, not a "Peaks" fan to begin with, wasn't as enamored.)

I'm learning to cook a bit, using the new stainless steel cookware to thaw, sear and fry up the goods. The steamer/rice cooker gift has also been handy. We steamed up some broccoli and carrots the other day. Firm, nutritious perfection.

The HD-TiVo has been hooked up and a whole new world of high-definition TV (nay, recordable HDTV) has opened up in our home. The good: anything on the Discovery HD Theater channel, and the aforementioned "Sopranos" in glorious high resolution. The bad? "Bikini Destinations," a seemingly sure-fire slam dunk that proves that typical male ogling is best from a distance, or at least too far back to see every wrinkle and pore on a nubile model's face.

We came back from Paris exhausted and bleary, the living room stacked full of endless wedding gifts in gorgeous gift wrappings and gift bags. We waited a few days to go through it all, taking care to write it all down for future thank-you notes.

We're still adjusting to "wife" and "husband," to "spouse" and "married" and the rings, both of metal and of wordplay, that come with the union.

Every few days we'll look at each other and say, "So . . . we're MARRIED!" It splashes over us like cold water. It's really happened.

We talk about buying a new house somewhere else; a place with bigger closets and a location more amenable to our commutes.

We talk about our jobs, our futures, the possibility of children, the certainties of aging and money.

But we also watch TV, go see movies, buy groceries, mow the lawn and feed the cats.

The inevitable question swirls around us like the scent of coming rain. The question that never came up in the flurry of wedding planning, reception arrangements, in booking the honeymoon: "Where are we going now, together?"

Mostly, everything else is just distraction.

From: Joe Gross e-mail me

The old No Wave and the new Old West

Saw an amazing thing last night over at the Alamo. It was Dollar Night, which was nice, but the program was worth 10 times that.

The show was a compilation of clips of no wave bands hosted by Alamo mouthpiece Kier-La "ask me about 'Death Church' vs. 'Cacophony'" Janisse and curated by noise evangelist/no wave expert/owner of all these clips Weasel Walter. All of this footage was absurdly rare, almost all of it was wonderful to see (you know the usual suspects: Lydia Lunch, DNA, Mars, James Chance) but a few clips were flat out inspirational.

There was Suicide, lousy picture but still riveting in their intensity, singer Alan Vega morphing Elvis' hick hiccup into something urban and menacing over Martin Rev's minimalist drum machine and organ.

There was Von LMO, dressed like a '50s spaceman, turning DEVOlutional riffs into deafening buzz.

There was Japan's Friction, making all that destruction jump and swing like classic punk. It reminded me that as good as the new Drive-By Truckers album is, my first love, my best love, is horrible noise, and it made me want to grab a cheap guitar, find some pals who wanted to make horrible noise with me, find the possibility in all that feedback and rhythm.

Speaking of the tension between nihilism and hope, say what you will about the extraordinary amount of (expletives) on "Deadwood," it has some of the best dialogue on television. Series creator David Milch's whip-crack combines the kind of noirish grit, dark wit and bull-spit that made the first few years of "NYPD Blue" so hypnotic. And some sort of award (I think those things are called "Emmys") is due to Ian McShane for his portrayal of foulmouthed Gem saloon owner/calculating villain Al Swearengen ("swear engine," get it?). Not only is his performance outstanding, but he's in nearly every scene. The guy must have 40 pages of dialogue to memorize every week, one of the only real tours de force on TV right now.

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From: Chris Garcia e-mail me

Oh, to be a human beatbox

It's something I always aspired to be, a far-off dream too fantastic for my feeble grasp, a talent my lips could only talk about but never fulfill.

I'm of course talking about a human beatbox, whose mysterious skills land somewhere around a Boardwalk human robot, a Whoopee cushion and that guy in "Police Academy."

I met one Saturday night, a human beatbox. (I love just saying it.) That would be ubiquitous Austin musician John Pointer, a short dude with a gelled-up baby Mohawk, sneakers and the elastic swagger of a hip-hop guy who's white. He was doing his beatbox-with-a-band thing Saturday night at hipster Irish pub Fadó, where I was summoned by friends Dawn and Randi. On the outdoor patio, in a soothing breeze, Pointer spat out rhythmic raspberries, kissing the mike as his limber arms described the nonsense semaphores of rap. He climbed on the deck railing and squatted, his lips vibrating with beats that ran the sonic gamut of lusty cicadas to a cupped hand in an armpit. It was one of the coolest and stupidest things I've seen.

This and the hopelessly starstruck Randi's body glitter, which formed a twinkly galaxy across her chest, had me and Dawn tailing it to the Bitter End B-Side, that dank, swank underground lounge with a lighting scheme prime for developing photographs. Pizza followed. . . .

What else happened during Chris' Big Weekend?

Friday night I saw "Mean Girls" with a (mean) girl who prefers anonymity. The Tina Fey-written comedy is wildly overrated, fitfully grin-inducing, mostly flat and grating. (Not as abysmal as the deflating "13 Going on 30," and don't ask how I wound up at that one.)

Drinks were naturally required afterward; some short-term memories should be erased. The bartender at Club De Ville's outdoor bar called me by name. I'd never met him, but he said he reads my stuff and sees me at De Ville often. He once called me at work, he said, to gripe about my interview with Chris Tucker, which he found rude and prickly. (I thought he said he reads my stuff.) He was surprised when I picked up the phone and was impressed how I put the interview in context and explained my facetious tone in the article. (This happens a lot: Talk to an irate reader like a regular person, have a coolheaded conversation, and disarm them. You end up getting off the phone with each of you telling the other, "No, you're the man!")

As my friend and I checked off must-sees on the new Paramount Summer Classic Film Series schedule printed in a rival publication, who walked up but my buddy Valerie. I hadn't seen her since I was banned from the set of "The Alamo" in January 2003.

Valerie is an industrious production assistant who's worked on several movies ("The Alamo," "Daredevil," "Matchstick Men"). A couple years back she left Austin for Los Angeles and went all Hollywood on me. She's back in town working on the new Mike Judge project starring Luke Wilson. We caught up, hugged, joked and refused to buy each other drinks. Just like old times. . . .

My weekend sounds like it was busy, but actually I didn't leave the house at all during the daylight hours of Saturday and Sunday. Holed up in sweats and socks and a KISS shirt I got for like 50 cents in China, I read lots and watched DVDs — "Pitch Black," a gruesome and coolly atheistic sci-fi monster flick, Kurosawa's always touching "Ikiru," episodes of "Freaks and Geeks" and the documentary extras on the Criterion disc of "Umberto D." (I had no idea actor-turned-director Vittorio De Sica was such a hammy glamorpus.) . . .

My scintillating life doesn't stop there. Whew!

Thursday night I saw John Waters do his stand-up "vaudeville act," as he put it. Inside a stadium auditorium at the Metropolitan movie theater in South Austin, he stood front and center in a weak spotlight. Waters is a suave, tiny man, and on this night wore noticeable makeup. He looked vaguely like Joel Grey in "Cabaret."

I've seen Waters' act three times now (San Francisco, 1987; Austin, 1999), and it invariably snaps with scathing pop-culture commentary and self-effacing autobiography.

"My life is getting closer to Paul Lynde's)," he said, comparing the present to his dangerous "Pink Flamingo" years. Nowadays, drugs are bad; taking them is "so retro." And what is it with Ecstasy? he asked. "It makes you love everyone. . . . That sounds like hell to me." A man after my own heart.

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