Punks lost in time

Generation without a definition still remembers. Quietly

O'Connell, Joe.

Austin American Statesman; Austin, Tex. [Austin, Tex]. 12 Jan 1995

My signed Devo collectible.

Talk about a lost generation. At 34, I'm in a bracket the pop culture moguls forgot to define. I'm a baby boomer, you say? Technically, since I was born before that arbitrary cutoff line of 1964. But isn't that a group of '60s radicals who grew their hair long, popularized bell-bottoms and listened to the Beatles?

Sorry, the '60s opened with me in diapers and ended with me transformed into an avid collector of Monkees bubble gum cards. Sure, I listened to the Beatles. My sisters and I turned the transistor radio up loud and rocked until nap time. Groovy. As for protests, the closest I came was the third-grade play. My dead-on impersonation of President Lyndon Johnson got me the role of a lifetime: the commander-in-chief who died of air pollution. Ah-choo.

A member of Generation X? Those born in 1961 and later? I think not, dude. Douglas Copeland, the author who popularized this most annoying of terms, might be about my age, but just mentioning a transistor radio should disqualify me. That and not having a tatoo or a pierced nipple. And Xers did the unforgivable by glorifying the '60s, Boy George and disco (though they had to dub it "trash disco" to qualify it as kitsch).

My recent experience with a member of the angst-ridden group of twentysomethings should close the case. Here's the scene: I had a need only she could fill. Thirty minutes after phoning her, she knocked on my door. I welcomed her supple frame into my humble abode. God, she smelled spicy. Her eyes lit up as she spied the high-tech electronic gear in my living room. It was clear I had her attention. I waited for the adoration to flow from her lips. "A turntable?" she squeaked. "You have records? Cool. I've read about those." I was afraid she might report me to the MTV police, so I quickly ended our discussion. I gave her cash, took the pizza from her nubile hands and drowned my sorrow in pepperoni.

So, if I'm not a Boomer and not a Buster, what I am? This is the question that perplexes those of us caught in that hazy line between two generations of bell-bottoms wearers. Oh, we hide it well. Those of us who made it into corporate America with only nicks and bruises claim to be cash-hungry baby boomers and try to look enthusiastic when those Woodstock and Vietnam tales come up again and again ("Charlie let off a blast that tore my sergeant's head off. We just loaded up the bong again and grooved").

The hazy-liners who got caught in the crunch of tough economic times - recent studies show that all of the boomers EXCEPT those on the tail end of the generation are doing just fine financially, thank you - have learned to love grunge and have tried to hide the fact that those trendy flannel shirts we're wearing have been in the backs of our closets (where the button-downs are now) since high school. We pretend to welcome the disco revival and don't admit we only tolerated it the first time to get laid.

We've been living a lie, and it's time to come clean. We're not baby boomers and we're not Generation X. To both of you we have this to say: Jim Morrison bores us. We refuse to wear Birkenstock sandals. Eating a hamburger and fries occasionally is not a mortal sin. Your two generations combined gave us political correctness and Neil Young. Take it all; we're fed up.

My generation's problem is a lack of definition. We contain traits from both of our better-publicized cousins, but we are different. If music defines a generation, then call us the Wavers or the Punks. We came of age in the late '70s and early '80s listening to the Sex Pistols, Devo, Talking Heads, the B-52's, Elvis Costello, the Ramones, etc. Austin Punks still long for the days when the Huns, the Standing Waves and the Skunks drove us to a pogoing frenzy at Raul's and Club Foot. We took from our era's music an attitude, a swagger that said "authority sucks, but just a little."

The Kennedy assassination (sorry, I don't remember where I was then; probably getting potty-trained) defined the boomer youth; Xers' adolescence was indelibly marked by Reagan's colon surgery. Punks were weaned on Nixon and Watergate. Think about it.

Punks were sexually promiscuous before AIDS hit, then we calmed down and kept our mouths shut. We have no problem with the concept of making money, after all, most of us voted for Reagan (we were drunk at the time). But we want more meaning from life than a 40-hour-a-week grind can provide. We waited, and some still are waiting, to get married out of fear of repeating our parents' failures. We are artists and stock brokers. We're probably a lot more liberal or a little more conservative than you imagine us.

Who are the Punks? Woody Harrelson is a prime example. He made a career out of playing a dumb guy on Cheers, but it was all an act. George Stephanopoulos is a Punk, but you already knew that. Remember the Brat Pack: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy? Punks one and all. Jerry Seinfeld is stretching the age limit, but his television show is 100 percent Punk: It's all about nothing. Ditto for Ellen DeGeneres. In fact, television in general is Punk, everything except The Brady Bunch, which the Generation Xers have stolen from us and turned into pop art.

Michael Jordan and Carl Lewis are the Punks of sports, but don't tell them I told you. Spike Lee brought our preteen years to the big screen in Crooklyn, and Austinite Richard Linklater glorified our late '70s high school days in Dazed and Confused, but Pulp Fiction's Quentin Tarantino is the Punk who really understands the way we talk and think.

Suddenly we're everywhere, and it is time for the Punks of the world to stand up and be counted. We demand a voice equal to that of the boardroom boomers and the bored Xers. It is time for a publicity campaign to define a generation that can hum the theme song to Room 222 and still worships the Frito Bandito. Soon every magazine and newspaper you read will be brimming with the trials and defining moments of our unique generation. It'll be enough to make you sick.

Joe O'Connell, a graduate student at SWT teaching freshman English, still thinks Pong was a cool video game.

MacArthur grad inducted into Texas Film Hall of Fame

 

(I post this in honor of Michael Nesmith who just died. 

As a little kid I collected Monkees bubblegum cards, so it was a thrill to meet and interview Michael Nesmith in 2010 at the Austin Film Hall of Fame ceremonies. Who is that old guy? I thought as the crowd rushed to take his photo on the runway.

I was there specifically to talk to him for both the Dallas Morning News and the San Antonio Express-News, so he sat down with me for a few minutes and told his story of Texas.

The next day I was at the Four Seasons doing another interview. As I left, I saw Nesmith waiting for a cab. I spoke to him again and he handed me a card. Call the number, he said, and come see his new internet project Michael Nesmith's Videoranch3D. It was amazing and he was a very cool guy.

(He's hiding in the back of this shot taken with a crude digital camera.)

By Joe O'Connell 

March 13, 2010 

Publication: San Antonio Express-News (TX) 

Page: 10B 

Word Count: 400

AUSTIN - Bruce McGill couldn't resist. As Tim Matheson held a microphone up for the audience to hear, McGill strummed the William Tell Overture on his neck just as he'd done in 1978's "Animal House." The University of Texas alumnus followed it by flashing a hook 'em Horns sign.

McGill, a MacArthur High School grad, was one of a handful of inductees into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on Thursday night. The Austin Film Society fundraiser kicked off the South by Southwest Film Festival. Also honored were Lukas Haas, Michael Nesmith, the Lockhart-shot film "Waiting for Guffman" and Quentin Tarantino, named an honorary Texan.

McGill, who did his first play in San Antonio at age 11, said his career was dictated by a very practical upbringing and a realization that character actors stay employed.

"I'm a character actor first, last and always," he said. "I tend to fly beneath the radar. (The award) is a great nod to guys like me who enhance the story."

Nesmith, best known as a member of the created-for-television band the Monkees and for winning the first-ever Grammy for a music video, said his days at San Antonio College played a big part in his career.

He came to the college straight out of the Air Force and formed a musical group that was to perform at a college talent show. When he was asked to be the show's master of ceremonies, he feared that would disqualify his act but accepted. He won the college's Talent Award.

"I think about that particular moment as when I learned that sometimes you have to give up your target and let things take you where they're going to," he said.

Nesmith said his efforts these days are focused on the next wave of the Internet, including the creation of 3-D worlds.

"The future is in live programs and virtual environments," he said.

Tarantino recounted coming out of a midnight screening of "Nashville" in Santa Monica in 1993 and meeting fellow moviegoer and Austin director Richard Linklater. That budding friendship led to a benefit Austin premiere of "Pulp Fiction" in 1994 and to a string of all-night QT festivals in Austin where Tarantino screens his personal prints of obscure exploitation films.

Linklater founded the Austin Film Society.

San Antonio native Robert Rodriguez, who worked with Tarantino on "Grindhouse," silently capped the evening by presenting Tarantino with a replica of Rodriguez's signature cowboy hat.

Wes Anderson talks about 'Rushmore'

I interviewed Wes Anderson for an article--if memory serves for the San Antonio Express-News. I recorded it and included the full interview in my '90s zine Lost Armadillos in Heat. 

LAIH: You grew up in Houston where "Rushmore" was filmed. And actually shot it in St. John's, your old school. Was that weird?
ANDERSON: People always want to know if it was weird going back to film there. It wasn't because I spent all this time convincing them to let us shoot there. Also we would go there to think about the script and walk around. By the time we filmed there, I'd spent so much time there recently and got re-aquainted with a lot of people there. So it was really a comfortable place to film. We had a screening just for St. John's people. It was odd because people applauded a thing like a house. And they applaud certain extras with real force.
LAIH: How would you describe this film?
ANDERSON: Somebody told me it was a coming of age story, and I guess it is, but I hate to think of it that way. It sounds like a genre. I wanted a school movie. We had this character. Me and my co-writer Owen
Wilson, we wanted to do a character of a kid who loved the school and founded all of these different clubs and societies, but is also a terrible student and is going to get kicked out.
LAIH: Where did that idea come from?
ANDERSON: Putting on the plays is something I did when I was a kid. We went to similar schools. Owen went to St. Marks in Dallas. Both of us had a sort of deluded thing and thought we were going to go to really
good colleges. But we were both bad students and never stood any chance of getting into any of the places we were applying. We did get rejected by all of them. So that sort of figures into it.
LAIH: What did you learn from "Bottle Rocket" that you brought to this film?
ANDERSON: I felt there was stuff I learned on the other one about how to plan a movie and what to expect--how much you have to be totally focused every day. But on the other movie the cast was just a bunch of
friends. This one we had to put together a cast and I didn't really know anybody in the cast. Except for some small supporting roles, all of the main actors we cast like they cast a regular movie.
LAIH: Where did you dig up Jason Schwartzman?
ANDERSON: We did a big casting search all over the place for a year. It was this total hassle. Finally our casting director in San Francisco met this kid and sent him in to me. I felt like within 30 seconds we had something. He was not like anyone else. He was very compelling. And I just liked him a lot personally. I always hoped I'd get to cast someone I'd be friends with.
LAIH: I know he's Talia Shire's son. What is his film background otherwise?
ANDERSON: His background is high school.
LAIH: Who are your filmmaking inspirations?
ANDERSON: A million movies all rolled together. Louis Malle movies. Mike Nichols and Hal Ashby and the 70s guys.
LAIH: Surely "Harold and Maude" was an influence?
ANDERSON: No question. Just the feeling. I used a Cat Stevens song. That's got to be paying respect on some level.
LAIH: What about the music in the film?
ANDERSON: I used British invasion music from the 60s and 70s. I think that's really hard angry rock music, but it's played by English kids in blazers, like school boys. And I think that combo is something like what this kid is. That was my way of analyzing it afterword. At one point I just wanted to use some Kinks.
LAIH: The tone of "Rushmore" is so different. Can you explain what you were trying to do?
ANDERSON: There's a sort of unreality. You don't see a lot of cars from today. There's not any cultural references really. It's just its own little world. So it almost feels like it's not any one particular time. It's a bit of a fable, maybe? The behavior of the characters, the stuff that's happening in the movie is not quite reality. The plays are unrealistically ambitious.
LAIH: What kind of films do you like to watch?
ANDERSON: I like funny movies. "Murmur of the Heart" by Louis Malle is one. "The Rules of the Game" by Jean Renoir. I like movies where there is real affection for the characters. In those movies I feel like there aren't any really bad guys. I think Renoir says something to the effect that everyone has their reasons. You just have to make an effort to understand them. I guess I'm not too into cynical, cool movies right now. I've just seen so many violent, steely or cool movies and I'd rather stay away from that.
LAIH: Talk about your process as a filmmaker.
ANDERSON: It starts with the way you want the movie to feel, the setting, the kind of feeling of the characters and the way they'll interact, and less the story. Once you're making the movie, you're not affected by that anymore. You're just into the world and have to follow your instincts.
LAIH: What about the collaborative writing process?
ANDERSON: We talk for months. While that's going on, one of us will write a scene and hand it to the other, and they'll make marks and hand it back, act out things, add things. As it goes along we write more and
more and we start to figure out if we need a scene. It sort of evolves that way, just the two of us hashing it out.
LAIH: How do you see your style of directing?
ANDERSON: I like on the set for everyone to feel like friends. I like to be very private with the actors. I like for us to rehearse scenes very privately and quietly. That's probably because I feel self-conscious "directing" in front of a group of people. Lots of people who worked on Rushmore worked on "Bottle Rocket," the head of
every department, so there are lots of friends on the set.
LAIH: Do you plan much in advance?
ANDERSON: I like to plan as much as possible. I think the more you can have ideas for things, the more you can really make an effort to find a new way to do a scene. It becomes more dense if you really make an
effort, like you're writing a novel, if you focus on the detail in advance. It's hard to make that stuff happen spontaneously. You've really got to plan it, I think.LAIH: Do you storyboard?
ANDERSON: Yeah, I do it twice, in fact. I storyboard it once and then go back and do it neatly. You find some things you had sketched out when you go back and go, I thought I had this thought out, but it's
sort of half-baked. It's a pain because it takes forever, but you get it all more specific.
LAIH: The narrative arc of "Rushmore" is all over the place, yet that seems to work. How do you explain that?
ANDERSON: The stuff we get excited about are unexpected turns to the story. Also, we'll have ideas and you have to somehow get there.
LAIH: Tell me about Max Fischer. Is he a good guy?
ANDERSON: I think some people feel we made a character who is not always very appealing. But I have just a good feeling about that character. He does some almost unforgivable stuff, but I feel like he's redeemed. I have a personal feeling for the character like it were someone I knew. I hate it when someone says they find him unlikable. We try to push him, but I don't want him to be a bad guy.
LAIH: How did you get Bill Murray interested in the film?
ANDERSON: We just sent him the script. A week later he called and said he wanted to do it. Really all we talked about in your first conversation was this movie "Red Beard" by Kurosawa, that Bill was a big fan of. He had an idea that "Red Beard" had something to do with "Rushmore." I never quite understood what the connection was.
LAIH: What was he like?
ANDERSON: Working with him was really great. He's really funny and he's just such a good guy. He made a real effort to support this movie. It's a small movie. It's the kind of movie, if someone tried to modify it
and make it more palatable or to fit into a certain slot, it would just go to pieces. He was a good defender of the movie. You can settle for things and Murray wasn't interested in us settling for anything. I'm not either and it's good to have somebody like that involved.
LAIH: I love the plays in "Rushmore." Did they pose any problems?
ANDERSON: For the war play, if you don't get it right have to wait an hour and a half while they set up all of these charges again. We had to do the whole scene in one day according to our schedule. There's one shot where this plane flies across the stage bombing it. If we hadn't got that right, it would have been two hours to line up all the charges again. We got lucky and got the shot right. It was a fun day because all of these kids dressed up for Vietnam. It felt like there was a play happening (enthusiasm in voice). When we were filming, It felt like it was an EVENT day.
LAIH: What's next?
ANDERSON: Owen and I are working on this script set in New York. It's about a family there.
LAIH: Tell us again how you got started.
ANDERSON: Owen and I were both at UT. We did a play in a playwriting class that I wrote and that Owen acted in. Before we finished school there we started writing the "Bottle Rocket" script. After that we went to Dallas and made a short version of it. The short was supposed to be a feature but we ran out of money." With "Bottle Rocket," not that many people got to see it in the theater. Most people saw it on video. There wasn't much of an event to the release. I sort of regretted it. So I want to do everything I can to let people know about this movie.

Tobe Hooper’s ‘Midnight Movie’ rewrites the script on film fandom

     

By Joe O’Connell

Austin American-Statesman

Posted Jul 10, 2011 at 12:01 AM

Forget “Slacker” and “El Mariachi.” Underground Austin filmmaking street cred begins and ends with the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” the quirky shoestring-budget cinematic blast of cannibalism that set the gold standard for creepiness while keeping gore to a minimum. The 1974 film also begat a cottage industry of remakes, knockoffs and reverberations. Just last year, co-writer Kim Henkel’s “Boneboys” script was being filmed near Austin by Duane Graves and Justin Meeks with its own flesh-eating fiends.

Now it’s “Chainsaw” director and co-writer Tobe Hooper’s turn to take a nibble with the very cinematic novel “Midnight Movie,” co-written with Alan Goldsher. It stars a guy named Tobe Hooper who comes to Austin during the South by Southwest Film Festival to screen the rediscovered sole print of an obscure movie he shot as a teen — well before “Chainsaw” — to a small crowd of film geeks. The catch is a car crash years ago has left Hooper with little memory of the film except he’s “pretty sure there’s some zombie sex involved.”

The film, titled “Destiny Express,” is a squishy, bloody mess, but it just possibly infects the hipster audience with a virus dubbed the Game that transforms some into sex-crazed harlots and others into violent, flesh-munching zombies. Soon Austin is ablaze with what are presumed to be exploding drug labs, and the violence and madness quickly spreads nationwide.

How to stop the spreading gloom? Hooper, part-time Austin Chronicle film reviewer and wannabe rocker Erick Laughlin, University of Texas student and waitress Janine Daltrey and the overly glib über-film geek Dude McGee (whom Hooper tells us — wink, wink — is surely not inspired by Austin’s Internet film guru Harry Knowles) decide the only hope is to quickly track down the original cast of “Destiny Express” — minus its main star, who has gone full-tilt zombie — and remake the film in order to kill off its bad juju.

It’s a fun ride, made all the more so by its links to reality. Hooper did indeed come to SXSW in 2009 to show his earlier, little-seen 1969 film “Eggshells,” which he also co-wrote with Henkel. But he made that film in his 20s, and it’s more groovy psychedelia than bloody horror.

For the myriad “Chainsaw” fanatics, Hooper the semi-fictional character (we can assume speaking for the real-life Hooper) unapologetically addresses his reputation as a cold dictator. “Always have been on the set. I have a vision, and I want to bring it to life.”

Hooper also makes it clear that he takes “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and its mythic legacy quite seriously. “See, ‘Chainsaw’ was a story. It wasn’t ‘The Iliad’ or anything, but it had an arc, a beginning, middle, and end. Yes, it was about shocking the audience, but they wouldn’t have been shocked if it was a random series of attacks and murders, because they wouldn’t have been absorbed into the picture. There would’ve been distance. If there wasn’t anything for the audience to grab on to, they wouldn’t have given a good (expletive) what happened to good ol’ Sally Hardesty.”

Does the novel “Midnight Movie” have something for the reader to latch onto? For the most part, yes, and that something is the engaging voice of Hooper that sings. Told through the viewpoint of a lot of characters mixed with blog posts, Tweets and news articles, the story is most engaging when its main force is on stage. Hooper, the character, comes across as a crusty but kindly curmudgeon who is serious about the art of creation but is also a dedicated loner. He’s funny, wise and in on the zombified joke.

But Hooper vanishes into hibernation during the novel’s midsection when the stylized details of the spread of the infection become a little repetitious. Fortunately he and his posse return for the final showdown. It’s a satisfying blur of zombies, film fandom and the messy business of low-budget filmmaking. Our heroes must recreate the original film’s fake alligator stuffed with roadkill, in a touch quite true to the legend of the late “Chainsaw” art director Bob Burns driving around the countryside collecting decomposing animals to strew about the set.

Oh, and for the record, Hooper does claim to have lost part of his memory after being in a car crash as a teen. “The whole incident was a big blank, and the concept of blankness is flat-out frightening,” Hooper writes in a brief interview included at the end of the novel.

That theme and a sense of jovial nihilism lurk just below the surface of the novel’s blood splatters, zombie sex and film-cool swagger. “The only thing that makes sense is the taste of blood, the taste of suffering, the taste of death. I do not know why I didn’t realize it sooner,” we are told as an aside by an analyst from the Department of Homeland Security who has gone zombie.

Hooper, the filmmaker, author and character, would surely laugh and tell his audience to sit back and enjoy the bloody ride.

Hanging out in a topless bar with 'Varsity Blues'

A report from Joe O'Connell (1998)

A two-day shoot in a topless bar officially ended when "Varsity Blues" director Brian Robbins asked the stunning, almost-naked blonde on stage to repeat her gyrations one last time for the film's cast and crew.

The cameras sat idly by as teen heartthrob James van der Beek and Scott Caan (yes, that's James Caan's boy) hooted and clapped along with nameless extras and weary technicians. The scene was so real it could have been in, well, a movie.

And elsewhere around Austin this same broiling summer day other cameras were busy. Directors Robert Rodriguez and Mike Judge were filming "The Faculty" and "Office Space" respectively. As summer burned into fall and fall cooled into winter, these film sets were replaced by ones for Sundance-bound "A Slipping-Down Life," Tom Arnold star vehicle "Just Sue Me," "Texas Funeral" and on and on.

The bottom line is, if you're always wanted to see your face lighting up the big screen, but don't have training, a sparkling smile or an agent, you can still leap into film heaven, Texas extra style and make about $50 for your trouble. The process is simple. Call the Texas Film Commission's production hotline (512-463-7799), send in a photograph and wait by the telephone like an anxious teenager.

Both "Varsity Blues" and "The Faculty" shot all-night crowd scenes in high school football stadiums, so most extra hopefuls didn't have to wait long this past summer for "the call."

But the about 50 extras who showed up at 7 a.m. at the Landing Strip topless bar for the "Varsity Blues" shoot knew their chances were much better for the ultimate payoff--actual, though likely fuzzy, face time on screen.

The trade off is tedium mixed with a heavy dose of sweat. Filming proves a process of hurry up and wait, and when the cameras do roll, the air conditioner is turned off to extinguish unnecessary noise.

Since "Varsity Blues" is an MTV production, many on the crew, including those in extras casting, came straight from "Austin Stories," the network's aborted attempt at a sitcom. Other crew members knew each other from the sets of such other recent films as "The Newton Boys."

In this scene, high school football players go to a topless bar and catch their attractive English teacher moonlighting on stage.

Female extras are dancers and waitresses, while males are assigned seats around the stage as club patrons. The confusion comes in separating reality from make-believe. Many of the women portraying dancers are experienced performers from area strip clubs, one works in the mortgage field.

A menacing bouncer dressed in black with his long hair slicked back suddenly ejects one of the rowdy football players from the stage. Other extras shy away from him when the camera isn't rolling, but this is a carefully planned look for a Dallas actor trying to break into the big time.

At their tables, extras pretend to drink from empty beer bottles as a machine called a Lightning Flash pumps 40,000 watts of strobe light at them and at mirrors that ring the stage. They are told looking at the lights could be dangerous, but find completely avoiding the flashes impossible.

Machines cloud the air with insubstantial, almost odorless smoke meant to represent the output of hundred of cigarettes. Crew members don white masks, but extras are left to tough it out and whoop it up again and again for the dancers on stage.

By mid-afternoon, the heat in the nightclub, which features the cockpit of an airplane "crashing" through the wall into the bar, is unbearable. Between shots the air conditioner comes back on, but barely makes a dent in the smoky blaze. Caan and van der Beek retreat to the only cool area of the building--the restrooms.

Meanwhile, extras spent breaks lolling around the Landing Strip ticket booth, behind which were posted Polaroids of people who have been banned for the topless bar for life. The reasons were sadly scrawled underneath each photo: “exposed self” said one, “went home with a customer,” said a shot of a dancer. I was entranced by a shot of an obviously drunk and angry tree trunk of a man being forcibly posed for a photo with the aid of two beefy men. Underneath, the obvious: “Started fight.”

Back on the set, the same scene is shot again and again from different angles. Late in the day the camera is turned toward a pair of thirtyish men in business suits at a table to the right of the stage. One is taking a day off from his life in real estate but confesses a burning desire to write screenplays. The other is between temporary jobs.

When the assistant director signals the cameras to roll (Robbins, best known as Eric on television's "Head of the Class," watches through a monitor in the next room), the men break into wide grins and clink their bottles together before taking big swigs of imaginary beer. On stage the blonde dancer swings from a pole as the strobe lights flash. For this one moment, they are all stars.

This free-lance article originally appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. All rights retained by the author.

Anatomy of a Building // You know it as Antone's -- but it's also The Still, and Shakey's, and a hall of ghosts

 

O'Connell, Joe.Austin American Statesman; Austin, Tex. [Austin, Tex]08 Jan 1998: 53.

I needn't have brought the camera. The true pictures of the house reside in my mind as it was when I last entered the door in the early '80s. In fact, my head is full of vivid images of many places that no longer exist, at least not in their original forms. As David Byrne would said, "This is not my beautiful house ... "

If I squint my eyes tightly, I can walk their hallways. The fifth step down is larger than the rest. Be careful. Over here, pencil marks on the wall chart my steady growth. Sometimes the buildings emerge in a flash while I'm driving. The past washes over me and just as quick is gone, replaced by something I dare call the present. But these places exist. I'm sure of that. Each exists then, now and in the future. They dance together and form something ever new, vibrant, alive.

Long black tables in back. The tinkle of happy music draws us to the long benches. A player piano is alive. Notes spray forth. Keys depress, guided by invisible fingers. Brothers and sisters fight for another slice of pie. Pepperoni. Cheese. I love cheese. The crust is thin, brown and crisp. Cheese dangles toward my mouth as I lean my head back as far as it will go.

My childhood home was for sale again. I called the real estate agent and arranged a tour. I said I was coming as a favor to a friend who had just been hired as an executive at ... Dell. Yeah, that was it.

I bought a disposable camera and entered the house clicking. The living room was nicer, no wood paneling of old. The agent wandered the house with me, pointing out every new detail.

"In my opinion this porch would look lovely if it were screened in," she said. It was lovely that way, I thought, and clicked off another shot.

Upstairs I asked if there had been an attic fan once, knowing full well there had. "Heavens, no," she said. "But wouldn't that be lovely? And it sure would reduce the cooling costs." Click.

I needn't have brought the camera. The true pictures of the house reside in my mind as it was when I last entered the door in the early '80s. In fact, my head is full of vivid images of many places that no longer exist, at least not in their original forms. As David Byrne would said, "This is not my beautiful house ... "

If I squint my eyes tightly, I can walk their hallways. The fifth step down is larger than the rest. Be careful. Over here, pencil marks on the wall chart my steady growth. Sometimes the buildings emerge in a flash while I'm driving. The past washes over me and just as quick is gone, replaced by something I dare call the present. But these places exist. I'm sure of that. Each exists then, now and in the future. They dance together and form something ever new, vibrant, alive.

As I drove down Guadalupe the other day past what many Austinites refer to as "the place that used to be Antone's," workers were cementing a new facade onto a building with many pasts.

PIZZA

Stretch tiny legs toward the door to Shakey's. Grip Dad's hand and hurry. The smell of cheese cradles, pulls my family inward. Men in white coats and puffy hats toss pizza dough in the air silently behind glass. The gooey mass twirls, grows, rips, is reborn.

Long black tables in back. The tinkle of happy music draws us to the long benches. A player piano is alive. Notes spray forth. Keys depress, guided by invisible fingers. Brothers and sisters fight for another slice of pie. Pepperoni. Cheese. I love cheese. The crust is thin, brown and crisp. Cheese dangles toward my mouth as I lean my head back as far as it will go.

We beg to go to Shakey's often. Across the street is Dairy Queen, the first one ever, my parents say. But I beg for the men who spin white magic into pizza.

Another scroll is wound into the player piano. The ghosts nod at us, and begin their concert.

DISCO

Frank's CB handle is Purple Haze. He's older, drives a hot rod, walks with a swagger. And he goes to bars. Tonight he is taking us with him. Sweat drains from our 15-year-old armpits. This is The Still. I erase the year from the birth date on my learner's permit and pencil in an older one. The doorman nods and we enter through the front door of Shakey's. Only now, a partition hides a bar. We walk around it and recorded music surrounds us. Where the player piano once stood is a towering deejay booth from which a hidden wizard produces magic sounds that thump deeply into our chests.

Tables gird the dance floor. Seniors are here. I boldly ask an impossibly beautiful blonde senior named April to dance. I don't know how to dance. My body is wood. I bounce, doing my worst imitation of the white guy dance. (Remember, move at the hips, my sister's voice echoes in my mind.) Heat burns across my face.

Every teen-ager's dream. The polyester of the red dress is a glove on ample curves. The neckline dips dangerously. This is an older woman, an experienced woman. Her dark eyes sparkle when I ask for a dance. Red lights, blue lights, white lights, green. They mingle along our bodies and reflect back to the wooden ceiling. Donna Summer sings, "Looking for some hot stuff, baby, this evening." Our bodies sway as one. She looks around to see who is watching her, then slithers against me. The heat burns down my chest.

When the song ends, she returns to her table and orders another Sloe Gin Fizz. I write my phone number on a napkin and, Mr. Cool, drop it on her table as I leave. I don't dare look back.

A miracle -- she calls. I tell her I am leaving for college the next day. Her name is Rose and she is a telephone operator and part-time disco queen. I am too young for her and we both know it. She laughs kindly at my clumsy efforts to be smooth. She won't give me her telephone number.

Whenever I am back in town I call information hoping to discover Rose's voice laughing back at me.

*Jennifer is beautiful inside and out. A young Mary Tyler Moore, but taller. When we met in high school I was already dating someone else, so we became friends. I return from college and go to The Still. She is in a booth by the wall clowning with friends. She greets me with a grin. We dance. Familiar faces in a familiar place. Our bodies glide across the dance floor with ease.

Two weeks later Jennifer is in a car accident while visiting in another state. Iowa? Idaho? Her legs are severed. She is dead. Other details are sketchy. I never again set foot in The Still.

THE BLUES

She loves the blues. She complains that we never go anywhere, that our relationship is going nowhere. She is right. We go to Antone's. I did not know it had moved here! The old entrance to The Still/Shakey's is gone. Now we enter on the side past the ghosts of pizza chefs and disco queens. I do not want to be here.

Seven men blow seven horns on a stage that replaces the deejay booth that replaces the magic piano. We find a table close to the crowded dance floor. We do not talk much. We do not dance.

The music drills into my head. The drive home is silent except for the tinging I will hear in my aching ears for the next 24 hours.

*Christmas Eve on bar stools. Brad's family is far away. Mine is scattered. Steve is escaping his for the night, and Gilbert despises the holiday season while only tolerating his wife's Christmas tree. We sit at the Antone's bar sipping cold beer and staring at a soundless television as a guitarist warms up on stage. Besides us, maybe five paying customers are here on what must be the slowest club night of the year. Certainly a recipe for bar stool depression, I think, and sigh deeply.

On the television, "Sodom and Gomorrah" is showing. Toga-clad men strut through ancient, sinful times, or at least the Hollywood, badly colorized version of them. Since the sound is off, we step in with dialogue for the citizens.

"Good evening, centurion. Would you happen to have some cheese?" asks the muscular man in the blue toga.

"Cheese? Why no, I do not have cheese," replies the older man bearing a sword. "But my stomach does love this substance dearly. Perhaps the passing serving wench can assist us. No. She has walked past us without a word. This is indeed a dilemma ..."

For the next hour the four of us create a new plot for the proud toga wearers, all of it centered around the quest for some most-excellent cheese. Occasionally, we pause to take a drink of beer or watch the guitar wizard perform on stage. But soon we are back in cheesy old Sodom and Gomorrah. We laugh as one and order another round.

* The doors to Junior Brown's ever-popular Sunday night show at the Continental Club are shut tightly tonight. No one else will be admitted. Junior is getting too trendily popular. Last time Gilbert and I saw this show, Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater sat on stools next to us and affixed a glossy "cool" seal of approval on everything.

Instead we head north, decide to stop in at Antone's. Maceo Parker has already been on stage for two hours. Admission price is reduced to $5 for latecomers like us. This is James Brown's former sax player, Gilbert explains.

Shakey's/Still/Antones is rattling with the blues. The club is nearing fire- code-breaking full of life. We order two Shiner Bock and wedge our way into the crowd. Heads and bodies bob around us. My own head begins to move as if I it has been sucked into some borglike being brimming with soul. Good God almighty.

To the side of us, women crawl up onto the bar, stand for a moment, then begin to sway back and forth unselfconsciously. One of them kicks her foot out with glee. She is a dead ringer for Jennifer.

Gilbert yells, "Pass the peas!" and, on cue, Maceo bursts into the song of the same name. We hoot and look at each with grins that say, "We are where it's at. Cool."

The crowd envelops us in its groove. From somewhere in the building, I swear, I catch the faint aroma of pizza cooking. The walls greedily suck the energy from the room like a hungry sponge.

Andre Dubus: The writing doctor with healing powers

(A piece I wrote from the Austin American-Statesman shortly after the famed short story writer's death in 1999.)

 BY JOE O'CONNELL
Special to the Austin American-Statesman

The day after Andre Dubus died I was discussing his short story, "The Doctor,'' with a student. In the tale, a doctor discovers a boy caught under a heavy slab in shallow water and can think of no means of rescue. He must watch the boy drown.

It's about defining yourself by your profession, by your outward self, and dealing with the inevitable failures.

Louisiana-born and bred, Dubus made a name for himself writing about the small and large pains of ordinary lives. That he is often mentioned in the same breath as Chekhov speaks to the truth to be found in his fiction.

Tobias Wolff said Dubus' writing is . . . ``driven by the conviction that the possibility of freedom and grace, even heroism, abides in every life.''

The title character of ``The Doctor'' responds to his failure by preparing for future heroism. Too late his mind hits upon the solution. He cuts a small section of garden hose through which the boy could have reached life-giving air.

In 1986, 11 years after that story was published, Dubus became just such a hero. The burly ex-marine and devout Catholic stopped to aid stranded motorists only to be struck by another car. Dubus lost one leg and the use of the other, but was able to push the woman driver of the first car to safety.

When I met Dubus in 1993, I was a graduate student studying creative writing at Southwest Texas State University. I was impressed and asked to work long distance with Dubus on the book of short stories that would be my ticket.

Two years later I was handed a cassette tape, special delivery from Dubus.

I somehow managed to slide the tape into a player. I pushed a button and Dubus was in the room. He had a cold and was grieving the loss of a friend, but was ready to read my work with a critical eye.

The advice was big and small. Tape your writing and listen to it for rhythm. Be careful about imprecise simile. Tack your stories to the wall so they can be viewed as wholes not just individual pages. Trust your material. Read Alice Munro.

``She is amazing, astonishing, astounding. All of those A's,'' he said. ``She has given me the confidence to know stories don't have to do what we've always been told they have to do. They just have to be."

``I know too many good writers who can't handle rejection,'' he said. ``Don't be one of those. You've got great talent here and things should work out well for you. Like the rest of us you'll probably have to have a day job. But, so what? We volunteered."

With that Dubus signed off, but let the tape continue to run. He silently turned on a radio and a snappy Big Band tune filled the air. His wheelchair scraped harshly across the floor. His fingers shuffled through papers and began to do what came naturally. He wrote.