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Re: Your New Job!
Don Nelson should really keep better track of his correspondence. Once again, we’ve intercepted one of his missives, this one meant for Avery Johnson, the former Dallas Mavericks point guard now exiled to Golden State. Nellie asked Johnson if he wants to be a coach on the Mavs, and the NBA wasn’t happy about this tampering during the season. The e-mail, forwarded to us by someone who has the e-mail address “antwalker@dallasmavs.com” sheds a little more light on why Nellie is so keen on having Johnson rejoin the team.
From: “Nellie”
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 11:37:43 -0600
To: “Avery” >
aj:
what up money? long time no ‘stranding you at the end of the
bench with
popeye and that french kid’ 😉
im just messing with you!!!!!!
hey me and cubes were wondering if you’d wanna come run the team again
like you did last year. (remember you promised not to tell anyone. 🙂
seriously!!!)
PLEASE????
walk is driving me shithouse and any time I try to get donnie
to do something he’s off at the computer looking up new euro prospects or on
im with sabonis. id almost rather have him checking out porn
at this point.
also it wouldn’t hurt to have someone with your ‘background’
on the bench when this wayne embry shit hits the fan. i think you know what i
mean. and if you dont, lets just say its because your black.
nellie
ps sorry for all the swearing. just got home from happy hour at
gilleys.
MFFL MoFo!
Winning is Fun
Even when we try to do something for you, the readers, we screw it up. We had a contest last week in which, to win, you had to correctly identify 16 famous Texans by their high school pictures. We said we’d reward the first two people to e-mail the answers. But we accidentally told three people they won. So we’ll send each of them a $100 gift certificate to Salon Gossip. Oh, and we accidentally called it Gossip Salon last week. It’s Salon Gossip. Lord, we’re dumb. The winners were Jeff Haff of Richardson, Erin and Bill Ballard of Dallas and Freaky Secret DJ Cheeky Puppy of Dallas, who also thanks us for being “the other voice in a one-paper town with a transparently corrupt city government.” No, thank you, Freaky Secret. Here are the correct answers:
Angie Harmon
George W. Bush
Jerry Hall
Meat Loaf
Sly Stone
Lisa Loeb
Ethan Hawke
Morgan Fairchild
Anna Nicole Smith
Rhett Miller
Renée Zellwegger
Mike Nesmith
Patrick Swayze
Edie Brickell
Luke Wilson
Sissy Spacek
Ethan Makes a Funny
It may be no Sundance, no Toronto, not even a Telluride, but the annual South by Southwest Film Festival down in Austin does offer its own singular attractions. At other festivals, you probably won’t find Ali McGraw chatting up former Texan Ethan Hawke at 1 a.m. in the kitchen of the downtown modernist manse owned by the president of a local bank. You probably won’t find former Governor Ann Richards emceeing an awards banquet cracking jokes about Quentin Tarantino–“a real weapon of mass destruction,” she said of the filmmaker, referring to one of his long-winded speeches at this very dinner some years back. And you probably won’t attend half a dozen documentaries about the takeover of the Republican Party, including one movie partially about former Mayor Ron Kirk’s ill-fated bid for the Senate featuring cameo appearances from Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze and former Observer Associate Editor David Pasztor.
The fest begins with a sort of sister event: the Texas Film Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Austin Studios, home of the old airport. It’s become easy enough to mock the event, which took place last Friday beneath a thin, constant sheet of drizzle; when Ali McGraw’s accepting an award for merely shooting The Getaway in Texas in 1972, well, you know you’re a year away from feting Morgan Fairchild and Anna Nicole Smith. Ethan Hawke, gracious and barely goateed, acknowledged as much when he was inducted, apologizing for picking up the award from his old buddy, constant collaborator and Austin Film Society founder Richard Linklater. Hawke, star of Training Day and Linklater’s forthcoming Before Sunset, said he felt awkward picking up the honor when there were people far older and far more deserving than he. “But then I heard Owen Wilson has one,” he said, cracking up the room, “and, hey, fair’s fair.”
This year’s Buzz Film was Bush’s Brain, about the nefarious influence of Bush “adviser” Karl Rove and based on the book co-written by Dallas Morning News Austin bureau chief Wayne Slater. It was disappointing–Rove’s bad, yeah, but so’s the storytelling in this mishmash doomed for home video, meaning Wayne Slater’s home–but far better was Paul Stekler’s Last Man Standing, about the Democrats’ losing of Texas four years ago; you know you’re in Austin when Molly Ivins shows up on screen and gets applauded. Rounding out the lefty trifecta was Harry Thomason’s The Hunting of the President, about the right-wing conspiracy to git Bill Clinton; it’s being distributed by Dallas-based Regent Entertainment and, go figure, Fox Home Video. –Robert Wilonsky