#@dankusner

MY FIRST PRESS CLIP: 

Austin Kaleidoscope magazine | Mar-Apr 1991

By Laura Crawley

Crowds of musicians, record executives, agents and music lovers will converge in Austin in late March, for one of the nation's premiere music events. 

PULLQUOTE

“Dan Kusner, an Austin bassist who plays with singer Michele Solberg, ap­plied to South by Southwest for the first time this year. 

If they are chosen to play the conference, Kusner said, they want “a record label, fame on a silver platter, stardom and an MTV video" — but he was only kidding. 

Their actual goals for SXSW are more realistic. 

"It's the big shindig around town for the year,” Kusner said "We want to open up our music to other venues." 

TRANS4M TODAY Jen Sincero hangs with Bush Family scion Jenna for part of the Today Show's "Transformation Tuesday." (Sincero worships "214 Trans4m.")

“214 TRANS4M” IS A JOY RIDE THROUGH DALLAS with some of the city’s most glamorous transgender gems at the helm. The writing is every bit as compelling as the photographs — showing Big D in a perception-bending light that left me screaming for more. At once provocative, educating, hilarious and gutsy, it’s a civic-minded fashion parade that I wish would last forever. I want to live in this book — or at least go shoe shopping with it. — JEN SINCERO, author of “You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life.”

That time I interviewed JULIA CHILD

Don’t be a big fattie...

Straight people we love: JULIA CHILD serves up culinary advice for urban gays

BY DANIEL KUSNER

For a starter course, Julia Child begins this “Straight People We Love” interview by declaring that she’s not at all interested in people’s sex lives. 

Nonetheless, she was once hit with a $3 million lawsuit by Daniel Coulter, a San Francisco man who alleged that Child thwarted his appointment as director for the American Institute of Wine and Food because he was gay.

“The lawsuit was settled out of court because it would have cost us so much more to bring the case to trial,” Child explains. “That fellow got something like 30 to 40 thousand dollars, so it was probably worth his while. I have nothing against gay people. I work with them all the time. It doesn’t make any difference to me what you are.” 

It’s weirdos who aren’t interested in food that draw Child’s barbs.

“I don’t even consider them people,” she says in her distinctive warble.

Since so many gay men are slaves to their diet, Child has one simple rule.

“Moderation! If you eat too much or too fast, you’ll be a fat fellow. So don’t be a big fattie. It’s not healthy, and it’s not attractive. Just use some discipline,” she commands. “The downfall of American cuisine is overeating and not paying attention to what you’re eating.”

She also insists that people should eat only three reasonable meals a day — no seconds and no snacks.

“The more you snack, the fatter you get. If you want to lose weight, just eat smaller helpings,” she advises.

Has Child ever sunk her teeth into a Power Bar or sipped a protein shake?

“Yuck. I wouldn’t eat anything like that at all. I like regular food — good food. Why eat something that wouldn’t be any good?” she asks.

The culinary master confesses that her favorite ingredient is butter. She’s also been known to order fast food at the drive-thru window.

“Sure, I’ll order a hamburger and a Coke at McDonald’s. Why not?”

According to Child — who didn’t start cooking until she moved to France with her diplomat husband — one of the best ways to hold onto a man is to satisfy his stomach. 

And she says learning to cook is terrific fun.

“There are lots of nice classes around. The classes are great. After work you can go out and take a class with a friend and then cook dinner and eat in. That’s how you should do it,” she says. “You’ll know when you’ve learned how to cook when you can enjoy eating it. There’s nothing difficult about cooking.”  

What’s an easy starter dish when trying to impress a new date?

“A nice a beef stew and mashed potatoes with red wine. That’s always a good idea. Of course, chicken dishes are always very good, too,” she suggests.

And when it comes to equipment, Child says a decent cook can get by with only a stove, a sink, a stock pot, a frying pan and a knife. “And if you buy good equipment and use it correctly, you should never have to throw it away.”

STRAIGHT PEOPLE WE LOVE: Marion Winik accentuates post-9/11 positivity

Email inboxes have been clogged with forwarded sentiments concerning the Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks. Some jerks circulated cryptic predictions of Nostradamus — including phony quatrains not found in French astrologer’s oeuvre. 

Of the more hopeful messages streaming around, one written by NPR’s Marion Winik stood out as an inspiring and pragmatic opinion to help relieve the suffering.

Winik’s Mothers Against Symbolism and Indiscriminate Revenge commentary — which aired on “All Things Considered” two days after the attacks and was later transcribed — reminded us that big buildings full of people were destroyed, not symbols of American power, riches or world domination.

She writes, “If terrorists wanted to destroy a symbol, they could have gone to the Statue of Liberty, at night. They could have paint-balled the Washington Monument.”

“It’s fine for something to be a symbol if it’s in a poem or in a philosophical argument. Once you’re in a real world with real planes and real bombs, there’s not much use of thinking of something as a symbol,” she says from her home in Glenrock, PA. “Letting it be a symbol is giving in. Anytime you start losing the grip on other people and how very real they are, then you start to wander into the area of megalomania and bigotry — like Jerry Falwell, who’s obviously crazy.”

Winik says the response to her piece is similar to the reactions from her 1994 memoir, “First Comes Love” (Pantheon, 1997) about assisting the suicide of her gay husband, Tony, who suffered from AIDS complications.

“I don’t even remember if I had email back then. But I got, like, 800 letters. However, I’m really in awe of how this new piece is getting around. I know it’s because of how people are feeling — and how much they want to share ideas that mean something to them,” she says.

Winik now teaches in Baltimore and raises a family with op-ed writer Crispin Straw. She leads a more domestic life compared to her younger “shooting heroin and getting beaten up on the Lower East Side” days.

“I now live in South Central PA. Nothing but cows and country out here. I have always loved fun, and still do. But in my youth I had this bad combination of loving fun and being self-destructive. And that’s changed. I still love laughing and having a vibrant edge of life, but what’s different now is that I’m so relentlessly positive,” she says.

She has wonderful memories about Austin. 

She fondly remembers that her late-husband Tony as a gifted father who honed a natural ability to care for infants. 

She also misses Oil Can Harry’s.

evan dando. austin. mid-90s. liberty lunch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dgX93HBUUA 

POE’S HEADSHOTS And here is Spread magazine’s most valuable asset: Beth Sams — the most authentic Texan who ever worked in alternative journalism since Molly Ivins. 

That time I met TILDA SWINTON

As a mother of twins — a boy and a girl — Swinton was stopped in her tracks by a Mother’s Day question: about parents accepting their children’s sexuality.

“A child’s sexuality is none of anybody’s business — not even the mother’s,” she says firmly. “There are bank managers who can’t bear the idea that their sons are going to be bad at math. And there are amateur dramatic mothers who can’t stand the idea of the children not being performers. Of course, I joke that my children will end up being Nazis. Because one’s worst fear is that you won’t be able to take part in your child’s life. And that’s a selfish fear,” she continues. For mothers who are having any difficulty accepting their child’s sexuality, Swinton suggests they read the parenthood section of Lebanese philosopher Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet.” “It talks about the parent being like an archer. You simply draw your arm back and you let your arrow go. The arrow will go further than you could ever travel. It’s not for you to follow the arrow. And you should never skew the arrow so that it will land close to the bow,” she explains. “It’s such a privilege to have children. And on children go. In a way, they come from you. But you can’t go where they’re going.”