USA holidays: Saddle up and go steer crazy in tremendous Texas

Austin, Texas. A city of water - after all, the mighty Colorado river flows through town. A city of bats - by day millions of them roost under the modern Congress Avenue Bridge before emerging at dusk to go hunting. And a city of green spaces - the largest being Zilker Park, where they hold the annual South by Southwest music and film festival, and where the Rolling Stones once played.

I went to Zilker Park with veteran piano player Pinetop Perkins, who is 94 and witnessed the boogie boom of the Thirties. Astonishingly, Pinetop still plays gigs. I told my brother that he has some way to go to keep up with Pinetop's schedule as he played twice in two days while I was there.

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De Niro Collection opens in Austin

April 27, 2009 THR.com

The Robert De Niro Collection of film-related materials has opened to researchers and the public at the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin.

Donated by De Niro in 2006, the collection, including more than 1,300 boxes of papers, film, movie props and costumes, documents his professional career from the 1960s through 2005.

Filling more than 300 archival boxes, the paper portion of the collection includes De Niro's heavily annotated scripts and correspondence, makeup and wardrobe photographs, wardrobe continuity books, costume designs and posters and extensive production, publicity and research material.

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