Getting Picky with Picante
Release Date: 2002-08-08 San Antonians are an especially stubborn lot when it comes to Mexican food; we have our firmly held opinions, our favorite places … and, frequently, our black holes of utter ignorance. Just as an unconverted outsider might find it strange that otherwise rational people would seek out a dark and dingy dining…
BRIGHTER SMILES AND BRITTLE BONES
Fluoride in the water is nothing new — it has come out of area faucets in naturally occurring amounts for years — but now significant quantities are being pumped into our supply for consumption. San Antonio Water System and BexarMet started injecting fluoride into their combined 34 pumping stations Aug. 1. By Aug. 15, or…
KEEPING THE FAITH DESPITE THE CORN
The belief that nothing is random, that every detail in the universe signifies something beyond itself is a symptom of paranoia, or religiosity. It is also a precondition for viewing movies intelligently. Filmmakers ask that we be attentive, that we notice and link details that outside a theater we simply ignore. If a tree falls…
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AGAIN?
NEW YORK — Should America send in 250,000 ground troops or will 25,000-pound bombs be enough? Do they have nerve gas, and if so would they use it? What about the Republican Guards? Are they as fierce, smart and loyal as advertised? How many people will die? It’s the middle of a Bush administration, so…
A SET IN SEARCH OF A STORY
Writers cluster around the 12-foot-by-40-foot image of Christ, awaiting the picture’s faint whisper of its 1,000 words. To some, the art speaks easily, and these writers eagerly transcribe its truth onto open-faced notebooks, in foreign scribbles that — when translated — will unfold the image’s story. To others, the art breathes silence, and the hard…
TRANSFORMATIVE DIRT
In one corner of the San Antonio art world this month, somebody is trying to pass off as a work of art a mound of crushed plastic water bottles. At the Southwest School of Art & Craft, though, Suzanne Paquette has demonstrated what “site-specific installation” can and should mean. The room Paquette had to work…
SECOND SATURDAYS
If you work a little late on Thursday and are able to leave the job by five on Friday, you can probably get home, shower, walk and feed the dogs, and still make it to Southtown for First Friday by 7:30 p.m. Personal taste and a strong belief that free beer is always worth the…
REPUBLIC OF DREAMS
It seems odd to describe a doorstop like Republic of Dreams as a brisk read, but indeed it is. Too brisk, in fact — the story rushes to a conclusion just as it’s getting good. Blame it on the sprawling subject matter, the author’s approach to telling his story, and tragedy. Village Voice contributing editor…
HISTORY LAID BARE
It isn’t every day that a respected art critic gets nasty and naked in a tell-all memoir. In a dramatic shift from the observer to the observed, French art critic and author Catherine Millet strips down for the world in her autobiography, The Sexual Life of Catherine M. Her book became a best seller last…
ALL EARS
Ever hear a well-known record and feel like you’re listening to it for the first time? I thought I knew David Bowie’s work pretty well, but last week I got the fancy new reissue of Ziggy Stardust (Virgin) and found myself listening to it six or seven times in one day. It’s still sitting getting…
EVERYBODY BREAKS DOWN SOONER OR LATER
I was 8 years old in the summer of 1982. My older brother Wayne discovered Judas Priest, and he somehow brought me along for the ride. While my classmates were jamming to “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” I was headbanging to songs with names like “Sinner” and “Genocide.” Did I mention I was EIGHT? Imagine…
NEW REVIEWS
SPY KIDS 2: THE ISLAND OF LOST DREAMS “A likeable, if not enitrely satisfactory, reunion with the super spy Cortez family” Writ. & dir. Robert Rodriguez; feat. Antonio Banderas, Carla Gugino, Alexa Vega, Daryl Sabara, Dale Dudley, Steve Buscemi (PG) Spy Kids 2 reunites us with la familia Cortez: big sister Carmen (Vega), little brother…
TAKING TWANG TO TOWN
It was a big night for folks in the little town of Electra, Texas. The Depression was on, but Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies had come to play, and folks were anxious to see the band live. The headlights of dusty farm trucks and Ford Roadsters washed over the weathered sides of the old…
Armchair Cinephile
Four films this week that could hardly be less similar, all with a common theme: Love is the one thing potent enough to save us from ourselves … Set in dry Central Texas, Tender Mercies (Anchor Bay) finds Robert Duvall washed up and drunk, a once-famous country music songwriter who is stranded by a buddy…
SWEET UNION
The community of Sweet Union in Deep East Texas is not on highway maps. It’s easy to drive past it and see only the soft undulation of the land and the cattle grazing in the meadows, missing the dilapidated shacks set back from the road. The only way a visitor knows they have arrived is…
SPECIAL SCREENS
“Just before it all went bad” Dir. Denis Sanders (PG) Everybody knows there were two Elvis Presleys. The young one was a hillbilly firebrand who popularized rock ‘n’ roll and terrified parents by making the link between sex and popular music impossible to ignore; the old one was a bloated, drugged parody of himself, shoehorned…
ENDANGERED HISTORY
Sweet Union, Texas is listed in a guide to East Texas as the best place to hold a wedding. The Handbook of Texas notes that it was once called “Hogjaw,” in reference to a place where a stolen hog’s head was found, and used as evidence against a local man accused of pork theft. Along…
