WAR CHILD
Sam Villela: One of San Antonio’s most gifted musicians is also a nine-year Army veteran. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Sexto Sol frontman prepares for a military stint in Iraq The clock is ticking for Sam Villela. As the end of November approaches, Villela’s days are inevitably filled with a daunting series of tasks and…
BEYOND REDEMPTION
The Queers (courtesy photo) New Hampshire’s Queers keep hope alive for drunken-lout punk The Fuck Emos will always be my favorite band to ever come out of Austin. Why? Who knows. They are perpetually inebriated, intermittently hostile, puerile beyond all comprehension, and notoriously late for gigs – if, that is, they bother to show…
ETHICAL SLAM DUNK
Boozikee fires back at Ethics Review Board over Spurs tickets Last year’s NBA season had San Antonio burning with Spurs Fever as the team battled its way to the world championship. City employees were caught up in it too: They wore Spurs jerseys and hung banners from the Municipal Plaza building. But city workers…
NAKED AND THE DEAD
The Beatles’ Let It Be … Naked has been accompanied by a sticker proclaiming it to be “the band’s take” on the troubled 1969 Let It Be recording sessions. Many critics have taken umbrage at that claim, arguing that Naked abandons the original spirit of the project. The simple truth is, both sides are…
FILLING THE VACUUM
John Courage Courage looks to lead Dems A Republican majority controls not only Washington, D.C. but the state government: from the governor’s office to the legislature to the dog catcher. Well maybe not the dog catcher, but Democrats have felt like they’re in the doghouse since the GOP bit them on the butt during…
COSMIC POLKA
Brave Combo (courtesy photo) Brave Combo has the best of both worlds. In the United States, the Denton creators of “nuclear polka” get to walk the streets in unfettered anonymity, but when they’re in the mood to experience stardom, they can tour Japan, where they have long been treated like bona fide pop stars.…
DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
Detail from Robyn O’Neil’s triptych, Everything that stands will be at odds with its neighbor, and everything that falls will perish without grace, graphite and paper, 94.5 x 162.5 inches, 2003 (Seale Studios) ArtPace residents turn sketchy ideas into fine art Anonymous middle-aged men with potbellies, furrowed brows, and discernible personality traits muddle around…
PEACE PULGA
Billed as an alternative to the crass commercialism (not to mention the shoppers feeding frenzy) of the busiest retail day of the year, the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center’s annual Peace Market, held the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving, is like a gigantic garage sale-meets flea market for the progressively minded and artistic set. PEACE…
ARTIFACTS
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene SXSW, everybody’s favorite ass-kissing festival, is just around the corner. For Texas-based visual artists, that means the festival’s annual bag design deadline is fast approaching. The “Big Bag” and other promotional materials are given out to gold and platinum festival attendees and panelists. Each festival segment…
UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS
Alex Frost plays the lead in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. (courtesy photo) Gus Van Sant thinks long and hard about Columbine Two connotations of the title Elephant, both via the film’s writer/director Gus Van Sant: The title is borrowed from a 1989 Alan Clarke film about killings in Northern Ireland; Clarke thought of the…
CHRONIC ILLNESS IS A SHELTER
Robert Downey Jr. as Dan Dark in The Singing Detective. (courtesy photo) A brooding author is healed by the powers of literary criticism Disfigured and disabled by the skin and joint disease, psoriatic arthropy, Dan Dark (Downey) describes himself as “a human pizza.” Stippled with pustules and crippled by his condition, he has been…
THEIR SYLVIA SUICIDE DOLL
Gwyneth Paltrow as poet Sylvia Plath in Sylvia (courtesy photo) Poet Sylvia Plath is portrayed in a time when it still seemed possible to be so besotted with poetry Even before they finished shooting Sylvia, Frieda Hughes, the daughter of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, was firing her own fusillade in print at…
Armchair Cinephile
Discs To Convelesce With A buddy of mine is having back trouble at the moment, and while he is an invalid, his friends are shuttling over with food and music and, in my case, movies. Looking for diverting ways to occupy the largest possible chunks of his sofa-bound time, I naturally am delighted at…
RECENT REVIEWS
Bad Santa Dir. Terry Zwigoff; writ. John Requa & Glenn Ficarra; feat. Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Bernie Mac, Brett Kelly, Lauren Graham, John Ritter (R) Bad Santa is vile. Snot-dripping and alley-pukey, pants-pissing and rotgut-swilling vile. It does not have redeeming social merit; it will not enrich your soul or teach you the meaning…
