Arts Trivial pursuits
If last week’s thunderstorms weren’t enough to douse those late-summer doubts about living in South Texas, try renewing your love affair with the state’s loveliest city at Fiesta Noche del Rio, the weekend celebration of Spanish, Mexican, South-American, and Latin-American music and dance held in the quaint Arneson River Theater. Basically, it’s the stuff you…
Music Current choice
Urban cowpunk Dwight Yoakam has never fit in with Nashville, even though he sports the requisite cowboy hat albeit one resting so low over his eyes one wonders how he doesnt trip and fall every time he hits the stage. Alt-country might be the trendy label for anything country-western that doesnt suck, but he doesnt…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Rabbit run Barely a month after the double-murder shooting that brought a tragic end to the Taco Land era, another San Antonio rock institution might be facing its final days. White Rabbit owner Rick Sciaraffa has decided to sell the St. Mary’s venue because he’s tired of the day-to-day grind…
Arts : Artifacts
Money’s only a problem if you don’t have any That’s the message behind the Artist Foundation, a planned fund that will provide grants to individual artists for projects or travel. The foundation is the brainchild of artist Bettie Ward and fellow Cultural Arts Board member Patricia Pratchett. “It’s something I wanted to do my whole…
Music Dirty birds
The Chicago “instrumental metal” quartet Pelican arrived on the scene in 2003 with a well-received EP they coyly called Untitled. The four-song release was recorded by band members Laurent Lebec (guitar), Trevor de Brauw (guitar), Larry Herweg (drums), and Bryan Herweg (bass) for only $300 and subsequently distributed by Hydrahead records. The quartet resurfaced in…
Screens Comrades in arm-twisting
Happy Endings contrives to bring its manipulative characters into uncomfortable proximity What hath Robert Altman wrought? Answer: A glut of independent films that, crosscutting among a dozen or so disparate characters, establish links among those characters. Like Heights, Me and You and Everyone We Know, and other recent variations on the Altman formula, Happy Endings…
Screens A 26.2-mile offering
‘Saint Ralph’ tries to save his mother with a miraculous run in the Boston Marathon When Emma Walker falls into a deep coma, Alice (Tilly), the nurse attending her, tells the patient’s son: “It’ll take a miracle to wake her up.” Ralph (Butcher) is such a literalist of the imagination that, desperate to save his…
Screens Quick study
Javier Hernandez’ comic-book series El Muerto inspired a film before its superhero even discovered his powers After a weekend spent watching Japanese monster movies, including the 1956 Rodan! The Flying Monster, 8-year-old Javier Hernandez returned to his second-grade classroom with one thing on his mind. “I actually always think about that day – the day…
News Get tested
While Hep C infections climb dramatically, a downtown Hep C clinic struggles to find funding The Metropolitan Health District estimates there are 20,000 cases of Hepatitis C in San Antonio, yet less than 25 percent know they’re infected, and a clinic that could treat thousands of patients is understaffed and underfunded. Hep C is a…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Ripped from the page The big treat on video-store shelves this week is The Complete Thin Man Collection (Warner Bros.), a bonus-feature-laden box set collecting the adventures of Hollywood’s most charming detectives, Nick and Nora Charles (not to mention their pooch, Asta). The couple’s booze-soaked banter is immortal, even if the filmmakers didn’t make it…
News Air ball
The Spurs’ success hasn’t helped the neighborhood near the SBC Center In the three years since the SBC Center was built on East Houston Street, it has been home to two NBA championships, three rodeos, and countless other special events. Despite the successes inside, the nearby East Side neighborhood hasn’t seen any substantial development outside…
Screens New reviews and special screenings
New review Yes Dir. & writ. Sally Potter; feat. Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill (R) Sally Potter made a brilliant film once. Called Orlando, after the Virginia Woolf novel on which it was based, it used a few dreamy special effects appropriate to its tale of a surpassingly lovely Englishman who never grows old…
News Party lines
Paul Elizondo: Get off my cloud Precinct 2 Commissioner Paul Elizondo appeared to be in a bad mood last week during the regular meeting of the Bexar County Commissioners Court. Its hard to tell what set him off. Maybe his mood soured when Gabriel Perez, the countys director of infrastructure services, reported on the progress…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres I guess nobody wanted to go up against The Dukes of Hazzard and Jessica Simpson’s toned legs. The Johhnny-come-lately film adaptation of the early ’80s television series is the only mainstream film to hit theaters this Friday. The film stars Sean William Scott (Road Trip) and Johnny Knoxville (Walking…
News For whom the roads toll
Toll-road opponents lash out at MPO About 40 commuters, retirees, and disgruntled citizens who could be affected by the proposed widening of Highway 281 from Evans Road to F.M. 306, bombarded members of the Metropolitan Planning Organization with threats and colorful language last Monday. Yet their tactics didn’t affect the MPO’s vote to move forward…
Food & Drink Go fish
Three hours from the ocean, Andrew Weissman serves seafood so fresh some of it tries to escape “We don’t have the Kumamotos yet,” chef Andrew Weissman says by way of greeting as we enter the Sandbar for our second meal in as many days. As if we might choose to dine elsewhere upon learning that…
News ADA’s quinceañera
After 15 years, persons with disabilities still face social challenges More than 60 percent of disabled persons in the United States are unemployed. Young children with learning disabilities aren’t receiving badly needed special education services. And many buildings, including the McDonald’s at the corner of Losoya and Commerce streets, remain inaccessible to people with mobility…
Food & Drink Wrenchilada
Taco Garage gives Tex-Mex standards an overhaul Two very large tin chickens rule the roost at Taco Garage, a colorfully painted tacos-y-más joint converted from a decommissioned Brake Check. “We found them in San Miguel de Allende,” says Monterrey-born Jose Luis, one of the new enterprise’s partners, “and at every checkpoint on the way back…
News Speed reads
No computers for Cuba While the U.S. House of Representatives was voting for the controversial Central American Free Trade Agreement, 43 boxes of Cuba-bound computer equipment seized by U.S. Customs officials at the Mexico border on July 22 still had not been returned to Pastors for Peace. The group, which had transported 140 tons of…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Green thumbs Gardening Volunteers of South Texas presents a free class on fall gardening at the San Antonio Garden Center, 3310 N. New Braunfels, from noon-3:15 p.m. Monday, August 8. Tom Harris, certified Texas master gardener, will discuss “Fall Vegetable Gardening” and “square-foot gardening,” a planting…
Feature Night of the hunter
If you’re on the lam, beware: Bounty hunter Billy Wells can find you The one-armed bail skipper screamed for her “daddy,” as Billy Wells, a local bounty hunter maneuvered her into the car. A “friend” had ratted out her location to Billy, and he found her outside a church getting ready for a wedding. “Let…
Music Beat battle
Donnie D and Kico represent San Antonio at a national DJ championship In 1986, American DJ Cheese won the first ever DMC World DJ Mixing Championship with a historic performance that introduced scratching to the nascent competition. Although the masses were formally exposed to the concept of the DJ battle courtesy of Ernest Dickerson’s 1992…
Arts Movin’ on up
A new generation of artists and young professionals is making their home in the heart of San Antonio’s East Side This story is the first in a series about the East Side, its culture, and impending changes brought on, in part, by an influx of young artists and other members of the “creative economy.” The…
Music Wiggles room
Unlocking the nagging mysteries behind Australia’s biggest export since Men At Work The best kid-oriented pop phenomena work on two levels. They create a seemingly simple, candy-coated universe in which toddlers can comfortably immerse themselves while simultaneously offering a subversive wink to adults with flashes of subtle social commentary, all the more amusing because of…
Arts Art capades
Power and destruction fuel multiple late-summer shows This week’s Art Capades is announced not by a gong toll, but by Rae Culbert’s sledgehammer smashing through Artpace’s front window. It’s exciting that Artpace is willing to comply by allowing the destruction as part of their WindowWorks series (445 N. Main and 306 E. Houston, 212-4900, through…
Music CD Spotlight
Ringside seats Naming your band Ringside comes with certain risks. First, it suggests you’re a spectator, only observing the real action. Second, those outside the ring are usually there because they weren’t good enough to step into it. Then again, maybe that’s the irony of Ringside’s eponymous debut – on paper, the duo shouldn’t be…
Arts The underworld is in LA
PI Tres Navarre is alive and well, but author Rick Riordan is branching into children’s mythology, too In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway writes about how Ezra Pound and Miss Natalie Barney, a rich American girl, conspired in the early ’20s to start a fund to save T.S. Eliot who was toiling away in a…
Food & Drink Butter’s too rich
Only the wealthy can farm like MaryJane Martha Stewart may have the market on good living cornered on both coasts, but for everyplace in between and particularly rural Idaho, MaryJane Butters and her new book, MaryJane’s Ideabook, Cookbook, Lifebook, are dedicated to nurturing the farm girl-do-it-yourselfer in all women. Well, I didn’t grow up on,…
Arts Tomorrow’s yesterday
Javier Marias’ hero is a diviner of futures who can’t escape the past Loquacity has always been a tricky river for novels to travel upon. Readers are likely to drown if the current is too frothy, as in, say, James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. On the flip side, when the tide moves too slowly, as in,…
Food & Drink Value vino
Read the label Wine labels are designed to convey information, and the nature of that information is strictly controlled both by the wine’s country of origin, and, in the U.S., by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Wine labels are also designed to seduce, and here the BATF is especially vigilant; in its zeal…
