Arts Word on the street
News and notes from the San Antonio literary scene Com v. org Actually its not a competition, and the confused come out ahead either way. The website saevents.org, maintained by Planet of the Tapes proprietrix Angela Martinez, is an omnivorous compendium of events large and small, cinematic and performing. You can view the entire month…
Music Current Choice
Good time Charlie When it comes to Charlie Robison, it’s hard to get past his family. Sure, this Houston native has built a nice, respectable career for himself as a journeyman singer-songwriter, but he’s inevitably overshadowed by the people who share the dinner table with him every Thanksgiving. His wife, the former Emily Erwin, is…
Arts Volver y volver
José Rubénde León has returned to Jump-Start Performance Co. with Simplemente Lara, his much-loved tribute to Mexican musical star Augustín Lara (adored, perhaps, even more than Lorca, his one-man tribute to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca). `See “Noche de Lara” in this issue of the Current.` Pianist Aaron E. Prado and bassist George Prado accompany…
Music Noche de Lara
For people who came of age in Mexico in the 1930s and ’40s, Agustin Lara was Cole Porter multiplied by Irving Berlin: a towering figure who provided a soundtrack for an era. Beyond his staggering body of work, what makes Lara an enduring source of fascination is the enigmatic complexity of the man. A romantic…
Screens A lesson in teaching
In The Hobart Shakespeareans, one instructor proves again that children rise to meet expectations To find an early advocate of dumbing down the curriculum, look to Shakespeare’s Desdemona. “Those that do teach young babes/ Do it with gentle means and easy tasks,” she tells Iago. However, though Rafe Esquith reveres Shakespeare, the tasks he sets…
Music Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Grackle theater For one night only, Buttercup is taking its beloved Grackle Mundy happenings to the theater. On Monday, September 12, the local art-pop quartet will host a performance at San Pedro Playhouse Cellar, a setting remarkably intimate even for a band that prides itself on breaking down conventional barriers…
Screens The root of some evil
The Constant Gardener, based on a Le Carré novel, is a thrilling ride to the bottom of post-Cold War greed and corruption Fernando Meirelles’ first film to receive American exposure, the stunning City of God, showed poverty from the inside by following multiple generations of the children from a Rio de Janeiro slum. For his…
Screens Buyer beware
In life as in art, choose well, Junebug reminds us, because you’ll be living with the decision “Meet the family” dramas usually hang their hat on the formula Meet the Parents ably spoofed: the nails-on-chalkboard contrast between one member’s beloved and the rest of his or her clan. In Junebug, the likable Sundance darling from…
Arts Writing for Godot
Author David Liss wouldnt eat a chicken any more than wed eat his cat San Antonio author David Liss isnt trying to one-up anybody, but, so far, hes not too impressed by Texas cockroaches. Believe me, you dont call these cockroaches, he says. These are little tiny bugs. In Florida, they put saddles on them.…
Screens A doppelgänger that bites
A Sound of Thunder chases down Bradbury’s short story to its illogical conclusion “This September, evolve or die,” or so warns the advertising campaign for sci-fi flick A Sound of Thunder. Adapted from the Ray Bradbury short story that’s inspired everything from a Duran Duran song to a Game Boy Advance title, Hollywood’s first big-screen…
Arts Texas hold ’em up
Enron stole a page from the ’80s S&L scandal Offshore: The Dark Side of the Global Economy By William Brittain-Catlin Farrar Straus & Giroux $25, 261 pages ISBN: 0374256985 The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L industry By William K. Black University of…
Screens Armchair Cinephile
Neo-nouvelle A few weeks ago, this column trekked through world cinema’s least-explored corners. Since then, I’ve received some scolding from regions that are rightly accustomed to film-buff fawning. I speak of two European siblings, France and Italy. Those countries staked their places in modern film history with dueling movements, the legacies of which are still…
Screens Special screenings
Cementville lives on KLRN Resurrecting Cementville Dir. Brian Birdwell, Jeremy Boyce, and Tamarin Ellis (2003) Resurrecting Cementville is an original documentary by three former Trinity University students who use interviews, photography, and commentary by Trinity professor and San Antonio historian Char Miller to recall the lifespan of the insular, predominantly Mexican-American community that was home…
News No rest in peace
Pioneer buried under front lawn in subdivision Augusta Specht Green’s husband John was shot dead in a pasture south of their frontier ranch house. She had him buried on the spot, sans coffin, under a motte of oak trees on their 1,280-acre ranch in northwest Bexar County. His gravestone read “John F. Green, born Feb.…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this weeks premieres Based on the 1952 short story by Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451), A Sound of Thunder combines time travel with the chaos theory and the butterfly effect, a phrase coined by American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Norton Lorenz 11 years after the Bradbury novella was published. Travis Ryer…
NewsParty lines
Slam dunk East Central ISD’s school board president Steve Bryant called last week to complain that the news story about acid rain and City Public Service Energy’s coal-fired power plant unfairly critiqued the district’s handling of a request to inspect the rooftops at Heritage Middle School `”Reading, writing, and acid rain,” August 25-31, 2005`. China…
Food & Drink Teach a kid to cook (and you feed her for a lifetime)
In high-school culinary-arts programs, students learn life skills I can remember the days of traditional Home Economics classes in which my fellow students and I learned to cook such delicacies as meatloaf and to plan meals for small dinner parties of six. Boy, am I old. Today’s high-school foodies flock to culinary programs that put…
News Briefs
DJ is rocked like a hurricane Current reader and San Antonio resident Tommie Morrow passed along a hurricane’s-eye view of Katrina via his cousin, Steve Suter, a DJ at a New Orleans radio station. On August 29, Suter wrote, “winds are still gusting near 130 mph in the city but conditions are improving a little…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online news politics culture News and notes from the San Antoniofood scene Breakfast of champions A tip from reader Chance Brandt sparked an investigative trip to H-E-B, 1604 and Kittyhawk, where Brandt allegedly purchased a box of “Hemp-plus” toaster waffles. According to Brandt, H-E-B officials explained that hemp is harmless – not to mention…
News Speed reads
All politics is local Want to complain about how the city spends your tax dollars? The second public hearing on the City budget takes place at City Council Chambers, Main and Commerce streets, Tuesday, September 6 at 6 p.m. One way the City might spend your money is by hiring a new city manager, namely…
Music Roots reggaetón
La Kalle brings red-hot, Latino hip-hop hybrid to the local airwaves “Reggaetón is not anything we went looking for – it found us,” says J.D. Gonzales, vice-president of Univision Radio. “Sometimes in radio, whenever you try to strategize and find the right formats for the right markets, it’s very obvious that a particular niche or…
Feature Take this job and love it
Ready to ditch your Dilbert-esque grind? Meet five people who haven’t seen a cubicle in years Considering Americans spend about a quarter of their adult lives working, they sure hate their jobs. According to a recent Harris interactive survey, less than half of those polled said they were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their work;…
Music After sunset
The Davenport’s dance-floor mayhem Downtown at night is a playground for the curious, full of oddities and awkwardness. I decided to take a walk downtown and the soundtrack for my evening stroll was a medley of drunken college boys singing the night’s prophecies like a Shakespearean chorus, but their insights were drowned out by the…
Arts A sensualist in the land of Judd
When Charles Field arrived in San Antonio in the early ’70s, he couldn’t have been less fashionable. But locals have come ’round to his way of seeing. Painter and UTSA Professor Emeritus Charles Field is the 61st recipient of the San Antonio Art League and Museum’s Artist of the Year Exhibition. While Field is primarily…
Food & Drink Hearts will play
But for the canned California olives, The Vine could be The One “When the moon-a hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie, that’s amore,” crooned Dean Martin. The moon was full, pizza had just been added to the menu, and amore was in the air at The Vine on a recent Friday. We think…
Arts Take a picture, it’ll last longer
When Hurricane Katrina threatened to demolish part of the Gulf Coast last week, one could have argued that the fragile bays, estuaries, and wildlife preserves choking in the contrails of the petrochemical industry were already gone. A cataclysm on the scale of a Category 5 hurricane or tsunami is rare; our sacred places usually quietly…
Food & Drink Meatless in Steer City
Up Beet – What’s not to love about the crown jewel of root vegetables? There are those who love cooked beet, crimson and sweet, and there are those who find its soft consistency suspect. The latter are the same people who get nervous around cooked carrots and think green beans are flat, watery strings that…
Arts Social intercourse
Fashion comes to San Antonio in a series of parties worthy of Diane von Furstenburg If San Antonio had a Fashion Week, the last fortnight of August would have been it, sans the white tents and paparazzi. From haute couture to wearable art, I saw it all, beginning with Neiman Marcus’ fall-fashion preview at Silo.…
Music CD Spotlight
Waco calling The Waco Brothers are an alt-country super-group comprised of punk rockers and other non-countrified types. Also, non-American types, since only one of the six members is a Yank, Dean “Deano” Schlabowske. The rest of the mob are Brits, including members of Jesus Jones, Revolting Cocks, and Graham Parker’s Rumour as well as Big…
