BURDEN OF PROOF
Burden Brothers Two years ago, Todd Lewis questioned whether he’d even continue playing music. Lewis, the lead singer and driving force of the Toadies (surely the best rock band ever to emanate from Fort Worth), had just come to the end of a torturous six-year industry slow-dance with Interscope Records. After watching the band’s…
SOUND AND THE FURY
Fred Silva a week on the scene TIGERHOOKED The Davenport’s subterranean sound lab introduces two members of the Philadelphia-based music collective Tigerhook Corporation to San Antonio on Saturday, December 27. DJs Randall Jones and Hito will school the city in progressive house. For a little audio sampling, check out Tigerhook at www.tigerhook.com. The evening…
ARTIFACTS
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene Participants of last week’s Third Thursdays downtown gallery openings witnessed the swan song for Brad Braune Gallery, which has shown contemporary painters and photographers at 315 E. Commerce for the past two years. Braune, who participated in and advocated for Third Thursdays, opened just in time…
PUSHING MIDWIVES OUT OF BUSINESS
Many women prefer midwives to guide them through pregnancy and birth, but increasing insurance premiums are forcing some midwives out of business. (Corbis images) Women have fewer choices about how to deliver their babies T he birth of Miriam Singer’s fourth child was tinged with a sense of loss for the mother, who knew…
A HOUSING SHORTAGE IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Jennifer Connely as Kathy Nicolo in House of Sand and Fog (courtesy photo) How brittle are the bricks with which we try to build our lives “O ur business is the American Dream” reads the motto of Fannie Mae, the financial institution created to facilitate home ownership. The American Dream, the belief that anyone…
WITH A WHISPER, NOT A BANG
Bush signs parts of Patriot Act II into law — stealthily O n December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House…
COMING TO AMERICA AND BACK TO LIFE
The Sullivan Family in their new American home in Jim Sheridan’s loosely autobiographical In America (courtesy photo) The cinematic magic of seeing the familiar as an outsider A n arduous crossing in steerage then embarkation at Ellis Island are standard ingredients of the classic European immigrant experience. In 1924, five months before the Statue…
FIESTA DEL DINERO
Fiestas Market Square sees hard times on Produce Row Fiesta del Mercado may never be the same. The City Council burned the midnight oil last week over a massive agenda that included inking a contract with the San Antonio Parks Foundation to operate the annual Fiesta del Mercado event at Market Square. That move takes…
Armchair Cinephile
Weirder Than Weird O ne of my longstanding DVD wishes was answered recently, when Criterion released Steven Soderbergh’s experimental mini-masterpiece Schizopolis. It’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely for me – and I’m convinced that there is an audience out there waiting to take this one-of-a-kind thing to heart. Made on a shoestring right…
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…
MIDDLE EARTH IS GOD’S COUNTRY
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) J.R.R. Tolkien’s deplorable cultus should go to church W e know what J.R.R. Tolkien thought of his most over-the-top admirers: head-bangers and hippies with their FRODO LIVES buttons; Italian neo-Fascists huddled at “Camp Hobbit”; proto-Trekkies in velvet capes. The Lord of the Rings author famously dismissed this disparate lot as “my…
ILLUSTRATING THAT FINE LINE
By including a wide range of individuals, photographer Michael Nye serves his subjects by removing their shame and celebrating their lives as human beings. (Photos by Michael Nye) Photographer Michael Nye’s exhibit allows its audience into the minds of the mentally ill “Daddy, that lady tried to kill herself,” a child at the Witte…
BOXCAR WILLIES
Boxcar Satan: (from left) Ken Robinson, Sanford Allen, and Patrick Sane (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Local underground heroes dish out another serving of rowdy nihilism For almost a decade, one band has reigned as an indisputable local music scene staple, beloved by crusty punks and egghead aesthetes alike. OK, OK … one band besides…
WHIPLASH ROCK
The Raveonettes: one key, three chords, 13 neo-garage classics (courtesy photo) The Raveonettes concoct a dizzy gimlet of punk, skronk, sex, and Buddy Holly Chain Gang of Love, the full-length debut by Denmark’s the Raveonettes, might be the year’s coolest collision of concept and craft: 13 hard, fast, irredeemably sassy neo-garage tunes written in…
MOJOE MEN
CD SPOTLIGHT / LOCAL Hip-hop is such a studio-oriented genre that in a live setting it’s often reduced to a parade of programmed beats and synchronized arm waving. Mojoe, a local hip-hop/R&B group fronted by MCs Easy Lee and T.R.E., faces the opposite challenge. With its live band instrumental backing and the soulful singing…
