Media Being there
Whether Harrison Ford acts or not, that “it” quality is back in Firewall The year: 1970. Cary Grant strides across the stage, dapper as always in his black tux; he’s a bit heavier than when he retired in ’66 and his famously black hair is easing into later-life platinum. He’s still charming as ever, though,…
Media Ballet a little burlesque
Diaghilev’s famous Russian troupe lives again on screen My favorite piece of art isn’t a painting or a sculpture. It’s a ballet called Afternoon of a Faun (1912) by Vaslav Nijinsky, who went mad shortly afterward and filled his famous diary with accounts of his vegetarianism and status as a god. Nijinsky was the lover…
News Inquiring minds
San Antonio School of Inquiry and Creativity grapples with teaching at-risk kids and meeting federal standards Pulling off a busy stretch of San Pedro into the small parking lot of the San Antonio School for Inquiry and Creativity feels more like arriving at a doctor’s office. But the teenagers milling about the lobby and lounging…
Media Willfully blind
A fallen countess and a disillusioned diplomat turn their backs on history Todd Jackson (played by Ralph Fiennes with an American accent he seems to have borrowed from Groucho Marx) has seen enough to turn a Gorgon blind. At the Conference of Versailles following World War I, he watched his vision for universal peace sabotaged…
Counterpoint The state of the union is wrong
And President Bush will work to make it, uh, wronger On January 31, President George W. Bush began his State of the Union Address by honoring Coretta Scott King, the late wife of slain Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.: “Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who … carried on a…
Media Game Theory
A more perfect union Eight months ago, a Netherlands-based computer programmer published a chunk of code that allowed gamers to access hidden sexual content in the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. News of this development quickly traveled from the blogosphere to the mainstream press, forcing the Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB) to change the…
News Big runaround
The City produces Big Tex asbestos docs, but they just raise more questions It’s a sunny Saturday morning in San Antonio, and the athletic fields at Brackenridge High School in Southtown are filled with students at play and practice. Across the river, the Blue Star Art Silos, also known as the Big Tex site, sit…
Media That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres Who says 2D animation is dead? In Curious George, based on the children’s books by authors H.A. and Margaret Rey, the curious little monkey makes it to the big screen and to America when The Man in the Yellow Hat (voiced by Will Ferrell) accidentally brings him back from…
News Pary lines
3D/I greases Flores’ wheel District 1 City Councilman Roger Flores recused himself and disappeared from Council Chambers last week when City staff recommended extending a professional-service agreement with architectural firm 3D/International for design changes at the San Antonio International Airport. The value of the contract is $900,000, on top of 3D/I’s $12.6 million contract for…
Food & Drink Mood food
Hunger and lust, two primitive instincts: alone, each can drive us to root in the dirt; combined, they can make us run wild in the streets. Here, four Current writers relate their memorable romantic food experiences, whether dining out or staying home. Carefully pick your edibles, potables, and audibles — and the rest will take…
News Briefs
Stuck at the bottom Texas has the greatest income division between the rich and poor according to a study released last month by non-partisan groups the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute. Over the past 20 years, annual average wages of Texas’ wealthiest families increased 65 percent — from $122,727…
Food & Drink D.I.Y. fortune cookies
A thrilling time is in your immediate future It was a New Yorker profile of Donald Lau that first inspired me to make fortune cookies. The vice president of Wonton Food, Inc., Lau is in charge of not only the hard math of accounts payable and receivable, but also the poesy of fate, writing fortunes…
News Troubled company
How to violate Zachry’s e-mail policy and still have a job Two men, two similar corporate violations, and two drastically different endings. On January 30, George Dickerson, who worked for Zachry Construction as a federal-procurement coordinator, sent an inflammatory e-mail from a Zachry server to District 7 Councilwoman Elena Guajardo about crime at Graham Central…
Food & Drink Value vino – Great wines for under $15
Fermentus interruptus Italy’s Brachetto d’Acqui may be the quintessential Valentine wine. Brilliantly ruby red in color, exuberantly fizzy in character, and loaded with the aroma and flavors of roses, raspberries, and undertones of chocolate, it is, as one wag suggested, “sex in a bottle.” It works as a dessert wine, with the chocolates and berries…
News Cuellar, Rodriguez square off
Let the ugliness begin Sunset Station was packed with local business leaders to consider poultry and politics Monday as former U.S. Representative Ciro Rodriguez squared off in a Democratic Primary debate with his nemesis, U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, who beat Rodriguez, the long-time incumbent in the 2004 election. Sparks flew between the pair, as Rodriguez…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online news politics culture News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Francesca’s at Sunset, 16641 La Cantera Parkway, has compiled a lovers’ menu for Valentine’s Day. The puya-laced Mexican rose soup might tempt your palate with golden and candy-striped beet pico, while the mulato-espresso demiglace on the El Rey cocoa-corn crusted lamb…
News Speed reads
– CPS to build new plant – Fair Trade Coalition settles in SA – Food Not Bombs relaunches – Election judges wanted CPS to build new plant CPS Energy received an air permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, allowing the municipally owned utility to begin construction on Spruce 2, a $1 billion, 750-megawatt…
Feature Culture war
Are complaints against Guadalupe President Bret Ruiz valid or are people simply resistant to change? In August 2005, Bret Ruiz left Dallas’ Anita N. Martinez Ballet Folklorico to become president of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, the West Side community center, gallery, theater, and school that is one of the country’s most revered Latino cultural…
Music Desert thorns
Rock entrepreneur Miles Copeland brings bellydance to Western concert halls In his pre-fame memoir, Broken Music, Sting recalled how much he instantly liked Miles Copeland when the two men met in the 1970s. Copeland, the brash rock-impresario brother of Police drummer Stewart Copeland, and the man who would go on to manage the Police and…
Arts Twin peeks
Haven Kimmel’s book is only the beginning of strange tales from Indiana One afternoon about 30 years ago, my mother found a young Hampshire pig in our woods and carried it to the house in hopes we could reunite it with the owner. Yet, when Mom put the pig down she realized that she had…
Music All ears
Easy listening for sophisticates I remember the startled feeling I got some years back when, in rooting through a square Big Chain record store, I realized that some of the discs I wanted were in the “Easy Listening” section. What? Who decided that Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan belong beside hopeless dorks like Pat…
Arts Brokeback plantation
The Vex’s revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof mines Brick’s repression The Vexler opens the New Year with a compelling, if occasionally over-the-top, performance of the Tennessee Williams classic Cat on Hot Tin Roof. Starring America’s most famously screwed-up family after the Simpsons, Cat details one long day’s journey into dysfunction, featuring a…
Music CD Spotlight
Mourning after – The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Tommy Lee Jones has been quick to concede that his feature-film directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, is not loaded with action. So, more than most films, it relies on music not just to underline a given mood but to build and sustain narrative…
Arts Post-Netiquette
Tea time(less) – In the dot-com present tea resists reinvention Tea leaves scatter across the white tablecloth like so many computer characters, but they’re made of material dear to a Luddite’s heart, more akin to runes than cursors. Spent at the end of a pot, the velvety detritus reveals a fortune that unfurls backward and…
Music Current Choice
Sleep deprivation Indie rock’s subdivisions of emo and hardcore link arms with “The Invisible Sideshow Tour.” It’s a package designed to satiate emo’s calmly cerebral subscribers as well as those who hunger for the frenzied catharsis hardcore inevitably brings. Current Choice ARMOR FOR SLEEP with CHIODOS, BOYS NIGHT OUT, and ACTION REACTION 7pm Sat, Feb…
Arts Framed – John DeFore on Comix
All you ever wanted to know… We’re well past the point now, I hope, when a fledgling comics column needs to make the case that “Comics are for adults now! They can be serious literature!” But just because folks accept the presence and merit of the graphic novel doesn’t mean we’re all sufficiently educated in…
Music Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene – Funny valentines Riding high from the growing popularity of their bi-monthly jams with Sexto Sol (who, by the way, tasted mass adulation when they filled in for Lenny Kravitz to open Aerosmith’s recent show at the AT&T Center), Bombasta will headline their own gig at Saluté International Bar on…
Arts Sweets for the sweet
As Cupid’s arrow aims for Valentine’s Day, here’s a few happenin’s to keep you and yours occupied the week of February 14. 20six15 and Suede Lounge, 231 E. Houston, present Lost Weekend: A Multimedia Fashion Experience at 10 p.m. February 10. The evening begins with electronic DJs Wyatt Earp of Denver and Eric Ross of…
Arts Classical attitude
News and notes from San Antonio’s other music scene Art critics and historians — visual, musical, or otherwise — often look at how stylistic and aesthetic shifts instigate or reflect larger social phenomena. So what does it mean that in the past few years everything’s coming up tango? An easy answer is that the tango…
