News Briefs
Texans get green from Abramoff Since 2000, nine Congressional members from Texas, including two from San Antonio, received a total of $58,750 from Jack Abramoff or Indian tribes he represented, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It is widely known that U.S. Representative Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland) and his political action committee, Americans for a…
Food & Drink Outside the box
Stella Style preaches low-carb, fresh foods over processed packaged products It’s a new year and, like so many, I’m looking to unload the extra junk in my trunk, but I must also admit to being suspicious of, though not against, diets — especially low-carbohydrate diets. I’m all for moderation, but how can it be a…
News Speed reads
Toll-road opponents get day in court A court date of January 27 has been set for a lawsuit filed against the Texas Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration over the proposed U.S. 281 toll road. `See “Road rage,” January 4-10, 2006.` Judge Javier Rodriguez will preside over the hearing, which is scheduled for…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene The handsome steed and chain mail adorning the knight on King Arthur Flour bags always reminds me of the Sunday funnies and Prince Valiant, but you don’t have to have a page boy haircut and tights to participate in King Arthur’s baking class. On January 25,…
Feature Court jester
The latchkey kid from West Columbia continues to mash up his sonic world Everything was going fine at The Davenport on January 7 until Mike Pendon decided to play a song from Fraggle Rock. Pendon, aka DJ Jester the Filipino Fist, is a pop-culture provocateur who loves to confound expectations, so none of his friends…
Arts Loving the city life
Urban professionals embrace the pace of downtown living “Every trip downtown is my first trip downtown.” This is the sense my husband, a native San Antonian, experiences when we venture into the heart of the Alamo City. There’s a certain mystique about downtown, as with city centers across the country, that dazzles him a little,…
Arts The art capades
Beauty and the freaks This week I hunted down two “blink and you miss it” museum shows that would make enchanting additions to your visual and conceptual repertoire. Feminine Beauty in 19th Century Japanese Art is small, but crackles like the whisk of a paper fan (San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 W. Jones, 978-8100,…
Arts Post-Netiquette
Subject: You are invited to a wedding – Is the paper-free invitation delightful or déclassé? “You had the perfect second-marriage wedding,” an old friend exclaimed a week after the event. “And I don’t mean that as a left-handed compliment.” We weren’t insulted. We paid for the ceremony and reception ourselves, and during our six-month engagement,…
Music Barrio alliance
So many records, so many listmaking fans The nice thing about year-end music lists is that, unlike lists of Top 10 Movies or Top 10 Horrifying Things Your President Did, almost no two are alike. There are simply too many diverse records released in a year, and too many eccentricities of taste, for any two…
Arts Framed
2005 in graphic novels Fans of comics and graphic novels had another good year in 2005. Pioneering cartoonist Chris Ware was awarded a weekly feature in The New York Times Magazine (he’s less pioneering there than usual, but it’s early); the supply of high-quality reprint titles turned into a near-glut; and those of us with…
Music All ears
So many records, so many listmaking fans The nice thing about year-end music lists is that, unlike lists of Top 10 Movies or Top 10 Horrifying Things Your President Did, almost no two are alike. There are simply too many diverse records released in a year, and too many eccentricities of taste, for any two…
Arts Classical attitude
News and notes from san antonio’s other music scene Food and more for the soul It’s no secret that music, like other environmental factors such as color and smell, affect mood. For me, music is an integral part of daily existence. When it comes to setting the tone for a fine meal, going to the…
Music CD Spotlight
Earth bound It all seems so long ago. In the fall of 2001, as America recovered from the 9/11 attacks, the Strokes emerged as new rock saviors with Is This It, an album that chewed up the history of CBGBs and spat it out in a fresh and exciting form. Beyond their command of the…
Arts Art and tango
The Carver Cultural Center and StoneMetal Press present a series of events for Black History Month, featuring artist Steve Prince. The opening reception for Urban Epistles: End Notes, a linoleum print series by Prince, will be held at 5:30 p.m. Friday, January 13, at the Carver, 226 N. Hackberry. A demonstration and hands-on workshop with…
Music Current Choice
Who knows what was going through their collective heads when they decided to name their band after a late-19th century Australian bandit who ultimately died at the gallows. Reckless Kelly is a 21st-century country-rock band, but Reckless Ned Kelly the bandit — more precisely, a “bushranger” down under — was a hero of the oppressed…
Screens On the front lines of piracy
It’s just like the, um, Marines, says one film-security expert The line inches slowly forward as each patron is thoroughly scanned with a handheld metal detector. Security personnel peek into each purse or bag with a miniature flashlight and check all cell phones to make sure they are turned off. This procedure might sound like…
Music Sound and the fury
Dilley and Dreamgirls With a new 15-song CD in the can and set for release within the next two months, Shit City Dreamgirls return to live-performance mode with a Saturday, January 14, gig at The Mix (2423 N. St. Mary’s). The always sprawling ensemble — which includes Phillip Luna, Ken Robinson, Steve Garcia, Cosmo, Bob…
Screens One of these things …
An outcast of a boy-girl leads a charming life in ’60s London Of all the times and places in history for a boy to want to look like a girl, surely one of the best was 1970s Great Britain. With David Bowie and T-Rex throbbing across the airwaves, even straight fellas wanted to leave a…
Screens Game Theory
Boomers shy away from new technology Barbara St. Hilaire craves interactive entertainment. She subscribes to several gaming magazines, owns three gaming consoles, and regularly visits the EB Games store near her suburban home in Mantura, Ohio. Immersed in a game, she unleashes torrents of profanity that would make George Carlin blush. In all of these…
News Kill the grandfather
The City is recharging the water-quality ordinance When Phil Hardberger was campaigning for mayor last spring, he said he could not and did not want to justify urban sprawl over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. But he also acknowledged that grandfather clauses protect property-owners’ investments. “My primary concern as a citizen and as a mayor…
Screens Special screening
Civil Rights Film Series Amazing Grace Dir. Stan Lathan (1974) “Moms” Mabley is a cautious neighborhood woman in Amazing Grace, a devious comedy in which a politician’s agenda is thwarted by collective action. Joanne Bland, director and co-founder of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Alabama, will speak about her experiences and…
News Counterpoint
Money after the fact – Why don’t we work as hard to stop cancer as we do to cure it? When the announcement was made last month that media mogul Lowry Mays is donating $20 million to Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, I felt deeply conflicted. Mays’ gift followed a $30 million grant from his…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres In Last Holiday, Academy Award-nominated actress Queen Latifah (Chicago) plays Georgia Byrd, a sales associate and novice chef who learns she has a terminal disease. Hoping to treat herself to some of the experiences she has never had, including snowboarding, deep-tissue massage, and base jumping, she travels to Europe…
News Party lines
Flood channel comes to life Extravagastic. Fantabulous. Make up your own adjectives, but make time to see the flurry of construction in the San Antonio River’s downtown flood channel. It’s history in the making as hotelier Rick Drury and Co. work furiously to build an 800-foot walkway to connect the western ends of the River…
Food & Drink Like the U.N., but better
International markets offer foods from Europe, Middle East, and India Enter Habiba and you find culinary world peace. Indian curries carouse with Pakistani pickles. Persian palates talk taste with Turkish delights. Cheeses from Bulgaria, Spain, Istanbul, and Syria go their own whey on cool, even playing fields. Habiba (“lovely” in Arabic) is one of two…
News Chain of fools
The more the River Walk changes, the more it looks the same — as everywhere else “We don’t want to be defined by national chains on our river,” warned Mayor Phil Hardberger at the January 5 City Council meeting. “There’s a danger of that happening. The River Walk is a place of beauty a defining…
Food & Drink Ezme’s ennui
At Istanbul Café, exotically named dishes prove more agreeable than provocative There is an expectation that unfamiliar cuisines are obliged to be exotic and challenging, and must thrill our taste buds in new and unexpected ways. This is the case with cuisines such as Burmese, Tahitian, Mongolian, just as it should be the case with…
