Music : Just met a band called Maria
Brainy, literate former schoolmates Rainer Maria are named for a German poet, but that doesn’t mean they can’t rock your face off Majoring in liberal arts may not be the typical path to fame and fortune, but with the right courses and a little luck, it can lead to unexpected success. College was the catalyst…
Arts : The John Picacio experience
The former SA schoolboy talks about inspiration and dodging cliché — and tackles the hallucinogen question Of the marriage between his art and his city, celebrated homegrown artist John Picacio says, smiling: “If you look at the work, you can kind of tell it doesn’t quite fit, you know. `I don’t think anybody` knows what…
Music : Current choice
Powerman 5000 Spider’s web Much like Spinal Tap (and their flower-power predecessors, the Thamesmen), Powerman 5000 is one of those bands that tell you more about the trends around them than their own emotions. When this band burst out of Beantown in 1994 with the indie release True Force, it built on the rap-metal foundation…
Arts : Stringing us along
But we don’t mind when it’s Cactus Pear’s prickly version of classical Cactus Pear Music Festival started out as a damn-fine, roaming summer concert series, providing chamber music in the off-season for San Antonio, South Texas, and the Hill Country. Now in its 10th season under founding Artistic Director Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, CPMF has added a…
Music : CD spotlight
Johnny’s gone It’s been almost three years since Johnny Cash passed away, but while Walk the Line was great (OK, maybe just good, with great performances) we’ve been sorely lacking the genuine article in the interim. You could blame that on super-producer Rick Rubin, but hey, the guy had a harder time dealing with Cash’s…
Media : An adapter faithfully
Linklater’s much-anticipated project doesn’t stray too far from the original material — and that’s a good thing The fiction of Philip K. Dick — who is often labeled a “science-fiction author,” though his career isn’t so easily pigeonholed — has been mined by a dozen or so movies over the years. Whether the end results…
Media : Wordslinging
Crossword puzzles were invented in 1913, and if James Joyce (who was born in 1882) had set his mind to solving them, he could have been a champ. But then he would not have written Ulysses. Word games are the purest form of verbal play; poets write their odes out of tainted motives — a…
Badly doctored redistricting
Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Voting Rights Act “The first thing the governor of Iowa asked me,” Phillip Ruiz, state president of the Tejano Democrats, told his group over brunch at Tito’s last Saturday, “Was, ‘What do I call you? Hispanics? Latinos? Mexican-Americans? What do you want to be called?’”…
Media : Macho peculiar
The adoring crowds who hailed him as “El Chino” (the Chinaman) were not the only ones to misjudge Alberto Fujimori, whose roots are in Japan. A scholarly agronomist, he leapt into power as champion of Peru’s indigenous poor. As president, from 1990-2000, he tamed the country’s hyperinflation, crippled narcotrafficking, and defeated the terrorist organization Sendero…
Von Ormy, Inc.
Though it’s just a dozen miles from downtown San Antonio, Von Ormy is a community that fosters a rural lifestyle. Just beyond the local cemetery, which holds more than 150 years of Von Ormy residents, cattle graze near the meandering Medina River. A handful of bumpy roads stitch together farms and ranches like an old…
Media : Armchair Cinephile
Books for an air-conditioned summer The season has arrived for Summer Book Guides. While most such articles envision readers lounging at the beach with quick-read thrillers or dishy comedies, though, I’d like to aim one at my people: Those whose response to rising temperatures is, quite sanely, to stay inside and think about movies. One…
Reading between the lines
Or: all the news that gives you fits When I read the Saturday headline in the local daily, “Terror plot aimed to flood N.Y.,” I thought, Fantastic! The Bush Administration has finally copped to its real motive for ignoring global warming. No such luck, of course. Apparently some al-Qaida operatives were plotting to blow up…
Media : That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres Another summer, another nominal comedy/inadvertent horror movie from Shawn, Marlon and Keenen Ivory. Plus, the most anticipated indie of the season, and another deal where Owen Wilson tries to cute his way into your pants for an hour and a half. With A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater’s scrupulous `see…
Feature Life on the streets
A local volunteer delves into the (growing?) SA homeless scene “Welcome to the Streets” By Liz, 18 You can feel your skin harden, You can feel the emotions fading, That’s what they do to you, The Streets. The smells are the same, They are the constant reminder of how low you have actually sank. You’ve…
Media : Special screenings
LA TRAGEDIA DE MACARIO Pablo Veliz (2005) Inspired by the 2003 deaths of 19 immigrants in Victoria, TX, the movie (an official selection of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival) follows Macario and his best friend as they try to cross the border into the U.S. Veliz, a 23-year-old UTSA student who moved to San Antonio…
Arts : The CAM cup is still half-full
A partial overview of Contemporary Art Month highlights at the halfway mark These are a few of our favorite CAM things: Kate Terrell’s entry in Local Lotería at Southwest School. Mister Danny Geisler’s giant dumpster bouquet at Blue Star. Mimi Kato’s digital prints at Joan Grona Gallery. Beto Gonzales’s faux-fur girls do one9zero6. First Friday…
Food & Drink : All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene What do we have here in our hot little hands? Why, it’s The Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, which comprises 390 reviews by three “feisty” writers — Rebecca Markovits, Robin Goldstein, and Monika Powe Nelson. By “feisty” they mean un-sauced assessments such as “It’s the oldest…
Arts : The fabulous Ks
Fresh out of the UTSA star-making machine, Mimi Kato and Jimmy Kuehnle charm Dallas and SA It’s hard to miss them, the new power couple on the art scene these days. He’s loud, tall, and over-the-top. She’s cool, quiet, and sharp as a tack. Jimmy Kuehnle, that First-Friday bike maestro, and Mimi Kato, who singlehandedly…
Food & Drink : Value vino
Great wines for under $15 Geology is writ large across the face of Eastern Washington State. Its high rolling plateaus, seasonally golden with wheat, are rent with basalt-gird coulees and dotted with isolated, “eccentric” boulders, both testimony to massive glacial movement. But as an impressionable child, making the yearly trek from the far greener side…
Arts : Beware Adelines bearing sweets
Oh, sure, female barbershop quartets sound harmless … Come on, I know I’m not the only one imagining a glazed pastry army, with each phyllo-dough soldier of Stay-Puft Marshmallow proportions. Forget about the bowties and mustaches: The Sweet Adelines put a feminine spin on barbershop singing. Although some readers may consider Sweet Adelines International to…
Music : Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Chingo’s revenge Last weekend, San Antonio’s adopted son Chingo Bling blessed Rosedale Park with a lively show that turned into an impromptu celebration of his newly signed deal with Asylum Records. According to Chingo, a Trinity University graduate, the deal is worth enough cash to make Dave Chappelle run for…
Arts : On the street
As we meander through Contemporary Art Month on First Friday, the streets are brimming with foot traffic on the way to various galleries and the bars scattered in between. Sometimes the two-day shows are worth the hike. On July 7, Holden’s 101 hosted the Porto Potty Posse art show, in which 14 immaculate Portopotties were…
Music : All Ears
Old dudes, but still edgy Throw the four discs of Rockin’ Bones into the CD carousel the next time you throw a party, and it won’t take long to realize this isn’t the background-friendly roots rock you may have thought you bought. The switchblade-and-skull packaging of Rhino’s 1950s rockabilly collection announces that the sounds will…
Food & Drink : Shopping, eating and, yes, drinking in San Miguel
Show me a market and I’ll show you a good time. Anywhere. From rural China to flossy Florence, one of the first things I do in a new environment is visit the mercado. It gives me a more profound sense of place than any shopping street or major museum ever could. So it’s inevitable that…
Food & Drink : Quickie mart
Beer ‘N All provides true convenience and a few cheap thrills As the last gallon of gas slowly trickles into Manuel Chapa’s silver Ford Mustang, he looks back at the Exxon Tigermarket he stepped out of minutes before, and wishes he had grabbed a cold Bud Light to quench his thirst in the 96-degree San…
