Pooling your assets
The only things South Texas summers are good for are dehydration and soul-sucking poverty. The sun robs you first, pick-pocketing your pores and leaving a trail of damp-backed T-shirts in its wake. The wallet goes either to curiously water-obsessed Germans with penchants for extreme tubing and slippery roads, inept tubes of filth next to I-10,…
Letters to the Editor
ON THE COVER It’s cold, sweet, free, and it won’t melt all over the interior of your car. Take the Current’s Summer Guide to your favorite pool, a breezy outdoor patio, or to the bookstore for a pre-beach buying spree (shopping list, page 18). Plus, our staff recommends live music, film festivals, and summer family…
Putting the ‘mock’ in democracy
A dreadlocked Christina Marrs sang but played no instruments when she met musician Guy Forsyth at a coffee shop in Austin. In 1994, the pair met Wammo (one name), and a raucous hootenanny on the banks of the Llano birthed the Asylum Street Spankers. Marrs, “the soul of the band,” executive producer, musical director, and…
AT&T: Your world, preempted
From the Editor Free speech, like most fundamental rights, doesn’t do so well under a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy — hard as that may be for a transplanted Texan like AT&T to accept. Last week, the San Antonio-based telecom giant announced that it will partner with Hollywood entertainment companies to stop piracy —…
Same Obamadrama, different day
One of our Queque contributors piqued the Hardest Hating Writer in the River City (Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, revive your Las True Stories from San Antonio blog! The Queque compels you) by comparing two of SA’s young black politicos to Barack Obama and deriding an Eastside scion (“Our City Council graduating class” June 13-19). C’mon Babs,…
How to sell Tundra from Texas
The Alamo sells many things. The souvenir tchotchkes marketed in the gift shop of the famous mission include bluebonnet earrings, Texas flag cuff links, coonskin caps, jellybeans, and a wooden Davy Crockett nutcracker. Elsewhere, the Alamo also sells a gas-guzzling Japanese truck. A full-page ad in the May 28 edition of The New Yorker, the…
A Winterbottom’s tale
Michael Winterbottom is one of the most innovative directors working today, and, though not a household name in the U.S., many Americans are probably familiar with his films Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) and the much-vaunted 24 Hour Party People (2002). Welcome to Sarajevo is perhaps his best-known work, as it is…
The Almighty sequel is greener, preachier than its forebear
Evan Almighty Dir. Tom Shadyac, writ. Steve Oedekerk, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow.; feat. Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, Molly Shannon, Wanda Sykes, John Michael Higgins, Jonah Hill (PG) Attention all comedy-hungry atheists: The time has come, once again, to suspend your disbelief (at least on a superficial level) and accept God —…
Motel Hell
1408 Dir. Mikael Håfström, writ. Matt Greenberg, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Stephen King (short story); feat. John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Mary McCormack, Jasmine Jessica Anthony (R) Big-screen Stephen King adaptations haven’t been too hot of late. Flicks like Hearts in Atlantis, Dreamcatcher, and The Secret Window have done nothing but contribute to the increase…
The kings of summer
Your time here in San Antonio’s summer insectary will be spent in close proximity to every Roger Corman B-horror bug imaginable. You’ll see neurotic and resilient ants; scorpions, if you’re in one of the northern land-gobbling developments upturning new angry earth and poison stingers; and, as Matthew 26:11 said, omnipresent mosquitos that we will have…
Summer’s in the bag
Sad to say, but there’s not much room for fashion with San Antonio’s unforgiving summer heat. Now that we’re hitting our 90-degree stride, I can predict an endless variation on tank tops, cool cotton skirts and shorts all the way through October. Even a chunky resin bracelet feels oppressive. But there is one item that…
Lessons from the armpit
OK, San Antonio. We need to have a chat. Summer’s here, and sure, it feels like ol’ Apollo’s cranked up the dimmer switch. You’ve started carrying around hankerchiefs to mop the perspiration mustaches off your upper lips, and many of you, in defiance of all fashion logic, have traded your slacks for above-the-knees shorts. I…
30 for the journey
I became a reader during the summer of 1989. Every day, as the temperature climbed toward 100, I would clamber onto my parents’ roof outside Sacramento with a towel and sunblock and a book. From up there, the sleepy, suburban streets of our neighborhood took on a strange diorama quality. Gradually, as I adjusted to…
Summer red
So, OK, it’s summer: Rush right out and buy red wine. I’m not kidding. There are plenty of light-bodied reds on the market, and with just a little chilling, you’ll be happy to have them with burgers from the grill, fish such as tuna and salmon, even cold chicken on the patio or alongside a…
Outdoor summer dining
The trees are crisp and bright and the flowers are blooming a rainbow of colors around us. Ahh summer. It’s finally here – but so is the heat wave. We all know how vile the high temperatures in our beloved city can be, and just the mere thought of having a meal outdoors is enough…
