Save Yourself!!!
If you are concerned about the state of media, lack of media, or just plain old bad, commercial-sponsored mediummy in San Antonio (not mentioning any names here), this is a forum you can not afford to miss. (And if you’re not worried, you may want to start your awakening with Common Cause or just read…
First Friday + McNay reopening = an art lovers dream weekend
We also checked out the opening of the McNay Stieren Center grand opening. However, we failed to capture the rollercoaster-like bus ride from Alamo Heights high school to the museum. It was bumpy but the journey did lead us to an amazing site. We regret we didn’t capture any interior shots of the museum, but…
Acorn to the rescue
An unprecedented economy in the 1990s led to a booming housing market that helped many people to achieve their home-ownership dreams. A darker side has emerged from this story however, as unwise lending and borrowing has led to foreclosures in record-setting numbers. More than a million homeowners in the U.S. are in foreclosure `edit, 6/11`,…
Save Yourself!!!
If you are concerned about the state of media, lack of media, or just plain old bad, commercial-sponsored mediummy in San Antonio (not mentioning any names here), this is a forum you can not afford to miss. (And if you’re not worried, you may want to start your awakening with Common Cause or just read…
First Friday + McNay reopening = an art lovers dream weekend
We also checked out the opening of the McNay Stieren Center grand opening. However, we failed to capture the rollercoaster-like bus ride from Alamo Heights high school to the museum. It was bumpy but the journey did lead us to an amazing site. We regret we didn’t capture any interior shots of the museum, but…
Acorn to the rescue
An unprecedented economy in the 1990s led to a booming housing market that helped many people to achieve their home-ownership dreams. A darker side has emerged from this story however, as unwise lending and borrowing has led to foreclosures in record-setting numbers. More than a million homeowners in the U.S. are in foreclosure `edit, 6/11`,…
On the Street
Letters to the On the Street Penthouse Suite #1 Critical First came this letter in regard to the cover story last week called Why We Ride… Mark, Great article! Tammy Busby’s story is especially motivating and I’m glad people like her are featured. Loved the first 3 paragraphs: great characterization of the scene. Do…
On the Street
Letters to the On the Street Penthouse Suite #1 Critical First came this letter in regard to the cover story last week called Why We Ride… Mark, Great article! Tammy Busby’s story is especially motivating and I’m glad people like her are featured. Loved the first 3 paragraphs: great characterization of the scene. Do you…
Our Lady of the Lake Benefit
Release Date: 2008-06-04 The fire that destroyed Our Lady of the Lake University’s main building has struck a chord with many San Antonians. Despite their losses, OLLU has proven they’re determined to rebuild and the community is rallying around them. The Southwest School of Art & Craft hosts a literary event to benefit OLLU’s English…
Bob Schneider w. The Gougers
Release Date: 2008-06-04 Bob Schneider hits the road in support of his new album, When The Sun Breaks Down on the Moon, an entirely self-made project that epitomizes DIY. His live performances comfortably fuse anthemic rock songs with bluegrass, R & B, country, and funk-inspired beats, and he’s gained a reputation for being a tireless…
Girl in a Coma, Sons of Sancho, & Pop Pistol
Release Date: 2008-06-04 Girl in a Coma team up with Local 782-San Antonio Music Coalition members for a fundraiser and drummer Phanie’s birthday celebration. The much acclaimed trio continue their support for other up-and-coming artists by headlining this rare indie garage-rock lineup, with all proceeds from the door benefiting Local 782 in its effort to…
McNay Art Museum Stieren Center Grand Opening Celebration
Release Date: 2008-06-04 The McNay celebrates the new Stieren center and the re-opening of the renovated main-collection galleries with weekend festivities, including a ribbon cutting, tours, hands-on children’s art activities, food booths, and live music. Small World performs in a Saturday-evening concert on the lawn. Free, 10am-10pm Saturday, noon-5pm Sunday, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N.…
Hurt w. Course of Nature
Release Date: 2008-06-04 Hurt is hardly a typical band, the distinct classical influence in their singular sound courtesy of vocalist J. Loren’s obsession with writers and stringed instruments. The quartet’s second Capitol album, Vol. II, furthers their dramatic art-metal meld, and a steady stream of fan requests has kept their video “Ten Ton Brick” at…
Adam Carroll CD Release w. Aaron Einhaus
Release Date: 2008-06-04 If you take the concept of a “garage band” literally, the small collective heard on Adam Carroll’s new album, Old Town Rock N Roll, certainly fits the bill. The San Marcos-based singer-songwriter recorded the disc in the garage of his friend and co-producer Mark Jungers. No one will confuse the resulting sound…
Johnny Gets Sick
Release Date: 2008-06-04 What’s not to love in a play about a witch doctor — that’s the idea behind Johnny Gets Sick, a show written by John Poole and directed by Kathleen Lovejoy playing at the Overtime Theater. In this satire, no one in the medical community is safe from ridicule. Johnny Jose attempts to…
Family Day
Release Date: 2008-06-04 The Friends of Government Canyon are known for their passionate environmental advocacy and this Saturday they’re hosting an eco-friendly event for children. Bird-watching, outdoor games, and storytelling are on the agenda, while plenty of kid-friendly programming teaches families ways to get out, protect, and enjoy the great outdoors. $6 adult entry fee,…
Plays Well With Others
Release Date: 2008-06-04 What’s not to love in a play about a witch doctor — that’s the idea behind Johnny Gets Sick, a show written by John Poole and directed by Kathleen Lovejoy playing at the Overtime Theater. In this satire, no one in the medical community is safe from ridicule. Johnny Jose attempts to…
The Carriage House earns its Bistro tag
Release Date: 2008-06-04 Even sticklers for contextualism will have to agree that dismantling the old Sullivan Carriage House and moving it stone-by-stone from its original location on Broadway to the San Antonio Botanical Center was a good idea. Here, it has a new and useful life as the gateway to the Center’s gardens. It looks…
A tale of two Mexicans
Sangre de Mi Sangre Director: Christopher Zalla Screenwriter: Christopher Zalla Cast: Jesus Ochoa, Armando Hernandez Release Date: 2008-06-04 Website: http://www.ifcfilms.com/viewFilm.htm?filmId=576 Rated: NOT RATED Genre: Drama While Woody Allen, the cinematic bard of Manhattan, was off shooting in London and Barcelona, New York City served as Hollywood’s favorite movie set. It now seems obligatory to begin…
Martial arts’ bear necessities
Kung Fu Panda Director: John Stevenson, Mark Osborne Screenwriter: John Stevenson, Mark Osborne Cast: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Seth Rogen Release Date: 2008-06-04 Website: http://www.kungfupanda.com/ Rated: PG Genre: Animation If you love martial-arts movies, particularly the Shaw Brothers productions of the 1960s and ’70s, you’ll probably smirk through most of Kung Fu Panda,…
ARTIFACTS
We’ve opted to forgo our First Friday preview to devote our pages to extensive coverage of the new McNay wing and some San Anto dance news (page 26). But that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about our favorite monthly art walk. In fact, we’re pretty excited about Veiled in Flesh, Julia Barbosa Landois’s newest work, opening…
Playback
One of these days, someone will write a psychoanalytical college thesis about Prince’s choice of cover songs. The tiny funkster might be the most important musician of his generation, but when he decides to interpret outside material, the results span the wide gulf between sublime and “What the fuck?” Over the years, he’s tackled Joan…
Dance umbrella seeks rainmaker
“I miss the hyperactivity of Dance Month,” S. T. Shimi said over coffee at Lazarus café near the end of May — whose 31 days have been dedicated to music-based movement since 1999. Jump-Start Performance Company Artistic Director and performance artist S.T. Shimi has been a fixture in the dance community since the mid-’90s, when…
Get ‘Lost?’
I’m done theorizing about Lost. Gone are the days when I thought the Oceanic passengers were in purgatory or that the whole plot was unfolding in the mind of Hurley. Gone, too, is the search for anagrams and the analyzing of strange warbles on the musical score (one of which occurred when Sun and Jin…
Over yawn-der
“You can pretty much bet all you own that I would never leave another voicemail message for my daughter that wasn’t just like something out of a Rodgers and Hammerstein score,” actor Alec Baldwin declared on 60 Minutes in response to a question about his political aspirations, referencing the scandal that ensued over a leaked…
CRITICAL Darling
Some actors you just can’t replace with other actors to signify passage of time. That whole Ewan McGregor = young Albert Finney thing in Big Fish is like a miracle. (Two more, and Burton’s up for sainthood.) I guess Meryl Streep’s lucky she has a twin-beaked successor in Mamie Gummer, or Evening would have been…
Dear Uncle Mat
Is it too much to ask that you clean up after your dog(s)? Keep your dog poop off my yard? When I first moved to Texas I was super-excited that Austin was so doggie-friendly. But more than that I loved that folks picked up after those amazing four-legged creatures that warm our hearts and give…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Since authoring the book Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, Penelope Trunk has written a blog that offers further advice. Recently she wrote about a subject I’d love for you to think about: mentors. You’re in a phase when you have a heightened knack for identifying and attracting and learning…
A space colony in Wisconsin
Every year in late May, several thousand people descend on Madison, Wisconsin, to create an alternate universe. Some of them want to build a galaxy-size civilization packed with humans and aliens who build massive halo worlds orbiting stars. Others are obsessed with what they’ll do when all of humanity is left to survive the barren…
Beware of chicken
Jessica Blanks knew something terrible had happened when she walked into her garage and saw a pile of chicken feathers on the ground. When she went over to check on the flock she and her husband Neil recently ordered, she quickly grabbed the phone and called a veterinarian: Her Golden Campine hen, Kitty Cat, had…
Battle of the bones
The tiny cranial fragments appear as frail as eggshell. A child’s lower jaw, clutches of rib bones, and a few vertebrae sit in plastic baggies. Each group is marked, stained by time, or possibly, cigarette smoke. More than 70 years ago, as archeology came out of its infancy, these bones – and many more like…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: First, it was the Native Americans, then it was the blacks, then the Japanese. For a while, Muslims. Now, I fear that American prejudice will soon overwhelm Mexicans. It’s one thing to get called a dirty Jap or border hopper, but tell me: Is it possible that America will cause another ethnic group…
Don’t ask. Don’t tell.
Signed, sealed, delivered This week’s journalistic peregrinations confirm that you might disappear an entire building in the right paperwork. A lobbyist here, an outgoing director there, and ala-kazaam! Another lot cleared for a strip center, a Walgreen’s — maybe a nail salon and shoeshine for the employees of American Payroll Institute, aka the current owners…
Clothes-minded
What is that fan-shaped leaf we’re seeing everywhere these days, from clothing to furniture to jewelry? According to Wikipedia, the ginkgo plant is a living fossil, dating back more than 270 million years. An important symbol in Buddhism and Confucianism, the ginkgo is primarily grown in China, Korea, and Japan, but has also been adapted…
Devil in a blue suit?
His hairline is receding, follicle fading brought on by a combination of age and stress. His designer shirt, jeans, and shoes — not to mention fashionable black-rim glasses — suggest a man who understands the importance of appearance, knowledge derived from years in the image-driven public-relations industry. He sips water and lime from a mojito-style…
Nuke Texas, Please
Yesterday, San Antonio’s City-owned CPS Energy, local automotive mongrel Red McCombs, and Illinois polluter Excelon Energy established “Nuclear Energy for Texans,” a private-public partnership built to lobby taxpayers, voters, and lawmakers for a nuclear-powered future. The collection of business interests (and former Guv Lite Bill Ratliffe) along with San Antonio’s recently spanked utility, fresh from…
Ask the Chef …
Food and agriculture issues might not make the headlines very often in a presidential race, but they affect everything from health to the economy, and touch on a lot of ethical, environmental, energy, and other issues along the way. That’s why I’ve been trying for weeks to reach the three remaining presidential candidates for some…
THE LITTLE VINEYARD THAT COULD
On a brisk spring morning, the vines at Red Caboose Winery are speckled with tiny buds. Amid downy leaves no bigger than a fingertip, miniature grape clusters drink in the sun. Gary McKibben regards them with pride. They are living proof that his vision for a sustainable winery is becoming a reality. That, and they’ll…
Remembering Rudy
A late-night email last week reminded me not to take even those most irregular of constants for granted. Rudy Williams, a Liberty Bar staff fixture until last year, died suddenly May 28, just a week after we published news of his rogue hamburger-stand venture during Spurs home games (much as it’s tempting, we won’t lay…
Nuke Texas, Please
Yesterday, San Antonio’s City-owned CPS Energy, local automotive mongrel Red McCombs, and Illinois polluter Excelon Energy established “Nuclear Energy for Texans,” a private-public partnership built to lobby taxpayers, voters, and lawmakers for a nuclear-powered future. The collection of business interests (and former Guv Lite Bill Ratliffe) along with San Antonio’s recently spanked utility, fresh from…
THE BEST OF OMNIBOIRE
Each month, Current food and wine critic Ron Bechtol assembles a wine-tasting panel composed of a chef or restaurant pro, a professional wine rep (sommelier, buyer, what have you), and a passionate amateur oenophile. Together they sample representatives of a wine category (country, region, grape, trend), ranking them according to taste, appearance, finish, price, label,…
Out with the old
Monday’s demolition of the old Jorrie Furniture Building at 131 San Pedro took the city’s historic-preservation watchdogs by surprise. Defeat on this scale, as in the case of the recently flattened downtown Walgreens, usually follows a protracted fight, marked by dramatic appeals to San Antonio’s sentimental citizens. But this time, the property’s (temporary) owners, the…
Remembering Rudy
A late-night email last week reminded me not to take even those most irregular of constants for granted. Rudy Williams, a Liberty Bar staff fixture until last year, died suddenly May 28, just a week after we published news of his rogue hamburger-stand venture during Spurs home games (much as it’s tempting, we won’t lay…
CHARLATAN CRITICS, GULLIBLE CONSUMERS
The wine blogosphere was collectively agog in May over the release of a new book, The Wine Trials, purporting to prove that wine consumers are easily duped by hype. Five hundred volunteers sampled and rated 540 wines for author Robert Goldstein, and among the results was this shocker: A Washington state sparkler costing around $10…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Watermelons are suddenly everywhere: market, grocery store, barbecues, half-consumed in the back of your refrigerator. I’m not really a fan of plain-ol’ watermelon, but as I tell my kids every time they turn up their noses at cauliflower or anchovies (or cauliflower and anchovies … ), for every food you think you dislike, there’s a…
SUMMER LOVIN’
OK, now, don’t go getting cocky. Just because you have graduated from thinking that white wine equals chardonnay to admitting that there is a place in the world for sauvignon blanc — and, if you have been especially precocious, pinot grigio (deduct points if it’s only Santa Margherita, however) — doesn’t mean there aren’t more…
Taking the long way
Some artists are crafted by outside forces, while others wind upward, vine-like, working their way slowly into the light, supported by the traditions that came before them. Rootsy singer-songwriter Jason Eady chose vine over product after being cured of his musical disillusionment by such artists as Steve Earle, John Prine, and Townes Van Zandt. Though…
Visual revolution
Latin American Posters: Public Aesthetics and Mass Politics, on view at the Museo Alameda through June 29, is a dynamic assortment of works on paper, dating from the mid-20th century to the present, featuring an enlightening visual review of Latin-American political history during a time of major change and controversy. In 1983, Eduardo Munoz…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Rock radio station 99.5 KISS extended a hand to local music this week, unveiling an extension of their popular program Texas Traxx, a midnight broadcast airing every Monday that highlights local and national rock from Texas. In addition to the weekly broadcast, jock Randy Bonillas and KISS will host a live version of Texas Traxx…
Bright light, big city
René Barilleaux, the McNay’s curator of art after 1945, was still addressing the Joan Mitchell paintings, but I was being pulled around the corner by a memory from the day before: An enormous, raw-looking canvas filled with narrow yellow leaves falling in loose regiments from top to bottom, glowing in the new Stieren wing’s natural…
Taking a punch from The Judy’s
Younger attendees at this year’s SXSW awards show may have been puzzled at the anticipation surrounding an appearance by The Judy’s. Who are these guys from Pearland, a Houston suburb that rhymes with Squareland (for good reason)? Now they, and those of us who couldn’t catch the reunion, can find out what the fuss was…
Pretty Pictures!
I know what you’re thinking: “What is that video playing in the nether regions of the Screens page?” (Oh, you don’t go there? That’s cool. Whatever. I’m not deeply hurt.) Well, this week it’s a super-swell trailer from SA’s Machina Cinema. Film’s called Jacob, and I just received word it’ll be playing the San Antonio…
Pretty Pictures!
I know what you’re thinking: “What is that video playing in the nether regions of the Screens page?” (Oh, you don’t go there? That’s cool. Whatever. I’m not deeply hurt.) Well, this week it’s a super-swell trailer from SA’s Machina Cinema. Film’s called Jacob, and I just received word it’ll be playing the San Antonio…
