Music : Current choice
Stray cat blues In 1985, when rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins taped a cable-television special celebrating his career, most of his backing musicians were middle-aged British rockers who’d spent their pimply teen years listening to Perkins’ music on BBC radio in the ’50s: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, Dave Edmunds, etc. One of the few…
Arts : Redeeming Northrup
The Urban Geographer – charting architecture, design, and liveablilty You really have to credit Kell-Muñoz for getting back to the drafting table after associating with Robert A. M. Stern, the lead architect on Trinity’s less-than-spectacular Northrup Administration Building. They’ve returned to the campus to redesign the Ruth Taylor Fine Arts Center, using in-house talent this…
Music : CD Spotlight
Shining Starr There’s a great photo of Garrison Starr inside Sound of You and Me. Barely made-up, with short hair and the hint of a raised eyebrow, it’s revealing, like a snapshot of a long-lost friend. This is me, it suggests. This is how I’m feeling right now. That’s the sense of Sound, too, Starr’s…
Arts : The art capades
Up-and-coming artists put their own stamp on traditional media There were a ton of openings on May’s First Friday — so many that I’ve decided to spotlight some up-and-coming artists as they emerged on the scene, and give you a rundown of how they put their stamp on traditional media. Enrique Martinez’s Funny Little People…
Arts : TeatroFEST ain’t over ‘til the Pain of the Macho
DECK2 San Antonio’s TeatroFEST is a city-wide celebration honoring the Latino voice in American theater. Founded by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in 2005, the festival has grown into a six-week theater joyride that unveils the talented and diverse Latino theatrical community. The FEST commences on May 26 with Anna in the Tropics, which portrays…
Arts : But enough about me
Sociologists ask why self-esteem and being special aren’t making youth happier “I am an American, Chicago-born,” announced the narrator of Saul Bellow’s classic 1953 novel The Adventures of Augie March. If that book were published today, Augie might also utter Stuart Smalley’s immortal line: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me!”…
News : Feast or famine
Hunger and overeating coexist in the city Pronouncements declaring which American cities are the “fattest” have become a semi-annual feature of local television news broadcasts, metro/region headlines, and stand-up comedy routines. No less a publication than Men’s Fitness releases a list every year, and in 2005 ranked San Antonio the tenth-fattest, up six places from…
Media : The Passion of Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code: crap or fiction? Here’s the thing: As a kid, I never did like that game “Follow the Leader.” Somehow this anti-lemming attitude followed me into adulthood, which is probably why I’ve always gravitated toward punk rock. This and this alone kept me away from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, despite…
News : Party lines
Stinky is as stinky does “Politically, no one could defeat Mayor (Phil) Hardberger if he elects to run again in ’07. If, for personal reasons, he decides not to run … that would be a real loss for the City,” wrote public relations consultant T.J. Connolly last week as Hardberger was coping with the death…
Media : Not all that ‘Kinky’
These Boots were made for smilin’, but you’ve seen this style before Millions. Billy Elliot. Calendar Girls. Love, Actually. Truth be told, I’m getting a trifle sick of all these heartfelt, rife-with-whimsy British imports that hop the pond, plant a kung-fu grip on good, honest, red-blooded American heartstrings, and yank like a bull moose on…
News : King of beasts — for now
Craig Bestrup fills in, but Animal Care Services needs a permanent director The City Manager has yet to appoint a new director for Animal Care Services after the retirement of former director Sam Sanchez became official at the beginning of this month. City Manager Sheryl Sculley hired Craig Brestrup to fill in as an interim…
Media : Stories of the ’hood are mine
Ya’Ke Smith is on his way to Cannes, but he carries SA with him It’s a muggy evening in the Alamo City and filmmaker Ya’Ke Smith has returned to his alma-mater, the University of Incarnate Word, to screen his award-winning short film Hope’s War. Running at about 12-and-a-half minutes, Hope’s War tells the story of…
News : Begging your padrón
HOT summer funds? Not for everyone … Florence had the Medicis; San Antonio’s got the OCA. With the May 19 application deadline just around the corner and revamped guidelines in place, both the estimated 40-some local nonprofits and creative outfits in search of arts and cultural funding and the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs, which…
Media : Game theory
Sexual politics goes digital Last week, in his annual address to the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, the president of the Electronic Software Association (ESA) celebrated the importance of video games. Arguing that “video games are the rock-and-roll music for the digital generation,” Doug Lowenstein proposed that “Halo and The Sims and Zelda are…
News : Accidental monuments
A building permit is more than just a green light Baltimore’s inner harbor is under construction. Across the water from my hotel, future Ritz-Carlton residences are announced with a mammoth banner. To the north, I can glimpse fresh red brick and shiny windows behind black scaffolding on a phalanx of new offices. Nearby, in a…
Food & Drink : When life hands you zucchini …
If you don’t like the veggie, try its flower I don’t grow zucchini in my garden. I like zucchini, but there’s always a surplus in summertime, and everyone and their neighbor with a garden wants to give them away. Nobody has ever tried to give me a kabocha squash. That’s why I planted a big…
Feature Natural-law school
Seventy-five years after its creation, Concept Therapy remains a little-understood road map to higher consciousness When Mary Smith met Graydon Smales in suburban Detroit in the mid-1960s, it was virtually love at first sight. Smith worked as a county switchboard operator, Smales attended Wayne State University, and the two met through a mutual friend who…
Food & Drink : Delicious Delicious
Taco Taco’s pillowy potatoes and house-made tortillas As a second-semester college senior, I find that breakfast tacos are one of the prime components in my life’s food pyramid. (Coffee is down there at the bottom holding everything up, where whole-wheat bread and rice should be.) It doesn’t help that Taco Taco Café is within walking…
Culture : The mudlark sings
Doug Gilmour finds treasure nearly everywhere he walks Once upon a clear evening, Thales, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, was led from his home by an elderly woman who invited him to observe the stars. Gazing up at the night sky, the philosopher forgot to mind his footing and fell into a ditch. In agony, he…
Food & Drink : The proof is in the prueba
The exotic — and tasty — abounds in The New Spanish Table “Yum, yum, yum,” opined Anya von Bremzen as she put the finishing touches on Carmelita’s Green Salad with Apricots and Hazelnuts. “Always put fruit in salad; it’s my secret. You want the `crisp` texture of a vegetable (nothing “squooshy-mooshy”) but the taste of…
Food & Drink : All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene SA’s RK Group catering has launched a new service: Rosemary Delivers. The company’s tangerine-colored trucks are zipping around the city delivering breakfast, lunch, and dinner as we speak. How about herb-crusted beef tenderloin on a bed of mixed field greens topped with pickled red onion, bleu…
Music : Skeletal Key
José Rubén De León pays tribute to AgustÍn Lara with a spare, haunting new collection When José Rubén De León began constructing a show dedicated to the life and music of Agustín Lara, he decided to go to the source. Lara’s romantic ballads have been covered by everyone from Placido Domingo to Nat King Cole,…
Music : The sound and the fury
A week on the scene SA debut Kris Kimura is a rare jazz player with vocal ability to match his instrumental skills. Kimura, leader of the Austin-based Kris Kimura Quartet, is a saxophonist first and foremost, but his smooth, young-Chet-Baker-tenor — heard on pop standards such as “It Had To Be You” and “Let’s Fall…
Music : All ears
I can see her roots Jolie Holland waited a couple of years to follow up her lovely Escondida, but Springtime Can Kill You (Anti) is well worth the wait. The former Be Good Tanyas member still delights in twisting, swallowing, and all but gargling her evidently self-created version of a Southern accent; it’s an affectation…
