News : Be all tu can be
PR pioneer Lionel Sosa writes a self-help book for Latinos Lionel Sosa was reborn at the age of 23. In 1963, at the time of his revelation, the San Antonio native was working as a sign painter for Texas Neon Sign Company on Josephine Street, making $1.10 an hour. One afternoon, a woman walked in…
Media : Special screenings
SLAB CINEMA: KING KONG VS. GODZILLA Ishiro Honda (1962) In this Japanese-language film, King Kong is captured by a pharmaceutical company and taken to Japan – home of the recently released Godzilla. King Kong escapes and the two duke it out in a battle of the titans. Outdoor screening at La Tuna Bar & Grill,…
News : Party lines
A farewell party When I came on board as a San Antonio Current staff writer in February 2003, the first thing the editor did was send me to a church service. Padre David Garcia of San Fernando Cathedral had called a group of parishioners to a noontime mass to celebrate the news that the Toyota…
Food & Drink : Flour power
A treatise on the cultural significance & uses of wheat flour The term “flour” generally refers to wheat flour, the fluffy white stuff. Nothing denotes home-cooking and domestic competence more graphically than a fine coating of flour on apron, forehead, and countertop. Even better is a thin coating on any type of meat or vegetable…
News : Counterpoint
The dog days of politics Will Hardberger make us wait all summer? Will Roger run? Get out the suntan oil and wait. When I was a child in Minnesota, I spent the summers sneaking into the neighbor’s raspberry patch, swimming in our stock-tank swimming pool, and inventing contests that ended with my brother having to…
Food & Drink : Afternoon delight
From bracing to delicate, apéritifs provide a relaxing repast Picture this: You’re sitting at a sidewalk café on the Piazza Navona in Rome, admiring the bearded men of Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain and watching the world roll by on vintage Vespas. It’s 4 o’clock and time for a refreshing drink, so what do you order?…
News : Juanita gets her SAHA house
Web Exclusive Juanita Segundo says she’s weary, but happy. On May 26, the West-Side resident bought her house from the San Antonio Housing Authority, ending a nine-month legal battle. Last October, SAHA asked Segundo to sign a lease and begin paying $550 monthly rent on her house. Segundo fought the request because, she said, she…
Food & Drink : The bar tab
Holden’s 101: by the book It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.* Actually, it was hot, too hot already for the season, but the intersection of Pereida and St. Mary’s was completely abandoned…
Feature : Public art confidential
Four critics take their notebooks on a tour of some of San Antonio’s most notable installations Under the practical title “design enhancement,” public art has become a staple of city development. The airport renovations, the new animal-care facility, the Brackenridge facelift, and library expansions, to name just a few, include art installations selected by a…
Food & Drink : All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Come one, come all to the Whole Foods Market County Fair. Leave your show hog at home, that’s not what this County Fair is all about; no sir, there’s not a single bale of hay. This is a blue-ribbon snack-a-thon in support of local farmers. Sponsored…
Arts : The © is silent
Feel like remixing Spielberg, or vice-versa? Creative Commons wants to help Chances are, you’ve heard tell of The Grey Album, the riotously popular underground “mash-up” project that barnstormed the internet in 2004, whipping up enough racket and controversy to get itself promptly served with a cease-and-desist order from London-based recording giant EMI. If you haven’t,…
Music : Idol minds
What if Pearl Jam’s new zeal for promotion intersected with America’s favorite prime-time music show? The dynamic of music as a shared experience is lost on you iPod people. TV, food, X-Box games, porn, IV needles — you manage to share the love there. But music? That’s something you use to shut humanity out. Ask…
Arts : Real pocket rockets
Air scooters could put the “rush” in rush hour With the recent legislation banning motorized scooters and carts from San Antonio’s streets and highways (direct thank-you notes to District 10 Councilman Chip Haass), what recreational vehicles can we dopamine-glutted thrillseekers play with, especially those of us who don’t own extensive acreage in the Hill Country…
Music : Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Hays commission On Saturday, June 3, Casbeers hosts the Country Giant Jamboree, a tribute to local music heavyweight Richard Hays, who passed away five years ago. Hays played a key role in bands such as the Country Giants and the Hickoids, and many of his friends will take part in…
Arts : Good ‘grief’
No one grieved quite like Mary Todd Lincoln. In the wake of her husband’s assassination, the first lady donned black garb and never again appeared in anything else. “She was not just any widow,” wrote Todd’s biographer, Jean H. Baker, “she was Abraham Lincoln’s survivor.” In his devastating new novella, Andrew Holleran embroiders this history…
Music : All Ears
Cover me Maybe the strangest idea I’ve heard in months (that didn’t somehow involve the government) is DEV2.O, a project for which Disney’s fledgling record label has recruited a group of kids to reincarnate Devo, performing the group’s greatest hits, complete with flower-pot hats. I guess it’s appropriate in a way: Devo always seemed to…
Media : That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres Jane Fonda, Jen-ince-Vaughniston-fer, and the antichrist? Let’s get to it. Down with Love and Bring it On’s Peyton Reed directs Vince Vaughn and Jennifer “Everyone Knows my Business” Aniston in The Break-Up, about a couple that splits, but remain together in the shared condo that neither is willing to…
Music : Current choice
Slaid Cleaves ‘Unsung’ heroes When singer-songwriters record covers albums, it usually means one of three things, and all of them are bad: Either they’re trying to revive a sagging career by hopping aboard a cultural trend (Rod Stewart’s Great American Songbook series), pointlessly revisiting their teen obsessions (David Bowie’s Pin-Ups) or conceding that they’re at…
Media : Game Theory
Baring it all for free speech Defying industry speculation that developers had failed to meet their launch date, Bethesda Software recently launched The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to critical acclaim. It was widely recognized as one of the best role-playing games ever created for the PC platform, and more than 1.7 million copies were sold…
Music : CD Spotlight
‘Identity’ crisis After the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? became a national phenomenon five years ago, Elvis Costello joked that the album’s producer, T Bone Burnett, could probably be elected president of the United States if he wanted to. On The True False Identity, Burnett’s first solo album in 14 years, the roots-rock…
Arts : Church of the Razorback
Comedian Matt Besser is in town. Lock up your priests and rabbis. “I’m part of the Razorback diaspora,” comedian Matt Besser tells his audiences in preparation for a night of personal-boundary violation and group-identity evisceration. The Arkansas native is the bushy-headed offspring of a lonely Little Rock Jew (the Lost Tribe comprised “maybe 2 percent”…
Arts : Home on the Range
A former New Yorker’s guide to the texas adjustment “Red and yella kill a fella. Red and black won’t hurt Jack.” – Ancient Texan Proverb The first time I saw a tarantula lollygagging on the front porch, my husband says I screamed. I dispute this. At the time, my husband was a few hundred yards…
Arts : Sebastián at work
Once thousands of people bustled up and down Hemisphere Park’s pleasant paths for the 1968 World’s Fair. Now it is something of a recreational ghost town. If it weren’t for the dependably uplifting popcorn cart in the center, filling the air with smells and the sounds of 1980s pop music, the urban park might seem…
Media : Better than (watching) sex
Audio-described films fill the gaps for the visually impaired The Full Monty, an Oscar-winning comedy about six unemployed steelworkers who form a striptease act, relies on sight gags for its punch lines. But why shouldn’t the visually impaired enjoy the characters’ pasty buttocks, knobby knees, and varying lengths of chest hair? In the audio-described version…
News : Board games
A private Christian school headmaster wins a contentious NEISD board election After 10 years on the North East Independent School Board and a stint as Bexar County chairman of the Democratic Party, Gabe Quintanilla probably thought he’d seen it all in politics. At least until April of this year, when billboards touting the attributes of…
Media : That sinking feeling
A Titanic-themed bar mitzvah sets off a battle of egos, life lessons included Director Scott Marshall’s Keeping Up with the Steins should have just been called My Big Fat Bar Mitzvah. It’s obvious from the very first scene that the filmmakers were more interested in producing a warm-and-fuzzy, family-friendly comedy about the Jewish celebration of…
News : Avoidance principle
Update on the situation at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center Anyone who attended the May 25 meeting of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center board and saw the five board members in attendance laughing and chatting with one another might have thought, for a brief moment, that all was well at the GCAC. Yet, in the…
Media : South Texas Cinema
News from the greater SA film industry Ah, summer in Cannes: The films, the stars cavorting on the beach, the air, I assume, sweeter than San Antonio’s by dint of its being French. Unfortunately, unless you’re one of those stars, directors, producers, or other notable wealthy-and-or-famous types, you have relatively little chance of experiencing it…
