Arts Early art milestones
Top: “Tighty” multiples by J. Derrick Durham Bottom: a print by Paula Cox Milestones and dressing like a patient Art SA continues its campaign to become the gallery for early-career San Antonio artists with Milestones, an exhibit featuring seminal work by each of the participants, Paula Cox, Donna Simon, Thomas Cummins, Justin Schneider, Gary Wise,…
Music CD Spotlight
Horrow show HorrorPops lead singer Patricia Day is pretty much what you’d get if Dr. Moreau cloned Gwen Stefani, cut her genes with a possessed Joan Jett, and then gave her a pair of monster-sized testicles. Consequently, her vocals are like messing around with the hot tattooed chick propping up the bar — it feels…
Arts Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene A Texas Turner Houston artist Eileen Maxson is the recipient of the first biannual Arthouse Texas Prize, which includes a $30,000 purse — not a Turner Prize, perhaps, but big league nonetheless. The winner was announced at a November 4 gala honoring Maxson and her fellow…
Music Rock of aged
Paul Simon once suggested that the problem with most rock artists is that they stop progressing fairly early in their careers. While great pop songwriters such as Cole Porter or Irving Berlin managed to maintain a high standard for decades, Simon argued, rock’s greatest figures peaked by the time they hit their late 20s and…
Screens Paradise lost
Hany Abu-Assad wants to know what makes suicide bombers tick “The most horrible thing about these stories is there is an action everyone looks to, but you don’t know anything about beforehand. Nothing,” writer-director Hany Abu-Assad says of suicide bombers, the subject of his new film, Paradise Now. “This is why we make movies. We…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Some guitarists are bigger than others We all know that Morrissey fans are a highly committed bunch, so they probably don’t need me to tell them that Boz Boorer has been The Magnificent Morose One’s guitarist and musical right-hand man (his latter-day Johnny Marr, if you must) since 1991. Along…
Screens More Brontë than Austen
A man with a good fortune seeks romantic strife in the latest Pride and Prejudice “I wish I could read more, but there always seem so many other things to do,” complains the giddiest of the five Bennet sisters, in 1797, before TV, CDs, and the internet offered further diversions. Two centuries later, it is…
Screens From a master of the genre …
A glassful of beer will help the schlock go down when Alamo screens this ’80s travesty How does one explain the cult of John Carpenter? Big Trouble in Little China is — despite the fact that it seems to be much beloved among those in a certain age bracket — certainly not the first piece…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Catching up with Criterion The Criterion Collection is always a film buff’s friend, putting out lavish (if expensive) editions of worthwhile titles. Their release strategies can be eccentric, though: They’ll release uncontroversial masterpieces such as Seven Samurai for a stretch, then suddenly swerve into a run of quirky diversions (a compilation of Beastie Boys videos,…
News Party lines
Tritium: breakfast of salamanders Former San Antonio Water System attorney Russell Johnson cautioned City Council last week about the potential legal pitfalls associated with attempts to reverse developers’ grandfathered rights over the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. Although Johnson said he has “no dog in this fight,” he debated Austin attorney Doug Young during a “B”…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres This week, fall into a burning ring of fire as Academy Award-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix (Gladiator) portrays legendary Country & Western and rock ’n’ roll king Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. The film follows the life of the man in black as he journeys from a cotton farm…
News Ballot blues
Voter arrested for ‘causing disturbance’ A funny thing happened to Lorenzo Tijerina on the way to the voting booth. Well, maybe not so funny. At approximately 8 a.m. on Tuesday, November 8, Tijerina went to his polling site at Ruiz Elementary School, 1111 S. Navidad, to vote. According to Tijerina, who posted his story at…
Screens Special screenings
Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price Dir. Robert Greenwald (2005) Compiled from footage from three continents, Greenwald’s documentary chronicles small-town businesses and minimum-wage workers as they fight to keep their communities Wal-Mart free. The film, which also features interviews with former Wal-Mart managers, will have its San Antonio premiere at 7 p.m. Thursday, November…
News Briefs
A torture survivor’s memories Carlos Mauricio, a former El Salvador professor who was abducted and tortured by Salvadoran death squads 22 years ago, remembers not only his own broken bones but also the suffering of others. “What has been very difficult to deal with is the memories of other people being tortured,” he said at…
Food & Drink Order up!
Straightforward food and simple pricing make this Lincoln Heights restaurant a low-stress hit Cries of “Order up!” from the kitchen punctuate the chatter of soccer moms on cell phones (and the giggles of rug rats on teething rings) at Orderup, a clean, well-lighted, and very cleverly conceived restaurant in the Lincoln Heights shopping center. Quasi-corporate…
News Fallen through the cracks
Because of a financial snafu, Juanita Segundo could lose her home to the San Antonio Housing Authority Visiting Juanita Segundo’s house, the first thing one notices is a tall wooden cross, painted white and hung with miniature Christmas lights, planted in the lawn. Three times a week, the Segundos hold church services for friends and…
Food & Drink Dinner belle
The Food Network’s Sara Moulton is never too busy to cook the family meal Thirty-five minutes total prep time? Impossible, I thought as I set out to make John’s Stuffed Chicken Marsala. Surprisingly, the butter-browned, fontina and prosciutto stuffed breasts were on the table in 30 … with a little help from my husband. What…
News Speed reads
A big spill at Kelly More than 45,000 gallons of chlorinated solvents were spilled at the former Kelly Air Force Base last month, contaminating areas outside and inside the groundwater treatment plant. According to an Air Force document presented at a Kelly Air Force Base Restoration meeting, at 11 p.m. on October 5, an ultraviolet…
Arts Social intercourse
Web Exclusive Models bare their, um, souls to Cavalli and families that tipple together stay together This is unquestionably one of the busiest times of the year. In addition to family activities and holiday celebrations, it is peak party season. So, let’s not waste any more ink and get right to it. The event still…
Feature Smith and western
San Antonio’s seminal cow-punk finds sobriety, launches a label, and adjusts to life without Taco Land Jeff Smith was 14 years old when the Sex Pistols came to town. Smith, then a student at Texas Military Institute, was already an avid follower of the nascent British punk-rock revolution. He and his older brother Barry, a…
Food & Drink Stuck on you
Handle the cactus with care, but relish the flavor Cactus seems like the kind of food one discovers under duress. Modern-day ranchers use “pear burners,” a sort of blowtorch on steroids, to scorch the spines off prickly pear cacti so the cattle can munch without multiple piercings. But if you have to approach the task…
Arts New space, same standards
Triangle Project Space relocates with Threat Zone “The triangle has been squared,” sounds like spy code from a Cold War-era movie. That we even think that way, imagining potential danger and intrigue around every corner, is the subject of Threat Zone, the ribbon-cutting show in Triangle Project Space’s new digs, south and west of Southtown.…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online news politics culture News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Turkish Delight Turquoise Turkish Grill, 11220 Perrin Beitel, has opened a Turkish market next to the restaurant. The new market sells an array of imported Turkish foods: spices, coffee, canned goods — stuffed grape leaves and cabbage, pickled peppers, and marinated…
Arts Group dynamics
Sodalitas Art Group masters the tricky business of collaboration There’s a basic assumption in Western culture that artistic creativity is generally the province of a single person’s imagination (the most common exceptions being granted to songwriting teams and filmmaking partnerships). But this summer, one of the most exciting artists in the Austin Museum of Art’s…
Sports Skate scuffle
Roller-derby league debut brings plenty of glitz and hits While approaching The Rollercade on a Sunday night, the last thing I expected to see was a line snaking out the door, through the parking lot, and around the corner, with minimal parking to be found. I soon discovered that the Alamo City Rollergirls attract a…
Arts The right word
Author H.G. Carrillo found his writer’s voice in Spanglish ¡Vamos! ¡Vamos now, goddamnit!” Fr. Rodriguez yells in response to the tragedy that begins H.G. Carrillo’s Loosing My Espanish. The priest’s resort to the familiar and expedient mirrors the Cuban-American author’s relationship with language: He wants to say precisely what he means, and sometimes “abuelo” is…
Music War correspondents
4th 25 offers a hip-hop diary of a harrowing year in Iraq Hip-hop is one of the few outlets in pop culture where you can still tell the unvarnished truth. Many of its most famous performers cowardly decline to take advantage of this opportunity, but for a group of American soldiers deployed in Iraq, hip-hop…
Arts The politics of Bakersfield
Country & Western is red and blue, not that you’d know it by listening to Nashville You’ve heard it before: Music and politics don’t mix. It’s derived from a similar piece of banality about partisan celebrities. Yes, it’s true that a three-minute single, no matter how catchy, doesn’t bestow credibility to discourse on the nuances…
Music All ears
Rocking the British Isles My vote for most compelling weird rock sound of the month is the guttural consonant-fest of Yr Atal Genhedlaeth (Rough Trade), an adventurous half-hour pop disc by Gruff Rhys, better known as one of the Super Furry Animals. The lyrics are exclusively in Welsh, and those of us with limited exposure…
