This fare is phat
Jasmin Thai is a party for your palate
FRONT AND CENTER
Wesley Clark How should candidates court the swing vote? A new book about baseball is all the rage. Called Moneyball, it’s the story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane who built a winning record on one of the league’s smallest annual budgets. Professional baseball is primarily run on inaccurate assumptions grounded in conventional…
AMBASSADOR FLACO
Flaco Jimenez returns to his roots as the self-proclaimed Squeeze Box King in his self-produced album – a first for him – of the same name, playing polkitas, cumbias, and waltzes with the traditional combination of accordion-bass-drum that has accompanied him for more than a half century. I’ve always considered Jimenez, as someone who…
SOUND AND THE FURY
a week on the scene KILLER QUEENS The Little Killers, who inspired the infamous garage label Crypt Records to cough up their first release of a new act in more than five years, come to town on Friday, October 3 to headline a show at Taco Land. The New York-based power trio rivals other classic…
SETTING SA ON FIRE
The Blazers (Courtesy photo) Being a Chicano roots-rock band from East Los Angeles is a little like being the next-to-last Son of Krypton: As far as much of the world is concerned, the job is already taken. Of course it’s unfair that the Blazers have to stand in the shadow of Los Lobos; unfair…
State Of The Art Comics
Jaime Hernandez’ Dicks and Deedees follows the adventures of the female protagonists from the Love and Rockets series. Talent explodes outside the superhero mainstream, despite economic challenges Early this summer, serious fans of alternative comics may have noticed some dire e-mail messages in their inboxes, heartfelt pleas for cash that had nothing to do…
ALL EARS
COMEBACKS AND SWITCHEROOS Have you heard? Lyle Lovett, long rumored to be finished with that whole songwriting thing for good, has finally thrown his perfectly blocked cowboy hat back in the ring. His My Baby Don’t Tolerate (Curb/Lost Highway), fresh on record store shelves this week, is distinguished by a splash of orange across the…
Planet Vortex Sutra
Cristina Benavides’ Pearblossom Highway, 24 x 17 inches, piezo pigment print, 2003. (Courtesy photo) Observing ‘The Unobserved’ at Gallery Sol y Sombra Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Witchita Vortex Sutra,” part of the epic The Fall of America, illuminates the spirit behind curator Chuck Ramirez’ vision for the unobserved, on view at Sol y Sombra through…
ARTIFACTS
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene On Saturday, October 4, the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center (922 San Pedro, 228-0201) will host representatives of the Jolom Mayaetik (Mayan Women Weavers) Chiapas Weaving Cooperative. Their beautiful, intricate artesania serves as their source of income, especially during times of economic hardship. As a collective…
THE BEST THE BORDER HAS TO OFFER
‘Puro Border’ anthology humanizes the beauty of la frontera It is a two-and-a-half-hour drive on I-35 from downtown San Antonio to the bustling, expansive sister cities Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. Tack on another hour or so to get to the Lower Rio Grande Valley; plan to spend all day in the car if you’re…
LOST AND FOUND
Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson contemplate their futures in Lost in Translation. (Courtesy photo) Ships pass in the night in Sofia Coppola’s gorgeous sophomore film Bill Murray, once Hollywood’s goofiest leading man, is on a roll. Although he has made serious films for many years – neither he nor Robin Williams just woke up…
NEW REVIEWS
The Rock and Seann William Scott co-star in The Rundown. (Courtesy photo) The Rundown Dir. Peter Berg; writ. R.J. Stewart and James Vanderbilt; feat. The Rock, Seann William Scott, Rosario Dawson, Christopher Walken, Ewen Bremner (PG-13) Fans of World Wrestling Entertainment are going to go weak in the delts over The Rundown, a WWE…
Armchair Cinephile
SNEAKING AROUND THE CENSORS Scarface (Universal) Sea of Love (Universal) Billy Wilder Collection (MGM) Irreversible (Lions Gate) There’s Something More About Mary (20th Century Fox) The big DVD news this week, obviously, is a little Cuban refugee with an ego as huge as the state he is named for: Al Pacino’s Tony Montana, the…
RECENT REVIEWS
American Splendor Dir. Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini; writ. Berman, Pulcini, Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner; feat. Paul Giamatti, Hope Davis, James Urbaniak, Earl Billings, Judah Friedlander, Pekar, Brabner (R) Early on, the filmmakers capture the precise vibe of some of comic illustrator Harvey Pekar’s best-known scenes. But Berman and Pulcini aren’t only interested in dramatizing…
BREAKING THE CHAIN
Fleetwood Mac: Soldiering on without Christine McVie. (Courtesy photo) The four-piece Fleetwood Mac can’t quite locate its group chemistry What accounts for the enduring interest in Fleetwood Mac, nearly 30 years after their relatively brief heyday? When you think about it, the five-piece band lineup that practically owned FM radio in the second half…
CLASSIC WYNTON
Wynton Marsalis: self-appointed curator of classic jazz. (Courtesy photo) Wynton Marsalis outlasts critics with his dogged devotion to traditional jazz The career of jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis reads like a novel. Fortunately for jazz fans, its plot complications have fostered one of the most impressive bodies of work since the early ’60s. Marsalis’ versatility,…
MERRY CHRISTMAS, YOUR JOB IS OVER
No more American jeans: The 150-year-old Levi Strauss company is relocating its factories abroad. (Photo by Mark Greenberg) Levi Strauss workers latest casualty of free trade Last week, a short article in a local newspaper reported that a man had threatened to hang himself from I-10 by tying himself to his car and jumping…
BANDA ON THE RUN
Banda El Recodo (Courtesy photo) Along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border region, accordion-based conjunto, norteño and Tejano rules the airwaves and serves as a reminder of the cultural cross-pollination that resulted when the early German settlers first introduced their button-row squeeze boxes to the area. During their westward trek across the continent, those…
