BREAKING BOUNDARIES
The spring of 2002 was a good one for Denny Mathis: The Texas Steel Guitar Association inducted the San Antonio legend into its Hall of Fame, an honor Mathis earned by spending the past 40 years in honky tonks and dance halls, lighting up audiences with the neon magic of his steel guitar. Now, at…
DIAL TONES
Telephones are just weird. To make a call, you “dial” a number, but phones have been push button, not rotary, for a good while; and back then, when phones were rotary, it cost more to make long distance calls than it does today. You never hear old people say, “I remember when it used to…
BEAT HAPPENING
If you pick up Beat Happening’s seven-disc Crashing Through (K Records) box set, expect more than the conventional career-spanning dog-and-pony show. The collection includes the group’s full-length albums — Beat Happening (1985), Jamboree (1988), Black Candy (1989), Dreamy (1991), and You Turn Me On (1992) — as well as numerous singles and compilation cuts. But…
SPOOOOON!
Allow me to extend a cordial invitation for you to check out the new release from the Austin rock ensemble Spoon. It’s called Kill the Moonlight, it’s from Merge Records, and it — go buy this record right now and play it really loud. Oops. Spoon is a hard band to pin down. I admit…
THE PESADILLA OF ERNESTO ZEDILLO
When Ernesto Zedillo checks into the San Antonio DoubleTree hotel to deliver a speech at a Trinity University Policy Maker breakfast on October 4 (university insiders figure it’s a $20,000 payday for the ex-Mexican president), it will probably be as close as he wants to get to the neighbor nation he ruled between 1994 and…
RADICAL ISLAM TAKES ROOT IN CHIAPAS
In a volatile corner of southern Mexico, history is being turned on its head. Muslims settlers from Spain are running a madrassa — or traditional Koranic school — on the outskirts of a pretty colonial town in the state of Chiapas, where they are determined to bring renegade Maya Indians to Allah. There are whispers…
DEATH IN CHIAPAS
The shooting started as Antonio Mejia and his wife, Maria Gutiérrez Sánchez, an indigenous couple living in the jungle community of K’an Akil, Chiapas, were working their corn field near their home on August 25. Armed members of Los Aguilares paramilitary group opened fire with AK-47 rifles and shotguns, killing Antonio. Maria managed to hide…
NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: AN INTERESTING ELECTION
That may be more important to political reporters than to the voters, because one painful axiom of politics – especially in Texas – is that what’s good for journalism is not necessarily good for the country. The electorate numbers – that is, those people who are not only of election age, but registered and vote…
PRIMITIVE POTS FROM PAQUIME
With no written language, their history has long since been lost, but the record of their passing is recorded in the potsherds, found by thousands, in Paquime, the windswept archaeological site of their former home. The people who inhabited Paquime were known by the size of their collective dwelling: Paquime means “big houses” in the…
KEEP A LOW PROFILE
Since its inception, the Low and Slow show has grown hundred fold in entries and attendance and has helped bridge the public’s gap between the myth and reality of a worthy tradition. Boasting a roster of over 200 custom cars and trucks, this years cheeky display of mechanized creativity is sure to tickle your inner…
LITERATE CHILLS, BOMBASTIC THRILLS
Two of his films hit the theater: One, the quiet, eerie Devil’s Backbone, was set during the Spanish Civil War; it was extremely well-received by critics, drawing favorable comparisons to moody hits such as The Others and The Sixth Sense. The second, the vampire gore-fest Blade II, set somewhere in the inner reaches of a…
SWEET HOME ALABAMA
Though only a few of the characters in Sweet Home Alabama don military uniforms and participate in battlefield reenactments, the entire movie is still engaged in Civil War hostilities. Melanie Carmichael (Witherspoon) is a Dixie chick who conquers New York with needles rather than swords, by becoming a fabulously successful fashion designer. She has the…
Armchair Cinephile
It’s impossible for me — and for most of my friends, I’ll wager — to watch Grease (Paramount) with anything like an objective eye. While I didn’t see the film when it came out, I lived with the soundtrack. (Along with the Star Wars soundtrack, it was among my first record purchases.) I can tell…
DEFT JUXTAPOSITION
There is hip-hop that is trite and easy to listen to, and then there is hip-hop that matters. The first is simple to identify: Just turn on the radio and wait for the next P Diddy remix to air. The second type, however, is often hard to find, relegated to the bottom of rap’s desultory…
