Arts Push me-pull you
The tourism and hospitality industries are ready to embrace the arts, but the arts want to make sure no strings are attached During an August 15 meeting for Destination:SA, the Convention and Visitors Bureau strategic-planning process chaired by District 1 Councilman Roger Flores, Centro Cultural Aztlán Director MaLena Gonzalez-Cid and CVB Commissioner Henry Feldman had…
Music Solitary man
Neil Diamond can’t help but wonder why critics don’t bring him flowers anymore He’s been called “the Jewish Elvis.” He even considered using Eice Chary or Noah Kaminsky as get this “stage names.” More unbelievable? His real name is Neil Diamond. And he’s one of pop music’s most polarizing figures. It’s hard to argue with…
Arts Endangered species
Flight Gallery promises to make art history of works that don’t sell before the Eve of Destruction Artists who contributed work to Eve of Destruction also had to conceive violent endings for their pieces in the event they are not purchased by 11 p.m. Friday, October 7. Works of art with one foot in the…
Music Current Choice
Sacred steel – Robert Randolph slides into town with Santana and Salvador Robert Randolph Growing up in Irvington, New Jersey, a young Robert Randolph often found himself with one foot in the church and the other in the streets. Coming from a family that was deeply religious and musically inclined, Randolph spent Sunday mornings manning…
Arts Balancing novelty with knowledge
Entrepreneurs design INKA Clothes to open minds As he looked through a table filled with multicolored T-shirts in the San Antonio College courtyard, freshman biology major Joshua Garcia pointed out a dark-blue shirt with white lettering to his friend. The front read: “I’m okay. My grandma rubbed an egg on me.” “I want that shirt,”…
Food & Drink Navigating the aisles
Buying Organic, a guide to shopping organic and the best of conventional foods A Field Guide to Buying Organic, by Luddene Perry and Dan Schultz, is a ponderous resource. On the one hand, it provides a practical guide to navigating the grocery-store aisles, on the other it re-examines the philosophical arguments for organic food production,…
Arts Social intercourse
Sweating gracefully through the fall shopping, drinking, and theater season “Where’s the stinkin’ cold front?!” This is what I was thinking last Wednesday as I traversed a steamy block’s walk between the parking lot and Yokonyu Sushi on Houston Street on my way to the Charbay Vodka tasting. As regular readers know, vodka is my…
Music Genius finds company
John Scofield’s tribute to Ray Charles represents the best example of the form Tribute albums are tricky. At worst, they can be an insincere attempt to cash in on another’s achievements: a mish-mash of opportunistic egos imposing their own voices on someone else’s artistic statement, or a collection of gimmicky musical devices that do nothing…
Arts History-onics
Comedy Central regular Jade Esteban Estrada returns to San Antonio this week with the second installment in his rainbow-colored-glasses revision, ICONS: The Lesbian and Gay History of the World, Vol. 2, 8 p.m. Saturday, October 8, at the Bonham Exchange. Tickets are $15 at the door, $12 for students and seniors, $10 in advance. More…
Music CD Spotlight
Fire escape Contrary to what the press has been trying to tell you this past month, Nickel Creek’s third outing Why Should the Fire Die? is not the equivalent of the Second Coming for alternative country. Produced by Eric Valentine (Queens of the Stone Age, Good Charlotte), it doesn’t rock either. Nevertheless, it kicks much…
Arts In the round
News and notes from San Antonio’s theater scene Autumn in the movie biz is traditionally the time for risky, high-quality fare. In theater, not so much. September, the beginning of the new season, brings safe stagings that follow established audience preferences. Here, that means lots of old chestnuts, popular revivals, and musicals. Starting in November…
Music Floor show
Local H To most rock listeners, Local H is simply the band that brought the word “copacetic” to the radio airwaves, via the gratingly catchy 1996 hit “Bound For The Floor.” But loyalists who’ve followed this Illinois power-duo over the last decade value its capacity for sardonic social commentary and willingness to let rip with…
Screens A binky for a big boy
Thumbsucker’s main character can’t find a way to cope with adolescence that makes everyone else happy Stories about awkward teens rarely give their protagonists quirks that are very embarrassing in the eyes of an audience. It’s one thing to make a character odd in ways that his parents or teachers don’t understand, and something else…
Music Sound and the Fury
A week on the scene Ill movimientos Latino eclectics Bombasta and Sexto Sol are uniting for a highly unusual double-bill at Sam’s Burger Joint on Saturday, October 8. Eschewing the conventional approach of having an opening band followed by a headliner, the two bands will share the stage for the entire night, with rotating lineups…
Screens Double standards
A video made to criticize Bush’s handling of Katrina comes under fire from an unlikely source It’s Friday, October 29, 2005. At the website address from which 40,000 copies of “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People,” a music video comprised entirely of sampled clips, was downloaded, a stark, lonely message fills the left half…
Screens Sticky like Houston in July
The history of pop’s most cloying art form, told in film, music, and memorabilia Bubblegum music gets its name from the inherently sugary, bubbly quality of its youth-oriented confections. But the name is fitting for another, unintended reason: Year after year, this form of music stubbornly sticks to the bottom of pop-culture’s shoe, earning derision…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Whose screen you calling small?’ As I sit down to write this, well over half of Amazon.com’s 100 bestselling DVDs are TV-show releases. A week ago, it was more like three quarters. This astounds me. Even factoring in one plausible explanation online retailers offer steeper discounts on big-ticket items such as complete-season box sets, making…
News Up against a stonewall
Amnesty International report critiques cops’ handling of LGBT community Editor’s Note: As a matter of disclosure, Amnesty International referred to several Current articles in the Stonewalled report. A white, transgendered woman reportedly worked for a motel where her shift ended at 3 a.m. In four or five instances, San Antonio police reportedly stopped her on…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres From stiletto pumps to ankle-strap heels to rhinestone sandals, In Her Shoes opens up the well-stocked closet of straight-arrow lawyer Rose Feller (Toni Collette) and introduces us to her wild sister Maggie (Cameron Diaz) who Rose can’t control. After a fight, Maggie searches for her estranged grandmother (Shirley MacLaine)…
News Out of jail and at a loss
Life on the outside is even tougher on women “If you are an offender, you might as well take your degree and stick it in the toilet,” says Sherron Scott, one of more than 600,000 people who will be released from state and federal prisons this year. When former inmates are released many are unprepared…
Screens Special screenings
La Tragedia de Macario Dir. Pablo Véliz (2005) In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, KLRN-TV will broadcast La Tragedia de Macario, the tale of a Mexican immigrant who is trapped with a wagon-load of undocumented workers when the “coyote” they’ve paid to smuggle them across the border abandons his passengers. Filmed and produced in San…
News Party lines
Toll roads and lizard tails It’s idle entertainment, but there’s a website that allows you to sign up to have a new vocabulary word sent to you via e-mail once a day. File this one under “did you know there was a word for it?” “Autotomy is nature’s gift to some animals to help them…
Food & Drink Got hive, got honey, need bees
Beeman’s Wine Spirits Gourmet is a great concept, but will it fly? The gulf between Leon Springs’ laid-back barbecue joints and dance halls on one side of I-10 and its suburban shopping center sibling on the other just got a little wider with the opening of Beeman’s Wine Spirits Gourmet, a finely finished palace of…
News Do not separate
League of Cities summit focuses on families who’ve endured disasters Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans and other locales along the Gulf Coast highlighted the need for communities to safeguard the elderly, children, and families, especially those who live in poverty. So said numerous citizens who converged last week in San Antonio to attend a…
Food & Drink A vice redeemed is a vice ruined
Don’t ruin coffee-lovers fun with good news Recent reports that coffee is chock-full of antioxidants came across exactly as one would expect: in the form of a gentle scolding. That a cup of joe contains 10 times more antioxidants than a banana “does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables,” warned the…
News Speed reads
ACCD bond forum A community forum about the upcoming Alamo Community College District bond election is scheduled for Tuesday, October 11, at 6 p.m. at San Antonio College’s Visual Arts & Technology Building, Room 120. Early voting for the bond election runs from October 24 to November 4. Election Day is November 8. The bond…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online news politics culture News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Gin, vermouth, and nail polish Does your work make you bite your nails to the quick? Then you need a drink and a manicure. On Thursday, October 6, The V Bar is unveiling Martinis and Manicures, in which manicurists from Versi…
Feature Old memories of the new deal
San Antonian James Garner talks about the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that helped families, including his own, survive the Depression At Garner State Park north of Uvalde, cypress trees arch over the Frio River, which on this febrile late summer day cools a swimmer’s bones to the marrow. Nearby hills swaddle the campground…
