Honkytonky Homeslice
A review of the String Cheese Incident spin-off’s self-titled debut album, on the day before they play Legends on Milpas.
Year: 2006
Chartreuse
There’s really nothing like Chartreuse. Find the geekiest wine and spirits lover and challenge them to identify flavors within this alluring elixir, and they’ll be stumped.
Fertile Fashion
Women Dress Better when Ovulating
Starshine takes on a recent study that tracks how females fit their fashion to meet where they are in the menstrual cycle. The UCLA study suggests that women opt for more attractive outfits near ovulation, when they are most fertile.
Deciphering the Village’s Alphabet Soup
Here’s J’Amy’s first print column in which she lays out the confusions surrounding the alphabetic mess of Montecito’s myriad land use agencies.
Opening Portals, Closing Dreams
Josef Woodard gets into online publishing, Xiu Xiu as The Hard to Find Showspace’s last show, and Fe-mail (pictured), his favorite female band from Norway.
Apartheid for the Common Man
A Chat with Phillip Noyce, Director of Catch a Fire
Director Phillip Noyce continues his recent streak of historical dramas (Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Quiet American) by exploring the true story of Patrick Chamusso, a South African oil-refinery foreman wrongly accused of sabotaging his workplace in 1980 during apartheid. Its plotline allows Noyce, who also directed Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, and Dead Calm, to apply his action-movie skills. And so Catch a Fire, which stars Derek Luke and Tim Robbins and is currently playing in Santa Barbara theaters, constantly keeps you guessing, even until the very end. I recently spoke with the director.
Expression of Protest
John Nava’s new show, Neo-Icons, has been in the news and attracted threats primarily as the result of the reproduction of one painting titled “Signing Statement Law or An Alternate Set of Procedures.” In a spirit of understanding and rational inquiry, let us spend some time actually looking at this picture. It’s a portrait, and yet it is square-a disquieting proportion for portraiture, as the figure fills only the central third of the canvas, with the background stretching out on either side like the wings of a triptych.
Who’s on 2nd
At a recent forum, the two candidates for the 2nd District seat on the Board of Supervisors squared off on the issue of who could “play better in the sandbox.” Actually, Dan Secord said he “knows how to play nicely in the sandbox,” while Janet Wolf claimed to “play well with others.” It was the only topic on which each candidate took an unambiguous stand. Neither the moderator nor anyone from the audience asked follow-up questions on this topic, but despite the electorate’s seeming indifference, the candidates themselves brought up the issue repeatedly at subsequent forums.
Marcia Tucker 1940-2006
Marcia Tucker is known internationally for organizing many significant art exhibitions and for founding the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City in 1977. She fell in love with Santa Barbara years ago when she swapped houses with Richard and Cissy Ross. She and her family spent many a summer vacationing here, and in 2005, she and her husband Dean McNeil packed up their SoHo loft and moved into a beautiful home on lower Chapala Street. Marcia, age 66, died on October 17 at home surrounded by her loved ones. Her absence is felt around the globe.
Q: ‘Wasn’t pampas grass once an important crop around here?’
For some 20 years at the end of the 19th century, the South Coast was indeed home to a major pampas grass industry. The plumes were used to decorate Victorian-era homes, the hats of Victorian-era ladies, and were put to a variety of public uses such as decoration of vehicles in parades.