Perkometer
It’s a soap. No way around that. But what the gathering at Perky’s place last week proved is that many believe it’s a soap with ramifications beyond this single abode. While the neighborhood is by no means unanimous as to the city leaving the former minister and self-taught artist’s home untumbled (prostitutes, they decry. In…
Perkometer
It’s a soap. No way around that. But what the gathering at Perky’s place last week proved is that many believe it’s a soap with ramifications beyond this single abode. While the neighborhood is by no means unanimous as to the city leaving the former minister and self-taught artist’s home untumbled (prostitutes, they decry. In…
Death Pause
It’s been six months since any prisoner in the United States was executed. The Big Pause is the anticipated Supreme Court ruling regarding lethal injection: does the deadly cocktail of sodium pentothal (an anesthetic), pancuronium bromide (body paralyzer), and potassium chloride (heart stopper) represent cruel and unusual punishment? However, in the past decade public sentiment…
On the Street
On the Street High Culture, Low Culture, and No Culture all co-existing uneasilly in another installment of On the Street. As always, read at your own risk… Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) Perhaps at some time later an OTS historian can more clearly look back and make sense of all that comes…
Death Pause
It’s been six months since any prisoner in the United States was executed. The Big Pause is the anticipated Supreme Court ruling regarding lethal injection: does the deadly cocktail of sodium pentothal (an anesthetic), pancuronium bromide (body paralyzer), and potassium chloride (heart stopper) represent cruel and unusual punishment? However, in the past decade public sentiment…
On the Street
On the Street High Culture, Low Culture, and No Culture all co-existing uneasilly in another installment of On the Street. As always, read at your own risk… Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) Perhaps at some time later an OTS historian can more clearly look back and make sense of all that comes…
Visitor tax: clarification
A discerning reader wrote the Current this week regarding last week’s cover story, “Welcome to San Antonio.” The story, about hospitality and car-rental industry concerns over extending the venue tax that paid for the AT&T Center in order to build and refurbish a host of new projects, from amateur-sports facilities to a performing-arts center, reported…
Ball’s in City’s court … house
If negotiations proceed as expected, the Law West (and South) of the Guadalupe will give way to the Feds — in one key downtown location. The U.S. General Services Administration announced yesterday that its first choice for a new federal courthouse is the SAPD headquarters at Nueva and Santa Rosa. Last May, the Feds floated…
If it sounds too good
Um, about that press release… and map. Yeah, I thought I’d knock that blog out and pick up the peices later. Well, here we with the peices. First of all, I used an old TxDOT map. You’ll see that is now adjusted to show the Trans-Texas Corridor’s current proposed distance from Alamo City. Second: Just…
CineMujer preview, pt. 2
Regrettably, I’ve experienced some difficulty getting my screener copy of the documentary Enemies of Happiness by Eva Mulvad and Anja Al-Erhayem to work properly. Thought it might just not want to play on my office computer, so I took it home this afternoon and experienced the same irreversible freeze-up. Hopefully I can make it over…
Visitor tax: clarification
A discerning reader wrote the Current this week regarding last week’s cover story, “Welcome to San Antonio.” The story, about hospitality and car-rental industry concerns over extending the venue tax that paid for the AT&T Center in order to build and refurbish a host of new projects, from amateur-sports facilities to a performing-arts center, reported…
Ball’s in City’s court … house
If negotiations proceed as expected, the Law West (and South) of the Guadalupe will give way to the Feds — in one key downtown location. The U.S. General Services Administration announced yesterday that its first choice for a new federal courthouse is the SAPD headquarters at Nueva and Santa Rosa. Last May, the Feds floated…
If it sounds too good
Um, about that press release… and map. Yeah, I thought I’d knock that blog out and pick up the peices later. Well, here we with the peices. First of all, I used an old TxDOT map. You’ll see that is now adjusted to show the Trans-Texas Corridor’s current proposed distance from Alamo City. Second: Just…
CineMujer preview, pt. 2
Regrettably, I’ve experienced some difficulty getting my screener copy of the documentary Enemies of Happiness by Eva Mulvad and Anja Al-Erhayem to work properly. Thought it might just not want to play on my office computer, so I took it home this afternoon and experienced the same irreversible freeze-up. Hopefully I can make it over…
Holy snapper!
Our critic kneels before the Lighthouse’s upscale comfort food
Flawless
Flawless Director: Michael Radford Screenwriter: Michael Radford Cast: Demi Moore, Michael Caine Release Date: 2008-04-02 Website: http://www.flawlessfilm.com/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Suspense/Thriller It’s a pity that even escapist genre fiction stoops to having a message these days. Take director Michael Radford’s Flawless: Roughly 101 minutes of this sleek and stylish 105-minute thriller offers a solid, unfussy…
Married Life
Married Life Director: Ira Sachs Screenwriter: Ira Sachs Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Rachel McAdams Release Date: 2008-04-02 Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/marriedlife/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Drama It always pains me to use the word tandem “chamber drama,” but there you have it. Married Life is one of those. Set in the ’40s. Based on a…
Consolers of the Lonely
Consolers of the Lonely Composer: The Raconteurs Conductor: The Raconteurs Label: Warner Bros. Release Date: 2008-04-02 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock You can imagine Jack White striding into the offices of Warner Bros. Music with the just-completed, top-secret master of The Raconteurs’ newest album and politely demanding that it…
Fighting for Life
Fighting for Life Director: Terry Sanders Screenwriter: Terry Sanders Release Date: 2008-04-02 Website: http://www.fightingforlifethemovie.com/ Rated: NOT RATED Genre: Documentary You can imagine Jack White striding into the offices of Warner Bros. Music with the just-completed, top-secret master of The Raconteurs’ newest album and politely demanding that it be released as soon as possible. Anybody else…
La Conquistadora
La Conquistadora Composer: The Krayolas Conductor: The Krayolas Label: Box Records Release Date: 2008-04-02 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Power pop Krayolas frontman Hector Saldaña likes to say that when his band formed in the mid-’70s, they were always the youngest guys in the bar, and now they’re the oldest. That…
The Unforseen
Release Date: 2008-04-02 The fight between industrial developers and environmentalists continues and is hitting closer to home. A Sundance Festival favorite, The Unforseen documents the clash between developers and environmentalists over the Barton Springs in Austin, which shines a bit of light on San Antonio’s current conflict over our primary source of drinking water, the…
Cowboy Mouth w. Structure
Release Date: 2008-04-02 For 15 years, New Orleans natives Cowboy Mouth have preached and shouted at the top of their lungs to screaming fans from around the world. With eight albums that have collectively sold more than 450,000 units, a live DVD, and the release of their new single “Kelly Ripa” they’re not slowing down,…
Taste of Chaos w. Avenged Sevenfold, Atreyu, Bullet For My Valentine, Blessthefall & more
Release Date: 2008-04-02 Rock Star energy drink brings together technical geniuses Avenged Sevenfold, Orange County rockers Atreyu, metal heads Bullet For My Valentine, and more. Like its summer sibling Vans Warped Tour, Taste of Chaos is getting bigger and louder, offering fans a chance to play the latest video games, attend autograph signing sessions, and…
Boxcar Satan: 15th Anniversary Show w. Chapstick
Release Date: 2008-04-02 Time flies when you’re in the bowels of Hades. How else to explain the fact that Boxcar Satan, SA’s best (only?) purveyors of savage, demon-chasing, avant-garde punk-blues, are celebrating their 15th birthday this week? Over their lengthy career, Boxcar Satan has honored the spirit of both Captain Beefheart’s eccentric blues and the…
The Density of Life
Release Date: 2008-04-02 Austin artist Brian Johnson made the trek to San Antonio for his exhibition The Density of Life, which features a collection of comic book-inspired pieces that delve into the inner thoughts of the characters featured in Johnson’s prints. His artist statement is unlike any other I’ve read before, wherein he reminiscences about…
The Big Dance
Release Date: 2008-04-02 Music and basketball collide at AT&T and NCAA’s four-day, celebrity-filled block party of basketball, music, and mayhem. Don’t miss headliner Kid Rock, funk stylings by The Roots (above), and alt-country favorite Bob Schneider. It’s also your second chance this week to see alt-metal group Flyleaf in San Antonio. The World’s Largest Pep Rally features…
Flyleaf, Drowning Pool, Cult To Follow, & Black Tide
Release Date: 2008-04-02 The weather is looking up and so are spring concerts, if you’re a fan of hard rock and outdoor venues. Gear up for an evening of metal as Flyleaf, Drowning Pool, Black Tide, and Cult to Follow combine for a brutal dose of headbanging fun. The interesting bill, dubbed the “Cuatro Cuatro”…
National Poetry Month
Release Date: 2008-04-02 As Robert Frost so eloquently put it, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” Well, you won’t get lost with the events that the local poetry community is putting together this year. From OLLU’s literary festival coming to a close this week to a teen poetry jam being held at the Guadalupe Cultural…
Ms. Southtown 2008
Release Date: 2008-04-02 The infamous all-gender pageant hits Southtown, beckoning to fearless contestants interested in becoming King William’s next beauty queen. There’ll be bands, beer, and an endless dose of glamour — Robert Tatum designer T-shirts will be up for grabs and adult-movie goddess Ms. Paige Turner decides who gets the honor of waving to…
Accommodations and reclamations
Jasmyne Graybill’s new sculptures, on view at UTSA Satellite Space this month in Domestication, are, like their inspiration, unexpectedly successful symbiotic relationships. Disco-blue and acid-yellow Sculpey-clay organisms bloom like mildew and fungi on modern artifacts: a muffin tin, a razor, a mailbox. An uprooted metal pole, one end encased in cement, is covered in safety-orange…
Nuclear genie’s cash jolt
It’s a gift: Hard numbers on CPS’s proposal to add two more nuclear plants to its electric-generating assembly. But it’s not coming from the City-owned utility. CPS isn’t sharing its cost estimates with the public. However, an internationally respected energy expert contracted by an Austin-based non-profit rounded up his best figures for the two proposed…
Trans-Texas Corridor Derailed?
Don’t be a sheep. Terri Hall of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) said the march on Austin against the Trans-Texas Corridor will continue despite recent announcements saying the mammoth transportation project eating up more land than Michael Chertoff was on the ropes. Hall says she won’t believe it until laws start being repealed…
Dear Uncle Mat
I’ve recently met this wonderful guy and I’m really happy with him. I’ve never felt like this before, but the sad thing is he’s in Mexico right now with his family finishing up school. I don’t know if he’s gonna move here or what. There are times where I miss him so much, and then…
Gum the Blackberry and touch the solar-powered monkey
Sun volts You say alternative power solutions aren’t as captivating as alternative lifestyles? Until you can shag your way to illumination, you’ll have to deal with it. The good news is, it likely won’t be long before you’ll be able to capture the kinetic energy of your bedsprings — or van springs or trainer cuffs…
CineMujer preview, pt. 1
If you’ve heard of the T Don Hutto detention facility but don’t know much about it, tomorrow night’s a great night to get enlightened at the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center’s CineMujer Film Festival. At 7:00 pm they will screen Hutto: America’s Family Prison, a pithy 17-minute, bilingual overview of the facility’s history, the controversy…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the film Fight Club, the character played by Brad Pitt storms into a convenience store with a gun, then herds the clerk out back and threatens to execute him. While the poor man quivers in terror, Pitt asks him questions about himself, extracting the confession that he had once wanted…
Build it, and they will happily pay for it
When the 75th Legislature passed the venue tax law in 1997, then Representative Leticia Van de Putte was in charge of defending the car-rental portion of the bill at the podium — a duty that turned into more than eight hours of fighting off amendments. One she championed, however, was extending the taxing authority to…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers: Belated April Fools, amigos! So many of you fell for my hoax of a farewell column last week (don’t any of you know that the feast day of St. Melito falls on April 1?) that I’m compelled to actually call it quits just to bask in your love and hate anew. But I…
Celluloid treatment
“What film would that be?” was Graciela Sanchez’s response when Palo Alto college professors Belinda Román and Mariana Ornelas approached her about screening a single film at Esperanza Peace & Justice Center, where Sanchez is executive director, in honor of Women’s History Month in 2005. And just like that, the CineMujer film festival was born.…
Clothes-minded
The violetinis were flowing at the opening of new ’09 boutique The Violet Hour last week, causing this journalist to fear a bit for the gorgeous, expensive frocks. Shoppers packed in to get a preview of new lines exclusive to the store, including celeb-favorite Karen Zambos Vintage Couture and Sex and the City designer Mara…
CRITICAL Darling
Your life, interpreted by Tilda Swinton and Thomas Jay Ryan — and all you had to do is become a suspected bio-terrorist! No, it’s not some The Game-like birthday present you can order from the Sundance Channel, it’s the concept of Lynn Hershman-Leeson’s latest film, Strange Culture. The film follows the story of Steve Kurtz,…
Cockrell, Iacocca, & Don Carlo
Sterlin Holmesly has been helping plan this year’s anniversary mayhem at HemisFair Park as a member of the HemisFair Committee Anniversary Board. The local writer spent 34 years in various rolling chairs and editing positions at the San Antonio Express-News, before retiring to tackle his own projects, writing, among other things, the book HemisFair ’68…
A Place where women were acknowledged
The San Antonio Woman’s Pavilion was built to showcase women’s worldly contributions to the crowds at HemisFair ’68. Some 40 years after its construction, the landmark sits vacant in HemisFair Park, its clean, horizontal lines and ceramic light fixtures emitting the faintest echo of its groundbreaking past. Today, several well-respected local women leaders have come…
English is dead
By the time English truly is a dominant language on the planet, it will no longer be English. Instead, say a group of linguists interviewed in a recent article by Michael Erard in New Scientist, the language will fragment into many mutually unintelligible dialects. Still, some underlying documents will supply the grammatical glue for these…
The Institue of whose cultures?
The Institue of whose cultures? This month, a special Institute of Texan Cultures exhibit titled HemisFair 1968: San Antonio’s Introduction to the World will commemorate San Antonio’s international coming-out party, complete with complimentary admission for its April 6 unveiling. That’s all well and good, but it raises a serious question: What’s next for the 40-year-old…
Street Kings
Streeet Kings Wednesday, April 9th 7:30pm at Santikos Silverado 11505 W. Loop 1604@Bandera Rd We are out of passes for this screening
HemisFair 40th Anniversary Celebration
The City celebrates HemisFair’s legacy Sunday, April 6 — 40 years to the day the Fair opened — with a tribute to some of the original players, including, ah, Coca-Cola, a sponsor of the 1968 San Antonio World’s Fair. The tribute, which will take place on the fairgrounds at 200 S. Alamo, will roll right…
Trans-Texas Corridor Derailed?
Don’t be a sheep. Terri Hall of Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) said the march on Austin against the Trans-Texas Corridor will continue despite recent announcements saying the mammoth transportation project eating up more land than Michael Chertoff was on the ropes. Hall says she won’t believe it until laws start being repealed…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Hometown bias probably plays a part when I say our local finalist for peta2’s Cutest Vegetarian Alive contest is by far the coolest of the bunch, with her manga-smooth two-tone ’doo. Smithson Valley High senior Kelly Anderson, who loves Green restaurant and recommends vegweb.com for recipes, went vegetarian and eventually vegan after she wrote a…
CineMujer preview, pt. 1
If you’ve heard of the T Don Hutto detention facility but don’t know much about it, tomorrow night’s a great night to get enlightened at the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center’s CineMujer Film Festival. At 7:00 pm they will screen Hutto: America’s Family Prison, a pithy 17-minute, bilingual overview of the facility’s history, the…
A drink worth the drive: TX Hill Country WFF
This is what I would do if I were you. (Oh, right, topic: The Texas Hill Country Wine & Food Festival.) The veteran Austin event has evolved from its early years, when it seemed that it was Dean Fearing, Robert del Grande, and Stephen Pyles over and over again, into a constantly changing, consistently hip…
Heavy metal cowboy
Fans of local metal-core group Brotherhood might be surpised to learn that frontman Rod Nichols didn’t spend his high-school years honing his stage skills. Instead of rock clubs, the Churchill alum’s venue of choice was the rodeo, and he devoted his teen years to competing as a semi-pro bullrider, achieving local-phenom status by the time…
First Friday preview
Last month, as a few friends and I strolled down South Alamo, we found ourselves starving, cold, and in need of some kind of shelter. It wasn’t quite Into the Wild, but you get my drift — when, lo and behold, we found ourselves in the alley behind Blue Star Art Gallery where a kid…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Once you get over the odd fact that March Madness actually culminates in the first week of April, the notion of SA hosting the Final Four is pretty awesome. Rabid partisans will surely spend this weekend debating the relative skills of UCLA super frosh Kevin Love and Memphis senior powerhouse Joey Dorsey, leaving the rest…
ARTIFACTS
The end has come for the monthly Hometown Artists’ Rodeo at the Cove. Ken Little hangs up his bedazzled cowboy shirts and boot scoots his way to a life without manning the monthly talent show (don’t fret though, Little will still be involved with his band Rodeo Ho Ho). On April 8, Ken and the…
Mambo father
The passing of Israel López “Cachao,” the great Cuban bassist, composer, and bandleader who passed away in Miami on March 22 at age 89 from kidney complications, was well reported by the Spanish media. But his funeral, which took place Wednesday, March 26, at Little Havana’s St. Michaels Church, was overshadowed (at least on Spanish-language…
Hallowed be thy hat
Remember back in 1998, when you were unabashedly watching VH1 Divas, and Aretha Franklin announced she was going to take the audience to church? Well, in an alternate universe where she’s still the queen but not quite so spotlight-selfish, she would’ve gladly traded Carey, Dion, and Twain for Crowns’ vocally scrumptious cast to comprise her…
CDs Nuts
The Odd Couple Gnarls Barkley (Atlantic) There’s no “Crazy Part 2” here, but Gnarls Barkley’s sophomore album is more rewarding than the debut. The peppy pity party “Charity Case,” the sunny ode to congenital sightlessness “Blind Mary,” and “Surprise,” a song about mortality’s inevitability sung over what sounds like an old Mamas and the Papas…
