Mikhail Gorbachev sings in the solar choir
You know, he actually looks a lot like my dad… Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Gorby has an idea about the sun. And a pretty good one, too. We’re all wound up, the ranks of the working press â?? lights, cameras, notepads, and an arrogant wire-service man in argyle socks â?? waiting. We’re waiting to hear the…
CPS and climate politics: By the numbers
CPS has spent $91,000 fighting global warming solutions Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com As Washington strains under the weight of industry and environmental lobbyists seeking to influence the outcome of what would be our first national climate bill, CPS Energy has been quietly working the angles on Capitol Hill to keep the coal power the city has…
Mayoral Candidates discussing the arts!
I’m thinking we should all go to this.
Cat Lady sues San Anto
Here inspecting a cat trap used to catch feral cats after a 2007 City raid on her home-based shelter, D’Ann Trethan is now suing for damages related to the raid. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com It’s been a while since staff here feasted on “the cat lady’s” cake. Dear D’Ann Trethan has been understandably enamored with the…
SAPD pot raid kills dog, nets all of ten pounds
Greg M. Schwartz gschwartz@sacurrent.com Don Nichols was standing in front of his house on the 100 block of Glorietta Street on the near East Side Wednesday night (March 25) about to unload some groceries from his car when he was taken aback by an SAPD tactical response unit that arrived to serve a no-knock narcotic…
Live & Local preview: Heather Go Psycho
Pack your Xanex, cause tonight (Friday, March 27) we’re heading to the Ortiz Ballroom to watch Heather Go Psycho, the self-billed “all-girl punk/rock band.” They’re currently one female bassist shy of supporting that claim, and are using stand-ins until they find one. I’ve yet to see a show at the Ortiz Ballroom (5139 West Ave.),…
Chaléwood No. 1: Gonzalo Menendez
Gonzalo Menendez — 12 Rounds By Kiko Martinez paperboy5456@yahoo.com It only took Cuban actor Gonzalo Menendez one viewing of Arthur Miller’s Tony Award-winning play All My Sons while in college to decide he wanted to become an actor. After studying at Florida State University, Menendez moved to Los Angeles in 1995 where he’s been jumping…
Chris Forbrich: The Gene Elder “Chartreuse Couch” interview
Gene Elder at the HAPPY Foundation archives, photo by Justin Parr. Chris Forbrich photo by Chuck Kerr Intro Note by Sarah Fisch: Gene Elder is a conceptual artist and the archivist at the HAPPY Foundation. His interview series, “View of Reality From a Chartreuse Couch”, has featured various art-world figures and has run in Voices…
SXSW For Free: Day 4, Saturday, March 21
Sixth Street gets hit by South By Southwest 2009 Fatigue set in by the time Saturday rolled around. I woke up tired and no amount of Red Bull would do me justice. My legs ached and my head was fuzzy from too many loud shows in such a brief amount of time. I missed most…
The Commander Strikes Again
By Gilbert Garcia Let’s be diplomatic about this: Michael Idrogo is a slightly eccentric mayoral candidate. We gave the Navy veteran the benefit of the doubt when he insisted that this year’s election ballot show his name as “Michael ‘Commander’ Idrogo.” The red flags started going off, however, when his website indicated that, as mayor,…
Eesti Buroo Correspondent Mahaffy
A Letter from Estonia Karen Mahaffy is a San Antonio artist, an instructor at Palo Alto College, and the recipient (twice, mind you!), of a Fulbright travel grant. â?¦Y’all ever heard of this place, “Estonia”? I barely had, but that’s where Karen is now. Whilst there, Karen is having some amazing thoughts, making some very…
Candidate questionnaire: Chris Forbrich, District 1
Beginning March 4, the Current emailed the following questionnaire to all candidates who filed by March 9 for the May 2009 municipal elections. As responses begin to roll in, we will post them in their unedited entirety here on QueBlog. Excerpts will appear in the April 1 print edition of the Current. if you’re a…
The Healy-Murphy bid: Parks & Rec board says no
If you’ve been following the Current’s coverage of the Healy-Murphy Park sale, you already probably already know that the sole bidder for the small Eastside greenspace is the very same developer who first inquired about its availability (and proposed a handy solution for meeting state-law requirements for moving public parks into private hands) through lobbyist…
SXSW For Free: Day Three, Friday, March 20, part two
7:15 p.m. – Exhilarated by an afternoon of great music, my friends and I sought out even more, a nighttime of activities ahead of us. We walked to the Bat Bar in the Austin Convention Center to find out the scheduled shows for that evening and possibly score tickets to Echo and the Bunnymen the…
E.T. go home
Monsters vs. Aliens Director: Conrad Vernon, Rob Letterman Screenwriter: Conrad Vernon, Rob Letterman Cast: Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Rainn Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland, Stephen Colbert Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: PG Genre: Film Forget monsters or aliens; co-directors Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon lay claim to the strongest claws in the galaxy. How…
Duplicity
Critic’s Pick Duplicity Director: Tony Gilroy Screenwriter: Tony Gilroy Cast: Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giamatti, Denis Oâ??Hare, Carrie Preston Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film How about “potboiler”? Is that cool? To drag the shrink wrap off another precooked-and-conveniently-microwaveable item from The Lazy-Ass Reviewer’s Approved Glossary of Shortcuts ($24.95, Random House*)?…
Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby: Registration
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Artist Cruz Ortiz brings back the always-popular Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby for a fifth year, now in the much friendlier weather of March. Local artists and non-profit organizations build their own elaborately designed pushcarts to race, with designs ranging from NASA-influenced human-powered race cars to thrift-store sofas on wheels. The participants pimp…
Trinity Cameron Lecture – Charles Krauthammer
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Charles Krauthammer is credential-heavy: former psychiatrist, speechwriter for Vice President Walter Mondale, and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. He comes to Laurie Auditorium for the Cameron Lecture series. Krauthammer has made a name for himself for coining various phrases — “Democratic Realism,” “Reagan Doctrine,” and “Bush Doctrine” to name a few. (Liberals had good…
A Place to Stand
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Written and directed by St. Philip’s College faculty member Vincent Hardy, A Place to Stand looks to be a proud achievement for both Hardy and St. Philip’s College as it returns for second run. The story of an African-American family struggling to survive in a contemporary American landscape is told through the…
Lila Downs
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Lila Downs is a cantante known for blending her indigenous Mexican musical roots with American rhythms. Her personal story is quite fascinating. Her mother is a Mixteca Indian from Mexico and her father is a Scottish cinematography professor from Minnesota. For a moment during her college years in Minnesota, Lila took a…
Scarface of the Geto Boys
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Before there was the Dirty South, there was Scarface, the original Southern thug rapper. As part of the Houston rap group the Geto Boys, Scarface has seen his share of success and notoriety. It’s true, the Geto Boys always gathered a disproportionate amount of attention from white people because of Bushwick Bill…
13th Annual Cesar E. Chavez March for Justice
Release Date: 2009-03-25 “Si se puede” is the motto and legacy of Cesar Chavez, one of the most important figures of the 20th century in America. March 2009 marks the 43rd anniversary of Chavez’s historic 350-mile pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento, which drew national attention to the plight of farm workers in America. For a…
Slab Cinema: Detour
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Detour is a film noir/B-movie masterpiece made quickly and crappily in 1945. The film has extremely shoddy production values but transcends these limitations, haunting audiences with its dark atmosphere. Film noir was one of the few pop-culture mediums in which nihilism was treated as an acceptable, mass artform. Or maybe the studios…
Lil Wayne
Release Date: 2009-03-25 The last time I checked, Chuck D, KRS-One, and Kool G Rap are thankfully still breathing and recording music, making Lil Wayne’s claim to be “the greatest rapper alive” seem hollow at best. Weezy gets props for dropping the best-selling album of ’08, crafting the definitive post-Katrina anthem in “Georgia Bush,” and…
The Hazards of Love
The Hazards of Love Composer: The Decemberists Conductor: The Decemberists Label: Capitol Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording With every album, Decemberists front man Colin Meloy comes closer to needing some sort of intervention. The second release since the group switched MOs from indie-friendly folk rock to hyper-literate, increasingly bombastic prog-freakout concept albums, The…
Art Opening: Three Exhibits from the Museum Jose Luis Cuevas
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-03-25 The Instituto Cultural de México sits in HemisFair Park, minding its own business, when suddenly SHOOOM, they bust out some absolutely don’t-miss show (to wit: their FotoSeptiembre 2008 lineup). Now they’ve got José Luis Cuevas: Painter, printmaker, draftsman, and critic. Cuevas helped found the Nueva Prescencia movement in the 1960s,…
Rules
Rules Composer: The Whitest Boy Alive Conductor: The Whitest Boy Alive Label: Asound/Bubbles Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Imagine Burt Bacharach mistakenly plugs in his grandkid’s iPod, and instead of hearing George Gershwin, it blasts Daft Punk — and the mix-up inspires him to write an album recreating what he heard. The result…
Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby
Release Date: 2009-03-25 Artist Cruz Ortiz brings back the always-popular Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby for a fifth year, now in the much friendlier weather of March. Local artists and non-profit organizations build their own elaborately designed pushcarts to race, with designs ranging from NASA-influenced human-powered race cars to thrift-store sofas on wheels. The participants pimp…
Naked Willie
Naked Willie Composer: Willie Nelson Conductor: Willie Nelson Label: RCA Nashville/Legacy Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Featuring tunes from 1966-1970, Naked Willie is not a mere compilation album but rather features tracks that have been “un-produced” by Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael. Nelson was frustrated at the time of the recordings by…
Ten
Ten (Deluxe Edition) Composer: Pearl Jam Conductor: Pearl Jam Label: Epic-Legacy Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording One of the most influential albums in modern rock receives the reissue treatment here, 18 years later. Your mileage will vary depending on which edition you opt for. The Legacy edition features the remastered original album along…
Travels with Frenchie
French Sandwiches
Blood sisters
Sunshine Cleaning Director: Christine Jeffs Screenwriter: Christine Jeffs Cast: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Steve Zahn, Clifton Collins Jr., Mary Lynn Rajskub, Jason Spevack Release Date: 2009-03-25 Rated: R Genre: Film It’s no surprise first-time screenwriter Megan Holley fashioned the script for her dark comedy Sunshine Cleaning from a report on National Public Radio.…
Untitled
The music pulsed through her body like an electric current, shocking her senses alive to the scene in front of her. Bodies intertwined in rhythmic movement as pearls of sweat formed on their foreheads and arms clutched in desperation while their feet told each couple’s various story: stories of love and loss, of passion and frustration,…
New hopes
“This city chose hip-hop,” says Leonard Favela, aka DJ Lenyrd Spinyrd to a crowded living room on 36th Street. “Hip-hop came as an art form, and it got adopted in San Anto, and this is how we do it. This is our representation of it.” Over the years, the hip-hop cosmos has been dotted with…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Chicano soul ensemble Sexto Sol quietly decided to call it quits last September after a stellar eight-year run that included three CDs and countless gigs (including a memorable, 11th-hour booking in 2006 to open for Aerosmith). During that time, they endured a tough stretch when singer-keyboardist Sam Villela was stationed in Iraq as an active-duty…
Hacienda
When Hacienda took the cramped stage at Emo’s Jr. as part of the Panache Booking Showcase, they had already played three shows in 24 hours. The band just came off their two-week national tour supporting Black Keys’ guitarist Dan Auerbach, but instead of showing signs of road weariness or been-there-done-that-syndrome, Hacienda rocked and rolled with…
“Explosion” — Louie Dollars
Sci-fi warning sirens start the song, but Armageddon never comes. Instead, the mostly instrumental hip-hop track seems decades old, built on a raw beat that sounds like it was constructed from live recordings of street performers hitting trash cans and discarded beer bottles. A deep-voiced slow-mo sample gives the track its title and pushes it…
The executioner’s song
It was a night for silliness to shine as the San Antonio Opera presented a crisp, colorful performance of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s popular The Mikado in collaboration with California’s Opera A La Carte. This was a straightforward presentation of the comic opera from a company that has built its reputation upon authenticity, certainly…
Heartache and old corn dogs
Never let it be said that working in show business isn’t rough. Actually, no. Let people say what they feel. Don’t be a dick. My point, though, is the following: Overloaded schedules can suck. “Yeah, did SNL, um, got home at 2:30 `a.m.`, and then woke up and flew here, dropped my bag off, came…
Artist in Residence Vol. I
Gary Sweeney is the merry prankster of SA’s visual-arts scene, turning out provocative double entendres along the lines of his airport installation “South Texas Souvenirs” (Fiesta. Siesta. Repeat.) and the politically themed work that he showed at Southwest School of Art & Craft in 2007. When he’s not making art or contemplating the universe from…
S’Nuff film
Legendary film school Texas State (most famously led to cinematic gridiron glory by Kathy Ireland, Sinbad, and Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula in 1991’s Necessary Roughness) will host the Tournées International Film Festivaland symposium beginning … ahem, well, last Monday (March 23) if you have to get all technical about it. The festival, specializing in French-,…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers: In honor of April Fools’ Day, I’m turning over the column this week to those who think America can stop the Reconquista. Following are the winners of my challenge to Know Nothings a couple semanas back asking people to explain in 100 words or less how they can hate the illegal Mexican while…
Master of the universe
When Conan O’Brien takes over the Tonight Show June 1, Andy Richter will be joining him as his announcer and occasional comedy partner. For Richter obsessives (and there are several) the announcement is exciting and sad. Richter has rarely had the chance to be as funny as he was on Late Night in the nine…
Dear Uncle Mat
Am I too young to live with my boyfriend? I am 19, and he wants us to move out of our parents’ homes and get an apartment together. We both go to SAC and work part-time. My parents said that if I do well for my first two semesters in school, they will pay my…
The QueQue
Sell-by date Not that the City Council will necessarily side with the Parks & Rec Board’s sentiments, but the members voted at Monday night’s meeting to reject the sole $350,000 bid for Healy-Murphy Park’s scant acre. The lone would-be buyer? The very same La Villita del Rio Development corp whose inquiry re: the small, neglected…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Don’t you think it’s time you toned down your manic aspirations? Aren’t you curious about the sweet, sensitive success that could be yours if only you got really calm and peaceful? Wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the more manageable opportunities that might become available by accepting your limitations with humble…
Last chance for a slow dance?
No one was advertising for an angry prophet when Jere Locke returned to Texas last year. But thanks to mainstream environmentalism’s aversion to the gloomiest — and, unfortunately, more accurate — messages from the climate frontier, the position was open. It wouldn’t pay much. In fact, Locke would have to fund it himself. That was…
Pinot Gris: Oregon vs. Alsace
The back labels of Alsatian pinot gris wines tend to mention foie gras. In today’s economy, this is not likely to win converts to a wine we know little about. The grape’s counterpart (and historically upstart) Oregon producers make no such luxury claims — in fact, the wines sampled for this edition of Omniboire made…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Want to be a professor for lunch? Try the Skyline atop Trinity University’s Coates Building. Although about half the 20 or so tables are reserved by faculty at the school, a little-known secret is anyone can eat there. The view is an unbroken vista looking south on downtown San Antonio. Lunch is a fresh, well-prepared buffet…
Twelfth Night, or Whatever, Man
The Classic Theatre has for its brief existence brought San Antonio imaginative, professional, and approachable productions of the dramatic canon’s most interesting and important plays. Their latest effort takes on Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, arguably Shakespeare’s darkest and most multilayered comedy, in a wonderfully entertaining production blessed with competent and often hilarious performances. Director Diane…
ARTIFACTS
Don’t miss Saturday’s 5th-annual Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby, a free, all-ages race of (mostly) wooden vessels helmed by one driver and pushed by up to two helpers. Artist/teacher Cruz Ortiz organized the Derby as a “public art intervention” intended to show off the East Side as a “dynamic and safe place to live and play.”…
Face
She thought she might have been less shocked. The face had the same exuberance, the same laughter. The lines wanted to say charming. If the face had been less than identical she might have understood. But it wasn’t that one. It was the other one in the back. The face looked angry, even when it…
Under The Birds
The trash bag enveloped the fish guts, any last romantic hope of grand escape forever dissipated. An extra large bag lay on the ground awaiting to dispose of another bag and itself with it. Idiot seagulls, frenzied, diving and grabbing bits of Styrofoam or poking at a wayward bobbing device. A mirage, sea birds in…
Sculley grounds former Airport Police officer
By Gilbert Garcia Sheryl Sculley has made it clear: She will not abide misconduct in the Airport Police Department. On March 17, the city manager disregarded a decision by San Antonio’s Civil Service Commission, and upheld the December, 2008, termination of Corporal Russell Martin. Sculley ignored the commission’s 2-1 finding that the department had misrepresented…
Council candidate questionnaire: Ivy Taylor, District 2
Beginning March 4, the Current emailed the following questionnaire to all candidates who filed by March 9 for the May 2009 municipal elections. As responses begin to roll in, we will post them in their unedited entirety here on QueBlog. Excerpts will appear in the April 1 print edition of the Current. if you’re a…
raúlrsalinas Guerrilla Chapbook Poetry Contest
First, go to this youtube clip and watch the “cockroach poet”/bebop hipster/native Tejano/human rights activist raúlrsalinas perform with a terrific backing band, including Manny Castillo. Photo/altar by Jane Madrigal. Now hear this: what with National Poetry Month (otherwise known as “April”) almost underway, here’s an event you verse-sters should investigate; a poetry contest in memory…
Jones/Burns
courtesy Just this morning I sat down for a one on one interview with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns who is in town promoting his upcoming project about American National Parks. The conversation covered a variety of topics – past projects, working methods, and yes, a bit of the criticism leveled against him from various groups…
