Doing The Right Thing: Muslims in SA
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com To be a Muslim in America is hard enough, but to be a Muslim in San Antonio can be extra troublesome. “There are people who really don’t want us to be here,” said Sarwat Husain, president of the Council on American Islamic Relations-SA. “The John Hagees, Steven Emersons, and Daniel Pipes…
U: After the Church Rock Disaster: the Blessing Way VS Uranium Mining
The Navajo Nation Council finds that the Dine medicine peoples’ interpretation of the Dine Natural Law (Nahaszaan doo Yadilhi Bitsaadee Beehazaanii), which is codified in Title 1 as 5 of the Fundamental Laws of the Dine, mandates respect for all natural resources within the four sacred mountains and is symbolized by the Sacred Mountain Soil…
Chaléwood No. 19: Adam Rodriguez
Adam Rodriguez – I Can Do Bad All By Myself By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net After eight years on CSI: Miami actor Adam Rodriguez is ready for new experiences. His first comes with his role in director/writer Tyler Perry’s new movie I Can Do Bad All By Myself. In the film,…
U: Hydrogen a Magic Bullet for Uranium Contamination?
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Federal researchers are still looking for that silver bullet that will enable them to clean up contaminated and radioactive waters beneath so many toxic heaps, the result of decades of dumping of atomic weapons and nuclear power waste. One of the technologies gaining federal attention is also getting treatment from researchers at…
Guitar Hero 5
Publisher: Activision MSRP: $59.99 It’s pretty rare for a game series to remain captivating by the time a fifth entry is introduced to the franchise. Nonetheless Guitar Hero 5 has made it to store shelves, and it’s clear that the makers of this ridiculously successful series have been observing what has worked well in past…
Taking Woodstock
Critic’s Pick Taking Woodstock Release Date: 2009-09-09 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Our Rating: 3.00 Taking Woodstock director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) was a teenager living in Taiwan when Woodstock took place a world away in upstate New York. For him, the lunar landing — which occurred about a month before the massive concert…
No ‘No Depression’
Band of Heathens chages under the alt-country label
Los Fabulocos Featuring Kid Ramos
Los Fabulocos Featuring Kid Ramos Release Date: 2009-09-09 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording East LA’s Los Fabulocos is what you get when you combine two former members of the Blazers (José Cuevas on vocals and accordion, and Mike Molina on drums), a former Fabulous Thunderbirds guitarist (the superb Kid Ramos, who also learned how to play…
Blood of Our Enemies
Release Date: 2009-09-09 (Note: On Friday, September 4, the White Rabbit hosted the third annual Rick Sciaraffa birthday scholarship show. Sciaraffa, before his death in 2007, owned the club and played an instrumental role in establishing the local metal scene as we know it today. It is fitting that a collection of San Antonio’s hardest…
Toma, no llores
Release Date: 2009-09-09 Back when I obtained high-school semi-maturity (e.g. license, breasts, existential malaise), the streets of Stone Oak were laid, but houses were few — a sci-fi suburban staging ground out of DeLillo or Ballard. We drove out to Stone Oak in rowdy groups or furtive couples, sought out unpopulated cul-de-sacs to blast the…
Brownout!
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-09-09 Grupo Fantasma better watch out — there’s a relatively new band in Austin that can do almost anything they do, only better: themselves. Brownout! is nothing but the funkier, instrumental alter ego for GF, which included some vocals in their sophomore album, Aguilas and Cobras, but stick to instrumentals live.…
THE FAST FOODIE
Right at home in Hot Wells
Ellipse
Ellipse Release Date: 2009-09-09 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The past couple of years have produced a bumper crop of newly minted singing/songwriting women of every stripe, from pop chanteuses with serious chart aspirations to rock chicks with chops and bravado. Imogen Heap is not one of them. The Brit worked with Acacia in the mid-’90s,…
The Show
The Show Release Date: 2009-09-09 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Colorado bluegrass-heads Yonder Mountain String Band spin the genre deep into jam-band land on their fifth album. They’ve been doing this for more than a decade, but The Show sounds more like the Grateful Dead than Bill Monroe. The quartet flashes its virtuosity at every turn:…
High-Yello Rose
Release Date: 2009-09-09 Kicking off their 25th season this week, Jump-Start will officially change its name to “The Sterling Houston Theatre” in honor of their gone but never forgotten creative director. In 2005, Sterling Houston delved into revisionist history by writing the witty, musical melodrama High Yellow Rose. The all female cast gets the pleasure…
James Taylor
Release Date: 2009-09-09 While most readers might assume James Taylor stopped producing music in the ‘70s when he was among the top sellers in the folk-rock music genre, his 2003 album Hourglass won him his first Grammy since 1977 and reads like a diary of his troubles on the road to success. Divorces (from Carly…
Fotoseptiembre: Joan Frederick:So Much Art, So Little Time
Release Date: 2009-09-09 After 30 years in the art world, Joan Frederick has seen a lot. Raised in Oklahoma, Frederick became somewhat of an authority on Native American art by tapping Kiowa painter T.C. Cannon (considered by many to be the “Native American Van Gogh”) for a biographical book project. Upon arrival in Texas, she…
Art opening: Unexpected
Release Date: 2009-09-09 Unlike some exhibition titles, “Unexpected” describes photographer Rodolfo Choperena’s work perfectly. In a medium chock-full of happy accidents, Choperena happened upon his show concept while experimenting with his iPhone’s camera while visiting Croatia. Intrigued by the complex results he was getting by photographing beams of light with a low-tech lens, he decided…
Demon in the rough
Graham Joyce makes friends in the most dangerous places
6th Annual Texas Metal Arts
Release Date: 2009-09-09 Now in its sixth year, Texas Metal Arts is a two-day festival in Gruene Texas. Metal artists (no, it’s nothing like Ozzfest) from all over Texas descend upon this tiny town to sell their artwork and show how it’s made. Highlights: Austin-based jeweler Steve Kriechbaum’s architectural works in gold stand out as…
Survivors jilt
Another dazzling adventure, another aggravating hero
O’Brother w/ Dignan and Look Mexico
Release Date: 2009-09-09 Dignan are yet another example of surprising creativity bubbling up from what my grandmother refers to as “the jumping off point” — McAllen, TX. These sensitive dudes create ethereal, poetic art-rock worthy of a Sofia Coppola film soundtrack. They tour consistently with the slightly noisier Atlanta-based band O’Brother, and have now joined…
All ‘Things’ considered
Important Things With Demetri Martin: Season 1 Release Date: 2009-09-09 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Important Things With Demetri Martin is essentially Blue’s Clues for stoned grown-ups. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Fortunately, the multitalented Martin is confident and capable enough to lead the audience through the show’s many, many quirks, beginning with the title…
Stuck on repeat
“As for the critics/ Tell me I don’t get it/ Everybody can tell you how to do it/ They never did it.” — Jay-Z, “Already Home” Sean Carter’s off-handed dismissal of music criticism is probably the only way to start a review of his latest release, The Blueprint 3. As he’s constantly reminding us, Jay-Z…
Puccini: The final frontier
All right, let’s just get this out of the way: John de Lancie, who directs the San Antonio Opera’s season-opening production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, portrayed the evil “Q” in several different iterations of the Star Trek franchise. And, sure, he’s set his Butterfly on a volcano 1,000 years in the future. But make no…
Cultural imperatives
Run for Your Wife The Vex successfully revives the screwball comedy with this English farce about a likable bigamist for whom no good deed goes unpunished. Think Simon Pegg in the lead role. `See “Three’s a crowd,” online at sacurrent.com.` $12-$18. Through September 13, the Sheldon Vexler Theatre, vexler.org Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward…
Ask a Mexican!
SPECIAL EL EDITION Why do Mexicans make the sign of mucho dinero with a gap between their thumbs and index fingers, as if holding an imaginary wad of bills between both fingers? — El Zorro Chupagringos Dear Gabacho-Sucking Fox: Because if a pendejo like you can get the gesture, imagine us normal folks. Why do…
La vida de noche
It’s 10 p.m. on a Saturday, and across the city restaurateurs are closing up shop, taking any sidewalk life with them when they leave. But along a 13-block stretch of Nacogdoches Road, the dining scene is just hitting its stride. From the H-E-B at the corner of O’Connor Road down to Erick’s Tacos at 12715 Nacogdoches,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Your assignment is to get angry in the most unique, brilliant, and constructive way possible. Merely being annoyed and muttering generic curses will definitely not be sufficient. Nor will it work for you to get consumed in knee-jerk rage or to be peeved about the same old boring targets that everyone…
An unsolved murder, a dissident censored
Searching for Dana Clair Edwards’s killer It’s been eight long months since Dana Clair Edwards’s parents lost their daughter, a vivacious and popular woman who collected top academic honors in high school and college before earning an MBA and entering medical school. Dana was the first Bexar County murder of 2009, found strangled inside her…
Hope for the homeless
If you’re homeless on the streets of San Antonio, beaten down by the heat, the omnipresent dust, the drought-dry fountains, and the near-constant hunger, hang in there. Early next year, Haven for Hope, the one-stop mega-shop for all your needs, will open just west of downtown. This not being much of a walking town, transportation…
Losing the baggage
He might consider himself a “small footnote in pop culture,” but comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, 47, is doing everything he possibly can to write a meaningful chapter for his often misunderstood career. Whether you know him for his skittish stand-up acts in the ’80s, the roles in three Police Academy sequels that followed, or for his…
S’Nuff Film
Last chance, guys: The third annual San Antonio Local Film Festival is accepting film submissions until Tuesday, September 15. The festival, in its third year, charges no entry fees, and this year they’ll be taking submissions in three categories — shorts, feature-length films, and films produced by amateur filmmakers, age 17 or younger. Films must…
LIVE & LOCAL
(Note: On Friday, September 4, the White Rabbit hosted the third annual Rick Sciaraffa birthday scholarship show. Sciaraffa, before his death in 2007, owned the club and played an instrumental role in establishing the local metal scene as we know it today. It is fitting that a collection of San Antonio’s hardest acts comes together…
Amuse Bouche
According to Italian wine regs, any wine labeled Brunello must come from a delimited area south of Florence and contain 100-percent sangiovese grosso (brunello) grapes. But several big-name Brunello boys have been caught Parkerizing their wines with cabernet and other unsanctioned varities. These adulterated wines may be more palatable to some palates, but vineyards, cellars,…
Dear Uncle Mat
I’ve got two women in my life, one pt whether I like it or not who’s also bipolar by her own admission, and the other who I rarely see, who’s also w/ someone she’s not even interested in but hangs with him for security reasons ; (The one I’m really interested in, C. (the second…
ARTifacts
Rhonda Kuhlman — San Anto’s one-woman Fabergé of vintage bottle caps, comic-book images, and scrap metal — died on Sunday, September 6. She’d long fought cancer, and recently underwent heart surgery. She’d made it to her friends Chris Sauter and Rick Frederick’s wedding in June, the last time many of us would see her in…
The Sound & The Fury
Buttercup and Bombasta play free concerts at Main Plaza on Friday and Saturday, respectively (8-10 p.m.), and there are other shows in town this week (look ’em up in our Calendar section, page 35). But, as far as I’m concerned, the biggest event is happening today (9-9-09) , at your nearest computer or local record…
U: Mining whistleblower surfaces in Yorktown
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Roland Burrows worked for Uranium Resources, Inc., as a wellfield operator at the Kingsville Dome in-situ uranium mine in Ricardo, Texas, back in 1996. He says the company at the time was regularly flushing high volumes of water into the mine field that would have expanded groundwater pollution beyond its permitted area,…
U: One Test, Two Test, & Cancer Risk in Karnes County
Radiation placard at General Atomics dump outside Panna Maria. Scientific research suggests nearby residents have been dosed with similar radiation levels as nuclear industry workers. By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Doctor William Au phones me just as I’m pulling into Falls City. A soon-to-be former professor of environmental toxicology in UTMB’s Department of Preventive Medicine and…
Matiz’s Mexico
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Sin título, 1944. (Leo Matiz) The life of photographer/caricaturist/adventurer Leo Matiz (1917-1998), unarguably Colombia’s greatest photographer of the 20th century, was in itself worth capturing on film —— a photojournalist almost by accident, he is revered in Venezuela (where he lived in 1954-64, as documented in the Leo Matiz en Caracas…
