Glassjaw in Austin
Glassjaw’s popularity peaked during my high school years. It is the soundtrack to my adolescence. Oh yes, I clearly remember hanging my arms out a friend’s car window as we drove around, loosing our voices to their last full-length album, Worship and Tribute. The album that also reminds me of frantically trying to hide my…
Three new hunger strikers at Port Isabel
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Three detainees `names changed awaiting their permission to reveal their identities` from the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos sent out letters to the Southwest Workers Union announcing hunger strikes, in protest for the condition of their detention and the uncertain status of their immigration cases. “`My` few brushes with…
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland Director: Tim Burton Screenwriter: Tim Burton Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Matt Lucas, Johnny Depp, Michael Sheen, Christopher Lee Release Date: 2010-03-05 Rated: PG Genre: Film As an exercise in delightfully deranged, comically monstrous visuals, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is everything you hoped it would be. Plants with human faces, checkerboard landscapes, forced…
Napkin notes: More on Sandbar
This week I reviewed the Sandbar, still one of my favorite restaurants in town, despite a few grumbles about the new location. If I could afford to, I’d eat there at least once a week. Print means limitations, though, so as promised a few notes that didn’t make it into the story: â?¢ Sandbar serves…
Census undercount threatens to punish our vulnerable for another 10 years, Perry shrugs
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com What’s a billion dollars of free social services worth? Apparently, not the carefully cultivated anti-Washington rugged-individual political image of Governor Rick Perry. Less than two weeks away from Censusmania, the state’s true hair-care magnate has failed to make any motion to ensure Texas’ consistently undercounted population is accurately recorded. It was nearly…
The White Ribbon
Critic’s Pick The White Ribbon Director: Michael Haneke Screenwriter: Michael Haneke Cast: Leonard Proxauf, Susanne Lothar, Christian Friedel, Thibault Serlem Rainer Bock Release Date: 2010-03-03 Rated: R Genre: Film Michael Haneke is an uncompromising filmmaker. In some quarters, he is regarded as a cinematic provocateur. If you’ve seen his masterful Caché (Hidden) or the American-made…
Dick Dale w/ Keegan Reed
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-03-03 The self-crowned (and who can argue?) “King of the Surf Guitar” seems like a pretty straight-edge kind of guy. The composer of “Let’s Go Trippin’” forbids his road crew from using drugs, drinking alcohol, or even smoking, so we’re guessing he wouldn’t like us using his back-to-back tour stops in…
Coppelia in person
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-03-03 Perhaps the E.T.A. Hoffmann tales that gave rise to Coppélia also laid the groundwork for Blade Runner’s maudlin genetic architect, AI’s inconsolable boybot, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and Lars’s Bianca, but the comic ballet is even lighter in spirit than that other Hoffmann-inspired production, The Nutcracker. Meet the Ballet San Antonio…
Cheap thrills down in “Fraggle Rock”
Release Date: 2010-03-03 Several months ago, a new place called Nightrocker Live blipped onto Bar Tab’s radar. Unfortunately, the bar/live-music venue got off to a rocky start: Zoning issues complicated the grand opening and indefinitely postponed a handful of previously booked shows — a few of which seemed like good opportunities to check the place…
Lunch at Sugarbakers
Release Date: 2010-03-03 Pretty in pale pink and light lime green, Sugarbakers was the perfect antidote to a gray, depressing day. The slick, pastry-porn photos on the walls seemed to suggest redemption through indulgence. Hot chocolate was all but inevitable. And a large cup of good chocolate it was, enlivened by a smidgen of cinnamon…
Snacks at Los Roberto’s
Release Date: 2010-03-03 Snacks at Los Roberto’s Open 24 hours, a panel van-cum-billboard parked at the street, a selection of six salsas at the accessories counter … and more burritos than anyone else in town (I suspect): You’ve got to give Los Roberto’s Taco Shop credit for creativity. But there’s more to Roberto’s than inventive…
Hardest Year to Date
Hardest Year to Date Composer: Our Sleeping Giant Conductor: Our Sleeping Giant Label: Self released Release Date: 2010-03-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording This 20-minute EP from Our Sleeping Giant seems to be a concept album about the strain the narrator’s cancer puts on his relationship, similar in theme to the Antlers’ Hospice, but musically and…
Have One on Me
Have One on Me Composer: Joanna Newsom Conductor: Joanna Newsom Label: Drag City Release Date: 2010-03-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Newsom’s third is a critic’s nightmare. Three CDs’, 18 songs’, two hours’ worth of music steeped in traditions ranging from Baroque to Appalachian folk to Dixieland jazz to early music styles I only pretend to…
Love Him
Love Him Composer: Okapi Conductor: Okapi Label: Illegal Art Release Date: 2010-03-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The sample-happy DJ label Illegal Art is no stranger to funny business. The label launched in 1998 with Deconstructing Beck, produced using low-fi, unapproved Beck samples. Today, Girl Talk — the Pittsburgh-based mash-up king who probably holds the record…
American Gong
American Gong Composer: Quasi Conductor: Quasi Label: Kill Rock Stars Release Date: 2010-03-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Three and out is the weird career pattern for Oregon’s Quasi. Their first three records — their career peak — were on the now-defunct Up Records. They shifted to Touch & Go for the next round of three.…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): To place yourself in smooth alignment with planetary rhythms, do conscientious work on the foundations of your life. Take extra care of the people who take care of you. Make sure you have a good supply of the various resources that keep you strong and steady. Check to see if maybe…
Gulf War vets get some relief, ICE refuses HR petition
A giant Gulf If you served during the Gulf War and your claim for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was denied, help may be on the way. Especially if your name isn’t Maria. Late last month, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the near completion of a study that might reopen thousands of Gulf…
Nouveau ambulance chasers
I don’t know if you’ve been to the new Marriott yet, but it’s worth the drive, if only to take in the majesty of the hundred feet of projection TVs in the sports bar. Every sporting event from every country in the world. I think I want to be buried there. While watching Australian Rules…
Toward restoration
If I didn’t feel so sick today I would have dressed up,” the young woman sharing one of several long wooden benches is telling the quiet tough face beside her. Sniffling, she pulls a pair of golden shrimp earrings from her pocket and begins to stitch them through her lobes. “Maybe if I put my…
I’m lying, I promise
Count on Sala Diaz to transmogrify its small space to suit each of its exhibitions. Maybe its institutional power lies in forcing its exhibiting artists to think inside the box, that little wooden house with its two gallery rooms, and to change it up — witness Katie Pell’s recent Intractable Chatter installation, a two-room, wood-enclosed,…
Can ya digg?
Much like the hip-hop culture he represents, ascending emcee Dwayne Dennis, aka C Murph, was born in Jamaica. Dennis eventually moved with his family to Miami where he was raised, and a few years ago arrived in the Alamo City at the request of Florida underground hip-hop legend Slykat, who had a string of performances…
Fundred pick up
Quick! Head on over to fundred.org and learn all about an urgently innovative public art / public works / public health project goin’ on across the nation. Thumbnail sketch: soil contamination is rampant in the U.S., particularly in post-Katrina New Orleans, where it’s estimated that 30 percent of inner-city children suffer from lead poisoning, a…
Pachuco boogie
I can’t blame Roco, the singer for Maldita Vecindad, for lying to me. “Yeah, man… We have material for two or three albums,” he used to tell me for years. “Anytime now.” Yeah, right. The “anytime” took exactly 12 years from the release of the uneven Mostros. But it’s better this way — unless your…
Some enchanted evening
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific might seem a tough sell in a politically correct climate; though the musical famously (and laudably) tackles race as a central motif —particularly in the anti-prejudice song “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”— the story itself flirts with some troubling ethnic characterizations, especially of the ruthless indigenous matriarch Bloody Mary. (Can…
Live & Local
To be honest, the Rafiki Project — not to be confused with the Central Ohio charity — had me at sound check. Guitarist-vocalist Daniel Ramirez tested out the mic with the chorus from Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” and part of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s “Crossroads” — two songs I’ll always be a sucker for. I bring this up…
SA Owner’s Manual Pop Quiz Answers
1. Who invented nacho cheese sauce? (The company name is fine, but extra points if you know the family’s name and mega credit if you can name the late country-music legend who married, then divorced, the sister of the inventor). Frank Liberto, CEO of Ricos Products Company, invented the ubiquitous concession-stand nacho cheese sauce…
The Sound & The Fury
Shawn Sahm, Doug’s son, was right: “The new Texas Tornados album sounds like … well, the Texas Tornados.” Está bueno (It’s good), which took years to finish, was released March 2, and it includes the last songs recorded by Freddy Fender (you gotta hear “If I Could Only,” which ranks among his best) as well…
Better than 40 for Life
According to 40daysforlife.com, a spring campaign of “fasting” and “outreach” is underway in 167 American cities, including Austin, Houston, and several other Texas towns. The organizers hope to repeat their alleged fall 2009 successses: two clinics closed, seven Planned Parenthood workers resigned. Here’s a crazy idea. Instead of intimidating people, let’s make a list of…
Hook, line, and sinker
In its new Pearl Brewery location, the Sandbar is still the best seafood restaurant in town, and one of the finest San Antonio restaurants, period, even though it’s suffering from a sort of identity crisis. When Chef Andrew Weissman opened the Sandbar in its original Pecan Street location, it was a casual but sparkling lunch…
Go ask Alice
Screenwriter John August — who scripted Tim Burton’s Big Fish, Corpse Bride, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, wrote two different treatments for failed Alice in Wonderland adaptations, though not the version hitting theaters Friday. In a recent blog post, August argues, “Alice has become one of our fundamental myths, an Ur-story that thrives through…
My bologna has a first name
We watch the Oscars for the stars, or the dresses, or in sad, desperate hopes that streaking has made a comeback. But nobody wants to sit through those boring thank you speeches, not even Meryl Streep’s Nana. This year, though, we can thank the Academy for at least attempting to clamp down on these self-congratulatory…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I’m a pan blanco and my wife is puertorriqueña. Our son looks basically white, while a casual observer might admit that there is some Latin going on there. I’m not sure how this pertains to my question — it may or may not be worth mentioning. Our son is a high-functioning autistic 12-year…
Digging deep for modern opera fans
The musical performance generally considered to represent the first true opera in the history of theatrical arts, Dafne, was composed in Italy in 1597. Humankind received the rutabaga shortly thereafter, with its first written botanical record appearing in 1620. But, unlikely as it may seem, in the nearly 400 years that have followed, the two…
Oils on film
People who follow the San Antonio art scene know Vincent Valdez has grown from one of the city’s most promising prodigies and hottest young Chicano painters into an established artist who has exhibited in major museums nationwide and abroad and attracted the attention of such cultural icons as Ry Cooder and Cheech Marin. They also…
Dear Uncle Mat
I have been having a casual affair with a classmate since the beginning of this semester. Well, we first slept together over the holidays, but didn’t start into a regular thing until classes started up again in the spring. We agreed it would be just for fun and that neither of us wanted a relationship…
Alice in Wonderland (1903)
While you’re waiting for the latest issue of the Current (hitting newsstands tomorrow), and the Tim Burton Alice remake (opening Friday), check out the first filmed version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, courtesy of the British Film Institute. ‘Preciate it, guvnah!
funding Fundred with art hundreds
(Note: This will run in tomorrow’s CAM guide, also.) And you can check out the CAM Calendar all month long! Special kudos to Kendra Curry who’s helped to orchestrate this, and to Andy and Yvette Benavides and SMART for empowering this event! **************************************** CAM Preview Pick fundred pickup Quick! Head on over to fundred.org and…
Farouk, Farouk, Farouk is on fire
He don’t need no water, just your vote in the Democratic primary. I had every intention of making fun of J. Xavier’s hip-hop tribute detailing Farouk Shami’s policies â??officially released by his campaign, mind you â?? but after listening to it I’d rather wipe a booger on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. We don’t…
