SB 1070 Smackdown: Round 1 goes to the immigrants and the government
How do you like them apples, Arizona? Even as Texas steps up border militarization via National Guard troops, many San Antonians cheered for the preliminary injunction against the controversial Arizona senate bill. Had the entire bill gone into effect on its scheduled July 29 date, it would have effectively made being an illegal immigrant a…
STP idled as Congress fails to kick in new billions for nukes
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com After months of anxious waiting for news from the U.S. Department of Energy on needed federal loan guarantees, NRG Energy, one of the City of San Antonio’s partners at the South Texas Project nuclear facility in Matagorda County, announced today it will idle payments into a planned two-reactor nuclear expansion on the…
Tommy draws a top gun
Retired Air Force Major General Susan Pamerleau confirmed today that she is seeking the Republican nod to run against Precinct Four County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson. Adkisson’s previous opponent, Larry Click, a retired deputy sheriff who was uncontested in the Republican primary, died suddenly July 19. Pamerleau, who spent eight of her 15 years in the…
Posh Pub Pairings
Don’t try this at home. In fact, don’t try this at Bohanan’s Bar, eitherâ??at least not the way I did it. I’m talking about my marathon sampling of all three of the new beer and booze tasting packages at Bohanan’s Bar. In the course of, oh, an hour and a half or two. I didn’t…
Where I’ll be tomorrow: The Farm’s Rock and Roll Garage Sale
‘Cause I know you care, not so much about my schedule as helping keep a unique asset to SA’s music scene open. You’re just that kind of people. Matt Ahern’s struggling to keep the doors open at local recording studio and former music venue the Farm (311 Howard St.), so he’s holding a fund-raising sale…
The $100 Million Question: How much do we invest in charter schools.
I’m beginning to think the Texas State Board of Education is the Sarah Palin of state government bodies. Just when it seems the members have collectively strained the board’s credibility to the max and it’s time for them all to take a nice, quiet break from the media circus, they burst back onto the scene…
Very Vinho Verde
Yes, it’s summer. We need to deal with it. Here’s one way: vinho verde. If you have just enough romance language knowledge to be dangerous, you might now be thinking that I’m talking about “green” wine. Yes, and no. The green, in this case, refers to youth in this thoroughly delightful wine from the northwest…
Trailers Without Trash: Weissman’s Latest Project
He’s at it again. Fresh from a half Iron Man in Napa, Andrew Weissman hit the ground still running with the inking of a contract for his latest project. No, it’s not the Olmos Park location you might have been hearing about. (More on that another time). It is, in fact, a park of a…
Two things you should do tonight
#1 This’d be a bargain even if it didn’t benefit one of the cooler places in town. Watch for our story next week on the status of one of San Antonio’s only true hippie havens, and I mean that in the best way possible. #2 This one features some of the most talented rock musicians…
Last Minute art opportunity. Get to work!
I’m too bummed still to write anything about this, so here’s the press release. SF Planned Parenthood seeks Art exploring Families for Group Show at Southwest Art and Craft Center What: Call for Entries for “Family”: A Group Art Show. Planned Parenthood invites entries from artists working in all mediums whose work reflects notions of…
The Kids Are All Right
Critic’s Pick The Kids Are All Right Director: Lisa Cholodenko Screenwriter: Lisa Cholodenko Cast: Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska Release Date: 2010-07-28 Rated: R Genre: Film Nic (Bening) and Jules (Moore) are a longtime L.A. couple in the midst of midlife sweatpants malaise, each the biological mother of a teen child from…
Maya
Maya Composer: M.I.A. Conductor: M.I.A. Label: N.E.E.T./Interscope Release Date: 2010-07-28 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Big beats, big personality, and big statements define M.I.A. She’s never been one for subtleties, and on her third album she’s brasher than ever. Sound effects are loaded on top of almost all of Maya’s 16 tracks — from electric screwdrivers…
Gold: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality
Gold: Before Woodstock, Beyond Reality Label: MVD Visual Release Date: 2010-07-28 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Gold’s DVD case touts the “previously unreleased music from MC5” on the soundtrack as one of the main selling points, right below the goofball acid casualty and the hippie-chick hooters. But even the most obsessive McFreaks will feel buyer’s remorse…
The Way Out
The Way Out Composer: The Books Conductor: The Books Label: Temporary Residence Limited Release Date: 2010-07-28 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Duo the Books return after a four-year break with a tongue-in-cheek ode to New Age nuttiness. Stylistically, Paul de Jong and Nick Zammuto continue to mine thrift-store cassettes for delightfully odd found sounds that they…
Scars
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-28 Dream Healing director Dora Peña serves as video director for SCARS, an original, one-act play written by cancer-survivor Maria A. Ibarra. Dreams, poems, and childhood and adult memories are woven into a theatrical history of Ibarra’s life as a “warrior” — one who’s no longer “afraid to remember.”
Radio La Chusma
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-28 They’ve been written about in Playboy. Their hit “Adelante” was chosen as their native El Paso’s official song. They’ve opened for the Doobie Brothers, WAR, and Steel Pulse. But you still might not have heard about six-piece Radio La Chusma ? a musical melting pot bubbling with ingredients from both…
The Cliks, Killola, Hunter Valentine
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-28 TV-heads might recognize Lisa Rieffel from the first five seasons of The King of Queens or maybe the lesbian-themed web series Girltrash! (Rieffel also stars in Girl Trash: All Night Long, a feature film set for a 2011 release), but music fans (especially of the online variety) know the actress-singer…
Stand-Up for Diversity San Antonio Semi-Finals Showcase
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-28 Representatives from NBC Universal will visit three “major U.S. markets” in an American Idol-esque search for the “most promising stand-up comedians” New York City, San Antonio, and San Francisco have to offer. Doesn’t it give you chills to hear nuestro pueblo chiquito’s name in the same sentence with esas ciudades…
Stairway to Heaven
Steve Brudniak’s densely crafted wall sculptures are as sobering as headstones, as quietly enervating as HAL 9000. Articulated silver serpents undulate like the blindly probing thoughts they represent from a series of brass vaults, each labeled with a religious figure, each reminiscent of the human knack for turning the sublime into cement cellblocks. He makes…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Success coach Tom Ferry says our ability to pursue our dreams can be damaged by four addictions: 1. an addiction to what other people think of us; 2. an addiction to creating melodrama in a misguided quest for excitement; 3. an addiction to believing we’re imprisoned by what happened in the…
Travels with Frenchie
It’s the end of the month and therefore time for another installment of Travels with Frenchie, the monthly food series in which a trio of culturally mismatched San Antonians explores the local hinterland in search of dining adventure. As always, the culinary vice squad consisted of: Frenchie (aka Fabien Jacob, celebrated local sommelier), Carlos the…
Safety dance, City gets demo bill, CEOh-no?, and more…
Safety dance Is the emphasis at San Antonio’s City-run Dangerous Structure Determination Board shifting from demo to repair, or are they just sensitive to overwhelming demonstrations of community support? `We suspect B; see “Kangaroo court,” April 21, et al.` Near the end of Monday’s hearing over the fate of Westside conjunto institution Lerma’s Nite Club,…
Pig tales for cocktails
Piq Liquors’ Lavaca location, within spitting distance of a neighborhood church, is unusual, but the shop doesn’t stand out; the interior and exterior, with a cheerful cartoon porker hanging above the door, are benign and inviting. There is no shady atmosphere, no austere white shelves of cheap alcohol, not even a bawdy theme or slightly…
Give Czech a chance
The reinvention of beer in America is happening at a breakneck speed as brewers at small breweries and brewpubs, and even homebrewers, get a wild hair and try something completely different. It also happens when agri-science brings us a new hop or yeast. But in this time of change it’s easy to overlook a style…
Go ask Alex
For the second time in six months, the five almost identically coifed mates of Asking Alexandria are headlining a national tour, something they’ve never done in their own country. Hailing from North Yorkshire, England, the band is making as much noise in the glutted American metalcore scene with their accents as they are with their…
Live & local
Seeing Ben Griffith play the Tap Exchange on Bulverde, it’s difficult not to equate getting started in the music industry with hipster panhandling. Before the show, Griffith tells me he loves jazz, funk, and improvisation, and that he has an album in the works with his band Paper Machete. But tonight, he needs to fill…
The sound & the fury
Remember Bowling for Soup? They had that one song like seven years ago? Well, they’re coming to Scout Bar (19314 U.S. Hwy. 281 N.) Friday, July 30. Tickets are $16 and doors open at 8 p.m. If you’re into more, well, relevant stuff, though, you should, as usual, buy local. On Friday, you can watch…
Art Openings: 7/28-7/31
Blame it on the wine, but with too many quality art events scattered across town last Saturday, even we failed our proposed attack on the local art scene. This week won’t be nearly as far-fetched: Three receptions you won’t want to miss are (thankfully) taking place on three separate days. In order of appearance ……
The rock that rules Chablis
As Current readers, y’all know that real Chablis does not come in large green jugs with ungainly handles, right? Of course you do. You’re probably also aware that it’s good with foods other than potato chips. Goat cheese, for example. Or even lobster in some special cases. But you may not know (I didn’t, at…
Last ditch effort
At 7:50 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, the narrow benches in Municipal Appearance Courtroom 1 B begin to fill with sleepy-eyed teens and their parents. “It’s not too bad today,” says Norma Morales-Arias, administrator for Municipal Court Presiding Judge John Bull. “These numbers aren’t as high as we expected. There’s maybe 100 cases on the…
Preempted programming
Summer has traditionally been a time for light drama — after all, who wants Hamletmachine with their mint juleps? — and the Overtime’s The Last Broadcast of Bailey and Long more than fits the bill: It’s an amiable valentine to the clever radio plays of yesteryear, and generally performed with panache. As penned by Overtime’s…
Legendary blues brothers
Celebrating more than 40 years playing together, and a combined age of 170, pianist Willie “Pinetop” Perkins, 97, and drummer/harpist Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, 73, are dropping some serious blues on San Antonio this weekend. Pinetop, an accomplished pianist, joined the genre-busting Muddy Waters band in the 1960s. That’s when he first met Smith, already…
Demand the best
Texas’ high-school football coaches have known for years the secret to spurring social evolution, something Darwin only vaguely hinted at: Find an activity that kids enjoy, then turn it into an all-out competition with clear winners and losers. That way only the best and strongest will propagate the species while the others will become bitter…
Rites of the spring collection
Because couturière Coco Chanel and composer Igor Stravinsky are sacred monsters of modernist culture, a cinematic encounter between the two promises an upscale version of King Kong vs. Godzilla. Fascinated by the Russian émigré’s boldly innovative music, Chanel invited Stravinsky to work and live at her elegant villa on the outskirts of Paris. Biographers dispute…
Mondo nuevo mundo
You know Sandra Cisneros: She authored the now-canonical coming-of-age novel House on Mango Street, as well as Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, her children’s book, Pelitos, poetry collection My Wicked, Wicked Ways, and multi-generational epic Carmelo, or, Puro Cuento, among other tomes. You may also have seen her out dancing at a party wearing…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, I’ve got a problem! For the last year I have lived in an adorable little fourplex just north of downtown. I adore my apartment and have wonderful neighbors. Well, all but one. That one being the middle-aged woman that lives above me. From the small talk we have made, she seems fairly…
Fonts of information
Their mission statement reads, “Fontmasters is dedicated to establishing personal gain through font education in an ethical approach at the highest level.” I had no idea what this meant, but after attending the first meeting back in April, wherein artists Cruz Ortiz and Ben Judson served up PowerPoint presentations in a Chinese restaurant — Ortiz’s…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Mexican, As an old gringo who calls himself a gringo (not a gabacho), I study Mexican culture and ask myself, “Where have I seen this before?” The answer invariably is: 1950s America, that’s where. Current Mexican culture in the U.S. is about 50 years behind current American culture. Back in the 1950s, Americans had…
Regis Shephard 1971-2010
Regis Shephard died this afternoon. He was 39. I met him in the mid-90s, at the Wong Spot (the old one on Cevallos and South Flores), we were both just out of college, kinda â?? I’d dropped out of UT, but he had graduated from Tech and was getting his master’s at UTSA and was…
The devil’s details: Kelly AFB, corn tortillas, and sick Leon fish
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Remember all that stuff about bad tortillas explaining away high cancer rates in South San Antonio? Bad mistake. Strike it; reverse it. While a follow-up study of liver cancer and aflatoxin bacteria across three San Antonio zip codes is pending publication, it’s no longer being considered relevant to addressing public concerns of…
Roberta’s First Protest: What about dying springs, streams?
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com As representatives of the nine-country Groundwater Management District 9 worked their way around yesterday to saying “so long” to 30 feet of subterranean water for future development, a lone voice of protest peeped. While the managers haggled over various depletion scenarios, Roberta Shoemaker-Beal squeaked from the back of Boerne’s Champion High School:…
