Turning the ship: CPS assembles two-day panel of clean-energy experts
Rifkin with Geis? That’s twice as nice. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com To keep up with the energy needs of the eight-county San Antonio area while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions will likely cost up to $30 billion come 2030, Skip Laitner, of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, told a gathering of local energy…
There’s this, too.
At 5 pm today:
U visa offers hope to victimized immigrants
Greg M. Schwartz gschwartz@sacurrent.com Illegal immigrants who become victims of crimes are justifiably reluctant to come forward, as merely doing so could wind up getting them deported. But an obscure pathway to legalization known as the U visa has solidified in the past year, offering law enforcement agents who are serious about fighting such crimes…
Verde endorsed by picky enviros minutes before ozone season party
Keep it up, but don’t shut us out, was the message for Hardberger on Verde. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com So the green camp likes the Mayor’s sustainability plan? Where’s the headline in that, local pen-pushers and lens-cleaners must have been asking themselves as they retreated en masse from the steps of City Hall. See, Mayor Hardberger…
Something to do Saturday afternoon
Hey! Pretend it’s the future! This Saturday the 4th, to be exact, in between 11 am and 5 pm. Are you bored, art-likey (have gotten some positive feedback on this new term, so I intend to forge ahead with it), community minded AND HUNGRY! Then you should totally be going to this thing like I…
Live & Local Preview: Bison
Holy shit! Do you see that up there? Tonight we’re heading out to the Warhol to see Bisön, who are celebrating the release of their debut album, Sans Sensation. (Read more about the band here.) They also appear to’ve mastered Johnny Cage’s Shadow Kick and modified it for the purpose of rocking out. Considering the…
More mudslinging in District 5
Greg M. Schwartz gschwartz@sacurrent.com Controversy continues to rear its ugly head in the upcoming District 5 city council race. First, there were accusations that incumbent Lourdes Galvan had made an error on her application and had altered it instead of filing a new application, which some community members said violated election code as indicated to…
Chaléwood No. 2: Mario Lopez
Mario Lopez — Extra By Kiko Martinez Paperboy5456@yahoo.com Whether he will forever be remembered as A.C. Slater on Saved by the Bell, hunky Dr. Christian Ramirez on The Bold and the Beautiful, or the runner up in Season 3 of Dancing with the Stars, Mario Lopez can always say he’s tried everything at least once.…
Things to do tonight
Are you both bored, and art-likey? (New term!) You are in luck, reader! It’s First Thursday. Here are two whole things to do tonight which are arty and free! I mean, in addition to this thing and these here things. I. BLUE STAR: OPENING RECEPTION FOR DANVILLE CHADBOURNE, RETROSPECTIVE PART I: ARTIST’S COLLECTION 1980-1999 6-8…
Clean energy landslide rumbling in D.C., Austin, and Hill Country Hyatt
DOE’s Tom Kimbis: watching solar prices tumble and helping cities cash in. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com For all my lambasting of the bottled water industry (and those hyper-toned Cult of Fitness members lugging cases of the stuff through our grocery store lanes), I must confess: There was a time I didn’t glug straight out of the…
MOSAIC Students Rock Stella Haus: Extended Dance Re-Mix!
(photo of “Self Image opening, by Troy Wise) In the current Current issue, online and in print today, my story appears about “Self Image” at Stella Haus, the show by students in the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center’s MOSAIC after-school arts program for high schoolers. You can read the shorter version here. As noted there,…
YOSA snags acclaimed musical director away from Vermont
After an exhaustive search, the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio have hired a new musical director in Troy Peters, currently the music director of the Vermont Youth Orchestra and conductor of the Middlebury College Orchestra. Present YOSA musical director Marlon Chen is retiring at the end of the season. Peters, who’s also won acclaim in…
Face Control
Face Control Composer: Handsome Furs Conductor: Handsome Furs Label: Sub Pop Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording In Wolf Parade, Dan Boeckner makes blurry indie-rock that twists and turns in so many directions it’s often difficult to grasp. In Handsome Furs, which he co-fronts with wife Alexei Perry, he makes music that’s slightly more…
LadyLuck
LadyLuck Composer: Maria Taylor Conductor: Maria Taylor Label: Nettwerk Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The former Azure Ray singer’s third solo LP shows her moving into primetime with a collection of emotionally and sonically arresting tracks. Taylor combines inventive beats with ringing guitars, lush orchestral arrangements, and strong vocals to create some compelling…
Mob rules
Gomorrah Director: Matteo Garrone Screenwriter: Matteo Garrone Cast: Gianfelice Imparato, Salvatore Cantalupo, Toni Servillo, Ciro Petrone, Marco Macor Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: R Genre: Film Fascinating creatures, gangsters. Gomorrah opens on a group of them, beefy and hard-looking men, indulging in tanning-booth rays and manicures at a grimy salon. The all-encompassing blue of the UV…
Knowing
Knowing Director: Alex Proyas Screenwriter: Alex Proyas Cast: Lara Robinson, Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne, Chandler Canterbury, Ben Mendelsohn Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Considering Nicolas Cage’s recent cinematic batting average, Knowing probably isn’t high on anyone’s must-see list. The good news is that this sci-fi end-of-days thriller is head-and-shoulders above his last half-dozen…
American Soldier
American Soldier Composer: Queensryche Conductor: Queensryche Label: Atco/Rhino Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Queensrÿche is back with another epic concept album, this time putting their formidable musical muscle behind the stories of veterans of wars from World War II to Iraq. The results are akin to watching a gripping combat film like Platoon…
27th Annual Lowrider Festival
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Centro Cultural Aztlan presents their 27th Annual Lowrider Festival with a day of music (the Krayolas and the West Side Horns at 9pm), competition, and events. Factory-made cars are wildly re-imagined into mobile works of art that depict each participant’s pride, love, and personal history. In the U.S., the automobile, despite its…
Food for Thought Lecture Series: Exploring the Underwater World of the Ancient Mediterranean
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Nicolle Hirschfeld of the Classical Studies department at Trinity discusses her underwater exploration of the archaeology of the Mediterranean Sea. To us, this sounds like a cross between Indiana Jones and Steve Zissou. Treasure hunting off Greece? There could be worse ways to make a living. Publish or perish drown. We’re not…
Art Opening: Ernst Caramelle
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Lawrence Markey’s gallery feels like a secret hideout within the local art scene, which is interesting because San Antonio as a whole already feels hidden from the rest of the country. Even more unlikely, on Thursday, Frankfurt/NYC artist Ernst Caramelle will be in town to show his most recent work. Though Caramelle…
Elvis’ Nightmare in Vegas
Release Date: 2009-04-01 From the Red Curtain Dinner Theater comes a reprise of this outlandish original play, which centers around a sitcom setup: Elvis is booked on the same stage on the same night with his mortal nemesis — that’s right, Robert Goulet. If this isn’t interesting enough on its own, the event is hosted…
James Carter Organ Trio
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Though it’s curiously billed as an organ trio, the focus here is on Carter and his powerful, varied approach to the saxophone. He can play traditional jazz, having studied as a young adult under Wynton Marsalis, while also showing appreciation for the more avante-garde elements of the form, such as Sun Ra…
San Antonio Highland Games and Celtic Music Festival
Release Date: 2009-04-01 The San Antonio Highland Games and Celtic Music Festival returns with a variety of events for the brave at heart. Consider this: traditional heavy Scottish athletics, live Celtic music, a Scottish clans village, and a living-history encampment with Celts, Romans, and Vikings. Also: Scottish and Irish dancing, sheep-herding demonstrations, bagpipes, and much…
Lalo Alcaraz
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Lalo Alcaraz — creator of Pocho Magazine and the cutting-edge comic strip La Cucaracha — comes to town for a multi-media performance that brings his comic strip to life. Nothing is off limits with Alcaraz as he satirizes socio-political issues in Latino culture head-on, which often gets him in trouble with older…
Attic Ted, McEats, Patsy
Release Date: 2009-04-01 The not-so-subtle drug pun in Attic Ted’s name is very appropriate, though there’s nothing particularly psychedelic about the San Marcos band’s music, and nothing particularly stoner about their appearance. In fact, the now-two-piece (Grady Roper on organ and Margie Osborne on cello) makes an idiosyncratic brand of experimental noise that seems the…
Cuba sabrosa
Beat the travel ban with El Bohio’s mofongo
Art Opening: Private Idaho
Release Date: 2009-04-01 Artist Kimberly Aubuchon loves Mr. Potato Head and cares not who knows it! Her soft sculpture installation exhibition at Three Walls Gallery will host many creative felt iterations of the tuber-rific hero and his underground cronies, a slice of universal/common mythology she developed while in the Ox-Bow artist’s residency in Michigan. Call…
Mixed Drink Mecca
Release Date: 2009-04-01 For a rare Monday-night experience, the Bar Tab crew ventured into Alamo Heights, the land of “beauty and charm,” to taste the ballyhooed cocktails of Cappyccino’s, the adjacent casual cousin of Cappy Lawton’s namesake Broadway restaurant. Though a Saturday night might have been livelier, Cappyccino’s succeeds in understatement, and to go on…
Crack the Skye
Crack the Skye Composer: Mastodon Conductor: Mastodon Label: Reprise Release Date: 2009-04-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Mastodon is most definitely fucking with us. According to interviews, the band’s fourth studio album tells the story of a paraplegic who leaves his body to travel through wormholes in outer space, and, as Stephen Hawking predicted, this leads…
Teenage riot
Stella Haus, a small Blue Star Complex gallery run by painter Dayna De Hoyos and devoted to emerging artists, took a leap of faith this March. Casa De Hoyos mounted an exhibition of (mostly self-) portraiture by some exceptional San Anto high schoolers enrolled in Blue Star’s MOSAIC (Mosaics of Student Artists in Community), a…
District 1
Incumbent Mary Alice Cisneros and challenger Chris Forbrich are joined on the ballot by 51-year-old night auditor Ruby Krebs, the first transgendered candidate to seek office in San Antonio, who says she will neither seek nor accept campaign donations. Krebs did not return a candidate questionnaire. Mary Alice Cisneros (incumbent) Mary Alice Cisneros, 59, is…
Tricked Dick
Television made, unmade, and remade Richard Milhous Nixon. His political career coincided with the birth and boom of commercial TV broadcasting. He succeeded despite lacking the telegenic charms that propelled John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama into office. On September 23, 1952, when allegations of a slush fund led Dwight Eisenhower…
District 2
Five candidates are vying to fill the seat vacated by term-limited Councilwoman Sheil McNeil, who is running for Mayor. Bryant Livingston Forty-six-year-old Bryant Livingston works at the San Antonio State Hospital, and serves as assistant pastor of Temple Missionary Baptist Church. Livingston is opposed to expanding the South Texas (nuclear) Project, and supports Mission Verde’s…
A Stitch in time
It’s not often that when you leave a stable 9-to-5 to open your dream business, you hit the zeitgeist of the times so cleanly. Luckily, this is exactly what happened to Crystal Palmer and Sandra Huizar when, after several years working together at USAA, they decided they needed a change and opened a “recycled fashion”…
District 3
Jennifer Ramos Jennifer Ramos, 33, was appointed in January 2008 to fill out the remaining council term of Roland Gutierrez, who resigned in 2007 to run successfully for state representative. Along with her family, she owns the Southside restaurant El Torero, has served on the Alamo Community College Board of Trustees, and worked as a…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why are Mexicans so proud of the brutality of their police force? They seem to glamorize it in all their music and telenovelas. — Batons Are Bats, Or Super Oracles Dear BABOSO: I’ll let you know when Dirty Harry, Detective Sipowicz, Chief Wiggum, and the producers of COPS get back to me,…
District 4
Philip Cortez (incumbent) Councilman Philip Cortez, 30, serves in the United States Air Force and is a community resource advocate for the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center. During his first term he drew public ire for compromising the terms of the city’s buffer agreement with Toyota — although with truck manufacturing making a beeline…
Dear Uncle Mat
I will keep this brief. I have been in a long dry spell since my early and untimely divorce. One night last month I was a bit drunk and had sex with a guy from my circle of friends I have known since high school. No drama, just a little help from a good friend.…
District 5
Rodriguez and Garcia are running in a crowded field of six candidates, which also includes incumbent Lourdes Galvan, 23-year-old former Ed Garza intern (and 2007 contender) David Medina, 48-year-old student Lorena Saldierna, and 57-year-old Raymond Zavala, none of whom returned the Current questionnaire. Eigenio Rodriguez Forty-four-year-old former zoning commissioner and retired fireman Eigenio Rodriguez has…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): There’s plain old everyday lightning, which travels about five miles, and then there are superbolts — strokes of lightning that are a hundred times stronger than a normal flash and that can travel more than 100 miles. In the coming weeks, Aries, your power levels could be more like these superbolts…
District 7
Justin Rodriguez (incumbent) Justin Rodriguez, 34, graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School and worked as a juvenile prosecutor for the Bexar County District Attorney’s office. He subsequently won election to the SAISD Board of Education and was chair of the school board’s government affairs committee and student advisory panel. He was the lone…
Amuse-BOUCHE
“Ahhh,” read the subject line to a pithy email that arrived in A-B’s inbox late last month: “dude i want to overdose on this shit.” Nope, not that ’09-dealt smack that’s been making the headlines lately, but the Poteet Strawberry Festival, which kicks off just 30 minutes south of downtown this weekend. Mark Chesnutt and…
District 6
Anna Caballero Caballero is a 53-year-old manager with the USAA who has raised four children in the district, where she and her husband have lived for 28 years. She has a Master’s degree in organizational leadership from Our Lady of the Lake University. Caballero is running for the open seat against 59-year-old former NISD board…
The original kings of rhythm
Before Ozomatli, Grupo Fantasma, and Bombasta, there were Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. OK, there were others. But in the modern history of Latin alternative music produced by those who speak Spanish as a first language, no other band has been more successful and influential in mixing different rock streams with Afro-indigenous rhythms than the Argentine now-six-piece…
District 8
Six candidates are vying to replace Councilwoman Diane Cibrian, who is vacating her seat for a run at the Mayor’s gavel: 22-year-old BBVA Compass Bank customer-service rep Juan Davila, 29-year-old UTSA Professor Jacob Joseph Dell, 49-year-old accountant and realtor Michael Berlanga, and 28-year-old USAA consumer-lending manager Melissa Martinez-Carrasco. Zoning Commissioner Jody Sherrill and petroleum-field retiree…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
More than a week after the fact, details remain murky about the March 22 incident at a Houston club that led to the arrests of Girl in a Coma singer-guitarist Nina Diaz and bassist Jenn Alva. This much is clear: The band was hanging out at the Montrose-area bar Chances after a Saturday-night gig at…
District 9
Businesswoman and Asian-American community leader Elisa Chan, 42, is considered the frontrunner in the race for County Commissioner Kevin Wolff’s former seat — occupied every so briefly by Louis Rowe — having lined up support from the local political A Team (Nelson and Tracy Wolff for starters). She is running against 33-year-old AT&T engineering manager…
Heather Go Psycho
The venue is key here. Heather Go Psycho take the floor (there is no stage, only slick wooden planks for wedding-reception bunny-hopping) around 10 p.m., and they have it all to themselves. Metal folding chairs line the walls, and the audience remains seated, awkwardly, like middle-school boys at their first coed dance. Maybe vocalist-guitarist Jackee…
District 10
Challengers Branden Moore, Jeff Carruthers, and Robert Yanez will take on incumbent John Clamp — the only candidate who didn’t return a questionnaire, despite promising to do so — at the ballot box. Jeff Carruthers Jeff Carruthers, 54, owned his own screenprinting and embroidery business for 15 years and now sells embroidery equipment in a…
“Revolver” – Spunky Munky
A track titled “Revolver” by a band named Spunky Munky evokes two simultaneous associations: the classic Beatles album and Ben & Jerry’s banana-flavored ice cream. Neither one of these is much help. While that ’60s masterpiece might be said to’ve influenced every piece of rock ’n’ roll it preceded, there’s not much Beatlesque about this…
Dope boys
Nearly every scene in The Boys of Ghost Town was filmed in San Antonio. Everything but the skyline. The few times the camera rises above eye level, there’s no Tower of the Americas; it’s all stock footage of Houston landmarks (whatever the hell those are) instead. Director Pablo Véliz explains: There’s no way to set…
One if by land, two by sea
Larry Foles and Guy Villavaso, the duo behind upscale seafood chain Eddie V’s and Z’Tejas Southwestern Grille (which they sold in 2007), opened up two new restaurants in San Antonio last year during the last of the boom days: Wildfish Grill and Roaring Fork. In the late ’90s, the partners started Eddie V’s Edgewater Grille…
S’Nuff film
The Josiah Youth Media Festival is accepting entries for its third-annual film fest from now until June 1. The festival is open to all filmmakers born after June 1, 1988, and entries can be no longer than 20 minutes. The grand prize is $500 credit at B&H Photo & Video, so get to the post…
Who wants to know?
A few weeks back Bar Tab poet laureate Lyle Rosdahl reviewed the unusually named bar Early Bird Special No. 1. With an abundance of oddly named bars around town Bar Tab decided to pursue the issue further and see what we would find — if not some form of lost treasure then perhaps a better…
One love
The musical A Place to Stand, written and directed by St. Philip’s instructor Vincent Hardy, opens with a distraught mother, Mrs. Patrice Parham (Michelle Burnett), standing next to her daughter, Angelie (Brianne Richardson), who is lying unconscious on a hospital bed. From this tragic moment in the play, which opened March 27 at St. Philip’s,…
Genocide, the rematch
The question answered by the first episode of Spike TV’s new pseudo-educational program Deadliest Warrior (premiering Tuesday, April 7, at 9 p.m.), is pretty simple: “Who would win in a fight between a Roman gladiator and an Apache warrior?” The questions not answered, however, are infinitely more worthwhile: “Why?” “Who asked to know this, and…
The road — to attrition
When you walk into the Overtime Theater to see David Robb’s pared-down, post-apocalyptic version of Shakespeare’s King Lear, you might think you’ve mistakenly stepped into one of the many junk shops or pawnshops surrounding the theater building on West Avenue. The set is made of mismatched, discarded technology: broken computer monitors, televisions, speakers, fenders, boom boxes,…
Dirty socks and celibacy
“What is his weapon of mass destruction?” Carnie Wilson asks coyly. The three newlywed wives, perched before Carnie on oversized loveseats, giggle. And we, the studio audience, giggle right along with them. Because what we’re talking about here is … LAUNDRY! More specifically the dirty laundry left in the hamper by these ladies’ brand-new husbands.…
ARTIFACTS
This Thursday, curator Dayna De Hoyos orchestrates the community arts event “Rummage Haus @ Stella Haus,” in which creative folk in the Blue Star area will offer myriad objects for sale, accompanied by texts that tell the stories of each thingamabob’s significance, where or who it came from, and why it’s no longer needed. A…
The QueQue
The invisible lobbyist Say this for local attorney and all-round political shaker Gerardo Menchaca: When he strikes, he rarely leaves fingerprints behind. Menchaca registered with the City as a lobbyist in 2007, and even though he’s no longer on the official list, he continues to behave much like the breed. Last month, Menchaca, working on…
Judge lifts injunction on City Parade Ordinance
Deciding that the City had complied with Judge Xavier Rodriguez’s instructions, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery today lifted the injunction against the City’s Parade Ordinance. Judge Rodriguez had ruled that critical portions of the ordinance, which City Council passed in November 2007, were unconstitutional in part because they left too much discretion regarding fees in…
Sanctuary sayonara on hold
Certain Texas legislators have been busy jockeying for position to introduce controversial bills that would target illegal immigrants, but they’ve got only two months left to pass such legislation or they’ll have to wait until 2011. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott recently issued a ruling that the state legislature would be within its right to…
Swapping constitution for chaos in Honduras?
Brian Thompson bthompsoe@gmail.com Imagine for a second that George W. Bush did not leave the White House quietly. Instead, he assumed that he had done such a stellar job that the country needed a third term under him to set things right. Naturally, this situation would have created something akin to civil war, with various…
A lobbyist by any other name
By Gilbert Garcia Say this for local attorney and all-round political shaker Gerardo Menchaca: When he strikes, he rarely leaves fingerprints behind. Menchaca registered with the City as a lobbyist in June, 2007, and even though he’s no longer registered, he continues to behave much like a lobbyist. Last month, Menchaca, working on behalf of…
