Rawr! Hiss! State GOP’s claws come out about MALC hearing
We just posted on the Mexican American Legislative Caucus hearing regarding the State Board of Education last week. Sitting through a grueling nine hours straight of testimony, it seemed almost everyone (with the exception of one late-comer) had their say. But not to the state GOP’s ears. Last Thursday they issued a press release belittling…
Leibowitz to SBOE: This process needs fixing, bud.
We were among the many reporters and stakeholders packed into a small hearing room at the state Capitol last Wednesday to hear testimony on the State Board of Education from a host of witnesses before the Mexican American Legislative Caucus. While the nation scoffs at our great state as a whole for allowing our SBOE…
Undergrad Invasion: Students Seek Board of Trustees Positions
The Alamo Colleges trustees’ debate was an evening of contrasts. Last Wednesday brought together all but one of the candidates running for two positions on the Board of Trustees. The usual suspects were representedâ??a former city councilman, a professor, a lawyerâ??but an uninformed onlooker might have been surprised to see two faces amongst them almost…
Working the Wine Lunch: Somebody’s Gotta Do It
Yes, there are perks (or are they perqs, from perquisite?) to writing about food and wine. One is invitations to wine luncheons at which actual winemakers are present. In season (which is to say, not during harvest and other activity-intense times). This is that season, and some good folks have been in town. One of…
New World Wine & Food Fest Faves
The New World Wine and Food Festival, now with ten years under its ever-more-ample belt, has switched seasons on us. Formerly in November (and, more specifically, the beginning of November to coincide loosely with Day of the Dead celebrations when the intent of the event was more Latin than it is now), it is, as…
Epistemological Enchiladas
Many of us will miss Chamade, the quirky jewelry shop in La Villita that featured the work of numerous jewelry designers, both local and international. The economic downturn (plus the desire to spend more time fishing on the part of owner Alain Teissier) did it in. But the name will live on for at least…
They just wanna be judged
Early last week, in the latest chapter of what is becoming a sprawling San Antonio epic, we visited New Orleans to see how the International Women’s Day March and Coalition would fare against the City of San Antonio in their fight to the death over the repeal of parade ordinance fees, an argument taken up…
Dude. What are you doing tomorrow?
…because if you’ve got no plans, or even if you do, consider showing up at Artpace for a unique and deep day-long art event. It starts with what they’ve billed as an “Artist Talk” with renowned installation artist Jim Hodges, whose large-scale works “Dont’ Be Afraid” and “look and see” have expanded the contemporary-art notions…
Garden Start pursues non-profit status to expand green outreach
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Matt Ahern has been installing gardens around San Antonio on a pay-per-lot basis for years as the founder of Garden Start. He’s also roped dozens of businesses into his “green” company directory with EchoTown a for-profit effort intended to make smart ecological decisions pay off for local companies and himself. Now, in…
Hey kids! Enter your films in the Josiah Media Festival
Are you a filmmaker under the age of 21? Then your young, impressionable eyes probably shouldn’t be looking at our site â?? we use swear words and question authority. But since you’re here, why not read the rules for entering your film for consideration in the Josiah Festival. It’s a chance for you to get…
Seed Bombs: Guerilla greening of the concrete jungle
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com With the Roots of Change Community Garden entering spring flower in the back lot, activists and organizers inside the Southwest Workers Union Commerce Street office are deep at work melding the worlds of urban gardens with their long-standing press for environmental justice. At a Saturday afternoon workshop at the Collins Garden Library,…
Insane Clown Posse Essay Contest 2: We have a winner!
Congratulations to D.W. March, who’ll be receiving the Nuked edition of ICP’s latest Bang Pow Boom for the essay reprinted, unedited, below. When I Heard the Learn’d Juggalo The Insane Clown Posse song “Miracles” can be seen as a modern interpretation of Walt Whitman’s classic poem “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”. Each can be…
SBOE candidate Soto claims plagiarism in social studies TEKS
Just a few moments ago, at the Mexican-American Legislative Caucus hearings on the Texas State Board of Education, Dr. Michael Soto managed to shock a group of people who thought they’d heard it all when it comes to the SBOE’s ridiculous overreach into Texas public education. Soto, a Trinity University professor and the Democratic candidate…
Jim Hightower and “The Living Spirit of Texas Populism: In Our Politics, In Our Culture”
Release Date: 2010-04-28 Considered “America’s #1 populist,” best-selling author and syndicated political columnist Jim Hightower is famous for challenging the powers that be on behalf of the “Powers That Ought To Be,” including environmentalists, farmers, and “just plain folks.” The exhibition Swim Against the Current: Highlights from the Jim Hightower Archive was made possible by…
Woofstock
Release Date: 2010-04-28 We love it when musicians come together for a great cause, and this one has us feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. Organized by Pet Pals of Texas (a non-profit that provides in-home care, food, and veterinary support to the pets of disabled and terminally ill animal lovers), Woofstock is an all-day…
Lemonade Day
Release Date: 2010-04-28 Don’t be surprised if you notice an inordinate amount of tiny young professionals selling roadside refreshments this Sunday. Lemonade Day is a nationwide initiative designed to teach kids the basics of running a business. Why not start early and plant the seeds that will one day grow into a massive golden umbrella…
George Strait, Reba McEntire, Lee Ann Womack, Randy Rogers Band
Release Date: 2010-04-28 With 57 chart-toppers, George Strait holds the world record for the most number one singles in the history of music, regardless of genre. Having sold 67 million albums worldwide, one would imagine the Poteet-born superstar could sell out the Alamodome on his own. We won’t find out this year, because Strait’s bringing…
Solar Fest 2010
Release Date: 2010-04-28 Solar San Antonio has organized an enlightening family day in the sun that fuses education and entertainment to raise awareness about ways we can make innovative changes to the ways we use power. Tent talks, live music, and an array of eco-conscious vendors will rely on solar power and soy-based biodiesels to…
Jung Hee Mun: Retracing Sensation
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-04-28 The prodigious Jung Hee Mun — the product of a Korean childhood, an American art school, the San Antonio contemporary scene, and her own billion-horsepower imagination — shows a series of artworks called Retracing Sensation at The Southwest School of Art & Craft until June 27. Her past work, which…
Abort!Abort!
Moviegoers should look for plan B
The Essence of man
Release Date: 2010-04-28 If you’re the type of guy who’s always been irritated by the “ladies only” rule at male strip clubs or the type of girl who longs for a slice of pumped and oiled beefcake but would rather not be seen entering Hard Bodies, Club Essence is sure to be a perfectly snug…
I Learned the Hard Way
I Learned the Hard Way Composer: Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings Label: Daptone Release Date: 2010-04-28 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Though it’s not a straight-up break-up album, I Learned the Hard Way, the latest from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, serves up a soul remedy for the broken-hearted. Jones,…
Heaven is Whenever
Heaven is Whenever Composer: The Hold Steady Label: Vagrant Records Release Date: 2010-04-28 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording All that partying and drug use (or at least all the recording of songs about it) appears to have aged the Hold Steady prematurely. In just five short years, they’ve gone from…
Year of the Black Rainbow
Year of the Black Rainbow Composer: Coheed & Cambria Label: Columbia Release Date: 2010-04-28 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Proggish bands like Genesis, Pink Floyd, and Queensrÿche have shown that albums can tell a story and still be entertaining, and even compelling. Others, unfortunately, attempted this kind of literary rock…
Fire Away
Fire Away Composer: Ozomatli Label: Mercer Street/Downtown Release Date: 2010-04-28 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Contemporary pan-genre stylists Ozomatli clearly owe a debt to their forefathers. On Fire Away, their fifth full-length, Ozomatli pay that debt forward with a polyrhythmic vengeance. Formed 15 years ago in East L.A. and named…
The Losers
Critic’s Pick The Losers Director: Sylvain White Screenwriter: Sylvain White Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Idris Elba, Chris Evans, Zoe Saldana, Jason Patric Release Date: 2010-04-28 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film You know what?s fun? Watching someone enjoy a job. Sure, it might put a fold in your brow to try to recall the last time you…
The Parental Advisory Tour
Release Date: 2010-04-28 Any band that’s capable of earning a Grammy nomination for performing a psychobilly song called “Fried Chicken and Coffee” probably deserves a listen. Lead guitarist Ruyter Suys (who was named one of the 12 Greatest Female Electric Guitarists by Elle Magazine in ’09) describes Nashville Pussy’s sound as “good old-fashioned, humping-in-the-back-seat-of-a-car rock…
Provacouture Runway Show
Release Date: 2010-04-28 This Friday, Toshiba, Geisha, Inc., and Mikailee Alton will unite to present the Provacouture Runway Show, an evening of fashion benefiting the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Lone Star Chapter. Starting at 6:30 p.m., guests can rub elbows with local celebs and fashion fans over cocktails before the big runway reveal at 8 p.m.…
Jamaican Gold: We small but we big!
It’s the end of the month and time for another installment of Travels with Frenchie, the monthly food series in which a trio of culturally mismatched San Antonians explores the San Antonio hinterland in search of dining adventure. As always, the culinary vice squad consisted of: Frenchie (aka Fabien Jacob, celebrated local sommelier), Carlos the…
Depth of field
After How to Train Your Dragon reclaimed the top box-office spot last weekend (with 67-percent of ticket sales for 3-D screenings), movie lovers have to wonder if the 3-D craze is really here to stay this time, or if it’s still a fad that will fade, like it did in the ’50s and the ’80s.…
Trees v. plains, SAPD’s cold-case files
SAPD: cold case files As we round out the month of Fools and Fiesta, the QueQue would like to end on a serious note: The National Sexual Violence Resource center named April Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The Sex Crimes Unit of San Antonio Police Department didn’t need the reminder, and has recently taken steps to…
East Side land mine
Part 1 in this series, “Kangaroo Court: Meet the City’s new extra-Constitutional crime-fighting tool,” appeared April 7. It explored Constitutional problems with the Dangerous Structure Determination Board — which is staffed entirely by City employees — especially in light of the City’s efforts to use the Dangerous Assessment Response Team and the DSDB as a…
No turning back?
“Once `a property is` in the system, there’s a procedure,” Beacon Hill Area Neighborhood Association President Cosima Colvin told the Current as part of this week’s installment in our ongoing Dangerous Structure Determination Board series. “It’s going to move along whether we want it to or not.” It’s a lesson nearby Tobin Hill knows all…
Bone by Bone
Barbara Ras has been recognized as an American poet of the first rank: her first volume of poetry won the Walt Whitman Award given by the Academy of American Poets, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, and her work has been published in magazines such as the New Yorker, Orion, and TriQuarterly. She…
SAHA: Emphasis on “Authority,” not “Housing”
I am not an expert, but in four years and more than 500 cases, I have learned a few things about poverty. Being poor is tough. Life is a constant struggle for the basics, which come either not at all or in inferior form. Some end up homeless, while others end up in poor neighborhoods with…
Down and out in Texas and Mexico
When Anthony, the Coptic saint, wandered alone into the Egyptian desert, his mind became a theater of phantasmagorical visions — demons, centaurs, and satyrs. In 1999, when 24-year-old Jake Silverstein drove into the desolate terrain of far West Texas, he found himself roaming the borderlands straddling not just the United States and Mexico but also…
ARTifacts
Get it while you can, Countdown City (2-1-0, geddit?): Exotic Matter, the breathtaking show at David Shelton Gallery, stays on his walls only until May 8. Go marvel at Joey Fauerso’s sexually charged, rigorously investigative and (yes) beautiful paintings, which are all about surface. Well, and depth. And also nudity. And renderings of exploding plant…
Despite all my rage
Matt Schultz, the charismatic 26-year-old frontman for Cage the Elephant, is wandering the secular aisles of a Best Buy in his band’s hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, looking for a copy of The Devil and Daniel Johnston, something he never would have been able to do as a kid. First off, his recovering hippie father…
If that ain’t country…
To her occasional dismay (see below), Jacksonville, Texas, native Lee Ann Womack is often labeled a country-music traditionalist, revivalist, etc., etc. Several of her best-known songs, though, including her signature hit “I Hope You Dance,” come closer to contemporary country than that descriptor might indicate. Her latest single sounds more like Christian pop. “There Is…
Live & Local
People don’t start trickling into Pedicab until midnight. Two of the three bands scheduled to perform this evening canceled: Micro Missile Attack a week before, and Colt of Us, the night of, reportedly after walking into the venue, making up some excuse about having to wake up early, and walking right back out. So the…
The Sound & The Fury
It’s safe to say that at this point, every drop of unintentional hilarity has been squeezed from the Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles” video (though “Fucking magnets, how do they work?” is sure to live on as a spiritual descendant of “I’mma let you finish,” and “All your base are belong to us”), but stop by…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, Can you explain what an “open relationship” is supposed to be? I am a young and admittedly naïve gay guy who has fallen in love. The man of my dreams is a little older and claims that he only believes in open relationships, that monogamy doesn’t work and is the sure way…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “In a recipe for salsa published recently, one of the ingredients was misstated, due to an error,” said an apology run by a local newspaper. “The correct ingredient is ‘2 tsp. of cilantro’ instead of ‘2 tsp. of cement.’” This is an example of the kind of miscue you should be…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I live in a Northeastern city, and a game I play with myself during the cold, wintry months is counting how many Mexicans I see without a heavy coat or appropriate outer garment. Believe me, I’m not prejudiced (I, too, am a minority, and this game is lightweight to some of the games…
Oregon pinot
Pinot noir. Nicknamed the “heartbreak” grape, because it’s notoriously difficult to cultivate — although the French have been growing it for centuries in Burgundy. But the mystique is bound to help keep up the price if nothing else. Pinot noir is an extremely flexible food wine in addition to its downright deliciousness, and the world…
‘Maters matter: Some local-food enthusiasts motivated by taste
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Among the cast of reasons people start puncturing their back yards with garden tools and laying out raised beds of manure to launch a garden, one of the most obvious yet overlooked is the supremacy of taste. Sylvie Shurgot moved from Germany to San Antonio in 1996. A child of Belguim’s rich…
Mmmmmmmm, Mohammad
A timely satirical “field report” by Gene Elder in response to the South Park (etc) death-threat fracas. Speaking of satire and freedom of speech, don’t forget about Political Art Month! Unrelated note: I have no idea why those sentences are underlined. ********************************************************************************************* Mohammad Face Appears On Tortillas San Antonio, Texas: by Gene Elder As has…
North-South antagonisms needled by tree ordinance
Richard Alles’ chart outlining how few trees are protected by proposed ordinance. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com In the last 50 years, half of the world’s forests have been razed to manufacture “premium” beef and executive-grade ass wipes. (And, yes, we are including your boss in one of those categories.) Industrial agriculture has played a huge role,…
