The (Real) Day w/o a Mexican
The Day Without a Mexican made much better billboards and movie trailers than actual feature-size-and-duration entertainment, still the point overtly maneuvering across the narrative was well-honed: The economies of the Americas, norte y sur, are linked to degrees our immigration policies don’t yet recognize or account for. By mysteriously rapturing the brown out of LA…
The (Real) Day w/o a Mexican
The Day Without a Mexican made much better billboards and movie trailers than actual feature-size-and-duration entertainment, still the point overtly maneuvering across the narrative was well-honed: The economies of the Americas, norte y sur, are linked to degrees our immigration policies don’t yet recognize or account for. By mysteriously rapturing the brown out of LA…
On the Street
On the Street High culture, low culture, no culture all co-existing uneasily in another installment of On the Streets. As always, read at your own risk… Letters (to the OTS Penthouse Suite) It was a slow week for mail, though thankfully a busy week (or two hour period) for fotographs. First Friday and the Final…
On the Street
On the Street High culture, low culture, no culture all co-existing uneasily in another installment of On the Streets. As always, read at your own risk… Letters (to the OTS Penthouse Suite) It was a slow week for mail, though thankfully a busy week (or two hour period) for fotographs. First Friday and the Final…
Sosa cuts out the immigration middleman
File under: we told you so (or sort of hinted at it, anyway). Lionel Sosa has apparently left MATT.org, his feel-good non-profit dedicated to building a stronger relationship between Mexico and the U.S. (and modulating the xenophobic, bad-for-business anti-immigration rhetoric) , to work for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. Current contributor Joe Solis speculated last…
Your Ass is Grass
Uugh. I think many things when I look at this week’s 210SA cover … none of them have to do with environmentalism — the issue they’re purportedly trying to call attention to — but several begin with “half.” Half-Martian. Half-leprechaun. Half-She-Hulk Mostly I can’t get over the fact that this…
Sosa cuts out the immigration middleman
File under: we told you so (or sort of hinted at it, anyway). Lionel Sosa has apparently left MATT.org, his feel-good non-profit dedicated to building a stronger relationship between Mexico and the U.S. (and modulating the xenophobic, bad-for-business anti-immigration rhetoric) , to work for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. Current contributor Joe Solis speculated last…
Your Ass is Grass
Uugh. I think many things when I look at this week’s 210SA cover … none of them have to do with environmentalism — the issue they’re purportedly trying to call attention to — but several begin with “half.” Half-Martian. Half-leprechaun. Half-She-Hulk Mostly I can’t get over the fact that this publication is edited by a…
TeatroFest: Teatro U
Release Date: 2008-04-09 CineFestival celebrates 30 years of Chicano film and video. Kicking off the four-day festival is Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. Look forward to old favorites and new additions, as well as a chance to meet the filmmakers and cast members of your faves. $30/40 four-day pass, $6-8/screening,…
CineFestival
Release Date: 2008-04-09 CineFestival celebrates 30 years of Chicano film and video. Kicking off the four-day festival is Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. Look forward to old favorites and new additions, as well as a chance to meet the filmmakers and cast members of your faves. $30/40 four-day pass, $6-8/screening,…
Filthy lucre
The Counterfeiters Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky Screenwriter: Stefan Ruzowitzky Cast: Karl Markovics, August Diehl Release Date: 2008-04-09 Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thecounterfeiters/ Rated: R Genre: Foreign To vanquish the enemy, follow the money. Because Allied money was bankrolling the planes, tanks, and ships that stood in the way of conquest, the Nazi régime conceived “Operation Bernhard,” an elaborate scheme…
Clooney tackles comedy
Leatherheads Director: George Clooney Screenwriter: George Clooney Cast: George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinkski Release Date: 2008-04-09 Website: http://www.leatherheadsmovie.com/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Comedy A good comedy is one that makes you laugh, a great comedy is one that beckons you to re-watch it immediately and laugh at the same things again, and a classic comedy…
The Starting Line, Bayside, Four Year Strong, & Steel Train
Release Date: 2008-04-09 Pennsylvania modern-rockers The Starting Line will defrost your heart and cause some hair-raising goose bumps with their new power-pop CD, Direction. Just check out the new video for “Island,” which was recently the most streamed video on MTV2. Heralded as the princes of pop-punk after their major label debut on Geffen and…
CineFestival
Release Date: 2008-04-09 CineFestival celebrates 30 years of Chicano film and video. Kicking off the four-day festival is Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. Look forward to old favorites and new additions, as well as a chance to meet the filmmakers and cast members of your faves. $30/40 four-day pass, $6-8/screening,…
Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
Release Date: 2008-04-09 Reminiscent of the crazy, whacked-out music of Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and Beck, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen reel in the glory days of odd science-fiction TV mixed with alt-country and rockabilly blues, rolled into an unforgettable stage show of comedy, twang guitars, and boogie-woogie piano. Rob Roy Parnell opens.…
DJ Shortkut, DJ Apollo, DJ Jester teh Filipino Fist, DJ Manilla Ice, & DJM
Release Date: 2008-04-09 As a legendary member of Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Jonathan Cruz, aka DJ Shortkut, is best known for his beat juggling and explosive percussion techniques. Partner DJ Apollo has mastered the art of playing mix master on two turntables like no one’s business, throwing down everything from old-school rap á la Run DMC…
From So Cal To So Flo
Release Date: 2008-04-09 30 artists — 15 from Southern California — use a mix of media to decorate some of the hippest skate decks this side of Orange County. Graffiti, tattoos, comics, and paintings will grace the backsides of the boards. Also bringing the talent are Gallista instructor Jim Haught, Picassoesque Robert Tatum, and tattoo…
Mae, The Honorary Title, Between the Trees, & Far Less
Release Date: 2008-04-09 The name of this Virginia Beach-based five-piece stands for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, and the aggressive rockers bring their thought-provoking grunge guitar driven sound to the Alamo City in support of their latest, Singularity. New York acoustic gods The Honorary Title and Florida indie-pop quintet Between the Trees combine for a stellar supporting…
Marcia Ball
Release Date: 2008-04-09 Marcia Ball refuses to recognize the border that separates Texas from Lousiana. In her mind, the Gulf Coast is a region unto itself, and the culture of Lake Charles is indistiguishable from that of Port Arthur or Beaumont. The statuesque blues diva is uniquely qualified to make that assessment because she was…
CrawFunk
Release Date: 2008-04-09 If you like BBQ, beer, and the big outdoors, have we got the day for you. The festival’s highlight is huge crawfish boil, supplemented by vendors, pulled pork sandwiches, sausage sticks, and more. Local Texas boys Flashflood, White Bread, Brian Strange & the Strange Brothers, South Texas Destroyers, and more take the…
Second Saturday Art Opening
Release Date: 2008-04-09 30 artists — 15 from Southern California — use a mix of media to decorate some of the hippest skate decks this side of Orange County. Graffiti, tattoos, comics, and paintings will grace the backsides of the boards. Also bringing the talent are Gallista instructor Jim Haught, Picassoesque Robert Tatum, and tattoo…
Presence and Presents
Release Date: 2008-04-09 CineFestival celebrates 30 years of Chicano film and video. Kicking off the four-day festival is Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. Look forward to old favorites and new additions, as well as a chance to meet the filmmakers and cast members of your faves. $30/40 four-day pass, $6-8/screening,…
Long-term planning: An open letter to Mayor Hardberger
Dear Mayor Hardberger, First off, congratulations on Luminaria. I’ll be honest, I had low expectations, but I think it really came together. It was a huge hit with everyone I talked to. With a year to plan, I will be shocked if next year’s event isn’t exponentially better. The reason I write is that you…
Note worthy
Alfred Silva looks nothing like Layne Staley, but close your eyes and you’d easily think the late Alice in Chains singer was standing right in front of you. Performing at Dixie’s on a Friday night, Silva, sans Staley’s blonde hair and wearing a chained wallet and black sneaks, steps up to the mic and offers…
The word in color
April, T.S. Eliot famously wrote, is the cruelest month; it mixes memory and desire — a reminder of things lost and a yearning for things yet to be. It’s entirely appropriate, then, that April is National Poetry Month. After all, poetry has long been the form of choice for lament, tribute, revelation, and meditation, whether…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Saustex Media founder (and Hickoids frontman) Jeff Smith and Sam’s Burger Joint promoter Jerry Clayworth are teaming up for Ram Jam III, their third-annual raucous celebration of the memory of Taco Land owner Ram Ayala. Smith and Clayworth were good friends of Ayala’s and Smith not only performed frequently at Taco Land with various bands,…
ARTIFACTS
Instead of taking a First Friday stroll, I opted for First Thursday (or as our design director calls it, Thurst Thursday — although the art walk has nothing to do with the definition of thurst, which is some kind of a coal-mining term), I was really pleased with the crowds that turned out for the…
Regaining their religion
No artist who has worked without a pause can be completely happy when observers label a new record a “comeback.” But there’s no arguing that, for R.E.M., there’s a lot at stake with the new Accelerate (Warner Brothers). The band has acknowledged (in interviews and with the record’s title) a need to re-focus and adrenalize…
A grand ole ho-down
Last night a friend and I visited the Cove to check out Ken Little perform his last Hometown Artists’ Rodeo … and it was a blast. We began the night off with too much food … and then took in some great music, performed by the Western cut-off shirt wearing Little himself and his batch…
Digging a poet-gardener
A gardener cultivates the soil, pulls the weeds, and creates an environment where plants can grow and others can enjoy them. Much like a gardener, poets cultivate thoughts, express their love or discontent, and create an environment where words can form emotion. Jesse Castro likes to refer to himself as a poet-gardener, which is why…
Playback
There is nothing sweeter in this whole wide world than a wishy-washy gangsta rapper. That’s why I’m crushing hard on 50 Cent these days. A few months ago, Fiddy offered his nine bullet wounds of political credibility to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. But after Barack Obama’s monumental March 18 speech on race in America, the…
Texas (Dead) Gulf (Dead) Coast
`cross-posted at harman on earth` The oxygen-starved “cloud” — hypoxia explosion, or dead zone — at the bottom of the mighty Mississip’ was nearly 8,000 square miles last summer, about the size of New Jersey. Off the Texas coast, we are now being informed by researchers at Texas A&M, is a coast-long lifeless stretch of…
Mujeres of prose
There’s something about the passion of the Mujeres Writing Group when they share their stories that makes me feel proud of my heritage and the women in my life. Last week, as part of Our Lady of the Lake University’s literary festival, I attended the Mujeres event Social Justice — Women’s Passion for Change, where…
Caucus chaos
On March 3, the night before this year’s Texas Democratic primary, a local group of Barack Obama supporters met in a Westside rental building at Commerce and Murry to plan for the caucus that would follow the primary. Amidst the strategizing and prep work, a politically savvy volunteer from California stepped up to put the…
The white noise album
TO HEAR IS TO SEE/HÖREN IST SEHEN, currently on view at the Triangle Project Space, is the culmination of a 10-years-plus collaborative project. The exhibition features more than 100 sound works, each paired with a photo and text. The first showing was in 1996, and with each subsequent exhibition the collection has grown. It has…
On war bondage and the thrill of the Four
Just when you thought you’d been punished enough, Queque rolls out of its mossy crag, unrolls the paper, flips the laptop wide, clears a sludgy throat, and mutters in gollumesque garble: “Pwee-Twray-Usssshs?” Brass buttons It opens with the brass in green and a pool of photographers swimming about at the front of the chamber in…
UTSA blows magic into the old ‘Flute’
Mozart’s Magic Flute is one of the strangest, most jumbled stories in classical opera. Yet for every incomprehensible symbol and discontinuous plot element, there’s a stunning melody, charismatic character, or charmingly absurd theatrical stunt to make up for it. Its fantastical elements lend themselves to over-the-top productions. But in the pared-down production currently running at…
The proposed PAC is music to local performance groups
You’ve been assured the Visitor Tax isn’t a new tax, or one you’ll ever have to pay — as long as you stay away from rental cars and hotels. `See “Welcome to San Antonio,” March 26-April 1.` But, damn, not being a Spurs fan, you’ve hardly used the AT&T Center they built for you last…
Dear Uncle Mat
Help! I am desperate to find a home for Felipe and since you give such good advice, I figured it is worth asking. We have a new baby in the house with asthma, and we need to provide a pet-dander-free environment. I placed an ad at my work and he wouldn’t even come out to see the…
Cross-cultural cinema
When it comes to Latino film in Hollywood, no one can deny the impact directors Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men), Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) have had on the industry. All hailing from Mexico, the trio has proven that cinema from south of the border can stand side-by-side with its…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): High-definition TV makes everything look more vivid than standard broadcast technology. Images are so high-quality they almost appear 3-D. While this is enjoyable to viewers, some performers are uncomfortable with the way it reveals their skin’s imperfections. Did you know that Brad Pitt has acne scars? I predict a metaphorically similar…
CRITICAL Darling
Once again, Critical Darling has become the receptacle for eulogizing (ugh, just when I had overcome that nasty little existential crisis), because, if you didn’t know: Charlton Heston is dead. (We didn’t know until a CD Exchange employee told us on Saturday while we were unloading our copy of Cold Mountain `Hey, speaking of dead…
Home on the Range
I don’t remember being troubled by a lot of rules when I was a kid. While it wasn’t exactly anarchy at my house, like most children of the ’70s, my brother and I were allowed to watch violent cartoons and ride seesaws without helmets and do “science experiments” in friends’ basements unsupervised. But on the…
‘Battlestar’ goes for the god
Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, Fridays, 10 pm) Three years ago, the Cylons, a race of androids, completely destroyed the 12 colonies of Kobol and most of the human race that resided there. The survivors formed a ragtag caravan looking for the mythical Earth. The Battlestar Galactica is their only defensive ship. In an age of…
¡Ask a Mexican!
SPECIAL DIA DE LOS IMPUESTOS EDITION Dear Mexican: Sitting on my desk is a levy from the Internal Revenue Service for over $12,000 in unpaid taxes. Turns out some dude used my Social Security number for two years in Albuquerque to get paid, and didn’t bother to pay taxes. It’s taken me plenty in time…
Clothes-minded
When Swedish hotshots Karin Jimfelt-Ghatan (a fashion designer) and Per Holknekt (a former skateboarding and pinball champion) teamed up a few years ago to create Odd Molly, the line was originally sold in the back of Stockholm cafés. Now their funky, feminine, Old World-inspired fashions are found in 27 countries, department stores as prestigious as…
Spittin’ Game
Turning Point: The Fall of Liberty (Codemasters) Playstation 3 $59.99 Turning Point presents an alternate universe in which the Nazis took over Europe and are now attacking America. It might be chilling if the backstory weren’t so stupid: Winston Churchill was killed before the war began, thus allowing Hitler to take over Britain. Seriously? A…
Live and let liver
I’ve always said that my love of bacon alone would prevent me from becoming a vegetarian, but after reading an exposé of the commercial pork industry in Rolling Stone about a year ago, I quit eating pork for a while. I’ve only resumed since discovering a reliable source of pork produced in a less evil…
88 Minutes
88 Minutes Wednesday, April 16th 7:30pm at Santikos Silverado 11506 W FM 1604 North We are out of passes for this screening
Amuse-BOUCHE
In a city that’s losing cultural landmarks monthly (alas, Esquire), the Bun N Barrel story is a happy one: Longtime owners Courtney Broussard and Carlos Villasana sold the 1950s drive-in landmark to their next-door neighbor and tenant, Tong’s Thai — which added a fresh coat of paint and some new menu items, but essentially kept…
A grand ole ho-down
Last night a friend and I visited the Cove to check out Ken Little perform his last Hometown Artists’ Rodeo … and it was a blast. We began the night off with too much food … and then took in some great music, performed by the Western cut-off shirt wearing Little himself and his batch…
Bodegas Julián Chivite
Spanish wines, once thought of by many as ponderous and oxidized, have made great strides in recent years — or perhaps the American palate and Spanish style have met mid-ocean. Somehow, without compromising national identity, Spanish vintners are now producing wines we want to taste at prices to suit every purse. One of the producers…
Texas (Dead) Gulf (Dead) Coast
`cross-posted at harman on earth` The oxygen-starved “cloud” — hypoxia explosion, or dead zone — at the bottom of the mighty Mississip’ was nearly 8,000 square miles last summer, about the size of New Jersey. Off the Texas coast, we are now being informed by researchers at Texas A&M, is a coast-long lifeless stretch of…
The Spring of Love!
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas had an unexpected reason to celebrate at today’s luncheon with author Anna Quindlen. News came through during the noontime event that Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins had authorized an increase in the Medicaid reimbursement for oral contraceptives to clinic-based pharmacies, also known as…
The Spring of Love!
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas had an unexpected reason to celebrate at today’s luncheon with author Anna Quindlen. News came through during the noontime event that Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins had authorized an increase in the Medicaid reimbursement for oral contraceptives to clinic-based pharmacies, also known as…
