Eva Reveals Where Tony Parker’s Heart Is
Here’s a sporty chisme guest post from our new Web Editor, Mark Ross… Perhaps trying to stir up some intrigue in what has otherwise been a summer dominated by the shenanigans of Lebron, Eva Longoria Parker let it slip last night that Tony Parker would like to relocate to New York. Is this just the…
Big Sisters? Big Brothers? â??No thanks,’ says Sculley’s proposed budget
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Future dropout? Meet City Manager Sheryl Sculley’s proposed City budget for 2011. Y’all can, like, hang out in the garage for a little bit together, but then you’ll have to go. Future Baby Momma? Yeah, I know the rec center is closing early these days because of the budget cuts. But we’ve…
R.I.P. Esteban Steve Jordan
Esteban Jordan, Carlos Santana, and Jerry Garcia Jordan goes Mariachi San Antonio, Conjunto music and accordion players lost one of the greats last night. After a long struggle with liver cancer, Esteban Jordan passed away at a friend’s home. He was supposed to be playing a show in Illinois that night. I saw Esteban Jordan…
Chaléwood No. 32 – David Zayas
David Zayas – The Expendables By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net Puerto Rican actor David Zayas joins a list of iconic action-stars including Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the new action film The Expendables. In the film, Zayas plays General Garza, a South American dictator who is the target…
City budget projected to balance on CPS Energy (again)
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Council (and cretinous Council watchers) got an introduction to the City Manager’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year this morning, one which, perhaps unsurprisingly, balances itself on expected revenues from San Antonio’s powerhouse CPS Energy and its magically* inflating natural-gas prices. The $2.3-billion budget holds property taxes steady at their current…
Hey bloviating politicians! U.S. border towns quiet, lovely, safe
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com As a good friend announced to her family she was headed to Mexico for some R&R, her sweet abuelita objected. “It’s not safe,” peeped the timorous voice at the head of the table. “I’m not going to the border,” my friend clarified, and the family around the table visibly relaxed. One would…
Fracking’s air pollution could push region toward ozone non-attainment
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Watching the regulatory kabuki up in North Texas can’t inspire a lot of confidence in the increasing number of South Texans leasing their land for so-called “non-traditional” natural gas development in the subterranean Eagle Ford shale. Late last month, the industry’s PR front organization, the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, released a…
The Suburbs
The Suburbs Composer: Arcade Fire Conductor: Arcade Fire Label: Merge Release Date: 2010-08-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Everything Arcade Fire does is big: the ballads, the rockers, the kitchen-sink epics. Even their more introspective songs are grand in scope. This has been their routine from the start, but on their terrific third album, The Suburbs,…
Tin Can Trust
Tin Can Trust Composer: Los Lobos Conductor: Los Lobos Label: Shout! Factory Release Date: 2010-08-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Los Lobos’ core members have been playing together for almost 40 years. They’ve explored an expansive breadth of songs and styles, but ever since their 1992 masterpiece Kiko, they’ve had a hard time coming up with…
Str8 Killa
Str8 Killa Composer: Freddie Gibbs Conductor: Freddie Gibbs Label: Decon Release Date: 2010-08-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording This seven-song EP marks the commercial debut or Gibbs, former Interscope artist (dropped before he released anything) and Gary, Indiana, resident, and the latest MC to make a name off mix tapes. He’s also the latest to charge…
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Exit Through the Gift Shop Director: Banksy Screenwriter: Banksy Cast: Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Thierry Guetta, Rhys Ifans, Space Invader Release Date: 2010-08-11 Rated: R Genre: Film Pay no attention to the man behind the voice manipulator: Although ostensibly directed by Banksy, the British street-art provocateur who has bombed everything from the Israeli West Bank barrier…
Culinary punks
When I was recently invited to join some friends for dinner at G & G Mobile Bistro, my first sentiment was fear. Not fear of eating delicious food prepared in a custom-built, two-wheeled trailer, but fear that as a vegetarian I’d (again) be the Debbie Downer of the evening by asking for inconvenient substitutions and…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When I studied method acting with David Mamet, he taught us to develop such a vivid imagination that we could taste the pretend coffee that we drank out of an imaginary cup. We’d feel the heft of the cup in our hand and the steamy heat rising. We’d hallucinate the bitterly…
Pilgrim’s lack of progress
Waiting for the lights to go down on Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, I overheard a guy asking a girl this question: “So, high hopes for Michael Cera?” Her response: “High hopes that this will be Michael Cera playing Scott Pilgrim, and not Scott Pilgrim playing Michael Cera.” This exchange told me two things: “Kids…
Dear Uncle Mat
My girlfriend and I have a problem. She doesn’t trust me — or at least cannot stop snooping through my stuff. Most specifically, my cell phone. I don’t have anything to hide and really don’t care if she looks in my phone or my desk and computer, but I do mind that she does it…
Pretty-Goodfellas
You know what the most entertaining thing about internet pornography is? If you just said, “Why, its apocryphal origin story, of course,” then you’re probably one or more of the following: 1) a person of unassailable moral character, 2) forgetting something, 3) not being entirely forthright, or 4) in the room with a parent/significant other/person…
The jobs bogeyman
Every time I hear some right-lurching consumptive hack up another commode-clogger about “jobs” these days, I think back to one dark, snowy January night in Michigan, circa Footloose. (“Michigan? Jobs? Huh?” — I know, I know. Stay with me a minute.) My buddy Butch and I were out, uh, loitering, basically, and we scored some…
Lighters out
An expanded San Antonio smoking ban continued its deceptively quiet creep toward Council Monday, with a two-to-one vote at the Quality of Life Committee meeting, where District 5 Councilman David Medina and District 2 Councilwoman Ivy Taylor supported the draft ordinance. As currently written, it would prohibit smoking not only in virtually all restaurants, bars,…
An affair to remember
South Texas veterans have a new site to visit on August 14, the day that ended the War in the Pacific in 1945, bringing World War II to a close: a Texas Historical Commission Marker in Three Rivers commemorating the Rice Funeral Home as the site of the Felix Longoria incident. In late 1944, Three…
Party favors
Some 400 Democratic Party faithful and their candidates turned out at 1101 Broadway for Monday night’s grand opening of the Bexar County United Democrats campaign HQ. The red-brick building was festively plastered with most of the campaign signs of its 41 candidate tenants. A band played San Anto R&B favorites in the solar-heated parking lot,…
Cool AIR rises
Whitney Biennial alum Corey McCorkle is one of the three current residents whose work is on display as part of 2010’s second Artpace Artist-in-Residence triumvirate. A Yankee by birth and a New Yorker by choice, he appears to be quite taken with San Antonio’s ubiquitous infrastructure dedicated — and our all-consuming addiction — to air-conditioning.…
Probation on probation
Officials and staff at Bexar County’s Adult Probation Department are bracing for another year of deep budget cuts as they tally up state funding commitments received over the past few days. Over the course of this closing fiscal year, the department’s $23-million budget was reduced by $600,000. However, the coming year’s cuts could be twice…
Comic enemy no. 1
To understand what Carlos Mencia’s professional life has been like over the last three years watch “Fishsticks,” a 2009 episode of South Park in which an animated version of Mencia is beaten and killed after taking credit for a joke that isn’t his. While the episode features a cartoon Kanye West and his cronies swinging…
Tommy’s expenses
County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson was among the crowd of elected and would-be officials at the Bexar County United Democrats grand opening, and judging from the backslaps, hugs, and handshakes, is among the more popular elected officials in his own party. But he professed to take seriously any candidate the Republicans throw at him in November.…
Play on, Playerz
Ten jazz musicians cram into a modified living room in Henry Brun’s modest home for rehearsal. Brun sprints in with a gourd shaker; Adrian Ruíz, the musical director and trumpet player, anxiously queues the keyboardist, a fellow trumpet player, a saxaphone player, two drummers, a bassist, and of course, Brun on his various percussion instruments…
Kiddie Council: Fall session
With much heaviness in our heart did we watch our City’s deciders struggle to outdo one another in thanking every single City department manager who presented at the first Council session since summer break. How much time would they save if they didn’t do this, wondered my colleague in the media box. Shh. The council…
Live in the Moment
When Maria Brink calls out “girls only” during a set at Ozzfest, or on Warped Tour, or at Mayhem, or wherever else In This Moment has, in just five years, earned the right to rock, it’s not a gimmick. It’s a service. Brink is all too aware of the risks women face when navigating the…
Live & local
Brotherhood’s August 5 gig at the White Rabbit is a succinct affair. The lights dim and the band tears out of the gate with “Colder Than Truth,” a racing number that proves Brotherhood still knows how to rip up a stage. When I heard Brotherhood was looking for a new vocalist in May, I was…
The Sound & the Fury
OK, San Antonio, you win. I’ve officially run out of shit to talk. Those Jeremy Martin voodoo dolls you’ve been poking must’ve worked, because after this issue, I’m leaving my post as infallible judge of all things local music and film to mooch off my wife and get my dreams crushed old-school in Clichéville, California,…
On the rocks (mixed messages)
Not only is smoky-smelling mezcal at the heart of Mayahuel, the New York “temple to all things agave” recently voted world’s best new cocktail bar at a spirits convocation in New Orleans, but some exclusive examples of “single-village” mezcal are appearing on retail shelves stickered above $200. At that price, there’s no room in the…
The pondered pint
Early in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a mother asks the doctor if her just-delivered baby is a boy or a girl. The obstetrician replies, “Now, I think it’s a little too early to be imposing roles on it, don’t you?” And yet somewhere along the way, we seem to do just that with…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Mexican, As a proud New Yorker, I gotta ask: What the FUCK is up with Mexican food in this city? Sure, New Yorkers are used to getting owned by California and Texas and even Chicago when it comes to getting kick-ass, cheap, regional Mexican food. But I just got back from Philadelphia, where I…
Two Wheels Good
Due to several factors largely related to an eventful 41st birthday celebration the night before, I missed the initial meet-up for Public Art San Antonio’s third artist-led bicycle ride (one in a series of seven, organized in conjunction with Public Art San Antonio’s summer 2010 “Que Pasa?” program). This particular ride was plotted by artist,…
The chicken’s husband
Until about 50 years ago, it was common to keep a few chickens on one’s property, however modest the parcel. Three, four, perhaps a dozen hens provided fresh eggs and meat and were available right outside the back door. With our migration to urban centers and suburban sprawl, one of life’s most prized possessions, personal…
Food council forming to flood SA’s â??food deserts’ with healthy eats
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com If Supersize Me taught the world anything, it was that bad diet can kill a person as surely as a bullet. Unfortunately, the “access of evil” of modern inner-city life means that reaching a fat-and-salt-rich meal is often as easy as locating that ubiquitous liquor store or firearm. Securing foods that boost…
