Wheelin’ it on Houston Street
By: Jennifer Herrera I ventured to the Houston Street Fair & Market for the first time this past Saturday. I thought I arrived early enough to avoid the crowds, but when I made my way to the front of the Alamo I saw where everyone was hiding at. Check out the video to see a…
no al muro (two)
Day two from Nat Stone…
no al muro (one)
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com I first ran across Nat Stone sitting in an Alpine coffee shop while working my way downriver on the border wall series Muro del Odio for the Current. He’d had what sounded like a year headstart on me, documenting with his camerat he ongoing policy tension that had la frontera in a…
The Dragnet versus the Bike Thief: Help Carlos the Carpenter
Lameness versus community. That was a topic indirectly addressed last night when Carlos the Carpenter made an impassioned speech at the Brackenridge Park “drum circle” to find the person who never came back with his bike. Though everyone complains about the lameness of San Antonio, there is a backside to this effect which is that…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dems: Day 4
By Gilbert Garcia Question: How long does it take to get 84,000 people into Denver’s Invesco Field for a DNC acceptance speech? Answer: Way too long. One couple got married and divorced while waiting in the mile-high, miles-long line. Myself, I wrote the Great American Novel by the time I got through the security checkpoint…
Treehouse Adventures
Yesterday afternoon I attended a preview of the Terrific Treehouses exhibit at the San Antonio Botanical Garden. I had an inkling that the treehouses were going to be masterpieces, and I was proven right when local designers brought their A-game. Nine treehouses were on display throughout the garden ranging from a feng shui creation to…
Live & Local Preview: Lie and Wait
Join me, Jeremy Martin, tonight at the Warhol, where I’ll be reviewing the performance by local hardcore m.f.s Lie and Wait. I’d describe their music, but this sweet sweet photo of lead screamer Tyler Lutz (taken by Steven Gilmore) should tell you everything you need to know, really. Tonight also marks the farewell performance for…
On the Street: Monroe Mustang, Pigasus Remembered, and Other Important Discussions of Our Time
“What Would Costanza Do?” Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) #1 All That’s Old Is New Again In this email is a link to a site where one can upload an image of oneself in what seems to be various high school archetypes – the BMOC, the nerd, the guy with the afro……
T. Boone covering his tracks?
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com If you are staying up nights worrying about whatever could be on my mind and if my obsession du jour could possibly be the final straw that tanks the market and leaves us all stranded in our respective victory gardens, let me put your mind at ease. I’m all about the Pickens,…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dems: Day 3
By Gilbert Garcia The most euphoric moment of the 2008 DNC (at least until Barack Obama’s surprise cameo following Joe Biden’s acceptance speech) came when Hillary Clinton hit the convention floor to join the New York delegation and make an announcement. Clinton took the mic and moved that the roll-call vote be suspended so that…
Ping Pong Wok
By: Jennifer Herrera As the Olympics winded down this past weekend the folks over at Stone Oak’s Fire Wok kept the spirit alive with their ping pong tournament. Owner Michael Hu challenged customers to a game of ping pong with winners walking away with a free lunch. And although Hu admitted in his press release…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dems: Day 2
By Gilbert Garcia With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, it’s like a rock-paper-scissors duel that lasts for two years. They simply have to match each other point for point. She tries to make history by breaking the gender barrier to the White House, so he has to make history by trying to break the racial…
Cowabunga!
Release Date: 2008-08-27 Beef seems to be slowly getting stampeded right out of the American diet. Or at least that’s what one might think if they heeded the warnings of former surgeon general and all-around health guru Dr. Andrew Weil, super-sizer Morgan Spurlock, and the final say on American opinion, Oprah. A trip to the legendary Little…
Death Race
Death Race Director: Paul W.S. Anderson Screenwriter: Paul W.S. Anderson Cast: Jason Statham, Joan Allen, Ian McShane, Tyrese Gibson, Natalie Martinez Release Date: 2008-08-27 Website: http://www.deathracemovie.net Studio: Universal Music Score: Paul Haslinger Rated: R Genre: Action Let’s just throw this out there: This B-movie remake fails horribly in nearly every category on which a legitimate…
Hamlet 2
Hamlet 2 Director: Andrew Fleming Screenwriter: Andrew Fleming Cast: Skylar Astin, Amy Poehler, Phoebe Strole, Melonie Diaz, Steve Coogan Release Date: 2008-08-27 Rated: R Genre: Comedy Steve Coogan may be the world’s current leader in turning boorish self-involvement into comedy — from his long-running Britcom persona Alan Partridge to the real-life music promoter Tony Wilson…
The Band of Heathens w. Jason Eady
Release Date: 2008-08-27 This popular, Austin-based quintet is poised to leap beyond their Texas borders with their eponymous studio debut, and is backing it up with an aggressive touring schedule of 200+ dates this year that includes an ACL slot. While playing at Austin landmark Momo’s in different bands, respectively, the group started jamming together…
Ultraviolet Sound & Electric Valentine
Release Date: 2008-08-27 Ultraviolet Sound and Electric Valentine are the latest industry-breaking buzz bands to hit the SA scene courtesy of Poparazzi, the pop-muzik dance party that takes over the dance floor Thursday nights at Atomix. L.A. quartet Ultraviolet Sound pumps out addictive, electro-dance rock that demands you shake it — their thumping, adrenaline-soaked songs…
Horrific Film Fest
Release Date: 2008-08-27 Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead? Quench your thirst for blood with a three-day festival featuring horror flicks ranging from full-length features to short films from around the world. Don your most gruesome living dead costume for the Zombie Walk at 6 p.m. Thursday, which…
Anthony Green (of Circa Survive), The Good Old War, & Person L
Release Date: 2008-08-27 Anthony Green hits the road sans Circa Survive this summer, backed by buddies from Philadelphia’s Good Old War as he strums through cuts off his first solo album, Avalon. Expect rousing acoustic rock ’n’ roll and sincere songwriting from the veritable frontman. Good Old War will play their own set in addition…
Greg Mortenson
Release Date: 2008-08-27 Mortenson vowed to build a school in a remote Pakistan village when he noticed local children using sticks and dirt to practice their lessons, and his foundation is now responsible for the education of more than 24,000 children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban’s breeding ground. Mortenson talks about his book Three…
Jeremy Enigk (of Sunny Day Real Estate), Jason Stiles, Pop Pistol, & Ledaswan
Release Date: 2008-08-27 When he fronted for Sunny Day Real Estate, Enigk’s whine-tinged tenor helped define “emo” in its mid-’90s heyday, before the term became largely synonymous with “horse shit.” Enigk’s solo efforts are comfortably familiar to SDRE fans, though his voice has grown smoother with age, losing a bit of that signature nasal quality…
Catch a fire
It’s Wednesday night at Luna, and Jai Lopez is slowly pulling his audience into complete rapture. The packed house is still, silent save for the music, and focused on his every word and drumbeat. That ability to not only entertain but enthrall an audience — what many musicians can only strive for — seems to…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Sam’s Burger Joint promoter Jerry Clayworth has left the club, citing aesthetic and financial differences. Clayworth has a long history with the East Grayson site, booking shows there in the mid-’90s when it was known as Billy Blues. When Sam’s ownership brought him in to handle promotions at the club two years ago, the venue…
Musical pranksterism
Recovery Loudon Wainwright III (Yep Roc) It was “like restaging a play,” according to producer Joe Henry, when he and Loudon Wainwright III decided (after working together on the Knocked Up soundtrack) to go back and re-record some of the latter man’s songs for a new record, Recovery (Yep Roc). Revivals of plays aren’t uncommon,…
AURAL PLEASURE
Forth The Verve (On Your Own) A decade after the Verve and an accompanying wave of Brit-pop acts washed the grunge off listeners who’d grown tired of wearing flannel despite the climate, they’re back with Forth and enough sing-it-in-your-sleep hooks to hock running shoes. Forth is a lesson in contrasts – glossy production laced with…
Big Soy
Big Soy will officially call it quits at the end of the month – its last gig is slated for Friday, August 29, at Limelight – and that much was evident as the duo made its penultimate appearance at the Warhol. The show, which started after midnight and closed after 1 a.m., didn’t feature much…
Brain trust
It’s a rainy Saturday morning, and customers idly browse the stacks at Cheever Books, one of San Antonio’s last remaining independent bookstores. Occupying a well-kept, whitewashed storefront on Broadway near the Witte Museum, Cheever Books is the hometown bookstore’s Platonic ideal. Its stacks reach the high, old-fashioned ceilings, and have been organized for maximum visual…
“iii” — Fields of Forel
“iii” begins as the type of track you’d like to build a summer home in. There’s plenty of space there among the squeaky-fingered classical guitar, the subtle accordion, the aaahing choir and moaning wind. The ambience lends the track a distinct sense of place, enough psychological real estate to open a subdivision in your cerebral…
ARTIFACTS
A third sequential Artifacts column on FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA?! Maybe we’re just making up for the fact that we don’t print the entire calendar all month as we do for CAM (they’ve never asked), or maybe it’s just that this year it’s looking like an extra-special BFD, aided by Blue Star, which under Bill FitzGibbons’s tutelage…
Alt prez
Just two candidates for president? Hardly. We’ve got more than 100, deluded losers and promising dreamers all begging for attention in America’s sideshow election. You’ve got outraged Ralph Nader to kick around again. But you also have Daniel Kingery, “Your Handy-Man President,” who would fix this country as surely as he’d fix the ceiling in…
Public freaks and private dicks
Get your SAT vocabulary flash cards ready, ’cause Darryl Wimberley has a mystery for you to solve — one involving a “caravanserai” and a “pan of loam.” If you decode what he’s actually describing in the first few pages (spoiler: an elephant trampling a man who just porked a 600-pound woman in its watering tank),…
The QueQue
Bury my heart The fight over the remains of numerous “archaic hunter-gatherer” Indians held at the Witte Museum is far from settled. `See “Battle of the bones,” June 4, 2008.` While protestors haven’t been able to maintain their avowed weekly protests, several of the organizers will be back in front of the museum late-morning Saturday.…
A ‘bird’ in the hand
Two weeks ago, the National Poetry Series announced that a manuscript by San Antonio-based poet and Macondo Workshop alum Kristin Naca would be one of five books the organization publishes annually through its Open Competition series. Selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, Bird Eating Bird will appear in fall ’09 under the HarperCollins imprint.…
Hang ’em high (and fast)
A rumor on the streets of SA — streets soon to be glamourized by the high-def glow of 15 digital billboards — is that Clear Channel Outdoor, the nature-advertising arm of SA-based media behemoth Clear Channel Communications, knows it’s not going to get one more ever-lovin’ electrical signpost. So when City Council passed the “pilot…
What to look at next week
The surprising thing about Abstract Expressionism in this multimedia age is that when you see a really good example of it, it’s still exciting and energizing. Which ruins one theory about contemporary sightings of the mid-20th-century movement: that the style falls flat outside of historical context. No, it’s just that, like any medium, some of…
Federal cases allege millions mismanaged, wiretapping at CPS Energy
Four million dollars. Normally when a company bean counter exposes mismanagement of the seventh-digit variety you expect them to be lured into the talk-show shredder. Those of us wearing our own timid little grooves inside the belly of the Ant Farm want our more courageous kin honored by a passing celebrity. Or, failing that, an…
Dear Uncle Mat
“There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be.” — Norman Mailer I’m a 22-year-old young woman considering having sex for the first time with my boyfriend, whom I am in a committed relationship with. I can see myself potentially marrying him in the future. My question is this: Do you think most young…
Sign off
The Queque reported incorrectly last week that, save for the absent Philip Cortez, Council unanimously approved the digital-billboard pilot program last December – the program that’s about to plant 15 bright, message-swapping signs along 1604, 281, I-10, and the Pan-Am Freeway. `See “Hang ’em high,” page 12.` But the City’s Approved Minutes had it wrong:…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): My Aries friend David’s acupuncturist diagnosed his current condition as an “encroachment of phlegm in his triple heater.” That’s also an apt metaphorical description of what’s going on in your psyche. Your internal engine — the fire in your belly — is a bit clogged by a sluggish stream of swampy,…
Duplassed
Of Baghead, the Duplass brothers’ painfully funny and (as per usual) laudably true-ringing follow-up to Sundance favorite The Puffy Chair, co-auteur Mark Duplass says, with a laugh: “Once we made the movie, and we knew it was good, we were like, ‘Great. Now how the fuck do we talk about this movie?’ Because it’s the…
Clothes-minded
Congratulations to everyone who completed the Wardrobe Refashion Challenge, where we vowed to only buy vintage, recycled, or handmade clothes and accessories for two months. Hopefully those of you who participated feel better about your support of a greener world and are a bit heavier in the pocketbook as well. I know the hardest part…
S’Nuff Film
Since the days of the zoopraxiscope, a single subject has enthralled history’s greatest filmmakers — the eternal quest of the undead for human brains. Celebrate cinema’s love affair at the Zombie Walk Thursday, August 28, at Hemisfair Park ( 200 S. Alamo). Show up at 6 p.m. in your most convincing zombie costume and join…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Why do Mexicans paint stripes on their donkeys in Tijuana? — Avenida Revolución Reveller Dear Gabacho: Same reason we put worms in tequila bottles, celebrate Cinco de Mayo, and star in Beverly Hills Chihuahua: to cheat gabachos out of cash. To paraphrase the classic dictum: A gabacho and his money in front of a Mexican…
Cleaned out
Benjamin Bratt made his name in the mid-’90s as Detective Rey Curtis on Law & Order. He was stoic, workmanlike, and good-looking, so he was granted a turn in film, where he remained good- looking and turned in a number of similarly stoic, workmanlike rolls. His most notable came as the drug kingpin Juan Obregón…
In the pink
San Antonio is ripe for rosés. At least that was the conclusion after Omniboire’s examination of these visually arresting and (OK, now I’m in trouble) gustatorially (see: I’m really stretching it) winning wines. “We should be drinking rosés `several` months out of the year in San Antonio,” opined Harold Wood, artist and wine connoisseur who…
Cinema Obscura
If you watch Maniac Cop for the reason I did — to complete your mission to watch every Bruce Campbell movie in hopes he’ll accept the wedding invitation you sent him — you’re going to be severely disappointed. The Chin is completely wasted here playing second banana as Jack Forrest, a philandering patsy with no…
Amuse-BOUCHE
It’s hard to say what sets A-B’s mouth watering more: dreaming of the cheese counter at Andrew Weissman’s forthcoming Italian venture at the Pearl Brewery, the promised antipasta spread, or the window in which fresh pasta will be made. The restaurant — scheduled to open early next year in the development’s Full Goods remade warehouse…
Spittin’ Game
Madden NFL 09 (EA Sports) Playstation 3 $59.99 Considering EA’s exclusive licensing deal with the NFL, reviewing Madden is nearly pointless these days. You can’t control the real pro players and teams any other way, so Madden couldn’t extort 60 bucks from you any more blatantly if Captain Obvious himself threatened to squash you with…
(Human) remains in the fray
By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The fight over the remains of numerous “archaic hunter-gatherer” Indians held at the Witte Museum is far from settled. While protestors haven’t been able to maintain their avowed weekly protests, several of the organizers will be back in front of the museum late morning Saturday. Juan Mancias, tribal chair of the…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dems: Day 1
By Gilbert Garcia Right in the middle of the Buffalo Bratwurst line at Denver’s Pepsi Center, it occurred to me that the Democratic National Convention is like South By Southwest with suits and ties, multiplied by 10. As with South By Southwest, there isn’t any one convention experience. There are tons of sanctioned and unsanctioned…
