Avenue A: The Lila Hour
“What Lila wants, Lila gets,” Bexar County judge and fellow mayoral alum Nelson Wolff once said of Ms. Cockrell, who these days holds court at the San Antonio Parks Foundation and the River Oversight Committee. Hell, he probably says it a lot, but we happened to witness it at the arts-community unveiling of the successful…
Free Speech on ropes in Helotes?
One of many offended Helotes residents who objected to the handling of the public hearing portion of the council meeting, when 10 opponents had their rights trashed. Greg Harman Cracking open the Helotes file again after Thursday’s brow-beating of local residents by Mayor Tom Schoolcraft. Hard nut: Mayor Schoolcraft Significance: Helotes Gavel Thumper (and bad…
Jesus-fueled birthday eye gouge
Greg Harman Today is Rafael’s birthday. He is 13. When first diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy the docs gave him 10 years to live. He’s blown past their prognostications. It has not been easy. Over the weekend Rafael was inducted into a private Christian wrestling federation, Warriors 4 Christ Wrestling, and they are already planning…
On the Street
“Don’t Bother With Karate Unless You Can Punch Through Sheet Metal” Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) Agreeing to join Facebook has done nothing but add schizophrenia to the mailbox of OTS. Where to draw the line between the incessant comments on photos and statements and direct correspondence? Things used to be so…
Live & Local preview: NSFW
If you don’t know what’s so NSFW about harmless seeming locals Bukkake Daydream (just look at them playing on the slide) you are STRONGLY discouraged from doing a Google search for that hard to pronounce, vaguely Japanese-sounding word at the front of their name, or you’ll forever refer to December 12, 2008 as the day…
Show & Prove: Spurs Roll
It’s been a good week for the Silver-and-Black faithful. After impressive romps against the Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors, San Antonio delivered again with a gutsy double-overtime victory against the hated Mavericks in Dallas. Tim Duncan paced the Spurs with 32 points and 14 boards and followed up the win by celebrating a milestone…
Sculley Fracture
By Gilbert Garcia “We need a City Manager who’s here for the long haul. Are you here for the long haul?” That’s what Council Member Lourdes Galvan asked Sheryl Sculley during the Council’s marathon session yesterday, and it’s so rare for Sculley to be confronted — even good-naturedly — by a local official, Galvan’s directness…
We must let them fail!
Xavier Perez Chrysler needs to go bankrupt, pack up their shit, and let those who actually know what the fuck they are doing build cars. Why such harsh words for the ignorant giant? Well actually this is not the first time or the second time or even the third time Chrysler has called on federal…
Toppling Big Oil’s tyranny: at the Bijou
Greg Harman I was a little worried 30 minutes into last night’s pre-screening of FUEL, the Sundance award-winning film opening in San Anto’s Bijou tomorrow. Bright-eyed biofuel evangelist and Veggie Van traveler wouldn’t quit preaching the Simple Solution. Yeah, petroleum = death. I think most audiences get that. But it’s been a long time since…
How to buy a City park, Part I
Not just anyone can purchase any ol’ piece of publicly owned green space that catches his or her eye. No, sir. It takes research (there be laws and whatnot), connections, and money. But if you, too, want to get in on the great near-downtown land grab of the late aughts (preferably with a limited-service hotel,…
Puppets, all of ’em!
These YouTube protests by media-savvy BuzzNolan get a little more personal than we care to, but what they lack in manners, they make up for in shoestring ingenuity. Our revolutionary pamphleteering forebears would no doubt admire the use of materials at hand (downside: production is pretty clearly confined to the school day). The satire runs…
Kwanzaa 2008
Release Date: 2008-12-10 “Peace, love, and respect for everybody” is the motto of the Utamaduni Unaochipuka Dance Ensemble, which was formed through an outreach program by the American Dance Festival of Durham, NC, and New-York-based DanceAfrica founder Dr. Charles “Chuck” Davis. The Ensemble is comprised of nine musicians and dancers, who incorporate dramatic staging, exciting…
Sleeping in the Aviary, Dizzy Pilot, The Cardinal Health, Bully Puppet, & Our Sleeping Giant
Release Date: 2008-12-10 On tour supporting their new album, Expensive Vomit In A Cheap Hotel, these Wisconsin natives bring their garage rock licks to The Warhol. Sleeping in the Aviary’s debut, Oh, This Old Thing?, earned praise for its lo-fi, catchy pop styling, but the band forges new ground with a solid, genre-bending follow up.…
The Nutcracker
Release Date: 2008-12-10 ARTS San Antonio, Ballet San Antonio, and the San Antonio Symphony come together for a spectacle of holiday glitter complete with dancing dolls, flying rats, and living snowflakes. Dazzling choreography and vibrant costumes capture the imaginations of both young and old, as does the Symphony’s rousing accompaniment of Tchiakovsky’s timeless score. This…
Justin Townes Earle w/ Samantha Crain
Release Date: 2008-12-10 Son of legendary singer-songwriter Steve Earle, 25-year-old Justin Townes Earle grew up in Nashville playing in the bluegrass/ragtime combo The Swindlers in addition to serving as touring guitarist and keyboardist for his father’s band. He makes his Gruene Hall solo debut with special guest Samantha Crain, a refreshing 22-year-old songwriter who wanders…
Drowning Pool
Release Date: 2008-12-10 Drowning Pool embark on a headlining tour behind their current release and first album with Eleven Seven Music, Full Circle, which debuted at #64 on Billboard August 7th. Featuring their current single “27 Stitches,” the band’s third album is the first one featuring their old friend and former SOiL singer Ryan McCombs…
PuroSlam presents Berkeley Slam Poet Christian Drake
Release Date: 2008-12-10 PuroSlam presents wordslinger Christian Drake, the 2008 Berkeley Grand Slam Champion and four-time National Slam semifinalist. Drake is the world’s only “eco-billy” poet — a little environmentalism, a little rock ’n’ roll — and often infuses the wordplay with his own botanical, ecologic, and political knowledge. As co-host of the infamous (and…
All in the family
Jason Dady’s Tre Trattoria is fantastic in portions large and small
Peter Case
Release Date: 2008-12-10 In 1976, Peter Case released a little-heard, four-song, indie EP with his power-pop trio the Nerves. In 2007, he released a little-heard, indie solo album dedicated to legendary bluesman Sleepy John Estes. With the exception of a performance cameo with the Plimsouls in the 1983 movie Valley Girl, Case has spent his…
That’s good enough for me
Release Date: 2008-12-10 St. Joe’s is a perfect place to go for a quiet, cheap cup of beer (I’m talking $1.25 for Shiner on tap). The huge round tables and blocks of square-tops with beer shelves underneath make them ideal for playing a game of dominoes. The only sound comes from the corner of the…
20 Years of San Angel
Release Date: 2008-12-10 “Can you believe we made it 20 years?!” enthuses Hank Lee. And, indeed, this month marks the two-score anniversary for San Angel Folk Art (110 Blue Star), San Anto’s home for traditional arts and one-of-a-kind works by outsider artists. Run by Lee, Leigh Anne Lester, and Paul Bonin Rodriguez, San Angel exhibits…
Day & Age
Day & Age Composer: The Killers Conductor: The Killers Label: Island Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording If that jacket with the enormous feather epaulets frontman Brandon Flowers has been sporting is any indication, the Killers are ready to take flight after delivering the less-than-soaring Sam’s Town in 2006. Their schizophrenic tracks of late…
R.O.O.T.S. squared
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2008-12-10 Join me, editorial intern Xavier Perez, for the final R.O.O.T.S.2 show this Saturday at Rebar in what promises to be a lively mashup of photography, art, and hip-hop. The spectacle features live visual art created to the sounds of battling DJs. Under the stage moniker DJ X Boy Rd, I…
Circus
Circus Composer: Britney Spears Conductor: Britney Spears Label: Jive Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Britney Spears has always been a niche-filler. Music snobs might dismiss her, but gays, their hags, tweeners, club-goers, and pop fans could bathe in her sassy deliciousness. With the release of Circus, the pop princess has emerged from the…
San Angel Handmade Gift Show
Release Date: 2008-12-10 “Can you believe we made it 20 years?!” enthuses Hank Lee. And, indeed, this month marks the two-score anniversary for San Angel Folk Art (110 Blue Star), San Anto’s home for traditional arts and one-of-a-kind works by outsider artists. Run by Lee, Leigh Anne Lester, and Paul Bonin Rodriguez, San Angel exhibits…
JJ Got Live RaTX
JJ Got Live RaTX Composer: RTX Conductor: RTX Label: Drag City Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Taking a definite turn from their near-perfected heroin chic, RTX loses some of its usual glam-meets-filth through intense mastering on latest album JJ Got Live RaTX. Lead singer Jennifer Herrema’s vocals are too fussed-over on most tracks,…
Hearts On .4. You
Release Date: 2008-12-10 “Can you believe we made it 20 years?!” enthuses Hank Lee. And, indeed, this month marks the two-score anniversary for San Angel Folk Art (110 Blue Star), San Anto’s home for traditional arts and one-of-a-kind works by outsider artists. Run by Lee, Leigh Anne Lester, and Paul Bonin Rodriguez, San Angel exhibits…
Silverlined
Silverlined Composer: Donna the Buffalo Conductor: Donna the Buffalo Label: Sugar Hill Records Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording If there were any justice in this world, DTB vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Tara Nevins would be a far bigger star than the many superficial pop tarts that garner so much more media attention. Nevins’ voice…
Rampage Theme Night: Pucks and Paws
Release Date: 2008-12-10 Definitely the most buzzed-about tour of the year, AC/DC’s return to the stage after seven years has been met with rave reviews from fans and critics alike. The worldwide tour — the band’s first since 2001 — promotes their latest studio album, Black Ice, which continues to dominate sales charts around the…
Why cry over killed Milk?
San Francisco’s city supervisor was gay rights MLK
Fear and loathing in France
Fear(s) of the Dark Director: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire Screenwriter: Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, Richard McGuire Cast: Aure Atika, Francois Creton, Guillame Depardieu, Nicole Garcia Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Call it the Persepolis effect. Critically acclaimed internationally, Marjane…
Punisher: War Zone
Critic’s Pick Punisher: War Zone Director: Lexi Alexander Screenwriter: Lexi Alexander Cast: Dominic West, Doug Hutchison, Ray Stevenson, Wayne Knight, Julie Benz Release Date: 2008-12-10 Rated: R Genre: Film Punisher fans, I’m afraid War Zone is as good as we’re going to get. Marvel’s franchise reboot, the first released under the mature-audience Marvel Knights imprint,…
AC/DC
Release Date: 2008-12-10 Definitely the most buzzed-about tour of the year, AC/DC’s return to the stage after seven years has been met with rave reviews from fans and critics alike. The worldwide tour — the band’s first since 2001 — promotes their latest studio album, Black Ice, which continues to dominate sales charts around the…
The QueQue
Poker? I hardly know ’er! Rumors were rampant at City Hall last month that Sheryl Sculley was about to call a press conference and announce her resignation from the City Manager’s post. Judging by the sweet new package the Council is likely to award her this week, Sculley might have been tempted to start the…
Water under the bridge(s)
“What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn’t have any doubt — it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn’t want to go anywhere else.” — Hal Boyle The public-art schema of the redevelopment project currently under way by the San Antonio River Foundation, et al., is…
You kill me
From his elevated bed at Methodist Children’s, Rafael is vacillating between dreams of becoming the first wheelchair-bound NBA coach and the compounding reality of the genetic disorder that has landed him in the hospital with pneumonia for the second time in a month. A week after another terrifying nocturnal ambulance ride in which he felt…
ARTIFACTS
Remember this column a couple of weeks ago, wherein we told you about Gary Sweeney’s installation of satiric tourist signage at the San Antonio airport? These meta-billboards are sharp, colorful, and generally awesome, á la Sweeney, and include snappy slogans such as “Hemisfair ’68: You’re Way Too Late” and “Fiesta, Siesta, Repeat.” You can find…
CPS soft-pedals nuclear expansion
CPS Energy announced plans at its November 24 board meeting to address San Antonio’s energy needs via an aggressive conservation plan and by building a new solar power plant. But beneath the glossy green veneer of its self-proclaimed environmentalism, the company continued to lay the groundwork for increased use of nuclear power in South Texas…
Learning as we go
As a genre, the 10-minute play highlights how simple, poor, and brief theater can be. Because the short play is more of a burst of inspiration than a sustained effort, the genre has the potential to foster something crucial for theater’s growth: experimentation. In that spirit, congratulations to the Flat Earth Plays (on through December 13…
S’Nuff film
Be careful where you spend your Milk money this weekend, guys. According to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Proposition 8 contribution tracker (sfgate.com/webdb/prop8), Cinemark CEO Alan Comstock — a Plano resident — donated $9,999 to ProtectMarriage.com in support of banning gay marriage in the state of California. A website (nomilkforcinemark.com) and accompanying Facebook group urge moviegoers…
Western promises
AtticRep’s production of True West, Sam Shepard’s seminal examination of American strife and impotence, effectively draws out the contest between Manifest Destiny and the promise of the New World, between colonization and the desire to be “free.” It’s a spare play, simply although viscerally staged, and its success hangs on the sibling protagonists, older lout…
Call me asshole
“We live in a media culture,” says Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson in episode two, turned slightly away from the video camera that records him, then looking back over his right shoulder as he pontificates so that the camera catches him at the perfect angle. “Things don’t happen unless you see it on TV.” Welcome…
Dreaming of a black-and-white Christmas
Given the state of the economy, you may not be buying your favorite comics fan that copy of Detective Comics #27 or piece of R. Crumb original art you know he wants for Christmas. Luckily, a quartet of new releases are hefty enough to make quite nice gifts while filling four different gift-giving niches. The…
Cinema Obscura
For many very obvious reasons (we’re looking at you, The Santa Clause 3) the suicide rate spikes at Christmas time, so all you Star Wars geeks who’ll be by yourselves this holiday, please resist the temptation to buy yourself a bootlegged copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special. This made-for-TV cash-in released between A New…
Yule slide
When I was a kid, my local newspaper would put a little box on the bottom left corner of the front page, counting down the number of shopping days till Christmas. I don’t remember when they would start the countdown, but I know the number always seemed gigantic — googolplex times infinity plus a baker’s…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Special Guadalupe edition Dear Mexican: Many times, as I cross the border into the U.S., I see bald cholos buying images (posters, blankets, baby bibs) of Al Pacino in Scarface. Where does such an obsession for this ugly Cuban come from? Is Tony Montana replacing la Virgencita de Guadalupe in cholos’ living rooms across America? …
Amuse-BOUCHE
We’re gonna party like it’s 1999, SA. Because in retrospect, that year was candy, wasn’t it? No war on terror. No Black Monday redux. No “the world will end in fire, turns out.” Aiding our retro fantasies are two key coordinates on the fantasy scale: Russian oligarch and hip-hop megastar. K?EMLIN, the new club on…
Dear Uncle Mat
There’s this guy I’ve known for more than a year. Normally I’m very logical, but when I met him that flew out the window. I didn’t think that I could be capable of loving someone unconditionally who was imperfect, but I truly love him no matter what (as irrational as it sounds, I would put…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): It’s an ideal time for you to throw a party for all the people you’ve ever been and all the different selves who live within you now. Invite the teenager who once seethed with frustrated potential and the four-year-old who loved nothing more than to play. Include the hopeful complainer who stands…
Hope I die
Bob Schneider figured he’d be dead by now. He’d become a rock star, do copious amounts of drugs, nail some groupies. Live fast, roll hard, die young. This was his plan, the all-too-familiar path of rock-star youth gone wrong. Still alive at age 43, Schneider is about 16 years too late to realize his Kurt…
Noise to the world
The rock ’n’ roll performance as we once knew it is dead. Blame it on MTV and manically paced music videos. Blame it on a generation diagnosed with a cornucopia of attention disorders. Blame it on friggin’ Rock Band. The day when performers simply stand onstage and play their instruments is going the way of…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
We may be living in a world of fools, breaking us down, when they all should let us be, but Hyperbubble has a solution to the problem: SA’s favorite husband-and-wife electro-pop duo plan to show us how deep is their love for the Brothers Gibb, with a newly recorded seasonal single called “Christmas With the…
Blue Means Go
The equipment problems begin at soundcheck. “This mic is shocking my mouth,” lead singer Carla Garza complains, and makes a face like she means it. But the band plays on, louder even. “The Devil and the First Lady,” Garza announces before the mic drops out for good. Her lyrics are lost in the static —…
“14:59” — Verity
Don’t let the title scare you off — “14:59” isn’t some self-indulgent jam nearing the 15-minute mark, and it certainly doesn’t sound like a tribute to the horrendous Sugar Ray album of the same name. It’s a tight three minutes of alt-rock propelled by a catchy, playful bassline. Singer Kimberly Cotton’s politely defiant lyrics about…
From El Paso, with…
Greg Harman Some of you may remember Nat Stone’s commentary on the Border Wall we ran in the Current several months back. He is one of those intrepid few I stumpled upon often as I was traveling the border for our Muro del Odio package. Here he is again, saving me the time of doing…
