Happy holidays, from Iorek Byrnison
Today the Current has made manifest what a billion movie-watchers, even The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, imagined. Why else do they send us promotional goodies? (Though not the rumored Beowulf blanket — thanks a lot.) Iorek Byrnison: Doh-di-doh, walking in the snow … IB: Things have been so quiet around here since I butchered…
On the Street
First Friday came again. I vowed to navigate First Friday differently this time. I’m not sure what I intended to differently exactly. Perhaps hang with the guy who sells turkey legs? I began at Beethoven’s, which is different than beginning there. Complete paradigm shift. Slab Cinema showed a few classic Christmas themed silent films accompanied…
Happy holidays, from Iorek Byrnison
Today the Current has made manifest what a billion movie-watchers, even The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis, imagined. Why else do they send us promotional goodies? (Though not the rumored Beowulf blanket — thanks a lot.) Iorek Byrnison: Doh-di-doh, walking in the snow … IB: Things have been so quiet around here since I butchered and ate all…
On the Street
First Friday came again. I vowed to navigate First Friday differently this time. I’m not sure what I intended to differently exactly. Perhaps hang with the guy who sells turkey legs? I began at Beethoven’s, which is different than beginning there. Complete paradigm shift. Slab Cinema showed a few classic Christmas themed silent films…
De La Paz “Je’Taime” Fashion Show
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Labkids and LOFT120 of Blue Star come together for a night of art, fashion, and design in the heart of Southtown. The evening of urban shopping features fine foods, unique gifts, jewelry, and apparel, creating an experience that typifies the innovative culture of downtown San Antonio. Jive Refried’s Agosto Cuellar also displays…
The Other Side of the Mirror: Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965
The Other Side of the Mirror: Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1963-1965 Composer: Bob Dylan Conductor: Bob Dylan Label: Sony Legacy Release Date: 2007-12-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Singer/Songwriter (Folk) It’s certainly nice having all these Newport appearances in one tidy package, but there’s only one reason anybody would…
Soap and Water
Soap and Water Composer: Chuck Prophet Conductor: Chuck Prophet Label: Yep Roc Release Date: 2007-12-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Roots Chuck Prophet is one idiosyncratic roots-rocker. Sure, he produces Kelly Willis and co-writes minor country hits with Nashville pros, but his own records follow the creative whims of someone who…
Femme Fatality, Hyperbubble, Analog Love, DJ DogBone & DJ Electro:Sexual
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Not your typical electronic act, St. Louis’s Femme Fatality has been whipping crowds into a dance floor frenzy with dark synth pop and boisterous live shows since their 2003 inception. Now sporting guitars and bass, the black-clad duo of Monanani Palmero and Octavia Leito revel in the debauched-discotheque atmosphere and implore hipsters…
Giuseppe Ielasi & Micheala Grill
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Italian musician Giuseppe Ielasi (Milan) joins Austrian video artist Micheala Grill (Vienna) for an improvised performance of music and video art. Ielasi has worked for years in improvised music circles, fostering long-term collaborations; most recently, his focus has shifted to site-specific solo performances, using guitars as his primary sound sources by integrating…
Back of the Throat
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Speaking to the recurring theme of Islamophobia in our current political climate, this black comedy depicts the unwarranted and forceful interrogation of an Arab-American writer. The piece performed by AtticRep inspires a difficult dialogue on civil liberties in a post-9/11 world, touching on issues at the core of contemporary American consciousness. $15,…
Gurf Morlix & Romi Mayes
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Gurf Morlix has produced and performed with a veritable “who’s who” of the music biz. His latest of four solo albums, Diamonds to Dust, is pegged as his best, released this year with the promise of more to come. The Austin-based songwriter has enjoyed lasting success due to his resonant voice and…
Turbojugend Blue Santa Toy Drive
Release Date: 2007-12-12 The Mix hosts this year’s toy drive with a rockin’ lineup featuring Turbonegro tribute band Santa’s Ass Cobras — featuring an array of local musicians — Austin-based Black Earth, and Misfit cover band The Cutthroats. A new, unwrapped toy is welcome but not required to attend, and you can sit on Santa’s…
SET
Release Date: 2007-12-12 Labkids and LOFT120 of Blue Star come together for a night of art, fashion, and design in the heart of Southtown. The evening of urban shopping features fine foods, unique gifts, jewelry, and apparel, creating an experience that typifies the innovative culture of downtown San Antonio. Jive Refried’s Agosto Cuellar also displays…
Craft Mania!
Release Date: 2007-12-12 The holiday clock is ticking, so wait no longer! Indulge in stress-free shopping at Craft Mania!, a fine art/craft sale and holiday open house hosted by Bihl Haus Arts. An endless list of artists and artisans will be displaying their wares while prospective buyers (that means you) lobby around the premises enjoying…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Everything absolute belongs to pathology. Joyous distrust is a sign of health.” So proclaimed Friedrich Nietzsche. Note well that he used the adjective “joyous” to describe distrust, not “cynical” or “grumbling” or “sour.” The key to remaining vital and strong while questioning every so-called absolute is to cultivate a cheerful, buoyant…
Post-traumatic tightrope
Popular wisdom holds that our country hosts an all-volunteer military. That isn’t quite accurate. It is better described as a recruited one. It took convincing to get most of our men and women out of their designer duds and into combat fatigues — particularly since our occupation of Iraq turned out to be a monster…
I lost it at La Gran Tamalada
There are some experiences you can’t share with another person without walking away friends (if in that Fight-Club-single-serving kind of way). I’d heard tales of tamaladas. Of the gossip, the mechanical masa-schmering, and of course, the tequila. Colectivo Cultural’s La Gran Tamalada, the one to which I was invited, took place in the morning, so…
THE QUE QUE
Robbing the Rev From the rancor exhibited by the churchy Lions of Zion and Councilthang McNeil, you would think that Reverend Seymour Perkins’ property at Nevada and Hackberry was the apex of all things street lethal. Yes, sex workers find solace there. And, yes again, drugs do pass through. Nevermind that these things also appear…
Amuse-BOUCHE
The Current took a little roadtrip Sunday to one of the area’s best-known wineries, Stonewall’s Becker Vineyards, the labor of love of Richard and Bunny Becker. While we waited for the sun to reappear, we sampled the port dessert shots promised on beckervineyards.com. The three-part treat is simple: Dip the side of a a small…
Like moths to the Luminaria
The website is up, applications are pouring in, big names are signed on, the scent of money is wafting through the streets of Southtown and Monticello — and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to resist the glow of Luminaria. If all goes well, in less than six months a team of mostly volunteers will pull off…
What to drink this holiday season
VV is an unabashed partisan of Champagne and sparkling wine at all times and for all occasions, feeling that they are extraordinarily flexible with food — and, of course, that they’re just plain fun. But the Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/New Year’s constellation does seem to suggest ginning up the bubble machine, an act that’s made easier by seasonal…
Revealing Briefs
SAN ANTONIO—District 8 City Councilwoman Diane Cibrian is preparing to add herself to the ever-growing list of people who want to be Mayor of San Antonio. Falling in line behind former City Councilman Julian Castro, builder Gordon Hartman and telecom exec and former State Senator John Montford (a firm “maybe”), Cibrian wants to replace Phil…
P. S. I Love You
P. S. I Love You Monday, December 17th 7:30pm at Regal Alamo Quarry 14 255 E. Basse Rd Pick Up your Passes at the SA Current Office 1500 N. St. Mary’s Mon-Fri 8:30am-5:30pm Quantities are limited. Limit: One pass per person.
Gypsy songman
To hear Jerry Jeff Walker tell it, he was just a boy from the Catskills who wanted to see the world, but it’s amusing how much the maverick country singer’s early travails with the National Guard mirror those of another Texas transplant: George W. Bush. He wanted a transfer to Florida, so he could bum…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
One of San Antonio’s finest jazz musicians, trombonist/bandleader Ron Wilkins, returned home last week after a harrowing, but ultimately encouraging, stay at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital. Extremely high blood-pressure readings initially led Wilkins’ pathologist to believe that the musician had rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis, a disease which quickly leads to a loss of kidney function.…
Visions of pumpkin art danced in their heads
What was I thinking last week when I began my “First Friday preview” article with “bundle up?!” I mean, I get it, we live in South Texas and all, but seriously, cut us some slack. I decided to beat the First Friday crowds by taking in some shows Thursday night — and let me tell…
Garota do São Paulo
The only thing worse than a corny Italian singing in Spanish is two corny Italians singing in Spanish. That’s what Laura Pausini and Andrea Bocelli did at the 8th Latin Grammy Awards last November in Las Vegas, performing a duet before and after a bunch of colleagues with varying dollops of syrup. Don’t blame them:…
ARTIFACTS
We at the Current agree that the name of local DIY organization Bumrush may not have been the most appropriate moniker for a group providing clothing and cold winter gear for local homeless folk, but we’ve decided to cut them some slack since they are providing needed help to valued community members. As the winter…
CDs Nuts
Smoke White Williams (Tigerbeat6) White Williams is a deceptive bastard. Smoke, his full-length debut, features gaudy artwork, but you probably wouldn’t want to listen to this sort of music — maybe best defined as "dance music you can't dance to" — high. (He probably recorded it high, but that's something else entirely.) He toured with…
‘Back of the Throat,’ front and center
To borrow an absurd expression, if you’re being racially profiled, you might as well sit back and enjoy it. Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat begins abruptly as two investigators search an obliging Khaled’s (Nate Beal) inner-city apartment after a terrorist act by Asfoor (William Razavi). The scene is fast-paced and inconsequential, and Khaled’s…
Go south, young man
Most people probably think moving to Hollywood is the only way to make a name for themselves in the film industry. But not filmmaker Trent Moran. After five years off and on in Los Angeles, Moran is coming home and he couldn’t be happier. Moran, a 1997 graduate of Lee High School, likens his story…
Letters from the cabaret
It takes a certain group of individuals to pull off “I’ll Be Seeing You” — a caberet-set emotional journey through the 1940s told through World War II soldiers’ letters — and it’s the Alamo City Men’s Chorale that is about to make it happen. San Antonio native and retired Marine Sergeant Eric Alva serves as…
CRITICAL Darling
Panicked, for Critical Darling had nothing — nothing — devastating to impart to you this week (and flabbergasting as a few event announcements can be, she hates for this to be a themeless textual bulletin board), CD has since decided to be careful what she wishes for: Erstwhile Jane founding editor Jane Pratt is now,…
Straight Shooter
Moon Knight Annual #1 Words by Duane Swierczynski Art by Jefte Paolo and Dave Wilkins $3.99, 48 pages (Marvel) The problem with Moon Knight is this: He has a really cool costume and a terrible, terrible back story. Crime-fiction writer Duane Swierczynski (who’s penning the new cable series) apparently feels the same way, and decided…
Corbijn’s ‘Control’: An intimate portrait of Ian Curtis
Photographer Anton Corbijn may be a first-time feature filmmaker, but he’s uniquely qualified to make Control, a portrait of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the hugely influential but short-lived band Joy Division. Like painter Julian Schnabel, who launched an impressive filmmaking career with a biopic about his onetime peer Jean-Michel Basquiat, Corbijn knew his subject…
Home on the Range
Barely a month shy of my third anniversary as a licensed driver, I got my first speeding ticket. If I were 16 years old, I might view this as a badge of honor. Instead I felt very contrite. What kind of mother speeds in a school zone? Even if the blame could be placed squarely…
‘Legend’ not a classic
Shouldn’t “post-apocalyptic” be a cinematic dirty word by now? And yet, there’s a sizeable early-to-middle stretch in the decidedly post-apocalyptic I Am Legend that, I’m pleased to report, drew this viewer involuntarily (and more than once) to his seat-edge and managed to hold him more palpably rapt than a great many ostensibly comparable films of…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: I’m sad that there aren’t more Mexicans here in the Detroit area. We’re one of the few areas in the country that is predominately Catholic. We’ve welcomed wave after wave of Catholic immigrants for well over a hundred years, and they’ve intermingled and blended into our local society and culture. In the past,…
Armchair Cinephile
The Jason Bourne Collection (Universal) PICK OF THE WEEK: The Bourne films are some of the smartest, most aesthetically deft action films mainstream Hollywood has seen fit to make. Assuming the trilogy is complete, video collectors can now put the whole saga on the shelf. Not to worry, high-def fans: Those who have the three…
Clothes-minded
If I had all the money in the world, everyone on my gift list this year would get cashmere. Sweaters, socks, bathrobes, all in tissue-thin, buttery soft, drapey, sinful cashmere. Made from the naturally shed winter coats of nimble little goats in the mountains of Asia and the Middle East, cashmere has relatively high insulation…
Fashion nightmare
Project Runway (Bravo, Wednesdays, 10 pm) Reality shows inevitably begin to suck. It’s like a law of the universe. No matter how great they are to begin with, they all suck by season four or five. It’s true of most things left in a vacuum, and there’s a clear historical antecedent. You get a king…
Dear Uncle Mat
How the fuck do you get over your ex? Argh … I hate her … how do you get rid of the bitterness? — Bitter, obviously Dear Bitter, Why do you hate her? Is she manipulative? Did she drown your pet hedgehog? Maybe she slept with your friends? Or is she just run-of-the-mill evil? This…
Spittin’ Game
Manhunt 2 (Rockstar) Nintendo Wii $49.99 The thing about Manhunt 2 is that I could write “This game is twisted and sick — an affront to God himself” and they’d probably quote this review in a TV commercial. The Entertainment Software Rating Board demanded some major violence cutbacks for the game to even receive a…
Border Deaths
They may not have bragged to their neighbors about it, but during mytime along a quieter section of borderland I met several homeowners and ranchers who made a habit of leaving jugs of water out in the desert where regular footpaths crossed their land. Just being neighborly. Of course, there were also those benefiting from…
Border Deaths
They may not have bragged to their neighbors about it, but during mytime along a quieter section of borderland I met several homeowners and ranchers who made a habit of leaving jugs of water out in the desert where regular footpaths crossed their land. Just being neighborly. Of course, there were also those benefiting from…
