Avenue A: the third-to-last word
This Thursday at 8:30am at the San Antonio River Authority offices (100 E. Guenther), Witte President Marise McDermott will present Ford Powell & Carson’s “Park Segment Feasibility Study and Subcommittee Priorities” for the trails that will run from and through Brackenridge Park to Pearl Brewery (including the hotly contested Ave A/B routes) to a special…
Live & Local preview: Blue Means Go
Saturday, we’ll be tailing local musicians and advocates for the color blind Blue Means Go, at G.I.G. on the Strip, openly gawking at them and taking notes while they try to pretend we aren’t there. This show, also featuring locals the Offbeats, is free. They don’t serve alcohol at GIG, but you can bring in…
Here, terror, terror. Here boy!
Greg Harman So, unless aggressive efforts to get Homeland Security to reconsider its choice of a Kansas community to host the massive federal germlab that would study diseases with no known cure that can pass back and forth between us and our underrespected livestock, San Antonio is free at last of the National Agro- &…
On the Street: Moustache Fandango, FF Foreshadowing, Worm Returns, and Analysis of the Swap
Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) (Christmas Invitations) I joined Facebook this week after some prodding and only later realized I might be drying up the well of letters that “flow” so “effortlessly” to the surface. Perhaps that explains this week’s offerings: invitations to various “art openings” (parenthesis added to include this moustache…
Show & Prove: Gone ‘Til December
No disrespect to Pop, Timmy, and the other Spurs, but San Antonio’s regular-season NBA campaign began in earnest last week when Manu Ginobili, the Alamo City’s favorite-adopted son, made his home debut in a 98-88 victory over the Chicago Bulls. While IUPUI godsend George Hill was the nights MVP, it was Ginobili who electrified the…
From the Salt in the Wound Department
Release Date: December 3, 2008 Office of Mayor Phil Hardberger: 207-7083 City removes Red Oak on Main Plaza Work crews Wednesday removed a Red Oak on the east side of Main Plaza due to recent and severe cracking along its trunk and at least one major limb. The cracking was discovered during a routine inspection…
No N-BAF for SA
By Greg Harman Dr. Mr. Red McCombs, Can we imagine Texas losing a fight to Kansas or Mississippi? Why, yes we can. After all the obscene salesmanship by our elected leaders for a project best performed deep in bunker somewhere (or, perhaps, offshore where such research has historically been done), Homeland Security selected Manhattan, Kansas…
Happy in Galoshes
Happy in Galoshes Composer: Scott Weiland Conductor: Scott Weiland Label: Soft Drive Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Solo albums are self-indulgent sorts of things. Scott Weiland, once lead singer of both Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver when not doing the drug-addict jailbird thing, offers up his second one-man outing with Happy in…
5th Annual Downtown Alliance Urban Spaces Tour
Release Date: 2008-12-03 The Current loves the East Side! This year marks the 5th annual Downtown Alliance Urban Spaces Tour, and the tour focuses on the near East, including Tucker’s Kozy Korner, the Carver Community Cultural Center, the Friedrich building, a residence by noted contemporary architect Candid Rogers (left), St. Paul Square, and more. The…
Happy-Go-Lucky
Critic’s Pick Happy-Go-Lucky Director: Mike Leigh Screenwriter: Mike Leigh Cast: Sally Hawkins, Alexis Zegerman, Eddie Marsan, Andrea Riseborough, Sinead Matthew Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: R Genre: Film Director Mike Leigh wants to test how cynical you really are. With Poppy (Hawkins), the central character in his latest improvised drama, he presents a true dilemma for…
Own Up SA’s Pet Adoption
Release Date: 2008-12-03 Save an abandoned pup or kitty this Christmas season during Own Up SA’s pet-adoption event, where more than 20 pet adoption organizations are seeking to find “forever homes” for hundreds of dogs and cats, both young and mature. Jesse James Leija, two-time World Boxing Champion, will be “pawing” autographs during the event…
Carlos Alazraqui
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
DJ Hazard
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
Randy Lubas
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
Chris Fonseca
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
Saosin
Release Date: 2008-12-03 In a move that was both innovative and intimate, the Capitol Records quintet Saosin joined with global youth brand Hurley to record demos for their upcoming album in Hurley’s Costa Mesa, California studio – and brought fans right into the recording sessions through a real-time, multi-camera audio/video feed from the Hurley studio.…
Clay McClinton w. Ruben V
Release Date: 2008-12-03 With a Grammy-award winning father in Delbert McClinton, Clay McClinton has understandably had to define himself and his music in order to escape the huge shadow cast by his dad. But, like Shooter Jennings and Hank III, sons of Waylon and Hank Jr., Clay McClinton is quickly carving out his own niche…
Carlos Alazraqui
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
Moving violation
Transporter 3 Director: Olivier Megaton Screenwriter: Olivier Megaton Cast: Jason Statham, Natalya Rudakova, Francois Berleand, Robert Knepper, Jeroen Krabbe Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: R Genre: Film Hi there. It’s me (Jeremy Martin) talking to you (your name here) directly for a moment. If you’re reading this review right now, I’m asking that you contact me…
Own Up SA’s Pet Adoption
Release Date: 2008-12-03 Save an abandoned pup or kitty this Christmas season during Own Up SA’s pet-adoption event, where more than 20 pet adoption organizations are seeking to find “forever homes” for hundreds of dogs and cats, both young and mature. Jesse James Leija, two-time World Boxing Champion, will be “pawing” autographs during the event…
Taking the cure
Release Date: 2008-12-03 If hell is other people, then purgatory, for better or worse, is the bar they meet in. The entry to the Recovery Room is a thick, metal, windowless door with a large sign on it announcing the drinking age, a sort of purgatorial guideline (under 21 being either too good or too…
The Dreaming w. Sounds Under Radio
Release Date: 2008-12-03 Christopher Hill, the former frontman of Stabbing Westward, is still making music these days — his current project, the Dreaming, released their full-length debut, Etched in Blood, this summer and are touring in support. Regulars on the Sunset Strip, they’ll share the Jack’s Patio stage with psychedelic rock troupe Sounds Under Radio,…
Travels with Frenchie
Part III: A bastion, a butcher, and barbecue
Kristeen Young
Release Date: 2008-12-03 Kristeen Young combines dark, emotionally raw songs with feisty wordplay and wry sarcasm to create her dramatic onstage persona, incorporating elaborate makeup and costumes into her aggressive and hard-hitting stage show. She’s able to achieve rock ’n’ roll intensity sans guitar — with her bandmate “Baby” Jeff White on drums, the vocalist…
Holiday re-gifting
Four Christmases Director: Seth Gordon Screenwriter: Seth Gordon Cast: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon, Noah Munck, Haley Hallak, Robert Duvall Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Like that relative who turns up at your doorstep each December 25, managing his comb-over with a licked finger after handing you a re-gifted Clapper, there’s no shaking the…
Urban-15 Holiday Laser Show
Release Date: 2008-12-03 The audience for Urban-15’s Holiday Laser Show grew to more than 7,000 last year, warranting a move to the Lila Cockrell Theater this season. The show is a multi-media spectacle of beams, animation, and light effects performed to holiday music favorites and carols. The 45-minute, family-oriented presentation has been extremely popular with…
808s & Heartbreak
808s & Heartbreak Composer: Kanye West Conductor: Kanye West Label: Roc-a-Fella Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The rumors are true: Kanye West’s newest, 808s & Heartbreak, isn’t really a rap record (’Ye calls his new genre “pop art.” Um … sure). Grief-stricken over the loss of his mother and split from his fiancé,…
Michael Fracasso & Mary Battiata
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2008-12-03 Nothing prepares you for Michael Fracasso’s voice. A gray-haired folkie-next-door, Fracasso looks like someone who’d have a wheezy, nicotine-toughened timbre. But his voice is a freakish, androgynous gift, a high, soaring expression of vulnerability that carries even his most pedestrian efforts to unpredictable places. It vaguely suggests a young Arlo…
I Am â?¦ Sasha Fierce
I Am â?¦ Sasha Fierce Composer: Beyoncé Conductor: Beyoncé Label: Music World/ Columbia Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Beyoncé divides her third album into two discs. One is credited to the comely singer who’s sold tons of records over the past decade; the other introduces Sasha Fierce, Beyoncé’s diva alter ego, who has…
Arts in our Parks
Release Date: 2008-12-03 The Office of Cultural Affairs presents the first annual Arts in Our Parks, an event developed to promote the arts in San Antonio and showcase Parks and Recreation Facilities and programs. The day features performances by local arts groups, an information fair, an interactive art installation, and a holiday market filled with…
Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer
Things Are Getting Sinister and Sinisterer Composer: Edie Sedgwick Conductor: Edie Sedgwick Label: Dischord Records Release Date: 2008-12-03 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Since being diagnosed with epilepsy in 2001, Justin Moyer (formerly of El Guapo and Antelope) has a new project — channeling the spirit, and taking the moniker of, Warhol’s hollow, though luminous, arm-piece,…
Carlos Alazraqui
Release Date: 2008-12-03 You probably know Carlos Alazraqui as Officer James Garcia on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911” and from his many appearances on VH1 and E Television, but he’s also an established and talented voiceover artist with a popular cartoon résumé. Alazraqui provided the voice talent on the “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” campaign, has starred…
Fear Snakeface
Fear Snakeface obviously believes in the big-rock ending and the power of woohoo’s. Tonight the band is reduced from a foursome to a duo — Sid St. Onge on guitar and vocals and Phillip Luna, who also plays with the bill’s second band, Worm, on drums — and it’s really hard to imagine what the…
That voodoo that you do
We’re approaching the time of year when we’re prompted to change our lives by ritual and resolution, and neighboring shows at Sala Diaz and Unit B offer art as inspiration. Ken Adams’ American Satori/Terra Lucida installation at Sala Diaz pushes a spiritual agenda, a purpose that has at times been given the cold shoulder, and…
“Where Birds Go” — Ledaswan
Full disclosure: Ledaswan’s guitarist is Jaime Monzon, web coordinator for the San Antonio Current. Before you cry nepotism, though, realize that we’ve held off writing about this track since we started this feature, partly because we didn’t want to seem like we were playing favorites, but also because it isn’t fair to the band that…
ARTIFACTS
Karen Mahaffy’s digital video and cut paper Window Works piece at Artpace, entitled “any given moment” (which was only up until November 30, sadly), reflected preoccupations that we think of as particularly, recognizably Mahaffian: graceful patterns tightly controlled in lyric and decorative repitition; an intimation of the secret rigors of femininity hiding behind a stylized…
The QueQue
Wall-Eh The blanket Real ID Act authority granted Homeland Security by the 2006 Congress that has allowed border-wall construction to move forward unhampered by any “antagonistic” federal laws — laws such as the Native American Graves Protection Act and our cherished Clean Water and Air acts — is about to expire. At least, that appears…
Clintonian
What’s wrong with Bill Clinton? How could a successful, popular, shrewd, and intelligent president allow himself to be dragged into a sex scandal so notorious it would forever overshadow all the good his administration had accomplished in his double-term tenure? That’s the question that nags at most people’s understanding of our 42nd president, and it…
The panopticon economy
Surrounded by barbwire fencing, the anonymous yet massive building on West Military Drive near San Antonio’s Loop 410 freeway looms mysteriously with no identifying signs of any kind. Surveillance is tight, with security cameras surrounding the under-construction building. Readers are advised not to take any photos unless you care to be detained for at least…
Natural history is written by the victor, too
I’m gonna start this review on a soapbox. My gripe? The “artist statement” and its often-obfuscating, needlessly jargony ubiquity. Now, I completely understand why artists write these statements (grant-, job-, and fellowship applications usually require them, and galleries increasingly employ them), and I even get why curators print them up — it’s probably not good…
Audit this
City auditors inevitably present municipalities with a confounding dilemma: How do you enable auditors to be independent enough to do their jobs, while also keeping them accountable enough to prevent them from overstepping their bounds? Austin City Council Member Lee Leffingwell calls this the “delicate balancing act” that cities face, and few have struggled with…
Lorenzo Salinas: The Woman Across the Street
I met Lorenzo when I dropped out of college and took a job with a landscaping company. He immigrated to Texas as a young man and lived the difficult life of a rootless migrant: picking fruits and vegetables whenever the season permitted, taking jobs of various character and any that paid. At the age of 72,…
Fangbangers
There are worse things than the sickening surety of death, the knowledge that every moment of our existence will be shortly rendered insignificant by the unstoppable passage of time. That’s what the vampires would have us believe, anyway. But we mortals have never bought it. Twilight’s Edward Cullen (played by pointy-teeth dreamboat Robert Pattinson) is…
The Feather Hunter
The first thing to go was the radio station. The combat-booted crabs that landed on the beach made sure they got that. So, all day we could only tune in to classical music and commercials for imported groceries. That’s when he appeared in the streets. I’d see him from the veranda at night walking zombie-like…
S’Nuff film
The theme of CineFestival en San Antonio (cinefestivalsa.org), the nation’s oldest Latino film festival, is “New World Onda: Building a Dynamic Media Society.” And if that’s not going to get some crazy panicked responses from the conspiracy-theory-subscribing Minutemen on talk radio, I’m not sure what will. That’s just one of many reasons to get excited.…
A fashion show with Mr. Bob
Last month, I found myself smack dab in the middle of a fashion show at the V Bar at the Hotel Valencia Riverwalk. It’s funny how you’re going along, ticking off things on your list, and the next thing you know, you get an email from your editor and — voila! — you are standing…
Cinema Obscura
David Byrne’s ambivalence toward working and middle-class Americans is the basis for some of the Talking Heads best songs. Like few other rock bands, the Heads could approximate the (kind of lame and pathetic) hopeful, temporary joy non-Bohemian types experience in moving to a new apartment building or writing fake sitcom pilots. But More Songs…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why is it that those of us who oppose illegal immigration are called racist by many Mexicans? Personally, I think Hispanic people are beautiful and a diverse people who contribute tremendously to our culture (and spicy hot as well!). At the same time, I oppose illegals who wander across the border as if…
The buck stops over there somewhere
It’s a strange truism of history that popular democratic leaders often leave a troubling legacy — but they don’t do it without help. Tammany Hall and the senior Richard Daley’s empires had their virtues, at least in the beginning, and certainly their adherents. In Shakespeare’s retelling of Caesar’s last days, he flirts with the crown…
Dear Uncle Mat
Your Uncle Mat was on a little Thanksgiving holiday last week, and in the spirit of giving thanks, I am sharing a few thank-you notes I have received over the last several months. I am not sure how often you receive emails sharing what happened after your response and publication to one’s inquiry. My first…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19):The European Union has had rules banning the sale of ugly carrots with knobby protrusions, cucumbers that are grossly curved, and equally unaesthetic specimens of 24 other fruits and vegetables. Recently that changed, however. The stiff standards were relaxed. “It makes no sense to throw perfectly good products away, just because they…
Carmenére
As recently as 1986, wine writer and critic Jancis Robinson devoted little more than a paragraph to carmenére in Vines, Grapes and Wines, her seminal guide to grape varieties. Noting that it had been important in the Médoc and Graves before phylloxera, she holds out the hope that plantings might again increase in order to…
Amuse-BOUCHE
The menu’s already been renovated, and now the restaurant is under construction at Merchants Bistro and Hardware Bar on Broadway (merchantsgrandcafe.com), so a little sawdust in A-B’s glass of Liberty School cab wasn’t a surprise (and was quickly and cheerfully fixed). The bartender told us that the sophisticated bar that had occupied the southern end…
Clearing skies
Future Clouds & Radar leader Robert Harrison wasn’t thinking about making a new album; he was busy teaching his band last year’s self-titled, double-album debut. The newly solidified touring lineup was still learning Harrison’s 27-song catalog when in late January the former Cotton Mather frontman got a call from über-producer Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse).…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
S&F isn’t your biggest fan of the Christmas album. The sheer cumulative weight of holiday product from the likes of Mannheim Steamroller and Josh Groban long ago left our ears in a state much like those mythical chestnuts roasting on an open fire. But we’ll happily make an exception for A Blackheart Christmas, the new…
It’s my disc in a box
I went into Home Depot this year a week or two before Halloween and saw Christmas trees and light-up Santas. How many years will it be before the Christmas season starts at Labor Day? Here at All Ears, the obsession with buying and giving consumer products starts after Thanksgiving, as God said it should, and…
Exhibit A
Greg Harman That big, white slip of paper represents the long and winding road that has been the fight for basic information about how your City-owned utility is run. So, crack a bottle, we’ve vaulted another hurdle this week, albeit one with itty-bitty type. After costly attorneys inside CPS and the Texas Attorney General’s office…
