Slash on GNR, Lemmy, & why San Antonio is a great rock town
Slash, the former guitarist for Guns N’Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, and Velvet Revolver, will open for Ozzy Osbourne Jan. 24 at the AT&T Center (go to attcenter.com for ticket info). He spoke to the Current’s Enrique Lopetegui on Jan. 15, from his home in L.A. I don’t know about you, but it pisses me off when…
Stop ‘Teen Mom 3’ now by teaching safe sex
I was inspired by the Open Letters on page 47 of this week’s SA Current, which tells a slew of media players to “go away. Forever.” The MTV show Teen Mom was on the list, so I knew I had to finally break down and do the unbearable by watching it. Nielsen ratings show that…
Gayby’s Monday Musings
It’s only January 17. The NBA season is a long 82 games. And, of course, the real season starts in April. C’mon though, the Spurs’ 2010-2011 regular season schedule is halfway completed and the Spurs are soaring atop the NBA standings at 35-6. The Spurs are 24-3 against Western Conference teams, 22-2 at home, and…
Actor Danny Trejo talks shop
Coming off the first lead role of his career in Machete last year, actor Danny Trejo is as busy as always. Slated to star in about 15 films in 2011 according to imdb.com, Trejo’s most recent project is Death Race 2, a prequel to the violent 2008 action thriller remake about prisoners who participate in…
Julieta Venegas returns to San Antonio
Mexico’s Julieta Venegas, arguably the most critically acclaimed – and popular – Spanish-language alternative pop-rocker in the planet, returns to San Antonio. The date is Thursday, January 27, at Club Rio (281 & Bitters). Details are sketchy, and all we’ve been able to find out is that pre-sale tickets start at $25 and can be…
“On the Brink” by Salvatore Buttaci
Introduction We’ve all had run-ins with friends. Disagreements and hurt feelings that we swallow to keep the relationship alive, feeble though it may feel. What kind of damage does it do to us? And how do we deal with it? Friendships are based on communication and that’s what “On the Brink” by Salvatore Buttaci explores.…
One Question with Jerry Rocha
This week Jerry Rocha features with headliner Andres Fernandez at the Rivercenter Comedy Club. Jerry is from Texas, but now resides in LA and is quickly gaining notoriety with a fast paced, edgy act. If you could do battle with any Jazz Crooner, who would it be? JR: “What do I win?” SAR: “Glory. Its…
Sneak preview: Joshua Bienko and Gabriel Vormstein at Artpace
If you read the Top Picks this week (which I hope you did), and you’re going to Artpace tonight (which I hope you are: 6-8:30pm, 445 North Main Avenue), then you’ll see that, as yours truly predicted, Texas-based artist Joshua Bienko has incorporated elements of his LOUIS le’ Con series into his installation in the…
Life without Twitter: a failed experiment
Every now and then, it’s nice to experiment. I’ve cut my hair into at least a dozen insane (and ultimately unflattering) styles, changed my “look” to the detriment of my wallet, switched up my social scene seasonally, and poked around with countless gadgets, systems and tech-related odds and ends. Some experiments led to incredible discoveries.…
Court denies Texas’ attempt to wriggle out of greenhouse regulation
Texas’ ongoing lawsuits and appeals aimed at stopping federally mandated greenhouse-gas regulation of industry suffered yet another setback yesterday (the day our update on the case hit the racks) when a D.C. appeals court lifted a stay preventing the EPA from taking over greenhouse permitting in the state. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s requested the…
The Green Hornet
That the 1966 television adaptation of radio’s beloved “Green Hornet” was billed as The Kato Show in Hong Kong, pretty much sums up this 2011 Green Hornet. It’s about fighting evil, walking away from explosions, and having cool one-liners, sure, but the real drama is the conflict going on between Seth Rogen’s playboy “hero” and…
Casbeers becomes San Antone Café & Concerts: Get used to it
The announcement that Casbeers at the Church had been renamed San Antone Café & Concerts ignited the FB fury of some in the local music world. “What??!!” asked singer-songwriter Aly Tadros. “Like, in the church?” “Dislike,” succinctly wrote drummer and graphic design-extraordinaire Chuck Kerr. Yes, our Chuck Kerr. I say: chill out! With all due…
Torture files: an open letter to Constitution “guardian” U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith
Every once in a while a letter comes over the wire that so freshens the discourse about Constitutional matters (ie. it’s not “free muzzle-loading muskets for all;” it’s not “anchor babies”), that it’s simply impossible not to share. Such is the case with the following legal lesson offered by a San Antonian to the new…
Monster Jam
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 Larger-than-life gas-guzzling monstrosities with names like Maximum Destruction, Air Force Afterburner, Grave Digger, Iron Man, Monster Mutt, King Krunch, El Matador, Destroyer, Raminator, Rammunition, Bounty Hunter, Stone Crusher, Bad Habit, and ? my personal favorite ? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will jump, race, ram, crush, crunch, and engage in other…
Art opening: 100Palabras
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 Even though a picture’s allegedly worth 1,000 words, curator Patty Ortiz asked writers Grisel Y. Acosta, Anel Flores, Laurie Ann Guerrero, Ignacio Magaloni, Robert Talamantes Garcia, and Ben Tremillo to stop at 100 when writing “responses” to new works by visual artists Andy Benavides, Katherine Brown, Ana Fernandez, Cesar Martinez,…
All Good Things
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 All you “stage noir” fans can finally exhale: the third and final chapter of playwright Scott McDowell’s and director Andrew Thornton’s deliciously dark detective series opens Friday. Even if you didn’t see 2008’s The Good Samaritan or 2010’s The Hard Bargain, returning detectives Blake and Winters will bring you up…
Hogwild Records 30th Anniversary Party with Nightosaur, Kill Yourself, Chamber of the 13 Skulls, & Martyrhead
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 They say elephants never forget, but punk-rock pigs aren’t known for their ability to remember fussy little details like exactly what year Hogwild first opened its doors (could it be all the excessive partying back in the ’80s?). One thing’s for sure, though, the Main Strip mainstay has been in…
What the Fuck! with Bro Safari, Vegas Banger, Le Doom, Sonora, & Holden with visuals and photobooth by Ghostpizza
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 Bro Safari, a DJ and producer who’s best known simply as “Knick,” is one third of Atlanta-based drum ’n’ bass outfit Evol Intent and one half of Ludachrist, a mashup project that’s even got its own “church” (check out the duo’s Beverly Hills Cop-themed video for “Pon de Foley” at…
Empresarios: Sabor Tropical
Empresarios: Sabor Tropical Label: Fort Knox Recordings Release Date: 2011-01-12 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Now, here’s a great concept: put together a dream team and form a collective that mixes Afro-Cuban with electronica. If the team is led by Javier Miranda (vocals, percussion), who toured with Thievery Corporation and Mustafa Akbar, that’s even better. Downtempo…
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals: III/IV
Ryan Adams & the Cardinals: III/IV Label: Pax Am Release Date: 2011-01-12 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording It’s no secret that Ryan Adams cranks out songs at superhuman speed. He’s released a dozen albums since his solo debut a decade ago. III/IV, a two-disc collection of 21 leftovers from 2007’s Easy Tiger sessions, doesn’t quite hold…
Cake: Showroom of Compassion
Cake: Showroom of Compassion Label: Upbeat Records Release Date: 2011-01-12 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording In the ’90s, while the world was being swept away by the grunge explosion, Cake was pop music’s Ugly Duckling: either you loved them for how different they were, or you just hated their guts, just like they themselves hated what…
Transistordale: Transistordale
Transistordale: Transistordale Label: Self-released Release Date: 2011-01-12 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording LOCAL REVIEW The worst thing about Transistordale is that name, for God’s sakes. It was inspired, so to speak, by bassist Spence Thompson’s ownership of the Sisterdale Bar and drummer B.J. Shuler’s “fetish for radio towers,” according to bandleader Greg “Smiles” Layne. Both Layne…
ARTS SA Presents: Mariangela Vacatello in Recital
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 According to her website, quickly rising piano starlet Mariangela Vacatello began her music career at the tender age of four, when she studied under Aldo Tramma in Naples, Italy. Ever since her debut concert, when she performed Franz Liszt’s “Piano Concerto No. 1” (at age 14, in Milan), Vacatello’s been…
Art opening: WindowWorks: Joshua Bienko
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 Not unlike a DJ on the decks, visual artist Joshua Bienko (who teaches at the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M) does a lot of heavy lifting when he’s creating what he calls “impressions of contemporary art.” For 2010’s Ever So Much More So, Bienko painted convincing versions of Jeff…
Lang Lang & Lang Lessing
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 The San Antonio Symphony, directed by Sebastian Lang-Lessing, starts its season with Chinese superstar pianist Lang Lang. The program includes Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” and Piano Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4. Unless the private donors who made this possible do it again, this could very well be the Symphony’s…
Art opening: Gabriel Vormstein: The Teeth of the Wind and the Sea
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-01-12 The lessons of Modernism are re-examined in the work of Berlin-based artist Gabriel Vormstein. Taking stylistic cues from Egon Schiele, he most often paints female figures, typically on newspaper and “other transient, organic, and ‘poor’ materials.” Jewel-toned watercolors saturate and warp Vormstein’s pages, giving them a three-dimensional quality not unlike…
PlaceName:The Beverage Bar & Cafe
Release Date: 2011-01-12 Located on the north side of San Antonio, the Beverage Bar & Café combines the best that coffee bars, juice bars, and wine bars offer, including a variety of drinks and freshly made food. Comfortable seating and entertainment — in the form of two TVs, a Wii gaming center, several board games,…
Music my mom does yoga to
Every time I go home to visit, I do yoga with my mom, a devoted practitioner of the Anusara style. She’s always playing crazy pop music while we practice, and it always works! She shares her playlists with other yoga posers every other week. — Callie Enlow This week’s column is about the winter solstice,…
Live & Local
“Who wants violence? Raise your hands,” sang Kevin Higginbotham of Athens v. Sparta to a medium-sized crowd in San Antone Café. The song, “Mytilene Debate,” details a chapter in the Peloponnesian War, where the Athenian government voted to kill all the male citizens on the island of Lesbos. Bear in mind, only a portion of…
Cine File (a film strip)
Cine File is a random reference guide exploring the vast catalogue of films available on Netflix instant viewing, with special emphasis on the interesting, the unusual, and the ones that got left behind. Here are two vastly different films that explore the adventure of the outdoors – 180° South and North Face. 180° South (2010)…
Go ask Alice
In 2007 I saw a fine local production of Rabbit Hole just months after it won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. I was initially wary about the play, since the Pulitzer jury had originally recommended three inventive plays that were ultimately rejected by the Pulitzer Board in favor of Lindsay-Abaire’s lesser, safer play. Rabbit Hole…
Country Strong
January is an evil month. Exhibit A: Obnoxious cold fronts. Exhibit B: Totally inconvenient amounts of mountain cedar. Exhibit C: By now, the 2011 New Year’s high has worn off (How are your resolutions going? … That bad, huh?) with no holidays to look forward to but Valentine’s Day — which everyone knows is a…
Seasons of the Witch
In all fairness, when Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman called out Nicolas Cage back in early 2009 and pleaded with him in his article “Nicolas Cage: Artist or hack? The choice is his” to stop pursuing “cheesy paycheck films,” a much-needed substantial Cage performance as a coked-up cop in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call…
Haunted Helena
The ghost town of Helena, Texas — located in Karnes County near the intersection of State Highway 80 and Farm Road 81, about 70 miles southeast of San Antonio — is more than a place to find fast food and a clean latrine while driving up to the Alamo City. For Barry Harrin, a Brooklyn-raised…
The three-headed Salinger
There were, as it happens, three J.D. Salingers. There was the reclusive, apparently stingy Salinger who, beginning in the 1960s, shut himself and his manuscripts away from public view and retained lawyers in a failed effort to curate the world’s perception of him. There was the complicated, continually evolving Salinger, whose short, long, and novella-length…
Ed Saavedra: Requiem for an English Major
Currently on view in Blue Star Contemporary Art Center’s Gallery 4 is Ed Saavedra’s installation, Requiem for an English Major, an elucidation of an historical event in Bexar County. On March 31, 2009, 31-year-old Harlan McVea (author of Memoir of a Modern Opium Eater and a past contributor to the Current) committed suicide by hanging…
Carry that weight
Regardless of what you think about LeBron James, pre and post Decision, you have to admit — LeBron makes excellent material for sporting discourse. Subscribing to the theory that all publicity is good publicity, anything and everything LeBron says becomes constant fodder for anyone and everyone following sports. Let’s be honest. The Decision deserved a…
Game stops
Located on the north side of San Antonio, the Beverage Bar & Café combines the best that coffee bars, juice bars, and wine bars offer, including a variety of drinks and freshly made food. Comfortable seating and entertainment — in the form of two TVs, a Wii gaming center, several board games, and free wi-fi…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Read your column in the Village Voice and am hoping you can help me: I think I have a Mexican problem. In short, I have a home in sunny California on a property with an abundance of agave cactus and century plants growing along the street. Every year for the past 20 years,…
Chisme y Chicle (foodie gossip)
I don’t brunch. Brunch offends me. It’s leisure at its worst — expensive, sprawling, and overstuffed. But somehow one of my favorite recurring memories of this winter involves reclining on the Monterey’s sun-dappled patio, listening to the Pretenders, and soaking up a Brown Coffee Americano with miniature, Technicolor pan de dulce. At the time of…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19):What empire are you building, Aries? What master plan are you in the midst of carrying out? As you gaze out upon your realm, are you content with the way it’s evolving? Judging from the current astrological omens, I’d say it’s an excellent time to ponder questions like those. And if your…
Bottle & Tap
DARING THE DARK Dark beer’s place in the American consciousness once was owned by Guinness, the Irish classic with its creamy head and ruby-hued opaqueness. Michelob Dark entered the scene with a national ad campaign with irreverent funnyman Martin Mull imploring consumers not to be afraid of the dark. For many, perceptions about so-called dark…
A bizarre history of anti-aging research
Through the years, the quest for eternal youth has largely been a province of the rich. The rest of us were just too damn busy foraging for roots and avoiding blood-thirsty aristocrats hunting virgin blood. Of course, we could start freezing our own heads (though it’s far more practical to enlist a third party), but…
Creative infusions lure San Antonio out of the dark ages
“Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker,” Ogden Nash famously said regarding, we can only assume, seduction. Combining the two clearly constitutes the perfect Don Juan double threat — just what Lutfy Flores-Vico and his staff at SoHo Wine & Martini Bar have assembled. On the bar’s oversized chalkboard one can currently find, among the…
The QueQue – January 12, 2011
We’re going to count San Antonio’s Joe Straus vaulting of competing (further-) right-wingers for the Speaker’s throne a victory (Ken Paxton? Puleeze!). We gotta take ’em where we find ’em these days. Likewise, the three-year jail sentence for former House Speaker Tom “dirty tricks” DeLay for money laundering this week isn’t going down too hard,…
The Sound & The Fury
I have two words for those who complain about our alleged Gordon Raphael name-dropping: Gordon Raphael! I haven’t even started name-dropping him — we should have a special section solely devoted to the guy for as long as he stays in San Antonio producing local bands. Even if he had only produced the first two…
On the heels of the Reaper
“May you stay forever young.” – Bob Dylan Naked mole rats aren’t much to look at. In fact, you might think the pink, wrinkly, squinty rodents are downright ugly. However, some researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio feel otherwise (“I think they are incredibly cute,” says Zimbabwe-born scientist Rochelle…
Loud, brown, proud, and funky
Latin music, soul, and funk always went great together. Ray Barreto and Joe Bataan (who was Filipino-American) did it in New York, while El Chicano (and even predominantly black acts like War) did it in Los Angeles. Tortilla Factory, Sunny Ozuna, Latin Breed, and The Royal Jesters did it here in San Antonio, and the…
Made in Dagenham
Women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes nearly 30 years after the Equal Rights Amendment passed through the United States Congress (it failed ratification by the states). No one bats an eye when it’s said that women still do most of the housework and child rearing, but that wage gap…
Texas objection to greenhouse regs stalling 167 construction projects, say environmental groups
Texas has decided to take a states-rights stand on federal regulation of greenhouse gases now being rolled into practice in 49 states. Texas, led by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, has refused to budge to regulate the most prominent of greenhouse gases, blamed for destabilizing the global climate. On a conference call Tuesday, environmentalists blamed…
