Extortion, possible evidence planting by SAPD officer
The story of an SAPD officer charged last week in federal court for extortion is unnerving for several reasons. First, officer Curtis W. Lundy, 36, a near four-year veteran of the force, was willing to risk his career (and freedom) over such a paltry sum of money – a $400 sum that evolved into $500,…
La Presy’s fruits: remembering the SA flamenco dancer who became a gypsy
Painting of La Presy by Zaafra (David González López) La Presy (born Priscilla Treviño Lozano, 1952-2011) left San Antonio 33 years ago and became a well-respected flamenco teacher in Granada, the heart and breeding ground of gypsy Spain. Two of her top students are now showing the fruits of what they learned with La Presy.…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Django
Although some consider Giacomo Puccini’s 1910 opera La fanciulla del West to be the first Spaghetti Western (a term some consider derogatory), the subgenre was introduced to the masses in the 1960s via Italian-made films that put a wilder, rougher spin on Westerns while also commenting on Hollywood ideals. What Sergio Leone established with his…
Oscar-winning songwriter Paul Williams happy to be back in spotlight with ‘Still Alive’
Oscar-winning songwriter Paul Williams is the subject of the documentary “Paul Williams: Still Alive.” Best known for winning an Academy Award for writing the song “Evergreen” for the 1976 film A Star is Born and for the song “Rainbow Connection,” which Kermit the Frog sings in The Muppet Movie, singer/songwriter Paul Williams has never lost…
The Right’s Catch-22 on Gun Control
If we are ever to have a real debate about gun control, conservative right wing republicans are going to have to do something they haven’t done for quite some time. Confront many of their long held arguments on the meaning of the 2nd amendment and dispel their own hypocrisy. They’ll have to finally admit that…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Apocalypse. Now What???
With a playful nod to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 war epic, Jump-Start Performance Co. rallies the troops for Apocalypse. Now What???, the nonprofit’s 28th Annual Performance Party. Promising relief from meteor showers, zombie attacks, and rogue computers, the survival-themed smorgasbord showcases jazz pianist, vocalist, and songwriter Bett Butler; “lesbiana, writer, educator, and multidisciplinary artista” Anel…
South Texas Town Tail by Don Mathis
As some of you may know, I’m intrigued by constraint. I love poetry and prose that construct some kind of artificial or natural rules (or boundaries) and then play the game. Oulipo is a group of writers and mathematicians (and musicians and artists and on and on) who insist on constraint. Raymond Queneau, one of…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: “We’re So Pretty”: 35th Anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ San Antonio Appearance
On January 8, 1978, the Sex Pistols played for the first and last time at Randy’s Ballroom in San Antonio (see feature on page 39). That infamous U.S. tour was also their first and last in the States, and the band would self-destruct (in the case of Sid Vicious, literally) shortly after visiting Texas. The…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: “Seeing Is Believing; Transient Spaces for Home”
Rich with cinematic narratives and looming shadows, Casey McGuire’s works often reference her family history (including her father’s career as a taxidermist and her grandmother’s stint in The Rockettes). Using maps as symbols of continuity, Lindsay Palmer explores progress and movement in an ever-changing world. The accomplished visual artists find mysterious common ground with “Seeing…
The Wicked Stage in NYC
Well, The Wicked Stage has fallen woefully behind. Yes, I still have theater reports on Madrid and Los Angeles in my hopper, but I plead (as my friends and colleagues know too well) that I really should be writing my #@$#* book. But as the year winds down, I find that I simply have to…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Jim David
Although he played a munchkin in a staged version of The Wizard of Oz and scored a part in the Broadway musical The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, New York-based Jim David is best known as a writer and stand-up comic. In addition to his witty contributions to The Advocate and The Huffington Post, the…
Bite: Where small is good
There was a harmonic convergence of sorts at Bite, Lisa Astorga-Watel’s new Southtown restaurant recently: the reviewers from the Express-News, Texas Monthly, and the Current all appeared within minutes of one another — and for a time we were the only ones there. If panic ensued, it wasn’t apparent; service was unflustered, plates came out…
Vincent Valdez witnesses for combat veterans
"America’s Finest" and "Excerpts for John," the sweeping double-exhibition by Vincent Valdez now on view at the McNay Art Museum, gives confirmation to his reputation as a masterful portrayer of combatants, but delivers a tragic personal note for a military town. Valdez, who in 2004 with "Stations" was the youngest artist to have a solo…
Best of Flash Fiction: November 2012
What I like about this story is the temporal shift. The subtle change from past to present gives the story, "Regis and Kelly," a taut depth. There is sadness here (and, in fact, abject horror — this cannot possibly end well), but also humor: what we talk about when we talk about love. Habit. Even…
Remembering The Bollocks: Sex Pistols week in SA
Aging aficionados and young punks were in a bit of a hurry for the holidays to be done and over with. Right around the calendar corner, they were ready to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the infamous Sex Pistols’ performance at Randy’s Rodeo in San Antonio. Organizers were kicking out the jams, and there were…
Welcome to the funhouse
State Rep. Mike Villarreal (D-San Antonio) talks about the Texas Legislature much the way you would a carnival funhouse — filled with smoke, mirrors, and deliberate distortion. The 82nd Lege will always be remembered for what lawmakers slashed: billions of dollars chopped from public education, higher education, and women’s health care. But some GOP lawmakers…
Hello tequila and mezcal too, at The Worm
Classy graphics and snarky ad copy usually grab my attention, and the campaign by The Worm Tequila & Mezcal Bar, some of it in these pages, did just that. Yes, it took me a little while to realize this was the joint that took over the space, not necessarily by mutual accord, from Jim Cullum’s…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Readers: My muchos apologies for this Best Of edition —I’m still in the rancho getting faded on the Herradura and stuffed with tamales, pozole, birria and empanadas. But this is an oldie-but-goodie even Art Laboe would appreciate: a 2007 piece ripping apart former CNN personality Lou Dobbs, who I hear does magic shows at…
'Reportero': News reporting and death in Mexico
Reportero, the first full-length feature by award-winning documentary filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, pries a vantage point into the chaotic and sometimes lethal milieu of Mexican journalism amid the plague of cartel violence by recounting the history of the famed Tijuana-published, San Diego-based, newsweekly Zeta along with a few of its editors and reporters. (Zeta, dating back…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 2013, I pledge to conspire with you to increase your mastery of the art of friendship. Together we will concentrate on making you an even stronger ally than you already are. We will upgrade your skill at expressing your feelings with open-hearted clarity, and in ways that don’t make people…
Local music preview 2013
With 2013 now upon us and the foretold apocalypse averted for now, we set our energies toward realizing and lifting high our hefty hopes for what’s to come. For the most part, you’re on your own with that; but the Current gives you this handy list of a few upcoming album releases to get excited…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Hair of the Dog Day
According to the U.K.-based site Phrase Finder, the term “the hair of the dog” is derived “from the medieval belief that, when someone was bitten by a rabid dog, a cure could be made by applying the same dog’s hair to the infected wound. How many people managed to get bitten again when trying to…
