Surfing Big Tex
As promised, the EPA’s official Big Tex site is live. Surf on over to epaosc.net/bigtex to download the spiffy PowerPoint presentation from the January community update about the asbestos-contaminated site and find contact info for On-Scene Coordinator Eric Delgado.
Surfing Big Tex
As promised, the EPA’s official Big Tex site is live. Surf on over to epaosc.net/bigtex to download the spiffy PowerPoint presentation from the January community update about the asbestos-contaminated site and find contact info for On-Scene Coordinator Eric Delgado.
Manu Being Manu
The possible turning point in the Spurs’ thus-far disjointed, injury-addled season arrived this week against Los Angeles Lakers, courtesy of future Hall-of-Fame coach Gregg Popovich and Olympic gold medal winner Manu Ginobili. Ginobili has already provided San Antonio’s signature plays at the mid-season (monster dunks over Houston’s Yao Ming and Dallas’ Josh Howard and…
Manu Being Manu
The possible turning point in the Spurs’ thus-far disjointed, injury-addled season arrived this week against Los Angeles Lakers, courtesy of future Hall-of-Fame coach Gregg Popovich and Olympic gold medal winner Manu Ginobili. Ginobili has already provided San Antonio’s signature plays at the mid-season (monster dunks over Houston’s Yao Ming and Dallas’ Josh Howard and Disagna…
(Tears of) Joy to the World
You must watch the trailer for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s new movie, Baby Mama: : Then read Stephanie Zacharek’s salon.com review of There Will Be Blood: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/12/26/blood/ Stephanie’s criticism is exquisitely written, and expresses so many things that I (and perhaps you, too) felt during the film but didn’t know how to articulate –…
(Tears of) Joy to the World
You must watch the trailer for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s new movie, Baby Mama: : Then read Stephanie Zacharek’s salon.com review of There Will Be Blood: http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2007/12/26/blood/ Stephanie’s criticism is exquisitely written, and expresses so many things that I (and perhaps you, too) felt during the film but didn’t know how to articulate –…
Pasenger
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Local favorites Savior Daughters and Pasenger team up for one of the most original nights of music outside the country and folk scene. Two of the most musically dissimilar bands come together with their cogent messages and pop melodies for a Northwest side showcase — get outside the Loop, on what is…
Fishing for the highlights
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Gotta say I like the name — shorn of its “Sushi Bistro and more” appendage. Wasabi alone would be punchy, evocative, and expressive of the restaurant’s theme. I’d also delete from most of the plates the colorful but entirely superfluous assorted, shredded vegetable matter — but let’s work up to that more…
What is ‘Cloverfield’?
Cloverfield Director: Matt Reeves Screenwriter: Matt Reeves Cast: Mike Vogel, Michael Stahl-David, Odette Yustman, Jessica Lucas, Lizzy Caplan, T.J. Miller Release Date: 2008-01-23 Website: http://www.cloverfieldmovie.com/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Action For one, it’s a film. It’s also a question printed on the promotional cups that were handed out after the preview screening at the Palladium. The…
Jukebox
Jukebox Composer: various Conductor: Cat Power Label: Matador Release Date: 2008-01-23 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock It’s fitting that Cat Power’s new album, Jukebox, includes a cover of the old George Jackson track “Aretha, Sing One For Me.” Although Cat Power, née Chan Marshall, sounds nothing like Aretha Franklin…
Sole & The Skyrider Band, Telephone Jim Jesus, & Lotus Tribe
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Sole was hatched the year Elvis overdosed — 1977 — in the far northeastern city of Portland, Maine. His musical arc might be described as a series of battle raps whose range of targets has gradually widened — the forceful language of overconfidence vital to classic battle rap populated his post-adolescent albums,…
First Round Knockout w. Kyle Lee, Fade Dogg, G’d Up, & more
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Big Fist Entertainment and Mischief Promotions present this exclusive hip-hop event featuring some of Texas’s own hard-hitting heavyweights. Taking the stage will be Fade Dogg, Kyle Lee, G’d Up, Get Money Click, and more. A $100 “let it Jiggle” booty shakin’ contest will get ladies on the dance floor, while cash and…
Te Tataitanga/Bind Together
Release Date: 2008-01-23 This reception marks one of many events showcasing contemporary art of New Zealand. The exhibition runs through March 16 at SSAC’s Navarro Campus, featuring indigenous Maori influences while reflecting the scenery and traditions of New Zealand. Other events include curator/artists talks, film screenings, and a performance slated for March. Free, 5:30pm-7:30pm, Southwest…
Five Times August
Release Date: 2008-01-23 A new model for up-and-coming artists, Five Times August is the unsigned solo project of 24-year-old Dallas native Brad Skistmas. Despite a massive national grassroots following, Skistmas still embodies the independent, DIY ethos that he started with. His sophomore effort, Brighter Side, will turn heads this March, brimming with pure acoustic melodies.…
Pasenger, Savior Daughters, & Jobber
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Local favorites Savior Daughters and Pasenger team up for one of the most original nights of music outside the country and folk scene. Two of the most musically dissimilar bands come together with their cogent messages and pop melodies for a Northwest side showcase — get outside the Loop, on what is…
Super Soul Shakedown w. Suzy+The Soul Revue, DJs Donnie Dee, JJ Lopez, & Scuba
Release Date: 2008-01-23 In a three-way effort by a trio of SA’s most seasoned DJs, JJ Lopez, Donnie Dee, and Scuba Gooding proffer a new funk and soul themed quarterly dance party. The well-versed dance floor conductors reign as resident DJs, their refreshing mixes evoking the now-defunct Davenport scene. The first event features a live…
The Heroine CD Release & The Y=Farewell Show
Release Date: 2008-01-23 2008 looks promising for The Heroine — they have eight national tours under their belt, opening for the likes of Chiodos, As I Lay Dying, and more. By touring relentlessly without label support, the band has earned the respect of many national and regional acts. The five-song EP features new material, including…
The Black Dahlia Murder, 3 Inches of Blood, Hate Eternal, Decrepit Birth, & The Breathing Process
Release Date: 2008-01-23 When you name your band after the grisliest unsolved murder in Hollywood history, you’re basically making a pact with your audience. You’re assuring them that you’ll never record a power ballad, that you’ll never write a sentimental song about your kid, and that you’ll maintain your commitment to the darkest, most evil…
Jim & Deric of Pasenger
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Local favorites Savior Daughters and Pasenger team up for one of the most original nights of music outside the country and folk scene. Two of the most musically dissimilar bands come together with their cogent messages and pop melodies for a Northwest side showcase — get outside the Loop, on what is…
Jim & Deric of Pasenger
Release Date: 2008-01-23 Local favorites Savior Daughters and Pasenger team up for one of the most original nights of music outside the country and folk scene. Two of the most musically dissimilar bands come together with their cogent messages and pop melodies for a Northwest side showcase — get outside the Loop, on what is…
Everybody wants some
Don’t even bother trying to figure out Eddie Van Halen. This is a guy who locked himself in his room for much of his teen and early adult years, tirelessly devoting thousands of hours to perfecting his fleet-fingered mastery of the guitar, but when he and his brother needed a singer for their band, he…
CDs Nuts
Nothing is Free Carolyn Marks (Mint Recordss) If there’s a tear in Carolyn Marks’ beer (or bottle of Jack), you should know she’s not wasting any of that eye juice on you. Nothing Is Free is as weepy an album as you could want from somebody with a great classic country voice like Marks’ (husky…
Dear Uncle Mat
I started a new job last fall in a large corporate office. It is my first job in the “real world.” I work closely with four other people, two guys and two other girls, and have limited contact with about 10 other individuals, including my boss. I have no friends here. Everyone is friendly and…
aural pleasure
I’d gladly be the first to preach the virtues of bluegrass music. The sound, drawing from spirituals, folk, country, and jazz’s sense of improvisation, is beautifully lonesome, even at its most giddy. Although bluegrass didn’t put a face to its name until after World War II, with the rise of artists such as Bill Monroe…
On the Street
MLK in Low Resolution The crappy weather intitially kept me from going down to the MLK Day celebration. I wanted to ride my bike. After I realized that wasn’t going to happen in the rain I finally drove on down. The march was over but I was able to make it to the celebration at…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year,” said essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson. That’s my first suggestion for you this week, Aries. Now, while you’re at the energetic peak of your astrological cycle, is a good time to cultivate a knack for identifying the…
Blossoms and ‘Blood’
Here’s what I know: Once upon a time, I had a fight with an old roommate. I crashed into my bed for some angry sleep. It was around 11 p.m. At 11:20ish, I heard Aimee Mann in the living room. Cunning-genius roommate was luring me awake with Magnolia, knowing full-well that I’d never be able…
It’s almost here!
Earlier this morning I attended the Luminaria: Arts Night press conference where the media (and a few unaware people trying to catch an elevator) gathered to share more about the first-of-its-kind event. I don’t know about you but I’m really excited about this event and I truly do hope everything goes right. With a line-up…
Our heroes have always been comics
The Flash The Flash was always my favorite comic-book hero. The idea that you could avoid rush-hour traffic and make it to your favorite restaurant in a fraction of a second and maybe even alter the rotation of the earth with your speed was highly appealing to someone astounded that Olympians could run the 100…
CRITICAL Darling
To all of my fellow film writers huddled together in Park City’s dark, Sundance-affiliated screening rooms this week, may I extend to you a hearty middle finger. Really, go fuck yourselves. In the snow. With your UGG boots. Jealous? Me? Never. I’ve got plenty of things to do. Like cry about the polar bear–inhabited areas…
The secret lives of superheroes
Dulce Pinzón’s project The Real Story of Superheroes looks sweet, but the underlying message leaves a somewhat sour taste for those unfamiliar with the strife of the immigrant worker. Her latest project, on view at Trinity University through February 22, is a collection of 20 photographs of Latino immigrants garbed in American and Mexican superhero…
Youth Without Youth
Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Youth Without Youth, regardless of its flaws, made me excited about the potential of movies again (If you are among the un-fatigued, my sincerest congratulations to ya.). It is an exploration and celebration of language and consciousness, and as a result, it is almost organically a celebration of its own…
Able to leap prejudice … ?
“I have always felt as though I needed a weapon against evil,” famed American photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks told author and art director Martin H. Bush for a 1983 compendium of Parks’ work. The camera, a relatively democratic and portable medium, has been that tool for many photographers, who often use it to document…
The Savages
Meet Wendy: Wendy is a struggling, middle-aged, New York playwright portrayed by Laura Linney who sleeps with a married man resembling James Taylor, and whose Ob-Gyn’s office is good enough to call just to let her know her pap is normal. She enjoys spending time with her cat and writing the world’s shortest-ever Guggenheim Fellowship…
With humor and grace
What does the producer of Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley and the director of Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries know about opera? Answer: How to make it funny, of course. Since the early ’60s, Garry Marshall has been one of Hollywood and television’s most prolific writer/producer/directors and his timing (comic and otherwise) has…
Armchair Cinephile
PICK OF THE WEEK: This Sporting Life (Criterion) British director Lindsay Anderson made the jump from documentaries to features with this 1963 Richard Harris film; a second disc includes two of his docs, along with in-depth bonus features and interviews. Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park (WGBH) Jane Austen fans who don’t need the umpteenth Pride…
Little Nemo’s buddies are in heaven
A little over two years ago, an obsessed comic-strip lover named Peter Maresca invested what must have been a frightening sum to produce a $120 book he couldn’t have imagined many people would buy: a giant-sized reprint of some Sunday funnypages almost a century old, written and drawn by Winsor McCay, who’s a giant to…
How the mighty have fallen
American Gladiators (NBC, Mondays, 8 pm) Though it gets its name from a Roman blood sport, American Gladiators takes most of its cues from Greek mythology. A game-show-format test of physical prowess, rudimentary problem-solving (“How do I not get pile-driven by this slab of man?”), and not much else, it aspires to the sustained drama…
A clip above the rest
J.R. Barber Shop is good times. But good times are not always easy to find. Unless you live in the area or get lost looking for the Mitchell Lake Audubon Center, you probably won’t run across the place. That would be a shame. The area is about as remote and unspoiled as one can find in San…
The No Fun League tour
I wanted bling. They gave me bland. To be honest, that wasn’t what I was expecting from EA’s latest arcade-football offering. Through three iterations, the NFL Street series had garnered a tidy following (including yours truly) by offering something that was a cartoony, occasionally exhilarating counterpart to Madden’s stat-heavy seriousness. Lining up a set…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: At a weekly Doors tribute-band gig, I’ve noticed the majority of the crowd is Mexican. I swear, sometimes it seems like the crowd missed the exit to the Lupillo Rivera show or a Maná concert. Never realized Jim Morrison was the equal of Morrissey and Charles Bronson among other Mexican güero icons. —…
SA’s solar slope
South of Progreso and less than a mile from the shallow Rio Grande, $100,000 in solar panels gleam beside Moon Lake. One would think the 64 panels comprising the massive 10-kilowatt residential system would have brought Ashley McAllen’s energy bills to their knees. However, in deregulated Texas, solar can still be a risky venture when…
Clothes-minded
Sign up for the club and you can get flowers, fruit, or even bacon in your mailbox every month — why not T-shirts? Swedish company T-post combines the excitement of regular gifts in the mail (in this case, every six weeks) with a social and political conscience. Started in 2004 as a way to engage…
THE QUE QUE
Double Dutch What is that fresh wind of promise blowing into San Antonio, impervious to news that the Army’s recruitment propaganda increasingly appeals only to those without benefit of higher education (or even a high-school diploma) and the international markets’ mortgage-crisis panic attack? Why, it’s a glistening new hilltop development of “sustainable” luxury condos and…
Norman the Indologist
“I can taste the Norman spices,” said my friend Ken, talking with his mouth full, minutes before he introduced us. We were behind the canoe rack in an overgrown garden. Children were swarming a tamarind tree, chewing the fleshy, tart pods. Norman, sporting close-cropped hair, a puffy beard and a twinkle in his eye, relaxed…
A whiter shade of guilt
You can stop patting yourselves on the back, you well-meaning white MLK marchers. Texas State University professor Barbara Trepagnier wants to dig into your psyche and talk about the subtle ways you aid and abet racism without even realizing it. But don’t worry, she’s not a finger-pointer. The disarming sociologist was quick to tell the…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Spring Break 101: It’s never too early to plan. Especially in South Texas, where tank tops and flip flops are the norm at Thanksgiving dinner and snow flurries leap generations. But we’ve grown tired of the traditional bikini-clad South Padre beaches steeped in college freshmen and cheep beer. Maybe it’s time to save up for…
ARTIFACTS
Our off-site theater reviewer Thomas Jenkins sent us a very intriguing article from the January 15 issue of The Guardian penned by playwright Neil LaBute. As his works are being performed in the UK (his double-feature Helter Skelter/Land of the Dead is playing at the Bush Theatre in London), he has a few words of…
Coming up Shorty
Fame’s fickle spotlight eluded Guitar Shorty for a good quarter-century, before rediscovering him the past few years. A spirited blues guitarist with a strong rock sensibility, Shorty disappeared for much of the ’70s and ’80s before making a comeback in the ’90s. While generally well-reviewed, the Houston-born Shorty’s first few ’90s releases suffered for the…
On the Street
MLK in Low Resolution The crappy weather intitially kept me from going down to the MLK Day celebration. I wanted to ride my bike. After I realized that wasn’t going to happen in the rain I finally drove on down. The march was over but I was able to make it to the celebration at least.…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Great Northern Guns’ January 18 show at the Limelight drew a mix of underground-rock devotees and curiosity seekers anticipating hostility after a series of SA-bashing blogs from the band. The Guns set up shop on the floor in front of the stage, as if to invite adversaries closer. Despite the tittering crowd, the night was…
It’s almost here!
Earlier this morning I attended the Luminaria: Arts Night press conference where the media (and a few unaware people trying to catch an elevator) gathered to share more about the first-of-its-kind event. I don’t know about you but I’m really excited about this event and I truly do hope everything goes right. With a line-up…
Now ’til 2100
It was the week I joined the Current that my freelanced article on the Aggie endeavor to peer behind the Global Warming curtain first saw ink. The key findings of international scientists on climate change have been startling enough, but somehow having them tailor cut to our pasture made the matter more immediate. When I…
Now ’til 2100
It was the week I joined the Current that my freelanced article on the Aggie endeavor to peer behind the Global Warming curtain first saw ink. The key findings of international scientists on climate change have been startling enough, but somehow having them tailor cut to our pasture made the matter more immediate. When I…
