The RIAA can seriously shut the hell up now
Recession what? According to a press release I just got, the soundtrack to Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel has qualified for gold record status (meaning it has sold at least 500,000 copies) after spending four consecutive weeks at the top of Billboard’s soundtrack chart. According to the press release: The second angel sounded his…
Grammy 52: The Latin Winners
Best Latin Jazz Album: Juntos para siempre Bebo Valdés And Chucho Valdés (Cuba) (Sony Music/Calle 54) Best Latin Pop Album Sin Frenos La Quinta Estación (Spain) (Sony Music Latin) Latin Rock, Alternative, or Urban Album Los de atrás vienen conmigo Calle 13 (Puerto Rico) (Sony Music Norte) Best Tropical Latin Album Ciclos Luis Enrique (Nicaragua)…
28 days ’til Contemporary Art Month
Check out the CAM website! Ahora con Calendar! Srs bznss! Woohooo! Good job, y’all. Lots of nifty things coming up. Luminaria on 3/13 Get to work. Now here’s an unrelated trailer for a documentary made by my friend Kat Green:
Operation Homefront “restructured”
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com (Update on 2/1/10: Jim Knotts clarifies status of communication department, newly created position, and reveals his salary) On January 20, the national office of the San Antonio-based military charity Operation Homefront eliminated nine positions, four of them locally, even as donations have greatly increased since at least 2006. “We actually didn’t…
DOD cutting â??non-combat’ greenhouse gases, leans on Valero for the dirty stuff
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The sophisticated hacking of a major UK climate research center two weeks before the would-a-been-historic international gathering on climate change in Copenhagen last December “bore all the hallmarks of a co-ordinated intelligence operation,” according to Sir David King, former science advisor to past British Prime Minister Tony Blair. King told the Guardian,…
Court watch: Supremes (lite) to decide if children can prostitute
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Sixteen-year-old Angela was said to be a “case study” in the difficulty domestic human trafficking victims represent to law enforcement. Though first forced into prostitution at age 11, it would be several years before local police would discover her. But instead of being rescued as a child victim, she was placed into…
Prepondering the evidence: Judge rules in CPS-NRG nuke nonsense
Karen Seal knows why you hate your utility, she’s just not at liberty to tell you. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The conference call held this morning could by no stretch of the most twisted Manga creator’s imagination be considered alt-weekly friendly. Some of us were deep beneath a pile of second-hand blankets and renegade felines â??…
RIP J.D. Salinger, too
J.D. Salinger died yesterday at 91, according to a press release sent out by his literary agent. Most famous for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger was best known in the house I grew up in as the author of the book with all those GDs in it. The obscenity spouted by teenage…
San Antonio man wins award for short film â?¦ in NEW YORK CITY?!
SA’s own Joshua Friedberg took the audience award in the Nikon Festival, an online showcase of super short films â?? 140 seconds or less â?? shot in HD. As recipient of the most viewer votes, Friedberg will receive $25,000 dollars and a Nikon camera. Have a look at the video above if you haven’t already,…
TCEQ, â??lapdog of industry,’ says â??no need for alarm’ over toxics
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com I’m not sure why the protesting rockers up in Cowtown honed in on trees like they did. I mean, I like to hug a tree as much as the next brainwashed lover of all things verdant and life-sustaining (you rascals!), but in the miasma of potential problems that natural gas drilling in…
RIP, Howard Zinn
(Many thanks to Ed Saavedra for posting this video on Facebook.) Howard Zinnâ??political science professor, lauded (and controversial) author, social historian, playwright, and activist, died today at the age of 87. Dr. Zinn, a Brooklyn-born World War II vet, the son of Eastern European Jewish immigrants and an educational product of the GI-Bill, represented what…
Go Charlie go
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Activist Vivian Weinstein addressing the crowd. (Photo by E.L.) Congressman Charlie González wasn’t there, but 38 local MoveOn supporters were. On January 26, the activists gathered outside of the Federal Building downtown (where González keeps an office), to thank the Congressman for supporting the public health-care option and to pressure him…
Pablo Ziegler Trio for Nuevo Tango
Release Date: 2010-01-27 In the 1980s, a new genre emerged as musicians and dancers began incorporating modern elements into traditional Argentine tango. Nuevo tango (or tango nuevo or neotango) is the result of this fusion. Having cut his teeth as tango legend Astor Piazzolla’s regular pianist, Argentine composer Pablo Ziegler is basically the poster child…
Buranded, Sleep Now Yes, Seileen, & GPKISM
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-01-27 Blame it on a bad translation if you like, but something tells me the email address listed in the press release for presale information for Japanese bands GPKISM, Seileen, and Buranden’s show at Atomix — yadayadabuttfartypants@fuckmeinthepooper.com — ain’t gonna work. You’ll want to go to this one anyway, though. Buranden’s…
Love in the time of chains
Imagining the master-mistress relationship
Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company: Song of the Phoenix
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-01-27 The Carver Community Cultural Center, San Antonio’s historical exhibition space and performing arts hall of African-American arts and culture, casts a wide and truly diverse net: This season, it embraces Korean-American string-playing sisters the Ahn Trio, and last summer’s epic Ramayana cycle was unexpectedly joyous and fun. This Saturday, Chinese-American…
Honky-tonk man
We’ve heard this broke-down-country-crooner bit before
Kiss me, I’m Gayrish
Release Date: 2010-01-27 One sentiment was unanimous at the grand opening of Sparky’s Pub earlier this month – no one felt like they were in San Antonio. Overheard more than once were statements like, “I feel like we’re in Dallas, or I don’t know, maybe Chicago?” Owner Randy Cunniff offered an interesting take on this…
Rebirth
Rebirth Composer: Lil Wayne Conductor: Lil Wayne Label: Cash Money Release Date: 2010-01-27 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Let’s be completely arbitrary here and say that the first rock song was Fats Domino’s “The Fat Man” (1949) and the first hip-hop song was “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1970). That puts rap about 21 years…
The Ladies Man
The Ladies Man Composer: T-Model ford Conductor: T-Model Ford Label: Alive Naturalsound Release Date: 2010-01-27 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording If the biggest blues names from Chess Records’ heydey had hopped a Greyhound, hightailed it out of Chicago, and returned to the South, their records might have sounded a lot like those T-Model Ford has turned…
End Times
End Times Composer: Eels Conductor: Eels Label: Vagrant Release Date: 2010-01-27 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Mark Oliver Everett started as something of a Beck imitator, so it’s fitting that he’s gotten around to making his Sea Change. This is the Eels’ frontman’s big breakup album, and for a guy who has made several fine concept-lite…
Teen Dream
Teen Dream Composer: Beach House Conductor: Beach House Label: Sub Pop Release Date: 2010-01-27 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Beach House is a pretty perfect name for Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s warm and sleepy gloam-pop duo, but they might have called themselves Bring a Book. Teen Dream, like lounging in a hammock on oceanfront property,…
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Critic’s Pick Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Director: Werner Herzog Screenwriter: Werner Herzog Cast: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit , Fairuza Balk Release Date: 2010-01-27 Rated: R Genre: Film In answer to your first question — no, you never see Nic Cage’s penis. According to most discussions and critiques I’ve read…
Bill Maher
Release Date: 2010-01-27 Libertarian, political satirist, writer, stand-up comedian, and talk-show host Bill Maher is no stranger to controversy. A few of Maher’s loaded comments (one compared retarded children to dogs while the other questioned whether the terrorists involved in 9/11 were in fact “cowards”) caused major advertisers to pull out of Politically Incorrect (which…
Family Day at Taichung City
Release Date: 2010-01-27 As a prelude to the Asian Festival — Year of the Tiger (which takes place February 20), the Institute of Texan Cultures is hosting a family day in conjunction with the Taichung City Da Dun Cultural Exchange Exhibition. The exhibition includes more than 100 works of art featured in Da Dun, a…
An Evening at the Theater featuring Dearly Departed
Release Date: 2010-01-27 David Bottrell and Jesse Jones’s play Dearly Departed cleverly turns a dreadful Southern funeral into a screwball comedy. After a healthy breakfast of corn flakes and whiskey, Bud Turpin kicks the bucket, leaving his disgruntled widow Raynelle to plan his service (“Mean and Surly,” is what she intends to have engraved on…
DeCoursey Lecture: Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Release Date: 2010-01-27 Author Jared Diamond is one of those intimidatingly intelligent people who seem capable of practically anything. For starters, he speaks English, Latin, French, Greek, German, Spanish, Russian, Finnish, Indonesian, Italian, and several more bizarre languages. Using aspects of anthropology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, Diamond began writing books in 1991. Of his published…
The 39 Steps
Release Date: 2010-01-27 The 39 Steps dates to 1915, when Scottish author John Buchan’s adventure novel was first published. In 1935, Alfred Hitchcock adapted the book for his film of the same name. The play closely follows Hitchcock’s film, but amps up the comedic elements and throws in references to Psycho and North by Northwest.…
Get Reel Film Series: Ajami
Release Date: 2010-01-27 Even the trailer for Geralyn Pezanoski’s documentary Mine is a tearjerker. The film recounts stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors and the pets many were forced to abandon. As heroic animal-rescue teams save hordes of starving, cherished pets, debates ensue between the original pet owners (many of whom were forcibly removed from their…
Cable TV vs. America
It’s now clear that Adolf Hitler might easily have won World War II if cable TV had existed in America at the beginning of the New Deal. I am dead serious about this. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933, the United States economy was in a state of near-collapse, the nation’s…
The grateful dead
Say what you want about the Grammys but, as Joe Posada, one of this year’s nominees in the Best Tejano Album category, can attest, when Grammy time comes, even skeptics care. “For Tejano musicians, `the Grammy` really hasn’t helped anybody,” Posada, who is nominated for Point of View, tells me in a phone interview. “Selena…
Pure country
Pure Country Filmmaker Scott Cooper sets out to make honest story with Crazy Heart First-time director Scott Cooper stopped in San Antonio this week to promote his new film Crazy Heart, which stars four-time Academy Award nominated actor Jeff Briges as “Bad” Blake, a country western musician looking to kick-start his life and career. During…
Pain in the neck
Sub-genres and their stigmas have sucked the life out of bands since rock’s inception, limiting listenership, prejudicing reviews, even killing careers. Which may explain why Steve Juliano, frontman for Long Beach, California’s don’t-call-us-goth rockers I Am Ghost, seems so eager to pry his band from the fangs of pop-culture’s recent vampire fixation. Along with a…
Live & Local
Those big old wagons the happening kids all load their surfboards into in beach-party movies are called “woodies,” and they’re really repainted hearses. The Sandworms seem well aware of that fact. “We’re gonna take you on a little trip,” says guitarist CJ Dagger before the band begins “Bump in the Night.” “Hope y’all dig it.”…
The Sound & The Fury
In Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito) tells Danny Aiello “Yo, Sal! How come there’s no brothers up on the wall?!” If Buggin’ Out were from San Antonio instead of Bed-Stuy, and Sal an FCC commissioner instead of a pizzeria owner, he would be saying “Yo! How come there’s no brothers…
Dear Uncle Mat
I know I am a dumbass for letting this happen, but I think I am a dumbass with a reasonable complaint. I have been hanging out with the same girl for a while now. She is fun, funny, and a really good time, if you know what I mean. A few weeks ago while we…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Shakespeare got modest respect while he was alive, but his reputation as a brilliant bard didn’t gel right away. It wasn’t until almost 50 years after he died that anyone thought his life and work were notable enough to write about. By then, all his colleagues and compatriots were gone, unable…
Sticky whites
Newcomers often prefer wines (mostly whites) with a touch of sweetness; vino veterans tend to move through tough, tannic reds and bone-dry whites … and out the other side to seriously sweet wines. The natural sugar in wine can be concentrated in several ways, including leaving grapes on the vine to shrivel, allowing them to…
Puff daddy
I’m sitting at 19th and Guadalupe on the West Side at Ray’s Drive Inn, the alleged true “home of the puffy taco.” In a few seconds I’ll take a bite of a brisket-filled taco that will crumble delectably through my fingers. But at the moment, I’m distracted by the unexpectedly mind-blowing interior design, which makes…
Chisme Y Chicle
Never-say-die Damien Watel, he of Bistro Vatel, Bistro Bakery, Ciao Lavanderia, and the Fork Fight in Stone Oak, is marshaling his forces to make Ciao II, the surviving restaurant of his northside beachhead (designed by yours truly), more user-friendly. “Not so foodie,” is what he actually said. Accordingly, Ciao II may append Bar & Grill to its…
Minority wit
Political satirist and comedian Bill Maher returns to San Antonio this week on one of his last visits to the provinces before his live Friday-night talk show, Real Time With Bill Maher — the antidote to the wishy-washy faux-liberal compromise that’s killing America — kicks off its eighth season February 19 on HBO. The Current…
That voodoo that you do
If you’re at all interested in the local theater scene, and its heartening and hard-won Great Leap Forward of the last several years (think: AtticRep, the Classic Theatre, the scrappy Overtime, and the avant-mainstay Jump-Start), you probably already know who Tim Hedgepeth is. He directed the much-lauded production of Albee’s The Goat Or Who is…
Alpha Mel
What drives Mel Gibson to the edge of darkness? “Press conferences; when someone borrows your dental floss,” Mel Gibson told the Current and a handful of other publications in a recent phone conference. “Nuclear winter’s another good one. That would put you in a pretty dark spot.” Gibson’s devilish laugh followed most of his quips…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Why do so many Mexicans work for Taco Bell and El Pollo Loco? Don’t they know they only add a false credence to the belief that this is Mexican cuisine? The bastardizing of the truly great and diverse food of Mexico by the money-hungry corporations of the U.S., I feel, contributes to the overall misconception…
Amor De Letras
Click The image below to download a pdf of Kendra’s piece “Amor De Letras”
The QueQue
Friendly fire As the QueQue reported last October, at least one San Antonian was chilling a bottle of bubbly in anticipation of the Roberts Court’s Citizens United coup. “Anytime that Susan Reed is unhappy, I’m happy,” an ebullient T.J. Connolly told the QueQue Thursday. District Attorney Reed convinced a grand jury to indict Connolly in…
A mindbending short film
This is a stop-motion animation in Buenos Aires by Italian graffiti artist BLU. Check out his website! Man, this stop-motion animation must’ve taken about a hundred damn years.
