Bill Freimuth, VP, Awards of NARAS, speaks
By Enrique Lopetegui “These days, things like NARAS’ latest brouhaha matter only to the bean counters at the —thank Heavens— soon-to-be defunct old-school record companies and old-guard music industry types,” said Emilio Morales, editor of La Banda Elástica, in an email. “I have never met anyone in the Latin alternative scene (and I’ve been around…
Local animal rights groups boycott circus, zoo
Amie Ninh amieninh@hotmail.com PETA member Shari Pearson sports a jail-like minidress in effort to appeal to crowd, stand strong against circus. In the days just before America’s own independence celebration, cries of freedom for mistreated elephants arose from local animal welfare groups hoping to advance the citywide, progressive movement against animal cruelty. Members of both…
PETA Strikes Again
Alicia Ramirez aliciak2010@mac.com Last Wednesday’s demonstration by PETA to warn against animal cruelty committed by Ringling Bros. Circus was not the first San Antonio saw this year. In anticipation of Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus coming to town, they stepped up the shock value to get people to stop and pay attention. Earlier…
‘Fame’ National Talent Search in SA
If back in the 80s you were that little boy or girl who would dance in the mirror to “Hot Lunch Jam” or “I Sing the Body Electric” from the musical “Fame” or even if today you enjoy throwing on your fluorescent spandex and terrycloth headband and pretend you are Coco while singing “Out on…
Free Speech Coalition will take Parade Ordinance suit to 5th Circuit
At an emotional meeting at the Esperanza last night, the San Antonio Free Speech Coalition and the International Women’s Day March Planning Committee announced that they will appeal this week’s ruling on the City’s Parade Ordinance to the 5th Circuit. Late Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery granted the City’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit,…
Border Wall experience comes to San Antonio
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Border mayors, angry homeowners, vigilantes, migrating humanity: shake â??em up in a bag and tumble â??em into the editing machine that is documentary filmmaker Ricardo Martinez. What you get is The Wall, everything we wanted to tell you about fear and loathing on La Frontera but were afraid to ask, we’re sure.…
Doggett denies reports White House pressured him into voting for climate bill
By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Okay, maybe I’m the little doggie getting wagged here, but I thought those of you watching the climate bill up in Washington should know that Austin’s Representative Lloyd Doggett (right, with unidentified bystander) is denying allegations appearing in Salon and elsewhere that the White House somehow manipulated him into voting for…
The season’s canceled, but watch for re-runs
To the great surprise and dismay of Texas Campaign for the Environment members and the Texas House Representatives involved, Governor Rick Perry vetoed the TV TakeBack bill. However, the legislature cannot override Perry’s decision even if they wanted to. By Texas law, if the legislature presents a bill to the governor less than 10 days…
Girl in a Coma: The best band in Texas?
The staff at the Boston Phoenix sure seems to think so. They chose San Antonio’s own all-ladyfied power trio as top “new” act in the Lone Star State in their annual Independents Day: Best New Bands in America feature. According to the article, GIAC answers the question, “What would it sound like if Lush caroused…
Art Capades
ART CAPADES FIRST ONLINE EDITION A CurBlog arts round-up column by Sarah Fisch. Some bad photos, some okay photos, some laughs, some screeds, and some useful information for artists and art-likers. Let’s commence. 1. Well, alright, here’s a picture of a dead animal: What, you don’t like it? I don’t blame you. Life can be…
Cornyn-Latino summit in Austin
By Gilbert Garcia Politicians generally start mending fences the year BEFORE an election, not the year after. But only a few months after beating Democratic challenger Rick Noriega (and five years before he’ll again have to face Texas voters), John Cornyn seems to have been bitten by the bipartisan bug. How else to explain the…
Biery dismisses Free Speech lawsuit against SA
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com In a move obviously timed just to spite the Current’s publishing schedule, U.S. District Judge Fred Biery yesterday dismissed the lawsuit against the City of San Antonio by an assortment of local non-profit, social justice groups. I speculated on the course the case would take should it be granted a hearing in…
An island in the asphalt sea
Release Date: 2009-07-01 According to Wikipedia, a “Clark Bar” consists of a honeycomb peanut-butter crisp with a chocolatey covering. San Antonio barflies have their own definition. A “Clark Bar” refers to any one of five bars owned by Clark Boeken: the Thursty Turtle, the Safe House Drinkery, the Cross Eyed Seagull, Baker Street Pub, and (the oldest…
Lonely are the Brave
Release Date: 2009-07-01 No surprise that Lonely Are the Brave, Blue Star’s CAM entry, is as rich and densely layered as baklava: It’s curated by Sala Diaz’s Hills Snyder, who loves nothing more than an inextricably entwined art and philosophical nest embedded with crunchy nuggets. An extensive preview Saturday, while the artists finalized their installations,…
Grumpy old men
Whatever Works Director: Woody Allen Screenwriter: Woody Allen Cast: Larry David, Evan Rachel Wood, Patricia Clarkson, Ed Begley Jr. Michael McKean Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film In his latest film, neurotic sometimes-genius Woody Allen offers a look at a May-December romance that’s so insightful, tender, and sometimes beautiful, you’ll leave the theater thinking…
Transformers
Hillbilly Herald Composer: Hillbilly Herald Conductor: Hillbilly Herald Label: Urbas Music Group Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording They all have beards. Astoundingly, journalists seem compelled to comment on budding rock group Hillbilly Herald’s facial hair. I never knew beards were out of place on bands. Even so, if HH is any indication, I…
Original Gangsters
Public Enemies Director: Michael Mann Screenwriter: Michael Mann Cast: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Channing Tatum, David Wenham Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Director Michael Mann, auteur of Heat and The Insider, returns to the screen with the Depression-era cops and robbers movie Public Enemies. On the one hand it has a…
Frank Castle
Around the dog in 80 ways
Away We Go
Critic’s Pick Away We Go Director: Sam Mendes Screenwriter: Sam Mendes Cast: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Chris Messina, Melanie Lynskey, Paul Schneider, Carmen Ejogo, Catherine Oâ??Hara, Jeff Daniels, Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: R Genre: Film Our Rating: 4.00 Rarely have I felt quite as peculiarly that a…
Food, Inc.
Food, Inc. Director: Robert Kenner Screenwriter: Robert Kenner Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: PG Genre: Film Ammonia-washed ground beef, ethylene gas-ripened tomatoes, soybean seeds patented and fiercely protected by a multinational biotech company, chickens with unnaturally engineered breasts so big that they can barely walk by the time they’re slaughtered, unhealthy food containing high-fructose corn syrup…
Farm
Farm Composer: Dinosaur Jr. Conductor: Dinosaur Jr. Label: Jagjaguwar Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Dinosaur Jr. isn’t throwing any curveballs this late in the game. So you pretty much know what to expect on the band’s second album since 2005’s comeback and the fifth by the original trio of guitarist J. Mascis, bassist…
LP
LP Composer: Discovery Conductor: Discovery Label: Beggars/XL Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Discovery — an electronic R&B side project consisting of Vampire Weekend keyboardist (and spell-check nightmare) Rostam Batmanglij and Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles — has a few strikes against its imaginatively titled, Auto-Tune-heavy debut right off the bat: 1. Most side…
Rockers
Rockers Label: MVD Visual Release Date: 2009-07-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace says he’s the hardest drummer in Kingston, and maybe he’s right. When a shady tourist-trap owner steals Wallace’s motorcycle, old Horsemouth doesn’t just get it back, he takes a nasty beating for it and avenges the damn thing Robin Hood style,…
Peachcake
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-07-01 Song titles “Welcome to the Party to Save the World!” “Stop Acting Like You Know More About the Internet Café Than Me,” and most especially “How to Get to the Moon and Back on Half a Tank of Gas (As Told by the Great Racecar Driver From Outer Space)” should…
CPS attempts to vault board, threaten public with higher rates
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Monday afternoon, CPS Energy’s top brass released their $13 billion figure to the board of directors, including new mayor Julián Castro. Toward the end of the meeting, board members expressed the meekest of hesitations. Board Chair Aurora Geis stressed that with technologies developing as rapidly as they are, the utility is shooting…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Time to diversify your energy sources, Aries. It’s as if you’ve grown too dependent on oil — metaphorically speaking — and have neglected to develop relationships with wind turbines, solar panels, natural gas, and other mans of generating power. What if in the future — metaphorically speaking — oil becomes scarcer…
Citizen Benita
Thanks to a continuance granted in immigration court last month, Jefferson High School Valedictorian and St. Mary’s grad Benita Veliz will remain in the United States at least until her September 9 hearing. Twenty-three-year-old Veliz was 8 when her parents brought her to the United States from Mexico and subsequently overstayed their travel visa. She…
LIVE & LOCAL
We’ve all heard the maxim: “If the music is too loud, you’re too old.” In the case of the Grasshopper Lies Heavy, “loud” defines the music while the old are left bleeding from the ears. Now, I haven’t witnessed many three-pieces able to achieve such astounding heights of amplification outside of an amphitheater or Giants…
4th of July party guide!
Though a burn ban blankets the county, you can still celebrate our country’s birthday by igniting bombs and rockets. You’ll just have to drive outside 1604 to do so, and check in at one of five fireworks-approved zones. Yeah, not a lot of fun. Instead we suggest leaving the explosives to the U.S. military, because,…
“Repeat After Me” – Bully Puppet
The song’s chiming guitars and build-and-release structure borrow equally from Thurston Moore and the Edge, but it’s “I’m free ’cause I’m me” message is straight-up PSA. The constant freedom references and the second-verse lyrics “I go to work, I pay my taxes,” threaten to take the song into Frank Stallone Rambo soundtrack power-ballad territory, but…
Crazy sort of folk
“`The Hap and Leonard stories` are crazy sort of folk tales mixed with reality, but it’s always the social and cultural issues and the two characters that drive the series.” — Joe R. Lansdale Joe R. Lansdale, previously best known as a pivotal figure in the blood and guts infused ’80s splatterpunk movement, reinvented his…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
It’s pretty common for pop stars to begin dabbling in the visual arts when they hit middle age, but how often do respected visual artists start writing songs after they turn 50? That’s exactly what happened in 2000 with local sculptor Ken Little. Over the last nine years, Little — in collaboration with his jazz-pianist…
Men at work
Guitarist Derek Badillo named the band after some chick in a movie he doesn’t even remember. It might’ve been Joan of Arc. “They said ‘the heroine,’ and then there was this girl, and she was powerful and beautiful — and she slashed throats,” recalls Badillo, dripping post-show sweat in the alley behind Jiggers, “and I…
Church ladies
Last spring, following reports of alleged child abuse phoned in anonymously from the road, Texas child-protection officials summarily removed more than 440 children from a ranch in Eldorado, Texas, owned and occupied by a branch of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — echoing the disastrous Arizona Short Creek raid of…
Stars and prison stripes
Texas doesn’t like you to burn its flag or Uncle Sam’s — disincentives run up to $4,000 and a year in jail. But the Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson ruled that if you’re lighting up Old Glory to make a statement, you’re protected by the Constitution. Well, what about foreign flags? David Bohmfalk was…
I now pronounce you enfranchised Americans
What do we want? A sane and compassionate law which recognizes the heart-and-soul unions of same-sex Texans! When do we want it? How soon is now? But marriage equality is a tough row to hoe down here in the land of beers, steers, and (heck, yes!) queers, where Bible Belt conservatism rides roughshod over the…
Streets paved with gold
There are those in San Antonio who still revere the youthful Emma Tenayuca, the firebrand champion of Mexican-American laborers who helped ignite the infamous 1938 strike against Southern Pecan Shelling Company. And there are those who would just as quickly see any repeat of her laborer-loving antics dealt with through the stealth and finality of…
Frank castle
You can get a dog for half a buck at your local Exxon-Mobil Tiger Mart — as long as you purchase a large drink. No, I didn’t do it. But the perennial pup is staging a new assault on the American culinary consciousness from other beachheads as well. Call it a reaction to recession, a…
From your mouth to their ears
A century ahead of Alexander Graham Bell’s engineering feats, our Founding Fathers might’ve been hard-pressed to imagine a U.S. Government-engineered spy network that would tap into its own citizens’ every electronic or digital communication near instantaneously. But, themselves the product of wartime, they suspected the reaches of infamy and built in a number of safeguards…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Well-known SA gal Heather Hunterlaunched Cowgirl Granola out of her kitchen this April in response to that most primal capitalism call: friend-and-family demand. Dissatisfied with the overbearing sweetness and ingredient clutter of many store-bought brands, Hunter’s been making her own for about eight years from a dozen basic ingredients. With its meaty oats, whole nuts…
J is for jail
We don’t know how many children will celebrate July Fourth inside the T. Don Hutto “Residential” Facility’s fences, because Uncle Sam won’t say — although the official bed count, 512, gives us some guessing parameters. But we know that the families incarcerated at the Central Texas prison aren’t accused of any crime except, perhaps, being…
ARTifacts
The Tobin Hill Neighborhood Association’s second installment of Art on the Hill — a culture-filled stroll around the historic district just north of downtown — will be even meatier than the first, rewarding reckless souls willing to hike in the Second Friday heat with work by Ben Mata, Steven DaLuz, and Larry Graeber (at super-designers…
Provisional vote
The Supreme Court’s recent eight-to-one opinion more-or-less preserving the Voting Rights Act gave an Austin utility district the option to seek an exemption from the legislation’s hotly contested Section 5, which requires five states (including Tejas) and multiple counties to pre-clear any change in voting standard, practice, or procedure with the DOJ. Since Congress passsed…
S’NUFF film
Nerd test: Rate your excitement level over the July lineup for Movies by Moonlight, Slab Cinema’s free weekly film-screening series in HemisFair Park. On Thursday, July 2, it’s Superman, followed by Rocky on July 9, Dr. Strangelove on July 16, Raiders of the Lost Ark on July 23, and Batman on July 30. If, like…
Well-hung judges
The story of judicial elections in the United States is loaded with irony. In the 1830s, a wave of Jacksonian Democracy rebelled against the notion of big-money elitists making appointment decisions behind locked doors. As a result, states slowly moved away from appointed state judges in favor of judicial elections. Texas joined the union in…
Look before you eat
Filmmaker Robert Kenner is no stranger to controversial subjects. He won an Emmy for his 2005 “Two Days in October,” an episode in PBS’ long-running American Experience, which examined the domestic response to the Vietnam War during the turbulent fall of 1967. Kenner runs into an equally volatile subject with his new documentary, Food, Inc.,…
Love means never having to check your .38
Guns and Texas isn’t just about image: It’s the real deal, y’all. We love ’em. We buy ’em. We trade ’em like. And when we really get excited, we shoot ourselves and other people with ’em. In honor of the Texas love affair with the gun (and to try to intimidate the rising costs of…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Looking back recently on my distant youth in northwest Ohio, I came to the realization that the sweetest, most beautiful girl this gabacho ever went out with (indeed, in my entire senior class) was the pure-blooded daughter of Mexican immigrants. Am I under the sway of 1) simple nostalgia; 2) racist exoticism; 3)…
The way we were
I lost a good friend to God a while back. Pedro Saldivar* was a Mexican national, an undocumented worker who lived and worked on my family’s South Texas ranch. How he got there, why he stayed (never once returning to his homeland), and why he remained an “illegal” for the rest of his life is a…
Dear Uncle Mat
This spring I met a guy at Hooters. Yes, Hooters. He was totally hot and a big flirt. He asked me out and even though my friend warned me that he was a player, I said yes. The first date was great and the sex was right on par. We continued to hang out for…
Free for all?
Texas, which celebrates its statehood December 29, is often remarked on for its outsized ego, which is credited variously to our unwieldy square mileage, our prior sovereignty, inbreeding, and too much natural flouride in the drinking water. But as this week’s news feature demonstrates, sometimes it legitimately seems as if democracy’s very future hangs on…
CPS $13 billion nuke figure spins against renewables
CPS chart explaining why nukes are better than bread and milk. By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com It would have been alarming had CPS Energy’s figures not gelled with their nuke partner (soon to be absorbed by hostile nuke polluter Exelon?) NRG Energy. The pair are hoping to double the size of their jointly held South Texas…
MAC on track?
It’s too soon to get a feel for the chemistry of the new City Council, but QueBlog can’t help but notice the recent change in District 1 Council member Mary Alice Cisneros. During her first term, MAC spoke as little as possible during Council sessions. Inevitably, she would make brief, tentative comments after her colleagues…
