Art in a (sweat) box
An art show on wheels is a pretty clever idea, especially when you’re getting the wheels at a 20-percent discount (thank you very much Ryder trucks). While I perused the 24-foot long truck, Ryder Richards (one-third of the Lubbock team that brought the Nomadic Gallery to the Southwest School of Art & Craft) gladly spoke…
Art in a (sweat) box
An art show on wheels is a pretty clever idea, especially when you’re getting the wheels at a 20-percent discount (thank you very much Ryder trucks). While I perused the 24-foot long truck, Ryder Richards (one-third of the Lubbock team that brought the Nomadic Gallery to the Southwest School of Art & Craft) gladly spoke…
On the Street
“Trying to Balance the Equation” Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) #1 Bike Tsar No More? (sin permiso) Huggie Bear # 47 writes… …With this great link comes news that city bike planner Abigail is leaving her post to work for VIA. They’ll be looking for a replacement if you know anyone with…
The Dark Knight reviewed
In the closing scene of Batman Begins, newly-promoted Lt. James Gordon warns his winged ally of the threat of escalation, describing a homicidal armed robber who leaves a playing card — a joker — to mark his crimes. “I’ll look into it,” Batman promises. As the vigilante leaps off the roof of the Gotham PD…
Last-minute Friday prophylactic!
If it were ever prudent for politician to actually act like a lame duck, it might be a president with an approval rating hovering consistently around 30 percent, and whose party stands to take a second trouncing in upcoming national elections. Not our W, though. He and his administration continue to introduce right-wing propaganda as…
Congratulations â??
Best Narrative: I Want to Fly by Misha Sundukduskiy (Tisch School of the Arts, NYC) Best Documentary: A Shift for Representation: The 1977 City Council Reform, by Carlos Landa, Mayra Chapa, Shane Carroll, Javier Flores (Communication Arts High School, San Antonio, TX) Best Animation: Fresh Fruit, by Ed Kelley, Brenden Cicoria (St. Mary’s Hall, San…
On the Street
“Trying to Balance the Equation” Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) #1 Bike Tsar No More? (sin permiso) Huggie Bear # 47 writes… …With this great link comes news that city bike planner Abigail is leaving her post to work for VIA. They’ll be looking for a replacement if you know anyone with…
The Dark Knight reviewed
In the closing scene of Batman Begins, newly-promoted Lt. James Gordon warns his winged ally of the threat of escalation, describing a homicidal armed robber who leaves a playing card — a joker — to mark his crimes. “I’ll look into it,” Batman promises. As the vigilante leaps off the roof of the Gotham PD…
Last-minute Friday prophylactic!
If it were ever prudent for politician to actually act like a lame duck, it might be a president with an approval rating hovering consistently around 30 percent, and whose party stands to take a second trouncing in upcoming national elections. Not our W, though. He and his administration continue to introduce right-wing propaganda as…
Congratulations —
Best Narrative: I Want to Fly by Misha Sundukduskiy (Tisch School of the Arts, NYC) Best Documentary: A Shift for Representation: The 1977 City Council Reform, by Carlos Landa, Mayra Chapa, Shane Carroll, Javier Flores (Communication Arts High School, San Antonio, TX) Best Animation: Fresh Fruit, by Ed Kelley, Brenden Cicoria (St. Mary’s Hall, San…
Obama fatigue
Obamamania is suffering a serious backlash, folks. And we’re not talking about all the hooplah surrounding The New Yorker cover, either. Just drive through Janet Cleary’s off-Fredericksburg neighborhood and you’ll spot it. After you pass a few Obama supporters you’ll notice Cleary’s homemade sign. (We forgive her for the misspelling of Barack’s name … or maybe…
Obama fatigue
Obamamania is suffering a serious backlash, folks. And we’re not talking about all the hooplah surrounding The New Yorker cover, either. Just drive through Janet Cleary’s off-Fredericksburg neighborhood and you’ll spot it. After you pass a few Obama supporters you’ll notice Cleary’s homemade sign. (We forgive her for the misspelling of Barack’s name … or…
Tooth of Crime
Tooth of Crime Composer: T Bone Burnett Conductor: T Bone Burnett Label: Nonesuch Release Date: 2008-07-16 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Roots Sticky. That’s the new buzzword. A record’s sticky if something elusive yet compelling makes you want to keep revisiting it as you divine new levels and nuances, progressively getting…
Mamma Mia!
Mamma Mia! Director: Phyllida Lloyd Screenwriter: Phyllida Lloyd Cast: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth Release Date: 2008-07-16 Website: http://www.mammamiamovie.com/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Musical Just as some people like Anne Geddes posters, Nicholas Sparks novels, and imitation bacon bits, some people like ABBA. For the rest of us baffled…
When Did You Last See Your Father?
When Did You Last See Your Father? Director: Anand Tucker Screenwriter: Anand Tucker Cast: Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent, Juliet Stevenson Release Date: 2008-07-16 Website: http://www.andwhendidyoulastseeyourfather.co.uk/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Drama It’s played European film festivals since last summer, gotten itself nominated for the British Independent Film Awards, and garnered numerous other accolades abroad. This week, finally,…
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Hellboy II: The Golden Army Director: Guillermo del Toro Screenwriter: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, Selma Blair, Luke Goss, Jeffrey Tambor Release Date: 2008-07-16 Website: http://www.hellboymovie.com/ Rated: PG-13 Genre: Action OK, let’s say you’re Guillermo del Toro. You’ve just made Pan’s Labyrinth and it was hailed by critics the world over as…
Bella Morte, Esper Machine, & Downfall Funeral
Release Date: 2008-07-16 This rockin’ Charlottesville quintet is crisscrossing the U.S. and Canada this summer, hitting San Antonio with a headlining slot Saturday. Bella Morte is guided by an eclectic range of influences, a band that shows their extensive talent and versatility through the waves of punk, metal, cock rock, and EBM flowing through their…
One for the Road
Release Date: 2008-07-16 AtticRep presents One For The Road, Harold Pinter’s searing critique of state-sanctioned torture. The play’s a chilling study of power and powerlessness, and AR performs for a week in San Antonio and a week in Washington D.C. Opening night is a special benefit performance for Attic Rep supporter Chuck Ramirez, who is…
Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom Huck Jam Tour
Release Date: 2008-07-16 The Boom Boom HuckJam Tour features some of the most exciting athletes from the world of skateboarding, BMX, and freestyle Moto-X, including half-pipe king Tony Hawk. Check out the world famous HuckJam demo ramp, the giant jumbotron, and multi-media master Mike Relm with his imaginative onslaught of pop culture bits that combine…
Southtown Art of Fashion Show
Release Date: 2008-07-16 The Southtown Main Street Alliance shines a spotlight on everything the district has to offer. Featured designers include Angelina Mata Chumney, Agosto Cuellar, and Henry De La Paz, along with the top ten fashion design graduates of UIW. The show includes a cocktail reception, hair and makeup runway exhibit by Aveda, CAM…
Rock & Roll Anime Night
Release Date: 2008-07-16 San Japan promotes their August 8-10 Japanese Culture and Anime convention with music by the two-piece rock band Birthday Suits, The Snags, and Knuckle Sandwich. A series of anime-related competitions abound, including a character pose-off, a Pocky (Japanese cookie stick)-eating competition, and a Cosplay costume contest. $10, 7pm, Sam’s Burger Joint, 330…
Alejandro Escovedo
Release Date: 2008-07-16 When Alejandro Escovedo joined Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band onstage at Houston’s Toyota Center in April, it was a bit like Crash Davis suiting up to start as catcher in the opening game of the World Series. That’s not meant to imply that there’s anything minor league about Escovedo’s talents,…
College Night w. Break Audio, Fareview, The Conflict, & Jar of Flies
Release Date: 2008-07-16 Billy Bob Thornton’s not much of a singer, but he’s got the kind of knack for vivid lyrical detail that you’d expect from an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and with the mod-attired Boxmasters, he indulges his love for artsy hillbilly music. This show’s sure to draw an eclectic crowd, true fans supplemented by those…
Metal Shop
Release Date: 2008-07-16 Billy Bob Thornton’s not much of a singer, but he’s got the kind of knack for vivid lyrical detail that you’d expect from an Oscar-winning screenwriter, and with the mod-attired Boxmasters, he indulges his love for artsy hillbilly music. This show’s sure to draw an eclectic crowd, true fans supplemented by those…
Singles 06-07
Singles 06-07 Composer: Jay Reatard Conductor: Jay Reatard Label: In The Red Release Date: 2008-07-16 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Garage Recording artists like Jay Reatard don’t really evolve. They just go full-bore with the high-beams on, until their batteries run out. Fortunately for Reatard and us, this compilation suggests that…
Pre post-modern mastery
Click for complete CAM Calendar The two-year-old Long Hall Gallery occupies the bottom half of a wooden Victorian manse on Craig near San Pedro and Woodlawn, a fair jaunt from gallery-crowded Southtown. The gallery has a relaxed, lived-in, historical feeling; square, high-ceilinged parlor galleries are connected by two, erm, very long halls, evocative of its…
Robo-prop, or: Don’t blame me, I voted for the man-chine
My dear and sainted mammy always cautioned me gravely against ever using “hate” to describe my feelings toward any person or subject. It’s a strong word, I was taught, and one that isn’t easily rescinded. It is with that lesson firmly rooted, then, and with love and deference to mammies everywhere, that I proceed obediently…
Monkey shines
Click for complete CAM Calendar Welcome to the Monkey House at the UTSA Satellite Space is a perplexing and fascinating exhibition, whose mysteries may well haunt me for the rest of my days. The artwork is definitely in keeping with the 1968 Kurt Vonnegut short-story collection of the same name: creepy, deeply dystopian, and oozing…
CRITICAL Darling
Not that you needed Critical Darling to tell you, but The Dark Knight opens this weekend. (Nikki Finke’s sources are actually suggesting that it “will make less than Iron Man. Cute.) And no, you won’t find a review in the rag you’re presently holding, because the studio didn’t screen early for us, and you think…
The best is yet to come
Click for complete CAM Calendar Carla Veliz’s latest series of mixed-media paintings is entitled Vivencias, “Life Experiences.” Each work, sincere and authentic, is inspired by events that have shaped the artist’s perspective. Veliz works with a variety of media, including wax, resin, sand, and other materials that add texture beneath and atop her painted surfaces.…
Love to Hate
 
Cactus Pear serves up hot Krauts
I was in a church, so I kept quiet. So many contemporary chamber-music concerts get a bad rap for being relegated to hushed, isolated spaces that keep them distant and irrelevant. Not so for the Cactus Pear Music Festival, now in its 12th season. After completing the first movement on the program, Artistic Director Stephanie…
Nine years of everything
I’ve been writing this column for nine years. I was here with you through the dot-com boom and the crash. I made fun of the rise of Web 2.0 when that was called for, and screamed about digital surveillance under the USA PATRIOT Act when that was required (actually, that’s still required). I’ve ranted about…
Dear Uncle Mat
My aunt is a 42-year-old alcoholic who still lives with her parents. She had a tumultuous life from her teens through her mid-20s due to excessive drug use and a nearly fatal car accident. Ever since said car accident she’s been playing the pity card. (It’s been 25 years!) Her brothers don’t talk to her…
Meat of the matter
Ask most Americans what causes global warming, and they’ll point to a coal-plant smokestack or a car’s tailpipe. They’re right, of course, but perhaps two other images should be granted similarly iconic status: the front and rear ends of a cow. According to a little-known 2006 United Nations report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” livestock is…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): After studying your astrological omens for the upcoming weeks, I got really excited. There was so much I wanted to tell you. I popped a chunk of organic, fair-trade, cruelty-free, espresso-tinctured chocolate in my mouth and sat down to type an extravagant message. Maybe it was because I was overly pumped…
Billions served
Nori Roll-On This week’s press deadline converged harmonically with the July 15 campaign-finance filing deadline, and papers and blogs alike are reading the numbers like heavenly prophecy in the underdog tale of Rick Noriega, war vet and Texas state rep v. Senator John Cornyn, loyal Bushite and SA native. The cash-on-hand contrast is the most…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why are there Mexicans in the Border Patrol? What a hypocritical thing to do to our people. — Carne Asada Carlos Dear Wab: Not only are Mexicans in the Border Patrol, but la migra’s own figures show that Latinos make up about 52 percent of its force, comfortably outnumbering gabachos (that pop you…
Gerardo Menchaca’s pinky ring
I became fascinated with Gerardo Menchaca the moment he hung up on me on a hot Friday in late June. He mentioned that he had been “slammed” by the media and had no interest in being interviewed for this profile. Gerardo, it was that click that did it for me. I was intrigued. Gerardo Menchaca…
Clothes-minded
I hope everyone is enjoying a greener, cheaper summer as part of the Wardrobe Refashion Challenge, in which we’ve taken a pledge to buy only recycled, renovated, or handmade clothes. A perfect way to honor the Challenge and not feel deprived of glamour is to shop vintage. San Antonio’s grande dame of vintage stores is…
Chief concerns and PERFormance wisdom
Listen to the whole interview: It’s been seven months in the waiting, this outside evaluation of the San Antonio Police Department’s use-of-force policies and practices. After months of behind-the-scenes editing and discussion within SAPD, the City Attorney and City Manager’s offices, and a round of Council briefings, the Police Executive Research Forum findings and SAPD…
The ancient art of making Cucumber Kimchi
Back in the day I had a part-time job as an interpreter, and my administrative liaison happened to be an incredibly hot Belgian chick. Sadly, my assignments were infrequent, affording little opportunity to apply my game, as it were. Not making excuses; just saying. Unfortunately, the one time I encountered her in the wild I…
Mom, I’m OK
My mom doesn’t know how the hell I am, but the state climatologist knows I’m bent about global warming inaction in Texas. Why dear old mother must suffer my two weeks of silence, while John Nielsen-Gammon politely endures my camping out on his atmo.sphere blog? Of course, my behavior reflects my increasingly core belief that…
Amuse-BOUCHE
In nine quick months or so, you’ll not only be glad that Liberty Bar’s Dwight Hobart opened a second venue in Southtown, but that he was the one to purchase and renovate the circa-1930s Benedictine nunnery on South Alamo. A West Texas native, Hobart has a feel for local history and architectural details. The same…
Duo Rock Lounge flairs up
If Cocktail is the first place your mind goes when you hear “flair bartending,” well, you aren’t the only one. (It’s Coyote Ugly for the rest.) But you shouldn’t be subject to any of Coughlin’s laws — at least, we hope not — at Stone Oak’s new flair-bartending outpost, Duo Rock Lounge. For those not…
Last Words
 
Music City refugee
Eric Hisaw has always enjoyed carnivals, albeit for slightly unusual reasons. Whereas many people frequent carnivals to experience gravity-defying rides and down cotton candy and soda, Hisaw prefers to watch the the workers who operate those gravity-defying rides and shill the cotton candy. “I always had this memory of going to the carnival, seeing the…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Before there was a Tex-Mex supergroup known as the Texas Tornados, the name was used by a horn-driven band from San Antonio. The group eventually changed its name to the West Side Horns — a moniker given to them by their frequent frontman Doug Sahm — and on Saturday, July 19, this uptown blues ensemble…
Shadow of a doubt
Just off the windy highway that connects Comfort to Fredricksburg in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, Sky Patterson sits in a small studio painting. He slowly builds up layers of paint, starting with purely gestural abstractions as a ground before bringing in his eternal subject: the human figure. A completed painting may only…
A moveable Phaze
It’s not often that Ernest Hemingway’s name comes up in discussions about dance clubs, but when Steve Alejandro thinks about the late-’80s San Antonio hangout known as Phazez, he flashes back to a Hemingway quote about his time in Paris with other American literary expatriates in the 1920s. Describing the City of Light as “a…
Mom, I’m OK
My mom doesn’t know how the hell I am, but the state climatologist knows I’m bent about global warming inaction in Texas. Why dear old mother must suffer my two weeks of silence, while John Nielsen-Gammon politely endures my camping out on his atmo.sphere blog? Of course, my behavior reflects my increasingly core belief that…
ARTIFACTS
Assuming you grabbed your Current fresh off the rack, you’ve got just over two days to turn in your application for the Fourth Annual Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby. Requirements: a regulation cart, $30, mild disregard for physical injury. The flag drops at 5 p.m. July 26. Dignowitypushcart@gmail.com for info. (It’ll be too late to sign…
Playback
With the presidential primary battles settled and the national conventions weeks away, it’s a good time to gear up the Draft Daryl Hall campaign. You might remember that alt-hip-hoppers Gym Class Heroes dubbed their 2007 tour “Daryl Hall for President,” and some of us punters have not forgotten the enticing promise of a third-party Hall…
Why so serious, KENS 5?
Today, the Current received a Dark Knight viral-marketing cake with chocolate icing and a cell phone inside. It was in a plain box with no distinguishing marks and didn’t say BATMAN!! on it, but did we panic? No. Why? Because, 1) we are hardcore, 2) strange cake is nom-nom, 3) we were wondering why we…
Why so serious, KENS 5?
Today, the Current received a Dark Knight viral-marketing cake with chocolate icing and a cell phone inside. It was in a plain box with no distinguishing marks and didn’t say BATMAN!! on it, but did we panic? No. Why? Because, 1) we are hardcore, 2) strange cake is nom-nom, 3) we were wondering why we…
