Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Release Party
Release Date: 2007-07-18 Where will you be? The most prestigious of Potter fans were introduced to Harry 10 years ago as he stood on platform nine and three-quarters, awaiting his first trip on the Hogwart’s Express; a decade later, Potter mania runs rampant across the globe. Your best source for witching hour bashes is Potterparties.com;…
Brotherhood, In Ovo, All Stories End, Under Nothing, Lokey, & more
Release Date: 2007-07-18 One of the most intense bands to ever grace San Antonio stages, Brotherhood is known across the region for being relentless and aggressive. Exceptionally energetic live performances are the norm — they feed off the audience and are extremely devoted to their fans. Vocalist Rod Nichols is well-respected as one of the…
CAM Rrose Rizin’
Release Date: 2007-07-18 CAM 2007 is just as crowded with best-show contenders as 2006 was (hot tickets to date: Franco Mondini-Ruiz at Soho wine bar, curated by Chuck Ramirez; Play and Re-Play at UTSA Satellite Space; Ethan Moore at Ahern Studios to name a handful), and this weekend two more Best Of candidates open. Olmos…
Southtown Art of Fashion Show
Release Date: 2007-07-18 Originally part of the month-long Southtown fundraiser, Art in the ’Hood, the Southtown Art of Fashion Show has continued to grow in popularity and importance, coming into its own as a stand-out, premier event. The event assists Southtown in raising funds to revitalize the neighborhoods commercial corridors, shining a spotlight on independent…
Prhymemates 5th Year Anniversary
Release Date: 2007-07-18 Saturday marks five years since the Prhymemates put out a public call to revitalize the city’s stagnant hip-hop scene. They’ve since been successful in unifying the city’s talented graffiti artists, breakdancers, DJs, beat makers, and rappers — their most notable endeavor the annual “Clogged Caps” aerosol-art festival. The highlight of Saturday’s celebration…
NALIP-SA CAM Film Slam
Release Date: 2007-07-18 This Contemporary Art Month, NALIP-SA celebrates the tireless, creative, Third-coast underdogs that comprise the San Antonio film community with the SA Film Slam at the Blue Star Brewing Co. For one night only, you and your friends can be the test group for original movies from around the city. With a general…
Dutch boy
Dance music, like universal health care, seems to be something everybody else in the world gets. While the music is popular in clubs and has found its way into commercials, it still hasn’t broken into the American mainstream the way it has in the rest of the world during the past 15 years. In that…
The hole nine yards
THIS WEEK’S PICK: Ace in the Hole (Criterion): Billy Wilder, always ahead of his time, outdid himself with this portrait of news-media cynicism that foretold the era of 24-hour coverage of every girl-in-a-well and high-profile meltdown. Wilder may have been shamed by the drama’s lack of commercial success, but star Kirk Douglas should have a…
This week, Hollywood offers you John Travolta in drag and homophobic firemen
This week, Hollywood offers you John Travolta in drag and homophobic firemen. I speak of Hairspray and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, respectively, and look, I’m just trying to keep our expectations nice and low, because, to misquote a recent A.V. Club interview with Patton Oswalt, I don’t hate movies, “`I’m` actually disappointed…
Odor of the Phoenix
The subtext of the almost wholly positive critical response to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is quite suitable considering its subject matter: No one wants to believe that ol’ scar-head’s days of whimsy are over, that the dark times are upon us — that Voldemort has indeed returned. Buck up, comrades, you…
Game reviews by Jeremy Martin
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Xbox 360 2K Games $49.99 Little known fact: If you’ve already bought Marvel Ultimate Alliance, you already have FFRSS, you just have to mod the game. Execute the following program to unlock Fantastic fun: 1) MAKE everyone playing select members of the Fantastic Four. 2) IF one of…
Spanish is the American language – English is just an intruder that Mexicans learn with ease.
Dear Mexican: Why don’t Mexicans ever drop their Spanish? Even third- and fourth-generation Mexican-Americans still speak the language to some degree or another. I speak Japanese, but I’m losing it quickly, and when my mother passes on, so will my language. The typical Asian-American kid may attend Chinese, Korean, or Japanese school on Saturdays, but…
The matter with mater
Because it in part tells the story of a doughty veteran of the nightclub comic circuit, Clubland was the original title of Introducing the Dwights when it was released in its country of origin, Australia. Jean Dwight is a raunchy menopausal jester who lives to charm an audience. However, the charm has long since worn…
Gigabytes in paradise
Data, welcome to Nirvana: a small black box with lights called Drobo, the “data robot.” One blurb called it “the iPod of mass storage.” I’ve been waiting a decade for this. The Drobo (Drobo.com) is the first device that can take multiple hard drives — of unequal size, by any manufacturer — and unify them…
‘Chalk’ it up
Having spent several years working at public schools in South Central Texas, I’ve long wondered (all too predictably, perhaps) why we don’t more often see big-screen stories about the everyday ups and downs of teaching. Now, don’t mistake me — there’s an impressive slew of films set in or around schools (Elephant, Kindergarten Cop, Ferris…
The annual Art of Fashion fundraiser hits the runway with lots of lace and a splash of Belle Epoque
Southtown’s Art of Fashion fundraiser returns to Blue Star this Saturday with a line-up of local designers including event director Angelina Mata Chumney, Agosto Cuellar, Henry De La Paz, Rodrigo Virgen, Mary Alice Medina, and Luis Almanza. The annual runway show, now in its 16th year, fits right in to the CAM calendar, given just…
Here, movie movie
Texas filmmaker Lance Flores is moving his production company, Mockingbird Films, from Dallas to San Antonio. With a budget of $18-million for his next movie, The Black Messiah Murders, Flores had hoped to shoot in the Alamo City. Instead Flores will be taking his crew to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The reason is simple: Financial incentives…
Remembrance of things queer here
I had started my summer reading and was well into Volume II of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume opus, that quintessence of queer-camp literature, Remembrance of Things Past, when Director Graciela Sanchez asked me to coordinate ¡Qué Queer! San Antonio! for the Esperanza, San Antonio’s stalwart sanctuary for disenfranchised artists and activists founded here two decades ago…
Our writer gets his two strokes off at last weekend’s national scooter rally in Seattle.
Wednesday, July 11 Dawn picks me up in what she’s calling the “shag wagon,” a big ol’ Eight-is-Enough van, except the seats in the back have been taken out. I hop in with the luggage. I bounce around with luggage. The door doesn’t open from the inside, so I’m unloaded with the luggage, too. The…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Here’s how you damage the Aries soul, according to astrologer Steven Forrest: You bore it, you deprive it of adventure, and you starve it of chances to grow evermore courageous. I’m worried this could happen in the coming weeks. According to my reading of the omens, you may be tempted to…
Iraqi unions fight the new oil law
Iraq’s proposed oil law, which would open up control of the country’s oil fields to multinational corporations, is one of the Bush administration’s top political priorities. On July 3, Bush called Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to encourage him and other leaders to move “aggressively forward” on it, and as the Current went to press,…
Ernie’s Ghosts
Stories of ghosts at downtown hotels are widespread. When I went to Ernie’s Bar on the ground level of the Crockett Hotel, I wondered if I would hear supernatural tall tales. I went through what I thought was a front door that turned out to be a door to the dining room. No one was…
Survival of the fittest
As veteran officers in the San Antonio Police Department, Pablo Arriaga and Marty Rodriguez are accustomed to high-intensity, dangerous situations. Whether it’s getting a call at 3 a.m. to respond to a domestic disturbance or jumping a 10-foot fence to apprehend a car thief, patrolling the streets is physically and emotionally strenuous. Most officers savor…
Come hungry
It’s not often I set out to review a restaurant with a 5-year-old in tow, and the dynamic is decidedly different from my usual routine. Let it first be said that he was not susceptible in the least to the elusive charms of Cowcatchers’ rusty, corrugated tin siding or the once-pegged pieces of antique barns…
Bexar Met’s secret soldiers
On May 10, 2007, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources met at 8 a.m. on the first floor of the Pink Dome, just a short walk from the central rotunda. A certain lawyer from San Antonio filled out the public-comment card to speak about House Bill 1565, leaving blank the line where officials, lobbyists, and…
Blender bender
Despite the fact that they may be accurate, most global-warming forecasts are still rather general. The other day, for example, while I knew the heat wave was coming, I didn’t anticipate being tethered to my blender by a leash of insatiable thirst. Details like this can only be written in real time. There isn’t much…
Modest and talented
ON THE COVER The City’s proposed Haven for Hope is a visionary campus that would provide shelter, medical care, child care, and other social services to the homeless on a long-term basis, helping them get off the streets and out from the highway underpass seen here. There’s only one problem: the Westside neighborhood where the…
Trapper Keeper
Wild Mountain Nation Blitzen Trapper (LidKerCow) Blitzen Trapper frontman Eric Earley says he doesn’t own any albums and never visits record stores, but one disc that he admits to loving is Pavement’s Wowee Zowee. It makes sense that Earley would be drawn to Pavement’s most restless, chaotic creation, because Earley’s band tends to make an…
The lawlessness of parties
Once upon a senior year in high school, the Queque was the only one of its motley crew to own a motor vehicle, an inherited Chevy Celebrity. And oh, the trouble the Queque’s gang of skateboarders would cause. Hardly a punk-club commute completed without one skater hopping out at an intersection and dropping his pants.…
Idol Plans
The 2007 American Idol tour came through San Antonio on Monday, July 16 and the unavoidable story was the homecoming that the concert represented for SA chanteuse Haley Scarnato. At a pre-show press meet-and-greet, Scarnato, sporting frosted blond hair and decked out in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and flip-flops, talked about her still-unresolved recording…
Helter shelter
After years of saving money and establishing themselves as productive residents of San Antonio’s Westside community, Rafael and Maricela Garza built their dream home — a beautiful coffee-colored, stucco house on Arbor Place near San Marcos Street which they moved into in April 2006. Two months later, they gave birth to their first child. Across…
Manifesto destiny
Five years ago this week, a group of 40 to 50 San Antonio hip-hop enthusiasts gathered at the Ellis Bean warehouse in Southtown to lay the groundwork for an underground movement. Armed with a seven-page manifesto and some snazzy T-shirts bearing the name Prhymemates, the group’s brain trust — DJ Scuba and emcees Mic Dagger…
Flop haus
One-woman operation Eva Trimm has joined a select list of local independent entrepreneurs such as 180 Grams’ Jesse Garcia, and Fl!ght Gallery’s Justin Parr by transforming a former rave warehouse into the 5,000-square-foot Mattress Factory, a melting pot for art, dance, and live music. At four months old, the venue already hosts local stage darlings…
