Texas Border Wall broke ground, etc.
By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Looks like a lone protester snuck up close for a photo op. It’s one of many shots you can find by Wall antagonist extraordinaire Jay Johnson-Castro. I’ve fallen away from regular Wall updates since returning to my cozy little village of SA. Of course, until recently I was the lone FT…
NANANANANANANANANANANANANA … BAT-RANT!
OR: How to fix what, by most accounts, ain’t even close to broke. BY BRIAN VILLALOBOS Three hundred million dollars. In the first 10 days. Shoot, that ought to be enough to greenlight at least like, six more of these suckers, yeah? Mr. Nolan, if he so pleases, could probably kick back and do nothing…
Sandbags and glad rags
If I didn’t know better — and I’m not sure that I do — I’d say that the McCain campaign sandbagged Barack Obama, when they attacked him for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany, a decision which he made at the urging of the Bush defense department (Did we mention that the administration…
On the Street
“Microbes! You may get my bodyin the end, but you will never get my dreams!” Letters (to the On theStreet Penthouse Suite) #1 Portland Cycle Rage Nico may have sent thisto you already. http://www.newsweek.com/id/149224 Hereis a video of a cyclist who got knocked off his bike onto the hood of acar. And in classic “TJ…
Mongol
Mongol Director: Sergei Bodrov Screenwriter: Sergei Bodrov Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Khulan Chuluun, Sun Honglei, Odnyam Odsuren, Pai Ying (II) Release Date: 2008-07-30 Studio: Picturehouse Rated: R Genre: Biography Take a moment to shed a tear for poor Genghis Khan. He wasn’t born ruthless; society made him that way. Or so it seems to Russian director…
Free The West Memphis 3 Benefit w. Desdemona, Jar of Flies, Top Dead Center, So Unloved, The Heroine, Virgins Never Die, & more
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Jessie Misskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols (pictured left to right) were arrested as teens in the spring of 1993 and convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys. The trial, featuring testimony about satanic rituals and heavy-metal music, led to a swift conviction. However, the case has been the subject of various books…
Element Tattoo Benefit Show
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Element Tattoo needs your help! The popular studio on Fredericksburg — selected as a third-place Reader’s Pick in the Current’s Best Of 2008 issue — has been temporarily shut down due to an electrical fire. Nina Diaz of Girl in a Coma takes the Rabbit stage to help them get back on…
Lucky Tubb & The Modern Day Troubadours
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Ernest Tubb was considered by many to be the King of Honky Tonk, nicknamed the “Texas Troubadour” by his fans. These days his great nephew, Lucky Tubb, is carrying on the family name and legendary music. The third-generation Tubb just released his second record, Damn The Luck. It’s his best effort to…
Dog Days of Summer
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Bring your four-legged friends along as the Botanical Garden opens its gates to SA’s dog lovers. Dog Days of Summer offers two days’ worth of pet-related activities, including dog adoptions, discounted microchipping, pet licensure, and more. The Milk-Bone SpokesDog search gets underway as dogs pose for the camera and owners share a…
Peachcake
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Arizona electro-intellectuals Peachcake come through SA on their Make Mixes, Not War summer tour in support of their forthcoming debut full-length, What Year Will You Have The World? After a slew of unfortunate incidents, arrests, accidents, and a family death, the band decided to get out of their record deal and forge…
Candlebox w. Another Black Day & The Kings Royal
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Candlebox signals their return to the modern music biz with their first new record in 10 years — Into The Sun, their fourth full-length, was released July 22 featuring the new single, “Stand.” The original Candlebox songwriting team of Kevin Martin and Peter Klett, along with original drummer Scott Mercado, has reunited…
Geeks Who Drink
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Calling all beer-soaked nerds! Geeks Who Drink hosts live pub quizzes in Colorado and New Mexico, and the nerd empire is marching into Texas. If you’ve got your own seat next to the neighborhood bar’s Megatouch machine, we want you! Bring friends — the UK-style trivia quiz consists of eight rounds in…
Coheed & Cambria, Secret Machines, & Russian Circles
Release Date: 2008-07-30 It’s fun to think that maybe the Aughties neo-prog-rock movement with its 80-minute concept albums and piss-contest guitar riffage originated in response to the castrato pseudopunk that wussified late ‘90s airwaves – an exact reversal of the way it happened back in ’77. But while the Sex Pistols and Ramones recaptured rock…
Lucky Tubb
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Ernest Tubb was considered by many to be the King of Honky Tonk, nicknamed the “Texas Troubadour” by his fans. These days his great nephew, Lucky Tubb, is carrying on the family name and legendary music. The third-generation Tubb just released his second record, Damn The Luck. It’s his best effort to…
Hill Country trailer nirvana
Release Date: 2008-07-30 Mac and Ernie’s Roadside Eatery sounded too good to be true: High-quality food in the Hill Country served from a trailer that even FEMA might not certify. But the myth called to me like an idyllic taco-truck rumor, except with pan-Texas cuisine instead of al-pastor tacos, and the sounds of whippoorwills instead…
The mystery of Margot
Tell No One Director: Guillaume Canet Screenwriter: Guillaume Canet Cast: Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josee Croze, Andre Dussollier, Kristin Scott Thomas, Francois Berléand Release Date: 2008-07-30 Studio: Music Box Film Rated: NOT RATED Genre: Foreign The adage that no one is a prophet in his own land finds no clearer proof than in the reception of American…
Nothing to believe in
The X-Files: I Want to Believe Director: Chris C. Carter Screenwriter: Chris C. Carter Cast: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Xzibit , Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly Release Date: 2008-07-30 Studio: 20th Century Fox Rated: PG-13 Genre: Science fiction It might be enough for the most devout of X-philes out there, but TV-show creator Chris Carter’s return…
March of the iconoclast
Encounters at the End of the World Director: Werner Herzog Screenwriter: Werner Herzog Release Date: 2008-07-30 Studio: Image Entertainment Music Score: Henry Kaiser Rated: G Genre: Documentary What Werner Herzog movie couldn’t be called Encounters at the End of the World? From the very beginning of his career, the director has shown an obsession with…
The voice of Julian Cisneros
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton found her “own voice” in New Hampshire in early 2008. People noticed that something was different when her inner passion emerged as she spoke. Unofficial candidate for mayor Julian Castro may have found his own voice, too: It is that of former Mayor Henry Cisneros. I heard the Cisneros voice and…
po•et•ry
Last week, in the Queque and online in Curblog, the Current reported on two recent instances, one at the San Pedro Playhouse and one at community literary organization Gemini Ink, in which City arts funding was given as a reason to shut down an audience Q&A and reject a writing workshop because they contained overt…
When Zeta met Hunter
Nearly 40 years after an uneasy friendship between Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta created gonzo journalism, the urban legend that Thompson alone was its genesis persists while Acosta’s collaboration has been virtually whitewashed out of the picture. Last month, on a program about the recently released documentary film Gonzo, Charlie Rose remarked: “Thompson…
2005 Bordeaux
Critical response to the 2005 wines of Bordeaux has been nothing short of orgasmic on the part of normally restrained critics. Said the Wine Spectator’s James Suckling, “These young wines seduce already with their complex aromas of ripe fruit, minerals and light earth. These enticing aromas constantly evolve in the glass. They are mesmerizing, like…
ARTIFACTS
Contemporary Art Month screeches to a halt this week with the opening of Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City, 8-10 p.m. Thursday, July 31, at the Museo Alameda, which doubles as the closing party for the month-long series of shows. The slate of contemporary work from our Southern neighbor looks enticing,…
Amuse-BOUCHE
From the Tex-Mex gets its due department: Current On the Street correspondent Mark Jones sends word that L.A. Times writer Jonathan Gold has discovered puffy tacos. Not just any puffy tacos, but those produced by Arturo, brother of Henry. After a brief history of the Puffy Taco in America featuring El West Side as the…
An early evening ‘Dream’
Although the setting wasn’t exactly the moonlit forest the Bard originally envisioned, the San Pedro Springs Park did make an ideal backdrop last weekend for the Playhouse’s summertime favorite — Playhouse in the Park. This year’s selection was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Shakespeare rom-com that follows the travails of the lovers, actors, and fairies…
Last Words
 
Fightin’ words
Sandra Cisneros is on her cell phone, driving around on errands for this week’s Macondo Libre event at Our Lady of the Lake University. “My costume alone is driving me crazy!” she laughs. Part fiesta, part fundraiser, part literary summit, Macondo Libre is a three-night extravaganza of spoken-word performance, música, costumes, and shenanigans. The theme…
Think of Laura
There’s not a lot of overlap between the crowds you’ll find at the Phoenix clubs Modified Arts and the Rhythm Room. Modified Arts is a hip, underground space that welcomes avant-garde performances, while Rhythm Room is an old-school, urban-blues mecca. It’s telling that the Tempe, Arizona-based band What Laura Says has gigs lined up at…
Shape (and soul) shifters
“If we could talk to the animals … ,” sang Doctor Dolittle, voicing a fond wish shared by many human beings. He might have tried Portuguese. The narrator of Brazilian novelist Moacyr Scliar’s 1985 gem The Centaur in the Garden is a hybrid of horse and human. Now comes a non-human character created by José…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Two of S.A.’s best-loved turntablists, DJ Jester the Filipino Fist and Ernest “Theory of Everything” Gonzales celebrate the one-year anniversary of “Get Busy,” their First Friday DJ night at Limelight, with a blowout at the club (2718 N. St. Mary’s) on Friday, August 1. Billed as Jester vs. Gonzales, “Get Busy” surely has to be…
Dear Uncle Mat
This is a bit lame and more of a complaint than a request for advice. I work in a relatively small office (less than 50 employees), and we probably host about another 30 to 100 people for meetings in a given week. I am middle management and I recently started an office recycling program at…
Music for Katrina’s aftermath
City That Care Forgot Dr. John and the Lower 911 (429 Records) Is it possible to tiptoe through hurricane season these days without thinking of New Orleans? Katrina and its aftermath are certainly still on Dr. John’s mind, and the singer has finally (after a quick benefit EP recorded in the disaster’s wake) gotten around…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Work can be hazardous for the actors who portray cartoon and fairy tale characters at Disney theme parks. The U.S. Health and Safety Administration reports that one-third of them have suffered on-the-job injuries. A prime cause of the mayhem: kids who kick and punch, sometimes out of misplaced exuberance and other…
Playback
It’s one of the great caricatures of crotchety old people that they’re always lamenting the effects of inflation. In our ageist imaginations, they’ll whine about the good old days, when they used to be able to get into a movie theater for a nickel, have a three-course meal for a dime, or get a rim…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Special la raza edición Dear Mexican: What’s with calling yourselves “la Raza”? Being Mexicans, Chicanos or whatever isn’t enough — now you’re THE race? Sounds pretty racist to me. — The Race Is On Deart Gabacho: Few things annoy the Mexican more than the Know Nothing Nation’s deliberate ignorance with this most nebulous of…
S’NUFF FILM
Hello, folks. As you could probably tell if you could see me typing this (and let’s both be glad you can’t, since all I’m wearing is a pair of unlaundered Thundercats Underoos), I’m not your Critical Darling Ashley Lindstrom. I’m the new associate editor for Screens (as well as Music and Tech) so kindly forward…
Clothes-Minded
So we’re about halfway through the Wardrobe Refashion Challenge, two months of buying only recycled, renovated clothing. There may be some money burning a hole in your pocket. For those of us who shop therapeutically — just a small pick-me-up when the rest of the world is out of control — it can be damn…
Love to Hate
 
FREE LUCKY! (THEN WHAT?)
We’re at the San Antonio Zoo to examine Lucky the elephant, a 48-year-old Asian female and subject of a grassroots push for liberation. But somehow we can’t get past the black rhino lying listlessly in her own crap. My guide is the advocacy and education coordinator of a nearby sanctuary known as Wildlife Rescue &…
Spittin’ Game
Unreal Tournament 3 (Epic Games/Midway) Xbox 360 $59.99 Thanks to climate-inappropriate ski goggles and an awkward-honky soul patch, UT3’s big gun, Reaper — 300-plus pounds of veiny man-meat and phallic wrist rockets — is less space marine than ’roid-raging Backstreet Boy. Even stupider than his wardrobe, though, is the one-player campaign, which tweaks the franchise’s…
A necessary kill?
It was the shot heard ’round the animal-loving kingdom. On November 8, 2006, armed with a .22-caliber rifle, ornithologist Jim Stevenson caught a feral cat in his sights, pulled the trigger, and instantly became the most hated man among feline fanciers everywhere. Stevenson said he saw a wild look in the cat’s eye as it…
Sugar-glider education (the hard way)
Some girls get diamonds, some get pearls; from my great (ex) love I received a pair of sugar gliders. They sound like something you drop in a fish tank to suck the algae off the glass, no? But these exotic animals are actually more akin to fellow-marsupial opossums than undersea slime-slugs, and, really, the whole…
Wolff in councilman’s clothing
When Kevin Wolff won election to City Council in 2005, his District 9 office was looked upon as the plum spot for Council staffers. With Wolff’s political pedigree — his father, Nelson Wolff, is the Bexar County Judge and a former San Antonio mayor — and considerable fundraising connections, he instantly vaulted to the head…
Do ya feel Lucky?
The Queque arrived late to Monday night’s Parks and Rec board meeting. Too late to witness the official resistance to the proposed Parks Police-SAPD reorganization promised in a July 20 email from District 3 board member Charles Bartlett, but early enough to catch a putsch on behalf of Lucky, the Zoo’s lone Asian elephant, and…
2008 Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby
Local artists, students and organizations go for the gold, or rather, a handpainted wooden trophy, in the 4th Annual Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby.
2008 Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby
Local artists, students and organizations go for the gold, or rather, a handpainted wooden trophy, in the 4th Annual Dignowity Hill Pushcart Derby.
