As Iran goes, so goes D2?
The Byron Miller campaign, which lost Saturday’s District 2 election runoff to former City staffer Ivy Taylor by 54 votes, is alleging election fraud and irregularities, including dead voters, pre-filled-in mail ballots, and multiple voting. But Elections Administrator Jacquelyn Callanen says that while she doesn’t want to call the county’s election system failproof, “we have…
Selling Sunset Station
City Hall watchers might want to circle Friday, June 26 on their calendars. That’s the day the City will hold a public hearing at the Municipal Plaza Building to discuss the proposed sale of Sunset Station property to East Commerce Realty, a subsidiary of the powerful (and seemingly omnipresent) Zachry Realty. East Commerce reps didn’t…
Tyson
Tyson Director: James Toback Screenwriter: James Toback Release Date: 2009-06-12 Rated: R Genre: Film James Toback’s new documentary Tyson is a fascinating look at the former heavyweight champ who has had one of the most notoriously controversial careers of anyone who’s ever entered the ring. Essentially an extended interview with the man, the movie pulls…
Attention Guitarists: See somebody who’s seen a Beatle
Well that’s if you’re one of those sheeple who believes that Paul McCartney is still alive line the man’s been handing us. Still, Brian Ray â?? who’ll be appearing 3:30 pm Saturday at Redbone Guitar Boutique â?? has toured as guitarist, bassist and back-up vocalist for the government-created android that replaced Paul in 1966, and…
Castro-ville II: Parade complaint on Council floor
By Gilbert Garcia The controversy over Mayor Julián Castro’s decision to serve as Grand Marshal of SA’s July 4 Gay Pride parade, heretofore confined to talk-radio rants and constituent emails, briefly spilled onto the Council floor this morning. Shirley Thompson, a former mayoral candidate, addressed the issue by telling the Mayor: “There is one standard…
City to host digital-sign ordinance review!
Right, that’s the good news: Public input is being sought on the much-reviled 2007 digital-billboard pilot program, which gifted the city with 13 bright “variable-message” signs, many of them overlooking our scenic byways, all but one operated by SA-based media giant and political player Clear Channel. But, that of course means: The city is considering…
Castro-ville: a 21st century, gay-friendly city
Mayor Julián Castro knew roughly what to expect when he agreed this week to serve as the Grand Marshal of San Antonio’s July 4 Gay Pride parade â?? the first San Antonio mayor to do so â?? and in less than 24 hours, conservative talk-radio host Adam McManus had marshalled his self-styled “Adam’s Army,” urging…
SA college grad granted deportation extension
A blog update on the case of San Antonian Benita Veliz, from Current intern Alicia Ramirez, who attended today’s immigration-court hearing: St. Mary’s University graduate Benita Veliz has been granted a few more months to prepare a case challenging her deportation to Mexico. Veliz, 23, graduated valedictorian of her class at Jefferson High School before…
It’s amore
Release Date: 2009-06-10 Whenever Italian food is the topic of conversation, the first thing I think of is the film Moonstruck — the mood, the moonlight, the happily-ever-after for a cynical 38-year-old. Yet walking into Joe’s Italian Grill, ready for a delicious meal, my initial reaction was skepticism, not romance. The exterior of Joe’s Italian…
Ale fest every day of the week
Release Date: 2009-06-10 Out past 1604 on Old Bulverde road, in the “Netherlands” of San Antonio, is a hidden oasis for beer lovers called the Tap Exchange. We’re not exactly sure which community it’s located in — Encino Park? East Stone Oak? South Bulverde? This is foreign territory to many of us Inner Loopers, and…
Critic’s Pick
Critic’s Pick Land of the Lost Director: Brad Silberling Screenwriter: Brad Silberling Cast: Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, and Jorma Taccone Release Date: 2009-06-10 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Dir. Brad Silberling; writ. Chris Henchy, Dennis McNicholas; feat. Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, and Jorma Taccone G-dog, if you’re there, it’s me, Chrissie. I…
Jay Stay Paid
Jay Stay Paid Composer: J Dilla Conductor: J Dilla Label: Nature Sounds Release Date: 2009-06-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording This posthumous compilation, packaged like a radio program, was not curated or mastered by the much-mourned producer, and for that reason alone it’s not nearly so infinitely relistenable as 2006’s Donuts. Many of the beats here…
God Help the Girl
God Help the Girl Composer: Stuart Murdoch Conductor: Stuart Murdoch Label: Matador Release Date: 2009-06-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Stuart Murdoch, Belle & Sebastian’s master storyteller, conceived the musical God Help the Girl sometime around 2004. Five years later, Murdoch’s still working out the details (like, um, a screenplay), but that didn’t stop him from…
Préliminaires
Préliminaires Composer: Iggy Pop Conductor: Iggy Pop Label: Astralwerks Release Date: 2009-06-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording On Préliminaires, Iggy Pop sounds all of his 60-some years, and it’s about damn time. Jazzy and mature, the record is like nothing Pop has ever done. There are shades of mid-’90s French electro-pop (think Air’s The Virgin Suicides)…
Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1
Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1 Composer: The Paper Chase Conductor: The Paper Chase Label: Kill Rock Stars Release Date: 2009-06-10 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Dallas’s the Paper Chase offered a truly frightening sound when they emerged in the late ’90s. The rhythm section hit like shoulders to steel doors, while dissonant, jazzy…
Wild Street
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-06-10 In retrospect, it seems inevitable that guylinered emo acts would discover lipstick and eyeshadow and devolve into all-out ’80s hair metal-bands. Case in point: New York City’s Wild Street, who don’t look old enough to’ve been sexually confused by Twisted Sister videos and who probably first saw Tommy Lee in…
Dear Uncle Mat
I use the internet to date and hook up on occasion. I make no secret of this, either. I am very respectful of the people I date and sleep with and don’t discuss my exploits in detail and never gossip about the men I meet and/or date. I have run into not one, not two,…
Johnny are you queer?
As I sat down to write this column, I wished I were Facebook friends with at least one of my ex-girlfriends from high school. As I recall though, neither had a clue I was gay till we broke up because I didn’t put out, they had moved on to sleep with one of my friends,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): So you’re trying to tell me that the way out is the way in. Is that right? And that the “wrong” answer just might be the right answer? And that success, if it makes an appearance, will most likely happen by accident? I don’t know, Aries. It’s tricky to get away…
Closet cleaning
After the police read him his Miranda Rights, Senator Larry Craig immediately denies soliciting sex in a men’s room. “I am not gay,” he insists. “I don’t do those things.” Most of us — gay, straight or otherwise — don’t, if for no other reason than for fear of getting caught. So why would an…
‘Pelham,’ take three
An action film centered around a conversation, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 explores the intricacies of human connections and the development of relationships via the unlikely venue of a fast-paced hijack flick. But don’t worry — there are guns, too. Pelham, based on the novel by Morton Freedgood (aka John Godey), immediately jumps…
S’NUFF film
Local website blog4reel.com announced the winners of its inaugural most filmable web journal competition June 5. Local artist and UTSA grad Tom Trevino took home top honors for his blog “chocolate mojo” (chocolatemojo.blogspot.com), beating out second-place winner Alex Pollack’s “Writing the Ship” (alexpollack.com), which chronicles his experiences as an English teacher in South Korea, and…
The case for Coldplay
After the release of Coldplay’s third album, X & Y, in 2005, New York Times reviewer Jon Pareles called the British quartet “the most insufferable band of the decade.” In case you missed it, folks, the most odious band in the world to this erudite asshole is not Chumbawamba, nor is it Aqua, nor even…
Battle Sounds
May 29, 2009, will go down as a historic, albeit bittersweet day for hip-hop in the Alamo City. This was the Friday that the DMC, the granddaddy of all DJ battles, finally came to town for the inaugural San Antonio, Texas, DMC Southwest Regional. After an inspired night of cutting and scratching from a field…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
With Girl in a Coma busy promoting their new album, Trio B.C. (which dropped last Tuesday), one of the local beneficiaries of the band’s success has been Ledaswan. The alternative/dream-pop quintet, which includes former Current staffer Jaime Monzon, picked up a couple of July shows with GIAC and decided to use the gigs as a…
Rhyme Mind Theory
“They call us Reynolds Wrap,” Rhyme Mind Theory frontman Lennox Gonzalez says without irony in 2009, “because we keep it fresh.” And he’s not joking. Well he’s joking, but not in the sarcastic, meta-joke way you’d think, not unless this is extremely convincing performance art and he’s really committed to the character. He’s just the…
Real salsa, por favor
Mary Lou has got her quirks, that’s for sure. The first of them is the warm sauce that comes with the house chips — if you get chips, that is. On my first foray, none were served at all, leading me to believe that, heresy of heresies, she had elected to jettison this birthright of…
“Kiwi Minor” — The Barracudas
The song begins with something close to a keyboard playing “Down by the River” in demo mode accompanied by only occasional acoustic strumming, and it ends in cartoon lasers. In-between, “Kiwi Minor” seems to branch off, exploring several different variations of itself, while mixing drum machines with banjos, creepy whispers with tambourines, and awesomely untrained…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Blanca Aldaco opened her restaurant at Sunset Station abutting the Alamodome a decade ago, only to have the rug pulled out from under her when the Spurs moved to their new location a few years later. She has staved off closing with special events, a complimentary shuttle to Spurs games, free pickup for the downtown office…
The Que Que
LULAC’s Hutto connection As a growing coalition of activists prepares for what they hope will be the most high-profile protest yet at the immigrant-family detention center in Taylor, Texas, fellow activists are challenging LULAC over sponsorship monies received from the private company that runs the prison. Corrections Corporation of America, the private-prison vanguard and government…
Polly Lou Livingston
Polly Lou (Simon) Livingston has a voice that will live in infamy. Los Angeles animator Pen Ward, son of renowned local artist Bettie Ward, has engaged Polly Lou to be a voice in his new Cartoon Network series. Polly Lou will be giving utterance to the character known as “Tree Trunk,” an elephant with a…
BRAC life support
Circa 2011, 12,600 prospective San Antonians are scheduled to show up on our doorstep, families, moving vans, and mortgage/rent checks in tow, ready for work and school at the expanded Fort Sam Houston military base — home to what will be the world’s largest medical technical training campus. Even our dear old polished-brass military gets…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: I was riding the local light rail when two female Mexicans sat down and started talking rapid-fire Spanish nonstop for 45 minutes! It seemed as if neither one stopped to take a breath of air. They were loud and could be heard the length of the train. Question: Is this why Mexican men…
State of the Union
As a gift for the guests of their wedding this past Saturday, Chris Sauter and Rick Frederick burned a mix CD. On the CD’s cover is a photograph of their house on the city’s East Side, and its musical contents run the gamut from Erasure (“Stop!”) to R.E.M. (“At My Most Beautiful”) to Mark Chesnutt…
Bad things happen
When I was 12 years old and a hopeless nihilist, I took to Edward Gorey the way other self-dramatizing adolescents embraced J.D. Salinger. My introduction to the diabolical creator of more than 100 witty books like The Doubtful Guest and The Fatal Lozenge was his animated opening for the PBS series Mystery! If you weren’t…
We are family
Felice Garcia and Celeste Branstetter are married. So are Keith Franklin and Jesse Alvarado. Both couples had San Antonio weddings which included their loved ones, both couples share homes and bank accounts, and are written into each other’s wills. The state of Texas does not recognize these couples’ marital status (though, in Keith and Jesse’s…
Revenge! Mistaken identities! Poison! Musical anvils!
Opera 101 Il Trovatore, by Giuseppe Verdi, premiered in Italy in 1853 and in the United States in 1855 at the Academy of Music in New York. Comprising four acts with two scenes each, it’s among the top 20 most-performed operas in North America. Il Trovatore (The Troubador) is considered part of a Verdi trilogy…
Get gay married!
Hetero couples can tie an ill-considered knot in BexarCo for $66 and a breathtakingly short reflection period, but same-sex unions, for better or worse, take considerable more effort and investment in the vast majority of states that don’t recognize gay marriage or homosexual domestic partnerships. And for all the additional small type, they rest on…
ARTifacts
REM Gallery is hoisting itself out of its current nest at 1420 S. Alamo, and scooting over to 209 E. Park, in the Tobin Hill district. It’ll be closed for the rest of June, but will re-open just in time for the very last July-edition Contemporary Art Month with a painting show by talented earth-mother…
Let ’em eat cake
Gene Elder is an out and proud gay man, an artist and activist, and is the LGBT Archives Director for the HAPPY Foundation, located in the same building as the Bonham Exchange. Among the many art and activism ideas he enacts is the Wedding Cake Liberation Front, in which participants bake a wedding cake and…
