New animal ordinances at last
No ticker-tape parade, no rioting Lakers fans, no vuvuzela blasts from the city council audience … sometimes working for the City must be such a drag. For instance, Animal Care Services spent more than six months reviewing the City’s animal ordinance, trying to assuage concerns from all corners of San Antonio’s animal world (more on…
Trinity Prez vows to crush water bottles underfoot
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com First City Manager Sheryl Sculley came for the refined sugar, and I said nothing. Then the City Council declared war on tobacco smoke, and I was silent. But at last someone has hit upon the environmental “sin” I may despise most of all â?? the plastic water bottle. In a move that…
GASLAND: Monday on HBO
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Can you do this with your water? Do you want to? Natural gas. It’s become the bane and boon of North Texans contending with the toxic emissions of deep gas drilling (and suddenly ubiquitous hydrofracking) of the Barnett Shale. The environmentalists’ preferred “bridge” fuel we had hoped would help lead us into…
Stimulating new projects to get San Antonio off the crude
You may have heard President Obama’s Oval Office address on Tuesday, where he finally declared (sans ass-kicking language) that the BP spill is “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced,” and deemed the deep sea oil gusher’s as-yet-unquantified environmental impact “an epidemic.” Though Congress stole the show this week, alternately recommending Hari Kari to…
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 Director: Lee Unkrich Screenwriter: Lee Unkrich Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Wallace Shawn, John Ratzenberger, Michael Keaton Release Date: 2010-06-18 Rated: G Genre: Film Our Rating: 4.00 Remember that scene in Toy Story 2 where Jessie’s owner gets older and leaves her to gather dust, neglected, for years at a time, and…
Testing SAISD’s New Mural Policy
Rosendo Gonzalez working on his mural tribute to teacher Robert Sutton Just one week after celebrated local artists Vincent Valdez and Alex Rubio received an in-person apology from San Antonio Independent School District members who authorized the destruction of the Burbank High alums’ mural on their alma mater’s western wall, another local muralist says he’s…
DIRT! The Movie
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-06-16 Part of the Official Selection at Sundance 2009, DIRT! The Movie takes a long hard look at what’s happened to dirt since the arrival of humans some 2 million years ago. One of the film’s catch phrases is: “Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way…
Miss Texas Continental
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-06-16 “I’m so sorry I’ve been so busy since I saw you last, and haven’t had much time to do anything other than check in and out of hotels and airports. Here’s the info you requested about the pageant I took over five years ago. Miss Texas Continental is open to…
Grupo Fantasma
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-06-16 If you were bummed to miss Latin-funk orchestra Brownout! when they played Luna a few weeks ago (see “Bella Luna,” June 2), Friday’s your last chance (for a while at least) to see their “senior alter ego,” the 11-piece ensemble Grupo Fantasma. In support of the extremely fun and danceable…
Loretta Lynn
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-06-16 Just how badass is Loretta Lynn? To find out, we compared the titles of her late ’60s/ early ’70s singles with those of current country pop tart Taylor Swift. In Swift’s corner: “Teardrops on My Guitar,” “Should’ve Said No,” “Our Song,” “You Belong With Me.” In Lynn’s: “Don’t Come Home…
Art Opening:Alejandro Diaz: Just in Queso
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-06-16 A maker of food-based puns that put your gray matter to work and yet radiate a flip, populist appeal (sometimes as neon, sometimes as glitter, sometimes as an ironic smile), Alejandro Diaz seems like a perfect candidate for the first solo show at David Shelton Gallery in Stone Oak. SA…
Missing Daughters
Mother and Child Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Film The fact that it is still illegal in some states for same-sex couples to adopt a child lends a certain piquancy to The Kid, a musical about the experiences of two gay men and their adoptive son that recently opened in New York. Could another…
Fast Foodie:
Drinking dinner at the Friendly Spot
Please Give
Critic’s Pick Please Give Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Film The most telling moment in Please Give occurs as Kate, Alex, and their daughter, Abby, walk home after dining out. Carrying her leftovers in a styrofoam container, Kate sees an African-American man standing on the sidewalk near a restaurant. Unable to resist the eleemosynary…
Destroyer of the Void
Destroyer of the Void Composer: Blitzen Trapper Conductor: Blitzen Trapper Label: Sub Pop Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording With each album Blitzen Trapper gets more ambitious, even as they become more predictable. On 2008’s Furr, frontman Eric Earley got about as close as he could to making a Dylan/Dead/Band record without actually inventing…
Texas Blues and Country Tear Jerkers
Texas Blues and Country Tear Jerkers Composer: Bick Brickey Conductor: Bick Brickey Label: Self released Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording You wanted an album review, Bick Brickey. You got it. Charmed by Brickey’s handwritten note that accompanied the aged San Antonio songwriter’s debut album, prodded by his repeated voicemails, and intrigued by the…
Welcome to the Jetset
Welcome to the Jetset Composer: Puppy Jet Conductor: Puppy Jet Label: Green Onion Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording In this instance, the word “formulaic” doesn’t seem like an insult. The songs on Welcome to the Jetset are too energetic to be labeled “uninspired”; instead, it’s as if the whole album were constructed with…
Rock n Roll Weekend
Rock n Roll Weekend Composer: The Far Crys Conductor: The Far Crys Label: Self released Release Date: 2010-06-16 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording If the album title, the Lite-beer-swilling cigarette-butt-snorting party dude on the cover, or failing that the photo-collage shrine to Taco Land in the liner notes doesn’t clue you in to what the Far…
Riders on the storm
This weekend, motorcycle aficionados from around the country will descend on a two-acre lot on East Commerce to pick through 22,000 square feet of fully stocked warehouse space and a large yard strewn with disabled choppers. On the sales block: 83 starter solenoids, 271 foot pegs, 489 clutch brake levers, and more than 1,000 used…
Home on the Range
I don’t know how old I was when I learned how to read. I wasn’t a prodigy and I wasn’t a laggard. I do remember reading my first word: I was fidgeting in a check-out line at the local department store, waiting for my mother to buy pantyhose and curtain rods, when I suddenly realized…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I’m a civil-rights lawyer. I sue the San Diego Minutemen. Whenever the Minutemen are accused of being racist they always say something like, “I’m part-Hispanic,” or they’ll note that some of their members are Mexican. This last claim is actually true. Some of the most zealous Minutemen are actually Mexican-Americans. I’m 100-percent Irish. I don’t understand why the…
Different breed
Chicanos Unidos might be viewed as an act of hip-hop activism in light of Arizona’s recent racial-profiling-friendly immigration law (which, don’t forget, April’s Gallup poll estimates 51 percent of the U.S. population supports), and it is in part, but that isn’t how it started. The idea for this self-described “sociopolitical hip-hop event” featuring performances from…
Limited visibility
Talk to Starchild creative force Henry Roland for five minutes about being in a band, and he’ll go to a place most musicians are too cool for: Bidnezz. “The price of living was getting so high,” he said of attempting survival in New York City. “Even when `shows were` packed, we still couldn’t make all…
The long and confusing road
In 1998, the Guggenheim Museum mounted an exhibit called The Art of the Motorcycle, which was met with a mixed critical reception and accusations of pandering to either BMW (who sponsored the show) or to the unwashed masses (who visited in numbers that would inspire envy in even the most popular painters). The show was…
Live & Local
You can almost smell the foursome the moment you lay eyes on them in their faded cut-off shirts. Bassist Crystal Casas, guitarist Vanessa Ray, and Briana Lozano share vocal duties, while their hair clings to their sweaty, straining faces. With songs like “Baby Animal Core” and “Megabitch!,” post-riot-grrl band Lisa Frank’s goal doesn’t seem to…
New boxes in the old Attic
Getting trapped at an inept production of Eugene O’Neill can mean a very long journey into night. An evening of one-acts, by contrast, calls to mind Mark Twain’s quip: “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.” The weather ranges from barmy to blustery during the two short plays…
The Sound & The Fury
While we wait for the reps at tour sponsor Ernie Ball to decide on the local lineup for the Warped Tour’s San Antonio stop, we’d love to entertain some wild speculation re: which lucky band will wind up as the subject of a feature story in our June 29 issue. I don’t envy the Ball…
Artist on artist action:
San Antonio native Joe Reyes took up the guitar at age seven, and is one-third of the popular art-rock band Buttercup. He received a Latin Grammy nomination in 2001 for the Sergio Lara and Reyes recording World Jazz, and he won a Grammy for co-producing Freddy Fender’s 2002 La Musica de Baldemar Huerta. I interviewed…
To serve and protect
After a failed attempt at an investigative drink at a “revamped” local institution (the bartender was nowhere to be found — for a good 10 minutes — at 9:15 p.m. on a Friday night, and the only people in sight were taking turns whining about the bugs floating in their White Russians), I decided to…
Rigoletto, or what’s in the bag?
Such is the evolution of art that a play France’s famous man of letters and liberty struggled to save from the state’s censors can now be taken for granted as the season-finale production of the struggling opera company of America’s seventh-largest city. Progress? Of a sort! Rigoletto is a three-act opera by Italian composer Giuseppe…
The QueQue
Hero or heroin? Given the number of deaths related to heroin withdrawal that have occurred inside the Bexar County jail in the past couple of years, it’s tempting to root for 48-year-old Sheriff’s Deputy Robert Falcon, arrested last Friday on suspicion of trying to deliver narcotics to detainees on the inside. While we’d never outright…
Artifacts
Director Jonathan Pennington’s production of Grease at the Woodlawn Theater aims to “step it up” — in terms of quality and target audience. The Woodlawn’s Sherry Wehner noted that, after several kid-friendly runs, this Grease even has “cussing and making out!” The cast and costumes are adorable, but visiting Brit Claire Russell (whose credits include…
Diary of the dead
The key to making a successful movie in San Antonio is to not make a San Antonio movie. That’s what the team behind SA’s latest local “infected” flick (“fast-moving zombies” to people who don’t care about the semantics that fuel IMDB message-board flame wars), The Killing Strain. “We’re not making this as a San Antonio…
S’Nuff Film
Saturday, CineMundo at Main Plaza hosts the official kick-off of the 16th Annual San Antonio Film Festival, which technically doesn’t begin until Wednesday, June 23 (look for a full schedule in next week’s Current). Guests are invited to bring lawn chairs, blankets, and picnics to this evening of seven short films under the stars. Program…
A cure for the blues?
Since 2007, 11 San Antonio Police Department officers have received indefinite suspensions related to sexual misconduct. In 2009, one third of officers fired for misconduct were investigated for a sexually motivated offense. That doesn’t surprise national experts; police departments throughout the country face similar issues with rape, sexual assault, improper searches, baseless traffic stops, and…
The sanctions charade
The mountain labored for a year and a half, and finally gave birth to a mouse. On June 9 the United Nations Security Council agreed on a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, for its alleged attempt to build nuclear weapons, that will cause Iran no grave inconvenience. But that’s only fair, since the crime…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, The sex in my partner’s and my relationship has been waning over the past few years and is getting pretty boring. I honestly think I had a better orgasm jerking off last week than I have had with him this entire year. We both know it and have talked about it, but…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Istanbul is the world’s only mega-city that spans two continents. Many Turkish commuters take the 15-minute ferry ride across the Bosphorus Strait, traveling from their suburban homes in Asia to the urban sprawl in Europe. I’m seeing a comparable journey for you, Aries: a transition that happens casually and quickly, but…
SAISD Prepared to Phase Out Fine Arts Magnet
“Artistic people are kind of weird and they need to stick together,” joked Virginia Guzman, explaining just one of many reasons she and a host of parents and students are angry with San Antonio Independent School District over its decision to phase out theFine Arts Magnet Academy at Thomas Jefferson High School. Guzman, like many…
Jail suicide-prevention response being discussed, debated
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com In an emailed response to a list of questions from the Current, Jail Administrator Roger Dovalina said he is getting cost estimates to see what it would take to make the cells in the Suicide Prevention Unit and Mental Health Unit suicide resistant. On an inspection of the jail earlier this year,…
