The County Line Free Concert Series
(Courtesy photo: Charlie Robison performing at The County Line Bar-B-Q) It looks like it’s that time of the year again, as The County Line Bar-B-Q will be having its Live Music Series every Wednesday night from 6:30 to 10 PM this Summer. For the past 13 years, the music series have brought some of the…
The Anti-Pixar: A Q&A With Aaron Augenblick of Augenblick Studios
The studio behind some of the most evocative animated television since South Park can all be traced to one man, Aaron Augenblick. The creative mind behind shows like Ugly Americans and Superjail, as well as animations on MTV’s Wonder Showzen and Saturday Night Live, Augenblick has helped transform the landscape of today’s animated television. The…
House Approves Anti-Abortion Bill Despite Hundreds of Protestors
“Are you against science?” asked Rep. Lon Burnam (D-Forth Worth), encapsulating Sunday evening’s Texas House debate over a bill that would eviscerate abortion access in the state. The House preliminarily passed the legislation 97-33 this morning. The bill is expected to move back to the Senate and be met with a filibuster from Democrats. The special…
5 Things You Have to Do This Week
1. Ke$ha She drinks her own urine, bathes in glitter, dresses like the star-child of Liza Minnelli and Oscar the Grouch, and smells “like shrimp in a diaper.” These are but a few reasons to love or not to love booze-obsessed pop princess Ke$ha (many more can be found here). Born Kesha Rose Sebert, the…
Mitote Records Add Bite Lip Bleed And Secrets And Irises To Roster
Beginning as Pop Pistol’s imprint label in 2008, Mitote Records later added Langton Drive with their self-titled debut. This summer adds the female-led outfits Bite Lip Bleed and Secrets and Irises to its roster. Both bands will be serving the label’s first EP releases on Friday (Bite Lip Bleed at Hi-Tones) and Saturday (Secrets &…
Video: Yeah Yeah Yeahs on top of the world
With the release of “Despair,” the second single off <a href="With the release of “Despair,” the second single off Mosquito (which debuted at number 5 on the charts back in April), the Yeah Yeah Yeahs confirmed they’re on top of the world. Literally. “There’s been a lot of career highs and lows over the years…
Ask Aliyah: The Top 5 Proposal Sites in San Antonio
Dear Aliyah, I have a great girlfriend. She is my best friend and the person I am meant to be with. I know I want to spend the rest of our lives together and she feels the same way about our future. Well, I am all but ready to propose except I can’t stand her…
Sunday Comic: The Adventures of Pizza and Myrtle
Click image to enlarge. Related: The Adventures of Pizza and Myrtle Archives
SA Scorpions beat Edmonton in stoppage time: 2-1
Hans Denissen and Javier Saavedra celebrate the Scorpions’ first goal (photo by nasl.com) Hans Denissen did it again, saving the Scorpions from a disappointing draw against FC Edmonton at Toyota Field. The San Antonio forward scored in the 5th minute with a beautiful chip off an excellent assist from Javier Saavedra, but Edmonton equalized three…
Thrifting San Antonio
Being a college student, flea markets and thrift stores are my mall. But you don’t have to be in my position to enjoy all the neat things these places offer. They’re scattered everywhere in San Antonio but you have to dig deep for the ones worth going to. These are the top personal favorites, but…
Q&A: ‘World War Z’ Director Marc Forster on Brad Pitt, Blockbusters, and Zombie Pyramids
In his 2001 independent drama “Monster’s Ball,” director Marc Forster didn’t have a scene that had more than a few actors. It was a small, intimate film with a modest budget of $4 million. Forster, for the most part, was stress free. Twelve years later, Forster is at the helm of one of the biggest…
Freddy Krueger’s Take on the SA Spurs
Enjoy it while it lasts, LeBron. If you thought dealing with our big three was tough, wait ’till you meet the Spurs’ new weapon: Mr. Freddy Fucking Krueger himself. Actor Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), in town for the screening of Sanitarium (a San Antonio-made film in which he co-stars) at the SA…
‘Monsters University’: When Hairy met Mikey
Candy-colored abominations frolic through photo-realistic backdrops and crack wise while secretly learning valuable life lessons, all while a sprightly Randy Newman score blares on the soundtrack. This is pretty much the formula that has guided Pixar to the mountaintop of big-screen animation. This amiable and totally disposable prequel is nowhere near the summit of the…
The Great “People’s Filibuster”: More Than 700 Sign Up To Protest Abortion Bills
Photo by @WholeWomans Twitter Updated: This afternoon, The House State Affairs Committee voted in favor of HB 60 and SB 5. At around midnight, Rep. Byron Cook (R-Corsicana) felt like he had heard enough. The chair of the House State Affairs committee criticized passionate and oftentimes intimate testimony from scores of women fervently protesting a…
Q&A: ‘Bling Ring’ Actress Katie Chang on Working with Emma Watson, Sofia Coppola, and Playing a Teenage Mastermind
In Sophia Coppola’s new caper “The Bling Ring,” newcomer Katie Chang plays Rebecca, a teenager living in Hollywood who begins a crime spree with friends by breaking into the houses of well-known celebrities including Paris Hilton, Orlando Bloom, and Lindsay Lohan. The film is based on the real-life crimes committed by high school student Rachel…
Oriole Double Stuff: Cal Ripken Jr. Costs Tim Duncan a Fifth NBA Title
If you wanted to, you could blame the San Antonio Spurs’ gut-wrenching 95-88 loss to the Miami Heat in Game 7 of the NBA Finals on Danny Green (1-12, 5 points), petrified in the last two games after setting a league record for three-pointers made in a championship series. Or you could blame it on…
Tim Duncan’s Top 5 Geeky Tendencies
Many Spurs fans know Tim Duncan for his game on the basketball court, but what many people don’t know about Duncan are his geeky tendencies and nerdy games off the court. Don’t get me wrong, Tim Duncan is an amazing basketball player, but who would have thought he’d be into the fantasy role-playing game, Dungeons…
10 Things You Have to Do This Weekend
Thursday, June 20 1. San Antonio Film Festival Including the supernatural dramedy Blood Cousins, there are 23 films (five features and 18 shorts) made by San Antonio-based filmmakers screening at this year’s San Antonio Film Festival from June 17-23. Other films on the slate are coming from the usual film meccas like New York, Los…
Gavin The Third covers Queen’s “Death on Two Legs”
Already garnering some buzz with his self- titled debut, Gavin the Third is now sharing his rendition of Queen’s classic “Death on Two Legs.” Originally released in 1975, the song is known for Queen’s opera- tinged touch, but Gavin The Third’s cover veers into a different direction. Channeling his inner heavy metal head, Gavin the…
Hear Third Root’s New Single, “Revolutionary Theme Music”
As part of an upcoming collaborative EP between Third Root (Easy Lee from Mojoe and Marco Cervantes/Mexican StepGrandfather) and Greg G (who produced “Call Me Black” on Third Root’s Stand for Something album), the black/brown hip-hop duo released their latest single, “Revolutionary Theme Music” (featuring Big Rube from Atlanta’s Dungeon Family), also the name of…
Q&A: Pixar Director Saschka Unseld on ‘The Blue Umbrella’
All it took was one rainy day in Los Angeles for Pixar layout artist Saschka Unseld to sprout an idea. While standing outside, Unseld, who had already worked on a number of Pixar films including “Toy Story 3,” “Cars 2,” and “Brave,” noticed an umbrella that had been tossed in the gutter. “I just stood…
Sopranos Actor James Gandolfini Dies
NPR is reporting that James Gandolfini, an actor known for his infamous Tony Soprano mafia boss character on HBO’s “The Sopranos,” died of a “sudden stroke” earlier today while in Italy for the 59th Taormina Film Festival in Sicily.
5 Things To Expect From The Council Runoff Winners
As campaigns wind down and recent city council runoff election winners get the official nod later this week during a swearing-in ceremony at City Hall, what should we expect from our newly elected members once the celebrating is done and they start the real work in office? Based on the Current’s candidate questionnaires from April,…
The Spurs’ 7 Keys to Winning Game 7
Funny thing, a basketball fan’s psyche. Had the Spurs gotten blown out by 30 instead of having a championship snatched out from under Ray Allen’s feet in the final five seconds of Game 6, it’s safe to say San Antonio would be a far more cheerful pace in the hours leading up to the final…
It’s Juneteenth. Where’s the Celebration?
Some things take forever and a day to get done. In 1865, two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Texas were finally informed that the days of slavery were over. The news was delivered by Major General Gordon Granger when his regiment arrived in Galveston to enforce Federal control…
Esperanza Center Joins Little Free Library Movement
On Friday, June 21 the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center will unveil San Antonio’s first Little Free Library. Located at 816 South Colorado, the Little Free Library will allow book lovers to share, swap, and borrow books for free. Part of a worldwide movement initiated by Todd Bol, Little Free Libraries offer communities free books…
Last Day To Buy Your #SPURSHEAD Shirt is Today
Damien Velasco, founder of Sharpen Up Graphics, got the idea from novelty shirts. But he never saw it done for a sports team before. “I wanted something that was going to be unique and get the fans as close as possible to the Spurs,” Velasco said. And that’s exactly what happened during at a fateful…
Texas Senate Votes To Decimate Abortion Access
People are “genuinely afraid” of how the Texas Legislature treats women, said state Sen. Kirk Watson (D-Austin) in an impassioned speech just before the Republican-dominated Senate, in a 20-10 vote, sailed through a measure that would shut down all but five abortion clinics in the state. Watson requested his colleagues remember the day they limited…
It Stinks: Spurs, Manure Squander Fourth-quarter Lead, Vintage Duncan Performance in Demoralizing Loss to Heat
Over 100 games into this NBA season, who knew that the Miami Heat’s least valuable player was LeBron James’ headband? Utterly stymied for a full three quarters of Game 6 of the NBA Finals by the Spurs’ peculiar defensive tag team of Boris Diaw and Kawhi Leonard, James chucked his headband, flexed his receding hairline…
Islands & Tigers: 'Failed Attempts'
"If I could choose from a thousand lovers, I would surely choose you." These telling words begin “Do You Wanna Come Back Home?” — the stellar first track on this delirious summer romp of an EP from one of San Anto’s best young pop-rock groups. It’s that heartfelt belief in the sacredness of youth and the enormity…
Mutemath keeps the faith…to themselves
Even though singer Paul Meany comes from openly Christian (and short-lived) outfit Earthsuit, New Orleans’ Mutemath is not the type of band that flaunts its Christianity in your face. “Mutemath’s music is certainly not Christian-rock,” drummer Darren King told Minneapolis/St. Paul’s City Pages in 2012. “It’s in a much better place where it can exist…
Hell Bibles: Mandatory reading for real metalheads and posers alike
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal By Jon Wiederhorn and Katherine Turman It Books 718 pp., $32.50 The book with the “definitive” oral history of heavy metal is heavy. Heavy on research (the product of 400 interviews), heavy in pages, and heavy on guests (it has a foreword by Anthrax’s Scott Ian…
'Evocative Lust' Showcases BDSM Community
NSFW Photo Gallery: ‘Evocative Lust Lurking on the edge of the neo-burlesque self-empowerment movement is another tradition that pushes tastes for a little lace into darker territory. Bettie Page did it, and so, too, do many normal-seeming folk today. The “it” is fetish photography of the BDSM variety, a prurient art form that delights in…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Recently, a coworker turned me on to a website that features many videos of unspeakable atrocities the drug cartels are committing in Mexico, many graphically displaying murders and beheadings. I just recently saw one of a woman getting her head cut off with a knife! Now I wish I had never seen this,…
Urban Homestead: Raining on Your Garden Parade
Gardening is a sport best undertaken with a sort of live-and-let-die attitude. The recent glut of rain has left a list of victors and victims in our kitchen plot, and it remains to be seen who will survive, who will thrive, and who becomes compost. The most heart-wrenching loss was a huge, fabulous, long-established rosemary…
SB5: Dead Anti-Abortion Bills See New Life In Special Session
For an updated version of this story, read "Texas Senate Votes To Decimate Abortion Access" Just when we thought we evaded a round of draconian abortion bills proposed during the surprisingly quiet 83rd Texas Legislative regular session, Gov. Rick Perry has not-so-surprisingly clumped the most onerous restrictions together and slapped them on the special session…
Dog-Friendly Restaurant Charlie Wants a Burger Still Ruff Around the Edges
On paper, the pup-centric concept behind Charlie Wants a Burger sounds great: a dog-friendly River Walk restaurant specializing in all-American chow, with a charitable tie-in to the Humane Society. But in reality, this utopian doggie vision breaks down faster than a turd in the rain. On my first visit, I brought my 105-pound Great Pyrenees,…
'Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire,' an NRA Love Letter
Once and for all, here’s the meaning of “the right to keep and bear arms.” “They’re mine, you can’t have them, and I got some on me right now — and they’re loaded.” Yes, that’s Ted Nugent speaking on Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire, a Kris Koenig-directed documentary funded through Kickstarter and opening June 20…
Girl in a Coma Singer Nina Díaz’ Spiritual Makeover
“What’s up with Nina?” I asked Faith Radle, Girl in a Coma’s manager, looking at the band’s lead singer, Nina Díaz. It was pouring rain that afternoon in late May, but we were safely sheltered at the ballroom of the Omni Hotel, minutes after Judge Nelson Wolff gave his State of the County address and…
Sigur Rós: 'Kveikur'
That opening rumble is a rocket blasting off into pure, uncut space rock, held in orbit by a low-end that’s death-metal-heavy by Sigur Rós standards. When the bass drops out of album opener “Brennisteinn” (which fittingly translates to “Brimstone”) we’re left floating in that familiar fragment of the galaxy inhabited pretty much exclusively by Sigur…
Artpace International Artist-in-Residence Pak Sheung Chuen Takes on San Antonio
When I sit down with Hong Kong-based artist Pak Sheung Chuen, he opens a small black notebook filled with scrawled Chinese script and abstract drawings, produced while exploring San Antonio over the past three weeks. “That is the record of this kind of writing I do every day. The first part of the creation process…
Down the Hatch: The Six-Demon Bag
Texas is unforgiving country. This giant slab of stone uses every resource it has to chase us off, deter us, or kill us. Fire ants scavenge beneath our feet. Scorpions hang overhead. Black widows and brown recluses hide in the domains of the dark. Moccasins swim in the roots of river-reaching trees, while rattlesnakes wait…
Artpace International Artist-in-Residence Series 1: Believers and Sacred Objects
The Current is pleased to partner with Artpace to present a weekly series of work by International Artist-in-Resident Pak Sheung Chuen. Read more about the Hong Kong-based artist in this interview with Ben Judson. Click on the image to the left to expand. We have reproduced Pak’s text below. Check back next week for the…
No such thing as too many tacos: Expansion plans for three acclaimed SA eateries
Rosario’s Mexican Restaurant is opening a second location on San Pedro sometime this fall. For those of us that love Rosario’s but hate First Friday crowds, this is welcome news. Johnny Hernandez opened a second location of the Fruteria at the Bush airport in Houston, and is planning a third in San Antonio this fall.…
Awesome or Awful: Ke$ha’s Questionable Decisions
Dear Ke$ha, It’s important that you know this comes from a place of love. You are, by far, the most interesting female pop star working right now, I don’t care how much weight Lady Gaga gains or loses. Thank you, especially, for bringing “Die Young” to Top 40 radio. That is one of my top…
To Talk or Not to Talk: HemisFair and Convention Center designs
Taken together, the joint public input processes for both HemisFair park and the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center remind us of that Best in Show quote: “We could talk or not talk forever and still find things to not talk about.” On the “talk forever” side is the HemisFair redesign, which will eventually allow for…
Surfer Blood: 'Pythons'
Three years after Surfer Blood took the indie-rock world by pleasant surprise with their wonderful debut, Astro Coast, the Floridian foursome is back with a more mature yet slightly more boring effort. Though equally laden with bright beachy harmonies and borrowed surf riffs, gone here are some of the more exuberant jagged edges and stretched-out…
Going To 11: Why 'Spinal Tap' is the Hardest Rocking Comedy Ever
The Merciless Book of Heavy Metal Lists ranks 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap as second in a list of “5 Awesome Heavy Metal Movies” (after Heavy Metal Parking Lot). I completely disagree, and this goes beyond heavy metal: This Is Spinal Tap is the best rock ’n’ roll comedy ever made. “I was approached by…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Maybe you’ve seen that meme circulating on the Internet: “My desire to be well-informed is at odds with my desire to remain sane.” If you feel that way now — and I suspect you might soon if you don’t already — you have cosmic permission, at least for a while, to…
Review: Viola's Ventanas
Viola Barrios opened her first restaurant on Avenue B in 1979, the year I first started reviewing restaurants. We share an anniversary. Here’s to you Viola — may your memory linger long. Viola herself didn’t stay long on Avenue B; she and her family went on to build a legend with the ever-expanding Los Barrios…
Escape from First Friday: In search of a rare Pearl
Halcyon Drink: Lagunitas Brewing Co., Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ The xylophone standing in the entryway of Halcyon is the first clue something troubling is underfoot. I suspiciously go back to sipping my beer. What once was a peaceful group of coffee drinkers has almost imperceptibly changed into a large and raucous crowd. My drinking buddy for…
Nike Sucks: Next LeBron Shoe Already Declares Him a “Two-Time Champion”
Via Kix and the City and the Miami New Times, a leak of the sock-liner of the proposed — “proposed” being the operative word — new Nike LeBron X Low, which very clearly states that we should just call off tonight’s game, as well as Game 7, because LeBron and the Heat have already won their…
Jordan Mackey named Exec Chef at Hotel Contessa’s Las Ramblas
John Mackey has been named executive chef at Las Ramblas in Hotel Contessa. Prior to joining the River Walk restaurant, Mackay was executive chef and food and beverage director for the River Terrace Inn and Restaurant Cuvee in Napa, California. A graduate of New England Culinary Institute, Mackey has held similar positions at Seattle, Miami, Naples, and…
5 Perfect Picnic Spots in San Antonio
In honor of National Picnic Day, here are a few places where you can lay down your gingham blanket and munch freely. 1. The Park at Pearl Situated on the San Antonio River, the Park at Pearl is perfect if you’re looking to picnic, relax or catch a performance. Pearl Park features a 1,000- seat…
Spurs’ big night: What would you tell Joey Crawford tonight?
(art by John Mata) NBA veteran referee Joey Crawford will officiate Game 6 of the NBA finals tonight, and true Spurs fans are pissed. Crawford gave Tim Duncan two technicals while Timmy was on the bench in 2007, a feat that earned the ref notoriety, and a suspension for the remainder of that season. Last…
Top 10 Restaurants to Dine with Your Dog in San Antonio
This is Wallace. He is ready to ride and dine. As far as dinner companions go, the well-behaved dog is hard to beat. Who can match the unconditional love of man’s best friend, or the eagerness with which a pup helps to clean fallen food from the ground? Who can act as both icebreaker and…
