Hays Street resistance: micro-brewery or community park?
A year ago, Current beer columnist Travis Poling wrote up the news that Alamo Beer Company was making for a new pub on the city’s east side, opening his dispatch with the words, “The view from the Hays Street Bridge tells stories for those willing to see them.” Of course, history and the lessons thereof…
Latin tribute to Michael Jackson in the works
Tito Nieves, India, Jennifer Peña (from SA), Obie Bermúdez, and others will take part of Unity, The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson. This reminds me of a surprisingly good salsa tribute to the Beatles released in the ’90s. The problem is: the press release I got has no release date, and when I called the…
“World’s poorest president” stops the show in Rio
Uruguay’s José “Pepe” Mujica, a former leftist tupamaro guerrilla leader who was kept in a hole and tortured for 14 years until receiving amnesty in 1985, is the world’s poorest president. He makes $12,500 a month but only keeps $1,250 for himself. The rest, he donates to charity. He still drives an old VW and…
Cirque du Soleil’s Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour
If you missed Cirque du Soleil’s “Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour,” June 23 at AT&T Center, I feel sorry for you. I feel even more sorry for the fact that there was only one performance in San Antonio, but you can’t blame Cirque du Soleil for it: ours was a near sell out (not…
Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon to release collaboration
After their benefit single “Early in the Morning,” Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and Kim Gordon have confirmed they’ll release YOKOKIMTHURSTON on September 24 internationally and Sept. 25 in the U.S. via Chimera Music.
SA Film Festival winners announced
Our congrats to local filmmaker Sam Lerma, who won the Best San Antonio Filmmaker prize at the San Antonio Film Festival for his short Lilia. Here’s the complete list of jury winners: 1. SAFILM Grand Prize Portion (2012) Dir. Gisberg Bermúdez 2. Jury Prize Best Performance David Diaan for Mossadegh (2012) 3. Jury Prize Best Narrative Short…
‘Bible Storyland’ at the SA Film Festival
If you feel clueless about what you just saw on this trailer, don’t feel bad: I felt the exact same way. I couldn’t figure out what the movie was about. Was it Disney? Was it about a man’s obsession? Obsession with what? All I knew is that its director, Stephanie Hubbard, and her main subject,…
‘Moonrise Kingdom,’ one of Wes Anderson’s best movies
Happy trails Wes Anderson carves out one of his best movies The characters in Wes Anderson’s movies live in a fantasyland. Going back to his 1998 breakthrough Rushmore to 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (a stop-motion animated film about woodland creatures that takes the whole fantasy thing to the extreme), the boys, girls, men, women, and…
‘Brave’: Pixar goes Disney in its first period piece
It’s a Small World Pixar goes Disney in its first period piece Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) has a problem with authority, especially her nagging mom, who just wants her to settle down with a nice boy from one of the neighboring clans in their medieval Scottish village. But she’s a super-strong heroine who…
Fun Fun Fun Fest: 2nd lineup leak
As some of you may know, the identities of the first bands to perform at Austin’s 2012 Fun Fun Fun Fest (Nov. 2-4) were announced recently by none other than the Viceroy of Auditorium Shores. But that’s not all. Just minutes ago, we’ve received the festival’s second lineup leak. The only tickets on sale right…
Ordinary and Quiet by Steve Calamars
There just aren’t enough good stories out there with leeches in them. I mean leeches are kinda like stories. They settle in and suck bits and pieces of you into them. You become part of the story, one of the integral parts of the stories, the life blood, so to speak, of the story. The…
Actress Bitsie Tulloch talks ‘The Artist’
In the Academy Award-winning film The Artist, Bitsie Tulloch plays Norma, an actress in the 1920s starring in a silent movie with a veteran actor (Jean Dujardin) who has no interest in evolving with the industry and making movies with sound. During an interview with me, Tulloch, 31, best known for her role on the…
Bernal vs. payday lenders
Downtown Councilman Diego Bernal doesn’t pull punches explaining his thoughts on payday lenders. In a room teeming with lobbyists and supporters of the payday and title loan industry at council’s governance committee meeting Wednesday he chided the industry’s “just barely, not quite criminal practices.” “A lot of folks in town are working class and these…
Bexar County, Maruchan Ramen, and wage theft in Texas
By Andrew Oxford While city and county officials weigh their proper roles in the minimum-wage economy alongside a proposed multi-million-dollar package of tax incentives to attract a Ramen noodle factory to the county, a report published earlier this month by the think tank Progressive States Network suggests state and local governments in Texas should be…
Fourth annual RiverTini Pour-Off lights up the River Walk
By Anne Vanzant On Tuesday evening, the newly restored ballroom at Hyatt Regency morphed into a martini mecca courtesy of the fourth annual RiverTini Pour-Off, a San Antonio River Foundation fundraiser intended to raise money for the beautification of the San Antonio River as a benefit to the community. The funds will be utilized for…
Robert “Kool” Bell: The Current Q & A
Kool & The Gang 2012: founding members Dennis Thomas, George Brown, Robert “Kool” Bell, and Ronald Bell (photo by Silvia Mautner) When Kool & The Gang was putting the world to dance in the ’70s, Van Halen was only beginning to get noticed after a decade struggling in the Sunset Strip. When Van Halen exploded…
SA2020 offers summer volunteer opportunities with new website
When San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro unveiled his ambitious SA2020 vision for the City last year, I had mixed reactions. I really wanted to be jazzed. The idea as a whole is good one. I totally believe in creating community, collaborations, and making positive changes for the good of all our citizens. But, I also…
Radio Show Time!!!
Stay a while and listen!! I know it’s been a while, and for that I cannot apologize enough. I’m sure a bunch of you out there have been knee deep in Diablo 3 like myself. Thankfully, I was able to pull myself away and make this post about the radio show I was on last…
