Fred Otash’s Noir: Sex, Murder & Hollywood Confessions
A man waits patiently beneath a streetlight. The city’s darkened alleyways etch out like veins behind him. He imagines the streets pumping cigarette smoke as oxygen. As his mark leaves the Chevy, the man tosses his lit cigarette into the pooling water along the gutter. He makes softly for the bushes, adjusts a microphone and…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Summer of ’83: Scarface
In conjunction with its Summer of ’83 and Tough Guy Cinema series, Alamo Drafthouse walks “the thin white line between moral drama and celebratory excess” with a revival screening of Brian De Palma’s American crime classic Scarface. A remake of a 1932 adaptation of Armitage Trail’s 1929 novel of the same name, the film centers…
5 Videos You Need To Watch Before The “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer” Documentary Premiere On HBO
“Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 16 months, you know the story: on February 21, 2012, members of Pussy Riot stormed the altar of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior and sang a self-penned punk anthem whose chorus borrowed the opening of Rachmaninoff’s “Ave Maria” and loudly implored “Mother of God,…
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Martinis
The martini has been the subject of much discussion over the years and will be subject to even more when the 5th Annual RiverTini Pour-Off Mix and Serve takes place at the Embassy Suites on the River Walk June 10. With all due respect to the more than twenty competitors signed up to do battle,…
Heat Even Score With Spurs, Series Coming To San Antonio
For a man of his size, Tiago Splitter doesn’t dunk often. Now the world knows why. In the midst of his team being on the wrong end of a 30-5 late-game run Sunday night in Miami, Splitter caught a Tony Parker pass at the dotted circle, took a step toward the bucket and rose, ball cocked, intent…
Black Sabbath: '13'
What good will it do for the founding fathers of heavy metal to get back together at this late stage, not only in their careers, but in their lives? Not much, judging from the harsh reaction the Rick Rubin-produced 13 has gotten in some quarters. But that reaction ignores the powerful way that the new…
Beady Eye: 'BE'
Following a plodding, less-than-stellar first album, Liam Gallagher’s latest outfit Beady Eye return with BE. Producer Dave Sitek (TV on the Radio) lends an all-too-necessary hand, forging the group ahead to explore psychedelic-influenced charms with such tracks as “Flick of the Finger.” The first single balances crisp horns and fuzzed guitars, all rollicking brilliantly behind…
Ask Aliyah: Dealing With The Office Whiner
Me, an office newbie with a desk located near a much trafficked corridor entrance/exit. Him, an office veteran with a bad attitude and a need for unloading his disappointments/observations/concerns/bullshit on others. He stops by my desk at least twice per day and I am afraid I will be lumped in as being the ‘Eeyore 2.0’…
Sunday Comic: The Adventures of Pizza and Myrtle
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Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Geto Boys
Geto Boys — Houston gangsta rap trio and precursors to the dirty south sound — have been an important force in the rap world since their classic 1989 album Grip It! On That Other Level. Though they haven’t released any new material since 2005’s The Foundation, the trio of Scarface, Bushwick Bill, and Willie D…
Catching Up With Marcus Rubio
After a near-decade in San Antonio actively recording, performing and programming his works with various projects and outfits, composer and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Rubio, the 2012 Current local artist of the year, moved to the Los Angeles area late last summer to pursue an MFA in Music Composition at the California Institute of the Arts (commonly…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Texas Folklife Festival
The cultural fabric of the Lone Star state comes to life in living color at the Texas Folklife Festival. Modeled after the inaugural Smithsonian Folklife Festival and launched in 1972, the three-day fest brings 250 organizations together to celebrate the history and heritage of Texas. A family favorite for its worldly array of edible treats…
Warped Tour Band Alert: Five Knives
Hailing out of Nashville, Tennessee, Five Knives is one band to keep an eye out for as they make their way down to the Lone Star State for Warped Tour in San Antonio on August 3. The four-piece outfit just released their debut EP The Rising. “Our sound’s kind of schizophrenic,” said singer Anna Worstell in…
Jade Esteban Estrada in ‘The Ecstasy and the Agony of Steve Jobs’
Jade Esteban Estrada knows how to fill the stage all by himself, but a few eyebrows were raised when it was announced earlier this year that he would take on renowned raconteur Mike Daisey’s solo show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Estrada is a comedian, singer, and gay entertainment icon. Daisey’s monologue…
Preview U-God’s ‘The Keynote Speaker,’ Out 7/23
U-God is back. Four years after Dopium, his third solo album, the Wu-Tang Clan member returns with The Keynote Speaker, set for release on July 23. With RZA as executive producer, the album features guest appearances by Method Man, GZA, Inspectah Deck, Styles P, Elzhi (Slum Village), Kool Keith and others. “I know yall seen…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: Moodie Black
Whether you call it noise rap, industrial hip-hop, or freaky-urban, the music of Arizona’s Moodie Black (pictured) is sublime in a deeply unsettling kind of way. Well-crafted and apocalyptic lyrics hover over and in between smoggy clouds of racket, like the rapture of decay that calls to mind nothing more than the screeching jolts of…
Spurs Win Game 1 In Spite of — or Perhaps Because of — a Lackluster Triple-Double by LeBron
Is it possible for an individual player to tally 18 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists in an NBA Finals game and have that performance be considered lackluster? If you’re LeBron James, and your Miami Heat are playing the most consistently elite team of the last 15 years in the San Antonio Spurs, the answer…
SAISD Board President Ed Garza’s Incredible* Real Estate Deals
*Incredible as in ‘not credible’ The blog Banker’s Anonymous is like a junkyard dog peskily tearing at SAISD Prez Ed Garza’s pant leg. A concerned SAISD parent and a “recovering banker,” BA has a knack for following the money. You may recall how he shed light on Garza’s hand picked Superintendent candidate’s questionable financial…
Hear Druggist’s new single, “See You Alone”
After transplanting to San Fran and taking a break from the Druggist project to work on other things, Blake Cormier and Zach Dunlap are back with this raw and righteous summer scorcher. Simple, garage-rock raucous, and brief, “See You Alone” will whet your appetite for the group’s upcoming fourth LP.
Nine Inch Nails’ New Single, SA concert
(photo by Rob Sheridan) Back in February, Trent Reznor, the leading visionary behind Nine Inch Nails, announced the return of the band and some tour details. However, there was no exact information regarding any new material, until now. After nearly five years of an indefinite hiatus, Nine Inch Nails have now announced a new album…
10 Awesome Spurs Viewing Parties Happening Tonight in San Antonio
1. Where: AT&T Center When: 6:30 p.m. Who: Bandwagon Fans Why: Massive screens, parking is free, Los Lonely Boys will perform pre-game on center court (lol), free tickets at any local Wing Stop. 2. Where: The Friendly Spot When: Anytime after 3 p.m. Who: The Fan with a Family Why: Friendly Spot offers a playground for kids…
Bexar County Jury: It’s OK To Kill Hookers if They Take Your Money and Won’t Fuck You
Say you find a prostitute on Craigslist, like what you see, and pay her $150 to come over. Then, say she refuses to have sex with you and won’t give you the money back. According to a Bexar County jury, it’s ok if you shoot and kill that woman. Yesterday a jury of your peers…
“Go Spurs/ESpurs Go,” Mariachi Style
Move over, King Kyle Lee: you’re not the only Spurs fan with a song vying to become the team’s 2013 Finals anthem. Here’s the song San Antonio’s own Mariachi Campanas de América came up with. Campanas de América, arguably SA’s finest mariachi, has a long history with the Spurs, having played at the games in…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: “Texas Tough”
Blue Star’s first all-female exhibition since 2008, “Texas Tough” rounds up artists from Houston, Dallas, and Austin. Depicting floating virgins and towering trees in two- and three-dimensional works, Sharon Korpriva meshes landscapes with visions of afterlife in “From Terra to Verde.” “Origins” promises “dense, chaotic forms and open drawings in space” from Sherry Owens, an…
Expanded Version of Juvenile Sex Offender Story at FWWeekly.com
Our sister to the north, Fort Worth Weekly, picked up Current staff writer Michael Barajas’ piece on the effects of being on the sex offender registry for crimes committed as a juvenile. The original piece sparked several readers also convicted of sex crimes as juveniles to come forward with their own stories of how…
Who Will Be The Next Doctor Who?
With the none too startling news that Matt Smith will be relinquishing his role as BBC’s title character in Doctor Who, theories abound as to who will take over the TARDIS and sonic screwdriver next. Though failing to reach present international interest at the time, the transition from David Tennant to Matt Smith reached a fever…
Watch: Superstorm Sandy Documented on ‘Beach 119’
In October 2012, Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc in a quant neighborhood merely 23.8 miles away from bustling Manhattan, known as Beach 119th Street. Accounting the residents’ stories about Sandy’s destruction, the short documentary Beach 119 sets to explore how amidst tragedy and strife, a small neighborhood of friends, families, and strangers came together in a…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: London: The Modern Babylon
A nominee for Best Documentary at last year’s European Film Awards, London: The Modern Babylon reaches back to the dawn of film to explore London through archival footage and the voices of Londoners past and present, powered by the flow of popular music across the century. Directed by Julien Temple (The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll…
One Day Only: ‘The Last Unicorn’ In SA
The Last Unicorn, the 1982 classic animated film, will be featured as a special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse Westlakes Theaters on Thursday at 7 p.m. Often known as America’s greatest living fantasist, Peter Beagle (who will be present at the screening) wrote the novel and the screenplay of the film directed by Arthur Rankin and…
El Ten Eleven Learns to Play With Others
Hey, guess what, everybody? Kristian Dunn, bassist/guitarist for Los Angeles’ El Ten Eleven (no relation to the music venue on Avenue B), thinks his band’s latest album, Transitions Remixed, is pretty boss. “I was really surprised at how much I loved that record,” he says. “It really went beyond my expectations. I’m kind of, I’m…
Tattooed Ladies' Night at Nightrocker Live
Roland “Nightrocker” Fuentes offers the least ladylike “ladies’ night” I’ve ever seen. For girls who just wanna have fun — and by fun I mean slamming 50-cent tequila shots, watching half-naked dancers waggle their tits, and listening to rap-rock — the newly revamped Nightrocker Live offers good times in excess. If you equate “ladies’ night”…
TEEN: 'Carolina' EP
Biggest turnoff in indie rock? A cold, almost calculated lack of emotion. On TEEN’s 2012 debut, In Limbo, the band was surely guilty of this cardinal sin, shuffling their feet through an album’s worth of otherwise well-crafted synth-pop. But with their follow-up Carolina EP, the Brooklyn quartet sheds their K-hole detachment for something more expressive,…
Alice in Chains: 'The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here'
The aging Northwestern transplant in me wants the recent grunge revival movement to succeed; the virulent anti-nostalgic critic in me wants to see it fall on its face. Luckily, or not, both of them get what they want on AiC’s second post-comeback album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. If you’re the sort who thinks the…
The Queen of Smoke Sails Ahead
Sometimes being behind the curve is a good thing. When the national economy tanked in 2008, chefs lost their berths by the hundreds as high-end restaurants closed in hard-hit areas. Lacking a steady gig, some found the scratch to invest in a trailer or truck, tried their luck on the road, and the food truck…
Public Art: Creating 'Ballroom Luminoso'
The unexpected Ballroom Luminoso project on San Antonio’s South Side astonished almost everyone involved. “I was really surprised,” said Blessing Hancock, one half of the public art team that created the colorful, glowing orbs now hanging from a highway underpass at the I-35 intersection of Theo and Malone streets. Hancock and partner Joe O’Connell were…
Burger hounds and grilled goodness
There’s a new burger joint on the River Walk now — Charlie Wants a Burger at 223 Losoya. The restaurant is part of the Paesanos Restaurant Group, the folks who oversee all of the Paesanos restaurants, Rio Rio Cantina, and Zuni Grill. ‘Charlie’ is actually a Jack Russell terrier, which explains why the restaurant also…
What a Bunch of Hoo-ha: Alamo Director Divorces Over Sexting
Sometimes, as they say, “it’s lonely at the top;” so lonely that you just have to reach out into the technology-obsessed darkness and flash your junk à la Anthony Weiner. That’s essentially what Melinda Tomerlin Navarro, executive administrator of the Alamo and active member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, did last year,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The longest natural arch in the world is the Fairy Bridge in Guangxi Province, China. Made of limestone, this 400-foot-wide span crosses over the Buliu River. No one outside of China knew about it until 2009, when an American explorer spied it on Google Earth. Let’s make the Fairy Bridge your…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers: U.K.’s spectacular Guardian newspaper has asked if I could field some questions for their readers as part of the paper’s summer travel package—turns out Brits want to know more about Mexican food! Let’s be benevolent toward those buggerers: their idea of what our comida constitutes comes solely from their gabacho cousins, and not…
Coming Soon: Texas Brewpub Boom
The pints had barely been drained from toasting the passage of new small brewery legislation by the Texas Senate and House when brewery owners began planning their expansions. (See “Winners and Losers Emerge in Beer Battles at the Texas Lege,” March 20, 2013) The first out of the box was Jester King, an Austin microbrewery…
Pussy Riot Won the War
The Sex Pistols have nothing on Pussy Riot. While Johnny Rotten and co. changed the course of music with only one album and two years of live performances, all the Russian feminist art collective/punk band needed to make an impact was 40 seconds (and no album). Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the…
Masters of regionalism at the McNay
Brash, big-mouthed Thomas Hart Benton railed against the conspiracy of homosexuals he thought controlled the 1930s New York art scene, while Grant Wood was a shy, timid, deeply-closeted gay man who remained true to his rural Iowa roots. Although the pair never met, they are forever linked in the American canon under the rubric of…
Newsmonger: Regular Session Round-up
Unlike our rainy late spring, the 83rd regular legislative session shocked Texans for being, well, dry. Where were the knock-down, drag-out fights over abortion, drug testing welfare recipients, immigration, and education we predicted back in January? (“Welcome to the Funhouse,” Jan. 2, 2013) Not to say some of them couldn’t rear their ugly heads in…
White Elefant Presents Debut LP at The Mix
At a time when musical artists, local and otherwise, are increasingly gadget-obsessed and depressingly convinced that the pile-on approach makes their work more interesting, San Antonio’s White Elefant finds their depth and charm in simplicity. Conceived in friendship and born in a one-car garage in 2006, White Elefant carved a faint niche for themselves sporadically…
Questions for Former Spur Brent Barry: An Interview by Artist Gary Sweeney
Just how cool is Brent Barry? He helped the San Antonio Spurs win NBA Championships in 2005 and 2007. He currently ranks 13th in career three-point field goals made, shooting over 40 percent from outside the arc. Barry won the NBA Slam Dunk contest in 1996 (wearing his warm-ups!) by taking off from the free-throw…
Megadeth: 'Super Collider'
With Slayer mired in tragedy and Metallica a wreck of its former self, it falls to Dave Mustaine to bear the torch of thrash’s golden era and, to be honest, political crankery aside, he’s done a pretty good job of it up until now. But Super Collider is a dud that swaps Megadeth’s blistering consistency…
Does Taco House Make San Antonio’s Best Puffy Taco?
“Doble Cero! Doble Cero!” Having received a receipt ending in two zeros, that was one of the possible responses. But having earlier watched my order for puffy tacos being dispatched to the kitchen along a wobbly wire, I wasn’t sure whether the shout-out would come in English or Spanish. Taco House, furnished with a motley…
The Rich Hands: 'Dreamers'
Though the “garage rock” label has, over the years, become ubiquitous enough as to be rendered somewhat ineffective as a descriptor, San Antonio’s The Rich Hands make the kind of music that the term was invented for. Dreamers, the group’s towering and gritty debut, is bright, loud, muddy, and chock-full of poppy hooks. If these…
Bexar County Jail's Fatal Flaws Come to Light
Thomas Taylor wasn’t well the night he climbed Bexar County jail’s front steps last summer. The 30-year-old electrician battled drug addiction for much of his adult life, drawn to the dulling effects of narcotic pain pills and Xanax. For years, Taylor tried to get clean, taking Suboxone — a synthetic opioid, like methadone — and…
Taste This: Chicago-Style Hot Dog, $3.69
If you’ve ever been to Chicago, you know why the term for flashy styling in the surfing world is “hotdogging.” If you’ve never been, get yourself downtown to Jerry’s Chicago Style Hot Dogs and find out why. Not just a weiner, this dog is done up to Windy City specs personally by a Chicago native,…
Cityscrapes: Word Game
“Regional Economic Generator” “Multipurpose Convention and Sports Facility” “National retailers like Barnes & Noble and Bath and Body Works” “Full-Service Boutique Hotel” “Very Tall Focus Building Site” Our politicians have a wonderful way with words here in SA. Things they — or the local business folk — want are often packaged and sold with words…
Beck Releases New Single: “Defriended”
Everyone has been giving Beck a hard time. It’s been four years since anyone has heard a proper followup to the guero superstar’s 2008 album Modern Guilt. However the wait is now over. Rolling Stone recently reported that he’s working on “a previously announced acoustic album plus another album that the source describes as the…
This Bytes: Spicy Watermelon Margarita Recipe
Perfecting the perfect margarita can be a bit challenging. Especially when you have a bunch of women throwing in their two cents. Believe me if there is one thing we know it’s a good margarita! When you’re born and raised in San Antonio you learn a few things. Before we get to the absolutely delicious…
Stay Current with the Pick of the Day: TPR Cinema Tuesdays: The Birds
Back in the summer of 1961, crazed seagulls suicidally flew into the sides of houses along the coastline of Monterey Bay. The cause was a mystery. About three years ago, scientists developed a working hypothesis for what happened: contaminated plankton poisoned the food chain, which eventually caused brain damage and seizures in seagulls. For director…
‘Hellcab’ Returns For One More Night
Do to popular demand, the AtticRep production of Will Kern’s Hellcab will return to the Attic Theatre stage for one more show this Friday, June 7 at 8 p.m. Based on Kern’s experiences driving a hack in Chicago, Hellcab features seven actors playing 36 characters in over 20 vignettes that lay out in raw but popping…
Taylor Family Sues Bexar County for Son’s ‘Untimely’ Jail Death
Taylor and daughter Adilynn Last Friday the family of Thomas Taylor filed a lawsuit against Bexar County and the Sheriff’s office regarding the “untimely death” of Taylor within seven hours of turning himself into jail this past August. The Facts: On August 21, 2012, Thomas Taylor turned himself in to the Bexar County Adult Detention…
