The end of the (gov’t-subsidized for-profit) world as we know it
Yes, Obama and the Dems are a Senate vote and a few pen strokes away from systemic health-care reform. In case your divining rod has been whacked off course by the prophesiers of doom, a handy link to several things that the health-care-reform legislation will change immediately, including closing the “doughnut hole” in Medicare prescription…
SXSW Day 3 and 4: Wuss Heaven
Photos by Lauren Martin Thurston Moore Sonic Youth’s most-of-the-time frontman Moore, Thursty as I like to call him, climbs on the Red 7 stage carrying a 12-string guitar, exactly on time. “All right, let’s get started,” he says, and he’s only played a few full measures before it’s completely apparent he doesn’t really need anything…
In front of the music
We all know SXSW is the mecca of music. But what gets you to the show? Usually a visual. Flatstock is a rock poster show featuring original graphic art from more than 80 of the most popular working poster artists today. It’s the mecca of visuals as far as music is concerned. In its 24th…
SXSW Day 3, Pt. 1: A whiner’s premature eulogy
photo by Lauren Martin As I type this on Saturday afternoon, SXSW 2010 has not only been pronounced dead, it’s being gutted and embalmed. I sit in the Austin Convention Center watching maintenance men collapse the booths and soundstages, ripping the concert posters off the pillars. Defeated-looking musicians stomp through, rolling their instruments away, passing…
Show & Prove: Running the Gauntlet
The San Antonio Spurs entered their Friday night contest against the Golden Sate Warriors sitting at 7th place in the Western Conference standings. Despite a recent upswing in their on the court mojo, the Spurs have been unable to gain much ground in the ultra-competitive West, but don’t tell that to the Warriors. San Antonio…
Sunday: Road to Detroit::U.S. Social Forum Hip-hop fundraiser
Road to Detroit U.S. Social Forum Hip-Hop Fundraiser Invincible + Anita Tijoux + Rebel Diaz In GI + Rodstarz from Rebel Diaz SUN March 21 10pm $5 Pedi Cab Bar 415 E Cevallos St 78204 Doors open @ 9 Cash only bar. Atm onsite. Raffle+Arte +Resistencia Invincible Detroit “One of the most talented MC’s I’ve…
Contemporary Art Month CAMMY Awards
Vote now! People’s Choice & Artists’ Choice: cast votes by 5pm Wednesday March 24! This CAM’s closing party on Saturday March 27 will feature the CAMMY AWARDS honoring our artists and showing respect and appreciation for our home-base talent. http://contemporaryartmonth.com/node/990 PEOPLE’S CHOICE: Now is your chance to have your say! Which San Antonio artist will…
Poetry badassery TONIGHT!
Push & Pull You’re Invited! The young poets from the Krier JCTC will read Friday, March 19 @ 6:00 PM at Gemini Ink. Please join us for this first reading and publication of their poetry chapbook. Push and Pull There will be a signing afterward and light refreshments will be served. The event is free…
Addicted to coffee shops? The Current wants you!
A Current call for coffee critics! Join our crack team of café-culture investigators. We’re looking for five individuals who love coffee and, just as importantly, coffee shops, to review SA’s coffee-drinking universe. You’ll be paid beans (brewed, of course), but you’ll be (in)famous. Owners (and their family members and significant others) and employees of SA…
Buddha under the bridge
The homeless dig Kiley Jon Clark’s Buddhist “Street Dharma.” But is he for real? By Enrique Lopetegui candombe108@yahoo.com (Photos by Enrique Lopetegui) I don’t remember being scared, but maybe he sees panic on my face. “Don’t worry, man,” Kiley Jon Clark, a.k.a. Sonom Gyatso, tells me as we approach the West Commerce bridge. “When you…
QueQue update: that damn dam
The QueQue spoke with Public Works Director Majed Al-Ghafry yesterday, who says residents living near SARA dam 15R, located by McAllister Park, can sleep soundly. He created a report earlier this year — more of a “finding” really — to close out that old OMI file, and says the dam is up to spec: it…
Parade Ordinance lawsuit, live at the Fifth Circuit!
Amy Kastely, attorney for the San Antonio Free Speech Coalition, received word late last week that the Fifth Circuit will hear oral arguments in their lawsuit against the City of San Antonio over our contentious parade ordinance. The new ordinance, which the coalition argues infringes on free-speech and assembly rights by allowing the City to…
SXSW Day Two: Old-Timers Night
Ray Davies On one hand, I feel like it sort of betrays everything South by Southwest is supposed to represent for me to spend my first night here watching Ray Davies and Roky Erickson â?? two pretty safely established acts, I’d say, who probably aren’t in need of discovery or extra exposure, or much of…
Big Star’s Alex Chilton dead at 59
Alex Chilton – The Replacement… Alex Chilton, lead and guitarist for the Box Tops and Big Star died last night in a New Orleans emergency room, reportedly of heart failure. Chilton’s biggest commercial success came with the Box Tops, who had a number-one hit in 1967 with “The Letter” when he was just 16. His…
From the whoa, nellie, department: Why does the Zoo get more of Brack?
I realize that the City Hall sanctioned narrative calls for popping champagne corks: the University of the Incarnate Word proposal to lease a small corner of Brackenridge Park for a fine-arts school and gallery (and to use the $1 million+ proposed rent to preserve adjacent Miraflores park) is dead, slayed by the coalition that often…
Petitions circulating to stop SBOE history revision
Frustrated with the justified swipes your out-of-state friends are taking at the Lone Star State’s educational, uh, initiatives? You’re not alone; right on the heels of a well-placed insult from a friend in Bodymore, Murdaland, of all places, I received this call to arms: FORWARD THIS MESSAGE Hiâ?? Last week the Texas State Board of…
Coathangers Show at Ten Eleven
With suggestive lyrics that would make your mom, or even your cool aunt, blush, all girl punk band the Coathangers barraged the 1011 with a highly charged performance. The Atlanta based quartet moved from song to song with the ease of a trapeze artist and the unadulterated precision of a stick of dynamite. Julia Kugel…
Esta Bueno!
Esta Bueno! Composer: Texas Tornadoes Conductor: Texas Tornadoes Label: Bismeaux Records Release Date: 2010-03-17 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording As its title indicates, the long-awaited new Tornados album is good. Really good, if you ask me, and not only for sentimental reasons. Even though Freddy Fender’s voice wasn’t the same, his conviction was intact both in…
Fish Tank
Critic’s Pick Fish Tank Director: Andrea Arnold Screenwriter: Andrea Arnold Cast: Kate Jarvis, Kierston Wareing, Michael Fassbender Release Date: 2010-03-17 Rated: NONE Genre: Film Fish Tank, recently awarded a 2010 BAFTA for Outstanding British Film, follows the hardscrabble life of one 15 year-old girl living in an Essex housing project in Southeast England. Life among…
From the flames
Release Date: 2010-03-17 Revitalization” is a word you’ll likely hear if you spend any time in downtown New Braunfels these days. Thanks in part to a local chapter of the Texas Main Street program, which is part of the Texas Historical Commission, new businesses in the area are returning to the way they originally looked.…
Number-one pho
Pho Ha Long restores our critic’s appetite
Lunch at Mariscos El Bucanero
Release Date: 2010-03-17 If you take the long way to El Bucanero, the Mexican-seafood joint of the hour, you’ll drive San Antonio’s soul-food row, past Chatman’s Chicken, Mr. & Mrs. G’s Home Cooking, and Big Lou’s Pizza, all the way down South W.W. White almost to Southcross, your stomach rumbling the entire way. But push…
What happened in the forest?
Rashomon Director: Akira Kurosawa Screenwriter: Akira Kurosawa Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori Release Date: 2010-03-17 Rated: NONE Genre: Foreign Faced with conflicting claims by victims of Bernard Madoff, bankruptcy judge Barton Lifland complained: “It’s a little like Rashômon.” Like La Dolce Vita, Rashômon is one of the few foreign titles that has entered…
Myth buster
God of War III butchers history
National Acts to Catch
Bear in Heaven Guitarist Adam Wills, an until recently closeted football fan, had an idea the night they played Birmingham, Alabama, last October. “I told `frontman` Jon `Philpot`, ‘Announce that we’re Bear Bryant in Heaven,” says Wills, who pulls for the University of Alabama Crimson Tide. “It’s going to go over well here.’” He was…
Anita Tijoux
Anita Tijoux was born in France in 1977 and started rapping in French, but make no mistake: She’s as Chilean as a cueca (the country’s national dance). Friday, Tijoux spoke to us on the phone from Santiago. She’s a socially conscious rapper and the daughter of a man who fled the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet,…
Live & Local
In person, threesome This Horn of Afrika appear to be mousy hipsters, not pretentious but distracted, as if too busy daydreaming to detect a hole in the ground on a daily stroll. They don’t all know the names to their songs — it’s possible that they’ve invented them as they went along and that instead…
Department of hybrid vigor
I have a dog named Cupcake, and no two people have the same idea about what kind of dog Cupcake is. Cupcake is a splashy-looking animal, so I’m accosted often by strangers who ask, “Hey, what kind of dog is that?” Even though I’ve got plenty of opinions, I reply, “I dunno — she’s just…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican, By now, I’m sure you’re aware of all the hate crimes against Hispanics in the last few years. By now, I’m sure you’re thinking that this is ¡Ask a Mexican!, not ¡Ask a Hispanic! But let me tell you that all the hate crimes against Hispanics have been because they’ve been thought to…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, I started seeing this guy last year. We always had a really good time and got along great. I could see that he really liked me. Then he had a loss in his family, so I just tried to be there for him. This is around the time the “what is this”…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): From what I can tell, your excursion to Fake Paradise didn’t exact too serious a toll. The accidental detour may have seemed inopportune in the moment, but you know what? I think it slowed you down enough to keep you from doing something rash that you would have regretted later. And…
Myth Buster
Sure, Nietzsche proclaimed “God is dead,” but did he bellow it between heaving breaths while standing over God’s disemboweled corpse? Hell, no, he didn’t. That’s just one of the reasons (also: sweet-ass full-body tattoo) that Kratos, who returns for the “final” chapter of Sony’s incredibly popular God of War trilogy, is clearly the superior philosopher.…
Perry’s crazy budget cuts, Rivard’s desal dreams
Bedlam Seeking to meet Texas Governor Rick Perry’s request to cut expenses by 5 percent for the coming two-year budget, Commissioners for the Department of Health and Human Services have selected a slew of preferred reductions, such as closing 200 mental-health beds at four state hospitals, including 50 beds at the San Antonio State Hospital.…
Small type, big damage
It is one of the basic rights of all Americans, enshrined in the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution, that in any civil dispute, we are entitled to a trial by jury. This right is significantly compromised these days, however, by the pervasive use of binding arbitration agreements by corporations that sell products to consumers. This practice has…
Sins of the father
When Simon McBurney’s high-concept production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons landed on Broadway in 2008, the critical reaction was swift and largely condemnatory: how dare a Brit turn a cherished American tragedy into a pseudo-Brechtian (and, hell, probably Commie) performance piece? Complete with (gasp) color video and non-naturalistic sets? But New York critics be…
The ides of Texas are upon us
Think of the Overtime Theater’s “The Ides of Texas” as happy-hour tapas of the San Antonio theatrical scene. Some of the original short plays, penned by local writers and staged by local directors, are light-and-sweet taste-bud tinglers that will leave a smile on your lips. Others — dark, spicy, savory — will engage altogether different,…
Neon Indian
For 22-year-old Alan Palomo, reaching the 16th floor of 30 Rock was like reaching the 25th floor in ToeJam & Earl – surreal, exhilarating, and, thanks to him, soundtracked with electrofunk. He met Jimmy Fallon, he met Gossip Girl’s Jessica Szohr (both big fans). Jimmy held up Palomo’s new record, Psychic Chasms. Palomo flipped the…
San Anto’s Own
Snowbyrd Bands who play official South by Southwest showcases are offered a choice between money and SXSW badges. Snowbyrd vocalist and guitarist Chris Lutz wanted the badge, but he says he was outvoted by the rest of the band. Even so, he sounds like a kid before Christmas, albeit an older one, experienced enough after…
Weird Press Releases, Volume IV: Libertarians don’t want to be counted, dammit.
(You can find the previous volumes of this series here, here, and here!) Libertarians don’t play, y’all. (That’s Ayn Rand, a favorite thinker for many Libertarians, and she is NOT KIDDING WITH THAT HAT. She is also DEAD SERIOUS about the cigarette holder. Furthermore, she believed herself to have written COMPLETELY THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS and EXCELLENT…
Perry to play weekend warrior on the border
From Texas’ real hair-care magnate1: For Immediate Distribution March 16, 2010 News Release Gov. Perry Orders Activation of First Phase Of Texas Spillover Violence Contingency Plan Increases Ground, Air and Maritime Law Enforcement Patrols AUSTIN — Following the recent escalation of murders in northern Mexico and the increasing threat of violence crossing over into neighboring…
Perry’s â??No new taxes!’ = jail deaths, overcrowding
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Seeking to meet Texas Governor Rick Perry’s request to cut expenses by five percent for the coming two-year budget, Commissioners for the Department of Health and Human Services have selected a slew of preferred cuts, including closing 200 mental-health beds at four state hospitals, including 50 beds at San Antonio State Hospital.…
The mysterious lady and the “hearing”-impaired cats
By Enrique Lopetegui candombe108@yahoo.com Remember our favorite cat lady D’Ann Trethan? On September 6, 2007, Animal Care Services seized and, according to Trethan, euthanized 37 cats she was caring for at her home. Trethan claims the City has nabbed 50 felines. She sued the City, and the City responded. Sort of. Trethan sued for seizure…
