Chalk one up for the god guys: Living Stones Ministries stays open
Judge Peter Sakai ruled early this afternoon that Living Stones Ministries, the Eastside homeless shelter and church, could remain open, provided it accepted no new residents at this time, corrected any additional code violations and safety hazards, and applied within the week for an appropriate Certificate of Occupancy and zoning. Living Stones residents, who along…
CPS gave Board Secretary chair, iPhone, and a year’s salary
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com When negotiating his separations papers with his former masters at CPS Energy late last year, former CPS Board Secretary and the Vice President of Nuclear Development Robert “Bob” Temple asked for so few things, it appears. His office chair and computer desk went with him. As did his iPhone (purged of company…
A public-health issue or a pre-Haven skirmish?
The City lost its first-round skirmish with an Eastside shelter dedicated to the homeless and impoverished yesterday when Judge Toni Arteaga declined to force Living Stones Ministries to close its doors. The City’s move followed a DART inspection March 16. City Attorney Savita Rai claimed inspectors found inch-long bedbugs, exposed wires, and inadequate sanitary facilities,…
After ‘Porn’ … My body, my â??self,’ & grasping after new paradigms
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com What makes porn â??porn’? While researching and writing the story that became Porn, Addiction, and the Black Market it was hard not to stray away from the tale’s natural thread, the question: does online pornography facilitate or accelerate real-world sexual crimes. Just ask my editor about that sometime. The discussion about why…
SXSW: Neon Indian
As Neon Indian set up at the Emo’s Annex Pitchfork day party on Friday, people grew anxious. “We’re Neon Indian,” said front man Alan Palomo as he adjusted the microphone. Someone in the crowd yelled back, “Hell yes you are!” After all there is a giant billboard of Palomo’s face keeping it real on Red…
Internet meme fun: Lololololol
If you’re like me, you enjoy good ol’ fashioned internet meme (I still occasionally RickRoll my brother). Like, here’s Hitler reacting to something. Here’s a post with a bunch of meme-y youtube videos. My favorite recent one, however, is this, brought to my attention by eagle-eyed friend Jennifer Marcha Allen: A Russian singer named Eduard…
Even more SXSW: Yokozuna, The Hong Kong Blood Opera, Los Odio
by Jeffrey Wright The SXSW festival has served as a prime opportunity for Latin American bands to gain exposure among US audiences, label execs, and industry scouts, and this year that tradition continued to build. The SA Current was on hand Friday, March 19 for the Gibson Latino venue at Austin’s Opal Divine’s Freehouse on…
Honor of the badgeless: SXSW 2010
“I’m with the band photographer.” This statement alone may be your golden ticket to SXSW ecstasy. This is how our freelancer, Will Lee, got into some of the biggest shows without a badge over the weekend. So next year, pack up your fancy camera – or handcuff yourself to your friend with an equally fancy…
Lunch at Cafe des Artistes
Release Date: 2010-03-24 The meals I’ve had at Café des Artistes, the new Watel-family restaurant on the grounds of the San Antonio Museum of Art, have so far been disappointing, and I’m taking it hard. The café is a stroll from the Current offices, and its covered terrace overlooks the new Museum Reach of the…
Cheated
Chloe belongs on Skinemax
The real housewives of San Antonio
Release Date: 2010-03-24 No, the SA edition of the embarrassingly addictive reality show doesn’t exist (yet), but I found myself fantasizing about it over a crisp glass of prosecco with Current staffer Sarah Fisch one recent evening. Bubbles rose to the surface as we imagined the cast: a bitter soccer mom in Alamo Heights, a…
Viet Ruse
Viet Ruse Composer: Viet Ruse Label: Self-Released Release Date: 2010-03-24 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording If you’ve taken our advice and seen Viet Ruse perform at any of the shows they’ve played around town in the past year or so, you’ll recognize most if not all of the songs on…
Broken Bells
Broken Bells Composer: Broken Bells Label: Columbia Release Date: 2010-03-24 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording For all the critical hosannas and fans the Shins have racked up over the years, they’re not much fun. They’re not so musically adventurous either. Which makes Shins frontman James Mercer’s role in Broken Bells…
Sisterworld
Sisterworld Composer: Liars Label: Mute Release Date: 2010-03-24 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Look no further than Sisterworld’s opening track, “Scissor,” to hear Liars’ influences. The ethereal beginning may echo Liars’ 2006 masterwork, Drum’s Not Dead, but the vocals sound like TV on the Radio. Just as you’re growing comfortable…
Plastic Beach
Plastic Beach Composer: Gorillaz Label: Virgin Release Date: 2010-03-24 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording When Gorillaz debuted more than 10 years ago, they seemed to be nothing more than a whimsical side project for Blur’s Damon Albarn, who surrounded himself with a cast of “virtual musicians” (Albarn and the group…
Repo Men
Critic’s Pick Repo Men Director: Miguel Sapochnik Screenwriter: Miguel Sapochnik Cast: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga, Liev Schreiber, Carice van Houten Release Date: 2010-03-24 Rated: R Genre: Film Most science-fiction films start out deeply in debt, and Repo Men – a competent, if somewhat uneven, futuristic thriller – is no exception. Its creditors include…
Porn, addiction, and the black market
Minutes before San Antonio resident Sean Block was sent up for his part in the attempted sale of his girlfriend’s 5-year-old and a single forwarded link to a child-porn website, he blamed his actions on his arrogance and selfishness, on his failure to “get the help that I needed years ago.” Though jail guards lost…
The lawless church
The Biblical formula “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” is generally taken to mean that people should recognize the authority of the state in secular matters, but that is not necessarily what Jesus meant by it. It is certainly not the current practice of the…
Dear Uncle Mat
I am a 23-year-old virgin. Never even dated. I don’t know if I’m gay or straight, and at this point I don’t think it matters. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. I am a guilt-ridden and self destructive masochist. It mostly centers around me being castrated and victimized. Back when I was 18,…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): All but one of our planet’s mountain ranges have been mapped: the Gamburtsev Mountains, which are buried under 2.5 miles of ice in Antarctica. Recent efforts to get a read on this craggy landscape, aided by a network of seismic instruments, have revealed some initial details about it, including its role…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I just read that Speedy Gonzales is getting his own feature film and will be voiced by George Lopez. I read in the Hollywood Reporter that Lopez said he gave Speedy his “Latino Seal of Approval.” Who grants this seal? What does it look like? And how did Lopez get it? — Hija…
When ‘Alive’ committed murder
It’s a pretty common assumption that rock ’n’ roll – at least rock ’n’ roll in the form codified by the classic-rock giants of the late ’60s and early ’70s – is dead. That assumption is not unfair; rock ’n’ roll has splintered into so many subgenres and micro-classifications that, today, everything from Fuck Buttons…
Country my ass
Austin musician Dale Watson once recorded a song called “Lost My Heart in San Antone,” but with the exception of a couple of appearances at Sam’s Burger Joint and the Lone Star brewery, he’s had trouble finding a suitable venue in the heart of the city. “I love San Antone,” he says “but it seems…
Live & Local
Yoshimoto’s songs are all constructed like rollercoasters: They build gradually, slow and controlled at first, ratcheting up a near-90-degree angle ascent. Guitarist and vocalist Tiffany Farias, who initially carries herself like a concert violinist — fully composed, perfect posture and finger placement — best exemplifies the aesthetic of the songs’ first sections. But then drummer…
The Sound & the Fury
Saturday is party time. Viet Ruse is celebrating the release of their new EP (read our review, page 54) 9 p.m. Saturday at Hausman Millworks (925 W. Russell). Admission is $2, or free with food or clothing donation to Inner City Development — and don’t tell your mom, but there’s gonna be a keg. Jason…
Havana social
Oil and water. Fire and ice. Locals and tourists. Was there ever a rivalry so needlessly twisted? While visitors crave the authentic experiences enjoyed by the natives, we all but recede to distant hometown corners, and never the twain do meet, despite a shared fondness for the River Walk, the Spurs, and margaritas. Given this…
Rated double-X
On the run from a nightmarish civil war, social worker Leymah Gbowee couldn’t give her hungry son even a “piece of doughnut,” but, together with several thousand women in the same seemingly powerless situation, she managed what American protestors and politicians, and even the United Nations couldn’t: uniting Christians and Muslims to bring about the…
SOLI Power
The SOLI Chamber Ensemble was in excellent form at the Blue Star Center for Contemporary Arts March 11. There, surrounded by the varied works of the Amalgamations exhibit `reviewed in these pages March 10`, music lovers listened to pieces by composers Timothy Kramer, Isaiah Putman, and Diego Vega, all of whom were in attendance. The…
The opera sings for supper, TX shops its nuclear dump
Zoonotics “Whatever Lila `Cockrell` wants, Lila gets,” Nelson Wolff once told a roomful of San Antonio politicos, and it was still true at Thursday’s press conference celebrating the defeat of the University of Incarnate Word’s proposal to transform a neglected 2.5 acre corner of Brackenridge Park into a fine-arts center, gallery, and fencing studio. Under…
Students ask Alamo Colleges to protect sexual orientation
San Antonio College students plan to ask the Alamo Colleges board of trustees tonight to add sexual orientation to the list of protected categories in the district’s nondiscrimination policy, which currently reads: “The Alamo Colleges do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability with respect to access,…
Smashing ACORN
The Express-News ran two pickup stories this week — one from the New York Times, the other from the Associated Press — about ACORN’s potentially fatal fiscal problems. Below, you’ll find a story by Current sister paper Metro Times that details the crimes against an organization that surely (legally and fairly) helped elect Barack Obama,…
