Biga Birthday Bash
While I’m still thinking of bread, it seems appropriate to mention that Biga on the Banks is celebrating its tenth anniversary downtown this yearâ??appropriate not only because they deserve accolades and encomiums, but because the celebration reminds me of LocuStreet Bakery, Debra Auden’s enterprise that occupied the rear of the original Locust Street location. From…
Pavil Pours Pale (Ale)
You’ll have to hurry for this one. While San Antonio has numerous places to knock back a brew to the accompaniment of good grubâ??and both Blue Star and Freetail Brewing are among themâ??the opportunities to sit down to a carefully considered beer and food pairing are few and far between. Perhaps in honor of its…
I Brake For Bread
I Brake for Bread Crisis! Ovens crash! The ovens at Whole Foods were out of order on Saturday, just when I was attempting to stock up on ficelles, that smaller sibling of the baguette that’s almost indispensible in my house for serving with cheese, spreads and other pre-meal palliatives designed to divert attention from the…
The Trinity diploma rumor mill
Seriously, guys: Check your facts The mainstream media and Trinity’s â??diploma controversy’ By Jake Muncy jmuncy@trinity.edu Internet news hubs such as Huffington Post and Fox News have gotten ahold of a religion-related debate going on at Trinity University and have distorted the story to an amazing degree. The story first hit the San Antonio Express-News…
Monarch crash has roots in U.S. suburbs, farms â?? not just Mexican damp
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The spring monarch migration has been a bust. Only a lucky few have caught sight of more than a couple of the iconic insects currently on their northward jaunt through Texas. Mainstream news reports have cited key culprits of the population collapse of this most recognizable of the flitter-bys. Soggy weather and…
Air Wars: AACOG, Bexar fight EPA’s proposed tightening of air regs
That’s under EPA’s “old” rule. Gird yourself for the red ink of *really* clean skies. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The lung-assaulting haze that sits on other Texas cities like Dallas and Houston half the year is so brutal that there really isn’t any debate about which direction to move. The need for the dismantling of the…
Clash of the Titans
Clash of the Titans Director: Louis Leterrier Screenwriter: Louis Leterrier Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes Release Date: 2010-04-01 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Our Rating: 3.00 Director Louis Leterrier’s loud-and-proud remake of 1981’s Ray Harryhausen-assisted Greek tale Clash of the Titans shares more in common with Avatar than just adventure, 3-D hubris and Sam…
FONTMASTERS! No, really, like typefaces and stuff. CATCH THE FEVER!
FONTMASTERS! YES! It is a real thing. I speculated a couple of weeks ago, having taken note of this event on the CAM calendar. Fonts and typefaces (there’s a difference, but we’ll get to that later) fascinate me as the standardized visual representation of language, letter by letter. Once when I was about 7, I…
Happy Birthday
Happy Birthday Composer: Happy Birthday Label: Sub Pop Release Date: 2010-03-31 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Happy Birthday are like a crash course in the past few years of indie rock. The fuzzy pop trio’s debut album fearlessly samples from recent torchbearers like Girls and Jay Reatard. And it works.…
No 2: Abyss in B Minor
No 2: Abyss in B Minor Composer: Serena Maneesh Label: 4AD Release Date: 2010-03-31 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording No 2: Abyss in B Minor comes nearly four years after Serena Maneesh’s debut won them opening slots for the Dandy Warhols, Oasis, and Nine Inch Nails. The Norwegian quartet was…
Under Great White Northern Lights
Under Great White Northern Lights Composer: The White Stripes Label: Third Man Release Date: 2010-03-31 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording A companion piece to a new documentary about the White Stripes’ 2007 Canadian tour, this 16-song live album captures the sound and fury the Detroit duo expends onstage. The set…
Mother
Critic’s Pick Mother Director: Bong Joon-Ho Screenwriter: Bong Joon-Ho Cast: Kim Hye-Ja, Won Bin, Jin Gu, Yun Je-mun Release Date: 2010-03-31 Rated: R Genre: Film Do yourself a favor and pull up your mom’s number on your phone before the opening credits even start, because you’ll be doing good to make it all the way…
Wordworkers
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-03-31 Photographer Melanie Rush Davis wowed us during Luminaria (the other bright star: Ed Saavedra, with his unforgettable “Makin’ Copies” performance/installation/art giveaway). Back in some nether reach of the Convention Center, she’d assembled a rotating “filmstrip” of a silhouetted model moving from pose to pose frame by frame, and momentarily assuming…
Milking their religion
Travels with Frenchie
The ghosts of discos pasados
Release Date: 2010-03-31 When faced with the challenge of getting dressed for: a family dinner, the first ever CAM Perennial Party, and a visit to a “fabulous” new nightclub specializing in ’90s-era pop en español, I got a little confused. In a decisive moment, I decided to dress around my favorite jean jacket. Covered in…
Nothing man
Ben Stiller takes a dramatic turn in Greenberg
Big Red & Barbacoa
Big Red & Barbacoa Composer: Hacienda Label: Alive Records Release Date: 2010-03-31 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Like the classic combo it’s named after, Hacienda’s latest album is a hunk of comfort food, golden-age rock ’n’ roll delivered with no irony and only minimal modern embellishment: Think a roadside stand…
Artist in Residence, vol. IX
Courtesy of Galleria Ortiz, San Antonio Franco Mondini-Ruiz is a San Antonio-born visual artist living and working in San Antonio and New York. He is the author of High Pink : Tex-Mex Fairy Tales and is currently working on his second book, Postcards From Home : A Painted History. The West Side of San Antonio,…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Readers, In honor of April Fools’ Day, I turn this column over to Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project movement, to answer your preguntas. Enjoy! Dear Mexican, I’m a white, college-educated, liberal, democrat, socialist U.S. citizen. I don’t have any problem with Mexicans coming here to get a good job. In fact, I…
Starchildren and demons forever
One of the frontmen for KISS IT, San Antonio’s full-on, makeup and all, KISS tribute band, the man who’ll identify himself only as Tall Stanley, bought his first rock album by mistake. He was 11, looking through the records at the Joske’s department store where his older sister worked. At the time, the only LPs…
Cover girls
Girl in a Coma, signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart record label and often compared to the Smiths, is about to pay tribute to a few of their musical inspirations, but probably not the ones you’re thinking of. The trio will release a series of three EPs titled Adventures in Coverland, beginning April 13. Together, the…
Live & Local
They’ve got a conga player (Alex McBride) but there’s about as little of the jungle in Junglenoize’s sound as there is actual jungle left on the globe. Modern technology and noise have intruded on ancient music forms, and no one born before this decade would consider anything about Junglenoize primitive. “River of Rhythm” is an…
The Sound & The Fury
On Saturday, April 3, two worthwhile causes will compete for your cash. Rockin’ for a Remedy, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. at Zombies (12285 Nacogdoches, (210) 590-7757), features Lokey, Destruction Evolution, and Impulse to Devour, and the proceeds ($5 admission, $7 if you’re under 21) will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (leukemia.org).…
Dear Uncle Mat
I have a new problem with my live-in boyfriend. Lately he has been getting into fights when he goes out. He has always been the quiet brooding sort, but never violent: I’ve known him to be a lamb and, I thought, a pacifist. It all started in January when this drunk asshole hit him at…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): I’m worried about your ability to sneak and fake and dissemble. These skills seem to have atrophied in you. To quote Homer Simpson, “You couldn’t fool your own mother on the foolingest day of your life with an electrified fooling machine!” Please, Aries, jump back into the game-playing, BS-dispensing routine the…
Rioja
Remember the three for $7 bin? Sorry, but some of us do — and that bin was the way we moved beyond Mateus rosé in the distinctive, squat bottle. (Believe it or not, there’s a market for those bottles today, and they are going for far more empty than they ever did full.) In that…
A shower of gold
The success of Avatar prompted Clash of the Titans filmmakers to delay its release until they could convert it into 3-D. The process cost $5 million, and the end product reportedly lacks Avatar’s incredible depth and texture (check out our review at sacurrent.com on Friday to find out for sure). SlashFilm’s Peter Sciretta writes: “At…
The bright lights of Broadway, the low lights of the Alameda
The Bourne agenda The memory of last spring’s brutal public throwdowns over extending the City’s pilot digital-billboard ordinance are fading fast, and the current negotiations over on-premises blinkety-blinks have been a comparitive snooze. Perhaps because the stakeholder committee is populated with the individuals most likely to get bent out of shape: sign builders and users.…
Nature v. nurture
Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious. 1st Peter 2:4 Approximately four hours deeper into City of San Antonio v. Living Stones Ministry than anyone at the Bexar County Courthouse expected to be, attorney Sam Adams held up yet another photo and asked an increasingly…
Praising Arizona
Maybe the story of David Grundman – the man who, out of boredom, shotgunned a 125-year-old saguaro cactus only to be crushed to death under its 3,000 pound carcass – is a metaphor for man’s struggle against nature in the unforgiving Arizona desert. Maybe it’s just hilarious. Tucson travel writer Tom Miller seems to think…
Leviticus lite
Food fascinates Jews. Nearly every holiday and celebration centers around food (or in the case of Yom Kippur, the absence thereof). The stereotypical Jewish mother constantly tries to get her children to eat. Even in the afterlife, Jews are promised a succulent banquet of Leviathan, Behemoth, and Ziz, all three created for just this feast.…
ARTifacts
April is the cruelest month, breedingLilacs out of the dead land, mixingMemory and desire, stirringDull roots with spring rain. April is also National Poetry Month, duh. So suspend those Passover chores, Easter plans, Fiesta preparations, the yardwork, and your skeptical disbelief about that least remunerative of American letters – unless you consider hip-hop to be…
Failure to invest in Census ensures more taxation w/o representation
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com If Americans were still interested in a portion of representation with their inevitable taxation, you would think we’d have wrapped up this Census business by now. Yet as of Monday only 37 percent of Alamo City residents had returned their forms, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Those numbers were even worse…
Awesome, but not particularly weird press releases
THE RETURN OF GRACKLE MUNDY!! I got this from the amazing Joe Reyes this afternoon, and plan to check it out. You go too! Just a heads up from Buttercup country about where we are in this latest foursome of grackle mundys as we head towards our first west coast tour dates later in April.…
Kitty â??raid’ shows alternatives to gas chamber possible
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Two years ago, our cat lady got shafted, her 50 kitties got gassed, and no one is happy about it (except, maybe, D’Anne Trethan’s feline-hatin’ neighbors). Guess she was raided by the wrong outfit. Last week, a wildlife rescue volunteer stumbled onto a hoarding situation in San Antonio involving an estimated 27…
Texas Unhinged: State leaders on whackabout with gay Jesus, public health
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Good grades have gotten harder to come by in Texas, what with the Guv Lite sticking his nose in our homework assignments, an’ all. Last week, a Tarleton State University student in Stephenville was to present a one-act play in class to complete the requirements of his theater course. After news leaked…
