San Antonio Police Officers Association and City Contract Negotiations Wrap-Up
The more things change…the more they stay the same in the imminent collective bargaining agreement between the San Antonio Police Officers Association and the City. We’re currently reviewing the final agreement forwarded to us by both the SAPOA and the City. The previous contract expired last October, but its 10-year evergreen clause was put into…
‘Fucking magnets’ & brain therapy in San Anto
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Okay. I’m not here to explain magnets for the inestimable Insane Clown Posse, though some have tried (and failed â?? though electrostatic force comes close!). But I gotta wonder at Shaggy’s bustin’ on scientists for doing their thing (“Ya’ll motherfuckers lyin’ and gettin me pissed!”). I mean, I get that science expels…
Smoking ban gets in our eyes
Only a week ago, Councilman Justin Rodriguez’s proposed expansion of the City’s smoking ordinance â?? to include pretty much all interior spaces where bonhomie is practiced â?? seemed a foreordained success: The Mayor endorsed the idea at a press conference designed to put the lead in the remaining council members’ pencils, where the Smoke-Free San…
SBOE to Vote This Week on Social Studies Standards
That’s right folks, by Friday eve we should know whether the pleas of civil rights activists, education specialists, and legislators fell on deaf ears or not at the Texas State Board of Education. Beyond evolution, beyond Bible electives, it’s the social studies TEKS (short for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the minimum standards for what…
Immigration Debate Back On Today at 3:30!
The long awaited debate between Mexican American Legislative Caucus Chair (and San Antonio representative) Trey Martinez Fischer and Tea Party supporter Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball) is on again. To get a brief on the debate, check our previous coverage. The short version is, one state representative is all for an immigration bill like Arizona’s, one is…
Gimme (more) shelter
On Thursday, the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance approving the funding for the kennels at Brooks City-Base that we reported on last month. Last time we heard about it, the proposal to lease pre-existing kennel space at Brooks City-Base was ping-ponging between being touted by Animal Care Services Director Gary Hendel, being dismissed as…
Goucho Gourmet
It’s showtime again at Central Market, and the latest act hails from Argentina. Foodies are scurrying about the isles in special aprons, there are placards for products you didn’t know Argentina producedâ?¦.and it will be hard not to encounter a wine tasting from now until May 25. This is a good thing. Part of the…
Bubble Battle Babble: Some ’09ers Just Say No to “No Socialism” signs
If you live in, hang out in, or have even traveled along the shady, well-kept lanes of the 78209 â??that’s the “bubble” comprised of the prosperous incorporated cities Alamo Heights, Olmos Park, and Terrell Hills, largely settled and built in the tween-war period during which previously fancy enclaves like Kaiser (aka “King”) Wilhelm (ie “William”)…
Sound & Fury, Pt. 2: More news that would’ve been fit to print
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting, again, and this time it was personal â?¦ Haha. Whew boy! There’s a little Faulkner humor for you. Any English majors in the house. No? OK, let’s just pretend that never happened. There are at least three things going on this week…
Against Me show at Scout Bar
Fans packed Scout Bar like sardines to see Florida-based punk rock band Against Me! put on an energized show Tuesday, May 11. Playing their newer songs from the White Crosses album and old favorites such as “Americans Aboard”, the crowd was pumped as they did an encore performance at the very end.
An interview with ‘A Surprise in Texas’ director Peter Rosen
By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net After following the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for the last 20 years, filmmaker Peter Rosen felt he had the intuition and experience not only to document the event for the fourth time in his career, but to make a film he could release theatrically for…
Chaléwood No. 29 – Jose Rivera
Jose Rivera – Letters to Juliet (screenwriter) By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net There is a lot to live up to when the first script you ever write is nominated for an Academy Award. Call it beginner’s luck if you’d like, but screenwriter Jose Rivera knows the hard work it takes to…
Robin Hood
Robin Hood Director: Ridley Scott Screenwriter: Ridley Scott Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, Danny Huston, Eileen Atkins, Mark Addy, Matthew Macfadyen, Kevin Durant, Scott Grimes, Alan Doyle Release Date: 2010-05-14 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Our Rating: 4.00 “Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Heckuva line. And,…
What the hell?
So, I’m laying in bed after leaving work early because I puked during a staff meeting, reading the latest print edition of the Current, when I see in Jeremy Martin’s The Sound and the Fury that he’s directing you readers to this blog to hear my first person account of an odd non-show I attended…
Verde values reflected in Food Bank garden project
David Gershon knows what it takes to move mountains (of people). Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com I’m at Pearl a week post publication of The Urban-Garden Revolution, a look at the many organizations and motivated individuals putting the victory back in Victory Gardens. At the front of the room a silver-haired dignitary of common-sense consumption, who in…
Art opening: Good and Well
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-05-12 At first glance, the the three artists featured in David Shelton Gallery’s latest exhibition seem a motley crew: Aaron Hans Forland’s meticulous, sharp, graphic painting, which notoriously appears unbidden on city-owned fixtures or quotidian objects, beckon you into double- take territory; Mimi Kato’s fantastical photos featuring heavily stylized, mysterious characters…
Slasher
Release Date: 2010-05-12 Inspired by the making of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Allison Moore’s “horrifying comedy” Slasher follows Sheena, a burned-out waitress who lands the role of the “Last Girl” in Bloodbath, a low-budget horror flick. As Sheena is introduced to a world of eroticized violence and plastic gore, her feminist mother Frances flies into…
Paper Tiger
How Ellsberg exposed the son-of-a-bitching truth
Sea of Cowards
Sea of Cowards Composer: The Dead Weather Label: Warner Brothers Release Date: 2010-05-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Jack White’s music is more notable for its swagger than its substance (remember when the drummer in that two-man band of his couldn’t even drum?), but at least it’s always interesting. Sea…
High Violet
High Violet Composer: The National Label: 4AD Release Date: 2010-05-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Brooklyn-based Cincinnati natives the National follow their sophomore effort, Boxer, with an album that chronicles the dream sequences of a man caught at the fringes of love, and, plays on the band’s strengths: Matt Berminger’s…
Forgiveness Rock Record
Forgiveness Rock Record Composer: Broken Social Scene Label: Arts & Crafts Release Date: 2010-05-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Forgiveness Rock Record is Broken Social Scene’s fourth album, and it isn’t as lengthy as their 2005 self-titled release. But it’s still marked by frequent sonic detours. Opener “World Sick” comes…
Together
Together Composer: The New Pornographers Label: Matador Release Date: 2010-05-12 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Themes of togetherness and love — familial and romantic — turn up all over the New Pornographers’ fifth album. Usually, the love that inspires them is the kind that falls apart. A.C. Newman wrote most…
Art opening: On the Road
Release Date: 2010-05-12 On the Road examines the significance of something most Texans can relate to: A good old-fashioned road trip. While the exhibition is based on what many of us remember seeing through the backseat window of our parents’ Pontiac station wagon, Artpace is treating us to what the view looked like to greats…
Citizen Architect
Release Date: 2010-05-12 Filmmaker Samuel Wainwright Douglas will introduce his one-hour documentary based on the life, career, and legacy of the late artist, architect, and educator Samuel Mockbee. In 1993, Mockbee and D.K. Ruth founded the Rural Studio, a prolific design-build program created to teach students about the social responsibilities of architecture while providing “inspirational…
Off Center
Release Date: 2010-05-12 Another of Dance Month’s gems, Off Center promises to challenge your preconceptions about what ballet is (or isn’t). Featured works in this mixed repertory performance presented by Ballet San Antonio include “Frida” (an homage to Frida Kahlo), “Bucovina” (which takes cues from Romanian folk dances), and “Sound of Silence” (a modern interpretation…
Disco Ball
Release Date: 2010-05-12 BEAT AIDS is a local organization that promises to “stand with this community, serving one person at a time, one family at a time … until there’s a cure.” This Saturday, BEAT AIDS will host its 8th Annual Disco Ball ? a shimmering dinner gala and retro extravaganza with the theme “Turn…
Tejano Conjunto Festival: Puro Conjunto Pesado
Release Date: 2010-05-12 The 29th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival is in full swing, with events taking place at the Guadalupe Theater and Rosedale Park. Although Friday’s program is nothing to scoff at, we’re most excited about Saturday’s Puro Conjunto Pesado. Why? Well, call us crazy, but we weren’t fully aware of Tejano’s scope until we…
2nd Annual Las Casas Performance Competition
Release Date: 2010-05-12 On an inspirational note, winners of last year’s Las Casas Scholarship Performance Competition are now completing their first year of college. On Sunday, another $60,000 will be divided among 24 college-bound students (selected from 114 applicants) who’ll act, sing, and dance before a panel of seasoned judges. After what promises to be…
All Leather & Yip-Yip
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-05-12 “Loud and trashy” is how you might describe Monday night’s line-up at the Korova. And if the bands at the top of the bill (which also features Búho and Crotch on Fire) heard you, you get the feeling their only objection might be, “We always thought of ourselves as trashy…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Readers, I was supposed to deliver this column to ustedes for Cinco de Drinko, but Arizona’s reprehensible S.B. 1070 bill had to rear its ugly head. I could devote this column to the issue again, but Mexican-hating is a national sport, and we must darle chingazos wherever it pops out. Big shout-outs, though, to…
Minnow v. whale
You’ve got to be crazy to be a plaintiff’s lawyer. Honestly. What we do to survive would make any economics professor regurgitate his latté and poppyseed muffin. I get a call, and it goes something like this: “Hello, my son’s had a horrible reaction to this drug, and he’s in intensive care; the doctors don’t know if he’s…
Televised Revolution
I devised a wonderful nationwide campaign for upping the fab factor of our American teenagers the other day, inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on Hulu (because, see, I watch things on friggin’ Hulu). For you sorry few who don’t know, Jamie O is an adorable, messy-haired Brit whose claim to fame was hosting The…
Pyrometer pizza
It all started innocently enough. A regular member of my Basic Food Group (we cook together frequently) noticed a sale: Buy a liter of an especially pungent, unfiltered Sicilian olive oil we were all using anyway and get a free pizza “kit.” None of us would normally fall for a pre-packaged product; we have from-scratch…
Blond bomber
MAKE YOUR OWN B-52s Paper Doll! STEP 1: Download and cut out the dolls on this week’s cover here.STEP 2:Click on the image above to download the pdf and cut out the clothing with the tabs.STEP 3:Fold the tabs over the body On the phone, the B-52s’ lead yeller Fred Schneider is a disappointingly normal-sounding…
Soy it ain’t so
Admit it, vegetarians. Those frozen, brittle, soy-based hockey pucks we call veggie burgers don’t hold a candle to the hand-formed hamburger patties, locally made sausages, and marinated chicken and fish our carnivorous friends gleefully char during seasonal cookouts. As they rave about the secret spices tucked into their mounds of meat, we gnaw at dull…
Latin Lingo
So what’s that?” I ask Louis “B-Real” Freese. “What?” “That sound in the background – working on some new material? Another ‘Insane in the Brain,’ perhaps?” “Man, that’s the ice-cream truck.” I laugh because … crazy insane, got no brain … that’s pretty much all I can do. He laughs because the idea of him…
Live & Local
Disregarding genre (which seems to be the Gatos’ M.O., anyway) there are really only two kinds of rock shows: the kind where when a bass string breaks, they replace it (it doesn’t matter whether this involves a roadie running onstage with a new instrument or a five-minute break for re-stringing), and the kind where the…
The Sound & The Fury
What the hell was going on at the Rafiki Project show at Pedicab Friday night? Power outages, thrown punches — it sounds like a B-movie prison riot. We’re not entirely sure, either, but check out Callie Enlow’s first-person account on sacurrent.com’s CurBlog. As our latest roster add, Enlow’s diving headfirst into the wondrous, hostile world…
Tuna Suprise
The documentary A Surprise in Texas follows a handful of entrants in Fort Worth’s prestigious1 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition from their arrival to the final medal ceremony, and while the title refers to the contest’s outcome, the real surprise here is that I actually gave a rat’s ass about what’s essentially a giant piano…
Dear Uncle Mat
This week’s column is a response to numerous letters I have received over the years, whose writers have wanted to maintain privacy. I have written these individuals back, but at the writers’ request I haven’t made their letters public. However, these advice-seekers share a common problem, and I feel I could help a lot more…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What happens when someone “sells out”? Typically, it refers to a person who overrides her highest artistic standards or her soul’s mandates in order to make a bundle of money. But I want to enlarge the definition to encompass any behavior that seeks popular appeal at the expense of authenticity, or…
Art capades
I was already pretty psyched for this past weekend of art-looking. I had watched some of the installation of, and attended the first opening/closing of Techjano/a: Hybrid Logic at the Alameda, gotten a JPEG glimpse of works from Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s Little Graces show, and observed the drawings now showcased at Fl!ght as Impromptu Complete…
ARTifacts
We hear that instructor Mark Pritchett retired from the art department at San Antonio College at the end of the Spring ’10 semester. We never took a class with him, mind you, but the guy’s an art-educational legend. Mr. Pritchett’s infamously gruff and challenging manner, his deep dedication to not just potential, but excellence, and…
Short Shorts
These two stories are concerned with what is real, and why. “Raw,” by Nicole Moore, studies the time-warping landscape of the Las Vegas strip, and comes to find comfort in a faraway place. Janet Lee in “One Time Thing” explores the value of not talking or thinking about something, making sure it stays dead for…
Chisme Y Chicle
The New World Wine and Food Festival, now with 10 years under its ample belt, has switched seasons on us. Formerly in November it is, as of this year, being mounted May 12-16. An alliance has been forged with the Valero Texas Open taking place, as are many festival events, at the posh new JW…
Artist on artist action: 10 Questions
What was the first artwork that made an impression on you? Duchamp’s “Urinal.” You were in New York during one of its heydays. Looking back, did you have a sense there was something important going on? I inhabited the East Village in the early ‘80s, when Keith Haring and Jeff Koons were its rising stars.…
G ‘n’ T
It’s gin and tonic time. When is it not, you might ask? Fair question; let me rephrase: It’s writing about gin-’n’-tonic time. So in the spirit (ahem) of the season (and because I have a freezer full of gins as at least an indirect result of On the Rocks), I decided to do a controlled…
The QueQue
Bexar trap Every incipient strongman needs a crisis, and newly elected Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Dan Ramos walked into a ready-made SNAFU when he was sworn in May 4: The disappearance last fall of at least a quarter-million in 2008 primary-election funds owed the County. His response to the economic and political fallout has…
Two Wheels Good
Welcome to the first Two Wheels Good, the Current’s new column for, by, and about San Antonio’s rockin and rollin’ cycling community. It will appear here the second Wednesday of every month. Getting around en bicicleta is nothing new for the hometown, mind you, but increased eco-consciousness, the improving scope and scale of local bike…
A dry spillover
Children trundle home in a long yellow school bus under an afternoon sun that roasts a neighborhood subdivision with 90-degree temperatures — unremarkable weather on an unremarkable day in West Texas. The kids banter and laugh, oblivious to the passing houses with rock-garden landscaping and two-car garages. The bus eases around a corner and rolls…
Marcus Rubio, Cola Cola and Gold Trash
Photo: Mariah DeLaye Usually, alternative venues have my wholehearted support, but last night’s show at the SMART Art Gallery space at 1906 S. Flores just made me nervous. Not because of wires dangling in puddles, onstage fights between band and bartenders or unexpected visits by police (all of which have actually happened at “legitimate” San…
Slab Cinema announces 2010 schedule
HemisFair Park’s going to be hosting free screenings, of everything from Elvis musicals to computer animated family films to Stanley Kubick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey thanks to the kick-ass folks at Slab Cinema. Check out the schedule in the press release below. There should be something for everyone, even jerks. *** Grab your blankets, lawn…
Strong hand or strong arm? Bexar Dems struggle with new Chair
Every incipient strongman needs a crisis, and newly elected Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Dan Ramos walked into a ready-made SNAFU when he was sworn in May 4: The disappearance last fall of at least a quarter-million in 2008 primary-election funds owed the County. His response to the economic and political fallout has been to…
