CPS Execs return from Operation Cacahuates Japonés
(Or: ‘Bless Me, Panchito’) Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com For CPS Energy CEO-lite, Sr. Steve Bartley, four pounds may be a small price to pay for redemption. That’s how much he told the utility’s Board of Trustees on Monday that he lost during a four-day trip to Japan last week on a nuclear rescue operation. Bartley and…
All about mariachi week
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Updated on 11/17/09 Six-year-old Angélica Vargas (left) and 10-year-old Mary Luévano, contenders at the Mariachi Vargas Vocal Competition, Saturday at the Municipal Auditorium. Twelve-year-old Christopher Pérez, another competitor. If you need a good reason to stop by Municipal Auditorium on Saturday at 9 am, get this name down: Angélica Vargas. The…
Mexico ready to wed sister park to Big Bend brother?
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Since the 1930s, there’s been talk of a Mexican counterpart to the 800,000-acre wilderness of Big Bend National Park being established south of the Rio Grande. But with little history or experience with federal wild lands management, it has taken Mexico’s largest cement company and some influential non-profits to begin cobbling together…
Running for Johanna
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Johanna Sigmund, 6/21/76-9/11/01 John Sigmund works at SAY Sí with my wife since early 2009. His position, Coordinator of College & Career Programs, means exactly that: He helps students apply and plan their future in college after they graduate from SAY Sí. He’s also a Real Madrid fanatic, but he left…
Show & Prove: Cuban Frowns
In their last contest, the San Antonio Spurs avenged their last season first round playoff exit at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks with a gutsy 92-83 victory. With All-Stars Tim Duncan and Tony Parker sidelined with minor ankle ailments, Coach Pop found more minutes for some of the new Spurs resulting in a defensive…
“No Te Acabes Kelly Field:” DIY collage project
I am so in love with this painting by Jesse Treviño. I went to take another look at it on Saturday as I was writing about it. It’s at the Alameda, where it will reside until Feb. 28, and where I took a whole buncha little bitty iPhone photos of it. A very nice guard…
2012
2012 Director: Roland Emmerich Screenwriter: Roland Emmerich Cast: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover Release Date: 2009-11-13 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Our Rating: 0.50 Sure the Mayan calendar predicts the end of an age on December 21, 2012. But those quaint ancient pyramid builders didn’t count on the merging…
Dobbs leaves CNN; bastadobbs campaign claims victory
Coincidence or cause? Lou Dobbs made his last appearance as a CNN anchor last night, announcing that he was leaving the network he helped put on the media map for other opportunities. His sudden departure follows both a reported meeting with Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes, and a nationwide campaign to oust him for…
Texan Caterer Don Strange Dies
The Current joins San Antonio’s culinary community in mourning the passing of caterer Don Strange, who made chuckwagon chuck chic and turned out larger-than-life Texas spreads that raised the bar for gala dining and entertainment. SavorSA has a few more details here; Ron Bechtol explains his magic and influence in next week’s issue.
Shiksas, Break Ups, Romantics, and Hook Ups
Release Date: 2009-11-11 Although this is technically a writers’ panel, the Jewish Community Center is billing the event as a girls’ night out, filled with laughter. Authors Jodyne Speyer, Bob Morris, Sarah Wendell, and Laurie Graff tackle the politics of relationships with a self-help-meets-stand-up-comedy approach. Passages from Speyer’s book Dump ’Em: How to Break Up…
Urinetown
Release Date: 2009-11-11 In a somewhat strange turn of events, stage director and actor Alan Muraoka (owner of Mr. Hooper’s store on Sesame Street), is directing Urinetown at Trinity University, where he is in residence as a Stieren Guest Artist. A musical comedy and political satire, Urinetown paints a yellow picture of a place so…
Sexto Sol, Azul Electrica, & JJ Lopez
Release Date: 2009-11-11 Sexto Sol lives. Even though Greg moved to Austin, Eddie plays bass for Azul, and Sam has a new band, Sexto Sol continue delivering their jazzy, classy brand of Latin soul. The band now only performs two or three times a year in San Antonio, and this is a special night because…
Chesca, The Motion Census, & Tealights
Release Date: 2009-11-11 Atlanta-based art rockers Tealights fuse classical, electronica, and indie elements to create a sound they describe as “the love child of a circuit board and a music box.” Although they take inspiration from Björk and Radiohead, they’re more often compared to the Cranberries due to lofty, ethereal layers of vocal harmony. Also…
1st Annual Gingerbread Design Challenge
Release Date: 2009-11-11 If you enjoy watching shows like Food Network Challenge, this event may tempt you. On Saturday, teams of local architects and contractors will compete in a timed competition as they design, build, and decorate gingerbread houses. The San Antonio Children’s Museum, American Institute of Architects San Antonio, and West East Design Group…
Tanya Tucker
Release Date: 2009-11-11 v class=”story”> In the public eye since the age of 13, when she broke into the music scene with 1972’s “Delta Dawn,” Tanya Tucker has remained surprisingly relevant for more than three decades. Several reinventions along the way haven’t hurt. After releasing the racy rock-inspired TNT in 1978, Tucker relocated to LA…
El Fin Del Mundo Motel
Release Date: 2009-11-11 Ruby Nelda Perez and Rodrigo Duarte-Clark, the team behind original plays such as Doña Rosita’s Jalapeño Kitchen, are back with another slice-of-life drama. In El Fin, Perez portrays Lola, the witty proprietor of an El Paso motel who decides to bury the hatchet and make peace with Maria Lupe, an estranged friend…
Praising Pasha
Meatless in steer city
Ray Gun: Welcome to the Gun Show
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-11 Danger levels vary among different artmaking methods: film photography ranks as pretty, well, rank (all those toxic chemicals!). Spray-can art can scramble some brain cells, and even brush-applied pigments, varnishes, and (especially) epoxy carry health risks. (Writing’s hazards are mostly behavioral.) None of these holds a candle to glassblowing or…
Herd the rumor
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-11 They’re responsible for some of the hardest music exported from San Antonio, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Upon a Burning Body. This noisy-as-hell metal-hardcore outfit played the first show I ever reviewed for the Current, and though my wife left halfway through, bleeding (ironically, she scraped her…
Upon a Burning Body w/ American me, & Molotov Solution,
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-11 They’re responsible for some of the hardest music exported from San Antonio, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Upon a Burning Body. This noisy-as-hell metal-hardcore outfit played the first show I ever reviewed for the Current, and though my wife left halfway through, bleeding (ironically, she scraped her…
Critic’s DISS
Gentlemen Broncos Director: Jared Hess Screenwriter: Jared Hess Cast: Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, Jermaine Clement Release Date: 2009-11-11 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film In a quirky, symmetrically shot universe not so very far away, a teenage loner named Benjamin is about to become a man. No, not like that. Gentlemen Broncos doesn’t abide sex (or swearing),…
Land of the dead
Release Date: 2009-11-11 Not too long ago, I started hearing about a place called Zombies out on Nacogdoches Road, of all places. When I typed the address into Google Maps, it revealed that Zombies is in the same shopping center as what I consider to be SA’s most reliable thrift store – Thrift Town. Now,…
A Different Kind of Ugly
A Different Kind of Ugly Composer: Sons of Hercules Conductor: Sons of Hercules Label: Saustex Release Date: 2009-11-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording The Sons of Hercules don’t specify the kind of ugly they’re talking about in their latest album title, but if I had to guess, I’d say the intentional kind. Marked “A product of…
Raditude
Raditude Composer: Weezer Conductor: Weezer Label: Geffen Release Date: 2009-11-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Weezer’s first two albums were startlingly consistent and craft-obsessed pop records that made the most of grunge’s loud-soft mix and found a niche for themselves in a mostly humorless alternative-rock boom with pop-art videos and a reverence for songwriting. In short,…
Phrazes for the Young
Phrazes for the Young Composer: Julian Casablancas Conductor: Julian Casablancas Label: RCA Release Date: 2009-11-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Regardless of the fact that the Strokes actually put out some good music in their heyday (Is This It has consistently ranked pretty high on some “best of the decade” lists), they will always be overshadowed…
The Remix Suite
The Remix Suite Composer: Michael Jackson Conductor: Michael Jackson Label: Universal Motown Release Date: 2009-11-11 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording There are just as many ways to exploit the dead as there are to honor them. This 12-song collection of Michael Jackson’s Motown-era hits remixed by mostly B-list producers falls somewhere in between. Some songs (like…
Last of the independents
Eugenia León has been an outsider since her victorious debut at the 1985 Eurovision-like Organización de Televisión Iberoamericana song festival. “It hasn’t been easy,” she told the Current on the phone from Mexico City. “People associate independence with marginality, with an attitude of being in confrontation with the show-business establishment. That may be true to…
Live & Local
`Note: Our reviewer tapped out at intermission, but please post your own comments on the show’s second half at sacurrent.com.` Twenty-five songs are just too many for one night. Most bands don’t even have 25 decent songs to play live, forget about trying to run through them all in a row. Cinderleaf, however, is the…
The Sound & The Fury
Red-hot alert: Any show with Cartographersand Blowing Treesis worth stopping by (Saturday at Limelight, 2718 N. St. Mary’s, 10 p.m.). But the other band featured that night could very well steal the show. Austin-based all-female trio Tribella (Latin for “three beauties,” but these girls rely on their songs and ballsy execution, not their looks) have…
That’s what he said
John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski has said in real-life interviews that although he wanted to get an adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men on the screen, he didn’t want to write it or direct it. He wasn’t kidding. Krasinski treats the camera like an elderly relative who should only be…
The price of a nuclear divorce and the elephant in the room
Nobody puts Baby in a corner For two weeks now, the local press has been rife with speculation that the City might kill CPS Energy’s nuclear-expansion deal with NRG Energy. That agreement, to evenly split an 80-percent stake in two additional reactors at the South Texas Project in Bay City and bring in a third…
The forbidding fruit
The pomegranate is the crazy aunt of fruits. It’s talented and passionate, but misunderstood. But it has not always been this way. The scabby orb’s blood-red image decorates the temple of Solomon and the robes of priests, its juice is imbued with medicinal properties, and its flavor is integral to many old-world cuisines. But in…
Walk softly
A history professor at the University of Michigan, Juan Cole’s notoriety as a scholar focusing on Islam was largely confined to academic circles until 2002, when he began writing his Informed Comment blog. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States, Cole’s significant insights…
Amuse-Bouche
San Antonio’s Maverick Publishing Co., which brought us the Wine Roads of Texas in 2002 has met the surging popularity of ale and porter with Beer Across Texas, lovingly compiled by Paul Hightower and longtime San Antonio journalist Travis Poling. A sea of Bud Light may threaten to drown you at any public SA event,…
Mysterious motives
Earlier this year, the Pentagon committed $50 million to a study investigating why the suicide rate in the military is rising: It used to be below the suicide rate in comparable civilian groups, but now it’s four times higher. Thirteen American soldiers were killed by a gunman at Fort Hood in Texas last Thursday, but…
Mabel Jingu Enkoji
Several years ago I was driving through the high desert of Eastern California, on the way to a ski weekend in the Sierras, when my driving companion and I passed by what looked like a nice state-park entrance sign. I turned to Patrick at the wheel (who also happens to be Nisei, a first-generation Japanese-American)…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Whenever I see an ad for a Mexican ramera, they always describe themselves as “spicy.” Are Mexican women hiding habaneros in their panochas? — Concha Curious Dear Gabacho: “I wish I could say that ‘Mexican Spitfire’ Lupe Velez was to blame for the ‘spicy’ epithet so often associated with Mexican femme pulchritude,” says William…
El Veterano: The duke of Kelly Field
Jesse Treviño’s ouevre is puro San Anto landscape, no matter who you are; as a kid I absorbed posters of “La Raspa” in the Blanco Café alongside the sexy wall mural of the Aztec warrior carrying the princess, and the faux-wood sign reading “you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps.”…
El Veterano: Mr. Trevino’s Neighborhood
“La Historia Chicana,” Our Lady of the Lake University (1974) 411 SW 24th St., Our Lady of the Lake campus, Sueltenfuss Library This majestic wall mural encircling the Sueltenfuss Library is generally acknowledged to be the first grand-scale work executed by Treviño after the loss of his right hand. This new-lefty (in all senses) epic…
El Veterano: Andale, Already
1. Pioneer: *Pioneer: Jesse Treviño is one of the few Chicano artists whose work was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and arguably the first San Antonio hometown artist whose work gained international prominence. 2.Founding Father: He acts as a crucial branch of the San Anto painting lineage. He studied with gran maestro Mel Casas at…
A light, creamy center
To find yourself in the fictional, titular town of Almost, Maine, at 9 p.m. on one fated, frigid Friday night is to find yourself in a state of ubiquitous climax. All at once, things have come to a head, you might say, for nearly 20 of Almost’s residents. Everyone is finding and losing love. Mostly…
Dear Uncle Mat
Our circle of friends has suffered a very decisive split. Two guys who were in a long-term relationship since we have known them broke up. One of them had an affair with an acquaintance of mine who has recently been hanging out with all of us. He isn’t, or wasn’t, even gay. There are seven…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): A whitewash happens when you use deceit to cover up the messy facts about a situation. A blackwash is just the opposite: It’s when you invoke candor as you reveal complications that have previously been veiled. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, the coming weeks will be prime time…
True school
It’s crazy,” says 33-year-old Houston native Marco Cervantes, reflecting on a rite of passage for many young Texans. “In third grade we did a reenactment of the Alamo. They built a big Alamo out of cardboard. The privileged students got to be the Alamo defenders, there were like five of them, and all the rest…
Two shades of Azul
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com This is Azul: This is Azul under the influence of rock ‘n’ roll: Both sides of Azul Barrientos will perform Saturday night in San Antonio at two different venues, and the singer told us —in Spanish— how and why she plans to do it. Tell me, Judas, when did you decide…
Fun Fun Fun Fest Day 1: I love the ’80s edition
Seriously, guys? Is this some kind of joke, or are we really determined to turn the next decade into some kind of stupid amalgamation of the ’80s and early ’90s? Of all possible time periods in US history we might be recreating, we’re going with the time of Reaganomics, the AIDS epidemic, Rick Springfield, and…
Marcy Playground tonight at Scout Bar
I’ll go ahead and say it: Despite being the only song of theirs you’ve probably heard,”Sex and Candy” was not a very good song. I’m not trying to say that it was a bad song, only that it just wasn’t representative of the rest of their album. By comparison it was sub-par. For me, “Sex…
