EPA regional administrator Al Armendariz on environmental justice, Texas’ (and the GOP’s) war against his agency, and the recent environmental summit in Corpus Christi
What does EPA hope to accomplish at summits like this, and are there similar EPA efforts across Region 6? We hope to really facilitate and start a dialogue. One in which we’re just a participant and just one of the people at the table — a dialogue on how to reduce environmental exposure to pollutants.…
Coming soon
Besides singing and playing a variety of instruments in Phonolux (one of my favorite local bands), Buddy Calvo is a promising local filmmaker. His latest project, produced by his own Machina Cinema, is a short titled Arose The Coward, starring Anthony Guajardo and Viviana Chavez. It deals with a high school senior (Andrew) who has…
Kim Kardashian karries on
Keeping Up With the Kardashians (9pm Sunday, E!) I got caught up in the excitement of Kim Kardashian’s whirlwind romance with basketball player Kris Humphries, which played out on Keeping Up With the Kardashians. True, Kim and Kris had known each other only for a few months, but come on — his name started with…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing," said rocket scientist Werner von Braun. I think it’s an excellent time for you to plunge into that kind of basic research, Aries. You’re overdue to wander around frontiers you didn’t even realize you needed to…
Bryan Hamilton: Welcome to Dreamland
Local producer Bryan Hamilton has described Welcome to Dreamland as a "bunch of angels talking to each other." The ethereal quality of the description gets at the heart of Dreamland. The album is a dark but beautifully woven tapestry of otherworldly songs all linked by one element: the hip-hop beat. They deal in heavy themes,…
School districts report upswing in homeless students as they struggle to offer stability
Kristina Martinez is well dressed, articulate, and passionate about her chosen profession. As a newly minted teacher with a certificate in special education from Texas A&M University – San Antonio, she had high hopes for herself and her daughter, now eight years old. “When I started going to college, everybody was like, ‘Oh education, that’s…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Mexican: GOP Senator Mel Martinez authored a decent compromise bill to resolve the growing illegal immigration problem in the United States. He broke up the group of 11 million illegals into three classes, depending on the amount of time that they were in the country. Those in the United State for two or fewer…
Freetail anniversary party
Freetail anniversary party Freetail Brewing Co., which celebrates its third anniversary the day after Thanksgiving, is expanding at the end of the year with the addition of a bottling line capable of turning out up to 1,800 bottles of the 22-ounce variety every hour. This is major step for the brewery, where staffers recently took…
Local record shops will need to up their game to weather the substanceless future of music
When local vinyl enthusiast Gene Hopstetter plays me Frank Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!, he pulls three pressings from his collection of roughly 700 albums, indicating the differences in each. The changing packaging and track listings chronicle the start of Sinatra’s 1950s disenfranchisement from Capitol Records. He places the needle as if preparing holy communion;…
Rescued tom turkey enjoying pampered days before release to wildlife sanctuary
At small farms around greater San Antonio, some adventurous souls were picking out turkeys for slaughter. Some were even trying their hand at taking off the turkey heads themselves for the first time. But to satisfy the demand for those 47 million birds expected to be purchased for holiday meals this year, factory farming systems…
Various Artists: The Essential Phil Spector
Ever since a 17-year-old Spector produced his own composition, "To Know Him Is To Love Him," for the Teddy Bears in 1958, record production has never been the same. The song debuted at number one and Spector instantly became the most sought-after producer in pop. Spector’s famous "wall of sound" was nothing but an obsessive…
Artpace International Artists in Residence, third round, offers effective cross-talk
Set atop a very tall pedestal are two small pillars. Between them dangle a set of black-gummed ivories skewered through by a metal rod. The teeth are uneven and worn, but this strange jewelry is no cannibal relic. Rather it is a painted bronze casting of the artist’s own teeth, made by Graham Fagen of…
Scorsese’s first children’s adventure comes from his own inner child
Trains and the cinema go together like horses and cave paintings. As soon as humans were able to show motion, we chose to show trains. And from our first interaction with locomotives on celluloid — the Lumiére Brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat in 1895, which, perhaps apocryphally, made audiences jump out of…
The Muppets charms with nostalgia, but feels far from fresh
If watching actor/writer Jason Segel reluctantly trying to impress Mila Kunis by performing a song from his Dracula puppet rock opera in the 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall made you wish all love was as eternal as a vampire’s, then you must’ve also been as intrigued as I was when news that Segel and Sarah…
art school salad, $7.50
At the cozy Copper Kitchen Café in the Southwest School of Art, suits, students, staffers, and others in the know march through line with trays before sitting down to lunch at massive, burnished wooden tables in the original dining hall of the Ursuline Convent and Academy. A new-ish addition to the unfussy menu is the…
The QueQue: TPWD burro killings roiling West Texas, Preservation fights continue to percolate River Road
TPWD burro killings roiling West Texas When the Marfa Sentinel broke the news in 2007 that Texas Parks & Wildlife officials were secretly shooting down wild burros inside the more than 300,000-acre Big Bend Ranch State Park a park peace officer knew things we’re “going to hit the fan” and area residents agreed. An internal…
Fast Foodie: Fishland Fish Market
Don’t bother looking for the name "Fishland" in your quest to find Fishland Fish Market on Walzem Road near Rackspace; it’s nowhere to be found inside or outside the building. Keep your eyes peeled instead for "Fish Market," short and sweet. (Fish Market has just moved a couple of doors to the east, but the…
Victoria Celestine: From the Outside
You may have heard of 15-year-old Victoria Celestine. When she was 14 (and known as Victoria Zaleski), she recorded a handful of tracks with producer Gordon Raphael and did a few well-received acoustic shows here and there. Now she’s released her first full-fledged album of mostly original songs (except for a wonderful, minimalist version of…
Fun with Alamo history (and club entry) elevate Moses Rose’s Hideout
Ever heard of Moses Rose? I hadn’t until last week — at least not directly. Like most kids who got a public education in San Antonio, Alamo facts legends were a staple of my history classes. One of the more stirring ones detailed Colonel William B. Travis drawing a line in the dirt to give…
Chris Cornell: Songbook EP 2
Grunge veteran Chris Cornell just can’t be stopped. After calling it quits with Soundgarden in 1997 and Audioslave in 2007, a reunion Soundgarden tour, and slew of solo shows, he’s released Songbook, a three-part EP with tracks taken from the best hits of his career to date. It includes acoustic work from Soundgarden, Temple of…
SA Poet Laureate goes to…
Luminaria is next March 10, but artists who want to participate in San Antonio’s big art night only have till December 9 to submit proposals. If you are a visual artist, musician, video artist, filmmaker, literary artist, performance poet, street performer, magician, architect, member of a dance or theater group, or a non-indexed creator hovering…
Film Review: Like Crazy
Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) and newcomer Felicity Jones play Jacob and Anna, two attractive college kids who meet during class and immediately fall head over heels in love. They relate to one another in intimate, clipped conversations that were mostly improvised by the actors, and Jacob, an American furniture-design major, builds Anna, a British journalism…
The Apoca-List
AKA The “We’re Fucked” Index
Black Friday shopping and olive soaps
Friday is the holiest of all American holidays: Black Friday. If you’re committed to putting your cheek to fellow-bargain-shopper jowl on this crowded day, at least go to local stores. And if you’re shopping for cooking supplies and sundry, head to Melissa Guerra at the Pearl Brewery (200 E Grayson, Ste 122). The Pearl is…
Looking for environmental justice in Refinery Row
When state regulators, local leaders, and industry representatives sat down to commune with neighbors who say they’ve been poisoned in the shadow of Corpus Christi’s Refinery Row for an EPA-prompted environmental summit last week, they did so in the midst of a growing GOP war on the federal regulator, one fueled by the Texas political…
Fashionation Reviews Latina Bella, Available Now at H-E-B
Like its name suggests, Latina Bella is intended for women with gold and olive skin tones. I had the opportunity to speak with the makeup company’s marketing department, who informed me that most makeup companies use rose and pink tones to create their foundations—which is fine if you’re skin is on the white side or…
‘Sideways’ director dumps a mess of problems on George Clooney
Alexander Payne has this thing for mid-life crises. Whether pitting an exasperated high-school teacher against a scheming overachiever in his 1999 breakthrough Election, or dropping Jack Nicholson and a naked Kathy Bates in a hot tub for About Schmidt, or setting a pair of wine snobs loose in his last movie, 2004’s Sideways, the writer-director…
The Hangover Ham by Lyle Rosdahl
A day late and a dollar short, but here’s a 100 word piece that I wrote some time ago. Send me your 100 word stories: flashfiction@sacurrent.com. The Hangover Ham by Lyle Rosdahl The ham he had laid out the night before was gone. He had been on a bender and always craved ham the day…
Contemporary curators Rene Barilleaux, David Rubin, talk shop Saturday with Lilly Wei
Two local curators of modern and contemporary art, Rene P. Barilleaux, Curator of Art after 1945 at the McNay Art Museum, and David S. Rubin, the Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art at the San Antonio Art Museum, will talk about what they do and how they do it, Saturday, 5pm at Gallery Nord.…
Interview: Mia Maestro on ‘Breaking Dawn – Part 1’
She might be new to The Twilight Saga, but for Argentinean actress Mía Maestro, starring in the popular series is just like any other acting job – just on a bigger scale. In fact, Maestro, who is also a singer/songwriter, hadn’t read any of the books or seen any of the movies before she was…
Are birth control pills dangerous?
Last week as I was writing about my history with chronic pain, something dawned on me. I first started experiencing chronic pain about midway through my freshman year of college. What dawned on me is that this was only a few months after I started taking birth control pills. That connection probably wouldn’t mean a…
City funding cuts already hurting women and children in San Antonio
For the first time, the Child Development Center at Blessed Sacrament Academy on Mission Road is losing enrollment. It still offers quality care for children ages six weeks to five years. Their programs continue to teach vital developmental skills. And, the children always receive nurturing care from staff. Why enrollment is down can be captured…
Egyptian Bazaar and Fashion Show at NY Exchange
Save the Date! Just in time for Christmas! Saturday November 19 from 4-9pm and Sunday November 20 from noon-4pm For Saturday Only: Food Served 6pm Fashion Show 8pm I am very excited to announce that Barbara Alarcon and Amanda Alarcon with New York Exchange and Mr. John & Imelda Hanna will be hosting an Egyptian…
The 12 Days of Xicana-Friendly Reading
Holiday music is playing on the radio, so it’s officially time to give you the Second Annual 12 Days of Xicana-Friendly Reading list. Last year, I recommended a few classics, with a splash of poetry and a couple of contemporary Xicana/o authors. All of the voices on 2010’s list continue to influence my work, life, and spirit in…
Group collaboration leans on symbolism, gesture in message of isolation
It’s eight o’clock at night at the Sterling Houston Theater at Jump-Start, and the cast of “Stranger” is in dress rehearsal. The world-premiere opening is days away and tonight the actors are working for the first time without scripts. They move rapidly through the scenes, only stopping now and then for director Viera Dubacová to…
Let the pumpkins feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner
Winter squash — along with turkey, eggnog, and perhaps your crazy aunt Bertha — has a place at most holiday tables. But unlike the others, there is a seasonal reason for the inclusion of winter squash. And by seasonal, I don’t mean holiday season. As the warm part of the year belongs to greens and…
BeerFace and Pointing Fingers: (7” Split Single)
Songs about gettin’ trashed are hardly original, but BeerFace’s "Number One" is a slick late ’80s party rap retread. Anchored with a mean funk bass line, slow drum break, and a wealth of booze-themed foley, BeerFace (operating as Louie Dollars in other projects) muses at length on romanticized alcoholism. Beer guts and parking lot puke…
Atlas Sound: Parallax
There is an eye of the storm quality that attends this album, like other Atlas Sound outings before it; a paranoid acceptance nudging the listener to an uncanny identification with the fragile human voice buried under the layered camouflage of the music. These songs gaze at you like strangers on a bus, their loneliness paradoxically…
Some soul-saving markets to explore this gift-giving season
Trying to find the perfect gift for that special someone, but none of the free-trade-zone-inspired piles of plastic doing the trick for you? Holding out hope that you can sustain that commercial-free corner of your soul through the increasingly crass holiday season? Don’t fret! We found you some positively liberating shopping alternatives for you. Art-i-copia…
The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito)
"At age 50," wrote George Orwell, "every man has the face he deserves." But what if a man — or woman — of any age is forced to undergo plastic surgery? If our bodies are ourselves, is organ transplantation an act of identity theft? When Dr. Robert Ledgard (Banderas) admits to the president of a…
Les Garrigues: French underdog comes of age
The universe in a grain of sand? I’ll let philosophers of a William Blake bent wrestle with that one. But the world of wine in a single bottle? Why not? For a number of reasons, one bottle caught my fancy for this exercise in expansion ad absurdum: it’s French (and they developed many of the…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If you go into a major art museum that displays Europe’s great oil paintings, you’ll find that virtually every masterpiece is surrounded by an ornate wooden frame, often painted gold. Why? To me, the enclosure is distracting and unnecessary. Why can’t I just enjoy the arresting composition on the naked canvas,…
Local artists create unique, perfect presents
Think there’s nothing cool being made in San Antonio? Think again. We scoured the city (and even the internet) and found stacks of quirky items by local artists we’d be thrilled to unwrap. Consider this your cheat sheet. Photos by Bryan Rindfuss Clockwise from top left: Vintage tea tin bracelets: FatCat Jewelry by Kari Stringer:…
The only solid fact about Robert Johnson is his music — everything else is up for grabs
Robert Johnson might the be the most effective musician in history. He died at 27 and only had 29 known recordings (16 of them produced in San Antonio); his music wasn’t widely played during his lifetime, and few facts are known about his life. Yet he’s widely regarded as the greatest bluesman of all time.…
R.E.M.: Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage (1982-2011)
I’ll never forgive Michael Stipe for once saying that the Beatles sounded like "elevator music" to his ears. What I will forgive him for is continuing R.E.M. even after drummer Bill Berry left in 1997. Although only Collapse Into Now (2011) achieved glorious status among the band’s post-Berry output, even the weakest of the late…
Regional cooking tips and eating Thanksgiving out
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and you’re probably panicking about what to cook this holiday season. You want to make something delicious, but not predictable. If you need some inspiration, head to the Quarry Farmers & Ranchers Market on Sunday, November 20, to see chef Lou Lambert demo recipes from his new cookbook, Big Ranch, Big City,…
Spinning inside the South Town Tavern
“I think this is the last Tejano bar,” said Antonio Alvarez, a South Town Tavern regular. “I come here every Friday after work.” Though only six months old, the venue inside the old Yolanda’s bar on South Presa owned by Leticia and George Rivas already has a Cheers-like quality with regulars populating the bar and…
‘Fall Fall Fall,’ SA’s low-budget answer to Austin
The relationship between local musicians and music lovers with our city is a complicated one. And with Austin so close by, most of us are guilty of cheating on San Anto at least a few times a year. But musician Arturo Garcia (Artie, for short), operating under the moniker of "Partie Productions," has something up…
The Apoca-List
AKA The “We’re Fucked” Index
ICE policies leave overburdened foster-care system in their wake
A sustained federal crackdown made 2011 a banner year for deportations. A record 397,000 undocumented immigrants were sent packing. And while the Obama administration cheers that more than half of those deported were convicted of crimes, advocates warn of a troubling by-product of rising immigration enforcement: children left behind as natural-born citizens absorbed by the…
The QueQue: Science fair: SA teacher petitions the TCEQ, Despite headlines, fracking not out of the woods yet
Science fair: SA teacher petitions the TCEQ It seemed like just one more Change.org petition. Honestly, it was just one more Change.org petition — one of an estimated 50,000 that have been started on the site since it launched in 2007. QueQue happily signed it, Facebooked it, and filed it away with all those other…
Reclaiming our history (and local artists)
Congrats to the San Antonio Museum of Art. Last week, contemporary art curator David S. Rubin placed 22 new acquisitions in the SAMA galleries, including works by local artists James F. Dicke II*, Joey Fauerso*, Jim Harter*, Chuck Ramirez, Henry Rayburn, Alex Rubio, Ed Saavedra, Mark Schlesinger, Ansen Seale*, Hills Snyder, Vincent Valdez, and Lloyd…
Rich DelGrosso/Jonn Del Toro Richardson: The opening act
Houston musicians Rich DelGrosso (mandolin, pictured at left) and John Del Toro Richardson (guitar) teamed up on the recent Time Slips On By, a collaboration of original Delta blues songs, and they bring the product of their partnership to San Antonio this weekend. “I am really glad that Jonn wanted to record together,” DelGrosso told…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Mexican: Why is Mexico such a dump? Just to name a few of the problems: stray dogs running all over the place, piles of trash burning in the street, blown out tires hanging from cactus by the side of the road, shredded plastic shopping bags plastering every fence in sight, rampant corruption in government,…
Make scotch your holiday adventure (no cinammon required)
This is the time of the year that spirits writers go all silly about cider this, mulled that, and cinnamon sticks (not to mention nutmeg, allspice, cloves) in everything. We plead guilty — not because these drinks are personal favorites but because there seems to be a kind of obligation to over-acknowledge the season. (The…
The horrible and the miserable
Woody Allen: A Documentary (8pm Sun, PBS) More than a decade after the disappointing Wild Man Blues, American Masters gives Woody Allen the documentary he deserves. Allen has long been a remote figure, loath to grant interviews or make personal appearances. The two-part Woody Allen: A Documentary allows us to get as close to the…
For someone living — and dying — with a terminal illness, options for a dignified death are scant and pitiless
When my beloved 17-year-old Persian cat was in pain, suffering from multiple diseases, I gave him the ultimate gift of love. I had him put to sleep, euthanized or, I suppose — semantics be damned — you could say I asked the vet to kill him, and she did. He died peacefully in my and…
Rory Block: The headliner
"In 1964 I first heard Robert Johnson," Rory Block told the Current. "I was 14 in 1964, and I immediately felt that he was the greatest blues genius I had ever heard." Little did she know than in 2003, while recording The Lady and Mr. Johnson (a tribute album released in 2006), she would get…
Commissioner Stern plays the part of Captain Obvious, cancels more 2011 – 2012 games
On a day that saw the NBA’s first players file antitrust lawsuits against the league, the NBA officially cancelled all games scheduled through December 15. To date, more than a quarter of the 2011 – 2012 season has been cancelled. The news isn’t shocking as Commissioner David Stern frequently made it clear that at least…
Artist Foundation Awards over $60,000 to San Antonio Artists
The Artist Foundation of San Antonio announced the 2011 award winners Monday night at Coates Chapel, Southwest School of Art. Founded by arts advocate Patricia Pratchett and local artist Bettie Ward in 2005 to identify and encourage local artists, this is the sixth year that grants have been given out fund new works. The grants are monetary…
SOLI Chamber Ensemble opens season
SOLI Chamber Ensemble opened their season last night at Gallery Nord with “Quantum Change,” three works that emphasized the quartet’s dedication to the American modern tradition while sneaking in a few contemporary twists. Tonight the program repeats at Trinity University’s Ruth Taylor Concert Hall. Mason Bate’s Red River opened the evening with five movements…
