EchoTown Update: Solar is cooking `tamales` in San Anto
By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com BRACKENRIDGE PARK â?? It is not a burger cooking in a cardboard box, as the City Parks man dragging a water hose tree to tree supposes. Rather, the X-Wing Fighter-looking solar oven silently radiating two batches of veggie tamales is a top-of-the-line outdoor sun-powered cooker. By redirecting and focusing the sun’s…
Interview with filmmaker Oren Moverman
Oren Moverman – The Messenger By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net Filmmaker Oren Moverman was never given a choice whether or not he wanted to join the Army in his home country of Israel back in the early 80s. Military service was mandatory at the age of 18. “We had to serve…
Chaléwood No. 24 – Luis Guzman
Luis Guzman – Old Dogs By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net While there might be a famous proverb that reads, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” actor Luis Guzman has to respectfully disagree. “Of course you can teach an old dog new tricks,” Guzman, 53, told me during a phone…
CPS No.2 bows out; Mayor Castro’s voicemail is full
Bartley shoved into the spotlight Oct. 27 to explain Toshiba’s $4 billion open secret. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com While San Antonio prepares to bow its collective head (to disassemble turkey), some antsy digits weren’t fiddling with kitchen implements, we were making calls. We wanted to know how much of an impediment City Attorney Michael Bernhard is…
Hyatt responds to “Hyatt Risk of Injury”
Posted by Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Just minutes ago, Amy Patti, Public Relations Manager of the Hyatt in Chicago, replied to our Hyatt Risk of Injury report with the following statement: “The health and safety of associates in all positions at Hyatt are our highest priorities. While we take seriously all valid research regarding workplace safety,…
Meet the Tear-Itself-Apart Party
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com The harder San Antonio’s Tea Party (SATP) tries to be transparent, the more opaque things get. It seems that, in April, the San Antonio Tea Party received more than $150,000 in donations, as posted (for “transparency”) on a month-by-month link on sanantonioteaparty.info. From May to October, the group received an average…
Pig Tales
The Scientists (doctors of drinking)
Mercado de Paz/Peace Market
Release Date: 2009-11-25 v class=”story”> Fine, upstanding, worthwhile-to-the-community organizations like the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center gotta weigh in early on in the holiday season against the big mega-titans of consumer commerce in order to be contenders. So strap on yer wallet and peruse their annual Peace Market this black Friday (and, uh, sinister Saturday).…
Chicken a la king
Travels with Frenchie
Putting the pieces back together
Stitches Release Date: 2009-11-25 Publishing House: W.W. Norton & Co. Rated: NONE List Price: 24.9500 Edition: Hardcover Genre: Graphic Novel At age 14, writer and illustrator David Small’s neck was sewn up “like a bloody boot,” his voice temporarily gone after surgeries to remove a cancerous growth that resulted from specious radiology treatments. His father…
Precious
Precious Director: Lee Daniels Screenwriter: Lee Daniels Cast: Mo’Nique , Paula Patton, Mariah Carey, Gabourey Sidibe, Sherri Shepherd Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: R Genre: Film Like its main character – a perceptive young girl hidden beneath layer upon layer of malnourished corpulence and emotional barbed-wire fences – there is a fine, almost daring movie buried…
The Twilight Saga:New Moon
The Twilight Saga:New Moon Director: Chris Weitz Screenwriter: Chris Weitz Cast: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: PG Genre: Film The Twilight Saga:New Moon — the latest screen installment in the multi-part epic of unfanged, sparkly teenaged vampires and the women who love them — is nigh…
The Very Very Best of Gleeson
The Very Very Best of Gleeson Composer: Gleeson Conductor: Gleeson Label: Almost There Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording As you might expect from an album that collects songs written over a period of 15 years, the debut from South Texas rock four-piece Gleeson covers a lot of ground in 45 minutes. While many…
Before I Self Destruct
Before I Self Destruct Composer: 50 Cent Conductor: 50 Cent Label: Interscope Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording For-the-ladies jams are few and far between on Before I Self Destruct, 50 Cent’s fourth album. As the cavalcade of pre-release mixtapes suggested, Destruct is an unabashedly militant for-the-streets disc; this is 50 in druglord/CEO mode,…
Attention Defecit
Attention Defecit Composer: Wale Conductor: Wale Label: Allido/Interscope Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Rapper Wale hit the buzz jackpot with last year’s terrific Mixtape About Nothing, 70-plus minutes of rhymes and samples tied together with a Seinfeld theme. On his official debut, the 25-year-old Washington, D.C., native pairs up with some A-list guests…
Ignore the Ignorant
Ignore the Ignorant Composer: The Cribs Conductor: The Cribs Label: Warner Bros. Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording v class=”story”> British rockers the Cribs loaded 2007’s Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever with razorblade vocals and guitars. On this follow-up, they get a little poppier and a lot moodier, thanks to ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr,…
The Road
Critic’s Pick The Road Director: John Hillcoat Screenwriter: John Hillcoat Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce Release Date: 2009-11-25 Rated: R Genre: Film You will find no green trees, sunshine, or healthy, happy-looking people in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, much less anyone who even remotely resembles Charlize Theron, so it’s a…
The Omniboire (thinking about drinking)
The early story of absinthe, affectionately also known as la fée verte, or the green fairy, is as cloudy as the louche that is produced when water is slowly added to a glass of the potent elixir. Potions made from Artemisia absinthium, or grande wormwood, the herb that is responsible both for the drink’s peculiar,…
‘P’ is for Puscifer
Maynard James Keenan hung up on me. To be fair, the publicist who connected the call warned me beforehand that I was scheduled for exactly 20 minutes of phone time, but I expected a gentler goodbye. Somewhere deep inside, I felt my inner 14-year-old — formerly so thrilled at the prospect of interviewing the lead…
Honesty in the youthfulness
Trade in Your Pieces, the new self-produced album from year-old experimental rockers Articles of Separation, is scheduled to drop on Wednesday, November 25. AOS will be joined by fellow Alamo City acts Deer Vibes and Pygmaeus that night for the release event at the White Rabbit. The $10 admission fee includes a copy of AOS’s…
Live & Local
Mexicans With Guns, aka err … a local DJ to be named later, originally planned to perform a guerilla show at the Alamo earlier Friday in honor of the Mexican Revolution. He didn’t (God was making it rain for one thing), and, as cool as that would have been, we think he probably made the…
The Sound & The Fury
Rapper Wale hit the buzz jackpot with last year’s terrific Mixtape About Nothing, 70-plus minutes of rhymes and samples tied together with a Seinfeld theme. On his official debut, the 25-year-old Washington, D.C., native pairs up with some A-list guests (Pharrell, Lady Gaga), raps a lot about things that bring him down, and comes off…
OCD like a ‘Fox;
Hand-knitted grass. Cotton-ball smoke. Bath-towel hillsides. Puppets wait on the verge of their next expression on this meticulously arranged set as a man reaches in from the dim periphery to tweak the gesture of a diminutive paw. This is Brad Schiff, animator for Fantastic Mr. Fox. “I often have that thousand-yard stare when I walk…
Gary Sweeney:Good Humor Man
Artist Gary Sweeney, a California transplant with an unshakable beach-bum ease and glow, is one of San Antonio’s ambassadors to the outside world. His “Nostalgia, Texas” series of billboards abuts the parking garage at San Antonio International Airport, where it beckons visitors and locals with glowing imagery redolent of the visual pleasures of midcentury advertising…
Gary Sweeney: 10 Facts
1. Gary Sweeney grew up in Manhattan Beach, California. When he was in high school and college, famed reclusive author Thomas Pynchon lived down the street, and was, in Gary’s words, Gary’s sister Gail’s “BFF.” In fact, a Sweeney family casserole recipe appears in Pynchon’s novel Vineland. 2. Gary and his wife Janet Sweeney…
Home for the holidays
Only a plane ride away by Bryan Rindfuss One day about five years ago, while walking along a familiar SoHo street, I got the call from my father. By the sound of his voice, I knew this was not the ordinary “just checkin’ on ya”-type call. With a cracking voice, he explained that a team…
Dear Uncle Mat
Me and my boyfriend are planning on moving to a new city next summer. We’ve been best friends for over a year before we started dating. The only problem is he wants to date other people when we move. We’ve never exchanged “I love yous” or whatnot, but he has talked about one day opening…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): One of the greatest superpowers a human being can have is the ability to change herself in accordance with her intentions. Let’s say you’re tired of feeling shame about something there’s no good reason to feel shame about, and you decide to do whatever it takes to dissolve that shame, and…
Home on the range (mother’s day out..of her mind)
I’ve never been one to take advantage of absolute-satisfaction-or-your-money-back guarantees. Part of it is just laziness, but I also try to accept my responsibility as a consumer: The choices I make are my own, motivated by a combination of careful research and wishful thinking. If the age-defying serum I purchase doesn’t prove to be as…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: I live in a little village in England in a house that’s 200 years old, just down the hill from a tiny church that’s so old that it was actually built before God said “Let there be light,” thus proving that Stephen Hawking is a blowhard. The only industry around here, apart from…
A remade man, a paper player
Restorative justice Is District Attorney candidate Nico LaHood crazy? At least two interested parties have suggested that the young Democrat, who kicked off his campaign with a Spur-studded fundraiser November 16 at the Tropicano, is nuts to run against 10-year incumbent Susan Reed. `See the QueQue, November 18.` That’s because his credentials — law school,…
Putting the pieces back together
At age 14, writer and illustrator David Small’s neck was sewn up “like a bloody boot,” his voice temporarily gone after surgeries to remove a cancerous growth that resulted from specious radiology treatments. His father had been his physician. His mother, distant and difficult. Small’s work Stitches, one of two graphic novels to receive a…
Misnamed â??Lucky’ the elephant said to whimper â??Namaste’
By Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com As President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visit over the next couple days, elephants likely won’t be on their list of talking points. But they should be. The land that holds cattle sacred would perhaps also like to hold conference with the planet’s most voracious beef eaters â?? especially…
Fall Geis: CPS Energy kingdom to crumble (a bit)
Board Chair Geis tries out a new hairstyle while trying to maintain utility control. Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com It was not the best choice for a daughter-to-work day: waiting out what turned out to be a marathon closed-door meeting of CPS Energy’s Board of Trustees. Nine floors above the increasingly haggard-looking media contingent, irrepressible policy wonks,…
Beauty and the Beast
Release Date: 2009-11-24 Ever wonder why Beauty and the Beast is the “tale as old as time?” While the publication of Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve’s La Belle et le Bete dates only to 1765, the story was a pre-existing fairy tale. An English translation appeared in 1757, as well as a French opera in 1771.…
Del Castillo w/ Red Abbey
Release Date: 2009-11-24 class=”story”> Being taken under the wing of director Robert Rodriguez hasn’t hurt Latin rockers Del Castillo one bit, but they were doing just fine on their own. What started as a family CD project erupted into one of the most talked-about Austin bands in recent history. Willie Nelson is one of their…
Wine to Wildlife Festival
Release Date: 2009-11-24 To celebrate its one-year anniversary, the luxuriously casual Serengeti Resort is pulling out all the stops with a two-day Wine to Wildlife Festival. Here’s a potential scenario: While that man of yours watches televised sports (beer in hand) in the Serengeti’s cozy Tiki Lounge, you and your gal pals browse the unique…
Las Nuevas Tamaleras
Release Date: 2009-11-24 Ever since its 1990 debut at Houston’s first annual Latino Playwrights Festival, Las Nuevas Tamaleras has been laughed at — for all the right reasons. SA native Alicia Mena’s original bilingual play follows unseasoned cocineras as they tackle making the perfect tamal. To make things even more difficult, the ghosts of legendary…
Glamarama III
Release Date: 2009-11-24 Something the Current will always approve of is taking the drag element out of the clubs and putting it in the theater, darling. In this case it’s Tobin Award-winning costume designer (and repeat offender) John McBurney, with emcee Miss Eva Green, showcasing a contingent of flawless divas as they parade around the…
Screening: Texas Music Extravaganza: the Tex Mex Generation
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-24 When we reported on the August 27 Texas Music Extravaganza show at Leon Springs Dance Hall, we knew it would be a dynamite concert. What we didn’t know was that the event, a benefit for the March of Dimes, would be filmed and eventually shown on PBS. “It went great,”…
