Lucky update: Ladran, Sancho
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com “Ladran, Sancho. Señal que cabalgamos (“When the dogs bark, it is because we are working),” said Don Quixote, according to my dubious English-translated copy of the Cervantes classic (I would’ve preferred “advancing” to “working,” but you get the idea). After a press conference Friday at the San Antonio Zoo where activists…
Jungle Rumble: What gives with Wild9?
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Not content with stripping the Wild Animal Orphanage bare on a Bexar County stage and exposing the unraveling mortal coil that is entertainment by marine mammal, the Current decided to hit upon what is perhaps the world’s most significant international gathering dedicated to the protection of the world’s wildlife and wild spaces.…
Live and Local preview: The Cinderleaf
Without Jeremy Martin’s firm, but gentle hand to guide me, I’ll be out at Rebar tonight for their 7th anniversary to check out San Antonio’s unsung alt-rock heroes The Cinderleaf, Unfortunately I don’t have a whole lot of info on this show. The Cinderleaf isn’t returning my messages, and I hear they didn’t even listen…
Straight from the Arizona Gulag: Linda Ronstadt in SA
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com Flowers for Lou Dobbs: Linda Ronstadt is mad as hell, and she’s not going to take it anymore. The short story: Linda Ronstadt performs her best-selling Canciones de mi padre with Los Angeles’ Los Camperos de Nati Cano, one of the world’s finest mariachis. The show is tomorrow night at the…
Music Town = Circus of Values
Music Town is going away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t exploit it one last time for your own personal gain. The store’s unloading all its stock including (assuming someone hasn’t already snagged it) the stereo equipment, turntables, and furniture pictured. Considering it’s the store’s last day, they won’t be placing any special orders (thanks…
CPS Energy’s Bob Temple talks nuke options
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Two days before he boards a plane for some sure-to-be heated negotiating in Japan, CPS Energy’s VP of Nuclear Development, Bob Temple, spent a few minutes with the Current laying out the city’s options. In the course of just a few months, the city’s appetite for power from a planned expansion of…
Senator Cornyn’s prescription is in
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com “No `video` cameras,” said Senator Cornyn’s staffer Jonathan Huhne, before accepting Cornyn’s medicine. (Photo by Enrique Lopetegui) “Now what? Are we going to yell and scream?” asked a high-school-aged girl outside the elevator, on her way to Senator Cornyn’s office in Downtown San Antonio. She was surrounded by about 15 fellow…
Forget it, Jake â?? it was Music Town
A late entry for our Dia de los Muertos feature: RIP Music Town (April 2, 2007 – November 6, 2009) Sniff. One of the city’s best record stores closes shop at midnight tomorrow, leaving musicians with one less place to sell their music and San Antonians with one less cool hangout/music venue. You can probably…
Union wants Probation Chief Fitzgerald out now
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Local union reps are leaning on criminal district and county judges to put Bexar County Probation Chief Bill “On the Fritz” Fitzgerald on administrative leave rather than allow the target of several federal lawsuits to serve out his time before a planned January retirement. Fitzgerald, the target of multiple state and federal…
Weird Press Releases, Volume II: Phone-a-Celeb
Note: You can get in on the ground floor of this exciting series by reading Volume I here. I’m in for an interesting Veteran’s Day, if everything goes according to plan. Here’s a press release we received today. My comments are italicized, and in parentheses. “Hi! You should be receiving you” (sic) “press kit for…
Show & Prove: Road Woe
Week one of the young NBA season was kind to the Spurs, resulting in a pair of blowout wins at home tempered by a tough loss on the road in Chicago. The 85-92 setback at the hands of the young Bulls came on the second night of back-to-back games, a recurring challenge San Antonio has…
The WAO Files 6: Sumner Matthes.
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com “Why are you calling me?” Sumner Matthes asked when I called him in early October, days after Carol and Ron Asvestas had been terminated and their daughter Nicole put in charge of WAO. After examining hundreds of pages of public records related to WAO, I came to the conclusion that Matthes,…
Fun Fun Fun Fest will probably be fun
Update: The $150 beer-and-food included passes are sold out. The $75 tickets are still available, however. OK, the above video of for-real band Metallagher (they’ve got a MySpace and everything) looks absolutely godawful, but I posted it to prove how ridiculous the 90-band lineup for Austin’s Fun Fun Fun Fest is this year. The two-day…
The WAO Files 5: WRR’s Lynn Cuny
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com In 1977, Lynn Cuny founded Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation, a model sanctuary in Kendalia. Shortly after WAO’s shake-up, Cuny met with Nicole GarcÃa, chosen by WAO’s board to replace her own mother as the head of WAO. I spoke to Cuny by phone on October 9. Did you meet with Nicole…
The WAO Files 4: Carol speaks. Sort of.
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com The following are some of the statements offered by Carol Asvestas and then-WAO attorney Eric Turton during and after an August 20 press conference at WAO’s Leslie Rd. facility. At the press conference On the number of animal deaths (to Channel 12 producer Shari St. Clair): “Since 2005, nothing but misinformation,…
San Anto Sangre
Sexy local vampire novel needs more bite
Little orphan Coco
Coco Before Chanel Director: Anne Fontaine Screenwriter: Anne Fontaine Cast: Audrey Tautou, Benoit Poelvoorde, Allessandro Nivola Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Our Rating: 4.00 The story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel is without a doubt France’s favorite fashion fairy tale. Born in a poorhouse to unwed parents in 1883, Gabrielle Chanel was dumped at…
Critic’s DISS
The Fourth Kind Director: Olatunde Osunsanmi Screenwriter: Olatunde Osunsanmi Cast: Milla Jovovich, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, Corey Johnson Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Our Rating: 1.50 What Psycho did for showers, based-on-a-real-made-up-story alien-abduction “thriller” The Fourth Kind does for owls. Just kidding — that sentence is ridiculous. Owls are already creepy (see The…
Diosdado
Diosdado Composer: Snowbyrd Conductor: Snowbyrd Label: Saustex Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Snowbyrd’s newest release is sort of a tribute to late drummer Manny Castillo, but as former Current music expert Gilbert Garcia points out in the liner notes, it “won’t allow you to grieve.” There’s just too much going on. After a…
A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears
A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears Composer: Antonio D’Ambrosio Conductor: Antonio D’Ambrosio Label: Nation Books Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording In 1964 (a year after scoring a huge hit with “Ring of Fire,” and four before the legendary Folsom Prison concert), Johnny Cash recorded Bitter Tears:…
Sainthood
Sainthood Composer: Tegan & Sara Conductor: Tegan & Sara Label: Sire Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Being one of alt-rock’s most consistent machines is sort of a double-edged sword. Canadian twins Tegan & Sara have never made a truly great album, but their best moments suggest acute focus could be just around the…
Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da
Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da Composer: Rammstein Conductor: Rammstein Label: Universal/Vagrant Release Date: 2009-11-04 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Liebe Ist Für Alle Da, the latest album by German theatrical music troupe Rammstein, proves the fires of post-industrial shock-rock are still burning strong. “Rammlied” opens the album in epic fashion with a chorus that undoubtedly alludes…
Art opening: Rx Garden: Sticky Ends
Release Date: 2009-11-04 Trinity University drawing professor Jessica Halonen’s curious artworks are often inspired by “dysfunctional biological systems.” At first glance, her delicate sculptures and scientific-looking drawings bring to mind the type of botanicals that might grow in the mythical forest that surrounds Candy Land, but are actually based on gene-splicing and pharmaceutical production. Halonen’s…
Shonen Knife w/ the Strange Boys & the Lovvers
Release Date: 2009-11-04 Often credited with opening the underground pop scene to bands from Japan, Shonen Knife has been recording stripped-down pop-punk for 27 years now. Heavily influenced by ’80s bands like the Buzzcocks and the Ramones, they’ve been known to play live gigs as “The Osaka Ramones” as a side project. Their most recent…
Indecent Desires (adults only)
Release Date: 2009-11-04 The Overtime Theater has been screening midnight movies recently, and they’re doing an excellent job of digging up campy, bizarre relics. The two main characters in Indecent Desires are a sadistic pervert and a sensuous woman who can’t seem to keep her clothes on. The creep finds a plastic doll and (naturally)…
An Evening with Linda Ronstadt
Release Date: 2009-11-04 Musical versatility is something Linda Ronstadt is famous for. Known as the First Lady of Rock throughout the ’70s, Ronstadt drew inspiration from childhood memories in recording 1987’s Canciones de mi Padre, the biggest-selling non-English-language album in American record history. On Saturday, the avid arts advocate will reprise this classic mariachi-themed album…
Art opening:Maybe If Your Metaphors Weren’t So Obvious
Release Date: 2009-11-04 If you think you don’t know what Gary Sweeney’s artwork looks like, you might be mistaken. His clever public-art projects seem to be seeping slowly into SA’s landscape. His Put-in-Cup installation at San Antonio Airport shows two menacing-looking German Shepherds book-ending a sign that reads “It’s Okay You’re Safe Now,” while eight…
Antigone
Release Date: 2009-11-04 First published in 1943, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone put the French author in a dangerous position due to the play’s originally censored subtext, which outlines the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France. Based on Sophocles’s play of the same name, Anouilh’s version is considered to be somewhat of a satire. Having…
Thai breaker
Release Date: 2009-11-04 “Here or to go?” was the brusque greeting at Thai Corner my first time out. “Here” was the answer — and here’s the result. The $7.35 lunch menu, available daily, seems a bargain at first glance. It comes with soup, appetizer, and tea, along with a choice of several entrées. I…
Screening: Nausicaa of Valley of the Wind
Release Date: 2009-11-04 Director Hayao Miyazaki’s films often explore humanity’s relationship to nature and technology. While most will associate Miyazaki’s name with 1997’s Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a fascinating example of his early work. Set 1,000 years after the “Seven Days of Fire,” an event that destroyed Earth’s ecosystem,…
Buddha’s delight
Release Date: 2009-11-04 Business partners David Padilla and Jeremy Roberts had been planning a Buddha-themed bar for some time. Padilla originally wanted to open Buddha Rok in Miami, but when a unique space became available on San Antonio’s North Side, it became home to the 1,200-pound sandstone Buddha he had ordered from Thailand. Buddha Rok…
Melt Banana w/ All Leather, Yoshimoto, Kick it!, & Of My Redemption
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-04 The trick to good noise rock isn’t overloading your amplifier, it’s making sure the noise you’re making is as interesting as it is loud. Tokyo’s Melt-Banana achieve that largely by knowing how the instruments they play work. Guitarist Ichirou Agata is a master of guitar torture, constantly coaxing new squeals…
The fungus among us
VanderMeer’s spore noir has legs
MFA Thesis Exhibitions: Mira Hnatyshyn: Happiness is Easy
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-11-04 Forget vampires, y’all. Zombies? Feh. But we’ll admit to being a little freaked out by clowns. We know this is no exotic confession; what with Stephen King’s IT, one John Wayne Gacy, and that unspeakable dolly from Poltergeist, clownophobia’s downright commonplace. Which is why Mira Hnatyshyn’s Satellite Space show, Happiness…
The main spot
It happened Saturday night at Main Plaza: I was sitting on the steps, surrounded by, say, dozens of people watching 1922’s Nosferatu, the classic silent horror film. Sandwiched between a beer-drinking teenager whose face was painted like a calavera, and a couple who was reading the title cards to their small sons, I had a…
Nice rack
The Antlers’ Hospice is definitely one of my favorite albums of 2009, but I’ve only heard it twice. That’s because this ambitious, risky, ultimately beautiful piece of music also happens to be depressing as shit. The lyrics describe a lover’s loss to bone cancer and — even more devastatingly — the painfulness in continuing a…
Live & Local
Maybe, maybe, 10 people stand in front of the White Rabbit stage when Necurat have finished tuning up, but that’s all right. It’s 8 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s not even completely dark outside, and this concert’s being billed as “A Night of Horror,” with four other equally evil-sounding groups (in addition to Necurat, Romanian…
The Sound & The Fury
Not surprisingly, the Calle 13/Rubén Blades collaboration “La Perla” (a candombe/salsa/rap gem that is the best Latin song of the year, hands down) only got one nomination (Best Video) for the 10th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, which will take place Thursday, November 5, in Las Vegas. Residente, lyricist for the Puerto Rican rap/fusion duo, told…
Dear Uncle Mat
There is no other way to put this than I am lonely. The holidays are upon us, and I am single for the first time in more than seven years, and I do not know what to do. I broke up with my boyfriend last May because I felt we were not going anywhere. We…
Sins of the Flesh
It’s an intensely graphic month at the San Antonio Museum of Art, where antique suppurating martyrs are countered by modern meat, splayed, ground, stacked, and photographed for consumption. I’m a fan of the bacon, but most of the subjects of David Halliday’s still-life photographs are actually vegetables, and in both his sepia-toned black-and-white images and…
ARTifacts
The Overtime is sin dudo the most accessible of the city’s theaters; founder John Poole(who also serves as a principal actor, writer, director, and receptionist) told us, “We’re putting on shows for the 90 percent of San Antonio who don’t already go to the theater. That’s why we do … campy, non-academic stuff — as…
Waiting to inhale
Head in his hands, whiskey at the ready, John Finch has a problem. He’s a local employed by an occupying force, tasked with solving a double homicide — one of his, one of theirs. His own regard him as a traitor. The others, expendable. The more he discovers, the closer he gets to the end…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): There was a time when wetlands were considered dismal and unproductive. At best they were thought to be a waste of space, and at worst stinky breeding grounds for insect pests. For over 200 years, many marshes, bogs, and swamps were filled with dirt and transformed into places suitable for farms,…
Don’t Stop ’til you get enough
When I told my father that I’d be reviewing This Is It, he said, “Michael Jackson was such a perfectionist — would he want rehearsals to be released to the public?” and “Aren’t those who stand to benefit from this movie the same people who exploited him his whole life?” This coming from a 60-something…
SeaWorld’s body count and the DA’s blood draw
Sink or swim For the annals of unfortunate headlines: A beluga whale died during a “visit” to SeaWorld San Antonio this weekend. It makes the residency sound voluntary, first of all. Worse, we couldn’t get the image of whale-sized turnstile tragedy out of our heads. A better visitation scenario: 3,000 pounds of lovely flubba plop…
Animal Wrongs
On July 10, a white Bengal tiger named Vi Vi died at the Wild Animal Orphanage, a sanctuary for retired research primates, discarded big-game pets, and an assortment of other castoffs located in Northwest Bexar County. Less than a year old, she had arrived at the orphanage in February from the Rio Grande Valley to…
The Fungus Among Us
World Fantasy Award winner Jeff VanderMeer, in the anthology New Weird, defined the 21st century’s first major literary movement. “New Weird is a type of urban … fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing … complex real-world models … that may combine elements of science fiction and…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Why do beaners or gabachos deliberately try to ignore white people and act like they’re not there, or when you’re walking by, the lady beaners laugh so hard with a repulsive fake laugh that makes you want to just punch them? Not only I have noticed this, but a lot of other people…
Fresh, raw, no cream cheese
Many butts have burnished the vinyl-clad swivel chairs at Niki’s sushi bar. I lost my San Antonio sushi innocence many uni ago in one of them, and I wouldn’t have them replaced for the world. Yes, the carpet could use changing again, and the bathrooms need updating. But Niki’s has never been about décor, so…
Amuse-BOUCHE
Yes, it’s New World Wine & Food Festival time again, and the lineup is either punishing or exhilarating, depending whether you’ve been training for this, the other November marathon in town. Get the complete schedule at nwwff.org or call (210) 822-9555. Here are my picks, based on expertise as a founder and former co-planner, and…
Weekend death makes 11 beluga fatalities for SeaWorld SA
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com I couldn’t help but mock the headline in my Twitter feed yesterday. A beluga whale had died during a “visit” to Sea World San Antonio. It made the residency sound voluntary, first of all. Worse, I couldn’t get the image of whale-sized turnstile tragedy out of my head. A better visitation scenario:…
