Pretty, and Witty, and Gay: Or, 2 out of 3 (on a good day) Ain’t Bad
This Wednesday, the Current’s annual LGBT issue (or is it GLBT?) hits the stands and the ‘Net, and I couldn’t be happier… except that I ain’t in it. Not that I’m gay, come to think of it (a girl can’t have everything), but the GLBT community is one I love and respect. Like most people,…
Arte: La Raza y la Rana (Sana)
I’m coming to count on UTSA Satellite Space as a reliable source for terrific, challenging, brainy art-looking experiences. (Way brainier than, say, the phrase “art-looking experiences.”) Recent shows like “Figure and Illusion,” “Media Lab,” “Welcome to the Monkey House, ” and the current exhibition, “Sana Sana Colita de Rana” have impressed me with their diversity,…
Desperately Seeking Sarah
By Gilbert Garcia In politics as in professional wrestling, much of the important stuff is preordained. For instance, in the hours leading up to Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at last month’s Republican Convention, you just knew that the bowling pins were being lined up for a major triumph. Young, untested Alaska governor endures cruel media…
On the Street: EMoney, No More Money, The Rising Costs of Corn and Porn, and You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll (You Can Only Hope to Contain It)
“Let’s get solid” (Dennis Rodman to David Robinson, circa 1993) Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) #1 Letter From Paris foto: Taylor Holland From expat Taylor Holland, he writes about his foto show in Paris… america and australia, (mexico and france got a separate email) i’m having my first-ever photo show this week,…
Live & Local Preview: Altus
Stalker alert: This Saturday at 8 p.m., I’ll be at Music Town (4714 Broadway St.) to watch and review a free in-store performance by poppy punkers Altus. Local noisemakers Feed (featuring vocalist Tyler Lutz, also frontman for hardcore act Lie & Wait, reviewed by me a little over a month ago here.) Come see what…
Smog-blessing Americums
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com He’s sort of a co-traveler on my morning commute. That’s as close as we get. I’m heading into downtown on Broadway; he’s moving away. I’m combusting exhaust into the spray; he’s pushing pedals and working those pipes. It’s been a bad week for it â?? for both my soot-exhaling Kia and his…
Dear Science
Dear Science Composer: TV on the Radio Label: DGC/Interscope Release Date: 2008-10-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Indie Rock TV On The Radio is officially the sexiest band in indie rock. Or at least the most sexed-up. Most of their indie-rock contemporaries either treat love like something epic and metaphysical, or bury it under a layer of…
Way to Normal
Way to Normal Composer: Ben Folds Label: Epic Release Date: 2008-10-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Singer/Songwriter (Rock/Pop) Where’s an EP when you need one? If Ben Folds’ third solo disc had been pared down from 12 tracks to say, six or seven, Way to Normal might have ranked among the top releases of the fall season.…
Red Letter Year
Red Letter Year Composer: Ani DiFranco Label: Righteous Babe Release Date: 2008-10-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Red Letter Year is DiFranco’s most collaborative release on her independent label — once again giving the anti-establishment finger to the man. Deep, layered arrangements of jazz-infused rhythms have replaced her trademark staccato, fierce-fingerpicking concoctions. Brass melodies featured in…
Beating Back the Claws of the Cold
Beating Back the Claws of the Cold Composer: The Pica Beats Label: Hardly Art Release Date: 2008-10-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Planting roots in Seattle by way of Vermont, the Pica Beats have bloomed into an unself-conscious four-piece from the solo-project seed of guitarist/sitarist/vocalist Ryan Barrett, melding a buffet of genres and idiosyncratic circumstances into…
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
Critic’s Pick Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist Director: Pete Sollett Screenwriter: Pete Sollett Cast: Michael Cera, Kat Dennings, Ari Graynor, Rafi Gavron, Alexis Dziena Release Date: 2008-10-01 Studio: Sony Pictures Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is a late-teen romantic comedy equal parts Superbad and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Nick (Micheal Cera) is…
Third Day, Switchfoot, Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Jars of Clay, & Red
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Though it’s not the traditional choice for most rock stars, Switchfoot (right) and Third Day are strengthening communities throughout the nation with the Music Builds tour. Habitat for Humanity affiliates will be the beneficiaries of a portion of the funds raised during the tour, and the bands themselves will pick up hammers…
Third Coast Rally
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Scooterists unite! The Third Coast Rally is one of San Antonio’s best kept secrets, leading riders on a First Friday events tour, a pub crawl, scenic rides through town, a long ride with the Texas Road Rats, Mission Trail exploration, and more over the course of three days. Riders also get a…
11th Annual Huevos Rancheros Gala & Silent Auction
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Breakfast will be served as we celebrate the Latin community’s roots with the annual Huevos Rancheros Gala. King Huevo Rudy Lopez, the co-founder of Conjunto Heritage Taller, and Queen Huevo Eva Ybarra, a Conjunto Hall of Fame musician, will be honored for their efforts to keep the city’s cultural heritage alive. Proceeds…
2008 Solar Tour
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Local residents fed up with fossil-fuel prices will join more than 100,000 participants nationwide to discover the latest real-world insights on solar energy and to learn how to become more energy independent. San Antonio participants will learn about solutions that can generate economic and environmental rewards on a self-guided tour of 10…
Taste of San Antonio
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Taste of San Antonio is the perfect excuse to ruin your dinner. The culinary expo boasts numerous samples from area restaurants, catering companies, food manufacturers, Texas wineries, and beverage distributors, including Mi Tierra, La Hacienda, Wetmore Smokehouse, Star of India, and many more. Food and beverage costs are nominal, and a percentage…
Gay Fiesta 2008
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Expect to see San Antonio’s LGBT community fully represented at the 25th Anniversary of Gay Fiesta, held this year at Sunken Gardens, with enough food, drinks, and fun to warrant an all-day affair. MCs Miss Autumn Summers and Jade Esteban Estrada will entertain, while the 2008 Queen of Gay Fiesta, Penelope Lord,…
Southside wake-up call
Chaba Thai sets off the right alarms
Bible of the Devil w. The Man-Eaters of Tsavo
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Keep San Antonio Metal has put together two of the best bands that Say Town and the Windy City have to offer. Local instrumental favorites the Man Eaters of Tsavo display their prowess with the band’s signature psychedelic wall of sound, opening for Chi-town’s Bible of the Devil. BOTD is currently on…
Coco-colored glasses
Release Date: 2008-10-01 If St. Valentine lived in the Texas suburbs, Coco would be the type of bar he’d open. Almost every recipe, and many of the drink options, is made with chocolate as a main ingredient. It’s a legal opium den for middle-aged, middle-class women, or a good place to lull a date into…
Jaguares
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Some nasty business with a promoter (see Kamikaze, August 22, 2007, for all the details) forced them to cancel a scheduled S.A. appearance last year, but supernova rock-en-español-ers Jaguares are trying again. Though they were originally scheduled to play at White Rabbit this time, the show has been moved to Club Rio,…
Put taxi money in your shoe
Release Date: 2008-10-01 Alibis is the downtown happy-hour haunt for locals, and has been the site of some of the best conversation I’ve had leaning against a bar in this city. I love the bartenders and I love the patrons (an interesting mix of doctors, lawyers, hospitality folks, A/V geeks, chefs, and just about anybody…
Fade to white
Blindness Director: Fernando Meirelles Screenwriter: Fernando Meirelles Cast: Don McKellar, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Alice Braga Release Date: 2008-10-01 Studio: Miramax Rated: R Genre: Film Beginning with a single man (Yusuke Iseya), stricken instantaneously and unexpectedly sightless at a traffic signal, a plague takes the country, blinding an ever-increasing portion of the population.…
Shia like an ‘Eagle’
Eagle Eye Director: D.J. Caruso Screenwriter: D.J. Caruso Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Michelle Monaghan, Rosario Dawson, Anthony Azizi, Billy Bob Thornton Release Date: 2008-10-01 Studio: Paramount Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Just so we’re clear: The kid’s name is pronounced “Shy-uh,” and he’s for real. Not to distract, right off the bat, from the other factors that…
How it would feel to be free
If asked to name some powerful women in music today, you might stare blankly before reverting to “Rupaul?” If asked to name some skanky women in music today, the list might exceed in length the Declaration of Independence. It seems that something has happened, or rather has not happened, to strip the scene to a…
The second time as farce
This is not the Crash of 1929 revisited, and we are not heading into a second Great Depression. No developed country this time round is going to face the 25-percent unemployment rate that the United States experienced in the 1930s. “Capitalists can buy themselves out of any crisis, so long as they make the workers…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
San Anto Cultural Arts’ annual Huevos Rancheros Gala always has a strongly musical bent, with Chicano R&B ensemble Sexto Sol being a particular favorite in years past. This year’s Huevos Rancheros will focus squarely on the impact of conjunto music on South Texas culture. King and Queen Huevos will be Conjunto Taller founder Rudy Lopez…
Love is a Gypsy Child
Knife fights, hair-pulling, crotch punches, booze and cigarettes — this is the menu for an evening in Seville. The San Antonio Opera opened its 12th season last weekend to the largest audience in its history with Georges Bizet’s Carmen. It’s easy to forget how many classic numbers come from this 125-year-old opera. Before curtains-up, an…
Fat cat attack
It only takes one song. Singer/songwriter James McMurtry had toiled for 15 years, releasing bluesy country-rock albums and playing shows, and was getting discouraged. In advance of the 2004 election, he released the powerful, “We Can’t Make It Here Anymore,” as a free download on his site, and it launched him into greater prominence. It…
Found in translation
Think back to a long, rugged road trip you’ve taken: the unexpected obstacles, the storytelling stragglers you met along the way, the inevitable heated argument sparked by a car breakdown. Add these elements to an impromptu journey of self-discovery and you’ve got Stephanie Elizondo Griest’s Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines. This nonfiction collection…
The Cartographers
Jackson Albracht stands onstage between cardboard cutouts of a T. Rex and a tentacled guitar, complaining that a Christian wants to eat his head. Lead vocalist-guitarist Albracht’s complaint comes in the deceptively politely titled “I Don’t Care for Job,” the band’s penultimate track in a scary-good set list too brief at about 30 minutes. The…
ARTIFACTS
After this Artifacts, the Current swears on Ladybird Johnson we will not mention bluebonnets again … unless, um, somebody asks about them, or we happen across a particularly terrific piece of bluebonnet art, which, as it happens, happened. Unfortunately, when the Current was working on last week’s Onderdonk-o-rama, SAMA curator David Rubin was out sick,…
“El Encuentro” — Espira
“The Encounter” plays more like all-out linguistic warfare. Militant drumming calls cadence for a low-key, en español intro encroaching on rock/Tejano No Man’s Land, a breach thwarted at the threshold by a full-scale American metal assault. The bilingual battle continues for five minutes while English and Spanish struggle to dominate the front. No clear victor…
‘Over there’ over here
Allison Hays Lane was skeptical at first. Standing in the art gallery at the Main Library, surveying as library staff adjust the track lighting, the curator of The Winds and Words of War: World War I Prints and Posters from the San Antonio Public Library Collection muses, “When `the libraries` got in touch with me,…
Back from Iraq
Luck is not only fickle, it’s relative. So when Colee Dunn (McAdams), whose boyfriend was killed in the combat zone she has just left behind, declares: “We’re the lucky ones, aren’t we?” she feels grateful simply because she and her two traveling companions are still alive. Soldiers on their way back from Iraq, they share…
‘Q’ is for quarter-life crisis
After earning degrees in both English and music from Yale University in 1997, Robert Lopez felt he had wasted his time. “There was nothing I was really qualified to do, except temp,” Lopez, 33, said. “I felt like the Dustin Hoffman character in The Graduate. It was disheartening.” At 22, Lopez was going through what…
S’Nuff film
In honor of an upcoming experimental film festival, I’m writing S’Nuff Film in an edgy experimental fashion, meaning I’m not going to make any sort of effort to be entertaining or coherent, but you’re still going to tell all your friends you totally “get it” cause you want them to think you’re smart. Also I’m…
Short shorts
I’m convinced that storytelling is what makes us human. And while we are also defined by self-awareness, our fiction is more real than anything else on earth or in the universe at large. We create, dream, and die in words thousands of times a day. Our lives are shifted after we overhear a joke being…
Cinema Obscura
It’s been 60 years since it was written and 24 since it was repurposed in a kick-ass Mac commercial, but 1984 still serves as the future dujour for gloomy Gus prognosticators of the post-apocalyptic persuasion. From George Lucas to Terry Gilliam, filmmakers have forecasted a fate of atrophied individualism and eternal surveillance, and Kurt Wimmer’s…
Half
My best friend had a trampoline. Wintertime, we wrapped our feet in pairs of thick socks and jumped until numb. Then we came inside to thaw. There was a bar in the corner, fully stocked. We liked to play honky-tonk. She was a cowboy named Jared and I was a cowgirl named Jolene. Sometimes I…
Sites and sounds
Since most everyone enjoys some form of music, and approximately half of America’s 25-and-under sect is in a band of some sort, music venues, retailers, and publications have made a concerted effort of late to beef up their websites with everything from show information to message boards to online classified ads. San Antonio is no…
The QueQue
Know when to fold ’em The Queque’s office betting pool’s got nothing on Congress, which is gambling with the future of Main Street, America (last seen buying as much antifreeze, coffee filters, and cold meds as it could get its hands on and heading for a buried school bus west of Fort Stockton). Monday looked…
Party of two
If you believe in “musical soulmates,” look no further than the teenage adventure flick Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. The film stars Michael Cera (Superbad) and Kat Dennings (Charlie Bartlett) as the young title characters who jump from club to club all night in New York City searching for a secret show by their…
Test-tube maybes
For roughly four months after Bexar County’s Adult Probation department shuttered its in-house lab and started farming out drug testing to a Texas company, the results coming back were unreliable at best. Still those test results were used to revoke probations and jail clients until a probation officer blew the whistle on the deal in…
Hey Mister D.J.
… `Eagle Eye` started with an idea from Spielberg? Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, you know, he had this idea, I guess about 10 or 12 years ago, and … he thought it’d either be a great movie or video game. I was thinkin’ that! I swear I was thinkin’ that. Were you thinking that?…
Dear Uncle Mat
I am at my lowest point, and no, I’m not about to pay some stranger to tell me to “move on.” I know I need to move on and pick myself up, but I need a man’s point of view; all my women friends tell me my ex was a controlling jerk. He tells me…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In her book Courtney Love: The Queen of Noise, Melissa Rossi reports that in the mid-1990s “Courtney surrounded herself with a coterie of soothsayers, even approaching hipster stargazer Rob Brezsny, who declined to provide his astrological services.” Rossi doesn’t explain why I declined, but I’ll tell you. Courtney wasn’t interested in…
RWI
I sat in the car outside Ringside Sports Bar last First Friday, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. Somehow I’d managed to volunteer to cover Run A Tab, a 5-mile pub run that loops through downtown San Antonio every First Friday, stopping frequently at local bars and restaurants. Though I’m a runner and a drinker,…
¡Ask a Mexican!
I’m half-Catalan, and the women on my mom’s side of my family have spent most of our lives being hated by Mexicans. I’ve never understood it. My mom and aunts warned me as soon as I hit junior high that I was going to have a target on me, because they had one too when…
AMuse-BOUCHE
We’re heavy into wine/food/music festival season, and you can stretch your stomach for the upcoming New World Wine & Food Festival and Arts & Eats this weekend at Market Square, where the San Antonio Restaurant Association will be hosting the 32nd Annual Taste of San Antonio Expo. Make sure you stop by the booths for…
ACL Fest 2008: Day Three Report
Day 3 is always the do-or-die day for music festivals. It’s either the big finish or the anti-climax that will determine whether or not the 400 dollars you spent on tickets, parking, beer, food, merch, beer, and vitamin water was all worth it. For me, ACL tends to wear out its welcome after two full…
