Más Rudas on Xicana consciousness, art, and inspiration
Más Rudas, a multimedia Xicana art collective based in San Antonio, aims to perpetuate the significance of Xicana consciousness or “chicanisma” in a contemporary context. This group of women affirm their purpose clearly, and they work in an effort “to create dialogue about social awareness, document [their] perspectives, and bring about new forms of contemporary…
San Antonio food politics must-haves: who to tweet, follow, and friend
Getting connected with foodies and organizations on social media is one of the best ways to stay up-to-date with all of the happenings in the food world. While webpages are, by nature, static, social media is a constant flux of links, posts, pictures, events, and other great info. Big or small, learn more about the…
Fashion Week San Antonio finale: ‘The Emerging Designer Show’
Fashion Week San Antonio wrapped up on Friday evening with a final Fashion Group International (FGI) event, “The Emerging Designer Show.” Hosted in an historical part of Sunset Station, “The Depot,” the runway show began spectacularly thanks to the…
Interviews: Carrie-Anne Moss & Willem Dafoe talk ‘Fireflies in the Garden’
Last week, two-time Academy Award-nominated actor Willem Dafoe (Platoon) and actress Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) talked to me about their new film Fireflies in the Garden, which opened at the Cinemark Tinseltown South Theater in Austin on Oct. 14. In the film, Dafoe plays Charles Taylor, a stern father who has raised his son Michael…
Indigenous rights march to launch from Columbus Park on Saturday
As a nation, we refuse to really face the history of genocide, racism, and subjugation that arrived with Europeans half a millennium ago, says Antonio Diaz, who heads the Texas Indigenous Council. Case in point: Columbus Day. Diaz is one of many across the country pushing for us to collectively rethink Columbus Day, the national holiday…
Tucker & Dale’s comedy of (very bloody) errors
The winner of 2010’s South By Southwest Audience Award, and a hit at Sundance’s Midnight category, Canada’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is the type of film that critics love to ignore. After receiving this film’s promo material featuring two menacing ax-and-chainsaw-wielding hillbillies and one terrified blonde, one’s first reaction is to reach for the…
Ten ways better breathing can improve your health
Our breath is our primary source of life-giving energy, and a powerful tool for healing. So why don’t we hear more from the medical community about how important our breath is to our overall health and vitality? Probably because, as of now, oxygen is still free, so there’s not much potential for profit. Does efficient…
‘The Head’ by Robert Paul Moreira
This is a grim tale indeed. The haunting personifications throughout give the final image a frenetic and deadly power over the story. I think this is the first piece we’ve had that has been set in the grizzly world of gang killings and murder-soldiers that is the Mexico to the south of us (although there…
How to run afoul of Occupy San Antonio, just ask too many questions
After Adbusters’ Occupy Wall Street campaign went national, a San Antonio based contingent manifested. Social Justice leaders within the Bexar County are were skeptical of the ‘leaderless’ crowds. For years Social Justice scholars have studied historical protests. A leaderless movement? Could a fledgling group of dissenters in SA survive without infrastructure? And why hasn’t the…
Ripley’s Haunted Adventure vs The Monster Hunter
In a recent issue of the Current, I rated a half dozen of the top haunted houses in San Antonio. These rankings apparently drew the ire of management over at Ripley’s Haunted Adventure. They felt my description of their event as being ‘family friendly’ was off base. Thus, a challenge was issued — I was…
Where’s a good drought when you need one? (We kid)
It never rains in San Antonio. But last weekend the 11th Annual International Accordion Festival at La Villita suffered its worst nightmare: water. While the fest was able to get by not without problems on Friday and Saturday, Sunday delivered a mess of Noah’s Ark proportions. The rain started at 3 a.m. and didn’t finally…
Poor, minorities magnets for industrial ‘sacrifice zones’
Grappling with how to own up to the toxic legacy of uranium mining and nuclear weapons processing in the United States, government officials coined the cold term “sacrifice zones” in the 1980s. In his recent book by the same name, environmental journalist Steve Lerner writes that the term today applies to a whole new swath…
With cutting-edge fashion, art-packed lowriders, and street-corner poets, Una Noche delivers
San Antonio’s rising artistic talent was celebrated last Saturday evening at the third annual Una Noche De La Gloria, “Contemporary Art in the Cultural Zone,” in the Guadalupe arts district. Thankfully, the city’s highly anticipated (and much needed) rain stopped long enough for local talent to shine at the outdoor festival. Writer’s Block captivated audiences…
The QueQue: Occupied
Almost everyone likes a party in our fiesta town (though not necessarily every party). Give this one a try? The next Occupy San Antonio rally is a 6 p.m. Wednesday drum circle at HemisFair Park. Then on Saturday, a larger rally is planned from noon to 3 p.m. at South Alamo and Caesar Chavez. More…
Sonic Youth: Hits are for Squares
Not everyone has the benefit of a cool older brother/sister to introduce them to influential, innovative bands like Sonic Youth. And with a deep catalog dating back to the ’80s, it might be tough for newcomers to jump in without a little help. Enter Hits are for Squares: a career-spanning compilation of Sonic Youth tracks…
Daniel Maldonado’s textbook zombie flick passable for a first feature
If George A. Romero only knew how hard it was for zombie prey to run through dry South Texas monte, he might’ve moved some of his classic horror films away from rural Pennsylvania and into the Lone Star State for a little extra bloodshed. You can’t sprint very fast when you’ve got mesquite thorns caught…
Magnolia still winning hearts with unique-to-SA offerings
To nab a table at the Magnolia Pancake Haus on a weekend can warrant quite the wait, and the press of bodies makes it hard to hold a conversation over the intermingling of competing chatter and kitchen clatter. I took the cue to hit the popular restaurant on a Tuesday morning, and it was still…
October Surprises
October Surprises The usual fall beers are making their way onto shelves, but there are some nice surprises this month including the big, the bold, and the quirky. Although a handful of places have had Real Ale Brewing Co.’s 15th Anniversary Ale on draft, it is now out in four-pack bottles for home consumption. The…
Film review: Real Steel
Its metaphors are shallow and its plot predictable, but Real Steel is still fun in a fighting-robots-movie kinda way. In the near future, robot boxing has replaced human boxing. Fans wanted more carnage, as former fighter Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) points out. Still, Charlie’s wallet takes a beating, until he and his estranged son Max…
The Apoca-List
AKA The “We’re Fucked” Index
Pink Floyd: The Final Cut (2011 remastered edition)
You may have read music/screens editor Enrique Lopetegui’s eloquent gushing on the veritably lyric-less, meandering interlude that is The Dark Side of the Moon — its aimlessness surely appealing to Lopetegui’s aging, tofu-addled mind, with the album’s ability to inspire only the urge to gaze at one’s own shoes. Pink Floyd’s real best is The…
Film review: Senna
You might already be burned out on movies about automobiles, what with Transformers 3, Cars 2, and Drive, among others. Forget all those. There is only one truly essential movie this year about the relationship between man and machine, and that’s Senna. It’s a singular movie about a singular man whose name most Americans have…
Taste this: DELUXE BREAKFAST TACOs (chilaquiles and beef fajita), from el nogal $1.99
A bite of what we’re eating here at the Current
Delivering the male
Man Up (7:30pm Tue, ABC) I usually wince when a network sitcom panders to the 18-49 male demographic (see this year’s Last Man Standing, last year’s Traffic Lights). But the new Man Up hits this demographic where it hurts. It’s a brilliant satire of male pretension and pride, so painfully on target that it might…
Former CIA agent claims the military poisoned his family at Camp Stanley — and used national security concerns to cover it up
The ugly side effects surfaced soon after Kevin Shipp transferred in 1999 from CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to Camp Stanley, the sprawling U.S. Army weapons depot just north of San Antonio. His now ex-wife, Lorena Shipp, suddenly began to suffer near-constant migraines. Rapidly increasing bouts of confusion and short-term memory loss were so severe…
Children’s toxics study recruiting San Antonio babies
"We really don’t know much about the environmental exposures that children have and how those may contribute to environmental diseases," said Dr. Donald Dudley, vice chair for research in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. "There are diseases that are now epidemic that didn’t…
Zïquid Lounge adds nocturnal sushi to the nightlife experience
There’s a long history of using the umlaut to impart credibility, though it’s traditionally wielded by metal bands (Motörhead, Queensryche, Mötley Crüe) to convey a sense of Germanic power, or by ice cream companies (Häagen-Dazs, Frusen Glädjé) to suggest an exotic gustatory adventure. Much as I wish it was inspired by the former, I think…
Live & Local: Blackbird Sing at Boneshakers
Boneshakers, that claustrophobic bicycle bar with scattered lighting and thin crowds, felt like “Anybar, USA” last Friday night. All that was missing was a band playing songs of heartache and longing. Enter Blackbird Sing. Vocalist/songwriter Robert Salinas is unbounded in his sentimental lyrical kernels, delivered on the wings of a band in love with pop-country…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): If it’s at all possible, Aries, don’t hang around boring people this week. Seek out the company of adventurers who keep you guessing and unruly talkers who incite your imagination and mystery-lovers who are always on the lookout for new learning experiences. For that matter, treat yourself to especially interesting food,…
Songstress Choffel heading east
The national promise. It’s something entertainment journalists with local/regional beats get caught up in sometimes, wanting to see a deserving local act take off, making a name for themselves and their community. Or they just want to be the writer who calls it first (guilty). Eclectic, Austin-based pop songstress Suzanna Choffel (say it like “chauffer”…
Evanescence comes back strong while keeping Jesus (mostly) out of it
Suuuure… It was all “a misunderstanding,” as Evanescence singer/main force Amy Lee says of the band’s Christian identity of yesteryear. Never mind that she met former boyfriend and bandmate Ben Moody at a Christian summer camp, and that the band’s 2003 debut, Fallen, was heavily worked in the Christian rock circuit, or that the stunning…
Eat me: an invitation to a zombie
Local filmmaker Daniel Maldonado, 31, says that while he’s not a zombie aficionado, he has seen enough ’80s zombie cult classics and played enough Resident Evil to know in advance he could handle directing the walking dead in his first feature The Killing Strain, an independent horror film shot in south San Antonio in 2009.…
Misfits: The Devil’s Rain
It has been nearly a decade since the Misfits released a full-length anything, and decades still since legions of fiends declared they were "Teenagers From Mars and we don’t care." Fear not — the group’s picked up right where they left off. The Misfits are still the X-Files of punk. It’s all about the "Unexplained,"…
Questions linger over Kelly AFB contamination even after property changes hands
Purple wooden crosses that dot this south San Antonio community are starting to age, their paint chipped and faded. Planted in lawns next to mailboxes, fences, and trees, they point to a battle with cancer for someone inside. For many here, the crosses are a sign of the lasting, toxic legacy of the now-shuttered Kelly…
Lydia: Paint it Golden
Lydia’s candid melodies paint a glittering picture of a dream-like sequence often seen in films. Reminiscent of their sophomore record Illuminate (2008), Lydia rises from its freshly dug grave with a light-hearted, yet emotionally raw fourth album. While most Lydia followers were puzzled by the seven-track disc Assailants (2010), released during their "Goodbye & Farewell"…
San Antonio woman recounts time at birthplace of Agent Orange
When Diana Quintanilla Montoya and her husband Thomas left San Antonio for their new post at Fort Detrick, they’d been married for just two days. Touring the military installation for the first time, they noticed signs across the base warning: “Don’t ask questions, don’t take pictures, what you see here stays here.” The U.S. Army…
The ‘San Antonio Seven’ still sidelined by illness years after chemical and mold exposures
Chronic pain. Chronic fatigue. Regular ER visits. Memory loss and confusion. Seizures. In the mid-1990s the rash of symptoms were the calling card for a group of Southwest Airlines employees working at the airline’s San Antonio reservations center. Many blamed the building, the mold, frequent pesticide foggings, and bacteria in the air vents for forcing…
A talk with investigative journalist Arnold Mann about mold, environmental illness, and MCS
I was struck when I opened this book for the first time by how much San Antonio is in it. You really got into this story [of environmental illness] with this group of employees from the Southwest Airlines ticketing center. I was writing for Time Magazine. I suggested to my editor we do something on…
Texas Wine Month delivering discounts
October is a great month for oenophiles, because this is the time of year Texas vineyards harvest their grapes. The folks behind the Texas Wine Month Trail promise to deliver discounts at 27 Texas Hill Country wineries for $15. Benefits include complimentary wine tastings, discounts on purchases, and chances to win big prizes. If you…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
SPECIAL ‘BEST OF’ EDITION Dear Readers: The Mexican doesn’t want to take this week off, but has to because it’s his mother periódico’s Best Of issue and the Mexican is tasked with eating a thousand tacos in the search for the best one in Orange. I’ll return next week, more panzón than ever — in…
