Meeting with up-and-coming NY Designer Bradley Scott, Carried in SA
Story By Desiree Prieto While in New York City for fashion week last month, I headed to 7th avenue, aka Fashion Avenue, as it sits in the city’s Garment District. Previously the textile-manufacturing Mecca of America, the Garment District is still considered a fashion capital among designers and it is where I visited up-and-coming designer,…
San Antonio’s Dancing Devil of El Camaroncito
One of my favorite San Antonio sagas involves a dubious character known as the Dancing Devil. According to many long-time residents, as well as newspaper articles from the time, a dashing and handsome young man (el guapo) dressed in all white entered El Camaroncito Night Club on Old Highway 90 one night during Halloween of…
Texas prisoners see cost of crime increase as lunches disappear
This year, the cost of crime got more risky. Break the law, be sentenced to serve time in any number of prisons in Texas, and you may end up rather hungry. That’s not due to the quality of food (which is always questionable at best), but because some prisons across the state have come up…
Ministry, the movie, coming to Austin
(Photo by Paul Elledge) By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com If you are already a little out of your mind and missed the short San Antonio run of Fix, the Ministry documentary, good news for you: the movie will show again in Austin (see below). Fix is an inside, unadulterated look at Al Jourgensen, a key figure…
African zombies in SA
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com The Dead, which opened October 28 at the Bijou and Santikos Mayan 14, is a unique film in many respects. For starters, it is set in Burkina Faso and Ghana, instead of the usual LA, New York, or London. “Stories of zombies originated in the West African spiritual belief system of…
Flash fiction magazines: must haves for any writer
Alas, no flash fiction this week. Submissions have slowed to a trickle. And not the good kind of trickle, which a flash fiction can mimic. I should have something for next week, though. Stay tuned. In the meantime: send in your submissions to flashfiction@sacurrent.com. I’m looking for approximately 500-word stories. That’s about it. I’ll always…
Spain’s Oscar hopeful “Pa Negre” screening tonight only
Agustí Villaronga’s Pa Negre (Black Bread), which will represent Spain in next year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, will be screened tonight only at the Aula Canaria of UTSA Downtown Campus (501 W. Durango). Free admission.
Interview: Ving Rhames fends off zombies, photo-grubbing extras, criticism
Zombies might be referred to as the “walking dead,” but they really don’t know what dead is until they’ve felt the cold end of Ving Rhames’ sledgehammer in the SyFy original movie Zombie Apocalypse. In the film, which airs Oct. 29 at 8 p.m., Rhames plays Henry, the “enforcer and protector” of a group of survivors…
Margin Call elevates financial crisis drama above the bluster
The 2008 financial collapse was so large in scale, and so unfathomable to most, that it practically begged for Hollywood’s blustery mythmaking. It got it, too, in the Oscar-winning Inside Job (2010) and in this year’s HBO movie Too Big to Fail, an apocalypse-with-suits telling of the post-crisis bailout talks that, for a time, seemed…
The director of Independence Day is a natural fit for Elizabethan intrigue
Director Roland Emmerich’s new film opens and closes at a modern theater. The curtain draws and, before a polite crowd dressed in their Sunday best, a narrator sets the scene. It’s a strange yet wholly fitting framing device: Emmerich, the merchant of spectacle responsible for Independence Day and The Day Before Tomorrow, is indeed about…
Ask a Mexican: I should be ashamed
It’s true. Contrary to what others in the liberal media may want you to believe: “Ask a Mexican” is not universally loved by all. While I don’t savor making my grandmother angry (or getting the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce up in arms!), I do hope someone will take it upon themselves to do a decent…
Second Hand: A Halloween Love Story – Part 2
Click here to catch up on Part 1. The back of the store was a goldmine of small nooks of space with signs that said “Do Not Enter.” With only one employee dedicated to this entire area, Isa and Hime knew they would find a little privacy but not a lot of time. The dressing…
Alabama and the Latino exodus
When I think of Alabama, images of the KKK, overt racism, and segregation flood my mind. I wish it wasn’t the case, but it has been for as long as my memory serves. Still, I never thought I’d see the day when the state would reinvent itself as an epicenter of a new civil rights…
Fast Foodie: Taqueria Vallarta
Go ahead, hazard a guess: how many taquerias in town include Jalisco in the name — either by direct reference to the Mexican state or indirectly through one of its major cities? (A more specific subset appropriates the word tapatio, a term for someone born in Guadalajara.) We don’t have a clue, by the way,…
Coldplay: Mylo Xyloto
Breaking news: Coldplay can rock! Believe it or not "Hurts Like Heaven" has the ferocity and urgency many have been begging of the band. While "Princess of China," with a guest appearance by Rhianna, has the exact chorus melody of "Ra Ngo Tung Kinh," a Vietnamese song released in the U.S. by Ha Tran, for…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Life is not just a diurnal property of large interesting vertebrates," poet Gary Snyder reminds us in his book The Practice of the Wild. "It is also nocturnal, anaerobic, microscopic, digestive, fermentative: cooking away in the warm dark." I call this to your attention, Aries, because according to my astrological reckoning,…
Fierce lemonade
"Dónde está la pinche gente?!" echoes across a nearly empty room. It’s almost midnight on Sunday at Club Empire, a Northwest side nightclub that successfully partners with local radio stations other nights of the week. The voice belongs to Felisha Andrews, the hostess and emcee of "Submissive Sundays," a party that promises "sexy drag comedy…
Girl in a Coma: Exits and all the Rest
While Trio B.C. (2009), the ladies’ last collection of originals, had some grit and punch, it also had elements of an identity crisis as it danced between punk and rockabilly influences. Exits is the matured follow-up. It has polished rock tones and a much more focused sound, though it’s still unafraid to shake you up.…
Drought downsizes Texas vineyards
It’s been a rough year for Texas wines — even ones with names as ten-gallon tough as Texas Hills Vineyard’s Kick Butt Cab. It’s all about the drought, and Texas Hills, which proudly calls itself “Texas’ largest ‘mid-size’ winery,” has ratcheted production down to 3,000-4,000 cases this year. Last year’s yield was 17,000 cases, and…
Daniel Lee’s modern-day chimera haunting SAMA
It is comfortable to think that we are a species apart from the animal world. Deep in your heart, you know better. Daniel Lee’s retrospective “Animal Instinct” at SAMA presents digital manipulations by the Chinese-born photographer that meld human with beast to form chimeras, hybrids that seem to have appeared from the realm of myth,…
Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez travel El Camino de Santiago in The Way
My son is in a class by himself,” actor Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now, TV’s The West Wing) told the Current during a phone interview when asked how his son, Emilio Estevez, compares to some of the great directors he has worked with during his 50-year career, which include Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Francis Ford…
Man vs. beast
American Hoggers (9pm Wed, A&E) Truth be told, the title American Hoggers didn’t fill me with anticipation for this new reality series. But it turns out to be a fascinating look at boar hunters in Texas, where the feral beasts are terrorizing landowners. Veteran hog expert Jerry Campbell and his kids come to the rescue…
The QueQue: Pearl to get railroaded, ACLU sues ICE, CCA over Hutto assaults, TCEQ’s plot to destroy the planet exposed
Pearl to get railroaded Despite a no vote from District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules and District 5 Councilman David Medina’s no show, San Antonio’s Council bravely vaulted fringe objections from the Homeowner Taxpayer Association (“Mayor Castro, do not railroad us!”) and Tea Partiers (“We don’t need a Solyndra in San Antonio”) to course down the…
Sting: 25 Years
Even if Sting never went solo, his place in the rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Fame was secure thanks to the glorious way he mixed punk, reggae, and pop with the Police. When the trio was at its musical and in-fighting peak, he disbanded it and began an illustrious solo career that first explored his…
Pa Negre (Black Bread)
This is the movie that nearly swept the Goya Awards (Spain’s Oscar), and the first film to represent Spain in the race for Best Foreign Film Oscar in 2012 that is not spoken in Spanish (the original is in Catalan, but San Antonians will see a version dubbed into Spanish with English subtitles). Yes: the…
Daniel “Tatita” Márquez: Haribol
Márquez’s Haribol (a Hare Krishna greeting roughly translated as "chant the name of God") may remind some EDM fans of the Robert Miles/Trilok Gurtu collaboration Miles-Gurtu, wherein Gurtu murders world percussion instruments while Miles strings ambient, jazzy soundscapes around him. It’s a moody thunderstorm of a record, favoring tight parameters over patterns of tension and…
Three to watch: Michael Sohocki, Restaurant Gwendolyn
Behind the kitchen door with exciting young local chefs
Reasons to watch the scariest films you’ve never seen
Halloween, outside of being the one time of the year you can show up to work dressed like a cat and take out your office aggression through competitive pumpkin carving, affords the opportunity to watch disturbing and/or outright revolting movies and not seem like a sociopath. As with many of life’s precious opportunities, this one…
Feast obliterates famine with style
At first, I assumed Feast was all flash, no substance. It looks like a club, all shiny white and clear plastic, house music thumping over the speakers. It’s undeniably cool, like a club where only the most beautiful come to be seen. But when you look at the menu, you see ambition and a bit…
Pro-lifer’s war on the EPA a morally bankrupt case
In the nearly 40-year war that has been the battle over abortion in the United States, liberals have frequently complained about the hypocrisy of those who prostrate themselves before medical clinics and yet fail to turn out for a single state-sanctioned execution or war protest. Those criticisms widened during the last session of the Texas…
Girl in a Coma SA Current Interview (video)
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Q&A: Luca Della Casa
Since graduating from the unofficial School of Andrew Weissman, Piemonte, Italy, transplant Luca Della Casa has found an unlikely niche market by catering some of SA’s most delicious dinner parties. What brought you to San Antonio? I was living in Spain, in the Canary Islands, and a good friend of mine met a girl…
Solid Cellar production of ‘Time Stands Still’ seeks proper response to suffering
It’s easy to underestimate playwright Donald Margulies, even with his Pulitzer Prize (for the delicious Dinner With Friends) and his influential post as professor of playwriting at Yale. For starters, it’s because, on paper, his dramas might seem slender, improbably tidy, and — depending on your tastes — somewhat bourgeois: oh-so-middle-class professionals with oh-so-middle-class problems.…
Three to watch: Jason Garcia, Ocho Lounge
Behind the kitchen door with exciting young local chefs
Bruce Auden’s grilling tips
A five-time James Beard nominee for Best Chef Southwest, London-born Bruce Auden has trained some of the best rising talent in SA at his famed New American restaurant Biga on the Banks and at his new endeavor, Auden’s Kitchen, where he continues to experiment. What is your favorite grilling style? Up at the house…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Mexican: There’s something I’m concerned about, or bothered by. I was born and raised in Mexico, but I’ve been here for eight years. All the talk about 9/11 is too much, because every single year brings a rehash of the tragedy. I really think that remembering the event for two or five years is…
The Exorcist novel turns 40
Perhaps the reason The Exorcist is such a terrifying experience is because author William Peter Blatty wasn’t even trying to be scary. Primarily known in the late ’60s as a comedy writer of books and screenplays (A Shot in the Dark), when the funny season dried up and no studio would hire him to write…
Africa’s mark on San Antonio’s Chili Queens
The San Antonio Chili Queens are long gone from Haymarket Plaza, where their tables laden with tamales and steaming tortillas alongside pots of fragrant chili once stood. They were shut down in the late 1930s by a health department that didn’t approve of open-air kitchens. Robb Walsh, author of numerous books on regional cuisine, including…
Three to watch: Brooke Smith, The Esquire Tavern
Behind the kitchen door with exciting young local chefs
Bring out your dead
Día de los Muertos celebrations are being held throughout the city this week, and though the public events began at Centro Cultural de Aztlán in 1977 and at the Instituto Cultural de México shortly thereafter, the festivity’s roots go deep into Mezoamerican culture. After the Spanish conquistadores and their missionary allies failed to eradicate the…
The Apoca-List
AKA The “We’re Fucked” Index
Zombies walk downtown, drive to Tonic bar
It must be tough to organize an army of the walking dead. Last Sunday, we clocked thousands of zombies (and a few unsuspecting walking meals) shuffling from HemisFair Park to the Alamo for the official 2011 Zombie Walk. Despite the huge turnout downtown, getting the zombie mass to hop in a car, cab, or (hopefully)…
Big Lou’s Pizza moving on to BBQ, burgers
Big Lou’s is known for its giant pizzas, so big they were featured on the Food Network’s Man v. Food alongside Lulu’s Bakery’s cinnamon rolls and Chunky’s Burgers’ Four Horsemen burger in 2009. The restaurant is bringing that same attitude to Big Lou’s Burgers & BBQ opening Friday, October 28, next to Big Lou’s Pizza…
Live & Local: Sylvia’s Radio (GIAC ‘secret’ show)
“Sylvia’s Radio” is one of the names used by Girl in a Coma in the past. Fortunately, tons of fan mail made them reconsider and cleave to the GIAC moniker, but the band still uses it from time to time whenever they have a special mission. This time, the occasion was preparing for their October…
Best of Flash Fiction, October 2011
This is a wonderful Barthelmesque piece about whatever you think it might be about. Tiger sharks make terrible friends (or good ones depending on how you feel about your other friends). More profoundly this is an existential treatise on the nature of responsibility. Maybe that’s pushing it a bit … Submit your work: flashfiction@sacurrent.com. I’m…
Iconic Girl in a Coma exorcises their demons to deliver their best album yet
Girl in a Coma broke my heart. Jenn Alva (bass) and Phanie Díaz (drums) are eating meat again. “Oh, c’mon…” says Phanie. “It’s hard when you’re on the road.” Jenn tries to make me feel better: “We’re still not eating beef… We’re not there yet.” But the more road-friendly diet is a small thing compared…
Get lucky with Eva
Eva Longoria’s Celebrity Casino Night, a posh poker benefit for her Eva’s Heroes charity foundation, is going on as usual this year — without Tony P. but with a pot sweetened by several of San Antonio’s finest chefs, bartenders, and wine suppliers. The royal flush of local restaurants, emphasizing the event’s new emphasis on food,…
Natural-gas production linked to quakes in England, Arkansas, and North Texas, but more study needed
Late last week, the region’s largest earthquake on record rattled the heart of South Texas oil and gas country, shaking the ground 47 miles southeast of San Antonio in Atascosa County and sending mild tremors as far north as Burnet. But the 4.8 magnitude earthquake also stirred up questions over oilfield activity and whether new…
Rocksteady delivers a ‘Dark Knight’ Chris Nolan would be proud of
Two years ago, London-based Rocksteady Studios decided to match the superhero standard set by director Christopher Nolan by giving the world a video game worthy of comparison to his now-legendary The Dark Knight. Batman: Arkham Asylum delivered a true knockout video game experience in 2009, but having now completed its sequel I am happy to…
