‘Rage’ plays it safe despite id Software’s talents
If you’re one of the many FPS fans out there and you don’t know who id Software is, then I highly suggest opening up Wikipedia and giving yourself a quick history lesson. Won’t take long… … You back? Good. So, id Software set the standard for FPS back in the early ’90s with some huge…
Columbus Day reminder from the guys
‘Nuff said. Related Stories
5 iPhone Apps to use at the #SATX Beer Festival
Beer! Keep track of your beer tasting notes and ratings. Beer Pong. Multi-player, in-game chat, and table selection. DrinkFit knowing the carbohydrates and calories per beverage. Blood Alcohol Calculator (B.A.C.) App. For entertainment purpose only. BeerChooser. Personalized recommendations beers you’d like and don’t like.
Film review: The Ides of March
As a writer-director, George Clooney pushes all the hot buttons. In Good Night, and Good Luck it was the media; in The Ides of March it’s politics. Clooney plays Mike Morris, an Obama-like governor running for the Democratic party nomination. Ryan Gosling is Stephen Myers, an idealistic press secretary who thinks Mike is the chosen…
Interview: ‘Dancing with the Stars’ fan favorite J.R. Martinez
Actor and U.S. Army veteran J.R. Martínez says whenever he tries something new, his goal is to do everything he can to excel in it. This positive mentality could be the key to his success as one of the contestants on this season’s reality show Dancing with the Stars. Martínez, who starred in the daytime…
#thankyousteve in tweets
4.5 hours of #thankyousteve tweets sent out on Oct 5, 2011. Tweets are ordered by # of RTs, from the top left Image created by Twitter’s Miguel Rios.
‘Author’ supports #OccupySanAnto (best letter to editor /ever/?)
I get letters. Some stink (re: accusation of racism for listing the International Accordion Festival over Saxon as our music pick this week, for example). Some evoke inner sunlight and celebration. Below is one such inner-sunshiny letter. Enjoy! — Greg Harman
Get ready for San Antonio Fashion Week
If you haven’t checked out the tentative calendar for San Antonio Fashion Week, make sure you logon to the official Fashion Week San Antonio website. Running from October 9-15, SA Fashion Week’s Soft Opening and Going Green Fashion Show begins on Sunday October 9, 2011. The event starts at 3pm, at the Pearl Brewery and…
Tiger Shark on the Guadalupe by Clint Robertson
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 looking…
Fast Foodie: The Monterey
Pig foot feels more like a dare or man-versus-wild challenge than a tasty, quick after-work meal at one of San Anto’s newest and best gastropubs. It brings to mind pale pink appendages soaking in a glass pickling jar in the ethnic food market. Those who aren’t die-hard foodies likely haven’t worked up the courage to…
#OccupySanAnto moves to Occupy HemisFair
Occupy San Antonio made its first splash today, hoping to latch onto the broad national movement sparked by the ambitious weeks-long protest growing out of New York City. A group of activists, fluctuating from 20 to over 200 deep, rallied throughout the day at Travis Park, with periodic marches to the Alamo, the Grand Hyatt…
Environmental Working Group asks you to demand labeling for GMOs
Try to identify just how many genetically modified foods you’re eating every day and you may have a difficult time. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are most likely hiding in your cereal, cookies, crackers, lunch meat, chips, fried foods, and even in your corn on the cob and baked potato. Because GMOs require no special labeling…
San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition plays a part in animal no kill effort
San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition (SAAFCC) is a small nonprofit that roars like a lion. It’s run entirely by volunteers and provides San Antonio citizens with education and resources for dealing with feral or free-roaming cats. They get some grant money. A portion of the spay/neuter surgeries and rabies shots are subsidized by local animal…
UPDATED #OccupySanAnto joins Occupy Wall Street movement (and RIP Steve Jobs)
Should I be blogging about Steve Jobs? I didn’t know him. All kidding aside…he did get me to Think Different. Can we really deny how he contributed to the digital era? I’ve decided to pay homage to Jobs by outlining how Occupy San Antonio might use technology tomorrow, when they join the rest of the…
Help Blue Star Help La Tuna
Today through Friday, October 7, you can help support the arts and help La Tuna rebuild their kitchen that was destroyed by fire. When you become a member of Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, 50% of the price of your membership will go to the La Tuna re-build fund. All memberships can be purchased through…
Second Hand – Part 1
It was October and that meant the obvious: it was time to take a trip to the costume shop. By the first of the month, there were diehard Halloween aficionados lining the musty halls of Starstruck Co., the local mom-and-pop used prop shop. Isa was not really interested in wearing a recycled, well-worn costume sprayed…
Digital dirty tricks: diversion sites aim to push Doggett supporters to Castro
Doggett. Wait, Castro. Wait what? If you’re browsing the web for campaign info on longtime Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett, now running for the newly created District 35 congressional seat against Joaquin Castro, just make sure you know how to spell the surname. Any number of mistakes might land you on Castro’s doorstep. Someone has gobbled…
Live & Local: Say Revenge! CD release party
Coming in to Say Revenge!’s CD release party for Rough Night, Sugar? I knew what to expect
Audit questions state criminal history database
A new state audit highlights serious gaps in the Texas’ criminal records database, showing roughly a quarter of the state’s criminal background checks, used to screen teachers, doctors, nurses, and daycare workers, may be flawed. The audit says that prosecutors and courts around the state have failed to submit disposition records for roughly one of…
Tax breaks at our wealthier social institutions keep school districts running low on pencils
In their last legislative session, Texas lawmakers cut $4 billion from the education budget to balance state coffers, sending school districts scrambling to make up for financial shortfalls. In an ideal world, you’d expect the Bexar Appraisal District, prompted by this unprecedented development, to scrutinize local tax rolls to ensure property owners — particularly commercial…
The Apoca-List
AKA The “We’re Fucked” Index
Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon (Deluxe Experience version/remastered)
Current photographer Steven Gilmore is out of his mind — he thinks 1983’s The Final Cut is Floyd’s best album (that’s what years of pure, unadulterated socialism does to your ears). That album is fine and way underrated, but most agree the band’s best hour is found on either Dark Side or The Wall. I…
Boeing gets huge tax break in San Antonio 787 Dreamliner contract
Corporate welfare can feel like an abstraction, until it lands on top of you. Such has been the case of Boeing’s decision to have six of the much ballyhooed 787 Dreamliners refurbished at Port San Antonio. In March, Boeing selected San Antonio for the so-called incorporation work. The same month, state lawmakers Harvey Hilderbran and…
Critic’s Diss: Restless
Morose loner (newcomer Henry Hopper, son of Dennis) who likes to attend funerals and converse with his imaginary WWII kamikaze pilot ghost friend, meets quirky, terminally ill girl (The Kids Are All Right’s Mia Wasikowska) in director Gus Van Sant’s latest, which is just as relentlessly whimsical and calculated as it sounds. The big surprise,…
Off-track betting
As expected, the City Council voted last Thursday to continue extraordinary support of the perennially challenged Centro Alameda, Inc., the nonprofit that owns the Museo Alameda. For the last 18 months, the City has paid the daily operating costs for the city owned Centro de Artes building that houses the Museo, forking over cash to…
Mustafa Cuisine elevates overlooked dishes into a rich stew
Mustafa has been hiding in plain sight for some time now — at least from me. Located next to an Indian/Pakistani/Indo-Chinese grocery store of the same name and persuasion, the upstairs restaurant is entered up the hill and behind a small shopping strip on Medical Drive; I’ve driven by it several times without paying any…
Feist: Metals
Let’s get this out of the way first: there is no "1,2,3,4" on Feist’s new record. There’s also no "I Feel it All," "My Moon My Man," or anything that will likely get her played on iTunes commercials, covered by James Blake, or match the incredible cultural saturation her 2007 break-out The Reminder achieved. With…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Mexican: I learned Spanish in school as a teen. Then, it seems, because I was young, everybody was an usted. I would like to practice speaking it, but am now an adult and don’t know who gets to be a tú? I’m scared of getting it wrong and unwittingly offending. Tú might be too…
Portugal. The Man tumble in the Texas rough
Back in 2010, Portugal. The Man (intentionally punctuated) got roughed up by Texas and were better for the wear. Sort of. The band booked the famed Sonic Ranch recording studio in Tornillo, near El Paso but nearer to Mexico. The Portland-by-way-of-Wasilla (yes, that Wasilla) quartet couldn’t unite their vision in the studio. “Every time someone…
Live & Local: Sexto’s sendoff?
It hurts when a great band plays past their expiration date. It’s worse when a key figure leaves and the band never regains its lost artistic spark. But when a band is still a mythologically creative beast and just simply can’t “get together much these days,” it evokes special, grito-inducing lament. When Sexto Sol, Saytown’s…
Das Racist: Relax
What now? That’s a question that may have haunted Das Racist while recording Relax, their first full-length and third release in two years. Their 2010 mix tapes Shut Up, Dude and Sit Down, Man established them as rap post-modernists, obsessed with cultural trivia, furious rhyming, and satirizing the genre. It’s possible the trio is losing…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): "Do unto others as they wish," advised French artist Marcel Duchamp, "but with imagination." I recommend that approach to you, Aries. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when you can create good fortune for yourself by tuning into the needs and cravings of others, and then satisfying those needs…
Pedaling forerunners have already done the dangerous work of preparing SA streets for two-wheelers
Last Sunday’s Síclovía, the mass ride that brought 15,000 people to bicycle, skateboard, and jog down a four-mile stretch of Broadway for four hours while autos were rerouted, was the first SA edition of the international ciclovía movement (Spanish for “bike path”), a fresh-air party celebrating fitness through human-powered transportation. In a town where more…
Q&A with Tim Gunn
Liz Claiborne Inc. and Project Runway’s Tim Gunn chats with the Current about the “Lucky You Runway Contest,”
Living in the Material World, Scorsese’s moving tribute to George Harrison
When you tick off George Harrison’s achievements, those successes seem impressive enough: the Beatles’ brilliant lead guitarist; the writer of classic songs like “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”; the creator of the big rock charity concert concept; the man who popularized Eastern music in the West and brought spirituality to pop. And yet Harrison…
Misfire at VFW Post 76
Slipping into cold beer, loud Tejano, and casual racism
Thenewno2: EP002
This four-track EP from Dhani Harrison’s band is an English mélange of folk, electronica, hip-hop, and indie rock. “Wide Awake” is a just-woke-up sleeper, with Dhani’s soft vocals acting as a sedative to a brooding track that includes nuances of dubstep (whomp, whomp, whomp). If trip hop had ever gone pop, the soft ballad “Live…
The QueQue: Occupy San Anto! (sort of), Tar sands = human rights?, Castro redirects VIA streetcar plan
Occupy San Anto! (sort of) Taking a cue from the ambitious, ongoing protest in New York City aimed at shaking the foundations of the corporatocracy, a group of local activists have been gearing up for the past week hoping to catch a fire in San Antonio. Occupation? We’re getting there. After nearly a week of…
Texas Ag Commissioner fueling fronteraphobia
Lawlessness, widespread violence, and constant threats from vicious drug gangs. That’s the frightening portrayal of life in Texas border counties gleaned from the latest report from the Texas Department of Agriculture, further fueling an intensely politicized debate over security along the Texas-Mexico border. Referencing “insurgents” and “narco-terrorists,” the report, drafted by two retired Army generals,…
Sipping ’round those wine-dark seas
Sooner or later, the Greek debt crisis will affect all of us if it hasn’t already. Every measure proposed to alleviate the situation seems to be too little, too late. I have a suggestion that’s equally inadequate, but undoubtedly more fun: buy Greek wine. This will not be an easy sell. Just like getting the…
The International Accordion Festival’s battle against shrinking funds and ignorant lawmakers
The financial crisis affects everyone, but non-profits are particularly susceptible — especially arts non-profits. “If you’re going to get rid of something, why are we getting rid of art instead of football?” former San Antonio First Lady Linda Hardberger told me in 2008. “I don’t understand. If we’re going to start naming frills … [football]…
Sushi Time, Green Dos, & Feast
The more fusion-minded Godai, Godai Sushi and Bistro (4553 N Loop 1604 W) closed earlier this year (yes, Godai Sushi Bar & Japanese Restaurant on West Ave. is alive and well). Thankfully the location is already home to another prospective sushi restaurant. Sushi Time Martini Bar is nearly finished out, and is expected to open…
Fast Foodie: McCullough Avenue Grill
Starting a restaurant is hard. You have to prioritize; if you can’t be all things to all people, you’ve got to at least do a few things well. The McCullough Avenue Grill achieves that; their filet mignon was cooked to a perfection you might expect from a Park Avenue steakhouse. And their cod, the bane…
Amateur hour
Under the “Basic Information” section of Johnny Luna’s Facebook page, I can only assume the San Antonio filmmaker is being facetious when he describes himself as a “comedian, locksmith, husband, father, musician, film maker [sic]” and then goes on to admit he “suck[s] at all of them.” Now, I’ve never seen one of Luna’s stand-up…
The 2011 IAF lineup has music for all tastes, but here are two acts you must catch.
La Santa Cecilia If you missed La Santa’s two amazing shows at The Mix and Boneshakers earlier this year, make sure you catch them now. The L.A. band mixes cumbias, boleros, norteñas, and rock, and has recently earned a deserved Latin Grammy nomination for “La Negra,” the first single of their Sebastian Krys-produced Noche y…
Gonged Out
For those unfamiliar, the Gong Shorts is a Kimberly Suta-organized film festival inspired by Tucson’s First Friday Shorts. This is how it works: Films 15 minutes or under are screened for three minutes and paused. At this point, viewers can either yell out “gong!” or “continue.” Gradually, those that are allowed to continue are narrowed…
Primal Screen: Laura Dern finds intermittent serenity in Enlightened
Enlightened (8:30pm Mon, HBO) Laura Dern joins the list of brilliant actresses (Edie Falco, Laura Linney, Toni Collette) who have made cable TV an exciting place to be. Dern created and produced this new drama about — sorry, there’s no other way to put this — life. She stars as Amy, a corporate executive who…
Vegetable tagine rom Moroccan Bites, $10.99
A bite of what we’re eating here at the Current
Texas brewers bring home four medals from Great American Beer Festival
By Travis E. Poling DENVER — Hundreds of hopeful brewers and brewery owners stood for more than two hours at the Great American Beer Festival Saturday to see if they had achieved beer greatness. In the end, Colorado and California breweries walked away with a pile of medals. Texas breweries and brewpubs had four, including…
