Os Mutantes. Austin. October 18. Period.
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com If you don’t know Os Mutantes (oz-moo-TOHN-cheese), do me a favor: go to Austin’s La Zona Rosa on Sunday, October 18, at 9 pm. Buy the ticket now, going to gettix.com. Trust me. I know, it’s in Austin. But go. If you know Os Mutantes, you don’t need me to tell…
Live and Local Preview: Lonely Horse
“Save the boobies!” is the battle cry tonight at the 1011 for the Rockin’ for Racks Breast Cancer Benefit Show. I’ll be out there around 9:30 to see local folk/indie act Lonely Horse. I haven’t heard anything around town that sounds terribly comparable to what they’re doing, which according to their myspace is “Native American…
Chaléwood No. 22: Kuno Becker
Kuno Becker – From Mexico with Love By Kiko Martinez San Antonio Current contributing writer kiko@cinesnob.net After four years of running up and down soccer fields for the Goal! trilogy, actor Kuno Becker, 31, exchanges his cleats for a pair of gloves in From Mexico with Love. In the film, Becker plays Hector Villa, a…
Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre
If you’ve spotted the posters about town, you might be curious about the five-part musical lecture series entitled Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre, now lighting up the Josephine Theater on select Mondays. Co-presented by Herb Keyser and Bett Butler, Geniuses complements Keyser’s recently published history of musical theater, and features biographies interspersed with musical…
Why Dana Clair? And a few notes re: how the story came together
The very first comment posted to this week’s cover story about the unsolved murder of Dana Clair Edwards was, sadly, expected. “On 10/7/2009 10:39:10 AM, Anonymous said: Who gives a f*ck? This gets cover story just because the chick was an ’09er? Please. There have been other unsolved murders in the city and none of…
New season of ‘Voces’ begins tonight
KLRN’s series Voces, a “showcase of documentaries celebrating the rich diversity of Latino life” begins tonight with Celia the Queen, a bio on legendary Cuban singer Celia Cruz (as seen in the video above) featuring interviews with varied musicians, from David Byrne to Wyclef Jean to Pitbull, detailing Cruz’s impact and influence, beginning at 9…
Artifacts Online–SMART Fair edition
I’m thinking of changing the name of Artifacts to “Aartvark.” What do y’all think? More importantly, SMART Fair is this Saturday. Here’s my column about it: Hey, who cares if the pointy-headed four-eyes over at Dailybeast.com ranked the Alamo City 53rd out of 55 in its list of “America’s Smartest Cities?” The Beast don’t know…
The Beast
The Beast Composer: Budian Label: Texas is Funny Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Press materials for this SA quartet’s full-length debut compare Budian (Budge Anne? Boo Dianne? Booty Yawn?) to Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, and Postal Service, a side project for Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard…
Album
Album Composer: Girls Label: True Panther/Matador Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording It’s always hard to judge a throwback band. Are they paying homage, in love with nostalgia, or just plagiarizing? The retro-rock sounds of San Francisco’s Girls don’t make this debate any easier. Combining sunny California folk-rock…
Man on the Moon: The End of Day
Man on the Moon: The End of Day Composer: Kid Cudi Label: Universal Motown Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording You won’t find any rhymes about what a badass Kid Cudi is on his debut album. Like mentor Kanye West, Cudi specializes in weirdness. This glasses-wearing Cleveland rapper…
I and Love and You
I and Love and You Composer: Avett Brothers Label: American/Columbia Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording On their major-label debut, alt-country buzzmakers the Avett Brothers check in with a Grammy-winning producer (Rick Rubin), a newfound sense of scope, and a sweeping song cycle about broken hearts, wrecked truths,…
Capitalism: A Lve Story
Critic’s Pick Capitalism: A Lve Story Director: Micheal Moore Screenwriter: Micheal Moore Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: R Genre: Film This abusive relationship has gone on long enough. Sure, capitalism was charming at first, all about “freedom of choice” and “giving and taking.” But let’s face it: Lately, it’s done you wrong. It’s hurt you. In…
Kittie w/ Soil, Arkaea, & Straight Line Stitch
Release Date: 2009-10-07 Once upon a time in 1996 Ontario, Canada, two 14-year-olds met at an after-school gymnastics class and (naturally) formed an all-girl metal band named Kittie. By 1999, the band had a hit single with “Brackish” (from the album Spit), and went on tour supporting Slipknot. While Kittie has become somewhat of a…
Lambchop lollipops from Rio de Vino Wine Bar and Café.
Release Date: 2009-10-07 Happens all the time: I arrive at a restaurant only to discover that the menu is about to change, the old chef has just left, the wine list is in total flux … or all three, as happened recently at Rio de Vino. Schedules and deadlines being what they are, plunging ahead…
A shooting star is born
She’s a real slasher, too. This girl is talented!
Unforgettable
A legacy of reclaimed art masterpieces and devastating loss
Land of the dead(pan)
Zombieland Director: Ruben Fleischer Screenwriter: Ruben Fleischer Cast: Jesse Elsenberg, Woody Harelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin, Amber Heard, Mike White Release Date: 2009-10-07 Rated: R Genre: Film For the record: I’m a werewolf guy myself. Not that it matters, really. I mean, we could, you and I, pop a case of cream sodas and set…
Mercedes Sosa (1935-2009)
“Mercedes was the greatest voice and had the biggest heart for those who suffer. … She sang for her people and her American `continent`, but her universal chant was heard throughout the world. Her voice resonated in the heart like an embrace.” — Shakira I don’t recall a second of my life in which Mercedes…
Live and Local
San Antonio MC the One (myspace.com/the01) is checking the mic at Saluté International, and he looks a little nervous. “Don’t be scared,” hollers one encouraging lady in the audience, but it’s really a false start. The One’s CD won’t read, and now it’s stuck in the player. “I’m going to wait my turn,” the One…
The Sound & The Fury
Let’s get to the point, San Antonio: A lot of you straight-up hate me. The comments portion of our website is filled every week with new accusations that I suck at my job, am single-handedly destroying the local music scene, and would make a better-than-average receptacle for a certain Massengill-produced feminine-hygiene product. So it is…
Loving the liqueur
Olaf Harmel has little truck with the term mixologist — though it’s actually an old one revived. “You’d have to know too much `to justify it`” says the soft-spoken bartender at Mon Ami, the tiny lounge tucked away behind Mon’s Thai on Broadway. Harmel, who came to spirits from a wine background, says he’s constantly…
Making scenes
Before Alonso Emiliano was able to finish his Kanye West impersonation at last Friday’s San Antonio Local Film Festival press conference, fellow filmmaker Dagoberto Patlan interrupted. Basically, he had heard enough. Emiliano, whose short film “Delirum” was announced as one of the eight chosen to screen at this year’s SAL Film Festival on October 10…
Dear Uncle Matt
I was just wondering: I am tired of my job that I’ve been at for six years. Believe me, I’ve been trying to transfer out but with no progress. Why is it so hard to move up? I’ve even been taking courses for my bachelor’s degree in business administration. I’ve also been very interested in…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The poet Stephen Mallarmé wrote the following in a letter to a friend: “I don’t know which of my internal climates I should explore in order to find you and meet you.” I love that passage. It alludes to one of the central facts about the nature of reality: The quality…
Ask A Mexican!
Dear Readers: Since the Mexican’s sister is getting married to a good man from Zacatecas this weekend, I must ignore my research archives to slaughter a pig and hire a banda sinaloense. So indulge yourselves in some piratería questions I ripped off from my book, and await my return next semana! Dear Mexican: Isn’t brown…
Connolly fights back, WAO cleans house
Def squad Suddenly last week, everyone cared about about the death penalty. All it took was one pretty-damn-sure innocent man (RIP Cameron Todd Willingham, executed February 17, 2004, charged with intentionally starting a fire that killed his three young children) and a poorly timed move by Governor Rick Perry, who replaced three members of the…
Chisme Y Chicle
A tenuous culinary and geographic equilibrium of sorts is being maintained by two recent restaurant events: Biga’s Bruce Auden’s plans to open a casual place in the snooty Sonterra ’hood, and Jean-Francois Poujol’s downtown opening of Le Midi, a spin on his suburban Soleil Bistro & Wine Bar. Auden’s Kitchen will take the place…
Missing Pieces
Dana Clair Edwards wasn’t courting danger the night she was murdered. It was New Year’s Eve, and plenty of San Antonians were cutting loose, drinking more than usual, kissing virtual strangers in rowdy bars, seeking fresh faces to flirt with at large parties. But Edwards, a 32-year-old habitual overachiever, rang in 2009 with close friends…
Old School needs new students
The drive to Boerne isn’t the bucolic romp through the countryside it once was. But once you navigate the gauntlet of car lots, western-wear outlets, and chain eateries, Boerne’s main street still struts some of its small-town past. At Ye Kendall Inn, dating from 1859, there’s not a trace of simulacrum; this is the real…
Reclaimed:Paintings from the Jacques Goudstikker Collection
Marge Gregerman views the exhibition of Jacques Goudstikker’s collection at the McNay through two lenses. “As a docent at the McNay, this is an exemplary exhibit of 17th-century Dutch art, which `San Antonio does not` have. As art for art’s sake, it’s a wonderful contribution towards understanding what in Dutch culture produced these works,” Gregerman…
Reclaimed:Paintings from the Jacques Goudstikker Collection
Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker is a history-haunted exhibition and the material survivor of decades of tragedy and injustice … but it doesn’t seem to know it. Goudstikker, a Jewish art collector and dealer from Amsterdam, lost his life in 1940 while fleeing with his family from the German invasion of the…
Reclaimed:Paintings from the Jacques Goudstikker Collection
1897 Jacques Goudstikker is born in Amsterdam, into the third generation of a Jewish family of prosperous, influential art dealers. 1914-1918(approximately) Jacques studies at the Commercial School in Amsterdam, as well as with noted art historian Wilhelm Martin at Utrecht. 1919 Jacques joins his father’s fashionable gallery on the corner of Kalverstraat and Wijde Kapelsteeg.…
A shooting star is born
Ruthless! ain’t toothless, and for that we can be grateful. In a city largely inundated with anodyne musicals (exhibit A: Mamma Mia!), Ruthless! opens as a refreshingly amoral take on such sappy tuners as 42nd Street and A Star Is Born. Penned with obvious glee by Joel Paley and Marvin Laird (and in fact sharing…
When bad ain’t good
Joseph Green’s 1962 low-budget cult classic The Brain That Wouldn’t Die offers an awkward blend of uneasiness with science and fascination/revulsion with the female form. The film (unevenly) tells the story of brilliant surgeon Dr. Bill Cortner, who keeps the severed head of his bride-to-be alive after a horrific car accident while he searches among…
Full-body workout
Aesthetes of a high-minded bent might have you believe that classical music is an abstract thing of the spirit. Truth is, to make any kind of music — and we have this on no less an authority than Mick Jagger — you gotta move. When the young Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra first appeared…
Welcome to hell: here’s your senator
“Welcome to Heaven. Here’s your harp,” reads the text on the top half of the classic Far Side cartoon. At the bottom: “Welcome to Hell. Here’s your accordion.” (Shoot me; I find it very funny.) Few instruments are as maligned as the accordion, which is loved by enthusiasts but despised by practically everyone else. Fortunately…
WAO update: The Asvestas and Turton out; Nicole in
By Enrique Lopetegui elopetegui@sacurrent.com On October 1, a press release sent out by the Wild Animal Orphanage announced “the termination of Ron and Carol Asvestas as employees effective immediately,” that “Carol Asvestas has also been terminated as a member of the Board of Directors,” and that daughter Nicole Asvestas-García had been named by the board…
Unheard jobs debate: Rifkin report promises tens of thousands of local jobs while CPS tiptoes
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Damn natural gas. We just have too much of the stuff, and that’s driven down profits at one of the city’s biggest cash cows: CPS Energy. To keep the city’s 14-percent cut of CPS profits from growing too anemic, CPS has plans to raise your rates by more than 9 percent in…
