SA’s Wild Animal Orphanage closing
As sanctuary shutters, Boris the bear is in need of a new home. Enrique Lopetegui candombe108@yahoo.com It’s official: On Tuesday, August 31, the board at the Wild Animal Orphanage, a troubled animal sanctuary on the edge of Northwest San Antonio, decided to close its doors. A formal press release will be sent out this coming…
Sleepercar’s trailer stolen last Saturday in San Antonio
En route to their Dia de los Toadies performance in New Braunfels last Saturday, Jim Ward (At the Drive In, Sparta) and his latest groupSleepercar made a pit stop in San Antonio and their entire trailer was stolen. Not cool. They managed to play their set anyway, but are hoping and praying (or just really,…
First Friday Meets Fotoseptiembre
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-03 We love it when everything happens at once, but trying to make sense of all the art happenings this Friday could even make a Bellator dizzy. But we can get through this one baby step at a time, dear art warrior. Starting at the Mothership, Unit B’s Kimberly Aubuchon curates…
Cee-lo’s “Fuck You” video, officially
Does Cee-lo Green have the magic touch or what? Check out the production on the new video forhis internet sensation “Fuck You.”
Hawk
Hawk Composer: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan Conductor: Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan Label: Vanguard Release Date: 2010-09-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Former Belle and Sebastian chanteuse Isobel Campbell and ex-Screaming Trees wailer Mark Lanegan call to mind Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger or Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. She’s a breathy naïf, he’s a…
Teenage Dream
Teenage Dream Composer: Katy Perry Conductor: Katy Perry Label: Capitol Release Date: 2010-09-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Katy Perry’s life is all cotton-candy kisses, fireworks on the beach, and drunken Friday nights. And throughout her second album, she sings about the fun she’s having living it up with her BFFs. (Market crisis? Oil spills? What…
Going the Distance
Critic’s Pick Going the Distance Director: Nanette Burnstein Screenwriter: Nanette Burnstein Cast: Drew Barrymore, Justin Long Release Date: 2010-09-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Film If absence makes the heart grow fonder, maybe it’s best to keep your relationship with Going the Distance a long-distance one. Then again, it’s tough to stay away from anything that makes…
Wild Grass
Critic’s Pick Wild Grass Director: Alain Resnais Screenwriter: Alain Resnais Cast: Sabine Azema, Andre Dussollier Release Date: 2010-09-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Film “After the cinema, nothing surprises you,” offers one of Wild Grass’ many unreliable narrators a little more than an hour into this 104-minute cinematic souffle. “Anything can happen. It doesn’t surprise you. Anything…
Labor Day Weekend Celebration
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-01 Free, family-friendly fun awaits you at El Mercado Association’s Labor Day Weekend Celebration. A full lineup of participating bands can be found in the music listings, but we’re most excited about seeing Los Enmascarados ? a lucha libre-themed conjunto band. Hopefully their comedic twist on the classics will balance out…
Street Dogs with Devil’s Brigade, Flatfoot 56, Second to None
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-01 San Antonio (’scuse me, I meant St. Anthony’s Parish) being the land of the Irish and all, it’s no surprise Mike McColgan, ex-frontman for the Dropkick Murphys, would bring his latest Celtic punk band to town. The group boasts a backstory more Irish-American than Dennis Leary. After McColgan (five shamrock…
Canteen Fest 2010: The Pipelines, Pablos Grove, Cain’s Children, The Chayns, Crystal Winter, Stillwater, Excalibur, United, Water Brothers, John Colvin Band, Union Jacks, Bepko Fletcher, Santos Rose, Cave Dwellers, The Jammers, Rocksand, & Orion
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-01 Last year, 700 folks with fond memories of Teen Canteen gathered at “Samstock” — a musical tribute to the man behind the bygone teen club. In 1960, owner Sam Kinsey entertained the crowd at Teen Canteen (then housed in Jefferson Methodist Church Hall) by spinning 45s on a portable record…
Bellator Fighting Championships
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-01 It’s anyone’s guess why this is happening at the Majestic, but it is — and it’s not the first time, either. Bellator Fighting Championships brings eight compact, attack-happy cage fighters to the historic theater for four knockout rounds. Inside a circular cage, Bellators must follow the Unified Rules of Mixed…
Art opening: Danqing Coldwell
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-01 It’s a monster weekend, you guys. We don’t know if we’re ready to handle it. There are a metric ton of truly worthwhile shows opening on Thursday and Friday, and as it’s no longer muffin-baking temperature outside (as of print time), so why not go out and engage? Among the…
Zombie EP
Zombie EP Composer: The Devil Wears Prada Conductor: The Devil Wears Prada Label: Ferret Release Date: 2010-09-01 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording There’s two ways of looking at the latest EP from metalcore band/Ohio-bred Christians The Devil Wears Prada: (A) the songs are too long or (B) it’s a great deal! This reviewer falls into camp…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In an old comedy sketch called “One Leg Too Few,” a one-legged man comes in to a casting agent’s office to audition for the part of Tarzan in an upcoming show. The agent is as diplomatic as he can be given the fact that the role would best be played by…
Nylon Metal
Two young, talented Hispanic metalheads frustrated with their sprawling metropolis’s comparatively tiny music scene: sound familiar to anyone in San Antonio? When Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero couldn’t get their thrash metal group Tierra Acida off the ground in their native Mexico City, they simply ditched their homeland and the metal band in favor of…
Don’t let go
There are one-hit wonders, and then there are ton-of-hit wonders. The former is a pretty familiar term. The Buggles? One hit wonder. Everybody knows “Video Killed The Radio Star.” The latter concept we made up, but it’s pretty simple: If a one-hit wonder becomes famous for one hit song, a ton-of-hit wonder is a band…
Working class bros
The holiday spirit didn’t exactly cheer members of San Antonio’s Glow in the Sun last December. Sitting at Taco Garage on Broadway last week, members of the blues-rock quartet recalled how they were tired of playing time-change intensive, proggy hard rock. It was time to hire a proper songwriter to give their music some structure…
The Sound & the Fury
“It is what it is.” That’s the tag line for the Rick Sciaraffa two-day birthday/memorial benefit show this weekend at the White Rabbit (2410 N. St. Mary’s; (210) 737-2221). The former owner of the Rabbit passed away suddenly in 2007, leaving a huge hole in St. Mary’s biggest punk and metal venue. Despite Sciaraffa’s well-known…
Bombs and (bleached) blondes
Our preview of Broadway Across America’s 2010-2011 season begins with a moment of silence for the surprise no-show of last year’s season: the 101 Dalmatians Musical, sponsored by the visionary theatrical troupe Purina Dog Chow. Purina is, of course, world-renowned for its investigations of early modern drama — who didn’t thrill to its Munich production…
Searching for Watterson
There isn’t quite enough there, there. The previous sentence operates on two different levels. On the one hand, it might refer to Calvin & Hobbes, cartoonist Bill Watterson’s beloved comic strip about an overly imaginative six-year old boy and his stuffed tiger, who may or may not be alive; the strip ran for a decade.…
Human/Nature
I’ve been unintentionally avoiding Gallery Nord, and for too long. For one thing, it’s a humdinger of a building, designed by the late Allison Boyd Peery (1924-2005), a pioneer on the male-dominated landscape of South Texas architecture, associate of the mighty O’Neil Ford, and one of the primary architects — for better or worse —…
Spice it up, please
The place may still be pretty in pink, but the fire has gone out at India Oven. Let me be less metaphorical: there’s heat in some of the food, but something has happened to its soul. We could start with a humble flatbread. Humble but hardly without interest, the aloo partha, a whole wheat flatbread…
Quiroz at the Cork
Daniel Quiroz got into bartending early. So, yeah, at 17 he lied about his age. Which may make it ironic that, today, the now-strapping 24-year-old is a full-time student in criminal justice. But there’s nothing ironic about a passion for drinks that is also full time. Quiroz, who’s front and center at the Hotel Contessa’s…
Bottle & tap
It’s been seven years since San Antonio’s Alamo Beer Co. founder Eugene Simor began picking up kegs of Alamo Golden Ale from a little brewery in Blanco and delivering it to draught accounts out of his minivan. Since then, Blanco’s Real Ale Brewing Co. has moved to a bigger brewery and is fighting to keep…
Lock up your garden tools, the race war is coming!
One of the funnier things about Machete, the new action flick from San Antonio-born, Austin-bred director Robert Rodriguez, is envisioning how much it will fluster anyone supporting border walls and Arizona SB 1070-style immigration laws. The film’s subject, an uprising of Mexican-American immigrants spurred by corruption on both sides of the border, practically begs conservatives…
Danny Trejo is finally allowed to live to the closing credits
Danny Trejo’s never met a movie role he didn’t like. Since breaking into the film industry in 1985, after spending a majority of his adulthood in and out of prison, Trejo’s familiar chiseled-with-a-serrated-edge look has earned him screen time in over 140 movies, including Bound by Honor, Con Air, and just about every film directed…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I’m a naturalized citizen born in Ciudad Juarez (the most dangerous city in the world, thanks to the drug cartels) but I work for la migra. I get a lot of shit from some of my family members because they feel I shouldn’t be doing this job. I always tell them that it’s…
Strike against literacy
Julieta Flores knew enough to dial 911 to report the domestic abuse when the shouts and taunts turned physical. But she couldn’t communicate with the officer when he arrived at her house a short time later. The man with the badge didn’t speak Spanish; she spoke no English. “When I explained to the officers, they…
The Queque – September 1, 2010
E-N’s beetle-buggy battle Northside drivers’ Public Enemy Number One was outed last week across San Antonio’s media spectrum shortly after Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas filed a lawsuit objecting to an application to proceed with the construction of a new interchange at perennially congested U.S. 281 and Loop 1604. AGUA and equally catchy TURF (Texans…
Between past and present
Throughout its colorful history, the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center has been under some degree of scrutiny, like most arts nonprofits, but in recent years it has been harshly criticized for its empty facilities, controversial job cuts, a drop in funding, educational failures, and bickering and bailing board members. Focus and controversy increased a year and…
Dear Uncle Mat
I’ve been unemployed for over a year now. I’m currently living above my parents’ garage, and working at a local store to pay my basic living costs like phone bill, car insurance, and food. It’s kind of like I’m 17 again, but the setup is less attractive a decade later. The bigger problem is, there…
Rodrigo Sanchez from Rodrigo y Gabriela on fighting back against Arizona-style immigration laws
Rodrigo Sanchez, one-half of Mexican guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela (who found fame, incidentally, as temporary immigrants in Ireland) explains why he and collaborator Gabriela Quintero are members of Sound Strike and the best way to counter laws like Arizona’s SB 1070. Rodrigo y Gabriela play Sept. 4 at the Majestic Theatre. STE-001BA by cenlow
E-N’s verdict on 1604-281 mess reeks of Zachry favors
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Northside drivers’ Public Enemy Number One was outed last week across San Antonio’s media spectrum shortly after Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas filed a lawsuit objecting to an application to proceed with the construction of a new interchange at perennially congested U.S. 281 and Loop 1604 without a full environmental study. AGUA…
