Free the Cuban 5
The politically charged case of the Cuban Five, aka Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González, or the Five Heroes, as they are known throughout Cuba, is gaining momentum not only in their communist homeland, but right here in San Anto. While some believed The Five were convicted fairly in December…
Live & Local Preview: Druggist
I, Jeremy Martin â?? the painfully exquisite face of the Current’s Music section â?? will be personally attending Druggist’s show at the Warhol (1011 Avenue B) tonight. Doors open at 8 p.m. Tickets are $5 and all ages will be admitted. Come to meet me, stay for some local rock and/or roll from this duo,…
On the Street
Particle-Wave Dialectics and other Cyclical Dead Ends” Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite) Again, it bears repeating, pretty much anything will be printed in this section. It could be the most direct conduit for the public-media complex, and yet, too often, it’s a cyber ghost town with few letters to even be left…
Running A Tab
Nicole Chavez nchavez@sacurrent.com Let’s get one thing straight: I HATE to run with other people. I’m the last person you should pick to be your gym buddy, your workout partner, your running mate â?? I’ll probably ditch you simply because I like to fly solo. Something about having to rely on somebody else when I…
Plant germlab below (please)
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com Reminded of what a friend and fellow critic of Homeland’s Plum Island bioterror lab relocation project told me a year ago: “If it is built, it needs to be built underground.” He – and I – support the need for this research (that of it we are allowed to know about) but…
Songs sung blue
Current theater critic Tom Jenkins Curblogs again, this time re: The Color Purple, the novel/miniseries we said couldn’t be musicalized: The Color Purple — a musicalization of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel â?? has some huge strengths: much of the cast remains intact from the musical’s Broadway run, and the physical design â?? by John…
Drill Me! Drill Now!
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com San Antonio â?? if our population keeps growing as expected â?? may one day replace Houston as Energy City, USA. Of course, that will also require each of us to do our part: Eat more. Today, news broke that the city on that befouled San Antonio River is finding economic and energy…
The strongest pour in town
Release Date: 2008-09-10 As a seasoned drunkard I’ve seen my fair share of bars, and I must say that Charlie Brown’s (so far) sits atop my list of what many would consider “dive” bars but have come to be referred to as “neighborhood” bars. Food: Let me get this out of the way. The food…
Crossing the other border
Frozen River Director: Courtney Hunt Screenwriter: Courtney Hunt Cast: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: R Genre: Drama The natural habitat of coyotes — that bipedal species in symbiotic relation with migratory homo sapiens — is not limited to the Mexican border. Of course, coyotes stalk the 1,952-mile stretch from Brownsville…
Burn After Reading
Critic’s Pick Burn After Reading Director: Joel and Ethan Coen Screenwriter: Joel and Ethan Coen Cast: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: R Genre: Comedy Given the cast and credits, you go into the theater expecting this to be good, and there’s no real fault to find.…
Claws and Flaws
Claws and Flaws Composer: The Diamond Center Label: Superfluous Umlaut Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock This album came to me in a hand-decorated envelope from my hometown of Lubbock, a truly terrible place to have a band. So I gave Diamond Center a pity listen. Imagine…
Living on the Other Side
Living on the Other Side Composer: The Donkeys Label: Dead Oceans Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Surf The sophomore release from this Southern California-based four-piece is a collection of ruminations that explore daily life’s details through traipsing folk guitar and soulful, voluminous melodies. Grounded in the roots of…
Carried to Dust
Carried to Dust Composer: Calexico Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock For those who know Calexico primarily through its collaborations with other, more notable musicians – including the masterful 2005 EP In the Reins (with Iron & Wine) and last year’s I’m Not There contribution “Goin’ to…
The Stand Ins
The Stand Ins Composer: Okkervil River Label: Jagjaguwar Release Date: 2008-09-10 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Indie Rock The Stand Ins is Okkervil River’s follow-up to their critically acclaimed The Stage Names, but don’t call it a sequel — it’s really a collection of deleted and extended scenes, scrapped when frontman…
The Gourds w. Shotgun Party
Release Date: 2008-09-10 The Gourds have chugged through America fueled by music and the need for a good time since 1992, yet continue to shape their unique blend of American musical forms. Last year’s Noble Creatures moved the band into beautiful and unfamiliar territory with an unprecedented number of ballads and the inclusion of horns…
M.O.D., Plague, Lacination, In Ovo, Immersed in Hatred, Betrayed By Honor, & more
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Austinites by way of NYC, Method of Destruction is on tour supporting their latest album, Red, White, and Screwed, a timeless blast of infectious crossover thrash. The music seethes with the anger and abandon of old-school metal, kicking ass and taking names of those who can’t handle larger-than-life frontman Billy Milano’s acerbic…
5th Annual Texas Metal Arts Festival
Release Date: 2008-09-10 From red-hot steel to polished gold, you’ll find a full range of craftsmanship at the 5th Annual Texas Metal Arts Festival. Demonstrations reveal intricate skills used by metalworkers to transform raw metal into fine art, jewelry, furniture, and folk art, while 40 Texas artists present their creations for your shopping pleasure. Visit…
Latino Music Festival
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Main Plaza Conservancy presents two days of music and community in the heart of the city. Friday’s lineup showcases our region’s roots and fusion music, headlined by the ethno-jazz grooves of acoustic guitar innovators Strunz & Farah. Saturday celebrates San Antonio’s unique sound — Piñata Protest’s (above) conjunto punk rock, indie Tex-Mex…
H.E.B. Health and Fitness Fair
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Former professional football player and personal trainer “Bay Bay” McClinton hosts this boot-camp challenge, in which teams test their strength, endurance, and fitness in a series of events. Drill Sgt. Harvey Walden IV of VH-1’s “Celebrity Fit Club” also speaks at the H-E-B Health and Fitness Fair, featuring healthy snacks, an inflatable…
Texas Traxx Live w. Gandhis Gun, Pasenger, & Tungsten Coil
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Local music is the spiel every Sunday at Scout, where S.A.’s best take the stage in the name of 99.5 KISS — $2.50 Corona and Jäger specials guarantee a packed house of local scenesters. Ghandi’s Gun is the featured artist this go-round, playing a set of 12 original songs from their upcoming…
August Burns Red, A Skylite Drive, Sky Eats Airplane, Greeley Estates, This Or The Apocalypse, & more
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Lancaster, Pennsylvania, quintet August Burns Red is touring in support of last year’s Messengers, which considerably raised the bar after their first offering, Thrill Seeker, in 2005. No sophomore slump for this pummeling crew — they created Messengers with the intention of rising above the din of everything metal. Though lacking a…
Latino Music Fest Redux
Release Date: 2008-09-10 Main Plaza Conservancy presents two days of music and community in the heart of the city. Friday’s lineup showcases our region’s roots and fusion music, headlined by the ethno-jazz grooves of acoustic guitar innovators Strunz & Farah. Saturday celebrates San Antonio’s unique sound — Piñata Protest’s (above) conjunto punk rock, indie Tex-Mex…
The bar that time forgot
Release Date: 2008-09-10 A couple of years ago, Forbes ranked America’s drunkest cities. We were 12th. Not bad. But we beat out every other American metropolitan area in one category: heavy drinkers. What’s that mean? We have our fair share of teetotalers and so the rest of us have to make up for it. I…
ARTIFACTS
Artpace opens an exhibition of work by London-based architect David Adjaye this week, and one of the many good reasons to see it is that, thanks to the late Linda Pace, Adjaye has been commissioned to design a building in San Antonio for her collection. “She always liked to expose San Antonio to things it…
Overtime gives Faust(us) a soul
From Overtime Theatre comes a sincere and conceptual comedy by Rebecca Coffey that, while occasionally campy, shows real growth for the talented cast and crew. Starring the reincarnated tragic figure of Faust, The Poet Faustus follows the discouraged artist from rags to riches, and back to rags. Faustus Black (John Poole) craves recognition for his…
Dangerous liaisons
In the second act of Gregg Barrios’ new play, Rancho Pancho, 21-year-old Benny Briseño unbuttons his sweaty cotton shirt to reveal tight pectorals and a V-shaped torso pointing down to his shaved caramel pubis. Playing the part of Tennessee Williams’ Mexican-American lover Francisco “Pancho” Rodriguez, Briseño walks to the writing table where Williams (superbly played by…
Dear Uncle Mat
This is the problem: I’ve been in an on/off relationship for approximately 8 years. I met this guy through his sister and I can say we became a family. At some point in the relationship he meets a girl 10 years younger than both of us and decides to cheat. So I left him AGAIN.…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Some people would like the world better if it didn’t have oddballs, freaks, black sheep, misfits, and crackpots. Personally, I’m very much in favor of these types, and celebrate the entertaining diversity they add to the world. I hope you share my attitude, Aries, because you’re going to have to be…
S’Nuff Film
Check out the devastatingly awesome concept behind my new favorite film I’ve never seen: Santo en la venganza de las mujeres vampiro (Santo in the Revenge of the Vampire Women), in which some bloodthirsty vamps seek vengeance on the man who tried to destroy them by attacking his descendant — Santo, the silver-masked luchador. Before…
Home on the Range
I can’t remember a time in my childhood when I wasn’t just dying for want of a swimming pool. The only thing I wanted more was a horse. But even at 12, I knew my parents’ anti-equine logic was unassailable: a thousand-pound quadruped in our suburban backyard? And did I think I was Pippi Longstocking?…
‘Kill’ joy
Generation Kill (HBO, rebroadcast times and dates vary, check hbo.com for schedule) As Generation Kill opens, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the men of First Reconnaissance — an elite Marine detachment that completes much of the same training as the Navy Seals and the Army Rangers and operates best behind enemy lines—…
¡Ask a Mexican!
Special historia edition Dear Readers: The Mexican’s new book, Orange County: A Personal History, is in your local bookstore on September 16 — by pure coincidence, Mexican Independence Day! In honor of, and to shamelessly promote, my muy caliente libro (which deals with America’s Gomorrah, the Reconquista, and John Wayne!), I’m answering historical questions this…
Cinema Obscura
You might hear a few heartless film critics refer to Welcome to the Dollhouse as a “dark comedy.” That’s a lie. This film (for-real working title: Fags and Retards) is straight-up horror, a stomach-turning exploration of human brutalilty, with fewer legitimate laughs than The Shining. More painful to watch, too, because where most scary films…
Montezuma’s sweet revenge
I am standing in the living room of the house I have rented in the heart of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and my son has just informed me that he has to go “potty.” As I help him take down his pants, I flash back to the last four days. Me hunched over the…
Mutantphobia: The San Francisco treat
X-Men and X-Women: As a resident of San Francisco, I would first like to offer you all a warm welcome to the Bay Area, where I’ve noticed the X-Men have recently relocated. I was greatly saddened to hear about the destruction of your storied X-Mansion in Westchester, your East Coast residence of several decades. You’ve…
Amuse-BOUCHE
The third annual Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance Feral Hog Roast would seem to be in the “what do you get the benefit that already has everything” category, what with celebrity chefs of Jason Dady caliber lining up to roast said hogs, and a Panhandle-size spread of jewelry, art, and homemade Mustang Grape wine to bid…
Bringing the war to the DNC
In Denver, people don’t mention the Democratic National Convention without mentioning protesters, even if it’s just to complain about traffic jams. So let’s talk about protesters. Aldo Carrasco of Roswell, New Mexico, pulled up next to an older woman in a car that was dwarfed by his minivan. He leaned over and yelled to her,…
Rhett’s exploding
Rhett Miller celebrated his 38th birthday last weekend, but it’s pretty likely that the party had to start without him. The bash, at his three-acre spread in New York’s Hudson Valley, was set for the middle of the Dallas Cowboys’ regular-season opener against the Cleveland Browns, and although Miller hasn’t lived in Dallas for years,…
’68 redux: inside the DNC, without a riot
By the time Rage Against the Machine took the stage Wednesday, August 27, at the Denver Coliseum, the crowd was frenzied and ready to do more than listen to music. Rage’s blend of politics and poetry just fueled the crowd’s desire for action. There was no mistaking the purpose of the show for Rage front…
THE SOUND & THE FURY
Flannel-shirted, modern-day dustbowl troubadour Eric Hisaw will be the showcase attraction at Sam’s Burger Joint’s Honky Tonk Happy Hour on Friday, September 12. Hisaw, who’s spent the last couple of months promoting his well-crafted, no-nonsense, Springsteenish (or should that be Springsteenian?) album, Nature of the Blues, recently returned from a heartland swing that included shows…
Dumbing up the curriculum
Regularly updating the subject matter taught in public schools would seem such a basic good idea as to be a no-brainer — and non-controversial. Who would want their kids learning from history textbooks, for example, that end with the Soviet Union still intact or literature classes that cover only the works of dead white guys…
Reissued soul
I Got the Feelin’: James Brown in the 60s (Shout! Factory) A few weeks ago, auction house Christie’s sold a wild assortment of stuff — from used cosmetics to a Hammond organ and red-leather sofa — from the home of James Brown. More than a few bidders chose from an assortment of jumpsuits worn by…
The QueQue
We know what all you motherlumpers, er, readers, want from Queque this week. The mandate is clear, from the chat rooms to the press pools. You want lil’ Que to describe to you in that very print-media way the look of naked Sarah Palin. We must tell you now, that is not going to happen.…
Mojoe
The fans are hollering for the hits, of course. While the band tunes up the crowd calls out favorites from classic.ghetto.soul, the debut album local hip-hop mainstays Mojoe released in 2003, then reworked and re-released in 2006. But they have a new album to promote, this year’s Dirty Genes. Fortunately, emcees Tre and Easy Lee…
Democracy in St. Paul
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The bright white light of flash bombs can be seen everywhere among the scattering crowd now. Loud explosions of concussion grenades mix with the lighter, metallic tinkling of tear-gas canisters bouncing along the pavement. Lines of police dressed in full riot gear stretch beyond the sulfur-green clouds of smoke bombs. Shouts…
“Martians Never Die” — ElectricDisk
Maybe it’s the lighter pull of gravity that does it or breathing 95 percent carbon dioxide or the irregular orbit of the planet’s two small moons discombobulating Martian menstrual cycles. Whatever — ElectricDisk doesn’t bore you with all the scientific details. This techno remix of an early ’50s sci-fi radio play does, however, offer the…
You are what you think
The Mind Science Foundation, founded 50 years ago by San Antonio oilman, philanthropist, and adventurer Tom Slick, is one of those San Antonio giants hiding in plain sight. In science, a hypothesis isn’t much good without the means to test it, and MSF has been the lonely financial vanguard of the science of consciousness, underwriting…
World on a string
Man on Wire Dir. James Marsh; feat. Philippe Petit, Jean-Louis Blondeau, Annie Allix(PG-13) If I’m not mistaken — and for those who’ve been following along with the home version (hi, Mom; love ya lots) — the last documentary I reviewed for these pages was the British-produced In the Shadow of the Moon, which won the…
FOTOSEPTIEMBRE Week 2: Depth of field
Aaagh! The onslaught of photographic images that engulfs San Antonio each September is upon us again! Now in its 13th year, FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA has attached itself to gallery and museum walls all across our city, and hardly a local art venue is safe from the extravaganza. It’s hard to talk about photography. It’s beset with…
