Pick of the Day: John Prine
One of the finest lyricists this side of Bob Dylan, John Prine’s only given us two albums of new material in the last two decades, larding the cupboard with live discs, old demos, re-recorded hits and covers albums. Someone should tell him to get off his ass. But who has the stature to tell this…
What if “The Office” Were a Nonprofit?
It is my pleasure to again host guest blogger Francesca Rattray. In this post, Francesca hits the nail on the head with her parody of a nonprofit soap opera. Francesca Rattray has spent most of her adult life in the nonprofit world as a fundraiser, trainer, and consultant. She studied Asian Studies at Georgetown University…
Café Tacuba releases video of new single
The long-awaited return of Latin alternative’s most critically acclaimed band, Mexico’s Café Tacuba, will be released on October 22. The new album is called El objeto antes llamado disco (The Object Previously Known as Record). It’s 10 new songs recorded live with all four members facing each other in front of small or medium-sized crowds…
Pick of the Day: 29th Annual Jazz’SAlive
The Parks Foundation and the City of San Antonio’s free outdoor jazz festival returns to Travis Park for two days of live music on two stages. Saturday’s performances on the Jefferson Street Stage include Midtown Jazz Sound (noon), Saxophone Summit with John Magaldi and Eddie Olivares (1:15pm), Lee “Sparky” Thomason Quintet (2:30pm), Ulterior Motive (3:45pm),…
Pick of the Day: Fun Fun Fun Fest Scavenger Hunt & Disco Howl Release
How badly do you want passes to Fun Fun Fun Fest? Would you mosh in a dumpster, douse your face in queso, or get an FFF neck tattoo? Such are the tasks the FFF Scavenger Hunt has been known to include, with certain targets benefiting local food banks. And early registration (at funfunfunfest.com/scavenger-hunt) scores your…
Texas Filmmakers Showcase 2012
I must confess I’m not as thrilled with the 2012 Texas Filmmakers Showcase (compiled by the Houston Film Commission) as I have been in previous editions. Every year I’m looking forward for the annual DVD, because all the movies are wonderfully shot and edited. However, very few of the lucky ones included in this year’s…
Pick of the Day: Starlight Movies in the Garden: Rebel Without a Cause
Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause exemplifies ’50s-era cinema’s fascination with the juvenile delinquent. First crossing paths in a police station, disillusioned teens Jim (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and “Plato” (Sal Mineo) eventually form a “fantasy family” in an abandoned mansion after a game of chicken takes the life of a classmate named Buzz.…
Pick of the Day: “Swap Meet: Artpace and the Dikeou Collection”
An intriguing double bill taking place in two cities, “Swap Meet: Artpace and the Dikeou Collection” welcomes works from artist, curator, and zingmagazine founder Devon Dikeou’s nonprofit contemporary art space in Denver in exchange for “New Works Now,” an exhibition that will showcase Texas-based Artpace alums in Denver beginning October 4. A former Artpace resident…
Stargazing
Up in the AT&T Center rafters, amidst NBA championship banners and others celebrating successful rodeos, hangs a testament to the San Antonio Silver Stars 2008 Western Conference championship and sole WNBA Finals appearance. After 10 years in the Alamo City, the Stars are intent on returning to the Finals stage and took another step closer…
Stunning and (Mostly) Polished, Black Mesa is a Near-Perfect Redesign of Half-Life
In the hands of the bold a reinvention can either be very effective or very dangerous. Is redesigning a classic worth the risk of falling short or tarnishing the original? And what of the legions of fans who hold such games so near and dear? While many welcome HD updates of their favorite titles, others…
Pick of the Day: 3rd Annual Alamo Breast Cancer Charity Event
Tonic hosts the Third Annual Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation charity event featuring Alas Couture’s “Sweet Temptations” Candy Couture Fashion Show and a silent auction with hundreds of gift certificates benefiting the A.B.C.F. Free; 5pm Wed, Sep 19; Tonic, 5500 Babcock, Suite # 117, (210) 877-5858, tonicthebar.com. Check out our full online calendar of upcoming events here: calendar.sacurrent.com.
Latin flavors conquer the C.I.A.
The Culinary Institute of America’s website states that Nao, the name of its new, formal restaurant, is "derived from the Latin root "neo", meaning to weave or intertwine. If they say so; it’s hard to track this down without running into the dead end of the Greek neos, or new, so we’ll just leave it…
Grizzly Bear: 'Shields'
After a long, well-earned hibernation (last bear pun, promise), Brooklyn indie darlings Grizzly Bear have returned with Shields, their follow-up to 2009’s critically acclaimed Veckatimest. The time off did the band a world of good: Shields is a powerful, complex, and emotionally satisfying album — their best yet — with each member contributing to the…
Newsmonger: Congress will hold Lackland hearings
The House Armed Services Committee announced last week it will hold hearings on the sex abuse scandal that has continued to widen at Joint Base San Antoinio-Lackland over the past year, following the committee chairman’s much-criticized visit to the base just three days prior. HASC Chairman Howard "Buck" McKeon angered advocates when, after his surprise…
Fashion's night what?
Did you know last Thursday, September 6, was Fashion’s Night Out in San Antonio and around the world? Billed as the "hottest night in fashion" by industry mavens worldwide, Fashion’s Night Out (aka FNO) was launched in 2009 by famed American Vogue editor Anna Wintour to improve flagging retail sales during the economic crisis. Since…
'The Master': P.T. Anderson's prowess once again confirmed
Pornography as a cultural influence in Boogie Nights; the squeaky sound of an abandoned harmonium in Punch-Drunk Love; frogs falling from the sky in Magnolia. The works of auteur director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson over the last decade and a half might be some of the most challenging films to dissect for the average moviegoer, but…
At age 80, multi-award winner Rita Moreno still vocal about challenges Latinas face in Hollywood
Fifty years after actress Rita Moreno earned an Academy Award for her role as Anita del Carmen in West Side Story, the Puerto Rico-born performer is still the only Latina to ever win an Oscar in an acting category. Moreno, who will be in San Antonio September 22 for a retrospective of her life and…
What Texas criminal justice reformers could teach the booming immigrant detention system
GOP State Rep. Jerry Madden took the helm of the House corrections committee in 2005, just in time for a deeply distressing projection: booming incarceration in our notoriously tough-on-crime state meant Texas would need eight new prisons by 2012, at a cost of about $1 billion. Meanwhile, Madden got stern marching orders from then-House Speaker…
Council watch
The proposed Convention Center expansion, a massive expenditure that’s been waiting in the wings for months, is set to hit City Council this week. On Thursday Council will consider the multimillion dollar project, set to be paid for by hotel occupancy tax, to expand the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center eastward, eventually demolishing the older…
Life: The Romantic Comedy
The Mindy Project (8:30pm Tue, Fox) Dr. Mindy Lahiri (Mindy Kaling) has spent a lifetime looking for the perfect man, but she can’t find him. In the pilot for this new series, we perceive her problem: She sees everything through the lens of romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally. It’s hard for a self-described…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): For every trillion dollars the U.S. government spends on the military, it creates about 11,000 jobs. That same expenditure, if directed toward education, creates 27,000 jobs. Personally, I’d rather have the taxes I pay go to teachers than soldiers — especially in light of the fact that the U.S. spends almost…
More Jazz'SAlive highlights
SATURDAY 4:45pm — Red Young Trio True masters of the Hammond B3, an instrument that’s as notoriously difficult to play as it is to lug around, are few and far between. Fortunately, Jazz’SAlive will have one of its finest practitioners in Red Young, whose rich, soulful sound proves why the B3 is worth the trouble.…
¡ASK A MEXICAN!
Dear Mexican: Why do gabachos always feel the need to talk about money or trips they have taken? I always notice this when I am at any restaurant, like they don’t have nada más de que hablar. They make a point to speak loudly for everybody to hear … especially if there is raza near…
Jump-Start party is a big tent
The carpas, the traveling tent shows that entertained working-class audiences throughout Mexico and the Southwest during the 1920s and 1930s, offered a mixture of circus and vaudeville. "The time was filled with wonder and fantasy, not like now," says the narrator at the outset of ¡Carpa!, an energetic but elegiac salute to a vanished tradition.…
Béla Fleck and Marcus Roberts bring their magic to Jazz'SAlive
There’s a certain built-in disappointment that comes with high-profile collaborations, no matter how successful (Duke and Coltrane, Queen and Bowie) or, well, not (Loutallica anyone?). The task of fusing two established sounds to create something that transcends the sum of their parts is next to impossible. So when banjo master Béla Fleck and New Orleans…
H-E-B, Sa Food Trucks Cook for Charity
San Antonio food trucks and H-E-B are partnering to raise money for charity. In the Food Truck Face Off on Saturday, September 22, Jason Dady’s DUK Truck, Johnny Hernandez’s True Flavors, Pieter Sypesteyn’s Where Y’At, and Michael Anthony Romo’s MARS Mobile Kitchen will compete using H-E-B products. The winning truck will get a donation to…
A 'bigger-than-ever' Melody Fest comes to AT&T Center
It doesn’t get any harder than this, unless The Panic Division turns it up to 11. But they don’t need to: Colton Holliday’s band has enough to go toe-to-toe with hard-rockers The Heroine, Memory of a Melody, and Cult to Follow (iTunes has CTF’s single "Leave it all Behind," from their upcoming 2013 album). That’s…
'Dark Matter': Keep on truckin'
Blink, and you missed the first act of the RJP Nomadic Gallery’s performance on First Friday. The sun was setting slow and low as the eager crowd flowed through the Blue Star Complex. As art aficionados waded about the parking lot while catching sets from local bands nestled amongst the sculptures, a 40-foot-long Ryder truck…
Fotoseptiembre at Rendon Photography
Local photographer Scott Martin and Massachusetts shooter Lance Keimig are masters of moonlight. Their haunting Fotoseptiembre exhibition at Rendon Photography and Fine Art presents strangely brilliant nightscapes captured through time-lapse photography, but the dream-like effects are abetted with a few lighting tricks of their own. On a hillside in West Texas, a glowing phone booth…
Chick Corea & Gary Burton: 'Hot House'
Commemorating the 40th anniversary since the release of their groundbreaking Crystal Silence, pianist Chick Corea and vibraphonist Gary Burton hit the studio again for their 6th joint-release. After four decades of sporadic touring and recording together, there’s no questioning the fluency of the pair’s interplay or their individual virtuosity; however, there’s something lacking in Hot…
Alejandro Escovedo presents 'Big Station', his superb new album
San Antonio-born Alejandro Escovedo got a new lease on life when he overcame a severe case of hepatitis C that sidelined him from music, left him too weak to walk for a while, and had doctors believing he wouldn’t survive the disease. Since recovering, Escovedo has made what arguably are the four best CDs of…
Feds: immigrant smuggling ring linked to Zetas
Federal agents on Tuesday arrested 28 alleged members of an immigrant smuggling ring with ties to violent Zetas drug cartel. On Tuesday San Antonio’s federal district court unsealed a nine-count indictment outlining charges that include conspiracy to transport and harbor undocumented immigrants, transporting immigrants for money and placing them in jeopardy. “The results today will…
Payday-lending crackdown heads to Council this week
Councilman Diego Bernal’s much-awaited ordinance setting tighter regulations on payday lenders heads to City Council for a vote Thursday. While Bernal calls his plan the most aggressive crackdown on predatory lending yet in the state, it borrows from measures already passed by Austin and Dallas that have set off legal battles with the payday lending…
Pick of the Day: OFF!
Nearly 34 years after the release of Black Flag’s definitive hardcore EP Nervous Breakdown, frontman Keith Morris is still churning out raw, incendiary music. Following his tenure with Black Flag and Circle Jerks, Morris teamed up with Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides), Steven Shane McDonald (Redd Kross), and Mario Rubalcaba (Rocket from the Crypt) to form…
Meet Texas’ drone-wary contingent in Congress
RS-16 UAV flown under the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Initiative at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Texas GOP Congressman Ted Poe has filed legislation requiring law enforcement agencies get a warrant if they want to use unmanned aerial vehicles to spy on citizens. The bill, dubbed the Preserving American Privacy Act of 2012, “would only permit…
