Obama To Eat Pork Sandwich To Prove He’s Not Muslim
In an effort to finally put to rest persistent rumors about his religious views, President Barak Obama agrees to eat one pork sandwich. For the majority of his term and throughout his campaign President Obama has had to endure much questioning about his faith. A recent FOX News poll says that 60% of Americans believe…
Go Online and Get Some
Several years ago, my best friend met a man in an online chat room. She approached him because he used his real name as his user name, not some jumble of random words and numbers. They met, got along really well and decided to go on a trip together. Her family and I were shocked…
Last Chance To See Bats
This week could be your last chance to catch a glimpse of the bats that take flight nightly near I-35 and Camden in downtown San Antonio. Due largely to word of mouth and a few segments on WOAI, the bats drew a considerable crowd near the new River Walk expansion this summer. Onlookers frequently lined…
The Westside Has Eyes
On Monday night, while I recovered from my first (and might I add very enlightening) blogosphere debate on the ups and downs of welfare/education/gay rights, I found myself in the neighborhood I know as Home, probably because I needed something familiar and calming to help me understand what the hell my purpose was in this world. I’d spent the whole day feeling…
Jason West Tours With Sebastian Bach, Again
Local drummer Jason “Shakes” West will travel overseas this week with ex-Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach. West (Cult to Follow, Pitbull Daycare) is filling in behind the kit for shows in Spain and the UK with Bach — the band will serve as direct support for Guns N’ Roses on several dates. This isn’t the…
Let Me In
Critic’s Pick Let Me In Director: Matt Reeves Screenwriter: Matt Reeves Release Date: 2010-09-29 Music Score: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz Rated: NONE Genre: Film The elfin 12-year-old Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lives in a world of almost malignant isolation. He and his mother (Cara Buono) inhabit a working-class apartment complex in wintry early-1980s suburban New Mexico,…
Halcyon Project
Halcyon Project Composer: Deerhunter Conductor: Deerhunter Label: 4AD Release Date: 2010-09-29 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording “To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.” Deerhunter channels subversive French playwright Jean Genet on its latest album Halcyon Digest, a collection of faux-memories and lavish desperation. The fourth effort by the Atlanta, GA, foursome, including…
You Are Not Alone
You Are Not Alone Composer: Mavis Staples Conductor: Mavis Staples Label: Anti- Release Date: 2010-09-29 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording R&B legend Mavis Staples’ last album, 2007’s We’ll Never Turn Back, was a stirring concept record about the Civil Rights movement. The follow-up is more direct, bringing the singer back to her gospel roots with a…
Everything in Between
Everything in Between Composer: No Age Conductor: No Age Label: Sub Pop Release Date: 2010-09-29 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording When I told a radio DJ friend that I was reviewing the new No Age, he said: “I could scream into a phone for you, then you wouldn’t have to review it.” Fair enough, that fuzzy,…
Get Reel Film: Dogtooth
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 Three adult children are forced to live at home with their deranged parents in Dogtooth, a surreal Greek film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. According to the storyline, “A child is ready to leave the house when the dogtooth comes out. Only then is your body ready to face the dangers…
Bling-Bling Fling
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 The Bonham Exchange gets even more glamorous than usual when it hosts the 2010 Bling Bling Fling. Delicious drag queens entertain for the main fundraiser of the Martinez Street Women’s Center, donating their considerable celebrity impersonation and lip-synching talents to the Hollywood-themed bash. Grab your feather boa and/or tuxedo tails…
Bryan Adams
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 Best-known for hits like “Heaven” (his first song to reach No. 1 on the US charts) and “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” (often referred to as the biggest hit of the ’90s, it holds the record for the longest-running No. 1 in UK singles chart history —…
Manhattan Short Film Festival
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 San Antonio is one of 204 worldwide cities hosting a screening of what’s been called “the world’s first global film festival.” After viewing 10 shorts (each 15 minutes or less) directed by this year’s finalists, audiences across six continents will vote for their favorite films. Once SA’s votes are tallied…
Tera Melos, Zorch, the Grasshopper Lies Heavy, Daytes
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 Hopefully, it wasn’t the departure of drummer Vince Rogers (who quit the band to pursue a career in mathematics) that made Tera Melos “eschew” math rock. The fact remains that the formerly instrumental experimental outfit is cited as one of the genre’s true innovators. Formed in California in 2004, Tera…
San Anto Cultural Arts 13th Annual Huevos Rancheros Gala y Art Auction
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 Saturday mornings, so often occupied by housework and errand-running (if you’re awake, anyway), could be made a lot more festive in general if there was a Huevolution: Huevos Rancheros Gala y Art Auction every week. There’s not, though: It’s this Saturday morning, and then you have to wait another year.…
Shakira
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 If Dolly Parton insured her boobs for $600,000, and Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley insured his legs for 25-million pounds, how much must an insurance company shell out if Shakira’s hips stop gyrating? The Colombian pop princess shimmied her way to international celebrity promising her “Hips Don’t Lie.” But…
First Friday
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-09-29 Several arty press releases of late have us feeling like we’ve slipped down the rabbit hole. For starters, long-haired artist and curator Hills Snyder’s Casual Observer at Blue Star Contemporary Art Center claims to be an “open studio environment … derived from his 1977 Song 44.” While suggesting viewers will…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Mexican, I understand NYC isn’t your jurisdiction, but maybe you have some insight, or maybe this is also a problem for other smart and successful Latinas. My question is: why is it so hard to find an educated Mexican — or hell — even a Latino man who isn’t a pretentious hijo de papi,…
Who did what with the who, now?
1. The Battle of the Alamo was a part of which U.S./Mexico conflict? a. The Spanish-American War b. The Mexican War of Independence c. The Mexican Revolution d. The Texas Revolution e. The Spanish Civil War 2. Which of the following was revolutionary leader Pancho Villa’s given name? (Extra points for identifying the others.) a.…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, I am certain my best girlfriend is sleeping with her ex-boyfriend. We are both married and have been friends since high school. The guy I think she is sleeping with is this jerk she dated back in high school and for a while afterwards. I just don’t get it. She has an…
Saytown Lowdown
Next week, the 7th Annual Indigenous Human Rights March will take place with Aztec ceremonial dance, native drumming, and poetry by Chicano Indigenous poets Alurista and Anthony Flores. At a time when politicians debate the merits of a border wall that funnels families fleeing drug-war violence in Mexico into the Arizona deserts and increasingly anti-immigrant legislation…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Nine-year-old Fatima Santos told the San Francisco Chronicle her opinions about the movie Toy Story: “If I had to make a movie like this, I would make it funnier. I would make Mr. Potato Head look funnier that he already does. I would put his hair on his legs, his shoes…
The Gay Sportscasters
Jeff Smith, lead singer for The Gay Sportscasters (and also seminal cow-punk outfit the Hickoids), put on no pretenses about his nine-piece camp-punk “stuporgroup.” “`It’s` strictly for fun,” he said before mounting the stage at Nightrocker on San Pedro. “The whole concept behind the band was I wanted to have t-shirts with Howard Cosell with…
Crossing the whiskey river
On N. Presa, in between Commerce and Market, is Estillo Whiskey River Saloon. The owner, Mark Litton, named the bar after a song that his father-in-law, Johnny Bush, wrote in the early ’70s. Willie Nelson later recorded the song and made it famous. The saloon sits where Club Medusa once was, and you don’t have…
Bottle & tap
There is little doubt that 20 years ago San Antonio was a vast beer wasteland, as was most of the country. Craft brewing was still young in places like California, Colorado, and Oregon, and regional breweries like Spoetzl in Shiner and Yuengling outside of Philadelphia were doing what they could to remind the public that…
Backwoods Adventures
The first thing you notice after you drop your kayak into the San Marcos River is the river bottom. Unlike most rivers in Texas, the San Marcos is spring fed, resulting in crystal-clear water. After climbing in, it takes a few minutes for me and Shawn to get adjusted heightening lumbar rests, repositioning water bottles,…
2010 Fall Festivals
Beethoven Maennerchor Oktoberfest October 1-2, October 8-9 You don’t have to be German to know that beer, food, and music are synonymous with a good party. What began as a Bavarian marriage celebration has catapulted into an international annual happening. For nearly 200 years, Oktoberfest has been generating masses to celebrate the legendary German festival…
2010 Haunted Houses
13th Floor Haunted House Hidden downtown in a cold storage facility, two haunted houses take possession of this 105-year-old building, transforming it into a grotesquely eerie experience. “Unearthed” takes you through a tour of a mineshaft, a boiler room, sewers, cages and low ceilings. If you survive, the unlucky “13th Floor” awaits, complete with a…
Vineyard Express
The blast furnace that is our South Texas summer is fading into memory, thus freeing us from the necessity of ice-cold hops-inspired medication. It’s time to look forward to a healthier, grape-based prescription, and to return to my wino rootstock. It’s harvest time in the Hill Country, and I’m ready for a winery tour. Among…
Borderless Ambition
Last spring, the New York Times magazine called our mayor the “post-Hispanic Hispanic politician,” meaning, I suppose, that Julián Castro’s “broader American experience” qualified him beyond his ethnicity. Now the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center brings us “Post-Hispanic Cinema: A celebration of Latinos in film,” a broad survey of indie films just in time for Hispanic…
Texas Wine Month Trail
During the month of October (Texas Wine Month, didn’t ya know?), hit the trail through the Texas wine country and tour 27 Hill Country wineries, including: Becker Vineyards (830) 644-2681 464 Becker Farms Rd Stonewall, TX, 78671 beckervineyards.com Fall Creek Vineyards (325) 379-5361 1820 County Rd 222 Tow, TX, 78672 fcv.com Flat Creek Estate Winery…
You’ve got a new friend
David Fincher’s best movies fall somewhere between fantasy and reality. From Se7en’s serial-killer noir and Fight Club’s identity-disorder nihilism to the obsessive and overlooked Zodiac and even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’s bewildered man-child, Fincher has assembled quite a filmography over the past two decades. It’s no accident he got his start making music…
The Queque – September 29, 2010
SA2020 What is this thing? It seemed the world was holed up Saturday morning in the bright inner chambers of the Tri-Point YMCA “visioning” with SA Mayor Julían Castro, County Judge Nelson Wolff, City Manager Sheryl Scully, and guests, about a better world to come, a world that creative thinking matched by collective action can…
Clampetts on crack
The vulgar, cheeky, rowdy honky-tonk of San Antonio’s The In and Outlaws is a good fit for Casbeers at the Church. Something about their music complements the strangeness of people drinking beer and dancing suggestively in a former house of worship, pews intact. During their September First Friday gig at the venue, the band blew…
Out of obscurity
Jacob Bibb, 16, anxiously awaited the first game of his high school’s tiny 1A team in Mason. He’d be playing linebacker against a tough rival school and tried not to think about the swelling lymph nodes in his neck. At 21, Barbara Garcia was living what she describes as the perfect life as a party-hearty…
Revival preacher
The Reverend Horton Heat’s music has been featured in commercials. His group was the theme band for Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo. The surest sign the cult rockabilly, punkabilly, whateveryawannacallitbilly pioneers have secured a spot in American rock consciousness after 25 years? Not only inclusion in the digital rock ‘n’ roll pantheon of Guitar Hero II,…
Lang-Lessing set to move San Antonio Symphony forward
German-born Sebastian Lang-Lessing’s resume is dotted with places that read a bit like the set locations for a Bond movie. With posts as the conductor-in-residence of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, chief conductor and artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy in France, and most recently, chief conductor and artistic director of the…
The Sound and the Fury
Lisa Frank nostalgia Punk grrrls Lisa Frank recently declared an indefinite hiatus. We heard the news after an especially rad set opening for Japanther a couple weeks ago, so it seemed particularly jarring a band would take a break right as things were gelling like a Bic pen. At any rate, they played their last…
Come for the bugs, stay for the Revolution
Right now, the marquee star at the Witte is Backyard Monsters: The World of Insects, a stimulating, visually exuberant depiction of the vast world of entomology. Kids will seriously dig the giant, detailed models of monarch butterflies and tarantulas, the interactive robo-bugs (robo-bugs, you say? Yesss!), and will bug out for insect merch at the…
Shiraz shakes off critter cuteness
It can’t all be blamed on “critter” labels, but that’s a good place to start. Australian winemakers lead the world in the shameless appropriation of cute animal images on wine labels, and, for a time, Yellow Tail’s kangaroo seemed poised to take over the wine world. Wine snobs went into indignant orbit, but the buying…
Presidentes, Insurgentes y Generales: Leaders and Major Players of the Revolution
A renowned and gifted general, Porfirio Díaz fought against the conservatives who fought against Reforma President Benito Juárez, then ran against him for president in 1872, soon after which Juárez died of a heart attack. Díaz’s eventual election led to the “Porfiriato,” a 31-year reign which brought about major technological advances, including the railroad and…
The Cuban food crisis
It’s the end of the month and therefore another installment of Travels with Frenchie, the monthly food series in which a trio of culturally mismatched San Antonians explores the local hinterland in search of dining adventure. As always, the culinary vice squad consisted of: Frenchie (aka Fabien Jacob, celebrated local sommelier), Carlos the Bike Mechanic…
Revolution and the Narco-War
Much has been written about the similarity between the chaos of Revolutionary Mexico and that of contemporary Mexico in the grip of the brutal drug war. Certainly the militarization of the border increased dramatically in both periods, both as a result of and, in some cases, intensifying frontera violence. A report in Sunday’s Express-News by…
RIP Scout Bar?
Don’t write the obit yet. We just spoke with Scout Bar general manager Michelle Wilder after hearing a week’s worth of rumors of chained doors, a “closed for repairs” voicemail on the company machine, and canceled shows. The nearly-three-year-old establishment specialized in hard rock, novelty acts (well, that’s what Vanilla Ice is at this point,…
Child of Eden: Making Motion Control Intuitive?
While I’m no Wii hater, I don’t play many games on Nintendo’s wiggle-waggle Gamecube because the motion control has proven itself, time and again, to be a classic case of a great idea with poor execution and limited technology. That and the fact that other game systems don’t ply me with standard definition graphics on…
