ATTENTION, ACTORS!
Listen, hams and jamónitas: are the actorly among y’all aware of the innovative and high-quality work being done by the Attic Rep Theatre? You should be! They put on consistently outstanding, unflinchingly challenging theatrical productions– American classic True West, Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia, this summer’s Blackbird, Pinter’s One For the Road,…
Live & Local preview: Straight Live Saturday Night
Breakfast Club Crew (in the video above) and local artists Pokell, Roc Solid, and several others.Sponsored by BREAD Magazine. Doors open at 10 p.m., and admission is $5. Check out the flyer below for more information, and don’t you forget about me.
LUMINARIA: Deadlines and Guidelines info
I know it seems early to start thinking about Luminaria, but start thinking about Luminaria, you artists. Only 29 days ’til deadline. Luminaria will now be a major CAM event (CAM’s moving to March, remember?), so the opportunities and potential audience are bigger than ever. Get crackin’! See press release below, and good luck. CALL…
Glasstire a finalist for national arts-journalism award!
Texas’s homegrown arts-crit site Glasstire is one of five finalists in a national competition for nothing less than the future of the medium (check it out; that’s not much in the way of hyperbole). Here’s the press release; more soon. The first, second, and third-place winners will be announced October 30. LIVE TODAY: The National…
Express-News rejects: the Current’s new fall line
`Local clean-energy activist Margaret Day says the following column was rejected by Express-News Editorial Page Editor Bruce Davidson because it insinuates NRG Energy’s Executive VP of Nuclear Development, Mr. Steve Winn, “is a liar.” Express-News Ombudsman Bob Richter said Davidson turned it down because he “had other, better anti-nuclear commentaries” and felt Day “misstated Winn’s…
Neato Website Roundup
Hidy-hi, blog readers! I am always on the lookout for fun websites, aren’t you guys? While it’s easy enough to descend into a K-hole of Facebook-status-likery or YouTube gawking (lately I’ve been on an Electric Company kick), there’s other stuff out there I plan to herein enjoy bringing to your attention. Surely you already know…
Backspacer
Backspacer Composer: Pearl Jam Label: MonkeyWrench Release Date: 2009-09-30 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording One reason Pearl Jam’s ninth album is their best since 1994’s Vitalogy? It flies by. Backspacer clocks in at a breezy 36 minutes and hits the ground running with a raging spirit that we haven’t heard…
Monsters of Folk
Monsters of Folk Composer: Monsters of Folk Label: Shangri-La Release Date: 2009-09-30 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Monsters of Folk was spawned in post-show jams between Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and M. Ward in 2004., but it’s taken them five years to translate the backstage jams into a studio…
Time to Die
Time to Die Composer: The Dodos Label: French Kiss Release Date: 2009-09-30 Rated: NONE Media: CD Length: LP Format: Album Genre: Recording Pulsating syncopation and scattered rhythms have always been the cornerstones of the Dodos’ strangely attractive music. Time to Die is no exception. Logan Kroeber’s frenetic drumbeats guide the jagged fingerpicking of singer-guitarist Meric…
Toy Story & Toy Story 2
Critic’s Pick Toy Story & Toy Story 2 Director: John Lasseter Screenwriter: John Lasseter Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn Release Date: 2009-09-30 Studio: Disney/Pixar Music Score: Randy Newman Rated: NONE Genre: Film Our Rating: 5.00 R.I.P. Steamboat Willie. In 1995 this might as well have been the working title…
Secret Machines
Release Date: 2009-09-30 After forming the moody space-rock band the Secret Machines in 2000, Dallas-born brothers Brandon and Benjamin Curtis moved to New York to begin recording. Two full-length albums later, just as the band was finding its niche with 2007’s Ten Silver Drops, Benjamin left to focus on his side project, School of Seven…
Oktoberfest
Release Date: 2009-09-30 Oktoberfest takes over the Beethoven Maennerchor this weekend with a raucously appetizing combination of accordions, beer, clogs, and Bratwurst. Last year, I paid a premium for one of the food vendors to leave the corned beef off of a Ruben sandwich, which infuriated the cook, but the steaming pile of Swiss cheese,…
Solar San Antonio: Solar Tour 2009
Release Date: 2009-09-30 This Saturday, 150,000 people will shed a ray of light on a concept many of us have trouble wrapping our heads around — “going solar.” Ten SA homes and businesses will participate this year, opening their doors to give visitors a peek at how they’ve lowered energy costs, reduced dependence on fossil…
Family Day at SAMA: India
Release Date: 2009-09-30 San Antonio Museum of Art presents a unique theme the first Sunday of each month showcasing different galleries within the museum. In conjunction with Diwali (India’s Festival of Lights), SAMA sets the stage for creative learning with a virtual trip to the land of Ganesha, with regional crafts, snacks, and a kid-friendly…
Revolting Cocks w/ Jim Rose Circus, Blownload, Left Spine Down, & Emily’s Gone Mad
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2009-09-30 “Disgusting Roosters” might not be as catchy, but a more family-friendly name might’ve translated to more mainstream success. Or at least kept Britain’s home secretary Dennis Hurd from reportedly attempting to deny them work visas to keep their debauched live act out of the UK. Probably not, though. This industrial…
Invitame a una Copa
Release Date: 2009-09-30 This week, Bar Tab had a case of the hiccups. First, Maroc’s beer-pong tournament was cancelled due to inclement weather. The final round was to take place in the pool, which promised to be a major Kodak moment for the chic, Miami-meets-Morocco patio bar. Searching for a possible alternative with a similar…
Travels with Frenchie
Part XIII: Run, rabbit, run
Poetic brain & Fanny Brawne
Bright Star Director: Jane Campion Screenwriter: Jane Campion Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox Release Date: 2009-09-30 Rated: PG Genre: Film John Keats did not lead the most cinematic life. Unlike Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was not expelled from Oxford for atheism, and his wife did not drown herself when he ran…
Gustavo Arellano: Ask a Mexican!
Cultura Y Humor
Ghostdini the Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City
Ghostdini the Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City Composer: Ghostface Killah Label: Def Jam Release Date: 2009-09-30 Rated: NONE Media: CD Format: Album Genre: Recording At the risk of Ghostface tracking me down and beating my ass for even thinking this (just try it, Dennis*), I’m going to admit that seeing this repeatedly referred to…
Chisme Y Chicle
The space vacated by the late, lamented Luca (co-owned by the husband of Current Editor Elaine Wolff) in the Fairmount Hoteldidn’t languish for long — and it won’t change much visually in its new incarnation. “It’s just what we need,” says Chef Jason Dady, whose restaurants include The Lodge, Bin 555, Tre Trattoria, and 2…
The newlywed game
Lorna’s silence is in part the artistic restraint of Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; their film about Euroscamming might not displease the Scandinavian dogmatists of Dogme 95. With natural lighting, actual sound, and unobtrusive editing, they tell the compelling contemporary story of a young immigrant who becomes complicit with a gang of international criminals.…
S’nuff Film
The impending nuclear-powered holocaust got you down (see Greg Harman’s total bummer, page 10)? If so, tough titty —the fallout’s contaminated Snuffopolis this week, too, thanks to Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (esperanzacenter.org). The local nonprofit’s ongoing Other, Out & Beyond Film Festival features a day full of anti-nuke flicks on Saturday, October 3. The…
Neverending stories
From an outsider’s point of view, science fiction and fantasy fiction are the literary equivalent of the “Song That Never Ends,” the recursive little ditty that kids like to sing on a long car trip in order to drive their parents insane. This is the genre that can never let a story go. Scan the…
ARTifacts
Robert Motherwellheld that “collage is the 20th century’s greatest innovation.” Devotees of video art, Moog synthesizers, and PEZ may have a bone to pick with this notion, but from Duchamp to Dash Snow, collage holds up as a pretty sturdy art framework, even as late as 10 years into the 21st century. This First Friday,…
Intrepid meditation
I think the Supreme Buddha himself would approve of Jeffrey Wisniewski’s approach to art, in which no material is too settled in its form (that’s what woodchippers are for, apparently) or beholden to consumer culture (electronics, meet deconstruction; deconstruction, meet repurpose). For his Artpace Hudson (Show)Room installation, the artist has adapted motion-capture skills he picked…
Eva’s ascension
Maybe if someone made Barack Obama’s story into a pop opera, this whole sociopolitical transition — with its town-hall uprisings and halls-of-power histrionics — would seem like a less unpleasant affair. But until that wizard of the Great White Way, Andrew Lloyd Webber, turns his unique gifts toward our imperfect union, we can distract ourselves…
Bust: Grand Hyatt, 287(g), 210sa
Union-busting: outsourced A union vote was scheduled for housekeepers, bellboys, and other “domestics” employed at the San Antonio Grand Hyatt this past July, but organizers canceled it at the last minute, claiming that the hotel chain’s dissuasion tactics had been successful enough to queer the vote. The alleged arm-twisting included intimidating workers in captive-audience meetings…
Risky Business
The banquet room inside the city’s lavishly refurbished Pearl Brewery is filled with solar advocates, coal-power people, city decision makers and bureaucrats, geothermal enthusiasts, and a table of Express-News staffers. They dine on salmon and judge in quiet gestures the performance of the panel at the front of the room. As a tense but generally…
Finding Neverland
A decade ago, it was a rule that interviews that probed the influences of hip, up-and-coming, underground-ish bands had to include gratuitous citations of “just, you know … like … jazz.” These days it’s Michael Jackson. Everyone says they dig Michael Jackson. Thriller-era. Or, even cooler, Off The Wall-era. Listening to frontman Ryan Shaeffer, it’s…
Atomic Numbers
Most Texas homes weren’t built as if energy mattered. Despite 100-degree summer days, our roofs are still covered in heat-absorbing black-tar shingles. Cheap insulation in the attic, leaky doors, and single-paned windows mean when the air conditioner runs, it runs loads of cooled air right out the house. San Antonio’s CPS Energy plans to spend…
The Sound & The Fury
This year’s Huevos Rancheros Gala and Silent Art Auction (9 a.m.-noon Saturday, October 3, at Plaza Guadalupe,1327 Guadalupe St.), an annual benefit for San Anto Cultural Center, is a special one: The late director, Manny Castillo (who passed away in January), will be crowned as King Huevo, and his mother, Rafaela, will be crowned as…
Artist in Residence Vol. VII
It’s not easy growing up in a cultural diaspora within a culturally mixed-up town, but somehow, I managed. Jewish, Cuban, Russian, Spanish, American. It’s all the same to me. … I grew up on the North Side, hung out in King William for several years, and finally settled in Midtown. I know this city and…
Helter Skelter
Richard Gein (real name withheld for what should soon be obvious reasons) says one of his first San Antonio gigs was an opening slot at an Eminem and D-12 show. He’s sketchy about the details (he was performing under another alias he’d rather not mention, and can’t recall for sure the date and venue. )…
Live & Local
Think back: When you’d annoy your parents early Saturday mornings by playing pots-and-pans marching band, what was the expression on your face? Did you seek negative attention because your mother never hugged you tight enough, or were you just a troublemaking shit? Instead of getting into a highly subjective subgenre debate (the only people who’d…
Dear Uncle Mat
I’m a 23-year-old male living in San Antonio. I’ve been in trouble in the past (law, drugs), but I’ve changed now. I work full-time for my family business and go directly home after work to avoid getting into trouble. I’ve started working out and going to my parents’ church regularly. But it’s still hard for me…
Ask a Mexican
Dear Mexican: As a Mexican-American, I’ve lived in St. Louis for about 17 years and have seen a substantial influx of my brethren. Nevertheless, I’m for border security — against the no-good, godless Canadians. I hate Canadians! Funny accents and cold weather — ha! Why is America not closing the Canadian border? Those bunch of…
Pizza Wines
It takes a certain sort of chutzpah to make pizza for Dough’s Doug and Lori Horn. But wine guy Keith Kuhn, he of the backyard pizza oven `see “Outdoor oven envy,” March 19, 2008`, is also fearless in the kitchen and was instrumental in cooking up this wine and pizza pairing party, an event also…
The Royalette Flush: An Email Mystery
Text from an actual email, that’s also posted in a blog forum of some sort at neighbors.denverpost.com: from: Carol verdon <stolenferrets@yahoo.com> to: “ewolff@sacurrent.com” <ewolff@sacurrent.com> date: Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:07 PM subject: Royalette, she was America’s lucky winner! mailed-by: yahoo.com signed-by: yahoo.com 5:07 PM (18 minutes ago) Royalette, she was America’s lucky winner! In…
More Art Nerdification
Here is an excellent interview with the photographer/artist Nora Herting by our friend Richie Budd, whom I profiled a while back. he’s doing some good work for the Ft. Worth Examiner now. My favorite Herting quote from the interview: Toward the end of last summer, I was photographing in Midwood, which is many Russian Orthodox…
Zaha Hadid and the Case of the Shitty Art Writing
Jeez Louise. Have you heard about Zaha Hadid’s Chicago project, the Burnham Pavilion? It’s up ’til October 31. I wish I could get up there. Do a Google Image search and check out her work. It’s gorgeous–sinuous, thought-provoking, magically alive, somehow. After reading about the Burnham Pavilion, I got interested in reading more about her…
