Mark Twain

The Best Concerts In Houston This Week: Kendrick Lamar, Jesse Dayton, Amy LaVere, etc.

Kendrick Lamar Reliant Arena, June 11 Before Kendrick Lamar had ever released his major-label debut, he'd already worked with hip-hop giants like Dr. Dre, Drake, Warren G and Lil Wayne, thanks to a rabid Internet following and some wildly successful independent work. He's continued to find his foot ... More >>

Health Department Roundup: Downtown, Midtown, Trader Joe's vs. Whole Foods

Like so many homeless people and recently released inmates, we're going to stick mostly around downtown and Midtown this week. And we'll start with a citation - Deli Deluxe (1600 Smith/tunnel) got a ticket after an inspector found half a dozen violations. Two were new: employee eating in an unapprov ... More >>

Re-Marking Twain’s Equator

Friday Night: Yo Gabba Gabba Live! At Verizon Wireless Theater

Photos by James Bricker​Yo Gabba Gabba Live! Verizon Wireless Theater December 2, 2011 As a parent, Rocks Off can tell you firsthand about the sacrifices involved in child rearing. Most of us know going in that there are trade-offs for raising your own personal organ donors, from simple thing ... More >>

Bill Moyers at Progressive Forum: An East Texas Sage's Optimism Twists in Today's Ill Winds

Bill Moyers believes that the sun-baked scattered bones of Wall Street's carcass are being picked clean by "animal spirits" -- namely, hyenas, and that these scavengers believe that they are justified, indeed morally sanctioned, in behaving as such, and that nobody in government is willing or able t ... More >>

Five Can't-Miss Acts At ACL Fest This Year

Craig HlavatyWe're running this picture of My Morning Jacket's Jim James now because this will be the last we see of him all weekend.​For weeks after we skipped last year's Austin City Limits Music Festival to man the controls in Houston, Rocks Off found ourselves thinking, "Man, I wish I woul ... More >>

The Worst Real Estate Ad Ever

It doesn;'t say what you think it does​A 19th Century Portuguese man named Pedro Carolino took it upon himself to compose a Portuguse-English phrasebook, despite the fact that he knew no English and didn't even own a Portuguese-English dictionary. He did know French and he believed that was e ... More >>

The Truth Is, Bob Marley Never Said That, Either

Bob Marley: The coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.​In the last couple of days, we saw exactly how pretty words can be put in the mouths of even the most famous dead people. Unless you've been hiding out in the Tora Bora cave complex the past few days, you've heard all ... More >>

Jesse Dayton Lands Kinky Friedman Role In New Play

Houston socialite Carolyn Farb co-producing dramatization of eccentric Texan's life ​Former Houstonian Jesse Dayton has been tapped to play the lead role of Kinky Friedman in Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman, Dayton told Rocks Off this afternoon. Written by New York aut ... More >>

Five Songs That Huck Finn Guy Should Censor Next

gutenberg.org​As many of you probably already know, Alabama publisher NewSouth Inc. plans to release censored versions of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, replacing the words "nigger" and "Injun" with "slave" and "Indian," respectively. That's ... More >>

How the West Is Won

The Coen brothers take their tongues out of their cheeks for True Grit.

“Following Huck Finn”

Logan Sebastian Beck sets out to find remnants of Mark Twain’s America

Bono, Gaga And ZZ Top Write Like Raymond Chandler? Who Knew?

​Ask anyone who really knows Rocks Off, and they'll probably tell you we can be a little slow on the uptake sometimes. We proved this once again earlier this week, when we updated our Facebook status with a plea for someone to explain to us what in tarnation a "meme" is. We should have waited ... More >>

Mark Twain's Vibrator: Five Other Bits Of Possible Literary Kinkiness

If you hear a humming, Mark Twain's a-coming​As ordered in his will, the three-volume autobiography Mark Twain wrote as he was dying is being published 100 years after his 1910 death.First reports note that the book note that it includes talk of a "vibrating sex toy" his mistress gave him as a gif ... More >>

(Very Possibly) Excerpts From The State Board Of Education's Curriculum Standards For The 2012-13 School Year

​There's been a whole lot of hooting and scorn from a nation who has watched as far-right-wingers have forced their odd, minority political views into Texas textbooks. There are some carping liberal complainers who think -- difficult as it may be to believe -- that Thomas Jefferson should be menti ... More >>

Big River

Web exclusive!

Aftermath: Tina Turner at Toyota Center

Lower-Income HISD School Gets Prestigious Program

Musical Hurricane Preparedness Kit, Part 2, Continued: Hello Edouard (and Edward, and Ed, and Eddie...)

$7 at Chilosos Taco House in the Heights

Get Lit: Q&A with Sgt. Brian Foster of the Houston Police Department

Re: Are Umpires Racist? Maybe.

Lomax on Lomax

“Forgers, Fakes and Pirates: Faking the Book”

See original printings of the Texas Declaration of Independence and Adolph Hitler’s autobiography – Not!

Cowboys Are Frequently, Not-So-Secretly Fond of Each Other

Playing Hard to Get

A DiverseWorks show so complicated, it has a reference section

Remembering Molly

She was always more than what she seemed

Kinky's Got His Mojo Workin'

A Texas wild man enlists his Appalachian counterpart in his crusade

Baby Steps

Two actors bring a sorrowful script to painful, moving life

Garden State

Adam and Eve try to rekindle things by Searching for Eden

Cameron Crowing

How Would Jesus Groove?

A Broadway Superstar returns to save your soul

On the Case

Our new TV series is ready to roll

Sign Singing

Deaf West Theatre's Big River is a hands-on show

Letters

Banjos and Body Piercings

William Elliott Whitmore brings old-school bluegrass to the punk underworld

Letters

On-the-Job Training

Wanna write books for a living? First, head for the slaughterhouse

The Critical Craftsman

H.C. Westermann was the quintessential American artist

Knight Falls

Everything old is mold again when a brotha from another hood lands in medieval times

Waving the White Tablecloth

Cafe Perrier adopts America's casual attitude with its new brasserie concept

Deep-Fried Greenhorn

Only a dupe believes in such a thing as the "best chicken-fried steak in Texas"

A Georgia Peach

Carlisle Floyd's adaptation of Cold Sassy Tree is a comic song of the South

Minus a Plus

First-rate acting elevates this film beyond its familiar plot

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Rotation

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Letters

Fall from Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain's account of our first couple at The Company OnStage