Master Baker
If you consider the French to be the best bakers on the planet, then you probably also believe the humble croissant to be the quintessential French breakfast pastry. The best in town can be found at the original Auchan Hypermarket (8800 West Belt, 281-530-9855). The bakery is headed by French…
The Marrying Kind
It may not be Four Farthings, but Cahill’s on Durham (903 Durham, 713-864-9400) does a hell of a job making transplanted Chicagoans feel at home. Everything about the place shouts Chicago: the red and black fireman’s hats hanging behind the bar, the jerseys from the Bulls and Blackhawks — hell,…
Mount Bonnell Breakdown
The South Austin Jug Band doesn’t have a jug player, nor do they play jug band music. They do come from South Austin, where four of them live together. And they are truly a band, to which the shared residence attests. The closest thing to what the South Austin Jug…
The Eclectic Horseman
George Durham has been called “the Bill Gates of male dancers,” but most folks just call him Horseman. And, of course, we could make wisecracks about how he acquired his equine nickname — he says an MC gave him the name when he first started out and showed up onstage…
Band of Brothers
With much of America on edge amid daily reports of Al Qaeda sleeper cells, rampaging snipers and Iraqi chemical bombs, there’s a premium on watching what you say in public places — just ask those Muslim medical students down in Florida. We must be all the more vigilant when our…
Judging Rory
Carolyn Casale Taub stood there in her nice black dress, waiting to get through the five-minute formality that she had been assured would go so easily. Known more often as Mrs. John Ben Taub, wife of the nephew of famed Houston philanthropist Ben Taub, she was in a Harris County…
Rhythm Room Boom
Washington Avenue’s Rhythm Room is stepping up to the plate with two big festival-like shows, both of which come complete with a bevy of bands, not to mention high ideals and noble causes. A total of 15 bands will take the stage in the Sixth Ward bar/dancehall over the course…
A-cute Sexism
Firefighters to the Rescue Giving credit: A note of clarification on an otherwise excellent story on the problems along the Fondren corridor [“Moving On,” by Craig Malisow, October 17]: It was not an “officer” (police officer) who carried the child from the apartment into the ambulance. It was a firefighter/paramedic…
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Though the accolades and mega-hype given Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising have focused on the more serious tones of the material (much of it inspired by the aftermath rather than the events of September 11), in a live setting there are few better hosts for a raucous rock and roll party…
The Nickel Burger
The TV is blaring, although the picture is mostly snow. While I wait for my order to be called, I slip into a ripped vinyl chair and stare at the fuzzy soap opera. I’m the only white guy in the worn-out dining room of Adrian’s Burger Bar on Sonora Street…
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult
Of all the bands named after Russ Meyer flicks (Mudhoney, Faster Pussycat, Motorpsycho, Vixen), My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult seems most inspired by the filmmaker’s bawdy vision of the world. For 15 years, the Chicago ensemble has titillated concertgoers with over-the-top live sets, complete with GWAR-like creatures, voluptuous…
Sum 41
Only a week after Jackass: The Movie opened in Houston, “Jackass: The Band” barrels into town with a one-night screening at the Engine Room, starring those wacky Canadian rockers Sum 41. The four lads from Ajax, Ontario, are proof that high school kids in the suburbs can be bored out…
Sleater-Kinney
Every time a new Sleater-Kinney record is released, there’s a lot of frantic media posturing about just what Sleater-Kinney is. Are they post-riot grrrl? Lady punk? Angry musicians with politics? Blah, blah, blah. The argument could go on till the hipsters come home to the squat, but the one thing…
Scarface
To say that Scarface’s The Fix is his most commercial album to date is sacrilegious. It’s almost like saying the man has completely sold out — and that’s the last thing any Scarface fan wants to hear. He’s one of the original Geto Boys, for chrissakes! In fact, he helped…
Bye to the Good Ol’ Boys?
An eastside crowd of chamber of commerce types gathered recently at the Houston Yacht Club for lunch and were treated to a rare dessert: the spectacle of two closely matched challengers going at it for the Precinct 2 seat being vacated by County Commissioner Jim Fonteno after 24 years. When…
Queen of Pain
With Frida, the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo, it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration of it), but that’s the first and last cynical comment of this review…
Dead Heat
How long has Debra Danburg been representing Montrose in the state legislature? When she was first elected, Jimmy Carter was heading the Democratic ticket. How much longer will she be representing Montrose? That’s a much more difficult question to answer. In part, the answer is easy — because of redistricting,…
Fly Spy
Now here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth…
Dream Team or Bad Dream?
The political electricity got stuck on low voltage as the Texas Dream Team mounted a riser in front of Houston City Hall for a pre-election rally. After suffering through the B-52’s “Love Shack” on a tinny amplifier, a small crowd of maybe 200 — most of them kids or political…
Ho Ho Huh?
The Santa Clause, released at the height of Home Improvement’s popularity, played like a Very Special Holiday Episode of that now-defunct television series — what might have happened if an eggnog-saturated Tim Taylor fell asleep with visions of sugarplums in his head and woke up sporting a white beard and…
Electoral Gift
There’s nothing a candidate for public office likes better than a glowing profile right before Election Day. Last year it was Mayor Lee Brown being feted by the on-board magazine of Houston-based Continental Airlines (which more recently delivered a kiss-up to Governor Rick Perry). Now it’s Family Court Judge Annette…
Bohemian Rhapsody
Houston Grand Opera kicked off its new season, the Year of the Diva, with La Bohème. But opening night could just as well have been called the Battle of the Divas. Puerto Rican-American soprano Ana Maria Martinez (last seen by Houston audiences in Florencia en el Amazonas last year) returned…
All Good in da ‘Hood
Tymes Square, a bar in a residential area of deep southwest Houston, seems ordinary enough at first. Then you notice the herds of Brahman cattle milling about in a field just down the road. Inside, the black cowboys who raise them are listening to a decidedly urban brand of comedy…
Paul Faaaaag!
Paul Feig remembers everything about his childhood you want to forget about yours–the ass-kickings, the name-calling, the overwhelming smell of a classmate’s vomit commingling with the odor of the red sawdust used to sweep it up, the tingling sensation down there brought on by climbing a rope in gym class,…
Blue Bayou
Red-brick apartment complexes and urban lofts are encroaching upon Houston’s historic Fourth Ward district, destroying house by shotgun house. Freedmen’s Town, the neighborhood founded by freed slaves in the 1860s, is now one of the few affordable residential areas close to downtown, but it may not exist much longer. Of…
Farm Aid
Somewhere in that shadowy sweet space between memory and truth live the remarkable characters of Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy. Stunning for both its emotional tenderness and its intellectual grit, the award-winning Canadian script about art, loss and the healing power of stories blossoms under Rob Bundy’s careful direction. Across…
Doctoring Dinner
Doctors are notoriously difficult restaurant patrons, my chef friends tell me. So I wondered how transplanted New York chef Alan Ashkinaze was doing at his new restaurant, Trevísio, located in the beating heart of the Texas Medical Center (6550 Bertner Avenue, 713-749-0400). “Everyone has been very receptive,” says Ashkinaze diplomatically…
What’s in a Name?
Jane Hammond had a problem: The titles of her paintings were becoming too cumbersome. When she was starting out as an artist, she didn’t want to get pigeonholed by curators and critics, so she sought freedom in restriction on her own terms. Limiting herself to a vocabulary of 276 “found”…