Ringing from the Rooftops
FRI 2/6 Move over, Reefer Madness. The Fellowship of the Ring of Free Trade is a big-time contender for the Coolest Propaganda Film of All Time. This short film takes clips from the first installment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and adds subversive subtitles to them, creating…
A Mixed Casket
The yellow pages are open to “Funeral — Funeral Homes and Directors” in the large glossy color photograph. In them, David Funeral Directors offers “Burial/Cremation…in the manner of times gone by…” Yikes. Times how far “gone by”? Do they throw carcasses to packs of wild dogs outside the city walls?…
Nitrolicious
SAT 2/7 We know you’re dying to watch a little drag racing. This Saturday, the 11th annual Pontiac Pro-Stock Super Bowl will come to Sam Houston Raceway Park in Baytown. Pro-stock cars are factory look-alikes with an outer resemblance to what you see at dealerships, but that’s were the similarity…
Raw Weather
For dessert, we ordered our third dozen. The waitress was confused. Admittedly, it was a tad strange. But the two dozen oysters the four of us ate as an appetizer were without a doubt the best part of the meal. So what was the matter with following up our grilled…
No Pop Quiz
SAT 2/7 Quick, before standardized tests turn your kids into standardized thinkers, give them a chance to let their natural creativity rule. This weekend, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas is hosting Family Arts Day, dedicated to bringing out the free-thinking geniuses hiding inside their school uniforms. The program’s theme,…
Chinese Takeout Is Chinese Takeout
That is, unless you’re ordering from Shanghai River (2407 Westheimer, 713-528-5528). The River Oaks restaurant, which serves true Chinese cuisine, is an elegant oasis of Oriental splendor tucked into a strip center next to a RadioShack. Whether ordered in or taken out, the dishes here are top-notch delicacies made from…
Great Globes of Flesh
SAT 2/7 As wild, orgiastic parties go, Mardi Gras may wear the American crown, but on the international stage, Brazil’s Carnaval kicks Mardi Gras’s ass. Why? One word: samba. The intoxicating rhythms create an atmosphere where inhibitions are as scarce as clothing on an Ipanema beach. Derived from the same…
Just Say Yes
FRI 2/6 Rich people have license to act screwy because their wealth protects them. Exposés of their ill behavior abound, and in entertainments more literary than MTV’s Rich Girls. Wendy McLeod’s play The House of Yes (which was made into a 1997 movie starring indie queen Parker Posey and rich…
Pop-Punk Penance
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. How long has it been since your last confession? Uh, what’s today? Let me see…I guess that makes it…two…divide by three…carry the four…uh, it’s been about 24 years, six months, 25 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes and 16 seconds. I’ve seen worse. Tell…
Highway Stars
Special thanks to the forgotten towns and rolling hills along 101. So states the thank-you list printed inside Whenever You’re Ready, the latest release by the long-standing California band Swell. Made up primarily of singer-guitarist David Freel and drummer Sean Kirkpatrick, the group formed in 1989; soon after, Swell was…
Die Like an Eagle
Let the eagle soar / Like she’s never soared before / From rocky coast to golden shore / Let the eagle soar — words and music by John Ashcroft Few people have seen the clever propaganda memo that the White House recently released in an attempt to stem the tide…
The Doctor Is Insane
On January 19, on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa, a promising political career likely came to a, um, “screeching” halt. Howard Dean — champion Bush-baiter, hero of the disaffected, conqueror of the young American voter — appeared to go as crazy as a shithouse rat. By now, everybody knows…
Turkeys Fly
A dozen television cameras, 30 reporters and 15 or so public relations people are crowded into a room at the George R. Brown Convention Center. They’re gathered to hear about former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. Specifically, his cock. His rock-hard, throbbing, ready-for-action cock. At least that’s the mental image…
Boys Night Out, Moneen and Senses Fail, with the Beautiful Mistake and For the Time Being
Girls suck. Not only do they suck, they’re the root of all evil and the cause of everything that’s making your life difficult. If you don’t agree, then you must not be a semi-sensitive teen dealing with Clearasil and prom dates, because each of those unfortunate souls agrees with poor…
Free-Fire Zone
When Harris County sheriff’s deputies return fire, they really return fire. Especially if they’re at a bar. The December 27 drive-by shooting at the venerable West Alabama Ice House didn’t get much notice from the media, it being just another bit of the gunplay that tends to liven up a…
The Gossip
If you’re in a band, reading your own press sucks. Most of the time, you find yourself compared to bands you’ve never listened to or, worse, bands you don’t even like. But sometimes writers just keep spouting variations of the same theme, and the Gossip’s been sliced and diced by…
School Spirit(s)
Like little butterflies, the children have been fluttering in for half an hour. School starts at 8:30, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. Parents drop them off and they join the others in free playtime, building forts with sheets and blocks and small wooden chairs in the middle…
Mushroomhead, and Dope
Oof, tough times for nü-metal these days, huh? Skinny, Schmotz, Pig Benis and the rest of the Cleveland octet Mushroomhead may be feeling a bit like Joey, Jordan, Donnie, Danny and Jon circa 1992, but that just won’t stop these masked, malevolent misfits, these pied pipers of punk-thrash provocation, from…
Letters
Re-vealing Article Truth in menus: Thank you for your wonderful article [“The Cow Says ‘Oink,’ ” by Robb Walsh, January 22]. My family and I follow the same dietary guidelines as the Jews and Muslims, even though we are neither. We never would have known that beef was being switched…
Gettin’ Windy in the City
Whoops, franchise! Way back in 2002, who would have believed that a comedy starring rapper Ice Cube (né O’Shea Jackson) would be a hit, let alone spawn a sequel? Just having a giggle, obviously, but so are the producers of Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which handily snaps up its…
Law and Disorder
Sure, there are a lot of crazy people in Hollywood. But can movies seriously address the issues surrounding mental health — particularly when it comes to the law? The Museum of Fine Arts film series “Mental Health and the Law” will take a stab at it, anyway. The series, whose…
Score!
When the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team, consisting of 20 raw college boys, beat the seemingly invincible, state-hardened Soviets and went on to win the gold medal at Lake Placid, the event was regarded, even in palm-lined Miami and iceless Honolulu, as the most amazing feat in U.S. Olympic history…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, February 5 Andy Warhol’s personal fame has far outlasted the 15 minutes he predicted the rest of us would enjoy. His name is virtually synonymous with the pop-art movement of the ’60s, and no modern art museum would consider its collection complete without one of his soup cans, car…
Magic Show
Through February 15 at the Wortham Theater Center, 550 Prairie. For information, call 713-228-OPERA. $39-$254.
Games for the Bored
Work, sleep, work, sleep, wash, rinse, repeat: There’s only so much the average person can take before it’s time to escape into another world. For some people, that other world is full of drugs, sex and music. For others, escape comes nightly in the form of Will, Grace, Dharma, Greg,…
Mystery Meeting
Nobel Prize-winning physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr were great friends until World War II, which ended their relationship. Heisenberg was a German who chose to stay in his country to work for the Nazis. Bohr, who was Danish and half-Jewish, lived through much of the war in occupied Denmark…