Fine Lines
Do you know Gego? Her work was one of the standouts in the 2004 Museum of Fine Arts, Houston exhibition “Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America.” Gego was the Venezuelan avant-garde artist formerly known as Gertrud Goldschmidt. As alliterative as Gertrud Goldschmidt is, you can kinda see why she…
Going for the Gold
SAT 7/23 In Steven Spielberg’s Into the West, Skeet Ulrich’s character desperately hunts for treasure during the 1849 California gold rush. He labors for months, sifting through sand in ice-cold river water, enduring a crappy existence that finally claims his life. But hey, according to the folks at the Houston…
Capsule Reviews
“Amy Arbus: Rites and Rituals” This show presents work by Amy Arbus, the daughter of legendary photographer Diane Arbus. Diane is a tough act for any photographer to follow, and it has to be even tougher if you’re her daughter. But Amy has taken up the challenge, and she’s been…
Gimme a B!
FRI 7/22 In case you haven’t heard, electro and synth-pop are back. Not only has the resurgence created a whole new generation of ’80s-style wannabe Human Leaguers and Duranies, but there’s renewed interest in the stars of that decade. B!Machine, who has been active in the San Francisco synth-pop scene…
Birthday Surprise
Houston’s idea of historical preservation has always been like Jerry Springer’s idea of good taste: It’s a noble concept, but it doesn’t really help you get where you want to go. Preservation groups have been fighting for years to get some sort of ordinance protecting historic buildings, without much success…
Beauty and the Bestiality
Bestiality was never so cerebral as it is in John Harvey’s one-woman tale Hotel Pasiphae, the latest offering by local theater troupe Mildred’s Umbrella. Inspired by Greek mythology, the play is about Pasiphae (played by Michelle Edwards), daughter of the sun god Helios. Alone on stage, Pasiphae tells her story…
Letters to the Editor
Step Off Galveston The Gulf’s great: Just returned this morning from a week cruising the Gulf, and it was great to see the sands of Galveston [Night & Day, by Steven Devadanam, June 30]. By the way, these are the same sands that appear in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. While…
Hair of the Perro
The shrimp ceviche ($9.99) at the Thirsty Cactus Cantina (2416 Brazos, 713-521-1776) is the perfect antidote to a hard night on the town. The dish’s dozen or so large shrimp are soaked overnight in tequila and lime and mixed with diced tomatoes, avocado, onions and a good helping of cilantro…
Outside In
The art world has a history of exiling artists it finds threatening into neat little boxes with seemingly harmless labels like “primitive,” “folk” and perhaps the most pejorative of them all: “outsider.” “I don’t believe in that term. It’s a very ambivalent term,” says Josef Helfenstein, director of the Menil…
Breaking the Scene Barrier
Kid 606 appears
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, July 21 Where, oh where, can all the hip-hop-starved B-boys and girls go for a Thursday-night fix of phat rhymes and dope beats? Why, Helios, of course, where Houston’s own rap-slinging warrior Digifunk lays down the law for an hour every week along with guest mouthpieces like Tony Bananas…
Christmas in July
Seventy-three bands for seven bucks. I’m far from being a math major, but even I can tell you that works out to 9.589 cents a band. All right, I used the calculator on my computer to come up with that sum, or product, or whatever you call it. Sue me…
Mix Media
“I always thought dance music was a lot of fun and whatever, but really it’s a life-or-death thing for a lot of people.” Josell Ramos is describing what he learned making his new documentary, Maestro, screening at the Orange Show this week. Depicting the genesis of what has come to…
One More for the Road
This time every year, we ask all the bands on our Music Awards ballot about their best, worst and most unusual gig tales. Last year, the inquiry spawned a cover feature, in which we discussed musicians — many in various states of chemical intoxication — bleeding, peeing and rioting, among…
Meet the Beatle
Though vilified (unfairly) for “breaking up the Beatles” and (perhaps not so unfairly) for micromanaging her husband’s life, Yoko Ono has done more than anyone else to extend the artistic legacy of John Lennon. New CDs, DVDs and books have appeared at regular intervals to satiate fans. (Though, honestly, we…
Scenes from a Picnic
Close to 20,000 sweat-drenched fans happily descended upon Fort Worth recently for the 32nd Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic. Held in the Fort Worth Stockyards field adjacent to Billy Bob’s Texas honky-tonk, the 29-artist lineup included country legends (Nelson, Ray Price, Billy Joe Shaver, Asleep at the Wheel), shady…
The Devil & Mr. Zombie
When rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses was released in 2003, after years of bouncing around between studios afraid to put their name on a movie about a cartoonishly murderous family, it was anticipated as a hard-core gorefest. Instead, it was a plotless mess, with decent violence but nothing…
Doctor Nice
Friday, June 3, 8 a.m. Carol Costello is sitting in for Soledad O’Brien on CNN’s American Morning. Today, there’s hard-hitting stuff: Brooke Shields’s postpartum depression. Shields just professed in her book that she wasn’t able to bond with her daughter in the weeks after her birth. When Tom Cruise publicly…
Bad News
Going to the theater this summer has been like stepping into a time machine where your fondest childhood memories are retooled by cynics and sadists. Bewitched, Herbie: Fully Loaded, last week’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and now Bad News Bears are meant to be gobbled like comfort food by…
Brain Food
The pile of freshly shelled lobster meat in my seafood pot-au-feu includes a perfectly intact whole claw. I dunk a chunk of lobster in the savory broth at the bottom of the bowl and slurp it, still dripping, into my mouth. Mixed in with the lobster are some sweet braised…
Boyz N the Studio
MTV Films made a wise purchase in picking up Hustle & Flow at Sundance: The soundtrack is killer. Rapping over music composed by Three 6 Mafia and Al Kapone, star Terrence Howard has the skills. The rest of the songs heard on screen, most of which fall into the uniquely…
Send In the Clones
It should come as no surprise that the hero and heroine of the new Michael Bay action extravaganza are clones. Exact copies of other people. You don’t get to be a Hollywood hitmeister like Bay — 200 Zillion Tickets Sold! — without indulging in formulas, and the characters that Star…
Steel Wheels
“Hit me,” Mark Zupan says — begs, actually, like a kid clamoring for a new toy. “I’ll hit you back.” He means it too, and his ripped pecs and buzzed scalp and tattooed back and arms and bushy gangster goatee promise just as much menace. The dude’s bad and doesn’t…
Classic Christie
The opening of Spider’s Web is classic Agatha Christie. The setting is a proper English drawing room. Through the stately windows, we can see that it’s a dark and stormy night. At center stage stand two serious-looking men, and one is blindfolded. Something utterly nefarious is under way. But the…
Capsule Reviews
The Music Man Meredith Willson’s Music Man features some of Broadway’s most memorable tunes, including “Seventy-six Trombones,” “Till There Was You” and “Wells Fargo Wagon.” But solid as the music is in Theatre Under the Stars’ likable and absolutely free production at Miller Outdoor Theatre, the dancing, choreographed by director…