Charlie In Charge
A winter Sunday night, 1978. A blue norther howls. Snow has been drifting all afternoon and evening. Inside some shithole bar in Odessa, Texas, the patrons move beyond impatiently restless to downright surly. There is “we want our money back” talk from the bar full of roughnecks, bikers and cowboys…
Capsule Reviews
“Angelina Nasso: Transparent Presence” Angelina Nasso makes paintings with dots of rich color that create the effect of dappled light. The works are abstract but feel like they just might resolve themselves into a recognizable scene. But the paintings on view at McClain Gallery are less satisfying than the last…
Our top DVD picks for the week of November 1
American Chopper: Third Season (Columbia/Tristar) Attack Pack (Commando, Predator and Kiss of the Dragon) (Fox) Bill Maher: I’m Swiss (Image Ent.) The Brady Bunch: Four-Season Pack (Paramount) Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Warner Bros.) Disney Princess: A Christmas of Enchantment (Disney) Duran Duran: Live From London (Universal Music) Fame:…
Damn Fine Fish Heads
My dining companion scrunched up her nose when our “Singapore fish head vermicelli soup” arrived. We were eating dinner at Cafe Malay on Westheimer near Beltway 8, and I’d ordered the soup for a starter. “I knew you were going to go for the fish-head soup,” she said, rolling her…
Exquisite Corpse
Publisher: Aspyr Media
Platform: Xbox
Price: $49.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 8 (out of 10)
Redneck Renaissance
Don’t look now, but in Nashville, there’s a new moon (pie) on the rise. The big-city glitz and suburban kitchen-sink melodrama of Shania Twain and all those sensitive hot-tub and sippy-cup milquetoast wusses are out, and rollicking tunes about Busch beer, four-wheeling down at the mudhole in your honkin’ new…
Bulbous Basbas
Fennel, a plant of the parsley family, is native to the Mediterranean. It looks a little like celery, except that it has a broad, bulbous base and tastes like anise. The fennel salad Basbas ($7.95) at Saffron (2006 Lexington, 713-522-3562), named after a small town in northern Algeria, is a…
The Force Runs Its Course
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually plays better at home: You can watch it, then pop in the original trilogy and chart the evolution of Anakin, and have it all actually make sense. Though it’s still a…
Will the Real Blue October Please Stand Up?
Bands love free publicity. In the quest to stand out and apart, a picture in a newspaper or magazine is worth more than just a thousand words; it could be worth thousands of ticket or CD sales. So naturally, the members of local band-made-good Blue October were elated when they…
Against All Odds
Warnings and updates were coming in moment by moment. The city of New Orleans was about to get slammed by a hurricane. At Abstract House, a group home that for 20 years has provided an alternative to homelessness for hundreds of mentally ill and drug-addicted New Orleanians, something had to…
Stars, with the Jim Yoshii Pile-Up
It may be disconcerting to imagine your musical heroes as damaged goods, but sometimes this “damage” is what ignites that creative spark. Paul Gonzenbach of the Jim Yoshii Pile-Up is no stranger to struggles with inner demons, and his well-chronicled ills have spawned Picks Us Apart, one of the year’s…
The A Student
It was a normal day for Merrilee Littlewood, starting with 6 a.m. Bible study, then school and volunteer work at a home for seniors. Later that Thursday evening, after watching a talent show at Dulles High School, a friend called and invited her to a house party on Sugar Creek…
Los Lonely Boys
It’s been a year of highs and lows for twentysomething West Texas brothers Henry, JoJo and Ringo “Yes, I’m the drummer” Garza, otherwise known as the blues-pop trio Los Lonely Boys. The rerelease of their self-titled debut album — recorded back in 2003 with the help of admirer Willie Nelson…
Au Revoir, Chauncey
Weeks into our Houston “evacu-cation,” our New Orleans landlords call, wanting to know if we’re coming back. Their phone messages (we haven’t been brave enough to answer) claim that their property value has doubled, and though they won’t raise our rent, if we are coming back to New Orleans, they…
Lucero
There’s a darkness on the edge of Lucero’s town. The foursome comes from Memphis, which feels a million miles away from the golden smile of Nashville — at least in light of a defiantly titled new album, Nobody’s Darlings. On the disc, Lucero works solidly in the Uncle Tupelo tradition,…
Rookie of the Year
Shannon Burns, 25 years old, is only a few months out of law school. Until October 21, she had never set foot in the Harris County Civil Courthouse. But that day she handled her first case alone and won a major, major victory: She got World Series tickets. (Yes, we…
ADULT., with Genders, Numbers
ADULT. concerts recall the oft-staged movie scene in which a straitlaced, sheltered character must navigate an unfathomably freaky nightclub thanks to some plot contrivance. (After a song or two, concertgoers familiar with Martin Scorsese’s After Hours will be surprised they didn’t have to submit to a bizarre haircut before walking…
Letters to the Editor
The Motorcycle Dialogues Tier it up: I started this article thinking I was going to have to send you a caustic e-mail about another inaccurate bike story [“Speed Racers,” by Ray Hafner, October 20]. However, I’ve found that I agree with almost everything in it! I’m an experienced rider; I’ve…
Twista
Two things you’ll probably never do: travel to the moon or rap as fast as Twista. The first is a child’s pipe dream, the second a rapper’s gimmick — a parlor trick for the Bathing Ape set. And though Twista’s helix-coil flow may have earned him a spot in the…
Caught on Camera
The portraits seem to have exactly the same color and background. It’s the people — their faces and their expressions — that separate each image from the next. Their fear, sadness and shock are palpable. The stark photographs of Adrain Chesser’s family and friends catch them at a weightless and…
A Family Adrift
Writer and director Noah Baumbach has made three light films — one so slight (1997’s party- hopping Highball), it didn’t see release till five years after its completion, and even then it snuck onto video-store shelves credited to a pseudonymous writer and director. There was nothing on his filmography –…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, November 3 If you’re one of those ultra-prepared (ultra-anal) folks who like to have their Christmas shopping done by early November, you’ll find nirvana at the Friends of Fondren Library’s 2005 Book Sale. For the bookish on your Christmas list, you’ll find no shortage of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, mysteries,…
Killing Time
If Jarhead, director Sam Mendes and writer William Broyles Jr.’s adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s 2003 Gulf War memoir, seems at all familiar — like, say, a DJ’s mash-up of Full Metal Jacket and Three Kings — there’s good reason for it. Swofford, 20 years old during Operation Desert Storm in…
Ready to Roll
Filmmaker Tyrone Dixon has a mistress — a harsh, unforgiving, but ultimately satisfying mistress. It’s an affair he cannot stop gushing about. It’s a love that he just can’t keep bottled up. It’s a passion, a desire that he has had since he was seven years old. It’s a romance…
Wild, Then Crazy
Does Steve Martin have multiple personality disorder — or is he just brilliantly in tune with some things and wildly out of touch with others? Shopgirl, the movie based on Martin’s novella of the same name, is one of the most schizoid films in recent memory. It opens with crystalline…
It’s Been Reel
Gilligan’s Island did it; so did Survivor and Lost: Start with a tropical island with sandy beaches and clear water as far as the eye can see. Insert some non-islanders and tweak the supporting details a bit, and it’s a blockbuster. This has been the recipe for success so many…
Pluck Off
Chicken Little is a groundbreaking movie in more ways than one. Not only is it Disney’s first in-house all-computer-generated feature, but on select screens, it will be presented in “Disney Digital 3-D,” a brand-new system created with the help of George Lucas’s special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic. It’s revolutionary!…
Roll Aid
SAT 11/5 The full-body tattoos, piercings and faux-hawks may make them seem like freewheelin’ thugs, but skateboarders will tell you that just ain’t fair. Heck, skaters have big, generous hearts. At the ninth annual Texas Skate Jam, skaters from across the country will gather to skate for a good cause…
Totally Wicked
Musicals aren’t supposed to make us think; they’re just supposed to make us happy. But Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s powerful Wicked, now playing at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, breaks all the rules. The jaw-droppingly marvelous story (based on Gregory Maguire’s best-selling novel) explores what made Oz’s…
We’re All Gonna Die
THU 11/3 Steve, the singularly named lead singer and guitarist for XBXRX, and his bandmate Vice have been pretty darn successful for a couple of 21-year-olds. They formed their noise band as wee teens in 1998 in Mobile, Alabama, and since then they’ve toured with legends Sonic Youth and recorded…
Capsule Reviews
Boris Godunov To open its 51st season, Houston Grand Opera has picked a royal winner, Modest Mussorgsky’s masterpiece Boris Godunov. Watching Stein Winge’s dusted-off, minimalist production, we get to luxuriate in the composer’s powerfully raw, original 1869 version as superstar bass Samuel Ramey commands the stage. The combo is unbeatable…
Alive and Kicking
FRI 11/4 For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf debuted on Broadway in 1976, at a time when black women’s stories just weren’t told on stage. Immediately, women across the country rejoiced at local playwright-poet-professor Ntozake Shange’s powerful stories of love, hardship and spirituality. Originally conceived…
Spirit of Splendora
Wood, wood and more wood is at the center of James Surls’s art. Eyes stare out from charred trunks; chunks of wood are carved into the shapes of petals and knives; twisted tree limbs become figures. The artist’s symbol-laden, woodsy surrealism is showcased in “James Surls: The Splendora Years 1977-1997″…