Joy Lynn White
Fans of Linda Ronstadt’s versions of “Different Drum,” “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” and “Heatwave” should feel instantly at home with Joy Lynn White’s latest album. White’s voice and delivery have much in common with the former Stone Poneys front woman. Sassy, sad, contemplative, reverent, flippant, sultry, swaggering, sexy, hurt,…
I Feel Pretty
Remember metrosexuality? Wasn’t that momentary? Queer Eye for the Straight Guy was the hottest show on television, and straight men everywhere waxed their backs and explored the benefits of dermabrasion. Meanwhile, those of us out of the fashion loop, lounging about in our wrinkled clothes and errant body hair, rested…
Grimy Austinites
The Austin instrumental dub quintet Grimy Styles infuses its music with deeply engaging melodies, throbbing bass lines, soundboard-created effects, electronic noodling and solid percussion that’s sure to please fans of King Tubby, Fela Kuti or Godspeed You Black Emperor. Grimy Styles formed in 2001 as a three-piece group with your…
Hot Duck
It’s hard to figure out where the heat comes from in the duck spring rolls ($8.95) at O’Rourke’s Steakhouse (4611 Montrose, 713-523-4611). Perhaps it’s the complex, bright red dipping sauce made from red chiles, garlic, wine vinegar and a dash of sugar. No, that’s not it. Then it must come…
Reality Nightlife
Thanks to the explosion of reality television, you can spend hours every day watching people dance, sing, perform and model. It’s had a profound effect on motivation levels: While you survey from the sidelines, cheering them on from the comfort of your La-Z-Boy, the only finger you have to lift…
What Up, Girls?
The word “girl” used to be tricky: Say it to your sweetie, you’d get smooched. Say it to your co-worker, you’d get sued. Now when women everywhere say “girl” — once used as a demeaning term by men — it’s an affirmation. This evolution is examined in “Girls’ Night Out,”…
Double Fault
The critical consensus has Match Point as Woody Allen’s finest film since…oh, let’s see…Bullets Over Broadway, is it? Or perhaps Deconstructing Harry? Or maybe Sweet and Lowdown? One forgets where the good stuff left off, because there’s been so much bad stuff since. It’s not difficult to understand the accolades…
Fit or Fat, Houston?
We don’t have to live up to our reputation around the world as “Fat City.” Sure, there are plenty of strikes against us — cheap food and drinks, year-round hot weather and a dearth of green space — but there are plenty of gyms. You’ll find one in every corner…
Midnight Thugs
When The Warriors originally opened in New York City back in 1979, a gang fight broke out at the theater and left one person dead. Now that’s what we call guerrilla marketing. Fortunately, when this cult classic — about a bunch of Coney Island gang members trying to make their…
Who’s Laughing?
Albert Brooks, the once-funny comic-turned-filmmaker, plays a once-funny comic-turned-filmmaker named Albert Brooks in Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which he also wrote and directed. It’s the second time Brooks has played himself, more or less; the first was in 1979, when he made Real Life, in which he…
Birth of a Klansman
Night Rider is a glorious hybrid of Captain America and Thor. A muscle-bound superhero with a chiseled jaw and sculpted frame, he fights for truth, justice and the American way. Check that — he fights for truth, justice and the white American way. Night Rider is a Klansman superhero, who…
Origin of Innocence
America — and by extension Hollywood — has an obsession with innocence and the loss thereof. Every generation has that Moment When Everything Changed, from Pearl Harbor to JFK’s assassination to 9/11. The impact takes a while to settle in, then people forget again, and future generations are similarly traumatized…
Allstar Talent
Two-thirds of the North Mississippi Allstars just happen to be the sons of Southern rock legend Jim Dickinson. But ten years after forming, with six albums, a Grammy nomination for best contemporary blues album and a New Year’s Eve performance at Madison Square to boot, the members of this trio…
War Is Hell
In Theater LaB’s Houston premiere of Barrymore, playwright William Luce travels back to 1942, six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor stunned and enraged the United States. Famed actor John Barrymore, now entering the twilight of his life, schemes to resurrect his career from its own twilight. His big…
Hollywood Halo
Alex Winn’s bedroom was crammed with a dozen teenagers. The smells of old pizza, rank sneakers and sweat hung in the sweltering air. Empty boxes of Goldfish crackers littered the floor. Against one wall, emitting incredible heat and a blue glow, stood a bank of televisions, computer monitors and three…
Tarnished Ivory
With the release of The White Countess, the much-honored Merchant Ivory canon is complete. Bombay-born producer Ismail Merchant died in May 2005 at age 68, and whatever direction his longtime collaborator and life companion, director James Ivory, now chooses, the working partnership that gave us a dozen elegantly furnished period…
Iran Around
Those who think Iranian cinema begins and ends with Abbas Kiarostami should swing by the Iranian Film Festival, which offers plenty of Middle Eastern films worthy of discussion during a post-screening latte at Starbucks. This year, the kiddies will be able to get in on the viewing action, as the…
Say What?
Let’s start with the big guy: He’s 12 feet tall and part grouse, part possum. He’s covered in fur and is wearing sneakers and a sort of body armor of small coins. A hybrid of beatboxing and scat singing is pouring through his stereo-speaker eyes. Right. Then there’s the other…
Bee Keepers
Nikki Dowdy, a 23-year-old public relations executive who lives in Houston, thought her e-mail system had gone haywire. January 2 should have been a slow day, being the official holiday for New Year’s, but instead her mailbox was exploding, with more than 100 messages pouring in. They were all notifications…
High Culture
Back in September 2004, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa sneaked in under the radar and landed in Houston from California for an eye-blink of a stay at the Alley. If you were lucky enough to stumble into the show, you were treated to an hour and a half of laugh-till-your-jaw-hurts scenes…
Sit and Spin
If you’re tired of forking over $70 or more for that trendy piqué polo, here’s an alternative: Weave one yourself. You can learn how today at the Fort Bend Museum’s Spinner Training, where museum docent Barbara Neeper will show you how to spin cotton and wool on drop spindles, a…
Piss, Sex and Swirlies
Twenty-two-year-old artist Jacob Calle has a little social-disruption experiment he calls simply Scavenger Hunt. “Friendswood kids were having these weird scavenger hunts, and we wanted to do something like it but less illegal,” he says. “Less illegal” isn’t saying much. In fact, the last scavenger hunt, which Calle staged in…
Letters to the Editor
Military Matters No way: I would not serve in the military if openly homosexual individuals were allowed [“Don’t Ask, Don’t Be,” by Craig Malisow, January 5]. As stated in your article, service in the military is not a right, and success is based upon the cohesion of the unit. Here…
Capsule Reviews
Pardon My English Pardon My English was written back in the 1930s, long before the great American musical came into its own as an art form. Back then, musicals tended to be little more than a bunch of songs stitched together by silly plots that usually featured some sort of…
On the Bill
You’ve seen Bill Bellamy in flicks such as Any Given Sunday and How to Be a Player and TV shows like Fastlane. Now the man who compares his acting talents to Jim Carrey’s is hitting the road, touting his new comedy DVD Bill Bellamy: Back to My Roots. Will he…
A Smashin’ Show
The Midtown club Hue is making sure you have something to do on Tuesdays with Smash the Disko. The weekly dance party, filled with electro, glam rock, danceable indie licks and sadistic punk jams, is put on by über-hot DJ Stiletto and the wax triple threat the Spinnin’ Kitties. (This…
Seventies Glam-Disco Party
“You’re my mousey aesthete,” croons Kevin Barnes above a pleasing din of chugging synthesizers, spritely guitars and massed harmonies. “You’re my buoyant cherub,” he continues, concluding: “I never want to be your little, friendly, abstract failure.” The words are from the chorus of “So Begins Our Alabee,” which can be…
Art Scavenger
In a 1972 codicil to his will, John de Menil explained that his funeral requests didn’t stem from vanity, as death would render him a “corpse for the meat wagon.” It’s a matter-of-fact, blunt view of death. But the stunning collection de Menil and his wife assembled lives on. From…
Hey, Ladies!
Props to the folks behind Les Femmes de la Nuit, who started an all-female DJ night, enduring every “ladies of the night” joke imaginable, and turned it into a monthly event that packs in the ladies and the dudes alike. This month marks the event’s first anniversary, and to celebrate,…
Barnes Is Noble
Who has time for all these angst-filled writers? Not Julian Barnes. “I am not one of those writers who dislikes the process of writing,” he says. “I like it. I think I’m temperamentally suited to it, and I have quite a lot of ideas.” No kidding. Those ideas, over a…
‘Bout Time
Talking on the phone from her hotel room in Paris, Bettye LaVette is having fun, and she’s having it her way. And why shouldn’t she? The veteran soul singer is riding high on the buzz generated by her new CD, I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, earning favorable reviews…
Capsule Reviews
“Beth Secor: atavistically speaking” Beth Secor loves to tell stories, writing and delivering funny, poignant and autobiographical monologues. In her visual art, she makes portraits inspired by people’s stories. Her current show at Inman Gallery presents a range of people young and old, modern and historic. The paintings are small…
Up to Speed
If you’re just too damned lazy to get off your rump and actually stroll through an art gallery, you’re in luck, slacker. Today, Real Films offers up two documentaries on fine art. Julie Speed: Queen of Her Room examines one of the nation’s most innovative artists and her work, which…
Better Living Through Silicone
More than ever, our culture seems obsessed with doomsday scenarios. Natural disasters, terrorism, pandemics and ham-fisted religious zealotry have whipped America into frenzied fear and anxiety — except, of course, for late-night media evangelists Jack and Rexella Van Impe (Jack has a little orgasm every time a bomb goes off…
Throw Them Horns Up
Underachievers and perpetual disappointments — for years you could describe both the Texas rap scene and the Texas Longhorns football team as such. In the last year, that’s all changed, and I believe the Horns couldn’t have done it without the rappers. The athletes fed off the confidence of the…
Swindled Art
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia) The best two hours you’ll ever spend learning about accounting, Enron is one part civics lesson, one part Greek tragedy, and one part political cartoon. Director Alex Gibney makes no pretense of objectivity; he wants you to hiss and boo at Ken…
Go for Brogue
For more than 40 years, the Chieftains have taken traditional Irish music (jigs, reels, drinking/sailing songs and, of course, tales of the potato famine) around the world and still found time to collaborate with such artists as Sting, the Stones, Ziggy Marley and Willie Nelson. Their current stage show includes…
Unholy Matrimony
Ellen Graham was aiming for the absurd when she wrote the screenplay Here Come the Brides, a “modern exploitation” film that explores the hot-button issue of gay marriage. Little did she realize what a timely topic it was. “We finished the movie in 2004 during the Republican National Convention,” says…
Extraordinary Machination
Plenty of people out there are under the impression that Fiona Apple is, well, nuts — but nothing could be further from the truth. Take the memorable words she delivered at the 1997 MTV Music Video Awards: “This world is bullshit. Don’t model yourself after what you think we think…
Monkey Shines
Movie-based videogames have a well-deserved reputation for sucking. Ever since Atari’s E.T. — a game so ill-conceived that thousands of unsold cartridges were dumped en masse in the desert, creating the crappiest buried treasure of all time — Hollywood tie-ins have bombed big-time. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game…
Bling It On
Paris Hilton may not be hawking her ridiculous engagement ring anytime soon, but it’s not too late to score some bling from another of America’s royals. This weekend’s International Gem and Jewelry Show offers up a collection of jewelry and a bright red dress worn by her highness Elizabeth Taylor…
Colorado Bulldog
Still hungover from the night before, I needed a place to relax and get my head together. I decided to hit my old watering hole, The Doghouse Tavern (2517 Bagby, 713-520-1118). When I walked through the door, I immediately saw a familiar face. It was Mario, behind the bar mixing…
Beautiful Creatures
Some may claim glam rock died when Sunset Strip wannabes co-opted the look and cranked out droll, lite-metal in the mid-’80s. It may seem odd for a band to pay homage to a period of music many people would like to forget, but there are those intent on keeping the…
Our top DVD picks for the week of January 17
Adventures of Superman: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Asylum (Paramount) Casino (MCA) Celebrity Mix (TLA) Final Destination: Scared 2 Death Pack (New Line) Gendernauts (First Run) Ghost in the Machine (Anchor Bay) Industrial Strength Keaton (Mackinac Media) Jamie Foxx Presents Laffapalooza! 6 (Image) Junebug (Sony) Lois & Clark: The…
Rockin’ by Design
Forming a band with your siblings is risky. (The Jackson 5 didn’t do so bad. But then again, consider Hanson.) The Phillips brothers — Brandon, Zach and Adam — who make up three quarters of the Kansas City-based punk band the Architects, took that risk when they formed the beloved…
I Am the Walrus, Part 1
“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said, “Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed– Now if you’re ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed.” — Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter The first slurp from the icy shell was cold and briny,…
Rev. Billy C. Wirtz
The Right Reverend Billy C. Wirtz, who presides over the House of Polyester Worship and Horizontal Throbbing Teenage Desire, is in his own words “a partyin’ motherfucker.” Don’t make the mistake of thinking of Wirtz as just a comic, although he can split sides with the best Comedy Central has…
New Year’s Resolutions for Houston
As workaday Houstonians, we are all united in one thing: We will make New Year’s resolutions, and we will break them by Groundhog Day. But what of the high and mighty, the rich and powerful, the bold and the beautiful? Don’t they have anything they want to change in 2006?…
Fashion Junkies
You may not know it, but Houston has become the breeding ground for a whole flock of young and talented fashion designers. (You can catch Lot 8’s Chloe Dao on the fashion reality show Project Runway.) Tonight at the Bill Hicks Resurrection Collective Benefit, designer-model Josianne Junkie and designer Jennifer…
MuteMath
One of the first things an ’80s-reared rock dilettante realizes upon first listening to MuteMath’s soon-to-be-released, self-titled debut album is that vocalist Paul Meany sounds uncannily like Police-era Sting. In fact, it’s easy to simply ponder that similarity and zone out on this soaring cloud-pop (think Doves, U2). But where…
Fit to Be Tried
If you’re like a lot of people in this gluttonous nation, there’s a point in mid-December when you just give up. Eff the diet, screw the exercise — anything requiring self-control is usurped by gluttony and oh-so-much Baileys Irish Cream (or is that just me?). Then January comes in like…
Chin Up
If you were a fan of TV’s Melrose Place, you may be familiar with the work of Houston-born artist Mel Chin without knowing it. Chin organized a group of artists to insert subliminal artworks, like sheets and pillowcases bearing silk-screened images of condoms, into a season of MP episodes (the…
Eric Taylor
Eric Taylor may have been born a Midwest Yankee and may these days inhabit the mantle of a Columbus, Texas, gentleman rancher, but his artistic lineage is grounded in Houston. And in the beat generation. And in the blues of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb and other South Texas masters…
Class Conscious
“Adult Education” isn’t just the title of a horribly bad Hall & Oates song from the ’80s — it’s also the concept that learning doesn’t stop after you receive that diploma you cheated so hard to earn. Each New Year, thousands of Houston adults make resolutions to learn something new…
Deadly Photo Shoot
Talk about a death wish: Oscar Bony may be the only person to have shot himself several times and lived. Today, the New World Museum unveils the Argentine painter-photographer’s bullet-riddled self-portraits. Bony created the violent images by taking ordinary glass-encased images of himself, then popping caps from a nine-millimeter pistol…