Murder by Numbers
Thank you for purchasing the How to Write a Phat Hip-hop Eulogy starter kit. Enclosed you will find the following: Ten sample eulogies, including those used to mourn rap superstars such as the Notorious B.I.G., Jam Master Jay, Old Dirty Bastard and more! Fifty inspiring ready-to-use lyrical quotations. Sample (from…
They’ve Got Spirit
There’s this notion around town that the Houston Texans Cheerleaders have it easy. Bah! For starters, these hot, nubile women — much like their football-playing counterparts — have to try out every year for a roster spot. It’s a grueling process, I discover as I watch the Houston Texans Cheerleader…
“Argentine” Trip
Eduardo Gil’s black-and-white photograph Untitled shows a large circle of people holding hands, open-mouthed in either joy or protest. The ambiguity is no accident. Like Gil’s print, the eight-artist exhibit “Bringing Shadows to Light: Contemporary Argentine Photography” explores both the sorrow and the joy of Argentina’s history. Helen Zout’s sobering…
The Light
As I walk into The Light (2315-B Bagby, 713-526-3000), my eyes are immediately drawn to the upper-level lounge, where three hot, half-naked women in American-flag panties are splayed out on a bed. Turns out Kimmy, one of the bartenders, is doing a photo shoot with some of her girlfriends for…
HouTube.com
Did you hear that two out of every three macroeconomists have predicted that the American gross national product will steadily nose-dive 20 percent each year? Apparently a study has revealed that every working American now spends 45 percent of his or her workday sending each other clips from YouTube.com, while…
The Body Shop
A copy of “Donating Your Body for Plastination” was enclosed in my press kit for “Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds 3: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. PDF donor consent forms are available online at www.bodyworlds.com. Dr. Gunther von Hagens thinks of…
They’ll Albee Good
Broadway be damned. Edward Albee enjoys university theater, thank you. This week, the three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Tony Award winner, who has spent a good chunk of his life promoting budding collegiate talent, is bringing us the Edward Albee New Play Festival. The 20th annual event showcases short plays…
No More Pussy
They may seem simply entertaining or innocuous when prancing around the TV screen, but behind the scenes the Pussycat Dolls are ushering in an unsavory new era in the business of music. Ostensibly a vocal and dance ensemble, the unapologetically manufactured group is seemingly everywhere now as the Pussycat Dolls…
Capsule Reviews
“Alfredo Jaar: The Sound of Silence” Artist Alfredo Jaar’s installation The Sound of Silence at DiverseWorks tells the story of photojournalist Kevin Carter. Sitting on benches in a darkened room, you watch as Jaar silently tells Carter’s story through a projection with white typewriter-style text on a black background. In…
An Early Christmas
It’s almost May, and Bobbindoctrin and Unhinged Productions know just what you need: some warm holiday fuzzies. Their collaboration on Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home integrates the ancient art of Bunraku puppet theater with dramatic human performance. The tale begins on a Christmas Eve, when a…
Taking Back Sunday
After listening to Taking Back Sunday’s third album, it’s quite clear why the band’s fan base consists of mainly adolescents. Like their prone-to-conformity teenage admirers, the Long Island quintet prefers to let outsiders dictate what they sound like — and hasn’t yet cultivated a unique identity. Whereas producer Lou Giordano…
Capsule Reviews
Asshole Parade The Brazosport Li’l Players is a motley group of renegades, put together in large part by players at Infernal Bridegroom Productions, who’ve clearly got nothing better to do than create more theater in their off time. Think of the BLP as a slightly embarrassing, though often funny, crazy…
Jetsetters Invited
Although they’d never admit it, many people go to air shows in hopes of watching a stunt prop-plane execute perfect barrel rolls and loop-de-loops and then promptly crash into a cornfield in a blaze of glory. (Let’s call it the NASCAR effect.) But don’t expect that to happen at the…
Various Artists
For all the talk these past ten years about “Texas music,” you have to wonder how many of the Ball Cap Nation children with their “Screw You, We’re from Texas” T-shirts and Kevin Fowler beer koozies are actually aware of this extraordinary document about the birth of the movement they…
Wild Pitch
Boys are oiling their mitts, men have started playing hooky, and Dick Cheney just one-hopped it like a pussy. Yes, baseball season is in full swing, and our dip-juice cup runneth over. Normally, this is cause for heavy titillation — perhaps a strong lather or a well-intentioned fistfight. But 2006…
Boy Makes Good
Calvin is a loser. A loser’s loser. He’s so loser-iffic, his goldfish rejects him. After our mousy hero loses his job and girlfriend, he meets his six-foot-eight, easygoing neighbor Tim. Things start looking up for Calvin when Tim promises to hook him up with hot women. Sounds great, until Calvin…
Secret Machines
Self-proclaimed Secret Machines fan David Bowie explored the duality of emotion in “Rebel Rebel” and “Young Americans”; now, Secret Machines have appropriated the theme on their second full-length. Ten Silver Drops’ eight tracks drip with the New York trio’s trademark psychedelia: trippy, distorted guitarwork la Pink Floyd that’s bolstered by…
To Each Theron
Aeon Flux (Paramount) Many things about this surreal sci-fi flick defy explanation, but nothing more so than the mystery of how it got made in the first place. On paper, it’s an archetypal setup for a bomb: a mostly forgotten cartoon, notable for its visual style and incomprehensibility, revived as…
Bush, or Bust?
The debate has been going on for months: Should the Houston Texans select USC’s Reggie Bush with their No. 1 pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, or should they go with hometown fave and UT phenom Vince Young? (Don’t even get us started on all the trade-down possibilities that armchair…
Various Artists
Folksinger, Plimsoul, pop icon, California scenester and deep thinker Peter Case is one of the most prolific, restless songwriters on the American pop scene. His vision can be uplifting but is just as often informed by the starkest realism imaginable. Consider these lines from “Paradise, Etc.”: “The apocalypse is over…
Our top DVD picks for the week of April 25
Casanova (Disney) Dr. Dolittle 3 (Fox) Elevator to the Gallows (Criterion) 50 Greatest Kid Concoctions (Time Life) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Sony) The Heirloom (Tartan) Inspector Gadget: 4-Disc Set (Shout Factory) The Intruder (Fox Lorber) Magic (Dark Sky) Match Point (DreamWorks) The Passenger (Sony) The Patriot: Extended Cut (Sony)…
Bringin’ tha Funk
How’s this for cred? 50 Cent, Janet Jackson and P. Diddy have all worked with members of Break! The Urban Funk Spectacular, which the Society for the Performing Arts brings back to H-town today. The ensemble includes veterans of the legendary break “battles” of Harlem, Brooklyn and beyond, making for…
Joe Satriani
O furious angel — guardian of souped-up Escort GTs, “Pissing Calvin” bumper stickers, Oakley blades and other sweet shades, garage weight benches, nickel bags of medicinal shit, silver-skinned aliens, favorite black Ts with the arms cut off, gravel-voiced drive-time DJs and their “Get the Led Out” twofers of Zeppelin, Skoal…
Image of the Week
Grandmotherly love knows no bounds. Although if it did have bounds, they would probably be pretty close to this shuffling your way through the Meridian because you’ve got family playing that night. Click here to enlarge…
Coochie Coos
Much like Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, the title of local playwright/director Wayne De Hart’s new show gets right to the point. Yes, there’s really no mistaking what’s happening in Coochie Conversation. In the comedy, things get spicy when six women gather for an evening of poetry, movies and conversation. When…
Islands, with Why? and Cadence Weapon
As the Unicorns, provocative Montreal wunderkinder Nick Diamonds and J’aime Tambeur happily hoofed across an enchanted musical landscape. Their songs were fun but dark, simple but ambitious, with lyrics running the gamut from death and ghosts to…ghosts and death. The Unicorns’ stage show could inspire equal fits of glee and…
Meeting of the Minds
Someone at the University of Houston has a puckish sense of humor. It’s one thing to schedule the Harris County Republican Party Convention in one of the school’s auditoriums at the same time a history class is meeting there. It takes it to a whole ‘nother level when that history…
Raise the Ruthie
Texas singer-songwriter Ruthie Foster owes much of her fan base and critical following to her live performances. At once folksy, bluesy and poppy, Foster works any room — big or small — like it’s a just-for-you show. So it’s a smart move by her label, Blue Corn Music, to release…
Gris Gris, with Brian Glaze and Invincible Czars
After rising from a plume of industrial smoke in his native League City, Greg Ashley landed in the somewhat more herbal (though still industrial enough) Oakland, California, where the vocalist-guitarist formed Gris Gris in 2003. Since then, listeners have been riding high (literally) on the band’s wild organ and guitar…
The Sweet Smell of Wang Galbi
The metal grill in the middle of our table at Arirang Korean Restaurant was sizzling hot and ready for action. As luck would have it, the raw meats arrived at exactly the same time as my friend Will, who had left the restaurant 15 minutes earlier in search of a…
Phat “Futurist”
Born and raised in Queens, artist, rapper, tagger and self-proclaimed “Gothic Futurist” Rammellzee helped change the face of New York’s urban landscape in the 1970s with his traveling canvases — shiny, new subway trains. The 45-year-old Rammellzee has since retired from bombing public property. He now deals in mixed-media canvases,…
Behemoth
I tell Nergal, of the Polish black/death-metal band Behemoth, that his music reminds me of jazz. And over the cell phone in his tour bus, I hear him chuckle. Growing up amid post-commie nothingness, he had little musical training; it was even hard to get a decent amp. So it’s…
Fetish Food
It’s three in the morning and you have a sudden, overwhelming urge to devour a Stanky Whore. At Late Nite Pie (502 Elgin, 713-529-5522), $16.99 buys you a large Whore for the evening. What makes it “Stanky”? Perhaps it’s the roasted garlic, the pungent goat cheese or the fishy anchovies…
They’re in Tune
The next time you think of cracking on adolescent drama geeks, consider this: Tom Hanks and Angelina Jolie got their start acting in high school productions. With that in mind, today’s Tommy Tune Awards are worth checking out. Each year, Theatre Under the Stars christens the best and brightest in…
Kittie
Metalheads lurk everywhere. It’s a teenage disease — much like hickeys and tantrums — and it speaks to the raging pile of teen emotion that’s typically manifested in slammed doors and volumes turned up to 11. Kittie’s heavy, bottomless n-metal is nobody’s party music. You know what they say: Nothing…
Here’s Two You
Since its doors have opened, the Meridian has played host to the world’s hottest DJs, buzz bands and influential punk and metal icons. Today, the former Chinese seafood warehouse turns two years old, and to celebrate, there’s a party featuring L.A.’s neo-swing revivalists, Royal Crown Revue. (The Revue was largely…
Go West
Yep, it’s spring again, and the folks behind the leftist bi-weekly rag Free Press Houston are gonna make sure you get out of the house and experience it at the Westheimer Block Party. More than 40 area bands, hip-hop acts and DJs are scheduled to perform on four blocks of…
Fear of Flying
United 93 — which uses the hijacking of one plane on September 11, 2001, to tell the story of what happened to all four aircraft seized that morning — may be the most wrenching, profound and perfectly made movie nobody wants to see. There is no reason to think that…
TRU Dat
Today, Houston electronic group Go Spread Your Wings will return to the stage at the annual KTRU Outdoor Festival, less than two months after member (and former Houston Press employee) Eban Doss was diagnosed with stage-four melanoma skin cancer. “This is something for me to look forward to,” says Doss,…
Feeling Beals
You may recognize Jennifer Beals as the artsy femme on Showtime’s lovely lesbo fest, The L Word. But if you were of PG-watching age in 1983 — or you just dig old movies — you’ll remember she was the star of Flashdance. In the feel-good flick, young Beals plays a…
Big Love, Texas-Style
ELDORADO, TEXAS — James Doyle rears back on the stick, and his Piper Cherokee 180 flops into the air, hastily rising above the dry cedars and prickly pears of Schleicher County. Doyle is a rural justice of the peace. He sets bails, judges misdemeanors, declares deaths and even pilots out-of-towners…
Being Bettie
If you can tell a society by its smut, America in the ’50s couldn’t have been just a Frigidaire of repressive hysteria. Hidden somewhere in the closets of Pleasantville and Peyton Place, after all, was a stack of fetish mags bearing the face and hourglass figure of Bettie Page, and…
Junior in da House
Folks in the gay club scene idolize Madonna, sure, but there’s at least one DJ in the circuit that couldn’t care less. Dubbed “The God of the Circuit World,” New York City DJ, producer and sought-after pop-remixer Junior Vasquez is most famously known for his 1996 feud with Madge, which…
Kicking A Team!
Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are decapitated, set on fire and eaten by cats. The Eiffel Tower and most of the Egyptian pyramids are blown to hell. All in a day’s work for Team America: World Police. If you’re a fan of South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s…
Letters to the Editor
Horse Hoopla Nightmare neighbor: Thank you for your recent article on horse slaughter [“Horse Flesh,” April 13, by Josh Harkinson]. As these things go, horse slaughter is a particularly simple issue. Americans do not eat horses; 70 percent to 90 percent do not want horse slaughter in this country; and…
Thank Hell for Little Girls
The Darwinian theory that schlocksploitation must tighten its twist of the nuts with each new release will be tested strenuously for years — or at least several weeks — by Hard Candy. A pointedly s(l)ick cross between Oleanna and I Spit on Your Grave, thrown like raw meat to Lions…
Come Out with Sheryl
Recently, Houston Comets All-Star forward Sheryl Swoopes made headlines when she acknowledged that she’s a lesbian. Some fans where aghast, while others were more like, “Well, duh.” (After all, this is women’s basketball.) But regardless of who Swoopes chooses to hop in the sack with, fact is she’s a tremendous…
Ride This Wave
This weekend, there’ll be a wave of Latinos crashing into Houston. Relax, Minutemen, it’s the Latin Wave: Latin American Film Festival. The annual three-day event featuring six international films and documentaries concludes today with a packed schedule. First up at 1 p.m. is La Sierra, a documentary that follows three…
Mothers’ Day
Kawabata Makoto, the high priest of Japan’s Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno, conducts English-language interviews via e-mail with the help of a translator, and that’s appropriate. After all, his livelihood is founded on translation, albeit of a different sort. “My music is something that I constantly hear from…
Charlie & the Shoe Factory
If you’re a regular moviegoer with a gift for remembering unusual names, chances are you’ve started paying attention to Chiwetel Ejiofor, the black English actor with a chameleon’s talent for disappearing into a role. You may not have caught his breakthrough performance in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things, but you…
Queen Thang
Poppea may not get crowned Empress until the end of The Coronation of Poppea, but she establishes herself as Ms. Thang immediately. Already a married noblewoman living in a palace in Rome, Poppea is having an affair with the Emperor Nerone. In exchange for nooky, Nerone vows to make her…
White Cap Party
If you’ve ever woken up groggy, hung over and in bed with someone you didn’t know, don’t feel embarrassed. Head to the Engine Room, and Aaron Karo will give you a high-five. Perpetual frat-head Karo’s stand-up on twenty-something life is cold comfort for every fresh-outta-college kid who’s ever stumbled into…