The 5 Best Things to Do in Houston This Weekend: “wildLIFE,” Rothko and More
Tens of thousands of elephants are killed each year for the illegal ivory trade. This dismaying reality has been the motivation for activist-artist Maruyama’s latest body of work: “The wildLIFE Project.” Opening on Friday at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, “The wildLIFE Project” highlights Maruyama’s skills as…
Deep Cuts We Want to Hear at Jay Z’s Tidal Concert
Ever since launching his CD-quality streaming music service Tidal with a lavish event featuring himself, wife Beyonce, Jack White, Arcade Fire, Kanye West, and more, Jay Z has been running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to save face due to the public backlash. Turns out…
Why I Love Courtney Love
Tonight the always volatile and divisive Courtney Love will take the stage at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion opening for the equally controversial Lana Del Rey. It’s a bizarre combination: Love hasn’t exactly been a musical force in recent years, so her opening slot seems to be a choice made out…
Woman Who Recorded Baby’s Rape to Get New Trial
An appellate court has reversed the conviction of a Bacliff woman who recorded her boyfriend raping his 14-month-old granddaughter on her cell phone, saying the trial judge tainted the jury by arresting a prospective juror during jury selection. Alisha Marie Drake had been sentenced in 2013 to 15 years in…
Chef Chat, Part 1: Nash D’Amico of D’Amico’s Market Café
Nash D’Amico is a member of one of Houston’s greatest Italian restaurant families. His little café in Rice Village, with its red and white checkered tablecloths, turns 40 this year. His dishes, based off his family’s recipes, have become Houston classics that have kept diners coming through the doors all…
The Five Best and Worst Acts of ACL 2015
This year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival lineup is finally here, so now we can begin endlessly dissecting it until October. Should be fun, right? This year’s lineup is, as ever, a mixed bag, filled with all sorts of highs and lows. ACL has grown so dramatically away from its…
Gentleman Farmer Scott Miller Still Has a Little Rocker In Him
Scott Miller really doesn’t have time for interviews anymore. His agent’s message reads as follows: “Scott is working cows today and tomorrow. He will call Saturday night.” For years the 47-year old Virginian traveled the world looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rock and roll…
Eat This: Buffalo Crawfish Salad at Ragin Cajun
You should eat the Buffalo Crawfish Salad at Ragin Cajun because it contains REAL BUFFALO! No, of course not. That would be pretty weird and certainly a departure from Ragin Cajun’s culinary theme. What’s so wonderful about this salad? First, it is an extremely efficient way to enjoy crawfish. If…
Austin Barbecue Revivalist Aaron Franklin Wins James Beard Award
A Houston chef did not win a James Beard: Best Chef Southwest award last night. If we had to lose, though, at least we lost to someone that many Houstonians respect. We may even owe him some thanks. Over the past three years, Houston has witnessed an incredible surge in…
Company Sometimes “Borrows” Dogs From the Arlington Pound
The practice of a company or individual pulling dogs and cats from municipal shelters and using them in biomedical research is called “pound seizure.” Eighteen states prohibit it, but many others, like Texas, have no law regarding it. One Texas company that seems to engage in a form of pound…
What Happens When Animal Testing Isn’t Internally Monitored? Not Much.
USDA inspectors are supposed to conduct yearly visits of facilities that use animals for research. But facilities are also supposed to monitor their treatment of animals through the use of a so-called Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. These committees oversee a facility’s experiments on animals to ensure that researchers…
Whitney Mercilus Gets 4-year, $26M Contract Extension
My theory on draft day decisions is that every choice is a message to someone or about someone on the current roster. Every time a player is chosen or a prominent player is bypassed, we should ask “What does it say about [fill in name of current player here]?” So…
Avengers: Age of Ultron Is More Mediocre, Exhausted and Thoughtful Than the Original
Avengers: Age of Ultron is a complicated, ticking machine — a cuckoo clock under attack. Returning helmer Joss Whedon is earnestly trying to make a movie out of a bag of bolts: six stars, nine cameos, three enemies and at least ten films to go before the climactic Avengers: Infinity…
Disney’s Monkey Kingdom Is Wonderful and Full of Lies
Truth in film takes another jolly beating in Disneynature’s Monkey Kingdom, a documentary-like nature flick with the last-century chutzpah to pass off its marvelous footage of some months in the life of a single-mom macaque as a full-fledged princess story, with three acts, a tearful exile and her ascent, in…
Clouds of Sils Maria: Assaya’s Latest Pits Juliette Binoche Against Time Itself
No one likes the idea of growing older, and anyone who claims as much is lying, either to you or to herself. The anxiety of aging actors is particularly acute, not necessarily because they feel the passage of time intensely, but because, having the privilege of watching their faces change…
Dior and I Shows How a Great House Kept From Falling
It’s nearly impossible to persuade the average American citizen, especially if he’s a straight man, that haute couture has a reason to exist. The phrase isn’t just a catchall for “really expensive clothes,” as it’s commonly misunderstood, but a specific term for clothes made entirely by hand, for a specific…
Smuggler Thriller Manos Sucias Hurts Because It’s Honest
For any thinking person, little in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s fleet and sweaty Colombian-smuggler thriller Manos Sucias will surprise. Drug-running is work for the broke and desperate; the runners might be less broke after a delivery, but that desperation only grows worse; killing is grim and painful and utterly unlike the…
