Return Trip to the Barber
These days it’s tough to sell opera buffs on new works — and even harder to find anyone who cares about American forays into the European-dominated art form. But opera is the same in any language: old-fashioned tuneful melodrama. Over the past few years, the Moores Opera Center has produced…
Dental Floss Alchemist
Alchemy has long since lost its significance as a science, but not its hold on the imagination. Some of Jung’s ideas grew out of his study of alchemic symbology, and more recently, James Elkins at the Art Institute of Chicago has turned to the language of alchemy to explain What…
Cleansing Soaps
It is impossible to summarize the standard soap opera plotline without sounding lowbrow. Merely mention Roy and his on-again, off-again paramour Bobbie’s midair escape from a plane piloted by the crooked agent Larkin, and you’ve succumbed to trite melodrama. But the general viewer often fails to recognize that soaps have…
Ghost of a Chance
Ghosts haunt the fabled Balinese Room in Galveston. They aren’t the ghosts of performers who’ve played the South Seas Ballroom there, like Frank Sinatra or Peggy Lee or Phil Harris. They’re not even the ghosts of the gamblers who played in the most infamous illegal gaming room in Texas. They’re…
How Now Mad Cow?
Journalists, it must be revealed, do love a disaster or, pending that, a disaster in the making. No one in the profession has ever received a Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the sun is shining. Pretty much anyone in the profession, or at least anyone within a few hours’ drive…
Does Not Compute
Maria Angulo opened the door to her home and found a couple who said in her native Spanish that they were from the school district. They showed her brochures and papers for a computer system with tons of software — not found in stores — that would help boost her…
The Naked Truth
Too many helpings of the signature sweet from Morton’s of Chicago [5000 Westheimer, (713)629-1946], and Lady Godiva would not be so quick to shed her clothes. She would need as much fabric as she could find to conceal the folds caused by such a decadent dessert as the Godiva hot…
CACHH-22
The executive director of the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County cleaned out her office last week after resigning from her $90,000 post as overseer of city hotel-motel tax money distributed to local artists and arts organizations. Luci Dabney’s departure leaves some bad vibes in her wake. Shortly…
Stirred and Shaken
Three large oil paintings of Confederate heroes line the wall of the plushly furnished room in front of the bar. They stare down upon the free happy-hour buffet with melancholy eyes. “We’re known for making stiff drinks,” says the bartender at The Confederate House [2925 Weslayan, (713)622-1936] as he passes…
Blowin’ Smoke
This is how famous Denis Leary is: He begins and ends a story by saying, “To this day, when I see Mick…,” and by Mick, he means Mick Jagger. They became pals, oh, seven years back, when the Rolling Stones were on that week’s farewell tour, kickin’ it in the…
A Beat Ahead
Twelve years ago, when OrchestraX founder and artistic director John Axelrod was a mere event planner for Robert Mondavi, he found himself driving through Napa Valley, reflecting on the arc of his young life. Educated at Harvard, where his Houston stockbroker father went to school, Axelrod had flitted from job…
Letters
Big on Little Joe Dead-on alive: Beautiful work on the Little Joe feature [“Hitting the Highs and Lows with Little Joe Washington,” by Jennifer Mathieu, March 22]! I enjoyed reading it, immensely. It’s easily the best piece of writing ever to focus on LJ. You get way beyond the surface…
Reeling in the Years
Leaning back on the couch, clutching an empty gourmet coffee cup, Poor Dumb Bastards front man Byron Dean looks the consummate yuppie, but only at a glance. Scratch the surface, and it’s apparent that something’s wrong. Maybe it’s the black Sugar Shack shirt, or maybe it’s the scrapes and bruises…
The Inkblot Test
There are eight customers in the Triple A Restaurant at 10:30 in the morning; all of them are men, and four sport comb-overs. The wood-grain Formica on the tables and the orange vinyl on the chairs are a little worn. There is a picture of a 1935 high school football…
Jennifer Lopez/Vitamin C
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Knocking Back a Few
Speaking off the toque: Ian Larsen, brewmaster at Two Rows Restaurant and Brewery [2400 University Boulevard, (713)529-2739]. Q. Two Rows seems to be the last man standing in terms of Houston’s brewpub scene. What, in your opinion, has caused the decline? A. Actually, we are not the only brewpub in…
Chalee Tennison
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a young Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette were to arrive on Music Row today, songs in hand and kids in tow, Chalee Tennison’s This Woman’s Heart offers a clue. It scarcely needs to be mentioned that it isn’t a particularly pleasant sight…
Playbill
It probably didn’t make headlines when Susie Ibarra left Houston almost 13 years ago. Young musicians migrate to New York City constantly — it’s the place to be, especially if you’re interested in the sort of free improvisation that NYC’s jazz community contains. Ibarra returns to town as a 30-year-old…
Playbill
Nashville is desperately seeking a male savior. The last year has seen jaw-dropping declines in radio listenership with one Houston radio consultant reporting that 31 percent of country fans have ditched the format (mainly for rock and classic rock) in the last 12 months alone. Sales are in the toilet…
Film Noir
When filmmaker/insurance agent Stephen Allen began laying out the blueprints for the Houston Multicultural Independent Film Festival late last year, his intent was to show moviegoers — African-American moviegoers, especially — that they could enjoy an independent film as much as a big-budget Hollywood popcorn movie. “If a moviegoer looks…
Coke and a Smile
Hello, what’s this? Why, could it be another cautionary tale from Hollywood about recreational drugs being not particularly good for people? Indeed, with Blow, director Ted Demme (Beautiful Girls) has set us up with a morality tale in which the moral is obvious from the start, and there’s little to…
Jump-Started
The Engine Room is one big sumbitch. Clocking in at around 6,000 square feet and costing upwards of $100,000 to renovate, the Engine Room is a metropolitan roadhouse, a dark, smoky dive located not too far away from where the chic people hang. You know, the ones who get all…
A Tangled Web
Easily the creepiest (and by far most interesting) thing about Along Came a Spider, yet another adaptation of one of James Patterson’s alleged mystery novels featuring detective Alex Cross, is how much co-star Monica Potter looks, sounds and acts like Julia Roberts. Granted, it’s hardly a startling revelation to anyone…
To Be A Geek, A Robot God
It’s a robot that has brought 18-year-old Jose Hernandez here today, to Reliant Arena. The robot’s name is Big Cat, and soft-spoken, round-faced Jose is huddled over all 122 pounds of it, examining the chassis. When placed on the floor, Big Cat is as square and wide as a small…
Fool Moon
Somewhere, in deepest New South Wales, Australia, there exists a humble sheep paddock. The setting is rural, it’s pastoral, it’s quaint as all heck — and it also happens to be hallowed ground for its role in conveying to the world one of the most courageous and unifying moments in…
Tuning Out the Static
“Something big is about to happen,” says Edwin Johnston. Tall and lanky, with a mop of curly hair, Johnston seems kindhearted but crazy — the latter impression aided in part by one plastic eye and in part by a demeanor akin to a ten-year-old gone off his Ritalin. Johnston had…
Refreshing Paws
In Lee Blessing’s Chesapeake, a downtown New York performance artist wakes up one whimsical morning only to discover he has been reincarnated as a Chesapeake Bay retriever called Lucky. This strange hallucination gets even wilder when the performance artist/dog discovers that he is now owned by his archnemesis, a right-wing…