Houston BrewFest Offer: A Four-Pack Special Deal
Join the Houston Press and Lucky’s Pub on Saturday, May 16 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Silver Street Station as we celebrate the 4th Annual BrewFest. BrewFest is an indoor/outdoor beer-sampling event and festival that will feature craft beers, local food trucks and live music. Purchase a special…
Mayor Parker Threatens to Revoke Uber’s Permit, Sets Friday Deadline
Since news broke earlier this month that a local Uber driver has been charged with sexually assaulting a passenger, things have been pretty frosty between the rideshare service and the City of Houston. Duncan Eric Burton, a former Uber driver, has admitted to taking a blackout drunk passenger to his…
USW Rejects LyondellBasell’s ‘Last, Best and Final’ Offer
After more than two months on strike, it all came down to a vote. Would members of United Steelworkers District 227 opt to accept the “last, best and final offer” from LyondellBasell and go back to work, or would they decide to stay on strike? After two days of voting,…
The Final Houston Rockets Playoff Scenario Post Of The 2014-15 Season
Well, this time tomorrow it will all be over. We will know the answers to the test. Eighty-two games, a bunch of twist and turns, some injuries along the way (a few minor ones, a couple fairly catastrophic ones, one that is still a TBD until they take the training…
Netflix’s Daredevil May Be The Best Marvel Comic Adaptation Yet
Netflix has garnered mostly deserved praise for its original programming. “Mostly deserved” because for every Orange is the New Black or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt there’s a season three of House of Cards (you know what this show needs? More brooding Doug Stamper) or final episode of The Killing (“Holder, you…
Rebs Fight to Keep Confederate Heroes Day in Texas
Troubled that Texas not only has a state-recognized holiday called Confederate Heroes Day, but also that said holiday just so happens to bump up against Martin Luther King Jr. Day every year (this year, the celebrations even fell on the very same day), 13-year-old Jacob Hale of Austin took his…
Mamma Mia: It’s Hard Not to Sing Along at This Silly but Fun Show
The set up: Confession. I am the only person on the face of the earth who has not seen Mamma Mia. OK, that may be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but it’s not far off. At least not in the theater world. The jukebox musical featuring the music of…
Handsomebeast Gives the Sexy Face Reaction Time of Your Life
What Handsomebeast does is a type of music that can go very wrong very quickly if it’s not handled with care and consideration; kind of like nuclear power or anal sex. They are a funk-rock band, and funk in rock too often leads to delusions of stank that are, to…
FX’s Hillbilly Noir Justified Was the Forgotten Prestige TV Show
No show wears its love for language and land more proudly than FX’s Justified, which ended its six-year run on April 14. Based on a novella by Elmore Leonard and starring squinty-eyed sex symbol Timothy Olyphant, the hillbilly noir never received the critical adulation or the audience one might expect…
Group Says its Training Videos Could Cut Down on Dogs Getting Shot By Cops
The National Canine Research Council says its training videos on police and dog encounters could reduce the amount of fatal dog shootings like the one that occurred in Santa Fe April 9. In that incident, a police officer responding to a complaint of dogs barking in a storage unit arrived…
UH’s Center for Creative Work Presents the Annual Dionysia Festival
As sad as it is to say, war is a huge part of the universal human experience that dates back all the way to the first relatively small social groups that our ancestors created. So, what could be a more relevant title for a festival that pulls together the ancient…
Chef Chat, Part 1: Vladimir Smirnov of Chef Smirnov Catering
Imagine completely starting your life over in a new country where you don’t know many people, have no job prospects and don’t know the language at all. This is exactly what Vladimir and his wife had to cope with when they left Moscow for America, the “land of opportunity.” They…
Recipe: Homemade Snickers Bars
If you think making your own candy always involves a thermometer and endless stirring of chocolate, take pleasure in the fact that you can make your own Snickers bars with just a few ingredients, a microwave, and some parchment paper. The most challenging aspect of homemade Snickers bars is producing…
SpaceX Launches and Crashes a Rocket Into the Drone Barge. Again.
The sixth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract lifted off without a hitch on Tuesday afternoon, but once again SpaceX failed to stick the landing. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off with its Dragon cargo space craft right on schedule at 3:10…
Wolf Pack Invades Historic Heights Theater; Balance Is Restored
Wolves are the central theme in Rachel Schwind Gardner’s Rewilding exhibit, where the artist puts forth the argument that balance can be restored to ecosystems if we allow the reintroduction of non-human animals to their natural lands. Her life-size papier-mâché wolves take center stage in an artfully arranged tree limb…
Houston’s 10 Best Spots to Go Two-Stepping
If you didn’t make it out to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and feel like kickin’ up your heels to two-step the night away, Houston has plenty of hot spots for a little dosey-do dancing. So if you’re daydreaming of twin fiddles and a steel guitar, pull up your…
Richmond High School Teacher Who Gave Students Handouts Calling Islam “An Ideology of War” Resigns
An advanced placement U.S. government teacher accused of passing out virulently anti-Muslim handouts to a Richmond high school class has resigned. The Houston chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations called district officials to discipline the teacher last week upon discovering his class handouts included statements like this: “Muhammad posed…
Houston’s Vampire Court Gathers For a Pagan Sumbel
As we explained in this week’s cover story, Houston’s population of real vampires, those individuals who believe they must feed on the psychic energy created by other living beings to maintain their own sense of physical and emotional well being, are a diverse group. While modern vampires tend to share…
Try These Five Monster Sandwiches in Houston (Part II)
We’ve already written about Five Monster Sandwiches to Try in Houston. But there’s so much goodness going on between two slices all over town, we had to come back with five more. Here they are, in all their overstuffed and fatty glory: See also: Try These 5 Seriously Outrageous Pork…
Exploring Mort Garson’s Occult Moog Music
The 1960s and early 1970s ushered in a new Age of Aquarius, and also jump-started mainstream America’s love affair with the occult, making once taboo subjects like witchcraft and devil worship suitable conversation material for a suburban cocktail party. Anton LaVey was getting plenty of press with his Church of…
The “Stand-Up”: A Bathroom Breakthrough for Music Festivals
Written by Taylor Hamby/LA Weekly It was shortly after Charles Bradley’s stellar set last Friday afternoon at Coachella. Four coffees sat heavy in my bladder and I had already spent our meager per diem on 2.5 beers. It was time to break the seal. When used for their intended purpose,…
The Improbable Return of Houston Prog-Rockers Chameleon
Houston has a reputation for and kindness toward some music genres more than others. Blues, blues-rock, rap, metal, country and even psychedelia have all flourished in various clubs both still running and long-defunct across the city and its outskirts. But the Bayou City has never quite cottoned to progressive rock…
HCC Wants to Seal Records in Lawsuit. Again…
Houston Community College is attempting to seal internal records in the drawn-out legal battle with the former general counsel the college system fired last year. If this sounds like deja vu, it should. Since early this year, HCC, one of the largest publicly-funded community college systems in the country, has…
Rich Iacona: You’ve Never Heard of Him But You’ve Heard Him
Chances are high you’ve never heard of pianist/composer Rich Iacona. But believe me, you’ve heard him. While Iacona, a New Yorker who comes to town this week for a series of clinics and shows with the Houston Community College big band program at the invitation of HCC professor Woody Witt,…
Amalfi Doesn’t Offer the High-End Dining Experience That Houstonians Are Right to Expect
It’s a good thing that Amalfi’s waiters serve wine expediently, because it’s the only entertainment guests will get for 30 minutes. That’s how long it takes to place a food order at dinnertime, and that’s not a one-time problem. It happened on two different visits. As a result, the first…
Video Games Are Helping to Fight Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s is a terrifying disease that progressively causes dementia and memory loss, especially in the elderly. There is no cure, but an unlikely candidate is being enlisted in the fight: video games. In 2010 the East Carolina University Psychophysiology Lab began performing studies on the effects of casual games on…
Rob Gullatte & Show Louis: The Sophisticated Savages
The first time you’re introduced to Rob Gullatte may not be in a public setting. Instead it may come behind a firewall, where his country drawl can be masked behind 140 characters — but his affinity for the Dallas Cowboys, his Alief surroundings and wanting better for his son are…
USW Members Voting on LyondellBasell Contract Today
More than two months in, the United Steelworkers oil refinery strike still isn’t technically over, but things could wrap up soon for the USW District 227 workers at LyondellBasell in Pasadena. USW 227 has been on strike from the start. When USW called the strike on February 1, about 450…
Moores School’s AURA Ensemble Presents a Different Kind of Chamber Music
Asked to expand on the theme for the upcoming AURA concert, entitled Multifaceted, University of Houston music composition professor Rob Smith was at a loss to describe it in words other than what it is — a three-dimensional shape with flat surfaces. “Every single work on the program looks at…
Recipe: The Cuban Sandwich
In celebration of reduced restrictions on travel to Cuba, why not make its namesake sandwich with some of that leftover Easter ham? It is unclear whether or not what we know today as a Cuban sandwich was invented in the country proper or emerged in Cuban-American communities in Florida; nevertheless,…
Upcoming: Dan Deacon, Faith No More, Geto Boys, Kenny Chesney, Mojo Nixon, Reptar, etc.
4/19 Smoke Something Death Metal Mini Fest: With Suicidal Impulse, Destroy The Living, Flesheater, Within Hatred, Imperial Affliction., Sun., April 19, 8 p.m. Acadia Bar & Grill, 3939 Cypress Creek Pkwy., Houston, 281-893-2860. Adam Klein: Sat., May 30, 9 p.m., $7. Natachee’s Supper ‘n Punch, 3622 Main, Houston, 713-524-7203. The…
Real Vampires: The Houston Subculture That Drinks Blood and Chases Psychic Energy
“Generally we use single-use sterilized razor blades, the individually wrapped ones. It’s usually not as much blood or as big a cut as most people think of it being.” Blut Katzchen has a softly lilting voice and sounds as comfortable speaking on the subject of bloodletting as some people do…
This Week in Houston Food Blogs: A Look at North Italia
The Urban Swank ladies visited recently-opened North Italia and discovered a lovely, well-lit dining room. The pastas and dough here are made from scratch daily, resulting in outstanding dishes like Bolognese with tagliatelle and Funghi (mushroom) pizza. They added Italian fennel sausage because–well, why wouldn’t you? Unless you’re vegetarian, of…
Black Sabbath’s Ongoing Journey Into Evil
Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe By Mick Wall St. Martin’s Press, 400 pp., $27.99 In one of the most memorable scenes of the fictional rock mockumentary This is Spinal Tap, the clueless heavy-metal rockers endure some disastrous and embarrassing stage incidents involving a Stonehenge stage set that is far…
So What Else Were These Steely Dan Fans Doing at Coachella?
Written by Andy Hermann/LA Weekly Steely Dan fans get a bad rep for being snobby jazzbos who only like eight-minute songs with saxophone solos and overuse the word “musicianship.” Which is probably why the Internet’s collective mind was blown when it was announced they would be performing at Coachella this…
The Sacred Music of Houston Record Mogul Don Robey
Houston’s Don Deadric Robey — half black, half Jewish, all gangster — beat Berry Gordy by ten years to become the first African-American record mogul. A gambler and a hustler, he did not get there by playing fair, but Robey put out some of the greatest gospel, R&B and rock…
Seriously: Drake Will Play Houston Again May 24
What wasn’t happening is apparently happening again. A few months back following the release of Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late album, the Arena Theatre posted that the Toronto rapper was going to perform at the venue on May 17. That date was determined to be false according…
Game of Thrones S05E01: “I Wish You Good Fortune in the Wars to Come.”
If it’s April, it must be time for a new season of Game of Thrones. Don’t worry, even though the first four episodes reportedly leaked online yesterday, our weekly discussions here on Art Attack will be spoiler-free as always. Season Five is when show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss…
For These Fans, Cake Beats Game of Thrones By a Mile
Cake House of Blues April 12, 2015 After a weekend of sporadic downpours and questionable weather, Houstonians could have easily opted to stay tucked in Sunday night for the Game of Thrones season premiere or yet another marathon of Bar Rescue. Quite the contrary: Cake’s House of Blues show was…
Suchu Dance Imagine The End. of the World in New Show
The Setup: This weekend saw the premier of choreographer Jennifer Wood’s Destroyed. The End., a darkly comic take on the final days of humanity as embodied by five dancers, including Suchu Dance veterans Shanon Adams, Sarah Leung, Tina Shariffskul, Prudence Sun, and newcomer Somya Gupta. The latest production offers grim…
UH Professor and Author Kimberly Meyer Writes a Memoir About Mothers and Daughters
When Kimberly Meyer was a senior in college she thought she was about to embark upon “a Bohemian-explorer-intellectual kind of life”. As often happens, life had other plans. Kimberly found herself pregnant, and soon enough her duties as a single parent forced her to put her Bohemian-explorer-intellectual dream aside. She…
Who Are Top 4 Players of the Astros Franchise?
There’s a new MLB contest going around, one in which fans of teams are being asked to select the top four players in the history of each Major League franchise. The voting ends on May 5, and the four winners from each team will be honored at the All Star…
Houston Is Officially Smitten With Tune-Yards
Tune-Yards, Son Lux Fitzgerald’s April 10, 2015 If there’s something Tune-Yards learned about Houston music fans Friday night at Fitz, it’s this: if you win our love once, we’re yours forever. At least, that may have been the circumstance, since the building was packed shoulder to shimmying shoulder for the…
The Hunchback Variations: An Absurdist Comedy With Fascinating Oddness
The set-up: What are we to make of Mickle Maher’s The Hunchback Variations (2001)? This weird, absurdist little comedy holds the Catastrophic Theatre with a fascinating oddness and comes complete with Maher’s distinctive strangeness and poetic flights of fancy (see The Strangerer, There Is a Happiness That Morning Is, Spirits…
Garrison Brothers First Private Bottling With Reserve 101
Dan Garrison, founder of Garrison Brothers bourbon distillery, would tell you himself that Mike Raymond and Reserve 101 were instrumental in helping him launch his company in the Houston market. What Raymond described as their “budding bromance” has led to their latest partnership: Garrison Brothers’ first private bottling. In 2013,…
Houston’s Biggest Blunders: The Astrodome
Houston is a wonderful place, but we have made more than our share of mistakes over the years. From traffic to tear downs, sprawl to self promotion, we have found ourselves cleaning up the messes of former Houstonians for decades. We hope this series will help illuminate some of the…
This Week In Houston Food Events: It’s Galveston Food & Wine Festival Week
Monday, April 13 Chef J.D. Woodward’s Fish & Chips Pop-Up At Moving Sidewalk Following his successful Steak Night pop-up last week, J.D. Woodward of the forthcoming Southern Goods returns to his old stomping grounds for a Fish & Chips Night at Moving Sidewalk. Happy Hour specials will be in effect…
Over the River and Through the Woods and Right into Banality
The set up: Heartwarming. It’s either a cringe worthy descriptor that has you running for the hills or it’s the sweet dollop of honey in your cup of tea. In theater it generally means lightly comedic storytelling that tugs on our personal relationship heartstrings and leaves us feeling better about…
Dish of the Week: Pasta all’Amatriciana
From classic comfort foods to regional standouts and desserts, we’ll be sharing a new recipe with you each week. Find other dishes of the week here. This week, we’re sharing a recipe for Pasta all’Amatriciana. Sugo all’Amatriciana is a classic Italian tomato sauce made with guanciale (salt-cured pork jowl), grated…
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Multiverse in AT the Core of the Algorithm
Upon entering Hiram Butler Gallery to see Michael Petry’s AT the Core of the Algorithm installation, a visitor might quickly decide that everything could be seen within five seconds. That’s it, just the one piece, and nothing else. However, if a person looks beyond the simple beauty of hanging glass…
5 Cool Projects that Prove NASA Is Moving Into the Future
Last year, after too many years seemingly spent in aimless loitering, NASA got a sense of direction and started actually doing things again. It announced plans to go lasso an asteroid and then go to Mars. It launched Orion, the spacecraft that it’s hoped will one day take astronauts to…
Rockets Playoff Scenarios: How to Avoid the Dreaded Sixth Seed
Well, that didn’t quite go as planned now, did it? Heading into Wednesday night’s slate of NBA games, as outlined here, the Rockets were sitting in the two seed in the Western Conference, controlling their own destiny, with the franchise’s next MVP Award firmly in its sights. It was all…
After The Review: BCN Taste & Tradition
Spanish restaurant BCN Taste & Tradition is ensconced in a sophisticated, Mediterranean-style mansion just off Montrose. Inside, there’s a subtle, elegant cream-on-white color scheme. Original art by Spanish artists Picasso and Joan Miro lend brilliant bursts of color here and there. Of the eight restaurants I wrote reviews of in…
The Cherry Orchard at Classical Theatre Proves Chekhov Rules
The set-up: Recently Houston’s theater scene has been blessed by some very fine Chekhov knockoffs: last season’s superlative rendition of Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at the Alley; and, recently, a regional premiere, also superlatively produced, of Aaron Posner’s stupid f*****g bird from Stages Rep. Currently…
Kevin Costner’s Band Modern West Might Surprise You
Over the phone, Kevin Costner speaks with the kind of candor and soft-spoken intensity that has made him one of America’s most respected and durable actors. But the 60-year-old Oscar-winning director of Dances With Wolves and star of Bull Durham, Field of Dreams, Open Range and some 50 more movies…
X Turns In a Scissory-Sharp Set
X Warehouse Live April 10, 2015 When X played Warehouse Live last time, opening for Blondie on the big stage, they unleashed a scorched-earth campaign, leaving the place smoldering with their unbridled energy before Debbie Harry pelted the throngs with punk-disco. This time seizing the venue’s smaller room, X offered…
The Five Best Concerts in Houston This Week: Poliça, The Mavericks, Sixx: A.M., etc.
Policia House of Blues, April 14 The 2010s are turning out to be the best decade for synth-pop since the 1980s, with similar yet hardly identical bands like Future Islands, Bleachers, Chvrches and Purity Ring stepping forward to become some of the most sought-after and admired indie acts of the…
[Video] Houston Celebrates 50 Years of the Astrodome
Fact: Houston loves the Astrodome. It’s easy to forget that fact some days with the amount of debate that surrounds its fate. However, if people didn’t love the Dome, there wouldn’t be a debate; we’d simply pave it over and put up parking because that’s just sort of what Houston…
UH Student Entrepreneurs Develop a Tomatillo Enchiladas Video
Four University of Houston students who met in an entrepreneurship class decided the best way they could handle a class assignment was to make a video showing how to make tomatillo enchiladas. They could help out the student community while they were doing something they like to do. And then…
Reviews For The Easily Distracted: The Longest Ride
Title: The Longest Ride Describe This Movie In One Simpsons Quote: “But Aquaman, you cannot marry a woman without gills! You’re from two different worlds!” Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: One Toro from Bully for Bugs out of five. Brief Plot Synopsis: Nubile art student messes with…
Eight Simple Rules for the Dog Park
Now that spring’s here, Houston’s dog parks will see more action, and it’s important that we all be mindful of each other so going to the park is a pleasant experience for both two- and four-legged visitors. Parks already have basic regulations, and some, like Johnny Steele Dog Park, have…
Music Memories From the Astrodome’s Birthday Celebration
In the waning moments of a special night celebrating the Astrodome’s 50th anniversary, a young man sitting at the MetroRail station on Fannin gazed in awe at photos he’d just taken of the “Eighth Wonder” on his smartphone. The way he looked at the pictures of the fading giant –…
Whole Foods Post Oak Continues to Produce Quality in Its Beer Dinner Series, Though With Some Growing Pains
I attended and wrote about the first in the monthly Beer Dinner series at the Whole Foods Market Post Oak location, where the WFM Brewery is located. WFM Brewmaster Dave Ohmer and Post Oak Executive Chef Josh Shobe collaborated for a five-course meal of food and beer pairings, and I…
Houston’s 5 Best Weekend Food Bets: Desserts for a Good Cause & A Whole Lotta Wine
Pearland Crawfish Festival @ Pearland Parks & Recreation Center Grounds Friday – Sunday 4141 Bailey Head to this family-friendly event for spicy, Cajun-style crawfish in addition to tons of other great food and drinks, live zydeco and blues, games, carnival rides, arts and crafts, and more. Admission is free until…
You Can Own the Lion Water Fountain From the Houston Zoo
Question: What’s the one picture every Houstonian’s mother has in a photo album somewhere? Answer: You drinking from the plastic lion fountain at the Houston Zoo. It’s one of the most well-recognized signs of a Houston childhood there is, right up there with rolling down the hill in Hermann Park…
Wait, Someone Hired Dave Bliss to Be a Head Coach? Even After What Happened at Baylor?
Southwestern Christian University this week hired Dave Bliss to be the head coach of its basketball team. A small 800-student school located in Bethany, Oklahoma, and playing in NAIA, it’s a long way from the bright lights of the big-time NCAA. And being away from the bright lights is probably…
Here’s the First Flight of Committed Companies Bringing Beer to BrewFest 2015
It’s almost time for the 4th Annual BrewFest hosted by the Houston Press and Lucky’s Pub and today we’re announcing the companies who’ve signed on so far for the festival. BrewFest will be held on Saturday, May 16 from 3 to 7 p.m. at Silver Street Station BrewFest is an…
Uber Tells Texas Lawmakers Its Background Checks Are Totally Fine
The criminal charges against Duncan Eric Burton loomed over discussions at the capitol yesterday about how best to regulate rideshare services like Uber and Lyft in the state of Texas. Burton, who was arrested last Thursday, has admitted taking a blackout drunk passenger to his apartment, where he then orally,…
Second Lovers Step Up to the Plate
“I want to be in the biggest band in the world,” says Nic Morales. “When you are a kid and you dream of being a musician, and you see a big band on a big stage, every aspiring musician says to himself, ‘I want to do that.'” Morales is nursing…
Upcoming Houston Food Events: The Galveston Island Food & Wine Festival is Back
Monday, April 13 happens to be the traditional Thai New Year and Khun Kay Thai Café, 1209 Montrose, is planning a feasting celebration all week long. From April 13 to 19, the restaurant will offer a complete chalkboard menu of Thai New Year specials, all symbolizing good luck. Feast on…
Adam Pascal, the Original Roger in Rent, Will Headline the TUTS Gala
Adam Pascal grew up with Idina Menzel, knew her since third grade. So when she got involved in an off-Broadway show that hadn’t been able to find a singer with the right voice for the part of Roger, a rock singer who was HIV-positive, she thought of her old friend…
A Lively Round-Table With the Still-Dangerous X
X were (and still are) the kind of band that makes critics salivate endlessly. Writing fiercely literate songs with barbed insight about feral youth lurking in the shadows of decrepit Hollywood, the band’s cutthroat melodies and rockabilly-clogged music contrasted the gnarly noise of their contemporaries, who were often more addicted…
Texans Announce Preseason Opponents, Re-Sign Offensive Lineman White
The NFL will unveil its regular season schedule sometime in the next few weeks. It’s then that we can begin to formulate opinions and handicap how we think the 2015 season is going to go for the Houston Texans. Much the same way that the preseason is sort of a…
Openings & Closings: Hugs & Donuts Is Now Open
The folks behind the H-Town Streats food truck and defunct The Bird House have opened their new donut shop. Hugs & Donuts is at 1901 North Shepherd right next door to Fat Cat Creamery. The small, cute shop has both sweet and savory options, but if you want to land…
The 5 Best Things to Do in Houston This Weekend: Hunchback Variations and More
The latest effort from our “we will destroy you” friends at Catastrophic Theatre is The Hunchback Variations by by Mickle Maher (The Strangerer and Spirits to Enforce). It opens on Friday night for a four-week run. In it, Quasimodo sits behind a table alongside Ludwig van Beethoven. They’re on a…
Houston’s 10 Best Dive Bars
In years past, a dive bar was a term reserved for places that were a threat to civil society: disreputable, dangerous, oftentimes criminal places where fights would break out after angry words were spoken, resulting in spilled liquor and blood on floors. In modern times, our society has redefined dive…
Folk Family Revival’s Water Walker Finds Its Footing
Note: Due to an error in the metadata in the review copy that we were sent the track listing on Water Walker appeared in alphabetical order instead of the intended order. We withdraw all criticisms of the album’s pacing after re-listening to it in the correct order and would like…
The 10 Best Concerts in Houston This Weekend: NERVO, KTRU Outdoors, Bryan Adams, etc.
Folk Family Revival Dosey Doe Coffee, April 10 Folk Family Revival were country enough to land a date in the Hideout tent at this year’s Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo, though only on the far outer edges. The Magnolia-bred Americana quartet owes an obvious debt to Ryan Adams’ existentialist roots-rock,…
Remember the Astrodome for Concerts, Too
Houstonians’ ambivalence over the city’s most iconic structure and, at the moment, biggest civic embarrassment should reach a climax this evening at the Astrodome’s “50th birthday party.” With that milestone comes with an asterisk almost as big as the building itself, considering the Dome has been all but abandoned after…
Bill That Could Kill Houston-Dallas Bullet Train Moves to Senate
We’re used to seeing votes fall along party lines out at the biennial circus we call the Texas Legislature. But in a Senate Transportation Committee hearing Wednesday, a bill that would effectively stall the project to build a high-speed train connecting Houston and Dallas split largely along urban/rural lines. Senate…
Girls Rock Houston Continues “Cancel R Kelly” Efforts
On Wednesday evening, approximately 40 men and women gathered on the first floor of The Montrose Center to meet and discuss progress on the “Cancel R. Kelly” campaign, which was launched in response to the R&B singer’s booking at this year’s Free Press Summer Fest. “We spent about four hours…
Vanities, the Musical Loses Its Cheer After the First Act
The setup: Okay! Ready? Go! Gimme an M…gimme a U…gimme an S…gimme an I…Oh forget it, this is taking too long. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m trying to introduce a musical about cheerleaders. Three of them, to be precise. Well, they were cheerleaders back in the…
Anthony Bourdain’s “Close to the Bone” Tour Is Coming to Houston
Culinary star Anthony Bourdain is bringing his “Close to the Bone Tour” to Houston. It’s the second of ten stops in major cities across the United States. This is not the first time Bourdain has done a show in the Bayou City. He did one called “Good vs Evil” with…
JCI Grill Kicks Off “Funky Dog” Series Highlighting Frankfurters Designed by Randy Evans
Randy Evans may be leaving Houston, but for the next six months you can still enjoy the line of hot dogs he designed as part of the “funky dog” series hosted by JCI Grill (formerly James Coney Island)…
Irregardless of What AP Says, “Over” Doesn’t Equal “More” (and Please Stop Unpacking!)
We admit we can be word snobs from time to time. (In our defense, word snobs, English teachers and copy editors are the only thing between civilized society and roaming mobs of ill-spoken Neanderthals.) We read dictionaries the way other people read novels. We have a T-shirt printed with the…
It’s About to Get Weird: Welcome to Night Vale Returns to Houston
It starts with a dog park. Not the one you’re picturing in your brain as you read this, all green grass and frolicking puppies and smiling pet owners, but a dog park that no one is allowed to enter, other than the hooded figures that are already inside. There’s an…
The $40M Question: Bohac Wants Texas to Pay Transportation Costs When Students Switch Public Schools
If the state of Texas can just come up with $40 million a year, it can fund what the state’s Legislative Budget Board thinks will be the annual cost to provide transportation for public school kids who — along with their parents — want to transfer to another, presumably better,…
Chef Chat, Part 2: Matt Marcus of Eatsie Boys and 8th Wonder Brewery
Things have been good for Eatsie Boys since our last Chef Chat with Matt Marcus in 2012. He won the Houston Culinary Award for Best Up-And-Coming Chef right after that interview. They got a one-star review from Alison Cook (not too bad, truly) and made her Top 100 Restaurants list…
Donatas Motiejunas Is Done for the Season With Back Injury
Through the first three weeks of the NBA season, Donatas Motiejunas was floundering. Through 12 games, he was shooting below 37 percent and knocking down three pointers at a frigid 17.6 percent clip. It was being openly debated if he was the least effective rotation player in the league. Then,…
Where to Dine in Houston This Mother’s Day 2015
Show your love and appreciation by treating the moms in your life to a special meal. From elegant prix fixe lunches to fun for the family brunch buffets, here’s where to dine in Houston this Mother’s Day: 024 Grille 945 N. Gessner, 281-501-4350 Celebrate Mother’s Day with 024 Grille’s exquisite…
Opera Soprano Christine Goerke Returns to Houston to Sing Brünnhilde in Die Walküre
In composer Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Brünnhilde is the favorite daughter of the god Wotan (Odin) as well as a Valkyrie, one of the women who according to Norse myth determine who lives or dies in battle. In this, the second of the four operas that make up…
Best of Houston: 10 Best Nicknames for Houston
As you can probably guess, working at the Houston Press, a writer can get a little tired of typing “Houston” over and over again. It’s a fine city name, but it becomes repetitive. Well, recently I learned that our city actually has way more nicknames than I’d ever known. Let’s…
10 Suggestions for the Astrodome No One Is Talking About
Well, yet another proposal for the Astrodome has come and is almost certainly as doomed to failure as the ones that have come before. Look, there have been some good ideas all right. An indoor amusement park or alpine slope or even an indoor beach? Sounds sick. Space history museum…
Chef Matt Lovelace Will Be Chef de Cuisine at Pour Society
Chefs Greg Lowry and Matt Lovelace are putting the team together once again. Lovelace will be the chef de cuisine at Ogden Hospitality’s forthcoming gastropub Pour Society at Gateway Memorial City. That’s the same complex where restaurants KUU, Vallone’s and Churrascos are located. The two chefs have a long history…
Apparently a Selena Hologram Will Be Touring Soon
A week after the world paid public tribute to Selena in the wake of the 20th anniversary of her death, a hologram is going to be created in her honor, in the same vein as the Tupac hologram that appeared with Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at Coachella 2012 and…
What I Learned in Paris
Transport yourself back to a time when, in just moments, politician Maynard Jackson will become the first African-American mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. Jackson’s historic 1973 mayoral election serves as the backdrop for Pearl Cleage’s rich romantic comedy What I Learned in Paris. Ensemble Theatre Artistic Director Eileen J. Morris directs…
Sugar Land Wine & Food Affair
The five-day ultimate wine and food connoisseur event, the Sugar Land Wine & Food Affair returns for its 12th year. It kicks off with a five-course, Italian-themed dinner called La Dolce Vita. Chefs from Arcodoro, Coppa Osteria, Quattro and Ristorante Cavour are lending their culinary skills, while Banfi takes care…
My Friend Is Prettier Than Me. Help!
Welcome to Ask Willie D, Rocks Off’s advice column where the Geto Boys MC answers reader questions about matters, in his own words, “funny, serious or unpredictable.” Something on your mind? Ask Willie D! I’M JEALOUS OF MY FRIEND BECAUSE SHE’S PRETTIER THAN ME Dear Willie D: Hanging out with…
Nicholas Sparks’s Bull-Riding Romance The Longest Ride Is Total BS and Totally Great
The Longest Ride is Nicholas Sparks’s most ambitious novel. Instead of one couple, there’s two — and he’s even stretched out of his blond/Southern/Christian comfort zone to make the older pair Jewish. For balance, and for pandering to the powerful conservative audience who made American Sniper a megahit, his young…
Has Marvel Finally Figured Out How to Make Daredvil Work On Screen?
The screen version of any long-running comic-book superhero inevitably feels thin compared to the richly detailed idea of that hero in the minds of the fans who grew up with it. Five movies in, no Hollywood Spider-Man has yet embodied, all at once, the comic iteration’s glorious contradictions. He’s the…
Capsule Art Reviews: April 9, 2015
Capsule reviews by Joelle Jameson, Randy Tibbits and Susie Tommaney “Barnett Newman: The Late Works” “Barnett Newman: The Late Works,” which recently opened at The Menil Collection, is the venue’s major show of the spring season. It’s the first close look at the late-career works of one of the most…
Capsule Stage Reviews: April 9, 2015
Shadowlands Not since Barbara Stanwyck, as self-sacrificing mother Stella Dallas (1937), who peered into that upper-crust window to see her daughter finally find happiness, has there been such a weepie as William Nicholson’s love story Shadowlands. Perhaps Erich Segal’s Love Story, the curse of the early ’70s, might be next,…
Duo YUMENO
East and West meet in an impressive concert by Duo YUMENO. Yoko Reikano Kimura, a traditional Japanese koto/shamisen player and singer, and Hikaru Tamaki, a classical cellist, make up the awardwinning duo. Don’t think the pairing of traditional Asian and classical Western instrumentation is a gimmick. The New Yorkbased performers…
St. Petersburg Ballet: Swan Lake
In 1842, ballet-mad fans in Russia made a soup with famed prima ballerina Marie Taglioni’s pointe shoes (yes, they ate it!). It’s been 173 years since the shoe-soup incident, and Russia continues to produce dancers who deserve such wild devotion — among them members of the renowned Saint Petersburg State…
Stupid F##king Bird
The Seagull, Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov’s take on life, love and artistic integrity, was first produced in 1896. Almost 120 years later, playwright and director Aaron Posner has adapted the show for modern audiences and named it Stupid F##king Bird. With brief nudity, copious swearing and audience participation, Bird was…
For Dennis DeYoung, It’s Still the Best of Times
To many classic-rock fans, it would seem a bit of unnecessary clarification to bill a Dennis DeYoung show as “Dennis DeYoung: The Music of Styx.” After all, as the band’s main vocalist, chief songwriter and keyboardist, anyone with a ticket to the show surely knows they will hear the headliner…
