He’s a Maniac
Lizzard’s Pub (2715 Sackett) is nearly empty. We’re here to enter the club’s “White Boy Dance Contest,” and as we bump through the front door, it appears, much to our chagrin, that the entire thing has been called off. Or perhaps not. After all, Young MC’s mainstream geek-out “Bust a…
The Easy Road
The three women who populate Ted Swindley’s surprisingly mediocre Honky Tonk Angels have a dream. Angela, Darlene and Sue Ellen all want to be country singers. Angela’s an “honest-to-God housewife” in a Texas double-wide with husband Bubba and six kids; Darlene’s a Mississippi delta farm gal without a mama, snapping…
Big Chicken
Jokes about your favorite fast-food joint may seem lame. But Bruce Bruce is laughing all the way to the bank, thanks to his riffs on wings ‘n’ thighs. The Atlanta-based comic, who clocks in at six feet and 390 pounds, was rewarded for the jokes he makes about Popeyes with…
Son Volt
“The words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head,” sings Jay Farrar on “Bandages & Scars.” So begins Okemah and the Melody of Riot, the eagerly anticipated fourth disc by the renovated Son Volt. Okemah is Guthrie’s Oklahoma birthplace — but Farrar’s former bandmate, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, paid far…
Capsule Reviews
As You Like It Every Shakespeare festival needs a comedy, and in Houston the offering this year is As You Like It, directed by Sidney Berger. Filled with much singing and philosophizing, the play isn’t one of the Bard’s most focused comedies. But the easygoing plot allows for lots of…
Working Blue. And Brown.
Pity the daily newspaper critic who must review The Aristocrats without using such phrases as “a longshoreman’s arm up a little girl’s ass,” “then my wife goes down on my son while the dog’s licking his balls,” “my grandmother’s covered in my come,” and “is it shit before piss, or…
Dirty Projectors
Listening to the new Dirty Projectors CD, The Getty Address, makes me realize that hearing this while high would be suicidal. Why, you ask? Well, because it’s a concept album about Don Henley having a mystical experience on a mountain ridge at dusk. Scared yet? No? How about this: To…
Capsule Reviews
“Amy Arbus: Rites and Rituals” This show presents work by Amy Arbus, the daughter of legendary photographer Diane Arbus. Diane is a tough act for any photographer to follow, and it has to be even tougher if you’re her daughter. But Amy has taken up the challenge, and she’s been…
Deuce Is Wild
The Aristocrats may be the foulest-mouthed movie of the summer, but Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo is the foulest in deed, actually depicting some of the nigh-unspeakable acts that are merely hypothetical in the former film. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a big-time gross-out comedy, and European Gigolo definitely…
Darrell Scott
Lately I’ve gotten a lot of Americana records that are mopey, dreamy, sensitive, meaningful and overwrought with heartfelt plaint and artsy-fartsy visionary insight. Or worse, they look at you earnestly and say, “I’m an artist; therefore I’m purer than thou. Let me set the rest of you straight with my…
Who Cares?
He was unconscious and moaning loudly when the medic arrived to find him on the floor of the civilian workers’ tent — officially B-hut No. 13 — in Afghanistan on November 30 last year. In response to “painful stimulus,” all Celester Hall did was open one eye, his left. The…
Buckshot & 9th Wonder
Brooklyn rhymer Kenyatta “Buckshot” Blake is one of many shoulda-been-huge MCs who suffered when hip-hop became a blinger’s game. However, despite legal battles, label struggles and plain bad luck (Tupac was a fan, but he died before he could get Buckshot’s career into overdrive), the Black Moon leader hasn’t given…
Kiss and Tell
As far as the allegations go, Houston’s Father Joseph Tu Ngoc Nguyen loves the ladies. Juvenile, adult — it doesn’t matter. The word from the residential treatment center where he was sent by his religious order in 1993 was that Father Tu suffered from a “very underdeveloped psycho-sexual personality.” This…
Three-course Lunch
When you order the oyakodon rice bowl ($7) at Daiji’s Izakaya Japanese Tapas Bar (1201 Caroline, 713-651-3030), you also get a bowl of soul-warming miso soup and a simple salad drizzled with an intriguing ginger-citrus dressing. The rice bowl arrives with a smaller bowl inverted on the top — acting…
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Over the course of its 15-year existence, Brian Jonestown Massacre has established itself as one of rock’s most prolific bands. The group has released a dozen or so amazing full-length records (and a dizzying number of limited-edition singles and EPs) that run the gamut from driving, ’60s-tinged psychedelic R&B to…
Train in Vain
This summer, I’ve had a lot of trouble simply getting from point A to point B. First, there was the “African king” who approached me at the Metro Transit Center light-rail stop and attempted to get me to clean out my checking account and hand it over to him [“The…
Past Its Prime
The cramped salad bar at Taste of Texas featured a bin of chopped iceberg lettuce accented with colorful streaks of sliced red cabbage. Among the toppings were broccoli and cauliflower florets, along with black olives from a can, chopped eggs, pickled beets and a shredded-carrot-and-raisin salad. When we returned to…
Biirdie
Recalling the sly intimacy of Lou Reed and Maureen Tucker during their quieter moments, the duo of Jared Flamm and Kala Savage provides the serene poetry that makes this Biirdie fly. Though the dreamy, dusty songs on Morning Kills the Dark are colored by an array of instruments — rich…
Keeping Score
Undaunted by bad publicity, Metro light-rail trains continue to barge recklessly into cars and pedestrians. Equally undaunted, some cars and pedestrians continue to barge into the trains. But just how many collisions have occurred? There is some dispute. Metro’s count, as of August 4, is 99. In its world, Houston…
John Legend, with De La Soul and Rahzel
A little over six months ago, soul crooner John Legend released the first single, “Used to Luv U,” from his major-label debut, Get Lifted. The tune, rooted in R&B but blended with hip-hop, introduced the world to Legend’s throaty talents. Legend, born John Stephens in Springfield, Ohio, has lent his…
Letters
Drug Problem It’s a quandary: I am a clinical social worker in private practice in Houston. Many of the indigent clients that I see go to research programs like the one you describe. Not all of them are as poorly run as the Fabre Clinic [“One Dead Guinea Pig,” by…
Oneida, with Ume and the Jonx
When you think of Brooklyn’s indie rock scene right now, you conjure an image of a hipster groupie gangbang set to a swirling miasma of upchucked Wire, XTC and Gang of Four homages. Oneida, a far more eclectic-sounding bunch, stands apart from the whole we’re-more-angular-and/or-punk/funk-than-thou fest. The group’s spaced-out jams,…
Press Pix
We got a lot of entries. Some were pretty funny, some got an E for effort, and some were just, well, unusual. Winner and runners-up will get T-shirts, as will our special, out-there recipient of the “Double Take Award.” First place: Brian practiced saying “Bang!” but then suffocated in the…
Avril Lavigne, with Gavin DeGraw and Butch Walker
Britney and Kevin, Tom and Katie, and all other gratingly ubiquitous celebri-couples, please turn your attention to Avril Lavigne and Sum 41 front man Deryck Whibley. Engaged since late June, these lovestruck Canadians aren’t making a big deal about being crazy stupid for each other. No paparazzi-ready affectionate outbursts of…
Kudos Times Three
Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh has been named a double finalist in a national food-writing competition, and one of his reviews will be included in a national anthology of best food writing. Walsh is a finalist in the Association of Food Journalists Awards Competition in the Food Feature Reporting…
Get Gertie
You will be forgiven for believing Brian Herzlinger is something of a creepy guy. Certainly, at first (and 23rd) glance, the man seems to be covered in the icky residue of the stunted, the pathetic and the desperate, which makes him like most hopeful young men who move to Los…
Dream Doctor
In Michele Dugan’s Balance, a ballerina dances under a bridge in a dark, phosphorescent cavern. She’s flanked by two male figures: a skinny, bald and naked man ogling her breast; and a kneeling, half-human/half-rooster, who looks like he’s about to peck away at her posterior. It’s the kind of dream-imagery…
No Way Out
Once you get past its negligible plot, scant dialogue and almost zero action, Gus Van Sant’s elliptical rendering of the final hours in the troubled life of a grunge musician is rarely boring. That may seem like a backhanded compliment, but given the absence of such customary cinematic conventions as…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 11 Few individuals are more reliable than bartenders. They just naturally know to give us a generous pour when we’ve had an especially crappy day. And they’re also the ones who keep us from drunk-dialing our exes (for a few minutes, anyway) as they listen to our inebriated…
Swamp Thing
The Skeleton Key ranks high on the list of 2005’s funniest films, bested only by the first two-thirds of The Wedding Crashers, all of The Aristocrats and that part in Stealth where the airplane starts sassing Josh Lucas. Doubtful that was the intention of director Iain Softley (K-PAX, an inexplicably…
Oh, the Insanity
This is getting altogether too silly. — Graham Chapman, Monty Python You can be sure that things will get pretty silly in dos chicas theater commune’s newest offering, Stream of Consciousness: The Verge of Insanity. But this revue of short plays by local playwrights at least has some flow –…
Down Is Up
They used to call us nü-metal,” System of a Down singer-guitarist Daron Malakian told the ecstatic crowd at a stop on his band’s spring tour. “Now they call us prog-rock. I think they’ll call us anything that’s popular.” Then, after a pause and the subtlest of grins, he announced, “But…
Funky Bunch
The old John Wayne-Dean Martin hayburner The Sons of Katie Elder wasn’t a very good movie the first time around — Dino and a cowboy hat go together about as well as Sinatra and bib overalls — and John Singleton’s jokey, urbanized rehash isn’t likely to snow the Oscar voters…
All Right, We Give Up
SAT 8/13 Have you noticed the mysterious images of razor blades and the message “Give Up” that have been showing up on city property, blatantly flaunting the “post no bills” edict? How about the one of an hourglass, with a noose where the sand would be? What about the one…
Big Boss Man
To me, the late 1940s were one of the most fascinating times in American music history, especially for black music. In the music of guys like Louis Jordan or Louis Armstrong, you can hear snatches of everything that came before and the seeds of everything that has come since. Old-timey…
Grizzly Fate
“I always cannot understand why girls don’t wanna be with me for a long time,” says Timothy Treadwell, subject of the documentary Grizzly Man. “I have really a nice personality — I’m fun, I’m very very good in the . . . umm, well, you’re not supposed to say that…
Ropin’ the Rat
SAT 8/13 For Houston Texans fans, the long months between April and August are hellish. There’s nary a word about pro football mentioned in the local media. It’s Astros this, Rockets that. Hell, even the Comets get more love. Until the NFL’s August preseason games, that is, where veterans dial…
The Hipster’s Guide to Rock and Roll Vendettas
Some time back, we looked into the wacky world of hip-hop beefs. This week, on the occasion of this week’s Brian Jonestown Massacre show (August 11 at Walter’s on Washington — see Playbill), we revisit a few classic musical rivalries, this time with more of a rock angle. Brian Jonestown…
Unknown Soldiers
“The most daring rescue mission of our time is a story that has never been told,” boasts the poster for The Great Raid. The credits of the film, however, reveal that it’s based on not one, but two books about the 6th Ranger Battalion, which ventured 30 miles into enemy…
Russian Radio
SUN 8/14 You’d think Natilee Harren was a double agent — or at least a character out of Mission: Impossible — judging from her packing list for her September trip to Russia: passport, warm clothes, low-frequency broadcast equipment… She’s no spy, though she will be engaging in some covert action…