Night & Day
Thursday August 13 He’s a country comedian — a Stetson-wearin’, story-tellin’ guitar player from Longview, Texas — but don’t go comparing Rodney Carrington to Jeff Foxworthy or Ray Stevens. Unlike those PG-rated performers, Carrington revels in a raunchiness that would earn him a spot on HBO’s Def Comedy Jam, if…
Bullridin’ Belles
To the average spectator, eight seconds is hardly enough time to swallow that first gulp of beer. But to the athlete, it’s an eternity to spend on top of a 2,000-pound, pissed-off animal that wants you off its back. The laws of time will certainly be felt by the participants…
Hot Plate
I know there’s a rock-and-roll heaven. I’ve been there. And I know there’s a pizza heaven, too. I’ve been there, also. Want to find these pearly gates? Well, luckily for you, it doesn’t involve spiritual exercises. Just head on out to Nick-N-Willy’s Take & Bake Pizza (5010 Bissonnet, 666-9994). The…
Dish
Devising Crescendo Endings Let us now praise famous pastry chefs. Sure, those white-hatted culinary wizards who make the savory appetizers and hearty entrees get all the credit, but let’s be honest: What does the diner (if not the dentist) look forward to most if not the imminent arrival of the…
Mix Master
Considering that Pignetti’s is still in diapers — it opened in early July — this is a place remarkable for its poise. But once in a while, it reveals its inexperience. When three of us lunched there recently, the restaurant was relatively quiet, and the people in the open kitchen,…
Windy City Wonder
The much ballyhooed, award-winning revival of Chicago has finally come to Houston in all its glitzy, gorgeous, black-lace and bare-skin glory. Lowdown lawyering (is there any other kind?), cheap, tawdry women, and our oozy adoration of fame and fortune are at the utterly black heart of this very funny show…
Being Franks
With a soft, breathy tone that owes little, if anything, to the legendary likes of Joe Williams, Billy Eckstine, John Hendricks or even Mel Torme, Michael Franks sings like no one else. As a staple of contemporary jazz radio, he draws on an array of influences, from jazz to R&B…
In the Thicke of Life
Most of us past the age of 15 remember Alan Thicke as the tender-loving psychiatrist/father from Growing Pains. More recently, he did a convincing stint as Dennis Dupree, the bombastic talk-show host on Hope and Gloria. He’s also written TV specials and 45 theme songs, as well as starred in…
Young and Stylin’
The two young girls are glued to Brad McCool like family, but as it happens, they are fans of a sort. Waiting for his table at Spanish Flowers, a 24-hour Mexican joint in the Heights, the guitarist doesn’t seem to mind the girls’ presence as they stand moon-eyed and gawking…
Shop Art
The third and final exhibit at LAX Gallery, May I Help You?, by artist John Williams, can be viewed as a thumbnail sketch of one of the art world’s stronger currents, too new even to have been tagged with a name that sticks. Glutted with colored plastic, toys and trinkets,…
Mind’s Ear
Forget, for a moment, his more famous dead brother. Don’t make comparisons, and do not buy into the myth that to celebrate one you must tear down the other. Do not think that just because one brother sold hundreds of thousands of albums, and the other, thousands, that it means…
Masterful Moonlit Lake
Ballet historians agree that the first productions of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, in 1877, were uninspiring. Leading lady Pauline Karpokova was past her prime and just not good enough to play the difficult role of Odette, the Swan Queen. For years, choreographers insisted on reworking…
Dave’s World
It’s safe to say that the Dave Matthews Band owes the bulk of its tremendous success to the stage. Multicultural grandsons (of a sort) to the Grateful Dead, the band combines a jazzy, jammy feel with distinct world-beat sensibilities, using the live format to stretch out and comb for nuances…
In the Groove
The timing couldn’t be better for How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The dog days of summer are upon us, and few prospects could be more welcome to asteroid-weary moviegoers than a light romantic comedy that includes a trip to Jamaica as part of the package. Director Kevin Rodney Sullivan…
Temper, Temper
It was that rare chance to see a completely unscripted rock-and-roll moment — the type of ugly display most in the audience should remember long after memories of the British Rock Symphony fade. At first, most everyone at the Houston Arena Theatre August 2 seemed awestruck at the intimacy of…
Heroine Overdose
Minnie Driver makes a far more credible Orthodox Jew than Renee Zellweger did in A Price Above Rubies, but The Governess itself is only marginally better than that tiresome, contrived picture. The Governess, British writer/director Sandra Goldbacher’s feature debut, concerns a young Jewish woman in 1840s London who accepts a…
Static
Networking 101… Never underestimate the importance of choosing your friends wisely. Houston singer/songwriter Rogelio “Tody” Castillo has always been socially selective, and it’s paying off for his fledgling quartet, Tody and the Royals. So far, the dividends can’t be measured in amounts of money or number of units sold. Instead,…
Space Odyssey
On a summer day in 1969, as American hearts pounded in cadence to Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon, NASA engineer Tom Moser’s heart almost stopped cold. About two weeks before the epic launch, Moser’s boss at the Johnson Space Center in Houston had assigned him a top-secret mission…
Clubland
Hard to believe, but we’re already rubbing up against the deadline for the closure of Fitzgerald’s. Saturday’s gig with 30footFALL, the Suspects, Dynamite Boy, Pinhead Circus, the Overdrives and Mukraker will be the final show for at least a month. During that time, the building will undergo its first renovations,…
Of Life and Death
Erica Sheppard had decided she wanted to die. For three years, she had been on death row, convicted of the murder of Marilyn Sage Meagher, a Houston real estate agent and mother of two. Although Sheppard would later claim that she didn’t receive a fair trial, she confessed to her…
Rotation
Baaba Maal Nomad Soul Palm Pictures Ernest Ranglin In Search of the Lost Riddim Palm Pictures Baaba Maal and his 12-piece band, Daande Lanol (Voice of the People), have been a major concert attraction in Europe and West Africa since the mid-1980s. In the last few years, as a result…
Trivial Pursuit
Forward Times reporter/editor Ed Wendt, who had just been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer at M.D. Anderson Hospital while awaiting trial on a City Hall trespassing charge, called my house two weeks ago. No one was home, but on the answering-machine tape, Ed’s voice was dragging, and he sounded like…
Letters
Theories Abound Has anyone but me thought that the husband of Paul Beauchamp’s mistress (!?) may have done something — or had something done — himself [“An Open But Shut Case,” by Steve McVicker, July 30]? Perhaps Paul was almost drowned from liquor consumption and thrown into the pond to…
Imprints of the Eras
Right now, in your precious little hands, you are holding a piece of history. And despite the inky newsprint that’s undoubtedly rubbing off on your fingers, it may someday find its way into an exhibit under the category of “Late 20th-Century Alternative Newsweeklies.” That seems like just the sort of…