Mommie Deadest
SAT 8/27 Don’t you just hate it when you drop by your mom’s house for a routine visit, maybe a bowl of chicken soup and a little chat, but instead you find that she’s been brutally murdered? Damn. What’s even worse is when someone tries to kill you when you…
Capsule Reviews
“Bill Traylor, William Edmondson and the Modernist Impulse” Bill Traylor and William Edmondson are two African-American artists whose work came to the attention of the art world and the broader public in the late 1930s because of its modern aesthetic. This Menil exhibition explores the modernist aspects of their work…
Goal Oriented
FRI 8/26 In our football-frenzied town, collegiate soccer ranks pretty low in the sports hierarchy. But fans of the Rice University women’s soccer team are kicking and screaming in anticipation of the upcoming season. Back from a record-setting 2004 campaign, this year’s Owls have one of the nation’s most talented…
Capsule Reviews
Anne of Green Gables There’s probably no better fodder for a musical than Lucy Maud Montgomery’s perennial 1908 children’s best-seller. But Sharla Boyce and Cyndi Scarr Crittenden’s adaptation falls flat anyway. An older brother-sister farm couple wants to adopt a boy to help out with the chores. But in a…
Hungry Like the Wolfe
SAT 8/27 Veteran punk rocker Allison Wolfe didn’t exactly get a welcoming vibe when she moved to our nation’s capital two years ago. “It was definitely a harsher toke,” says Wolfe of the stuffy sausage-fest that was Washington, D.C.’s music scene. “We felt like there needed to be girl bands.”…
Endangered Songbirds
Theory A: Gray hairs. “The way that we structure our live sets is, uh — we know we’re old,” admits Wrens drummer Jerry MacDonnell. “We also know that we write some pretty good rock songs, like, energy-wise. So we come out strong, only ’cause we know at the end of…
Double Ax
THU 8/25 Fans of serious fretboard pyrotechnics won’t want to miss this. Austin ax-wielder Eric Johnson is an international legend, employing a wide and deep stylistic palette from country-picking to exploratory jazz to brain-bending space rock, all of which he’ll be showing off this week at Club V. By rights,…
Hello, Yum Yum
The white-meat chicken chunks have been wrapped in dough and pan-fried. When it seems cool enough to eat, I dip the odd-looking chicken dumpling in the mixture of ground chile and soy sauce on my plate and pop it in my mouth. It’s an intriguing bite of chewy, juicy chicken…
Coal Miner Mother of a Mess
A couple of Fridays ago, my wife and son were out playing softball, and I found myself baby-sitting our infant daughter. Having gotten her off to bed, it seemed as good a time as any to tear into the Oxford American’s annual music issue, so I uncorked a big bottle…
How Sweet It Is
The gooey pecan cake ($7.95) at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse (5839 Westheimer, 713-780-7352) is sort of like a pecan pie turned inside out. Think of a dense, dark cake with the consistency of bread pudding. Imagine it covered with caramelized pecan pralines and a thick caramel sauce, served warm. Next to…
Rock Floozies Write
Rock-related books encompass a lot of categories: autobiography, biography, critical analysis and rush-job-done-mostly-with-magazine-clippings (usually published shortly after a star’s OD/assassination/death following years of obscurity). But perhaps the most interesting subgenre is the groupie tell-all. Women whose chief claim to fame is balling a musician often turn in the most interesting…
Burnt Offerings from the USDA
The fact that contestants in Uncle Fletch’s Hamburger Cook-off felt free to ignore the USDA’s guidelines, and that the contest was willing to accept the liability, shows how low confidence in the USDA’s credibility has fallen. The USDA says that hamburgers are unsafe to eat unless they’re cooked to an…
Death Cab for Cutie
What Death Cab for Cutie does best on its major-label debut, Plans, is capture flashbulb moments of melancholy — the dissolution of a summer romance, growing apart from a lover, being dumped by an egotistical jerk — and analyze them with astounding honesty. Take the tear-inducing “What Sarah Said.” Solitary…
Burnt Offerings from the USDA
The fact that contestants in Uncle Fletch’s Hamburger Cook-off felt free to ignore the USDA’s guidelines, and that the contest was willing to accept the liability, shows how low confidence in the USDA’s credibility has fallen. The USDA says that hamburgers are unsafe to eat unless they’re cooked to an…
Angels of Light
On Michael Gira’s fourth studio release under the band name Angels of Light, he continues to lay out the same naked and personal material he explored on 2003’s Everything Is Good Here/Please Come Home. The big difference on this recording is the use of Akron/Family as his band. Gira has…
Texas Burger Binge
The burger was a monster — well over a pound of ground meat scorched to a forbidding-looking shade of black with charred bits on the outside that crunched between your molars. The black crust was a delightful contrast to the rosy pink interior, which oozed juices. The homemade bun was…
Ryksopp
On Röyksopp’s disappointing follow-up to Melody A.M. , a selection of ear-friendly, soulless dance pop shows little of the band’s former promise and spark. One wonders whether a few more years between albums would have been in order. The album’s opening Beethoven riff leads into a slow, mechanically driving build…
Lez Hook Up
“There are a lot of films about lesbian serial killers. But that’s just not a real big problem in the lesbian community.” Herein lies the problem with mainstream films about lesbians, according to the singly monikered filmmaker Alpha, creator of the Austin-based production company Passion Fruit Video. Her efforts to…
Eighteen Hamburgers You Need to Try Right Now
“Anybody who doesn’t think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy.” — Calvin Trillin Where else but Space City could you find so many fancy new burgers, time-honored classics and dinosaurs on a bun? It’s not a single burger but the…
Chris Whitley
Back in 1991, Chris Whitley’s debut record was a critical favorite played incessantly by indie record store clerks and praised for its atmospheric, consumer-friendly take on the blues. But for all of Whitley’s talent on the guitar, he was an overwrought singer who shunned the limelight, and his sound was…
Fool’s Gold
Pay attention, because this scam is a tricky one. Here’s the quick and dirty: A company lures unemployed professionals to its fancy office with the promise of offering premier career-counseling services. The counselor is actually a salesman, who verbally and illegally guarantees the client a cherry job in as little…
Close to the Vest
In many cities, police officers have badgered their bosses to get as many bulletproof vests as possible. But those cities aren’t like Houston. Houston, you may know, is freaking hot. And humid. Ever try to wear a bulletproof vest in August while directing traffic on Louisiana? Earlier this summer, HPD…
The Knitters
It wasn’t pretty 20 years ago, and it ain’t pretty now. Wasn’t supposed to be, and it never will. And yet the Knitters — this loose side project that was dedicated as much to drinking and friendship as to picking and art — have had a profound effect on popular…
Camp Death
CRAWFORD — There’s a bunch of people standing across the street from the Yellow Rose, waiting to see if it’ll blow up. An hour earlier, someone called the Crawford Police Department and said the general store was going to go up in smoke. If it blows, it will incinerate the…
Ozzfest
Ozzy Osbourne may be a doddering old relic and his wife (and festival coordinator) a shrill, overexposed harpy, but Osbourne’s namesake festival has remained amazingly successful as it hits its tenth anniversary. For a full day of unironic metal horns, black clothing and so much headbanging that the area should…
Letters
Fighting for Benefits Back from Iraq: This is a great article about the plight of Department of Defense contractors and what happens after they are injured or sick [“Who Cares?” by Margaret Downing, August 11]. I have worked in Iraq since the invasion, and I was injured in Iraq by…
Aquabats, with the Eyeliners, the Phenomenauts and Time Again
A decade ago, wacky ska preceded bling-bling rap as an ostentatiously decadent musical movement. With choreographed horn sections inflating their ranks, groups in this subgenre traveled in RV trailers instead of tour vans. The most successful of these acts, the Clueless-canonized Mighty Mighty Bosstones, even carried a designated dancer on…
Eighteen Greater Houston Hamburgers You Need to Try Right Now
“Anybody who doesn’t think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy.” — Calvin Trillin Where else but Space City could you find so many fancy new burgers, time-honored classics and dinosaurs on a bun? It’s not a single burger but the…
Throw Rag, with Los Skarnales, Sean Reefer & the Resin Valley Boys and Hell City Kings
Punk rock history is littered with dismal attempts at creative growth, from the Angelic Upstarts’ New Wave misstep to Seven Seconds’ spiritual awakening. But on 13 Ft. & Rising, the California desert rats in Throw Rag make a satisfying step forward that’s unlikely to irk their biggest fans. And anyway,…
Wild in Webster
Adema is a relatively serious, ambitious hard-rock band from California, touring behind their new CD, Planets, while working to shake off the nü-metal stigma. Girls Gone Wild is a series of popular home videos where “girls” — i.e., roughly college-age women — go “wild,” which doesn’t mean they rip each…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 25 There was a time when Buffalo Bayou was thought of as merely our city’s pathetic attempt at a river. But thanks to renewed interest, it’s now recognized as a historic waterway that supports a thriving ecosystem. Leading the lovefest is the Buffalo Bayou Partnership and its affiliate,…
Better Mood
Cineastes swooned over Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai’s 2000 film In the Mood for Love, a slow-as-molasses melodrama about two tediously formal people whose spouses are having an affair with each other. Thrown together by circumstance, they find themselves falling in love but, determined not to emulate their cheating…