New Heights
SAT 8/29 Tucked away in the more industrial part of downtown sits the sprawling Meridian. Inside is a mammoth, dark space lit with a deep red hue, complete with corner lounges with drapes, fluffy pillows and cushy benches. It’s reminiscent of a mobster flick — when you enter, you half-expect…
The Agony of Adultery
In We Don’t Live Here Anymore, an overwrought domestic drama about a pair of entangled couples, Peter Krause plays philandering writer Hank Evans, struggling to produce as he propositions female students at the college where he teaches. Blithely pretentious, fretful over only his writing, Hank observes from a distance as…
Baller’s Ball
In late July, the Houston Rockets traded All-Star point guard Steve Francis, guard Cuttino Mobley and forward Kelvin Cato to the Orlando Magic for All-Star Tracy McGrady and some throw-in players. Sports rhetoric aside, one of the main reasons for the trade was character. “Francis is selfish, he isn’t a…
Season’s Greetings
One of the best things about fall is the brand-new season of shows blooming across H-town. This year five major venues — from the much-revered Alley Theatre to the funky Infernal Bridegroom Productions — have put together rosters of shows that will make anyone who loves the stage sing. Here…
Boozin’ Music
FRI 8/27 With a name as shamelessly self-explanatory as the Intoxicated Dance Party, little more in the way of description would seem to be in order — except, of course, for who’s gonna be on the bill. Austin mash-up artist DJ Jester the Filipino Fist will be doing what he…
Capsule Reviews
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change! If only love trouble were as simple as Joe DePietro and Jimmy Roberts imagine it to be in their hugely popular musical revue I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change! The amusing bauble of a production now running at Stages Repertory Theatre gives…
Like a Prayer
Danny Magner and Jason Brown stumble onto the stage, passing a jug of booze back and forth and sloppily strolling about in drunken rhythm. They’re the Lurch brothers in FrenetiCore’s Sacred Harp, and they surely live up to their surname. Billed as a Southern gothic morality play, The Sacred Harp…
On the House
Project Row Houses has always been as much about community as art, so it’s not surprising that the idea of community should run through most of its “Round 20 Artist Installations.” For its decade-long existence, PRH has used art to advocate for Third Ward residents, working to reclaim and revitalize…
Rock and Roll Dream Team
Behold, ye underachieving, Internet-surfing cubicle dwellers of corporate America: Your next great workplace distraction awaits. For I have invented it: fantasy rock stars. Fantasy rock stars aims to combine two of modern society’s most debilitating obsessions — celebrity worship and fantasy sports — into one fabulous national pastime. For the…
Capsule Reviews
“Darren Waterston: Chimera” Waterston’s show presents an ambitious, site-specific wall work and several of his lush and gorgeously atmospheric paintings. Running over three walls, the mural, also called Chimera, is the artist’s first in a commercial space. Its imagery includes pale blue snaking forms, clusters of black tadpoles/spermatozoa swimming across…
Streets of Philadelphia
Marah appears Friday, August 27, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main. For more information, call 713-529-9899.
Transcendent Tacos
All tacos 99 cents
Cheese enchiladas $2.99
Three tamales with rice and beans $4.95
Bingo Was Its Name-O
Seven years ago, back when he still cashed checks from the Fabulous Satellite Lounge, David Beebe hit on a simple idea that would eventually enliven hundreds of Mondays for thousands of people all over south and central Texas. His new retro-lounge band the El Orbits would provide the musical soundtrack…
Rum Runner
It’s almost a pity that one has to enjoy a whole meal at Buon Appetito (2231 West Holcombe, 713-665-4601) before getting to taste the house specialty, the torta ‘o rum ($4.50). Italians love to add liqueur to almost anything they cook, especially desserts. So it is with the torta ‘o…
Let’s Get Nuts
Today, even with life’s modern conveniences, we have less time for ourselves. There simply is no time to dilly-dally. Grab it and go. Drive-thru window. Minute rice. Microwave burrito. And now more than ever, there’s a premium on our days off. You work hard, and the only thing worse than…
Drive By Truckers
Over the past three years, the Alabama-bred, Athens, Georgia-based Drive By Truckers have become something like the Atlanta Braves of roots rock. As the Braves were until recently known for their outstanding core of starting pitchers, so the Truckers are led by a trio of singing guitarists. There’s Patterson Hood,…
Truth and Consequences
Denise Crawford looked at her new client and saw a defendant more desperate than most. After six months in jail, Desmond Haye had been ushered in for trial as a young man without much defense — or even a defense attorney, for that matter. State District Judge Jeannine Barr delayed…
DJ Harry
DJ Harry had already scored points for cleverness when he touched up String Cheese Incident in a 2001 full-length remix. Mating jam bands and electronic dance music has always had a kind of “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?” quality to it. That fusion, “organica” — dig the term,…
Signs of Ignorance
We love our trees here in Houston. We protect them. With big, bold signs warning developers not to cut them down. Signs that, it turns out, make for a handy device to mark just where you should put the chain saw. As the accompanying pictures show, a Memorial Park-area site…
Beaver Nelson
Beaver Nelson appears Saturday, August 28, at the Continental Club, 3700 Main. Dale Watson is also on the bill. For more information, call 713-528-9899.
Bad Deeds
Flee the concrete heat — this is the unspoken mantra of thousands of Houstonians who head down to Galveston every summer. Bill Friedrich is one of them. He so enjoyed the coast that he teamed up with three partners to buy a five-bedroom house in the west end neighborhood of…
Playbill
Li’l Cap’n Travis With its flippant, pokin’-fun-at-the-Texas-music-thing lyrics and its psychedelic garage-band-with-killer-steel-guitar-player sound, on record the trippy Austin band Li’l Cap’n Travis seems like a dream substitute for all those sound-alike crap-ass pretty-boy bands pouring their hearts out on after-midnight MTV. Travis’s latest album, …In All Our Splendor, is packed…
Letters
Relative Merits Sad excesses: If these allegations are true (and they ring true), shame on you, Mr. Davila, for using your public post to unethically, and perhaps illegally, further your own family’s position at the expense of more deserving individuals [“HCCS’s Gift Basket Bonanza,” by Josh Harkinson, August 12]. And…
Jet-Propelled
There’s a new movie called Hero. Don’t confuse it with that dusty Dustin Hoffman vehicle, or with the epic Bollywood musical espionage extravaganza Hero: Love Story of a Spy (though that’s worth a mind-altering look, if you can find it). America and India aren’t directly involved here, but huge imperial…
Hey, Paula
Comedienne Paula Poundstone not only points out the skeletons in her closet, she makes them jump through hoops for the public. While most other celebrities gloss over their run-ins with the law, her official biography gutsily notes up front the sordid events of June 2001. That’s when Poundstone was arrested…
Screenplay Zero
You know how fear is scary? Well, director E. Elias Merhige is into that, especially in his new serial-killer thriller Suspect Zero. Absent, however, is the dark-comic malevolence the director smartly cultivated in his successful and disquieting Shadow of the Vampire a few years ago, bullied and bulldozed out of…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 26 Do you or any of yours have a story to share about the civil rights era? Head on over to Sharpstown Mall today for the Voices of Civil Rights Bus Tour. People from the Library of Congress will be there to take down first-hand accounts, so grab…
Constricted
It should go without saying that when one goes to see a movie about giant killer snakes, the main point of the whole endeavor is to watch people get eaten by giant killer snakes. Hardly rocket science, that. But while Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid does feature a…
Go West
A full-frontal nude scene of Colin Farrell was famously cut from the final version of A Home at the End of the World, writer Michael Cunningham’s touching tale about two best friends. It was deemed too distracting for test-screening audiences. Most people reacted in one of three ways upon hearing…
Live Baby Live
Some of the people who helped bring you dank, morose amusements such as The Crow, Dark City and The Matrix have a new movie to offer. Like The Matrix, it features a dork who flies through the air. As in Dark City, we witness the protagonist’s world radically changing shape…