Shock and Awe
Military clerk Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) is something of a modern-day Sergeant Bilko. Anything you need, he can get. Any scam that’s possible, he’ll run. Never mind the bumbling Colonel Berman (Ed Harris) who ostensibly runs the unit — Elwood has him wrapped around his finger. There’s just one major…
Endless Boogie
Oh, we got both kinds of music in here,” said the barmaid to Elwood Blues. “Country and western.” That line from The Blues Brothers got a lot of yuks, but that hillbilly barmaid was right. There is a difference. Country music and western music sound the same only to Yankees…
Bard Beauty
Through August 16 at Miller Outdoor Theatre, Hermann Park, 713-284-8352. Free.
Alphabet Soup
Confidence is a big part of the rock and roll game. If you’re a young band and you don’t have it, don’t present it and don’t believe in it, then you might as well pack it up, because there are dozens of hungrier groups out there. That’s why it’s so…
People Person
Through August 31 at the University of Houston’s Blaffer Gallery, 120 Fine Arts Building, 713-743-9530.
Racket
Ah yes, the 14th annual Houston Press Music Awards showcase. It was sublime. It was excellent. It was amazing. It was also, at times, utterly ridiculous. More than 70 bands performed on 14 stages, and more than 9,000 people attended, making this the largest ever showcase in the number of…
FOB Story
Cue the music: modern, sitar-heavy funk over the opening credits. That guy in the ridiculous ’70s-style attire — horrendous even by that decade’s unfortunate fashion standards — is our hero, Hari. His thick black hair lies limp on his scalp with all the life of a cheap wig. He nearly…
Chaat Room
The plump Indian lady at the front counter of Bombay Sweets & Pure Vegetarian Restaurant on Hillcroft is shouting something across the restaurant. She sounds pissed at somebody. But we are too greedily immersed — in the fire-roasted eggplant and green chile stew called bengan bhurta and the spicy garlic-and-ginger-studded…
Jail Hell
On March 15, Cissy Aikins and her husband, Mike, went to visit her brother at the Montgomery County Jail in Conroe. James Henry Mitchell had been brought in two nights before on a warrant for a parole violation. They recall he had been coherent and acted normal, showing no signs…
Tale of Two Cities
Carol Porter, who garnered national recognition for running the feed-the-children charity Kid-Care, has been laying low since a ton of bad publicity led her to resign in May. Laying low for Porter, though, includes constantly pushing her defense on reporters and supporters. The latest thing she’s steamed about is a…
Letters to the Editor
Blasting Cyberspace Fantasy and reality: Fantastic article by Jennifer Mathieu [“Game On,” July 24]. It was refreshing to see that the Team Forsaken kids aren’t totally obsessed with their gaming. It hasn’t consumed them. This helps dilute the ubiquitous stereotype of the isolated loser sitting alone in front of his…
The Mormon Market
So you wanna make a movie? One that people actually pay to see? Here’s an idea: Put a Mormon character in your film. According to Mark Potter, who wrote and directed Suddenly Unexpected, folks will come out in droves. “It’s very hard as an independent filmmaker to get someone to…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 7 Hilarioso. Former Enron chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay had the nerve to call Rebecca Smith, a Wall Street Journal reporter, “sneaky.” Now, we all know who the true sneak is. But Smith, along with fellow journalist John Emshwiller, began researching the story of Enron’s shady dealings weeks…
The Black Keys
Though guitar ‘n’ drums blues/punk duos are proliferating faster than the offspring of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, none of them plays more down and dirty than this pair from Akron, Ohio. The White Stripes, the Raveonettes, and the Kills may all have loftier musical ambitions, but the Keys — guitarist/vocalist Dan…
A Man of Letters
As anyone who’s ever taken an “Origin of the Novel” course can tell you, the epistolary format peaked, oh, more than two centuries ago, a few decades after Samuel Richardson launched the literary movement in England with Pamela in 1740. Nipping at that story-in-letters’ heels came a boatload of epistolary…
Beyoncé
Well, it’s official: Beyoncé Knowles’s “Crazy in Love” is the new “Hot in Herre.” The first single from her solo debut, Dangerously in Love, is, well, “destined” to be the summer anthem. You’ll hear it blasting out of passing cars and booming out of nightclubs. It will blare out of…
Female Fear
THU 8/7 When most people think of the concentration camps run by the Nazis, it’s the large, sprawling death camps like Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau that come to mind. But the Germans also had many smaller camps for transit, work and other purposes. Located 50 miles north of Berlin, Ravensbrück…
The Crusaders
You know what? You don’t hear much about the Crusaders around these parts, which is a shame, considering that the group was formed right here in Houston. You never hear about how piano man Joe Sample joined up with tenor saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer Nesbert “Stix” Hooper and formed…
Teenage Scribeland
Wonder what teenagers think about? If this year’s Alley Theatre Houston Young Playwrights Exchange program is any measure, then try ’50s small-town racism, Napoleon’s last day on St. Helena and a teen trapped in her mother’s purse. This weekend, five winning local playwrights will see their scripts read in front…
Ray Charles
Flip Wilson used to do a drag bit back in the ’60s where he played Spain’s Queen Isabella as an African-American mama. “Columbus is gonna find Ray Charles!” he would declare in a deliciously thrilled tone, as if Brother Ray were as valuable and rare as all the gold in…
Tough and Well Preserved
THU 8/7 Here’s a truly inspired double bill: ’80s ladies Joan Jett and Pat Benatar. Both could grind the current crop of female pinups and “sensitive” singer-songwriters into the dirt with their stiletto heels — and look damn good doing it. The subjects of quite a few Gen-X masturbatory fantasies…
Los Lonely Boys
Two years ago, Los Lonely Boys were described in these pages as young phenoms whose Spanglish roadhouse blues-rock was taking them to the big leagues on a fast track. We were right. Since then the Garza brothers — singer-guitarist Henry, singer-bassist JoJo and drummer-singer Ringo — have progressed rapidly from…
Moddening Crowds
TUE 8/12 For a while there, relocated East Coast DJ Mod Scott (also known as Scott Mesorana) couldn’t find a spot in town where he could play ’60s pop music. Earlier this year, he hooked up with former Fitzgerald’s booker Lara Lowery and spent an evening spinning ’60s soul, reggae…
The Mooney Suzuki
Jane says the best reason to head out to this year’s Lollapalooza, risking dehydration and mosh-pit injuries, is the Mooney Suzuki. Chock-full of fuzzy guitars, nostalgic harmonies and balls-out energy, this New York-based foursome is reminiscent of late-’70s punk with a 21st-century edge. The quartet provides the kind of music…
Water Wonderful World
It’s hard to imagine Santa Fe, Texas, as the center of anything. But the water-skiing universe will converge at Lago Santa Fe’s four man-made ski lakes this weekend for the U.S. Open Water Ski Championship. Athletes from all over the world will compete in best professional trick, slalom and jump-skiing…
Soaring Castle
Simon must propose to me now,” exclaims pretty, simpleminded Rose (Rose Byrne), “before he meets somebody else or gets to know me better!” Welcome to the none-too-subtly named Mortmain family, wherein foundering patriarch James (Bill Nighy) — for all symbolic definitions a dead writer — has been allowing his prolonged…
Shakin’ That Smart Ass
Jace Clayton put some hoodoo on my virtual whereabouts the other day. As I surfed the Web, I had one browser window open in the background to his Soot label’s site, and another open to surf while I listened to his mix CD Minesweeper Suite on my headphones. Suddenly, in…