Rice Freeze
The 2003 Princeton Review ranked Rice University the best academic bang for your buck. Students can get a top-notch education for a relatively low price compared to other, competitive, highly selective Ivy League-level schools. The reason is that Rice has a hefty endowment that generates funding for nearly half the…
Single Frame Ashtray, with Faceless Werewolves and Frox Noxon
“Garage rock” only begins to describe young Austin trio Single Frame Ashtray’s sound, which also includes elements of indie pop, punk, new wave, kraut rock and rap. According to drummer-vocalist Adreon Henry, the band strives for its albums to sound like compilations. “We were really focusing on not having songs…
Memories
Where have you gone, Bob Claypool? Actually Claypool, like Joe DiMaggio, has passed on to his final reward. As has the paper for which he wrote years’ and years’ worth of rock criticism, The Houston Post. Claypool and The Post may be long gone, but both lived on for Houston…
The Kants, with Groceries and Drillbox Ignition
Droningly melodic yet psychedelically hypnotic indie rockers the Kants can’t agree on the pronunciation of their band’s name (bassist Lee Walker rhymes it “fonts” as their namesake philosopher did, while deadpan vocalist/savagely expressive guitarist Ted Conway rhymes it with “pants”). But no matter their name, the trio will make you…
The Schmooze Returns to City Hall
Last week’s City Council session served up yet another bruising sucker punch to the jowls of battered Mayor Lee Brown. Mayor Pro Tem Gordon Quan ignored his appointed role of quarterbacking the administration’s agenda and instead voted for a one-week delay in council reconsidering the controversial SimDesk computer contract. With…
Big Tymers and Lil’ Wayne
Like so many popular rap empires before it, it seems like the crew of Cash Money Records is on the wane. Still, it could be worse: Juvenile and B.G. have packed up their collection of gold and platinum grills and moved on to greener pastures, but at least the Big…
Bad Judge; Worse Security Guard
Last week The Insider reported on the job-hunting adventures of Stephen Mansfield, the former state Court of Criminal Appeals judge who had taken a job as a uniformed security guard at the Texas Medical Center. Unfortunately for Mansfield, it appears he was as ill-suited for his new vocation as he…
Hot? Not.
If you already know that female and male humans employ somewhat different strategies for relieving themselves of liquid waste, you’re in for no surprises in Rob Schneider’s latest look-at-me-I’m-so-cute comedy, The Hot Chick. Every few minutes a dumb pee-pee gag rears its little head, usually as Schneider bumbles around half-clad…
Thumb TAKS
Thumb TAKS Journalism junkie: As HISD administrators begin preparing their excuses in advance of impeding calamity, I can only watch wryly as they struggle to solve a problem while ignoring the means to do so [“Wake-Up Call,” by Margaret Downing, November 28]. Last spring, teachers at my school were given…
Jenny from the Crock
Maid in Manhattan, in which Jennifer Lopez goes from pauper to princess, comes not from a screenplay but from a handful of self-help books and fairy tales and fashion magazines cut and pasted together in a glossy montage and committed to celluloid. Characters, made from the highest-grade cardboard and resplendent…
All Together Now
At this weekend’s “La Noche Buena,” an evening of Latino holiday music, San Antonio songstress Tish Hinojosa joins El Quinto Sol in a traditional posada, a Christmas song about Mary and Joseph searching for an inn. You would think that Hinojosa, who was born in Texas to Mexican parents, had…
Beat It
Of all the movies you could be spending your December with — and there are many good choices, from Oscar-bait to better-than-expected sequels like The Santa Clause 2 — why would you want to end up at Drumline? “Hey, dear, wanna go see the new Scorsese flick, or maybe one…
MECA Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe
It is said that in 1531 the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared before a poor native Mexican named Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill in Mexico City. Today her shrine there receives ten million visitors each year; Pope John Paul II himself has paid his respects. MECA celebrates the Feast Day of…
Miller’s Crossing
Each of the beautifully made vignettes that constitute Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity glimpses a young woman caught at a crossroads, faced with an important decision and about to experience one of those rare dilations of vision that can change an entire life. Now, this is a common ploy in what…
Wendy Liebman
They call her the Queen of the Asides. Wendy Liebman, winner of the 1997 American Comedy Award for funniest female stand-up, lulls audiences into a state of false confidence with her big disarming smile, then zaps them with unexpected snaps of cunning wit. Her style is frequently referred to as…
There’s No Place Like Hollywood
Theatre Under the Stars has had its way with movies this year, and the results have not been pretty. From the tepid Some Like It Hot to the disastrous Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, the productions have been a long, stinky lesson in what not to do with the flicks…
Drink Pink
Delicious Mischief is the name of a radio program about food and wine on KRTS 92.1 FM. It’s also an apt description of the impish rascality behind the Press’s annual champagne taste test. I love these blind tastings because the overpriced, pretentious wines always lose. Last year a cheap Spanish…
The Second Coming
Where’s Andrew Lloyd Webber when you need him? Even his troubled version of Mary Haley Bell’s novel, Whistle Down the Wind, has got to be better than the disaster of a musical now running at The Masquerade Theatre. The saddest part of all is that the dead weight of this…
November Pain
Backstage at General Motors Place in Vancouver, the tension was as thick as the morning fog that often cloaks the rainy West Coast city. An hour after doors had opened at 6:30 p.m. for the band’s 9:30 p.m. showtime, officials with the venue’s management, Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, were…
Reel Life
America is in an era of self-conscious, packaged and often constructed history. The news media blurs the line between information and entertainment, determining tone and selecting for us which images will become iconic of which events. The entertainment industry quickly recycles current events into blockbuster films and made-for-TV movies. Museums…
Retro Electro
Just like Samson, Peaches gets power from her hair; it’s just that hers is shorter and curlier. Witness her self-directed video for “Set It Off,” which opens with the rapper (a ringer for Carla from Cheers) perched on a urinal in pink undies and cheapo aviator sunglasses. She chants the…
Tommy Fitzpatrick
Fortunately for Tommy Fitzpatrick, Houston has a plethora of steel and glass office buildings. Fitzpatrick uses their architectural geometry as the point of departure for the flat planes of his paintings, such as Twilight Triptych, a dynamic, vertigo-inducing trio of ten-foot canvases. In his most recent paintings, Fitzpatrick breaks through…
Nightmare Before Christmas
Scott Aaron Wexton’s parents didn’t reckon on this when they took him to the mall and bought him an organ. Who could have fathomed a future in which their son would become obsessed with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Tom Waits, Haitian religious imagery and French electronica pioneer Jean-Jacques Perrey? How could…
End of the Road
Notes from a network executive’s forthcoming biography, pilfered from the desk of an editor at a major publishing house. This was hard to read, as it was scribbled in crayon on the back of a copy of Highlights taken from a pediatrician’s office. From page 412: “Last week, I met…
Rap Avengers
It’s midnight on a Wednesday going into Thursday, and it’s cold enough for breath to smoke. Nevertheless, the small parking lot in front of KPFT studios is full. Cars are also parked up and down Lovett Boulevard. Clearly, given that it’s midweek and positively polar by Houston standards, whatever is…
The Most Extreme Sport of All
Don’t be surprised if 200 crazies on bicycles roll past your house this weekend hootin’, hollerin’ and bunny-hoppin’. The annual North American Cycle Courier Championships (NAC3) are coming to Houston, and they’re bringing bike couriers from Canada, Ireland, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, the UK and all over the United…
Hell on Wheels
Standing on her pedals, Breanna Brand drills a hole into the starting light with her eyes. Her bike, the light, the track — these are the only things in the 17-year-old’s world right now. Her dark brown hair pulled into a tight bun, her fingers locked around her handlebars, she…
Combat Rock
Brian McManus is stalking the stage with thong panties on top of his damn head. The Fatal Flying Guilloteens guitarist is immersing himself in his alter ego: the beer-swigging, foulmouthed, white-boy pimp daddy known as Filthy McNasty, whose screeching soul stylings and tongue-in-cheek swagger make him like a cross between…
Texas Chick
The only problem with chicken-fried chicken (or chicken-fried steak, for that matter) is that you can’t eat it with your hands — not unless you wish to make a complete fool of yourself. Put it in a sandwich, and problem solved. At Casas Deli and Catering (2811 Washington, 713-862-4689) this…
Taking a Toll
Each April, more than 10,000 bird-watchers from all over the world visit the Bolivar Flats Shorebird Sanctuary near Galveston. They come to witness the spectacle of thousands of birds migrating north for the summer from Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The loamy silt of the Bolivar Mud Flats contains a rich buffet…
Baboon
The title of Baboon’s new album, Something Good Is Going to Happen to You, is truth in advertising, so long as you crack the shrink-wrap and give it a few listens or, better yet, a few hundred. It would apply just as easily to the band, had someone said it…
Dancing in Debt
Another area arts group falters. In a recorded message, the Houston Metropolitan Dance Company cited the economic climate in canceling its November performances at the Wortham Theater Center. But there may be more than just Allison, Enron and 9/11 (the litany recited by the opera and symphony when announcing layoffs…
K-Otix / The ARE
The members of K-Otix claim that these two platters — the products of a hiatus between MCs Mic and Damien and their producer the ARE — are merely hour-long musical pacifiers designed to tide their fans over until they properly follow up last year’s group effort, Universal. Don’t let that…