This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, Decenber 18 One of Houston’s most successful unsigned bands from back in the day is back together. Yes, Toy Subs will be playing its brand of straight-ahead rock and roll at a kind of reunion show downstairs at Fitzgerald’s today, sharing the bill with fellow fondly remembered Houstonians Zu…
Only In America
Sorrow sprouts wings and flies in Jim Sheridan’s radiant new film In America, which pits the pain and grief of unimaginable loss against the resilience of the human heart. In this semiautobiographical tale from the writer-director of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, a working-class Irish…
Blue Christmas
Here we are at the end of the U.S. Congress-declared “Year of the Blues” (insert your own Executive Branch joke here), and it’s actually been a good annum for the genre. The Martin Scorsese-produced PBS documentary series The Blues and a slew of CD and book releases have brought a…
A Fan’s Notes
This being the end of the year, and since none of the people I wanted to write about this week felt it necessary to return any of my calls, from the leftover heap comes this collection of random topics I considered tackling this year but lost interest in after 200…
In Harm’s Way
Our most enduring image of a World War II woman is of Rosie the Riveter, the plucky gal on the assembly line with the bandanna, rolled-up sleeves and look of stolid determination. But women played a far greater role — often unheralded — in actual military service. Thousands joined female-only…
Dream Team
Strange as it might sound, tuna fish, Ronald Reagan, the Infant of Prague and Sally Jessy Raphael all fit with perfect logic into Christopher Durang’s wonderfully bizarre satire Laughing Wild. Set in the 1980s, when Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Phil Donohue still had cultural cachet, the show attacks a world…
Whooping It Up
THU 12/18 Houstonians often complain that we don’t have seasons. But that’s not a problem for Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Joe, who hustle south each winter to enjoy our mild Gulf Coast weather. Nor do migratory birds seem to long for salty roads and frozen lakes. A group of endangered…
Water Colors
There’s a complexity of pattern in the branching of a tree, the sculpted shape of a cloud, the ripples on the surface of a fast stream, that cannot be duplicated by a human artist with brush and palette. German artist Mario Reis realized this in 1977, sitting at the Seine…
The Pageant Must Go On
What happens when the nastiest kids in town take over the church Christmas pageant? They learn about the true meaning of Christmas, of course. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever tells the story of the dreadful Herdman herd. All six kids are bad — they lie, cuss and smoke cigars (even…
Stoot Session
FRI 12/19 They call him “Funkafangez.” Actually, his name is Corey Stoot, but when a guy has a nickname like that (given to him by Houston rap favorite Devin the Dude, no less), it’s silly not to mention it.It’s a nickname that suits the 33-year-old Houstonian very well. Stoot has…
Hayes, Dude
SAT 11/20 Robert Earl Keen may be playing the Verizon Theater this Saturday, but his brand of uncool isn’t your only country option that night. Instead, you can hang with homeboy Hayes Carll — our taller, younger and much wittier answer to Robert Earl, the patron saint of Aggies. And…
Ancient Eggplant
Ephesus GrillMeze tabagi$7.99
Iskender kabob$10.99
Patlican kabob$10.99
Mixed kabob$16.99
Kunefe$4.49
Turkish coffee$1.99
Shrimp and Sunset
Most Houstonians looking for a little scenery and some fresh seafood make a run for Galveston or Kemah. For a change of pace, head to the Seabrook Shipyard, home of the Sundance Grill (222 Jennings Island in Seabrook, 281-474-2248). The shipyard, family-owned since 1939, may seem an unlikely setting for…
Shawn Pander Homecoming Show
If you’re like me, you’ve often found yourself waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking, “My God! I wonder what Shawn Pander is up to these days!” Well, actually, quite a lot. Since relocating to L.A. six months ago, the singer-songwriter has signed a…
Acid Test
Getting a story out of Linus Pauling Quartet on the occasion of the release of their positively stellar new album, C6H8O6, is one of the hardest things I have ever undertaken in this business. The band’s a lot like Pigpen off Peanuts, only the cloud around it is not one…
Wild Kingdom
It’s a clear, warm night, and the 17-year-old is on his roof howling at the full moon. Furboy Zero can’t explain the feeling that compels this behavior. It just hits, and the stocky teen is on autopilot, planting his feet on the gate between the single-story white house and the…
The Spirit of the Scabs
This past Thanksgiving Day, while the usual narcissistic suspects who bemoan Houston’s alleged lack of a music scene lounged on the sofa, barely able to budge from the overdose of tryptophan coursing through their veins, a near-capacity college-age crowd at the Continental Club had other ideas. They were getting their…
You Better Watch Out
Two years ago, it took Jerry Bruckheimer $135 some-odd million to re-create the mayhem of December 7, 1941. On a recent Sunday night, all it took was two dozen smoking, swearing, stumbling Santas, a round of drinks at a downtown bar and 15 minutes of rehearsal to stage Houston’s second…
Rappin’ Up Gifts
‘Tis the season for giving, and if you have friends or loved ones who have a thing for the hippity-hop, you might want to stuff their stocking with some hype shit this year. They’ve probably already downloaded or burned a pirate copy of all the high-profile stuff that’s out now,…
The Six-Year Itch
Two weeks from now, all city department heads will submit their resignations to incoming mayor Bill White. The three-term limit on the city’s top elective position has effectively created the window for an administrative purging every six years, with the new chief executive able to dispose of unpopular directors in…
I’m Not Dreaming of a White Christmas
Ho ho freakin’ ho, it’s Christmas time again, and time for Racket to get his Scrooge on. But instead of trashing a bunch of half-baked yuletide CDs, this time around we’re going deeper on the subject of Christmas music. Not that we’re religious, but aside from a few hymns, we…
Writer’s Block
Houston author Kathryn Casey thought there had to be a mistake when the Texas Department of Criminal Justice refused her request to interview inmate Celeste Johnson. Johnson and her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, entered prison this year for the Austin murder of Johnson’s wealthy husband. Casey has a contract with…
A Bevy of Benefits
‘Tis the season for benefits, and if you don’t want to be haunted by a bunch of chain-clanking phantoms of your dead mean friends on Christmas Eve, make sure to attend one or more. On Saturday, December 20, there will be three shows featuring almost 20 acts — with the…
Letters
Hip-hop Heretics Respect the Lady: I have always considered your newspaper innovative and “hip-hop,” but I would think that good journalism would never cross the line of religious worship [“Hip-hop, Tejas,” by John Nova Lomax, December 4]. Needless to say, I was so disappointed in the manner that you depicted…
Mannheim Steamroller
Mannheim Steamroller’s enduring popularity is as perplexing as it is disturbing. The brainchild of one Chip Davis, an Ohio native who eventually settled in Omaha, Nebraska, the Steamroller uses Davis’s New Age deconstructions of Christmas carols to sound like Howard Jones whooping it up during a solemn midnight mass. Cheesy…
The More Things Change
The “modern” in Thoroughly Modern Millie has always been relative. When the Julie Andrews film was released in 1967, both social and sexual mores had, of course, advanced from Millie’s 1922 setting. “Modern” referred to the ’20s version — a classic, Picasso modern rather than the unflinching, Warhol variety that…
Bow Down
You know how it’s often the ones we love whose flaws are most apparent? Well, when it comes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I am smitten. This film is a miracle, an extravaganza equal to its predecessors and in some ways more stunning. It…