Houston, 24/7
Two years after announcing their plans for a station devoted 24 hours a day to local news, Time Warner and the Belo Corporation put their product on the air December 12 after a week of dry runs. News 24 Houston occupies a prime space on Time Warner’s cable dial, has…
DJ Jester
If you’ve never heard a DJ mix George Strait with some classic Young MC, then screw down some gangsta rap vocals over bagpipes and beats, you’ve obviously never been to a DJ Jester gig. Hailing from San Antonio — though born and raised in West Columbia — Jester is more…
The Naked Truth
The Naked Truth Montgomery County news flash: The article about Montgomery County and the “cover-up” of Michelangelo’s David, removal of paintings with nudes portrayed, removal of books from libraries and the banning of the class T-shirts [“(Cl)ass Warfare,” by Beth Gullett, December 5] was referenced in the Nudist News this…
Lyricist Lounge Tour
When the Lyricist Lounge first started, it was merely an open-mike spot where aspiring emcees in New York could come together and get their feet wet in the rap game. It was a showcase for new talent generally hosted by a hip-hop hero like Guru from Gangstarr or Pos from…
Not Just a White Christmas
When Regenia Perry first started collecting African-American dolls, they were hard to find. In the early 1970s, most black kids played with what was available: white dolls. As African-American dolls became more common, the collector in Perry wanted to search for items that were still rare, and she moved from…
Mean Streets
Martin Scorsese’s latest epic of the streets, Gangs of New York, means to show us how a great metropolis was forged in the mid-19th century cauldrons of unbridled greed, ethnic violence and Civil War. It means to give us the City as wild frontier — without the usual cowboy hats…
Here Comes Pancho Claus
Richard Reyes, executive director of Talento Bilingue de Houston, first donned his Pancho Claus zoot suit 20 years ago for the cultural center’s Christmas show. Today, the Latino Santa is a local icon, but in the beginning, getting gigs for old Pancho wasn’t easy. “I’d go to elementary schools,” remembers…
Schmidt Happens
It’s easy to presume About Schmidt isn’t much of a movie since its protagonist, Warren Schmidt, isn’t much of anything. He’s portrayed by Jack Nicholson, but the actor is actually someone who looks like he used to be Jack Nicholson. This Warren, this rinky-dink actuary banished to the wasteland of…
The Shannon Brothers Family Christmas
The Shannon brothers left their large Houston family years ago to pursue careers as network television comedy writers. T. Sean, who lives in Manhattan, writes sketches for Saturday Night Live, and Charlie, who hangs his hat in L.A., has written for Sinbad. When the boys return home for the holidays,…
‘Tis a Foine, Foine Loife
People in showbiz do weird things to prove their credibility. Starlets pose for skin mags, actors start rock bands, rockers become sitcoms, rappers become tombstones, and now, in a heartwarming feature called Evelyn, James Bond wants us to believe he’s an everyman. The lovely thing is, it works. As Desmond…
The Territory
On Friday night, it’s time to party. So if you’re gonna stay home, it better be for something good, like PBS’s local independent film showcase The Territory. Tomorrow, catch Moon Palace, the story of a restless young man’s search for his life’s calling, which turns out to be writing fortune-cookie…
Orc Chops
Fantasy is at its best when it ennobles our reality, and at the movies this year no fantastic adventure towers above The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The second installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s delightful yarn is adapted here just as handily as last year’s The Fellowship of the…
The Pig’s Nose Knows
For most of us, holiday cooking means turkey, ham or, if you’re adventurous, goose. But for those with higher culinary aspiration — and an ample dining budget — ’tis the season to celebrate white truffle. Imported from Italy and France and selling for $1,000 a pound, truffles are globular spores…
Christmas in Hell
Real kids are strictly forbidden, but if you’re planning to attend The 2002 Slump XXXmas Show: A Jim Jones Christmas, be sure to bring your 12-year-old inner child. Who else is going to hoot and holler at this extended carnival of fart jokes and schoolgirls showing off their ruffled pink…
Quintessential Soul
Nothing says soul food like oxtail stew. At Blue Mountain Cafe (8245 West Bellfort, 713-988-4925), it’s prepared with a Jamaican flair and served with the national side dish of peas ‘n’ rice ($7.95). The peas, which are actually red beans, are cooked with the rice in some coconut milk, giving…
Floating/Falling
Like it or not, deconstruction has hit the dance world, and choreographer and DiverseWorks resident Lori Yuill’s first evening-length work, Floating/Falling, jumps into the philosophical fray with, er, both feet, so to speak. The night of dance, inspired by the work of artist/philosopher Juan Muñoz, explores that illusive space between…
Xmas Marks the Spot
Most Americans have a love-hate relationship with yuletide music. They can’t imagine the season without it, but they sometimes wish they could. Such conflicting emotions are easy to understand after plowing through the more than 30 holiday platters that made their way to our door this year. As usual, the…
Humanity’s Hero
It’s incredibly difficult to make successful art that is also socially and politically engaged. Almost inevitably, the desire to present a message overwhelms artistic considerations and the image becomes merely an illustration for a political agenda, or worse. Remember Judy Chicago’s female-genitalia-inspired Dinner Party? Or how about the Soviet Socialist…
Slick Billies
Let’s face it, folks, a degree from a respected college is rarely a good credential in a punk’s résumé. The fact that members of the Strokes attended tony Manhattan prep schools is the loudest false note underneath their hype. And the diplomas from Emerson College and Brown University held by…
Liz Ward
Liz Ward makes meticulous, delicate paintings that are informed by nature and evoke an organic elegance. Drawn with a tiny silver wire on tinted gesso, her fragile networks of hairlike lines trace the shapes of microscopic pollen spores. For her large wall collage, The Mesquite Line, Ward used a notoriously…
Rodeo’s Gonna Git You, Sucka
Sometimes it’s frustrating trying to get people to call you back. We’ve all been left in the lurch by a dawg romance or fallen prey to a would-be employer’s “don’t call us, we’ll call you” gambit. As Aaron Neville once angelically crooned, “Everybody plays the fool.” But it turns out…
Modified Milkshake
Whoever thought of drinking gin and milk at the same time must have been drunk. I almost fell off my barstool at Los Tios (14006 Memorial Drive, 281-493-4700) when the bartender described what was in this house specialty. “Apparently it was a recipe left over from the old owners,” he…
No Deposit, No Return
Ask any detective — there are at least three sides to every story. There’s your version, the other guy’s version and the truth. Unless you saw the whole thing with your own two eyes, you’ll never get the facts. You just have to side with the version you find the…
Alien-ated Youth
At first glance, they look like perfectly ordinary first-graders scribbling feverishly on the blackboard, but there is something striking about the boy’s deep blue eyes that suggests a maturity well beyond his years. Jake’s in advanced classes and already reading at a third-grade level. Jan is the quiet one, but…
Christina Aguilera
It’s easy to be too self-righteous. Oprah teeters on the brink of it every day. Rosie O’Donnell was so full of it, she’s currently committing one of the most public career suicides since little Lisa Bonet straddled Mickey Rourke in a rainstorm of blood in Angel Heart. Michael Moore seems…
Not That Turkey
Hot flatbread in one hand, knife in the other, I am poised to attack. But I hesitate, momentarily overwhelmed by the seductive excess before me. When you order the small appetizer plate at Empire Turkish Grill, you are entitled to five selections from the appetizer menu. We have chosen a…
Murder, They Wrote
It’s a sunny autumn afternoon at Floyd’s Cajun Kitchen, where laughter and chatter from neighboring tables mingle with the warm smell of gumbo and spicy crawfish. A mild-mannered little man in oversize spectacles and a neat dark suit spoons rice into his gumbo. “It was complete and absolute overkill for…
Secret Agent 8
There’s nothing clandestine about Secret Agent 8 when it comes to its approach to ska. The first three tracks on the band’s second album blast right out of the Two-Tone twilight zone where hand-wringing ska purists reside. The sweat equity on this 13-track CD has paid off; this album easily…
Letter Perfect
Dressed in a bright yellow suit with a black collar, 19-year-old Sudanese refugee Monica Jacob gently handles the four thin pieces of paper on the table in front of her. A bold headline is stamped across the top of each one: Ujumbe Wachame, Cha Msalaba Mwekundu — Swahili for “Message…
Bavu Blakes, with VG Skillz
Austin is not exactly a hip-hop mecca. In fact, if it weren’t for Bavu Blakes and a few of his folks, it would be a hip-hop nothin’. Not to harsh on a great city, but that’s the fact — Austin’s got the slacker country scene on lock and Houston’s got…
City Blames Metro for Cash Crunch
Just as Metropolitan Transit Authority officials are preparing a comprehensive transportation plan to submit to voters next fall, a fracas has broken out between the City of Houston and the regional agency over millions of dollars in reimbursement funds earmarked for city projects. Internal city documents indicate that Metro’s delays…
Brady Brock
Though the Houston native and current New Yorker cut his teeth as the guitarist for punk rockers The Grimple Twins, his current incarnation is as an über-sensitive singer-songwriter in the vein of Elliot Smith, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright. Practically sighing his way through the lyrics of his melancholy and…