This Week in Houston Food Events: New Year’s Eve
Tuesday, December 29 New Year’s Appetizers Cooking Class This cooking class at Central Market, 3815 Westheimer, will not only teach you how to make perfect appetizers for New Year’s Eve, but you’ll actually take home full portions of each one that you make in the class. The menu includes mini…
NASA’s Amazing Instagram: More Proof the Space Agency Rocked 2015
NASA has had a very good year. Seriously, NASA has had the sort of “very good year” that Frank Sinatra used to sing about. At the end of last year, we started to notice something different with NASA. After years of floundering around without any real sense of direction or…
I Don’t Mind if You Spoil Star Wars for Me
We live in a society where asking for a trigger warning is seen as some sort of social disease yet it’s perfectly OK to threaten someone if they spoil a plot point in Star Wars. Which baffles me because I just don’t understand why knowing something about Star Wars would…
Five News Stories that Dominated 2015
In 2015, stories of national and international significance had their epicenters in Texas. Greg Abbott had a banner first year in the governor’s office, helping fuel the tinfoil-hat brigade’s paranoia over Jade Helm 15, spearheading a lawsuit to ensure your undocumented abuela still faces deportation, and, in a year-end coup…
The 5 Best Things to Do in Houston This Weekend: Star Wars & Beyond!
This Friday, being Christmas, a lot of places (other than many restaurants) are closed. We can think of few things better to do than embracing another tradition — that of going to the movies on Christmas Day. Of course there are several to choose from, but this year we’ve got…
Texans-Titans — Four Things to Watch For
Here we are, two weeks left to go in the regular season, and not only are the Texans playing meaningful football games, but there exists intrigue in games all over the league when it comes to our hometown team a) making the postseason and b) possibly having some postseason success…
A Merry Christmas Wish List For Houston Sports
It’s the holiday season and a new year is upon us. The Astros had a winning season and went to the playoffs. The Houston Cougars are playing in a major bowl game next week and were actually able to sell out the stadium several times this season. So I’m feeling…
A Country-Music Christmas Wish List For 2016
Not to brag, but we’ve been pretty damn good this year, and that means that Santa’s going to come along on Christmas Day and make all our holiday wishes come true. That’s probably not going to happen — I don’t think Santa can fit a new take on the Bob…
100 Favorite Houston Dishes 2015, No. 19: Hunter’s Beef at Himalaya
Phaedra Cook is eating her way through Houston and counting down her 100 favorite dishes of 2015. It’s a collection of personal favorites that is also indicative of Houston dining. It’s a scene where a vast range of dishes coexist: highbrow and lowbrow; local and international; cheap and expensive; modern…
100 Favorite Houston Dishes 2015, No. 20: Smoked Brisket at CorkScrew BBQ
Phaedra Cook is eating her way through Houston and counting down her 100 favorite dishes of 2015. It’s a collection of personal favorites that is also indicative of Houston dining. It’s a scene where a vast range of dishes coexist: highbrow and lowbrow; local and international; cheap and expensive; modern…
100 Favorite Houston Dishes 2015, No. 21: Chicken-Fried Steak at Frank’s Americana Revival
Phaedra Cook is eating her way through Houston and counting down her 100 favorite dishes of 2015. It’s a collection of personal favorites that is also indicative of Houston dining. It’s a scene where a vast range of dishes coexist: highbrow and lowbrow; local and international; cheap and expensive; modern…
College and NFL Football: This Weekend’s Best Bets
I know what you’re thinking, and let me tell you that there is no need to thank me! You’re very welcome! After a six week slide that saw me picking games at a positively Chris Berman-ian clip, here I come, just in time for that last minute holiday shopping, putting…
Houston’s 10 Best Rap Songs of 2015
2015 is over in about a week. That’s less than six days to produce a song worth captivating the attention of the general public. Houston rap may have been more appreciated from a national perspective this year than any other year save for 2005. Two songs, Chedda Da Connect’s “Flicka…
Houston Texans J.J. Watt and DeAndre Hopkins Named To 2016 Pro Bowl Team
From about the midpoint of the season, even as the Houston Texans were limping to a hideous 2-5 start, there was one huge lock that, if you could wager on it, you’d have made a ton of money — J.J. Watt and DeAndre Hopkins were going to be named to…
Pittsburgh Steelers Team Christmas E-Card Contains Some Awful Caroling (w/ VIDEO)
It’s the Wednesday before Christmas, and with the big holiday two days away, the amount of breaking news in the sports world will dwindle for the next 48 hours before we get it cranked up again with the Texans’ playoff chase this Sunday. Later this week, you’ll still get a…
University of St. Thomas Opts Out Of Campus Carry Bill
The University of St. Thomas has opted out of the state’s campus carry law, the Houston Chronicle reported yesterday. “The safety of each of us is our university’s most basic responsibility,” Roberty Ivany, president of the Catholic university, said in a statement. “The clear majority of our representatives asked me…
Richard Linklater Hosting “Uber-Private” (and Uber-Tacky) Fundraiser for Murderer Bernie Tiede
If you’re a cold-blooded killer confined to prison for the rest of your life, it helps to have celebrity friends on the outside — friends with the kind of sway and money to get you another crack at freedom. In the case of Bernie Tiede, who shot an 81-year-old woman…
Greg Abbott’s War on Christmas (Displays)
Gov. Greg Abbott sent a three-page letter to the State Preservation Board whining about a tiny secular nativity exhibit that was on display in the basement of the Texas State Capitol, prompting the four-foot tall manger’s unceremonious ejection from the bowels of the capitol building yesterday. “The exhibit places the bill…
Mikey and the Drags Plan to ‘Make You Mine’ Tonight
One of the best-reviewed Houston albums of the year is “swimming in trippy Farfisa organ and bursting with fuzz-amp vigor,” according to Houston Press Music Editor Chris Gray. Free Press Houston’s David Garrick says, “It’s catchy, it’s riddled with hooks, and it’s the best representation of garage rock that I’ve…
Texas Strips Planned Parenthood of HIV Prevention Funding Without Warning
The State of Texas continued its scorched earth strategy in dealing with Planned Parenthood this week by stopping more than half a million dollars in federal funding the organization uses for HIV prevention and screening across the Greater Houston area. That money, some $600,000 every year, comes from the federal…
Three Things I Learned Touring In a Fetish-Rock Band
There’s nothing quite like the experience of being in a rock band that’s trying to make a go at commercial success. Almost 16 years ago, I found myself as the new guitar player for Bozo Porno Circus, an industrial-rock band based out of Houston. I found myself suddenly a part…
Ho, Ho, Ho, Punk — It’s Time For 30FootFALL’s Christmas Show Again
Local punk legends 30footFALL are undoubtedly one of Houston’s most beloved musical institutions. A predecessor of the gritty punk scene that was borne of long-gone clubs like The Abyss, Pik N’ Pak and the Axiom of the ‘90s back when Houston had only a handful of punk-friendly venues and even…
Houston’s Five Biggest Music Stories of 2015
The past year in Houston music can almost be defined by what didn’t happen instead of what did: Free Press Summer Fest didn’t get washed out, although Something Wicked did; Transmission Events didn’t last as Fitzgerald’s primary booking agents; and, thank God, Houston audiences remained safe all year long, whether…
Youth Offers So Much More Than Old Men Yearning for Young Flesh
Life is hard for the extravagantly wealthy lounging about in one of the world’s most beautiful hotels. Paolo Sorrentino’s latest might seem easy to mock — here, after all, are Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel, playing a composer and a film director, moping in a Swiss spa about old age…
Cold and Dreamy, Carol Examines Women in Love
Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s sweet nectarine of a jazz standard “Easy Living” figures, in a glancing yet potent way, in Todd Haynes’s Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Even though the lyrics speak of contentment — “Living for you is easy living/It’s easy to…
You Already Know Everything That Happens in Daddy’s Home
Here’s a challenge. Gather some friends, pour some drinks and announce to everyone the premise of Daddy’s Home, the new family comedy about dads competing to be pater superior. It won’t take long: Will Ferrell is a doting schlemiel of a stepdad to suburban moppets whose biological father, played by…
Harrowing and Masterful, The Revenant Dares to Strand Us in the Cold
What’s been missing for years in Hollywood’s adventure films? Verisimilitude. Correspondent with the rise of the computers, and the ability to show us any place that filmmakers can imagine, has been the fall of immersiveness — that sense that the actors are in a place you can’t go yourself rather…
The Hateful Eight: Tarantino’s Bloody Hangout Western Refuses to Play Nice
Here’s to Quentin Tarantino’s cussed perversity. The Hateful Eight, his intimate, suspenseful western splatter-horror comedy, has been shot at great expense in the long-gone 70 mm format, but the movie itself is set almost entirely in cramped interiors. He’s hired Ennio Morricone to score the thing, but don’t expect rousing…
Kris Jakob Leaves Namesake Restaurant, Announces Plans to Open Brasserie 1895 in Friendswood
After nearly 10 years at Kris Bistro at Culinary Institute LeNôtre in positions from Director of Culinary Arts, to Vice President, and also executive chef of Kris Bistro, Kris Jakob is striking out on his own. The talented toque, who took home last year’s grand prize title at 11th Annual…
