Capsule Reviews
Align The holidays usually bring frothy good fun to the theater. But A.D. Players, Houston’s Christian theater group, have a whole new take on the season. Their Christmas production of Jeannette Clift George’s Align is a dour little show about a family of sad sacks who learn to be thankful…
Sanguine Soup and Sandwich
Half of a Vietnamese barbecued pork sandwich and a small bowl of soup makes the perfect portion, my daughter Julia declared. We were finishing up our second soup-and-sandwich lunch at Bodard Bistro, a popular Vietnamese eatery in the Welcome Center on Bellaire. On our first visit, she determined that a…
Grubby Grub
“Food for Thought” is a cavalcade of the Art Guys’ previous food-centric works, and, frankly, it stinks. The show celebrates the Art League Houston’s recognition of the Art Guys — crackpot conceptual artists Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing — as its Texas Artists of the Year. And since many of…
Giant Burger
Hobbits may be dwarflike creatures who like to eat a lot, but they’d be hard-pressed to get their mouths around the avocado buffalo burger ($8.79) at the Hobbit Cafe (2243 Richmond, 713-526-5460). There is simply no elegant way to eat this mammoth burger, whose large lean buffalo-meat patty comes on…
Capsule Reviews
“Detoured” Police barriers are neatly tiled with mirrors like a disco ball. Concrete barriers are decoratively slip-covered in orange-and-white fabric that ties in bows on each end. Traffic cone piñatas are covered in ruffled orange paper. Houstonians will recognize all these objects as hallmarks of our city’s loathed and never-ending…
Cult Hit for Nobody
Nowhere Man (Image Entertainment) There’s good reason why you’ve never heard of this UPN show from the mid-’90s, which lasted 25 episodes before getting shuttled off to, well, nowhere. It’s a convoluted mind-fuck that owes its existence as much to The Prisoner as The Fugitive, and if you missed one…
This Game Bites
Publisher: Konami
Platform: PlayStation 2
Price: $39.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 4 (out of 10)
Farewell to the Twenty Nickel
“Next year local rapper Slim Thug will break big nationally, big things will come out of the Swisha House posse, and the city’s hip-hop scene will have its best year ever.” So we wrote in these pages some 53 weeks ago, and so it has come to pass. Of course,…
Our top DVD picks for the week of December 27
Ab-Normal Beauty (Tartan) Art of the Devil (Tokyo Shock) Bram Stoker’s Dracula/Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Sony) Caged Heat (Buena Vista) Dark Water (Buena Vista) Diary of a Mad Black Woman: The Play (Lions Gate) Empire of the Wolves (Sony) 15 Things You’re Not Supposed to See (Xtreme) Happy Here and Now…
Comeback Clips
Video killed the radio star in 1981. By the end of the ’90s, though, 120 Minutes was dead, The Real World had shown MTV that reality doesn’t bite viewers so much as it addicts them, and the music video had become irrelevant to everybody but the TRL crowd. Thanks to…
Podnography
Mary Windham met the guy in an online chat room. Every night they’d flirt and talk dirty over the phone. Mary’s husband, Max, would sit beside her and stroke her arms and thighs as she confessed her sexual preferences and fantasies. The stranger’s voice turned Mary on. And that turned…
Ryan Adams
When the Xbox 360 hit stores last month and the system sold out within hours, a Berkeley business professor commented on the genius of Microsoft’s marketing. “Shortages create a whole mystique of desirability,” the prof said. Ryan Adams, take note. With the release of 29, Adams’s third album this year…
A Cut Above
The lodge house where Gary Yamamoto lives sits atop a hill overlooking his sprawling East Texas ranch. The elegant yet rustic spread, which used to be a dude resort for gays and lesbians, features motel-like guest rooms and a restaurant-style dining room. Yamamoto, an eccentric sixtysomething Japanese-American, is one of…
The Darkness
‘Ello, this is vocalist Justin Hawkins from the Darkness, here to talk about our amazing, fantastic, unbelievable second album, One Way Ticket to Hell…and Back. [Pauses] What? You think the album is way more over-the-top than Permission to Land? You’d call it grossly self-indulgent, plodding in many places, and lyrically…
Wagyu Beef
This story is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “A Cut Above” The best guide to Wagyu beef on the Internet may be the June issue of The Rosengarten Report, a food lover’s newsletter. Editor David Rosengarten taste-tested American Kobe-style beef from butcher shops and mail-order sources all over the…
Hard ‘n Phirm
Chris Hardwick and Mike Phirman constitute this L.A.-based, Tenacious D.-like duo, and Horses and Grasses is a heapin’ helpin’ of super-geeky and utterly engaging musical comedy. The difference between Jack Black’s gruesome metal twosome and this one is mostly genre — HNP prefers to skewer the absurdities inherent in soft…
Wait Your Turn
The folks at the City of Houston just can’t seem to get the hang of inspecting low-income homes for dangerous lead paint. They’ve used unqualified inspectors, accepted inadequate reports and just generally made a hash of things (see “Lead Astray,” March 4, 2004). The federal government, through the Department of…
Lil’ Wayne
Lil’ Wayne is the Al Green of rap: He could recite the phone book and have listeners hanging on each of his curvaceous consonants and smoldering vowels. On Tha Carter, Vol. II, Wayne more or less does just that, injecting familiar rap tropes (sample chorus: “get money, fuck bitches, get…
Dragon Slayer
Tom DeLay isn’t just powerful, he’s scary powerful. He’s so damn intimidating that only the dimwitted and suicidal will dare admit that he’s never been more politically vulnerable. DeLay’s approval ratings have been in the toilet since September, when he was indicted on felony money-laundering charges and forced to step…
Lady Sovereign
This eight-song EP provides the first real indication that UK grime may be more than just a passing fad. South London MC Lady Sovereign, already a battle-scarred veteran at 18, has all the confidence of a sassy 28-year-old, plus the charm and cheekiness of an eight-year-old. Against a backdrop of…
Letters to the Editor
The Knittas Yarn Kudos: I loved Keith Plocek’s article on the knittas [“Knitta, Please!” December 22]. I wanted to say that although these badass ladies don’t think they have a political message, anytime we reclaim public space for something besides commercial ventures we are doing something political. Kudos to some…
Watch Them Die
Maybe I should’ve been able to tell from their name and the Orc-looking monster dude surrounded by skulls on the cover, but I’m sorry, the members of Watch Them Die are just plain mean. And what’s worse, you get the feeling they don’t even care. I mean, when they say…
New Year’s Eve Guide 2005
Tonight is a night to celebrate the past year, and what’s not to celebrate? Not only did we open our arms to our neighbors in need, but we also opened our arms to the nation to host our first World Series. This is one year the Bayou City will never…
Townes Van Zandt
Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas is Townes Van Zandt’s definitive statement, recorded in 1973 at the height of his powers — solo and acoustic, his songs stripped to the bone. Recorded more than 20 years after that classic live set, Live at Union Chapel features an older, wiser…
Sidecar
I decide to kick it old-school on a Tuesday night with a classic cocktail, the sidecar, at a bar that at least sounds old-school, Mugsy’s (3200 Kirby, 713-526-5595). The dimly lit bar is pulsating with a youngish crowd downing cocktails and wine. Jerry the bartender, with his tatted, thick forearms,…
Little Misses
Amid Hollywood’s zillion-dollar explosions and computer-enhanced trickery, plenty of quieter, better films sneaked into theaters virtually unnoticed this year. Following are our reviewers’ favorite overlooked movies of 2005. Some of them never made it to local screens, but many have since made it to the video store: Balzac and the…
Slanted Enchantment
Ali Jackson, big-shot jazz drummer extraordinaire, won’t claim encyclopedic knowledge of indie rock, but he does like him some Pavement. “I like that hit that they had on MTV, that ‘Cut Your Hair,’ ” he enthuses. “It’s real catchy and real earthy, just playin’ around, like you play around like…
Delightful Dysfunction
In A Fertle Holiday, a nice little family unit takes a Christmas trip to see their Fertle relatives, stopping at a Motel 6 along the way. There’s Fertle daughter Justicena (Rich Mills), her milquetoast husband, Pete DePugh (Steve Farrell), and their spawn from hell, Damien (Vicki Farrell), who zaps his…