Houston: The Musical
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The Rogers Sisters
No-wave. Art-rock. Post-punk. Post-wave. Garage-art. The quest to find a new, fresh label for New York City’s ubiquitous underground sound has taken a toll on journalists. They’re tired. They’re sleep-deprived. They’re taking hackneyed phrases and hyphenating them! The Big Apple is blessed with good musical genes, but the recent outpouring…
Spaced Out
The Columbia space shuttle tragedy should be a time for the Houston Chronicle to shine — it’s one of the few papers in the country with a full-time NASA reporter; much of the story is happening here and in East Texas; there’s a new editor eager to make a mark…
Various Artists
After listening a few times to this quirky cannabis cacophony (in various states of consciousness, strictly for scientific purposes), some interesting questions emerged. For one, how come nobody has written joyful odes to crystal meth or crack? And how the hell am I going to pay for this Grand Slam…
Protesting Peace
Protesting Peace Don’t question; support: Maybe I’m growing out of my liberalist mentality. Or is it that maybe I’m looking at all points of view on an issue before I form my opinion instead of falling victim to the media brainwashing? There are certain times in a society when it…
Karrin Allyson
If there’s a choir in heaven, someday the exquisite vocalist Karrin Allyson will lead it. She’s such an otherworldly talent that the creator probably already has her on heavy rotation. She’s been astounding the public and critics alike since her 1992 debut, building a storybook career and attaining one stratospheric…
Hidden Agenda
According to Austin author William July II, there’s a term for commitment-phobic men — and it’s not the profanity you might think. July euphemistically calls these heartbreakers “hidden lovers,” men who put on their game face because they’re afraid of losing face. “It comes from the Western idea of what…
Where the Heart Isn’t
It used to be that the only Korean films to be seen in the United States were somber art-house films such as Jeong Ji-yeong’s White Badge or veteran Im Kwon-Taek’s Chunhyang and Sopyonje. But as South Korea has developed a more technically sophisticated commercial film industry, these have been joined…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, February 13 In the ’60s, English musician Keith Rowe became frustrated with the limitations of his guitar. So he developed the tabletop guitar and used springs, paper clips, pliers, sheet metal and brushes to draw new electro-acoustic sounds from his instrument. Rowe’s innovations have had a profound effect not…
Bearly Necessary
Anybody who’s cracked open a recent Disney G-rated DVD has probably witnessed the ultimate in sequelmania: On Lilo & Stitch, for instance, the feature was preceded (skippably, thank God) by trailers for The Jungle Book 2, Atlantis 2: Milo’s Return, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch’s London Adventure, Inspector Gadget 2 and…
First Dance
Make no mistake: The first full-length concert of the Dominic Walsh Dance Theater may happen to fall on the holiday of love, but it is not a Valentine’s celebration. “There are natural threads in the repertory,” says Walsh, “but I’m not billing it as a Valentine’s event.” Still, the show…
Bloody Hell
The fanboy suckled at the teat of comic-book writer-artist Frank Miller, circa 1980-81, will be satisfied, for the most part, with this cinematic Daredevil; if nothing else, the thing’s got enough Marvel Comics in-jokes to amuse ’em down at the comics shop for ages, or at least till Hulk smashes…
Livingston’s Trade Days
Unless you own a boat, chances are a day trip to Polk County isn’t on your itinerary. But that may change. For one weekend every month, the fast-growing, lakeside city of Livingston hosts a trade fair that draws vendors from across Texas and as far away as New York and…
Cable in the Closet
Blond, bronzed, buff TV pretty-boy Lester Perry’s got quite a secret. And it’s filling him with an existential dread that no lightweight ex-soap star should ever have to deal with. Lester’s gay, but he can’t tell anyone except the male prostitutes he picks up in the middle of the night…
Suzanne Westenhoefer
Most comics spend ten years writing and performing short sets in small towns before they’ve developed enough material to headline minor venues in bigger cities. In contrast, only four years after her first stab at comedy, Suzanne Westenhoefer had already been nominated for a Cable ACE Award for her own…
Don’t Call the Cops!
One day in July 1991, William Pope.L, dressed in a nice dark suit and clutching a small flowerpot in his hand, lay down in the street near Tompkins Square Park, in New York City’s East Village, and began to crawl west. He intended to crawl clear across town, to the…
Eat Your Heart Out
Valentine’s Day is a holiday for love and” restaurant specials. For downtown dinner and dancing, start with the special menu at Zula and finish with free admission to The Mercury Room — all for $45 per person. For details, call 713-227-7052. Early birds can head to Maggiano’s Little Italy for…
“In Between Mass and Void”
This show could be subtitled “Six Men Make Big Heavy Objects,” except many of the sculptures aren’t what they seem. Butch Jack’s wall disks, which appear to be formed of molten metal, are in fact foam covered with metallic-looking graphite. Ditto Harvey Bott’s cubes and slabs of “steel,” which are…
White Nights
Is white the new red, if not for fashion this spring then for wine? “In New York it’s all about Chardonnay,” says Cafe Annie’s master sommelier Paul Roberts. “Our climate doesn’t make sense for reds, yet people still want Cabernets. But I do see that as more people discover wine,…
The Bleeding Edge
It was supposed to be make-believe, a disturbing but ultimately uplifting work of science-fiction from a celebrated author of grim futurama and glorious fantasy. The subject matter of Orbiter, a hardback graphic novel about a spaceship that disappears for years and returns sheathed in skin after visits to faraway places…
Suburban Escape
I was tired of the downtown scene, where big-haired, jobless 27-year-olds wearing skintight jeans were about the best you could hope for in terms of a little action. It was time to head out to the burbs and look for a rich divorcée who might need a little company on…
Teachings of the Pope
We’re still shivering when the waitress brings our menus. Maybe it’s the January chill that causes us both to want the dish called winter curry, or maybe it’s just the most intriguing thing on Boulevard Bistrot’s seasonal menu. I gallantly let my dining companion have the curry (provided she allows…
Stewed, Screwed and Tattooed
Although the Down and Dirties didn’t intend to live up to their moniker off-stage, it’s certainly turned out that way. “The band is more like a gang,” says guitar player/vocalist Bill Greer. “We don’t say we want to get into fights, but there seems to be like a biker-gang mentality…
Insanely Good
The Italian word for eggplant is melanzane, which comes from the Latin melum insanum, meaning either “unhealthy apple” or “mad apple.” It’s no wonder, then, that the poor fruit was regarded with much mistrust in Italy when it was first introduced from Asia during the Middle Ages. Lucky for us,…
Direct to Video
As the temperature drops, the concert schedule becomes as limited as Ozzy’s working vocabulary. This is the time of year, then, to stay home, save money on parking and $5 beers — and then blow it all on concert vids to tide you over until the spring thaw. Over the…
Line in the Sand
For a lot of people, it’s a rite of passage on the way to becoming a true Texan. Kirk Schwartzenburg is 32 now, a salesman for an environmental services firm, but like a lot of people his age, he remembers back in the late 1980s driving with a bunch of…
West Virginia Wild Man
Hasil Adkins became a one-man band because he thought he had to. The first time Adkins heard Hank Williams on the radio, he assumed that since the song was credited to one man, it meant that Williams had not only sung on the track but also played all the instruments…
Super Bowl Shuffle
Richard Honiball was just the kind of guy Houston had in mind when the city nailed down Super Bowl XXXVIII. The Hoboken, New Jersey, man and about a dozen of his young executive friends haven’t missed the NFL’s premier event in recent years. Honiball, a 34-year-old Brooks Brothers worker in…
Wham, Bam, Thank You MAMH
Houston’s been hard at work on its image ever since we dug the Ship Channel. Mostly we’ve tackled the problem by importing culture from afar. Thus we have the symphony, the opera, that tarantula-like Miró sculpture downtown and the art museums. Such institutions are commendable, of course, but for Houstonians…
Like It’s 1996
Remember the mid-’90s? Come on, it wasn’t all that long ago. A lot of Big Things have come — and gone — since then: Monica Lewinsky, the dot-com bubble, the rise and fall of Enron. Other big changes have been more permanent: three huge, expensive sports palaces built by Houston…
Bellini
What initially appears as an unwavering, genderless enigma tunneling through Bellini’s scattered wall of noise is, in fact, the shrill voice of the most assuredly female Giovanna Cacciola, formerly of the Sicilian band Uzeda. Seemingly oblivious to the movements of the music behind her, Cacciola conveys an authoritative wail nearly,…