History for Dummies
The voice coming from the computer isn’t your daddy’s history teacher — or yours, either. Studiedly casual and oh-so-hip, it’s more beatnik than Ben Stein: I was surfin’ the Net just last Saturday, see And I saw the most curious thing. At a chat room for Georges, two Georges were…
Sugar Bayou
On paper, it would seem that the debut release from this Houston-based band would have a lot going for it. The fine amalgamation of singers and multi-instrumentalist pickers and pluckers includes the core trio of singer-guitarist Bob Oldreive, fiddler-guitarist Joe Lindley and singer-guitarist April Rapier. No, the biggest problem with…
Gockley and HGO
First we lost longtime ballet boss Ben Stevenson. Then Alley Theatre managing director Paul Tetreault — the man who invented fiscal stability in the arts here — announced his move to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. And now David Gockley, Houston Grand Opera’s general director, is being touted as a…
The Flatlanders
The Flatlanders appear Saturday, February 28, at the Crighton Theatre, 234 North Main in Conroe. The South Austin Jug Band is also on the bill. For information, call 936-441-SHOW.
Letters
Cracking Up Prevention first: Your article was one of the best I’ve ever read [“Ship Wrecked,” by Josh Harkinson, February 12]. Is there anything an ordinary citizen like me can do to prevent accidents like this from happening again, or is there a PAC to contribute to, or volunteer with,…
The Bottle Rockets and Lucinda Williams
Lucinda Williams appears Saturday, February 28, at the Verizon Wireless Theater, 520 Texas. The Bottle Rockets open. For information, call 713-230-1600.
Shake It Up
Comedian Earthquake has already erupted here several times. “I’ve always loved Houston, especially when it comes to females,” he says. “But the heat is terrible. I once saw an illegal alien turn himself in to go back to Mexico! He couldn’t handle it!” Earthquake can handle the fact that he…
Suffer Unto Mel
This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon which Mel Gibson based The Passion of the Christ. I’ve read the interpretations of scholars, the apologias of popes and the damnations of zealots. I’ve read…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, February 26 The moral of The Wizard of Oz — that your heart’s desire is best looked for in your own backyard — will be given another airing today when the play Theophilus North, adapted from Thornton Wilder’s novel of the same name, opens at Main Street Theater in…
Rationality Will Not Save Us
At the opening of The Fog of War, the brilliant new documentary from director Errol Morris, we see a composed, sharply groomed and middle-aged Robert McNamara, preparing to brief the press on the Vietnam war. He asks two questions: first, if the chart he’s set up is visible and, second,…
H-Town Goes Cowtown
Attention all Houstonians: It’s rodeo time again. Now, before you tilt your trucker cap back down and turn up the Belle and Sebastian, let us remind you — the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is what makes us exotic to the rest of the country. Why settle for being…
Pepper-Spraying Jos
Some might think that a production written and performed by a Mexican is only for Mexicans. ¡Cantinflas! Latinologues. Culture Clash in Americca. Especially if it’s about the U.S.-Mexican border. In the case of Rick Najera’s Buford Gomez: Tales of a Right-Wing Border Patrol Officer, they are wrong, and the 70…
Bar Brawl
SAT 2/28 Ultimate Fighting. It’s not intense — it’s fucking intense. Boxing looks quite civil compared to this stuff. Imagine: one fighter using tae kwon do and kickboxing against another using Thai boxing and grappling moves, both locked inside a cage. Sound messy? Brutal? It is. But people love it,…
Powers in the Attic
Stepping into the theater at the Axiom, where Infernal Bridegroom Productions has opened Richard Foreman’s Symphony of Rats, is a bit like walking into some strange, wonder-filled attic. Splattered across the cinder-block walls of the theater is a crazy quilt of cartoon images — TVs, spaceships, skeletons. Provocative messages painted…
Disc-o Mania
“Disc golf” is more popularly known as “Frisbee golf,” but Wham-O, Inc. slapped a trademark on the term “Frisbee” in 1958. Semantics aside, the game is enormously popular, with more than 100 courses in Texas and dozens within Houstonians’ reach. So, where’s good? Just west of downtown on Buffalo Bayou…
Home Is Where the Art Is
In the early ’90s, artist Chris Burden was trying to build a studio on his own property. He was slogging through a bureaucratic swamp of building permit regulations when he came across a little-known section of the Los Angeles County building code. Intended for things like sheds and greenhouses, it…
A Colorful Education
As if any of you parents needed it, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is offering proof that children can make amazing leaps in perception when their creativity is engaged. “‘Learning Through Art’ uses work in the collection and ties it into the school curriculum,” says Margaret Mims of the…
Capsule Reviews
Ayanah Moor: Word! It seems like anything can be deemed a work of art once it’s been placed on a gallery wall, and Ayanah Moor’s work on view at Lawndale is a classic example of this phenomenon. For the A to Z Like Me series, Moor silk-screened definitions of African-American…
Sex, Food and Rock and Roll
TUE 3/2 When musician Lisa Loeb approached a record company about the idea of combining her love of music with her affinity for food, she got some blank stares. “They were confused by the concept of doing something people might actually like,” says Loeb. But the Food Network not only…
Capsule Reviews
Coyote on a Fence is an offensive yet entertaining play. It takes place on death row and is basically a low-budget version of Dead Man Walking. John Mitsakis plays John Brennan, a less creepy, less carnivorous Hannibal Lecter who’s always analyzing people and correcting their grammar. He writes the Death…
A Farewell to Tutus
THU 2/26 If watching Hugh Jackman and Guy Pearce movies isn’t enough to quell your lust for sexy Australian men, we suggest you get a dose in person. Damien Welch, a principal artist with the Australian Ballet, is dancing the lead in Divergence, part of Houston Ballet’s Winter Repertory Program…
Gastropub Crawl
Red Lion Pub
Stayin’ Alive
In a rap-rock world that spews more than its share of suspect rhetoric — it’s been a while since Fred Durst actually delivered a beatdown — Linkin Park is more candid than calculating. It’s fitting, then, that the sextet is the genre’s last thriving band, having put out one of…
Giant Food
There’s nothing little about the food served at Maggiano’s Little Italy (2019 Post Oak Boulevard, 713-961-2700). In fact, like all dishes served here, the shrimp oreganata ($22.95) is served “family style” and à la carte, which means that the portion is gargantuan, and if you want a side dish, you’ll…
Stone Country
In Texas, where driving is a way of life, great ideas are often born on the road. Wim Wenders wrote more than half of Paris, Texas in his car during the shoot. More recently, another movie, the Jesse Dayton-Lew Temple collaboration Balmorhea (set to start shooting soon) was written on…
Getting Out
The sisters, seven and eight, are on the floor of the trailer, the newspaper spread before them. They’ve got their eyes out for roaches. Grandpa is sitting quietly at the nearby table while Grandma prepares the meal. She sets Grandpa’s plate on the table, then turns back to the girls’…
Boobs Versus Prudes
The Great Super Bowl Rogue Breast Disaster of 2004 has reached truly epic levels of overexposure, with every pundit, columnist, blogger and dude-standing-behind-you-at-Subway scrambling to weigh in on the moral outrage of it all. But in our haste to denounce either our shot-to-hell sense of human decency or the Puritan…
Spring Thaw
Besieged workers at the Lyondell-CITGO refinery here may finally be catching some breaks. For years the union there has been trying to get someone to listen to their tales of mistreatment at the hands of management, but they’ve been about as effective as PETA protesters at the rodeo. Things are…
Medley Fool
What do Devo, Young MC, George Strait, Ice-T, B.B. King and the Carpenters have in common? Absolutely nothing, you say? Okay, how about songs such as JJ Fad’s “Supersonic,” Asia’s “The Final Countdown,” Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?,” the themes from Dallas and The Greatest American Hero,…
Package Deal
Dylan, a University of Texas film major, watched with relief as the co-op bookstore clerk rang up the $9.04 sale for his new textbook. That’s because the textbook actually cost $64. Moments earlier, Dylan had carefully peeled the sticker off a cheap workbook and transferred it to the textbook, required…
Money Waters
Listening to most hip-hop, you’d think black music history began with James Brown’s “Out of Sight,” the tune the Godfather himself favors over “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Feel Good” as a funk landmark. But as you might expect from his handle, Dallasite Money Waters is one…