Taking His Medicine
“My first responsibility is to protect my children,” says Dr. Michael Brown, tearing up during recent testimony in a Montgomery County court. The 48-year-old hand surgeon dabs his eyes with a pink handkerchief that matches his tie. He’s talking about his five- and three-year-old daughters who live with the ex-wife…
Diva Down
“I know why I hate integrity,” moans Jeremy Irons late in Callas Forever. “It’s great for the person who has it; it’s pure hell for those around it.” Indeed. As tacky, ponytailed impresario Larry Kelly, Irons makes for one seriously deranged philosopher, but his dedication to the late opera legend…
Letters
Slaughtering Sacred Cows Vanishing wetlands: I appreciate your tenacity and courage to uncover what is happening with our wetlands [“Draining the Swamp,” by Josh Harkinson, January 13]. I have been watching the demise of the forests up my way (Spring) for some time, the clear-cutting, replacing dirt with concrete slabs…
The Hustle
PARK CITY, UTAH — John Singleton, director of Boyz n the Hood, was all warm grins at the frigid outdoor party on January 22, and with good reason. Hustle & Flow, a movie he produced for 33-year-old writer-director Craig Brewer, was in the process of being sold for $9.5 million…
Hide and Suck
If you can make it past the first 10 minutes or so of Hide and Seek without busting up laughing, chances are that you’ve never seen a horror movie before in your life. This hack-job of a “thriller” may steal from the best, but it does it so badly and…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, February 3 Writer and activist Sehba Sarwar co-founded Voices Breaking Boundaries in 1999 as a forum for progressive art, intelligent protest and alternative discussion of world events. Now, in celebration of its fifth anniversary, VBB presents “High Voltage,” a night of storytelling featuring three of its founding members: Sarwar,…
Capsule Reviews
“David Fulton: New Work” David Fulton snakes loose fluid lines of watery acrylic over black and gray grounds. They build up and overlap, creating dense networks. The paint is whitest and densest at the edges of Fulton’s forms. The resulting works look like electron micrographs of intricate cellular structures. Fulton’s…
War Is Afoot
MON 2/7 Every time “Eyes Wide Open” moves, it has to find more space for all of its shoes. When the anti-war exhibit opened a year ago, it displayed 504 pairs of empty combat boots, one for each soldier who’d been killed thus far in Iraq. When it arrives in…
Some Serious Opera
Mozart’s first mature opera, Idomeneo, takes baroque opera seria about as far as it will go. Commissioned for Munich’s carnival in 1781, it’s his homage to the work of Gluck and Handel. And Mozart, who was 25 years old when he composed the work and would be dead ten years…
Boobs, Balls and Beer
SUN 2/6 Known by many as a perfectly valid excuse to eat 46 wings in one sitting, and by chickens as the worst day of the year, the Super Bowl is upon us. And to ensure that our readers show up for the big game (unlike a certain Peyton Manning,…
Capsule Reviews
After the Fall Playwright Arthur Miller has earned gobs of respect, a Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, and our eternal shock and awe for having married Marilyn Monroe. At 90 years old, Miller is the dean of American theatrical letters. But that doesn’t mean he has our love…
Dotted Lines
SAT 2/5 Lately, the music industry has been buzzing over Houston’s crunkified rap community. But as far as our independent hip-hop community goes, Red Dot Didaktiks producer Dizrokwel thinks its players should take some notes from local guys like “Lil’ Flip, Big Moe [and] all the Swisha House cats” and…
Modern Masala
Tandoori salmon, served in a sweet and tart cranberry and orange sauce, is one of the most interesting items you’ll ever see at an Indian restaurant. And here at Ashiana, the upscale Indian restaurant on Briar Forest at Dairy Ashford, the salmon sits in the lunch buffet alongside a stunning…
Party of Five
Centered around five young college grads who live together in pre-9/11 New York City, the off-Broadway show I Sing! would seem like nothing more than a musical adaptation of Friends. Of course, to our knowledge, Phoebe never sang to Joey, “You wanna fuck, you wanna screw, you wanna score? Well,…
Hot Plate
Everybody in the Middle East and Russia — but especially Turkey, Armenia and Iran — wants credit for inventing the shish kebab. Though its origin will always be disputed, this much can be agreed upon: The shish kebab was created thousands of years ago, and it was probably the first…
Mama’s Got a Brand-New Bag
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The Face of Rock and Roll
In the foreword to the stunningly magnificent new coffee table book Art of Modern Rock: The Poster Explosion, Wayne Coyne waxed eloquent when discussing what he calls “the power of The Poster.” “Both before the event and beyond the experience it will turn out to be,” he wrote, “The Poster…
En Fuego
Though the Pedro the Lion/Earlimart matinee ended a full three hours before doors opened for the Arcade Fire’s Sunday-evening show, a line of fans stood and waited in the cold outside Mary Jane’s Fat Cat. Some hoped for a miracle: that a ticket would come their way at the last…
Rotation
Doug Gillard Salamander Pink Frost As of January 1, 2005, Ohio’s perpetually soused indie-rock quasi-superstars Guided By Voices ceased to exist as anything other than a lingering hangover. Nearly all the hoopla accorded this event was aimed at the motivations and future plans of GBV main man Robert Pollard, but…
The Fido Solution
If, as Einstein once said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then there was a whole lot of craziness going on recently in a nondescript conference room near Reliant Stadium. The craziness wasn’t exemplified by the slightly manic edge of nervous energy…
Playbill
Ani DiFranco A friend says everyone needs one Ani record, but nobody should bother with two. This discounts the achievement of the first half of DiFranco’s career, when she achieved power and clarity over a half-dozen discs. That she said the same shit on each didn’t matter. What did matter…
Cats: That Other White Meat
Cats are vain, cloying, exploitive creatures, prone to working their charisma on the lonely, childless and softhearted. Given enough Whiskas, they will colonize your porch, eat your garden lizards for sport, barf fur and otherwise lounge all day like opium princes. That is why I shoot them. But I’m not…
Down on the Corner
Jason Kerr squeezed softly on the brakes of his bike while approaching a stoplight. Two young, attractive-enough blondes pulled up alongside him in a silver Honda. They asked him how he was. He said he was fine and asked how they were doing. Everyone was doing just fine. They then…
Canine Cuisine
Chihuahua Chalupas Springer Spaniel Spring Rolls German Shepherd Goulash
Searching for Shylock
When was the last time you lost yourself in a Shakespeare film? It’s a testament to the success of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the sharp and brooding new version directed by Michael Radford (Il Postino), that we leave the theater without concern for the production. Instead, the response…