Tin Henry
Though the line between hard rock and heavy metal is as thin as Layne Staley’s torso after a three-week heroin binge (that is, before he died of same), it is an important distinction. There is far too much histrionic crap produced in the guise of the latter, while the former…
Last Rites
At first the debris field was exciting. Normal people don’t have precedent for dealing with spaceships exploding over their heads. Driving southeast from Dallas down U.S. Highway 175 a few hours after the crash, you could see it in people’s eyes — the alert, panoramic gaze of shock and anticipation…
Savoy Brown
In the pre-Zeppelin days of the late 1960s, a Houston band called Josephus drew a considerable following in the emerging hippie community, their primary attraction being a cover of a 20-minute saga called “Savoy Brown Boogie.” Josephus vanished, but Savoy Brown soldiers on with its brand of amped-up boogie blues…
Dining by Demographic
Our waiter stops by and moves his lips. The noise level in the packed dining room at Fleming’s, the new steak house on Alabama, is so high that no one at the table can hear a word he’s saying. He leans over and shouts to the diner nearest him, who…
Hudson Hawked
Astaire & Rogers. Hepburn & Tracy. Heck, Ball & Arnaz, Houston & Washington or Vardalos & Corbett. Over the decades, Hollywood has proved that its romantic comedies needn’t suck. Alas, they often do, as is the case with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Clearly, bigwig co-producers Robert…
No Satisfaction
After their recent concert at Reliant Stadium, the Rolling Stones called Da Marco (1520 Westheimer, 713-807-8857) looking for a table. Da Marco turned them down. “It was a little after ten and we were crazy busy. We had a private party of 20 people out on the veranda,” says Gloria…
American Power
While virtually no one in this country foresaw the American disaster in Vietnam, the late British writer Graham Greene glimpsed it with astonishing clarity a decade before the first U.S. “adviser” set foot on Vietnamese soil. Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American, which has now been made into a disturbing…
Guilty Pleasure
Bored with my usual hangouts, I pulled up a barstool at Marfreless (2006 Peden, 713-528-0083) and asked for something peculiar. The barman offered me a Pimm’s Cup, a slightly bitter gin cocktail that had only one thing going for it: a cucumber slice. More interesting were the slightly embarrassed twosomes…
Boyfriends…and Jesus
In Just Be a Man About It, three attractive women live together, date the wrong men and tell jokes — in essence, they act a lot like the characters on Friends. But this gospel play is about as far from that naughty sitcom as it can get. “The hook is…
Nice Gnocchi
The potato flour Italian dumplings at Simposio (5591 Richmond, 713-532-0550) are formed to look like small scallops swimming in a rich Gorgonzola cheese fondue. The Gorgonzola imparts an intense flavor to the otherwise bland boiled gnocchi. The dish would be completely monochromatic but for some green speckles of chopped parsley…
Coming Down
At six o’clock on a clear Saturday morning, Mike Grant went to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to join Mission Control in the final welcome back for the returning space shuttle Columbia. The 19-year-old aeronautical engineering major at Purdue University — he was quick to point out it is Neil Armstrong’s…
Playing Bridge
After September 11, lots of Americans wanted blood. They plastered their cars with bumper stickers that read “Let’s Roll!” and sported T-shirts showing Osama bin Laden’s face obscured by a gun target. Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye was enraged, too. But she didn’t want to kill, she wanted to talk…
Stone Deaf
For the last three months Wendy Robbins told everyone she knew that she was going to see the Rolling Stones. The 52-year-old artist and part-time teacher has been a Stones fan for 30 years. She’s been to six of their live concerts. She thought the 40 Licks World Tour would…
The Battle of the Sexes
ComedySportz has hosted a battle of the sexes every Valentine’s Day for the past 12 years. The show lets men and women duke it out in a series of kooky improv games. Many a romance must’ve been temporarily dampened by gloating winners. This year’s skirmish comes one week prior to…
Business with the Unusual
He styles himself the ultimate City Hall outsider, and for sure, William Howard “Bill” White brings some unique credentials to his campaign for mayor. After all, how many Houstonians could or would brag that they launched a successful international oil-and-gas venture and never earned a cent off it? Likewise, how…
Letter from the Girl, Mailed at the Gas Station
Hailing from a cinematic netherworld whose denizens include directors David Lynch and Robert Aldrich, Enid Baxter Blader has arrived from Weirdville, USA, to freak you further. Her latest experimental video, Letter from the Girl, Mailed at the Gas Station, re-creates the opening minutes of Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly and then…
Warning:
We shuddered with horror when we saw the January 30 item in the Houston Chronicle: “Houston’s official one-year countdown celebration to Super Bowl XXXVIII begins Saturday night” with a street party. We didn’t shudder just because, in November, we had read in the Chron that “The build-up to the biggest…
Opera Light
Houston Grand Opera took some criticism this year for “lightening up” its season on the heels of revenue shortfalls and unsettling world events. But after the recent tragedy in the Texas sky, the company’s schedule seems both prophetic and comforting. Wrapped in the innocence of a bygone time, the romantic…
Bar X Views
Bar X Views Scorn porn: I really enjoyed reading your story [“Showdown at the Bar X,” by Jennifer Mathieu, January 23]. Couldn’t put it down until I finished it. You did an excellent job, leaving one wondering what would happen and what the truth is. Wish there were a way…
Just Loverly
Sometimes it’s hard to understand how the American musical has survived. Countless big-ticket theatrical remakes of children’s films such as Beauty and the Beast are enough to make any theater lover swear off the genre forever. But once in a while, the real thing parades into town and reminds us…
Bayou Riddims
If you drive down Hillcroft, you can see storefronts housing businesses from five continents in one strip center. For a long time, you couldn’t hear this diversity in our local music, but now that hip-hop reggae dancehall jungle collective Dubtex is on the scene, we have the aural equivalent of…
Cirque de Medrano
Cirque de Medrano’s got a little something for everyone. You can check out recent paintings by Patrick Medrano, take in the antics of fire jugglers and clowns, or amuse yourself by keeping an eye on “The Tin Lady.” She’ll be the one in the mask made out of tin cans,…
Iron Men
In casual conversation, it’s difficult to nail just what made a concert great, especially if you’re trying to trigger pangs of regret in a friend who foolishly passed up an opportunity to attend. To make it even harder, let’s say you’re a huge fan of the group, but your pal…
Picture in Picture
The mini-retrospective of Latvia-born American artist Vija Celmins is a quiet little gem of an exhibition that might get lost in the embarrassment of riches currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Comprising works from Edward R. Broida’s collection, the show charts the different phases of Celmins’s…
Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
Rozino Smith says he completely missed the 1980s. Not that he didn’t live through them, of course, it’s just that growing up in Abilene, he wasn’t exactly exposed to the cutting edge of pop culture. “My family used to listen to old, mellow stuff on eight-track, people like Willie Nelson…
Room to Grow
Wall space, the final frontier. Emily Joyce is taking full advantage of Sheetrock square footage in “Operation Eracer,” her exhibition at Inman@Lawing. Inman Gallery proper is part of Houston’s long tradition of “house” galleries — one of the pluses of our fair, unzoned city. But while Montrose’s vanishing bungalow galleries…
Letter from Uzbekistan
By now, the musicians’ path out of Houston to what many see as the greener pastures of Austin, Nashville, New York and Los Angeles is well worn. To say that Houston-bred Wil Wuerdig — the singer-guitarist of the alternative Southern rock band Raindance — is not on that path is…
Laurent Boccara
Born in Tunisia and educated in France, Laurent Boccara spent his early years working as a field archeologist in Israel, Europe and the United States. The job, with its painstaking duties of uncovering, charting and reconstructing finds, significantly influenced his later work as a painter. A quiet beauty emanates from…
The Great Gatekeeper
There is something graceful, damn near balletic, about doorman Carl “Wasi” Townsend in action. His engaging, non-sycophantic manner is astonishing in the world of velvet ropes. He greets the guys with warm handshakes and the gals with wet smooches. He makes every man feel important and every woman feel beautiful…
The Pain Train
Rawson Thurber has been so busy the past few days that by the time he finally returns a reporter’s phone call, he does so at 1:30 in the morning–and he doesn’t even realize the late, or early, hour till he hears the groggy croak on the other end. He’s sorry…
Massive Attack
Massive Attack’s slow-paced release schedule has made each of its albums a de facto statement on the UK dance music scene: 1991’s Blue Lines practically ushered in trip-hop, ’94’s Protection and its companion, No Protection, introduced us to electronica’s dub roots (not to mention Tricky), and ’98’s Mezzanine posited the…
Young Guns
Dolores Paige told the Marine Corps recruiter he could enlist all the students at Willowridge High School — except her son. “I told him, ‘You take all these kids if you want to, but don’t you call my house — you ain’t getting my baby.’ ” It’s not that Dolores…