Strapping Young Lad
Lots of folks get into a band, make it “big” — on one level or another — and then start side projects to keep themselves interested. Others start off dabbling in a bunch of different things and end up pursuing whatever ball stays in the air the longest. Vancouver-based Devin…
Roller Derby
At 4:45 a.m. Alan Bailey gets into his wheelchair, rolls down the hall to the kitchen and drinks a glass of water. Two inches above his nipples is where the feeling in his body starts and stops. He has a two-pound grip and can make a fist with his right…
Melissa Adams
A big chunk of the record-buying public gets the same kind of satisfaction from their choice of music as they do from regular trips to Mickey D’s. They seek a predictable outcome and have no place in their diet for anything challenging. Melissa Adams, who splits her time between Houston…
Mac Attack
Marcus Long nearly died three times last year. After a routine procedure on his bladder, doctors diagnosed the 61-year-old with cancer of the brain, colon, lung and spine. He survived brain and back radiation treatment and chemotherapy — but he barely survived a McDonald’s breakfast burrito, says his wife, Elaine…
Male Fraud
Paul Morse (Jason Lee) has this terrible problem. He’s all set to marry the take-charge, raven-haired beauty Karen (Selma Blair, thanklessly playing second fiddle as usual), but late in the game finds himself also falling for her free-spirited blond cousin, Becky (Julia Stiles). Gee, what’s a guy to do? It’s…
Searching for Normal
On the last day of school before the holidays, a bell sounds at Clements High and students spill from classrooms into the hallways. Most hurry excitedly toward the vast parking lot at this Sugar Land campus, but a few head the other way — trickling into the small temporary building…
Sour Hours
It all begins with the word. “I believe I may have a first sentence,” murmurs Virginia Woolf (Nicole Kidman, yes really) to her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), as she commences labor on her fourth novel, Mrs. Dalloway. The year is 1921, but skillfully intercut segments illustrate that the book’s heady…
Holy Halibut! It’s Fishman and Jordy
We should have known something fishy was up two years ago when Landry’s Seafood honcho Tilman Fertitta gushed all over The Insider when asked about his then unpublicized bid to renovate Fire Station No. 1 and the old city waterworks downtown. A tipster had slipped us the contents of a…
Toss It Outback
These are the dog days of January, the poor put-upon month used by studios as a dumping ground for product considered too lethally toxic for release during those real moviegoing months — December, say, when audiences are buzzed on two weeks of vacation and award-contenders do their Oscar striptease and…
Nice, Nice Baby
Niceness is busting out all over at the Houston Chronicle. The past week brought a trifecta of opportunities for the paper to choose Goofus over Gallant, and each time our favorite daily turned away from the Dark Side. The first, and most expected, incident came with the announcement that executive…
Strange Days
David Sedaris’s National Public Radio voice simmers with eerie, suburban-sounding calm. Everything seems fine in his commentaries — until the deadly bite of his irony chomps down on yet another morsel of human weirdness. Whether he’s recounting his experiences as an elf at Macy’s during the holidays (as he did…
Gut Reactions
Gut Reactions Gastric bypass option: I think you did a great job on this piece [“A Figure to Die For,” by Craig Malisow, January 2]. There is another surgery you can have done. I am 20 years old and I weighed in at 315 pounds, and I had what they…
Upside-Down Frown
The spirit of Count Orlock meets the smiley face in “Yesferatu,” Hills Snyder’s exhibition at Gallery Sonja Roesch. But Smiley, that sunny yellow icon with the vacantly cheery, I’ve-just-had-a-lobotomy grin, is the real star. Snyder extracts the familiar icon from the pop-culture storage shed and turns it into a 21st-century…
Slanguage Arts
How do you interest a new generation in poetry? You combine it with hip-hop, blues, jazz, theater and politics — all at the same time. At least that’s what the Bronx-based spoken-word collective Universes did in its critically acclaimed show, Slanguage. Five years ago, Steven Sapp, Mildred Ruiz, Gamal Abdel…
Globalization’s McBacklash
At 11:52 a.m., I ease into the line of cars waiting to pull in to the parking lot of the new fried chicken franchise Pollo Campero. The traffic has backed up one lane of Bellaire Boulevard all the way to Chatwood, where a Taco Bell and a McDonald’s sit across…
Almost Famous
Reality shows may make good television, but they don’t portray reality. Their “characters” are constantly performing, all too aware of the crews, production assistants and publicists looming nearby. At least Bravo’s The It Factor is a little more honest; its cast makes no bones about loving the spotlight. The new…
“Recalling Row Houses”
Sit back in a rocking chair and listen as voices from the Third Ward, including musician Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and artist Jesse Lott, reminisce about the neighborhood. Virginia Prescott’s audio installation was produced by the teenagers in Project Row Houses’ Art/Life program with help from the folks at KPFT. The…
Wayne Newton
Perhaps one of the following reasons will convince you to spend Saturday evening with “Mr. Las Vegas”: The guy has performed for more than 30 million people and released 158 albums. He plays fiddle, piano, banjo and guitar. He knew Lucille Ball. He’s won the “Entertainer of the Year” award…
Born-Again Bruschetta
This traditional Tuscan treat usually consists of toasted Italian bread coated with liberal amounts of garlic and olive oil and topped with fresh tomatoes and basil. At Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar (2405 West Alabama, 713-520-5959), however, bruschetta ($9.95) has undergone a chic remake. The toasted bread is the…
Norman Mitchell
8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. Friday, January 17, and Saturday, January 18; 8 p.m. Sunday, January 19. For reservations and information, call 281-481-1188 or visit www.thecomedyshowcase.com. $12.
Sea Legs
It was a quiet Friday night on FM 1960. Perhaps everyone was still hungover from New Year’s Eve, or perhaps the stars — which you can see out here — weren’t lining up right. In any case, The Boat at 3 Cheers (2462 FM 1960 West, 281-583-0990) was empty. The…
Not So Complic8ted
By all measures, Avril Lavigne had a great 2002. She sold millions of copies of Let Go, a clearly Canadian collection of mildly peeved kiss-offs that goes down like Alanis’s little pills without the jagged edges. Her slightly warped tours with her band of spiky-haired “sk8er bois” drew capacity crowds…
Guit With It
The nearly universally held short take on Junior Brown is that he’s the guy who fused Jimi Hendrix-style guitar playing with traditional country music — especially that of Ernest Tubb. Alas, that thumbnail sketch misses what Brown is really all about. Yes, Brown did lace some of Hendrix’s most memorable…
The Queen Bee
For Houston’s modern rock community, 2003 opened with some great news. At long last, after years of slamming the door on local acts, Clear Channel station the Buzz announced that it will let them on the airwaves. Their new show The Texas Buzz debuted on January 5. Finally, Houston rock…
System of a Down
So I was in Wherehouse Music the other day, and I saw that System of a Down has a new CD out called Steal This Album. Since their last one was kind of a letdown, certainly not worth the full $17 list price, I figured, “What the fuck? I’ll crotch…
Dot Allison
Dot Allison is best known as the ex-singer of the Scottish trio One Dove, which quickly came and went back in 1993. One Dove’s detached coolness and dub explorations (courtesy of Primal Scream producer Andrew Weatherall) still generated enough earth tones to keep it grounded in dance-pop. In fact, One…