Mindless Mayhem
Pardon My English was written back in the 1930s, long before the great American musical came into its own as an art form. Back then, musicals tended to be little more than a bunch of songs stitched together by silly plots that usually featured some sort of bumbling foolishness followed…
Sweet Saudade
We’re so proud: Though only 26 years old, Houston native Ayman Harper has danced with companies in Frankfurt, the Netherlands and Chicago. And now that he’s back home, he’s making strides as a choreographer. This weekend the wunderkind will premiere M Saudade, a contemporary piece that deals loosely with AIDS…
Digging in the Dirt
Broken Flowers (Universal Home Entertainment) Bill Murray, who long ago swapped manic kineticism for melancholy deadpan, is once more mired in a middle-aged funk; what else is new? As Don Johnston, an aging lothario whose latest young girlfriend is walking out as the audience is just settling in, Murray’s on…
Capsule Reviews
Baby: A Musical Stages Repertory Theatre has put together a production of Sybille Pearson, David Shire and Richard Maltby’s charming Baby: A Musical, a rich little work about three couples who must deal with the ups and downs of pregnancy in our modern world. The story takes place in a…
Roam the Iles
Here are two perfect people. Drew Elliott is a handsome, wealthy 45-year-old Southern doctor (and Rhodes Scholar, of course). Kate Townsend is a blond-haired, blue-eyed, brilliant, not-yet-18, half-English tennis phenom. But if their lives were really perfect, Greg Iles’s new novel Turning Angel wouldn’t have a plot, would it? Turns…
Full-Court Pressure
Pity the college basketball coach. He toils endlessly to explain the vagaries of offensive sets and defensive zones. He frets over lineups, injuries, and scouting reports. His job is never safe — one losing season, and it’s back to teaching bounce passes to the JV girls at St. Elizabeth’s. Few…
Capsule Reviews
“Detoured” Police barriers are neatly tiled with mirrors like a disco ball. Concrete barriers are decoratively slip-covered in orange-and-white fabric that ties in bows on each end. Traffic cone piñatas are covered in ruffled orange paper. Houstonians will recognize all these objects as hallmarks of our city’s loathed and never-ending…
Park Your Caboose
As Mister Rogers taught us when we were kids, miniature trains can be badass. See them in all their rollin’ splendor at today’s World’s Greatest Hobby on Tour, an expo that features live entertainment, seminars, manufacturers and retailers of model trains and Thomas the Tank Engine for the kids. You’ll…
Our top DVD picks for the week of January 3
All in the Family: The Complete Fifth Season (Columbia/Tristar) Annie Duke’s Beginner’s Guide to Texas Hold ‘Em (Big Vision) As Time Goes By: Reunion Special (PBS) The Cave (Sony) Dumb and Dumber: Unrated (New Line) Football Collection: Radio, Jerry Maguire, and Rudy (Sony) The Gospel (Sony) Green River Killer (Lions…
Did You Say Limequat?
If you’re up for a real fruity experience, check out the citrus at the Bayou City Farmers’ Market Citrus Festival. Tangerines, limes, grapefruits, limequats (!) and lemons round out this juicy lineup. Okay, we’ll say it: Orange you glad we told you? (Sorry.) Sat., Jan. 7, 8 a.m.-noon…
Don’t Ask, Don’t Be
So they’re sitting in an armored Hummer in the Mojave, wearing full battle-rattle: uniforms, flak vests, nine-millimeters strapped to the side. Specialist Tommy Cook, his sergeant and a third man are sitting on heavy artillery. Got a few M-4s and M-16s and a .50-caliber machine gun, among others. It’s December…
Ennio Morricone
His iconic scores for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns made him famous, but set those aside and Ennio Morricone would still be one of the modern era’s most intriguing composers. On a par with jazz-funk icon David Axelrod in terms of both madness and genius, the crazy Italiano sure knew how…
Feline Fine
Funny, but we didn’t know cats did anything other than sleep for 23.5 hours a day and, during the other half-hour, rub their rears on the legs of your black pants. So we can’t wait to see the Feline Agility Competition at the Houston Cat Club, Inc.’s 54th Charity Cat…
Letters to the Editor
School District of Hard Knocks? The grifters: As a teacher who worked for HISD for 12 years, I was not surprised to read the potential fate of the Vanguard/magnet programs [“Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” by Margaret Downing, December 15]. HISD portrays itself as a poor urban district that must cut…
Antony and the Johnsons
Antony and the Johnsons’ sophomore album boasts some impressive credentials, specifically the receipt of the prestigious 2005 Mercury Award, the European honor accorded to the year’s best breakout band. Even so, Antony himself remains something of an enigma. Hailing from California by way of New York’s cabaret scene, he has…
King Me
Looking for a hunka-hunka burnin’ fun? The fifth annual Elvis Presley Birthday Bash is offering a hip-rockin’ good time and free admission to the Sam Houston Race Park for anyone dressed like the King, so break out the white rhinestone jumpsuit and start wigglin’ — you might even win $1,000…
Where Have You Been All My Life?
Take one bite of the Campeche shrimp salad ($6.95) at Señor Rita’s Margarita Village (2409 Montrose, 713-526-7482), and you’ll wonder why you’ve never tasted this combination of ingredients before. Served in an oversize margarita glass large enough for two, the salad includes shrimp, cocktail sauce, onion, cucumber, bell pepper and…
Lindsay Lohan
Is it good or bad when the most notable aspect of an album is its drumming? Throughout Lindsay Lohan’s new disc, the drums give every crisply produced track a welcome jolt of energy. It’s a peculiar element to hail, but imagining this mawkish metapop without the percussive clatter is pretty…
Let Them Eat Cake!
Knowing full well that most guys just don’t dig wedding stuff, the folks at the Bridal Extravaganza Show have tapped into the male competitive spirit. Husbands-to-be can enter in today’s Grooms Cake Eating Contest — the groom who downs the most bridal cake in three minutes wins a honeymoon trip…
The Aeroplane Flies High
The most influential indie rock record of the past decade reverently declares its love of Jesus Christ, features the songs “Two-Headed Boy” (parts one and two) and “The King of Carrot Flowers” (part one, then parts two and three combined), uses semen as a lyrical motif, crushes heavily on Anne…
Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Alt-country’s answer to Frank Abagnale, Will Oldham has recorded under such pseudonyms as Palace Brothers, Pushkin and Superwolf. Although his work under these names has gravitated toward 11th-hour Dust Bowl despair and acoustic minimalism, Oldham has spent much of the 21st century loitering as the warbling country-gent Bonnie “Prince” Billy…
Don’t Knock Her
Mackenzie Phillips’s character, Lily St. Regis, doesn’t take part in the Annie tune “It’s a Hard Knock Life.” But Phillips might be mouthing the lyrics backstage. The former child star (you know her as daughter Julie in the sitcom One Day at a Time) kicked an early addiction to drugs…
Music to Cover Your Eyes To
If you hunt for music — especially vinyl — in thrift stores, junk shops, at garage sales or flea markets, chances are you’ve seen and rejected thousands of the records that now make up the bulk of Houstonian Nick DiFonzo’s world-famous collection of bad and strange album covers. As he…
Heath in Heat
For your Heath Ledger holiday-movie options, you have the following: a) a cowboy in love with another man; and b) history’s most infamous womanizer. Since the name Casanova is synonymous with an unquenchable thirst for straight sex with women (or at least boasting about it), the role might seem to…
A Fabulous Tale
It’s a memorable moment when handsome martyr Sidney Carton stands before the guillotine and offers a heroic speech before his execution in Charles Dickens’s classic A Tale of Two Cities. But hey, what if Sidney was a drag queen, and rather than facing death, he’s just facing the opening of…
It’s In The Cards
Yeah, Wack is superstitious. So what, wanna fight about it? We don’t walk under ladders, step on cracks or let black cats cross our paths. Doesn’t mean we’re pussies. Just says we’re aware that there’s a greater spiritual force at work in the world and that we respect it. We…
A New Tony’s Order
When nighttime rolls around, stomachs start growling and dinner choices are discussed, one option never mentioned among my ilk is Tony’s. This is for several reasons, some of which, if I’m being honest, are born of my own prejudices. It’s a dinosaur. It’s snobby. It’s a retirement home. In short,…
Sun and Skin
Dallas’s Hydroponic Sound System has made quite a name for itself since releasing its fresh 2000 debut, Routine Insanity. Praised by DJ mags around the world, the turntablist duo has been dubbed the originator of global soul, thanks to its eccentric mix, which blends dub, ’80s rap, jazz, Afrobeat and…
Morcheeba
Vocalists for the decade-old, formerly trip-hop British band Morcheeba are disappearing more frequently than Spinal Tap drummers. Original chanteuse Skye Edwards departed last year (she quit; she wasn’t the victim of a “bizarre gardening accident”) and was replaced by Daisy Martey of Noonday Underground fame, who decided over the summer…
Something to Wine About
At Wine, Women & Song, young single ladies are invited to sip an assortment of wines, nibble on cheeses and enjoy some acoustic tunes. And what are the ladies to do when they’re tipsy and lookin’ to unleash that drunken energy? Let loose on the poor dudes who paid a…
Hard Like Satin
If you’ve somehow missed Houston indie rockers Satin Hooks, who have rocked nearly every small live-music venue in town for the past two years, you’re in luck. Today, they’ll showcase their electronic shrouds, heavy rock successions and turbulent breakdowns; it’s a sound reminiscent of the Wipers, Kurt Cobain’s idols. The…
Eminem
Dude’s kind of obnoxious, huh? I guess we get the superstars we deserve. Truth: I haven’t been able to take Em/Marshall/ Slim very seriously even as a joke (always the most serious of literary forms, just ask David Mamet) since sitting through 8 Mile, which I was hoping would be…
Dinner, Dessert and Whores
If there’s anything a real Texas audience loves more than a sinner, it’s a juicy scandal — and a juicy steak. The Great Caruso Dinner Theater is serving up all that and more with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The infamous musical comedy is about the little-brothel-that-couldn’t-anymore, thanks to…
Pro-Choice Punch
Los Angeles-based artist Andrea Bowers’s installation at the MFAH’s Glassell School of Art takes on abortion rights in a way no Lifetime movie could. “Letters to an Army of Three” chronicles nearly a decade’s worth of letters (1964 to 1973) written to three Bay Area abortion-rights activists from women seeking…
Sean Paul
Blessed with exotic good looks and a razor-sharp tongue, former water polo star Sean Henriques reinvented himself as Sean Paul and became dancehall’s urban-crossover poster child; his second album, 2003’s Dutty Rock, knocked 50 Cent from the No. 1 slot in Billboard. Such success may have gone to his head…
He Will Rock You
Lichen on the rocks may sound like the latest funky cocktail, but it’s actually the center of Steven Gilbert’s new exhibit, “A Mountain of Memory,” which opens today at the Jung Center. Gilbert says he wanted to create “a natural inkblot test for viewers” with his heavily pixilated digital prints…
Chicanos on the Rampage
In 2004, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa rocked the Alley Theatre in a huge blowout of laugh-till-your-sides-hurt hilarity. Moving, funny and utterly irreverent, the politically wicked show had only one thing wrong with it: It came and went so fast most Houstonians never got the word. Thankfully, Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas…
Jamie Foxx
After Jamie Foxx’s career-defining performance as Ray Charles, the most predictable move he could have made was to resume a musical career that has been dormant for the last decade. It’s also not surprising that Foxx would recruit several heavy-hitting friends — Kanye West, Mary J. Blige, and Ludacris among…
Singin’ a Carroll
Leave it to a Texan to croon a love song that makes use of pickup trucks as a wooing device: On “Rice Birds,” Adam Carroll sings, “I was thinking of you at the Mardi Gras, Fords and Chevys like I never saw.” Carroll’s folksy-country tunes are more Townes Van Zandt…
Vodka Seven
After hearing so many people talk about the Dirt Bar (222 Yale, 713-426-2442), I have to check it out for myself. There’s a moderately sized crowd when I walk in, and it’s dark as shit, so I can barely see all the tattoos. All of the leather swivel chairs at…
Get Hustle
Get Hustle is a darkly discordant Portland-based outfit that has put out a variety of recordings with various lineups in its nine years. On its second full-length, Rollin’ in the Ruins, the band opts for a guitar-free drums/keyboard/vocals format. The result is somewhat sinister goth-prog, with bluesy chanteuse Valentine Falcon…
Hitting the Jim
Comedian Jim Gaffigan really displays his Indiana roots when he describes the entirety of Mexican cuisine: “It’s a tortilla with cheese, meat or vegetables.” (Wow.) His wisdom doesn’t end there. Gaffigan has made his mark by removing the shroud of mystique from exotic items like bottled water and postcards. Laugh…
Smiles to Go
We popcorn-chomping hitchhikers never know who will pick us up on the roadside. In Flirting with Disaster, it was a neurotic Manhattan adoptee on a nationwide search for his biological parents. The desert-parched heroines of Thelma & Louise brought us along as they raised hell en route to their doom…
The Coattails Are Hers
We’re so over “performers” who milk pub from a more famous sibling or family member (see Simpson, Ashlee; or Jackson, anyone other than Michael or Janet). Thankfully, that’s not the case with indie songstress Sloan Wainwright. The aunt of impossibly suave crooner Rufus Wainwright and sister of singer Loudon Wainwright…