Letters
Hip-hoppin’ Hymn Coming clean: This story was incredible [“Rapping on Heaven’s Door,” by Michael Serazio, December 23]. There is finally something better in hip-hop to report, and you guys reported it. It seems that Christian topics get avoided because of their controversial ways, but this one was definitely necessary and…
Capsule Reviews
A Fertle Holiday If you’ve been Sugar Plummed, Scrooged and Messiahed enough for the holidays, then Radio Music Theatre’s A Fertle Holiday is the perfect season’s greetings for you: a family Christmas show featuring the funniest damned family on earth, or at least within a 25-mile radius of Houston. The…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, January 6 This first week of January can be depressing. No, it’s not the farewell to Christmas and the holidays that gets to us. It’s the fact that we’ve already crapped out on the “resolutions” we made just five days ago. Today, kiss your best intentions good-bye. Then go…
Drawn Together
Making art can be pretty lonely — just you, your raw materials and your amorphous ideas. That isolation may be one reason artists collaborate with one another. Collaborating means you get to access other people’s opinions, ideas and skill sets; it can allow several artists to accomplish things and explore…
Gypsy Kings
Don’t be alarmed if you meet a Chinese acrobat, a Russian contortionist or a Mexican juggler around town this month. In a procession of 52 trucks, Cirque du Soleil’s newest show, Varekai, recently rolled into Houston. Cast and crew lugged 1,000 tons of equipment, including Cirque du Soleil’s signature blue-and-yellow…
Capsule Reviews
“Hyper’real’ism: Fellowship Series VI” Bill Davenport has been making a lot of quirky trompe l’oeil paintings of late, but with Dark Door, he’s taken fake to the next level of absurdity. Davenport has made a phenomenal and fantastically ridiculous sculpture. It’s a giant medieval-looking wooden door with big metal bolts…
“Delinquent” Behavior
SAT 1/8 The promotional materials for Commerce Street Artists Warehouse’s upcoming art opening state: ” ‘Wayward Delinquents’ features the work of 18 artists known to frequent the same warehouses, back alleys, elevated trains and dive bars.” Funny, that sounds like almost all of our friends, except for the “elevated trains”…
Paella Paydirt
You can taste the flavor of shrimp, chicken, Spanish chorizo, calamari and saffron in each grain of rice in the paella. Rioja, the new Spanish restaurant on Westheimer at Kirkwood, calls itself a tapas restaurant, but the main attraction here is really the authentic Spanish paella. In fact, when you…
Swingin’ Singles
Here’s the one thing those goofy commercials for low-carb beer featuring hot “sporty” people have gotten right: Playing sports on a date is hot. There’s the fiery competition, the innuendo and, heck, the sweat. Plus, it’s no secret that competitive sports are a surefire way to size up your partner’s…
You Wascally Wabbit, You
There’s nothing quite like a steaming bowl of rabbit stew on a rainy winter’s day. And at new restaurant Bistro Calais (2811 Bammel Lane, 713-529-1314), chef Michael Dei Maggi serves up the wascally wabbit in his ragoût de lapin au vin rouge ($17). Huge chunks of rabbit, which practically fall…
Sexy Socialites
For some undiscovered reason, the Social always manages to get the best-looking crowd in town. Well-dressed, well-coiffed and well-endowed — such is the Socialite clientele, and they come out in droves each month for the recurring club night Sundown at the Social. They may not be as scantily clad as…
Fun with Nuns
In a 2002 interview, Pulitzer Prize- nominated playwright Lee Blessing said: “Theaters in the last few decades have become much more conservative in the way they program, especially new plays. And when they do produce them, they want material that won’t offend.” From its title, Blessing’s 1982 play Nice People…
The Youngest Ballerette
Bitches. Hoes. Blunts. Dubs. Spinners. Bling. These words, so often used in hip-hop, aren’t going to end up in a fourth-grade teacher’s lesson plan anytime soon. They paint pictures of an adult world with adult themes and adult situations. Even so, the youth market captured by hip-hop’s widespread net is…
Crapped Out
Love him or hate him — there rarely is a middle ground — Pat Green is the biggest thing to come out of Texas since, well, George W. Bush. And now that Pat is entering his second term as a major-label artist with his Lucky Ones CD, it appears that…
Guilty Pleasures, Part II
Well, folks, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the second installment of my “guilty pleasures” project, in which I try to find out what local, state and national music figures jam when they think no one is listening, the songs and artists you love but play only on…
Playbill
Road Kings Talk about multiple personalities. In the past year, I’ve seen the Road Kings’ Jesse Dayton do his singer-songwriter-in-the-round thing at the Mucky Duck with Hayes Carll and John Evans, blow the swingin’ doors off the hinges at both the Houston and Austin Continental Clubs with his tear-ass overdrive…
Back in the USSR
Some years ago, Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas opened the Russian-themed Red Square bar to critical acclaim. Everyone seemed to think it was the cream of the crop — everyone except a couple of retired servicemen who didn’t think the proud statue of Lenin greeting them outside the doorway…
The Halo Challenge
Zyos plays the video game Halo, plays it better than anyone in the world. His mother, Rhonda, watched him dominate the military combat game in San Francisco last year at the World Cyber Games the gaming Olympics and because of her status, because she is the mother of Zyos, Rhonda…
A Few Dollars Left
Clint Eastwood began digging into the third act of his career — the one that reveals the mature, deep-thinking artist… with a little jazz piano on the side — a dozen years ago, with the discomfiting anti-western Unforgiven. Since then, he’s hardly come up for air or given himself a…
In the Pink
Alongside U.S. 59, several miles north of the Loop, sits the appropriately named 59 Gun Range. Run-down homes, vacant lots and a fireworks emporium line its block. Immediately adjacent is Pancho’s Mobile Homes, a makeshift sales lot marked by a hand-painted sign, where dented trailers teeter on cinder blocks like…
Blade Runners
Over a three-month period in 1994, machete-wielding Hutu tribesmen in Rwanda hacked to death 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children. News reports, including film footage of the unfolding carnage, were broadcast around the globe. In the face of such unremitting acts of inhumanity, the world community did nothing. It wasn’t…
Holiday Spirit
Just in case the glow of the holiday spirit is starting to fade, we offer one last feel-good Christmas story to keep those cockles warmed. And to provide something to point to whenever someone bitches that we never print anything nice. Manuel and Margarita Chavez have lived in a small…
Mute Button
At first glance, White Noise looks like one more supernatural thriller aimed at the audience that’s easily scared and easily parted from its hard-earned cash. It will be lumped in among the Rings, Grudges, Otherses and other gotcha creepshows inhabited by rancorous ghosts and pissed-off ghouls out to off those…