Fat Joe
“Lean Back” gave Fat Joe a chance to make the really big money, and now he’s embracing the mainstream. He came across as a genial glad-hander while working the red carpet at the recent MTV Movie Awards, and he makes repeated bids for airplay on All or Nothing, a disc…
Thanks, Babe
Bertice Berry earned her Ph.D. in sociology at 26. She’s a successful corporate speaker and has written two memoirs, four novels and two best-selling comedic “guides,” Sckraight from the Ghetto: You Know You’re Ghetto If… and its sequel. She hosted a cable television show and worked as a stand-up comedian…
Macon Greyson
We all do it — have those little what-I-shoulda-said internal conversations where we think up the perfect retort and verbally body-slam some dimwit who’s messing up our worldview. You don’t want to get into one of those with Dallas rockers Macon Greyson. On the band’s new album, Translate, from the…
Where’s Harry?
FRI 7/15 Oh, Harry, how you’ve grown! When we met you in J.K. Rowling’s first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, you were an orphaned but magically delicious child. Now you’re the BMOC at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And the much-anticipated sixth Potter tome, Harry Potter and…
From Autumn to Ashes, with Poison the Well, All That Remains and Throwdown
Many emocore groups alternate hefty and wimpy singers, but From Autumn to Ashes takes this approach to extremes. Grizzly shouter Benjamin Perri and comforting crooner Francis Mark actually swap lines during the verses, old-school Run-D.M.C.-style. Mark doubles as the band’s drummer, so when FATA plays live, his disembodied yet reassuring…
Ready for Some Ftbol?
SUN 7/17 Half the fun of soccer is the rabid, flag-waving, chanting fans in multicolored face paint. And it’s hard to get any wilder than the tens of thousands of bloodthirsty ones at Latin American soccer games. But don’t rush to your travel agent just yet. There’s something in store…
Reel Big Fish, with American Hi-Fi, El Pus, Punchline and Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer
Back in the day, Reel Big Fish was a real big deal. But folks don’t care so much for its O.C.-blessed ska-punk anymore. That doesn’t mean the Fish should be tossed back in the sea of forgotten ’90s rockers — there are still some mighty sounds on its new CD,…
Hip-hop Hoedown
THU 7/14 Most hip-hop MCs spit rhymes while their DJs spin vinyl — and that’s about it. Not so at a Bavu Blakes show. For the past five years, he’s performed his brand of hip-hop with a live band in tow. The Austin-based MC, who’s known around those parts for…
Cruiserweight, with the Letters Organize, My Epiphany and Blackout Pact
Siblings always have the best harmony — in music, at least. Cruiserweight is made up of three sibs and a friend, and the band tackles the peppy, ultraharmonic genre of pop-punk with better-than-average results. After moving from Terrell and Dallas to Austin, the band found a larger fan base and…
Proud Marie
FRI 7/15 Poet Marie Brown is a smooth, jazzy poet who scats with a Billie Holiday-esque grace. But behind her grace is a subtle fury. The San Antonio native started writing poetry as a ten-year-old, in part to diss her “evil stepmother.” More recently, in 2003, she pointedly attacked advocacy…
Always a Bridesmaid
If Vince Vaughn puts any effort into what he’s doing, it doesn’t show, which is perhaps one of the benefits of always appearing to be hungover. The man probably has to check the bags under his eyes at the airport, and he’s about as in shape as a toddler’s fistful…
Island’s Best
When I glanced up from the mound of pure jumbo lump crabmeat and the complimentary bowl of boiled shrimp on our table at Clary’s Seafood Restaurant, I was looking out a picture window at a scene so perfect, you could cut it up and make a jigsaw puzzle out of…
Comic Relief
Movies based on comic books have become dime-a-dozen events — appropriate given the cover price of these titles was ten cents when they debuted decades ago. It wasn’t so long ago Warner Bros. teased the release of Richard Donner’s Superman by insisting, “You’ll believe a man can fly”; now, you’ll…
Thug Life
Right now, it seems like the world is Slim Thug’s oyster to shuck. The towering (six foot six) Northside rapper has been one of Texas’s and the South’s mixtape messiahs for years now, as implied by the title of his brand-new major-label studio debut, Already Platinum. His cell phone’s ringing…
Mostly Miranda
Me and You and Everyone We Know, the new film from writer-director-performance artist Miranda July, walked off with prizes at both the Sundance and Cannes film festivals. An audience and critical favorite, it follows an ensemble cast of characters, each of whom is longing to connect with another human being…
Hellish Houston
There can be few worse places to be on this earth than Houston in a July drought/ heat wave. Chicago in a January blizzard can’t hold a candle to this for sheer misery — the hair-curling humidity, the obnoxious sunshine, the 110-degree heat indexes, the ozone alerts, the smog, the…
Happy Surprise
If for no other reason, Happy Endings deserves its soft spot in our collective hearts for rescuing Tom Arnold from the where-are-they-now? scrap heap. The former Mr. Roseanne Barr plays Frank, a widower who falls for and sleeps with his son’s conniving would-be girlfriend Jude, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And…
Whitney’s Dookie Bubble
Mark my words, two words will take the country by storm by the end of this summer, and those two words are dookie bubble. And we will have the one and only Bobby Brown to thank for that expressive new entry into the American English vernacular. In the second episode…
A Gap in Coverage
On a frigid Sunday evening, Daniel Hopkins and his girlfriend pasture his sorrel quarter horse, crank the heater in his Astro van and set off with a load of five children for his house in Shepherd. Hopkins is rolling down the blacktop and crossing the divided lanes of U.S. 59,…
Glorious Sea
What Winged Migration was to birds, Deep Blue is to the ocean: a breathtaking nature documentary cheapened slightly by melodramatic voice-over. In an opening that swells with import, Pierce Brosnan speaks in worshipful tones, informing us that our planet is a blue planet, with far more ocean than land. This…
Road Signs
Despite the fact that my wife, Jacqueline, and I had been on vacation for five days with four children — two of our own, our nine-year-old son John Henry and infant daughter Harriet, and two more, a boy of 13 we’ll call Duncan and a girl of 11 we’ll call…
Beyond Funny
In Main Street Theater’s hysterical production of Beyond the Fringe, the following characters all appear: Tony Blair, a coal miner and a one-legged man who wants to play Tarzan. And as unlikely as it might sound, they all snug together quite nicely. The 1960s British sketch comedy, created by a…
Mean Streets
The racetracks of NASCAR — from the “Too Tough to Tame” Darlington Raceway to the blazing-fast Talladega Superspeedway — are intense cauldrons of competition where the slightest mistake can trigger a chaotic crash. But they’re mere scenic-route drives compared to the mean streets of Houston. In order to crash at…
Capsule Reviews
Mister Roberts It’s hard keeping those crisp navy whites cleaned and pressed when you’re on a “can” of a cargo ship called the USS Reluctant, somewhere in the South Pacific during the waning days of World War II, out of harm’s way. The Reluctant is delivering needed supplies, but its…
Wish You Were Here
Congressman Ted Poe has gotten national attention with a little travelogue he wrote that showed up on the op-ed page of the Houston Chronicle and on the celebrated HuffingtonPost, a celebrity-filled blog run by Adrianna Huffington. In it he described the joys of Guantánamo Bay, which he had just visited…
Fantastic Form
With the exhibition of works by Luis Tomasello, Sicardi Gallery brings yet another little-known Latin American master of avant-garde work to the attention of Houston. Like Venezuelan artists Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesús-Rafael Soto, the Argentinean Tomasello creates optically kinetic work activated by the movement of the viewer. All three of…
Ying Yang Twins
Now that even your grandmother gets Dave Chappelle’s goof on Lil Jon, crunk faces the challenge of all overexposed genres: How to stay relevant? One way, of course, is through the time-honored bid for “artistic growth.” But when it’s Atlanta’s Ying Yang Twins talking about such matters, you have to…
Letters
Kitchen Stories The real world, Houston: I just wanted to thank you for your story [“Chefs Rule,” by Brian McManus, July 7]. Until recently, I taught culinary arts at HCC, and your article aptly describes everything I tried to make my students understand about the real world. Especially when they…
Capsule Reviews
“Amy Arbus: Rites and Rituals” This show presents work by Amy Arbus, the daughter of legendary photographer Diane Arbus. Diane is a tough act for any photographer to follow, and it has to be even tougher if you’re her daughter. But Amy has taken up the challenge, and she’s been…
Sufjan Stevens
Say it with me: “SOOF-yahn.” Last year, you could still get away with mispronouncing the symphonic-folk songwriter’s first name; his previous two records, the sprawling Greetings from Michigan and the religious, banjo-filled Seven Swans, were gorgeous works that, in spite of critical praise, never received the nationwide attention they deserved…
Let’s Be Unreasonable
The Inversion installation at Art League’s Montrose headquarters has been impressively turning heads lately. But in general, public art certainly lacks the “wow factor.” In fact, most public art projects, like the Lyric Centre’s awful giant cello, cry out to be vandalized. But what if money were no object, and…
Chocolate Kisses
Roald Dahl’s inner child was evidently a contrary lad — precocious, dark-minded, contemptuous of adult supervision and fueled by a sense of justice that often proceeded via cruel whim. In Dahl’s twisty children’s stories, villains throw kids out of windows, beautiful women turn out to be hideous witches in disguise…
Can
With Can’s second quartet of albums (remastered and reissued by Mute/ Spoon), hints of fallibility seep into its mighty sound. Not surprising: Few bands can maintain awesomeness for more than five consecutive records, as these German savants did. Future Days (1973), Can’s final album featuring idiosyncratic singer Damo Suzuki, marks…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, July 14 LL may or may not have gone to hell, but one thing’s for sure: His former one-man-band-cum-right-hand-man rocks the bells every week in Houston. That’s right, LL Cool J’s legendary DJ Cut Creator can be found “driving the cross fader like a cut mobile” at Suede Lounge…
Old Dog, New Tricks
The “perro caliente” ($4.25) at Onion Creek Coffee House (3106 White Oak Drive, 713-880-0706) is a dog with an attitude. Two large all-beef frankfurters are squeezed between hot dog buns that have been lightly greased with butter and then grilled. With melted white cheddar cheese, bacon pieces, diced fresh tomato…