Gong Hits
FRI 7/23 When you compare the Gong Show of the ’70s to American Idol of today, it becomes more obvious that television programming really is going down the crapper. Sure, Simon Cowell can attack vehemently and Paula Abdul can criticize constructively, but nothing says “Get your sorry butt off the…
Hypocritical Oaths
If the tiny Quebecois island of Sainte Marie-La Mauderne is any indication, Michael Moore was right: Canadians do not lock their front doors (an assertion he made in Bowling for Columbine). Of course, the 125 residents of this tiny fictional community have no need to: Murders are unheard of here,…
Slings and Arrows
Hunkered behind scrub, you wait. Musk covers your human scent, though you’re downwind of the prey to ensure camouflage. With the quiet steps of a predator cat, you slowly move closer, lift your bow and draw the string back. You release, and the arrow pierces the side of a three-dimensional…
Running Scared
Through August 28 at the Axiom, 2524 McKinney, 713-522-8443. $5.99-$17.
Beautiful Music
SAT 7/24 In the ever-evolving world of rock cred, few barbs can snap the Achilles heel of a group like the label “girl band.” A precursor to the “boy band” tag, it’s a misogynistic term used to smack softer, introspective male musicians. You know the pop/rock genre, with its sensitive…
Capsule Reviews
Chess With music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (the two male B’s from the Swedish pop sensation ABBA) and lyrics by Tim Rice (Evita, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast), this cold war-inspired musical about a world chess championship match has gone down in Broadway annals as one…
Half and Half
THU 7/22 Breaking up is hard to do, but Michael Weller’s Split makes it look like it might have been a little easier in the early ’80s. During the course of the play, we watch the seemingly happy Paul (Scott Banks) and Carol (Alice Fulks) as their marriage of six…
To Quirk or Not to Quirk
Most of us drew silly crap in our high school notebooks: doodles, caricatures, stream-of-consciousness imagery and commentary, maybe even an unflattering sketch of the algebra teacher with “dickhead” written underneath in 3-D letters…um, well, anyway. Save for the occasional scribble during a boring meeting, most of us stop drawing when…
Music Awards Survey
Well, folks, it’s gotten hot. After a June that felt more like an April, this summer’s finally stopped underachieving and is now hammering us with the unholy trinity of ridiculously high temperatures, soul-drenching humidity and alarmingly frequent ozone alerts. The gators have retired to their bayou-bank havens, and the blue…
Capsule Reviews
“Diane Arbus: Revelations” Diane Arbus photographed midgets, giants, transvestites and circus freaks. She also photographed suburban families in their backyards. In her photographs, strangeness is the great equalizer, and she exposes it in seemingly “normal” subjects. “Diane Arbus: Revelations” is a retrospective of her work, with photographs from the 1940s…
switchfoot
Jon Foreman has heard enough about his band’s faith and Christian-rock underpinnings. The Switchfoot front man says that to really understand him as a musician, critics and fans should know that, at his core, he’s a devoted follower of JC. We’re not talking Mel Gibson’s Hollywood savior here. It’s that…
Bogotá’s Best Birds
Pollo Riko Dodo’s Chicken Pollo Riko Whole roasted chicken$8.29
Half-chicken$4.69
Half-chicken and
two sides$6.09
Quarter-chicken (dark)$2.69
Lunch special: quarter-chicken
and two sides$3.25
Dodo’s Chicken Whole roasted chicken$9.15
Half-chicken$4.90
Half-chicken and
two sides$6.10
Quarter-chicken…
Body Rock the Vote
Paul van Dyk spins , at
Make Mine Migas
Rustika Café & Bakery (3237 Southwest Freeway, 713-665-6226) is a fancy-pants Mexican bakery gone uptown, set in a pricey strip center. But don’t let the eye candy — stunning pastries, empanadas, mile-high cakes and twinkling fruit turnovers — distract you from a delightful, home-style, hot breakfast. The best thing cooking…
Blame It on Braid
Braid appears For more information, call .
Follow Your Nose
Houston nightlife has characteristic smells. Sure, there’s that mingled fragrance of beer, cigarettes, body odor and perfume, but you get that anywhere, except in cities less sweaty than ours, or those namby-pamby metropolises with smoking bans in the bars. No, I’m talking about aromas more unique and exotic, like the…
The Mixmaster
The three-block area along Bunningham Lane, west of Voss Road, is one of the many places in Houston where fate is obscured by yellow caution tape. A chain-link fence, a phalanx of neon traffic barrels and a “Road Closed” sign clearly proclaim this is no longer a place to go…
The Cure
The Cure’s new record is its first since Robert Smith disbanded the group following 2000’s underrated Bloodflowers, and it was produced by Ross Robinson, whose résumé includes work for Slipknot, Korn and Vanilla Ice. But worry not: The self-titled return sounds almost exactly like a Cure record should — almost,…
Got It, Flaunt It
Trying to reform campaign-finance laws in Texas — home of Tom DeLay — is a noble, needed effort that will eventually, we’re sure, have all the success that state environmental activists have had. Someone has to do it, though, and thankfully Fred Lewis and the folks at Campaigns for People…
Jadakiss
In press interviews for his new album, Kiss of Death, Jadakiss, a member of the Lox, asserts that he wants to be thought of as one of the greatest MCs of all time. Though it seems like bravado, the fact that New York’s hip-hop community has taken his statements seriously…
Sins of Omission?
The bishop’s letter to the victim begins with a harrowing apology: I want to express my profound apology for any sexual abuse you suffered from Juan Carlos Patino. Although Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of the Galveston-Houston Diocese wrote the letter last November, he was referring back to 1996. That’s when, Fiorenza…
The Meat Purveyors
The Meat Purveyors have answered to all manner of genre-labeling in their six-year career (alt-country, roots rock, Americana), but what the Austin four-piece delivers is more or less straight, if banjo-challenged, bluegrass (which, after all, was country music before country music was country music), held together with a honky-tonk spirit…
Letters
The Race to Learn Exposing the problems: Many thanks to you, Houston Press [“HISD’s Ethnic Gap,” by Robert Kimball, July 1]. Dr. Robert Kimball is a courageous man who did and is doing more than just give lip service to the problems at HISD (and everywhere else in the United…
Bumblebeez 81
Plenty of scribes have unloaded on The Printz, and it’s easy to see why. This compilation of two EPs is often a mess, with Aussie provocateur Chris Colonna and one-named helpers such as Pia and Surya gleefully engaging in unnatural acts of rock, hip-hop and plenty more, without the slightest…
Big Words
The blood flies at . . For information, call or visit
The Hives
Of all the “The” bands swearing devotion to the Sonics/Stones/Stooges holy trinity of garage rock, the Hives have always seemed to have the most fun. Unhindered by the Strokes’ penchant for rock-star cliché or the White Stripes’ Machiavellian creepiness, the Hives reveled in the simple pleasures of three chords, a…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, July 22 Billy Gardell was an overweight kid with a tough upbringing in Pittsburgh and Central Florida. So the chubster took up comedy to make light of his situation. He was almost an instant hit on the comedy circuit, scoring gigs in clubs before he was old enough to…
Playbill
Sandra Collins The most noticeable change trance DJ Sandra Collins has undergone between her last mix CD, 2001’s Cream, and her new one, Perfecto Presents… , is visual. On the cover of the old disc, she’s hypermodernist Euro, wearing a skintight vinyl top and an impossibly smooth gray skirt, looking…
Brotherly Love
signs from . . Free.
Meow Mixed
Without risking much critical credibility, it can be said that Catwoman succeeds on its own feline terms. Much like a cat, the movie is a superfluous gob of fluff with an attitude ranging from idiotic to nasty. It’s a sleek and self-absorbed animal, adoring itself so ardently that those of…