Mixing It Up
Ellsworth Kelly: Red Green Blue,” on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, offers a group of paintings that’ll seriously mess with your eyes. It’s dizzying, walking into this gallery and experiencing these large canvases in the titular colors for the first time, and it’s thoughtful of the museum…
Comic Confidence
FRI 6/20 Michael Colyar, who will perform at this weekend’s Mega Comedy Jam, has no shortage of confidence in his comedic skills. “They’re gonna be mad,” he says about the audience, “because they’re gonna say in the end, ‘How come he wasn’t the headliner?’ ” The traveling show, which also…
Waves of Fascination
For 40 bucks, you can buy a device that emits some of the most irritating and beautiful sounds imaginable, a device that not only presents an international kaleidoscope of opinion but also receives secret spy transmissions. Best of all, every time you turn it on, the thing behaves differently, depending…
Cheating the Reaper
On Easter morning Vic Chesnutt rose from the dead. It’s 1983: He’s up all night, drinking, getting one-eyed blind. He goes for a drive. You know what’s coming, another 18-and-bulletproof kid out of his skull bearing down on a highway near you. There’s the ditch, the car hurtling downward, rolling……
Grumpy Old Men
Metallica needs an image overhaul the way front man James Hetfield needed to dry out. It’s been almost six years since the band bestowed an album of original studio material upon the world, and in the interim, Metallica has dropped dud after dud. Since 1997’s lukewarm Reload, there’s been a…
A Prickly Pair of Problems
It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Cactus Music and Video. First, Weingarten Realty Investors, the company that owns the Alabama-Shepherd shopping center that houses Cactus, told Cactus co-owner Bud Daily that the store’s giant saguaro-shaped marquee will soon have to come down. Then the Eagles announced that they…
Taking the Plunge
Rob Gaddi is a 22-year-old Rice University graduate with an electrical engineering degree. By all conventional wisdom, he should be spring-loaded for success. But right now he looks every bit an aging Willy Loman — albeit it in a blue and gray tie-dyed shirt — slumped in an easy chair…
Radiohead
The first sound audible on Radiohead’s sixth LP is the crackle of guitarist Jonny Greenwood plugging in his instrument. A welcome hum ensues — one that was largely absent from the band’s last two albums, which formed a beautiful but amorphous pastiche of malformed beats and sputtering gadgetry. Hail to…
Getting Carnal
Late last year, the rampant purges by assorted Montgomery County puritans seemed excessive [see “(Cl)ass Warfare,” by Beth Gullett, December 5]. The county’s Republican Leadership Council had declared a prudes v. nudes showdown. Sympathizers and the group groped to find library books to ban. They fig-leafed a David statue and…
Various
In high school during the ’80s, the 40-ounce ruled. Wine coolers may have gone down easier, but beverages were chosen as often for their cool factor as for their taste, and we quickly seized upon the 40-ounce’s ghetto toughness and its unmistakable link to hip-hop. Before long, the stubby tank…
Dueling Docs
City Councilwoman Dr. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs came into office last year determined to be the authority on all things medical. The only problem was that Houston already had a strong-willed public health director named Dr. Mary Kendrick, who wasn’t about to be taken to school by a Clear Lake dermatologist, of…
Matt Minor & Shot Glass
Forget rock bands from Sweden and teen punk poppers. Somebody stop the invasion of Texas-based singer-songwriters! These generic cowpokes are popping up everywhere, and the inspiration behind their songs of romantic desperation, barrooms and outlaw behavior are gleaned more from other records than from experience. Houston-based Americana artist Minor is…
Catfight
Every evening after dark, Dorothy Rhoden dropped ten pounds of Purina Cat Chow by the Dumpster at Green Meadow Apartments in Texas City. Dorothy’s mother had lived in the complex for 17 years, and Dorothy visited her every day. A pregnant cat had kittens on her mother’s porch, so Dorothy…
Gold Chains, with Stars as Eyes and Notes
Topher Lafata has the same bright idea lots of other former indie rockers are riding these days: Ditch the electric guitars, mopey breakup songs and human drummers, and feed all that pent-up postgrad angst into the computer instead, sharpening a horny, corny electro-rap that addresses the confused twentysomething condition in…
Bench Blues
In a move that will alter the way Harris County courthouses do business, state legislators have decided that visiting judges have overstayed their welcome. The county’s judiciary found out only last week that the last legislative session — in massive cuts to reduce looming deficits — slashed the upcoming statewide…
Lucky Dube
About 20 years ago, South African mbaqanga singer Lucky Dube heard a Peter Tosh record and realized that reggae was a better vehicle for his political lyrics. In 1984, he released his reggae debut, Rastas Never Die, to the delight of thousands of black fans and the dismay of the…
Letters
A Pound of Flesh Weighty feature: Engaging story of corruption [“Screwed!” by Wendy Grossman, June 5]. Perhaps the waffling, prevaricating D.A.’s will lose as many pounds as the story’s victims. And Wendy will be there to document each beshrivelment of adipose tissue, so as to prove that they, too, suffered…
Anny Celsi and Kaz Murphy, with Tish Hinojosa
This showcase of two L.A.-based offbeat singer-songwriters presents us with Anny Celsi, a beatnik-cool performer who veers from poppy, bouncy beats to jazzy piano bar riffs and sexy come-ons. With songs inspired by pulp fiction (and prose to accompany them), she’s sensitive but no wimp and a fellow traveler to…
Accidental Tourists
Accidents will happen. Jason Trachtenburg struggled as a solo songwriter in Seattle before a trip to an estate sale changed his life. “I was getting nowhere, making backwards progress,” he says. At the sale, his wife, Tina, bought a five-cent box of slides and a $5 projector. She thought the…
The Cruel and Unusual, with Poor Dumb Bastards, Hobble, Dick Delicious and Southern Riot
Just when it seems punk has gone completely corporate (think Good Charlotte) or has become a nostalgia circuit (Cramps, Buzzcocks), here comes a show like this — one with a youngish act like Austin’s the Cruel and Unusual duking it out with Houston’s legendary PDB and three other bands. The…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, June 19 The world’s freaks can be divided up roughly into two categories: social and antisocial. Your typical antisocial perv stands on the sidelines at kinky events with his hands in his pockets, ogling the action just a little too intently. After 17 beers, he’ll get up his nerve…
Amy Rigby
When the bubbles of jocularity are injected into songwriting, after a few spins the mix can often go as flat as a bottle of champagne left open overnight. But with Til the Wheels Fall Off and five albums into a career as the witty voice of the grown-up modern girl…
Late Night with Dave Attell
It’s the world’s best job. The duties: travel, party, meet interesting people and visit bizarre workplaces. Sadly, though, the position’s already filled. Dave Attell is the gruff-talking, ready-for-anything, everyman host of the hit Comedy Central show Insomniac. “It’s a travel show for losers, but people like it. I think a…
Simply divino
I have a theory that whenever a restaurant chooses to name a dish after a particular person, the tribute usually points to one of the better items on the menu. In the case of Emily’s goat cheese ravioli ($13) at divino (1830 West Alabama, 713-807-1123), my theory was again confirmed,…
Take His Word
SUN 6/22 Jerome Vielman seems to be equal parts Allen Ginsberg, Elvis and Bert Parks, if that triumvirate were born Filipino, raised in New Orleans and schooled at New York University. That’s where Vielman, 25, first was exposed to top-notch spoken word. He’s still jumping around about it, like a…
Jammin’ Jellyfish
First, you squeeze the lemon into the saucer that contains the salt, pepper and preserved plum powder. Then you snatch up a hot square of fried seafood along with a little of the watercress, tomato and onion salad underneath. You give the hot seafood and cold salad a quick dunk…
Mind over Matter
He’s 12 feet tall. He’s ripped. He’s quick as a tiger and fierce as a dragon. Lit by his fury to a dull green glow, the guy is sheer, boundless power. Any NFL team you can think of would love to start him at middle linebacker. But as art house…
Starry Night
SAT 6/21 On a typical Houston evening, you’re more likely to glimpse a 737’s landing lights than a star. With the limitless frontier of space obscured by smog, lying back and contemplating the Milky Way seems an impossible luxury. This weekend, the (relatively) clear cosmic space of Moody Gardens in…
Crap Out
The number of boring, uninspired studio pictures hitting today’s multiplexes is getting depressing. To add insult to injury, many of these mind-numbing creations come from formerly — and presumably still — talented writers, directors and actors. Last week saw Hollywood Homicide, a tired — and, what’s worse, lazy — buddy-buddy/cop/action…
Sleepy Muggles
SAT 6/21 At nearly 900 pages and 255,000 words, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix makes a hefty but happy summer reading assignment. Muggles are eagerly awaiting book five in the Harry Potter series, and Blue Willow Bookshop will host a nonstop read-a-thon the moment it goes on…
Call Holding
During the better part of the 1980s and ’90s, AIDS became the focus of some of America’s most gifted playwrights, creating a crushing wave of scripts about the disease. In less than 15 years, more than 30 plays were written on the subject. In fact, starting in 1985 with Larry…
Still Standin’
THU 6/19 Houston still has a few monuments to the city’s blues heyday. Back in segregation times, one aging bluesman recently recalled, “we created heaven on earth in our own neighborhood since we couldn’t have it where the white people lived.” The Third Ward was home to blues clubs, variety…