South By Southwest
By Scott Faingold “That’s how it’s done,” exclaims the vocalist for Houston’s Fatal Flying Guiloteens (which features frequent Press contributor and former Nightfly Brian McManus on guitar). And he’s not wrong. If punk rock is meant to be utterly spastic, crazed and joyfully antisocial, then this is, indeed, how it’s…
Into Thin Aries
In anticipation of a long, hot and unprofitable summer, Aries, the fine dining flagship of chef Scott Tycer’s restaurant group, closed its doors a few weeks ago. A lower-priced restaurant called Pic, also run by Tycer, has just opened in the same space at 4315 Montrose. The change comes as…
We’re All “Screwed”
Growing up near Washington, D.C., comedian/commentator/screamer Lewis Black was surrounded by the federal government. Every day, he’d see something that “would fuckin’ piss me off,” he growls in his standup routine. So Black would go to the White House or Congress, and “find whoever it was who bothered me and…
Relax Your Dogs
Dogs may be our best friends, but when they reek, they’re darn near enemies. Today, owners of odorous pooches can take advantage of SNAP’s Doggy Spa Day. For just a few bucks (that benefit SNAP), Fido gets an all-natural shampoo bath or a manicure. To sum up: That’s a fresh…
Rush to Judgment
In Seattle’s Fort Lawton, American staff sergeant Grant Farr was dozing in his bunk as three Italian prisoners sprinted past his window at top speed. A few minutes later, Farr thought he heard a distant crash but dismissed it. He was drifting off to sleep when his door flew open…
Pause and Effect
Click may be the first Adam Sandler movie in which the high concept isn’t dependent upon the star. Sandler comedies tend to take his standard character of the petulant man-child with anger-management issues and place him in different wacky situations: elementary school (Billy Madison), the golf course (Happy Gilmore), the…
Want a New “Drug”?
It’s easy to hate on ’80s music, but there are a few sacred cows from that decade, and we think Huey Lewis and the News should be one of them. Yeah, “I Want a New Drug” and “Power of Love” are way corny. But they’re supposed to be. And you…
Four For Art
It’s always nice to see H-towners doing well, which makes “Perspectives 152: 4 Artists 4 Stories,” the newest exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, especially gratifying. Each of the featured artists — Michael Bise, Janaki Lennie, Darryl Lauster and Soody Sharifi — received an MFA degree from the University…
CSI: New Caney
They do things differently up in New Caney, which is a small town in the woods of east Montgomery County. Take, for instance, their methods for identifying dead bodies. Most coroners — if confronted with a corpse who obviously has a wallet in his pants pocket — would check that…
Deep Doo-doo
About three quarters of the way through Waist Deep, the hero of the piece — an indestructible ex-convict who calls himself O2 (2 Fast 2 Furious star Tyrese Gibson) — peers out through the swirling smoke and the bloody mayhem of an urban killing ground and experiences a revelation. “Somethin’…
Spend a Fortune
How much cash would you drop to see INXS live — with Michael Hutchence’s replacement, J.D. Fortune? Apparently the going rate to catch the once legendary Australian band is about 60 bucks. Yep, 60 big ones to see new lead singer Jason Dean Bennison. Who the hell is he? He’s…
Oh, Mildred’s
So you never got that backstage pass to Bon Jovi. No worries — Mildred’s Umbrella Theater Company is here to make it up to you. Today, Mildred’s invites you behind the scenes for a live reading of the never-before-seen play A Night Dark in the House, by resident playwright John…
Letters to the Editor
On the Mattress Open invite: The story “The Plane Truth” [by Craig Malisow, June 8] should be shocking and appalling to me, but it isn’t. This Dr. Kilari fellow isn’t the only one of his kind. There are bigger and badder scams, and yes, many of them fall into the…
In Bloom
Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon’s Tony Award-winning adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s famed 1911 children’s novel The Secret Garden, playing at Main Street Theater in a smartly minimalist revival, is the only musical that begins with a cholera epidemic. It’s a work obsessed with death and gloom, replete with ghostly…
A League of Their Own
In 2004 the world was riveted as it watched USA Women’s Softball dominate every other team with the skill, power and heart that led them to their third consecutive gold medal. Though they made it look easy, it’s been a long, bumpy road to recognition for the first ladies of…
Show Some Pride
It’s, um, hard to find a better people-watching extravaganza than H-town’s annual Pride Festival. This year’s open-air party in the Montrose includes music by Duran Duran cover band Reflex, Liviya Compean, and headliner Taylor “Tell It To My Heart” Dane. (Let’s hope she rocks those dance moves from the video.)…
Image of the Week
As the oppressive summer heat starts to kick in, there’s no better time to learn how to ice skate. Ella Prescott, who’s three and a half years old, takes a lesson at the Galleria rink from Chung Dinh. Click here to enlarge…
Capsule Reviews
Impossible Marriage In Beth Henley’s stylized Southern universe (she’s best known for her prize-winning Crimes of the Heart and The Miss Firecracker Contest), her eccentric characters with their eccentric names (here, Kandall, Floral and Pandora) speak wistfully of times and emotions past. They also pontificate in florid, literary pronouncements, as…
G-town Jams
There are few venues in Texas as storied as the Balinese Room on Galveston Island, which makes it the perfect place for the Gulf Coast Music Festival. Getting the party started will be Sky Blue 72, a straight-ahead rock trio fronted by Jessica Zweback (named Houston Press best female vocalist…
Bloody Mary
I meet up with Editress at Palace Lanes (4191 Bellaire Boulevard, 713-667-6554) to discuss the column, sample some of their famous Bloody Marys, and play a couple of rounds of tenpin. Since I bowl about once every other year, I (high score: 95) prepare myself for a beatdown, courtesy of…
Rock and Roll and Rather Exhilarating
Forget “edge,” or whatever the edgy are calling it these days. I wish we could forget their non-youth in the bargain, but that wheeze will remain with us — they create from what they know. Let me put it this way: Sonic Youth is the best band in the universe,…
Space and Quiet
I wasn’t particularly expecting to like Swiss artist Urs Fischer’s installation “Mary Poppins” at the Blaffer Gallery. I’d just seen his work in the Whitney Biennial, in which he removed a chunk of wall in a gallery and hung branches from the ceiling with lit candles on the ends. They…
Mooney’s tha Man
Take in comedian Paul Mooney’s standup act, and one day you can tell your kids that you saw the man who crafted material for Richard Pryor and Dave Chappelle. Sure, most of us know Mooney as Negrodamus from Chappelle’s Show. But history will show that he might have been the…
Trae Cool
From the first time you heard it, you knew Trae’s “Swang” was a huge song. Like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me,” it is simply magical — musical opium. The chilled, jazzy track recycles, slows down and enhances LL Cool J’s circular…
Capsule Reviews
“Bringing Shadows to Light: Contemporary Argentine Photography” Addressing subjects as diverse as war, the tango and the country’s current economic crisis, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a good small survey of contemporary Argentine photography. There are pictures of a man’s crude drawings recording the torture he witnessed during…
Admire the Landscape
Most of us had our first introduction to landscape painting by watching PBS’s Bob Ross, the bushy-Afroed, effervescent painter who made those “happy little trees.” But long before the lovable Ross, there was Gustave Courbet, a prolific 19th-century French artist whose inventive use of brush, palette knife, rags and his…
Hip-hop as She Is Rapped
A little over 150 years ago, two Portuguese gentlemen of soaring ambition and limited linguistic skills published English As She Is Spoke, a Portuguese-English phrasebook so hilariously inept that it survived for 50 years in the Anglo world as a humor title. We’ve come a long way since then, right?…
Shark Bites
Publisher: Majesco
Platform: PS2, Xbox, PC
Price: $29.99
ESRB Rating: M (for Mature)
Score: 5 (out of 10)
The House Is Alive…
What do you get when you mix a headstrong, singing nun-turned-governess with seven adorable kids and a dashing naval captain? The Best Picture winner (1965) and Library of Congress “culturally significant” film The Sound of Music. America’s most beloved family classic is back on the big screen for a special…
Fanboy Deluxe
It’s one of those unplanned Friday nights, when a place to drink a beer and watch the ‘Stros sounds like a plan to my girlfriend and me. Not exactly “date night,” more like “what-the-hell-are-we-gonna-do-now-that-we’re-off-work night.” We start off at the West Alabama Icehouse (1919 West Alabama) but find it inhumanely…
Vampires of Moscow
Night Watch (Fox Searchlight) Every once in a while, Hollywood needs somebody else to steal a genre and totally reimagine it; it keeps old ideas young, like celluloid Botox. Well, Hollywood’s gonna need one big needle to absorb Night Watch, an insane, insanely cool Russian action/horror/sci-fi brew that’s like nothing…
Glaude Be with You
Seattle has given us plenty of musical icons: Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana and Pearl Jam…even Sir Mix-A-Lot. There’s also a dance music legend from the region, one Donald Glaude. The DJ from nearby Tacoma started rocking the decks 20 years ago — long before there was a real dance scene in…
Pink / Damone
Let’s be honest: Despite the perceived sensitivity injection (courtesy of tear-stained emo and indie artists), radio is no more welcoming to female musicians now than it was during the days of frat-mook n-metal — at least female musicians of substance. Save for Kelly Clarkson and KT Tunstall, modern airwave starlets…
Our top DVD picks for the week of June 20
Adventures of Superman: The Complete First Four Seasons (Warner Bros.) The Art of Erotic Dancing (BFS) Austin City Limits 2005 Music Festival (Image) Charlie Chan: Volume One (Fox) The Cult of the Suicide Bomber (The Disinformation Company) Eight Below (Disney) Equinox: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) A Fine Madness (Warner Bros.)…
Corset Rock
The resume of cellist and singer Melora Creager is quite extensive: backup for Nirvana, Goo Goo Dolls and, most recently, Fountains of Wayne and the Sounds. But Creager’s main gig has been with Rasputina, the New York-based, Victorian era-obsessed, gothic/classical band she founded in 1991. (The band bio states it…
Frank Black
What’s this? Frank Black, the mercurial leader of the Pixies, one of the most brooding and foreboding bands from the postpunk era, sounding enthusiastic? Soaking up the vibe of an all-star musical assemblage — Steve Cropper, Spooner Oldham, Buddy Miller, the Band’s Levon Helm, Cheap Trick’s Tom Petersson, Bad Company’s…
Why Do Mexican Soccer Fans Chant “Osama! Osama!” When They Play the United States?
Dear Mexican, Why do Mexican soccer fans chant “Osama! Osama!” when their side plays the United States? You don’t hear American soccer fans yell “La migra!” White Boy Dash Dear Gabacho, You think hurling bin Laden’s name is tasteless? How about the Daily Mail columnist who, on the day England…
One More for Freedom
Sure, Juneteenth was officially last Sunday. But the Houston Ebony Opera Guild is throwing a little celebration to close out the annual week-long emancipation celebration — and you’re invited. Today’s “Songs of Our Years” concert features performances of traditional African-American spirituals and original compositions by black composers. The show will…
Regina Spektor
Regina Spektor’s tricky tongue and fading Russian accent separate her from the ever-expanding crowd of Tori Amos/Fiona Apple wannabes who sport “funky” hats and own well-worn piano stools. Begin to Hope might be less histrionic than 2004’s Soviet Kitsch, but it’s still great fun to bear witness to this NYC…
Comida sin Fronteras
The garnish plate that came with the birria goat and broth at Casa de Leon Mexican restaurant on Long Point included chopped onions, chopped jalapeños, cilantro and lime wedges. I dumped most of the stuff on the plate into my soup bowl and squeezed some lime juice over the top…
Don’t Let Him Go!
We don’t blame you if you’re still bitter about the Texans passing on local pigskin hero Vince Young in April’s NFL draft. But Vince has promised to visit his hometown, and he’s as good as his word. Today’s Party with a Texas Star event at Fox Sports Grill is an…
Man Man, with the Lovely Feathers and Apollo Sunshine
Although Mr. Bungle has never officially broken up, the three-ring circus of spastic, hyper-speed weirdos might never get together again. Luckily, Philly-based Man Man has stepped in to pick up the oddball slack. The gravelly voice of Man Man’s mustachioed ringleader, Honus Honus, is comparable to Tom Waits and Captain…
Goo Goo for You
If the Bayou Goo Goo pie ($2.95) at House of Pies (3112 Kirby, 713-528-3816) doesn’t intrigue you on name alone, then perhaps a description will. A traditional pie base is layered with pecans and sweet cream cheese, then a layer of vanilla custard with chocolate chunks. The whole thing is…
Here Comes tha Boom!
When the folks at DiverseWorks brainstormed their first visual arts residency, they got inspired by MTV, specifically The Real World (but without the angry gay guy and the hot-tub scenes). The five artists in residency — Diana Sofia Estrada, Katy Heinlein, Eric Pearce and collaborators Danny Kerschen and Benjy Mason…
The Derailers
Many moons ago, my brother and I were leaving a show at Rockefeller’s, and as we passed the Satellite Lounge, we heard this twanging Bakersfield guitar and a great honky-tonk voice. We caught only the tail end of the show, but we were knocked out enough to buy one of…
Cute Little Shorts
“Even if you hate something, you can sit through it for three minutes,” says Aurora Picture Show executive director Andrea Grover. And that, basically, is why Aurora’s short films festival, “Extremely Shorts,” has become an annual event. Now in its ninth year, “Shorts” is a collection of 25 films selected…
Fantasy Date
No matter which potions we try, we still can’t seem to get our Level 5 wizard past this one damn orc. It’s driving us crazy! Fortunately, this weekend brings ApolloCon, Houston’s only sci-fi, fantasy and horror convention. It’s three days of pure geek heaven, with sci-fi lectures, live-action role playing…
Band of Horses
You may never have heard of Seattle’s Band of Horses, but the group keeps good company. Its fans include Broken Social Scene, Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and Iron & Wine’s Samuel Beam, who was enamored enough that he took the band with him on tour last fall. Singer-guitarists Ben Bridwell and…
Yes, MSTR
A decade ago, the snarling, sneering punk fans in Toronto probably wouldn’t have guessed that the dudes from noisy punk act Death From Above 1979 would ever get into dance music. (As we know, most punks aren’t so keen on the whole dance thing.) But that’s exactly what Jesse F…
Getting Corked
If you’ve been looking to learn more about wine but have been scared off by terms such as Bordeaux and Gewürztraminer, Wine Week in The Woodlands is for you. The annual event in the northern burbs is for oenophiles and newbies alike. At today’s Wine Walk Through Market Street, you…
Randy Weeks
One of a nexus of gifted L.A. writers and pedigreed players who populate each other’s records and gig bands, Randy Weeks is a master of the dark mood and the edgy relationship. Filled with foreboding tones and suicidally wistful sentiments on lovers here and gone, Sugarfinger, Weeks’s third solo album…
Shock Treatment
America is a little behind Japan in terms of high-tech gadgets, automobiles, video games and, heck, even karaoke bars. Then again, we’re leading the garage-rock scene, which native Tokyo garage trio Electric Eel Shock took notice of after their inaugural U.S. tour back in 1999. So the three-piece moved to…
Three’s a Crowd
Like the dance that she so closely scrutinizes in her book The Flamenco Academy, author Sarah Bird’s prose reads like rhythmic waves of passion, anger, obsession and love. At the center of the novel is flamenco star Rae and her best friend, Didi. Both lost a father to cancer and…