Food of the God
Cafe Annie
Capsule Reviews
“Fade In: New Film and Video” This Contemporary Arts Museum exhibition, curated by Paola Morsiani, presents a group of works by eight international artists. American Luis Gispert’s installation, Foxy Xerox (2003), is a witty take on the appropriation of hip-hop culture by white America. On one wall, a blond girl…
Companions Unobtrusive
It all began late one Friday evening at KTSU, during a broadcast of the popular rap show Kidz Jamm. Stevie C. and his crew were in the booth spinning choice cuts. A couple of ladies were in the lobby having a conversation. The evening was approaching midnight, and the music…
Tax Cuts for Some
Government entities in the Houston area traditionally hype how little they’ve raised tax rates with each new budget. Of course, they get huge increases in tax revenue without having to lift a finger. As all homeowners know, the assessed taxable value of their houses has grown exponentially in the past…
Rock and Roll High School
The Vans Warped Tour is big. How big is it? Huuuuge. There are seven stages and 50 bands, for chrissakes, and then you’ve got all their road crews and merch booths, not to mention all the corporate tents and concession stands, rock-climbing walls, skateboarding ramps and all that other hoo-ha…
Cafe Express
Nice salad: The funnest thing about eating at Cafe Express (1422 West Gray, 713-522-3100; and other locations) is hitting the high-quality condiment bar, where you can customize your plate with such delicacies as roasted garlic, cornichons, grated Parmesan, olives, sun-dried tomatoes and delectable garlic croutons. There’s even Italian grissini, for…
Jewels on the Box
I was talking to an English acquaintance of mine recently, an Oxford-educated geologist, and he said that Houston radio was “bloody awful,” or words to that effect. We’ve all heard that one before, and in general, it’s true. There are huge swaths of the local dial where little of interest…
PJ Harvey
On “The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth,” PJ Harvey sounds like music’s Lady Macbeth — “Wash it out / wash it out / wash it out,” she sings. And on the whole, Uh Huh Her is as cathartic for Harvey and her longtime fans as that damned spot was…
Gay Play
Kara sits in the back bar at JR.’s, sipping her Jägermeister and chasing it with Diet Coke. She’s wearing a tight, long black dress, and her wavy dark hair is pulled back in a bun. An elegant silver necklace completes her ensemble. It’s hard to talk to her for more…
!!!
Having a name like !!! has raised all sorts of issues for this (mostly) Brooklyn-based seven-piece dance-punk troupe, with myriad pronunciation problems ensuing over the years. In an adaptation of subtitled lines from the seminal ’80s comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy, the band’s name is properly pronounced using any…
Not a Mooooot Point
Charlie Mott was tired of waiting. First of all, he didn’t see why all the families at the Future Farmers of America facility in the Alief Independent School District had to be locked out of the barn over Christmas break just because some people weren’t taking care of business by…
The Reverend Horton Heat
The Reverend attempted to retool his rockabilly with big industrial-rock touches on 1998’s Space Heater, and before that, he hopped on the swing trend with 1996’s It’s Martini Time. Neither album broadened his appeal much beyond a rabid cult following that worries more about his next T-shirt design than his…
Off the Deep End
The black fence around the perimeter rises up well beyond Yao Ming heights, the rods curling outward at the top like spikes. The bathrooms in front stink of chlorine and urine. There’s only one way outta this joint and one way in. Fourteen-year-old Madeline (her real name has been changed…
Cowboy Johnson
The opening strains of Cowboy Johnson’s tribute to Houston’s songwriting favorite son Mickey Newbury instantly conjure the remarkable resurrection of Jerry Lee Lewis. After his fall from rock and roll grace, the Killer reinvented himself as a country singer in 1968, and his exquisite 1970 interpretation of Newbury’s “She Even…
Mail Call
DeLayed Reaction Jealous of Tom: You folks up in Houston are just jealous that we have Tom DeLay, who gets things done, while you’re stuck with Sheila Jackson Lee, a nobody in the U.S. Congress [“Sweet Charity,” by Sarah Fenske, June 10]. Jay Bute Houston Truth test: This was a…
MOFRO
MOFRO Fresh off a well-received slot at the Bonnaroo Festival, the MOFRO nucleus of John “JJ” Grey (vocals, harmonica, guitar, organ) and Daryl Hance (guitar, Dobro) are concocting something a bit different in their north Florida home: a mix of Sly Stone and Lynyrd Skynyrd, with a little Tony Joe…
Arts Grant
“Ain’t we lucky we got ’em?” The theme song from Good Times is more powerful than you might think. Did you know that one of the foremost collections of African-American art began, more or less, with the intro to this ’70s series? Yep, the colorful images seen during the credits…
George of the Bungle
A strong toxin requires a strong antidote. In the case of the Bush administration, the cure is being served in significant part by Michael Moore, he of the Peter Jackson Diet (and similar pop-culture ambition), who previously delivered the rousing documentaries Roger & Me and Bowling for Columbine. This time,…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, June 24 These days, anyone can be an artist. All it takes is the nerve to create something, whatever it might be, and then call it art. A monochrome canvas, a rusty hammer, even an ashtray full of cigarette butts — all of these things can be art. It’s…
Tears in Heaven
It’s often a challenge to fairly assess a film that, by its very conception, is simply targeted to an entirely different demographic than one’s own. I am not by nature romantic, or female; for those who are, it may have to suffice that the mostly double-X-chromosomed crowd watching The Notebook…
Queen of Smack
In Hollywood, it’s one thing for an up-and-coming comedian to dog on minor celebrities. It’s quite another, however, to draw the ire of Bill Cosby or to razz Ray Charles. Wanda Sykes got a chilly reception from Cosby at last year’s Emmys when she asked him why his show was…
Burning Bright
Everyone loves tigers, save perhaps for those actually being mauled to death by them. Men like ’em because they’re wild beasts; women like ’em ’cause they’re big kitty-cats. So whatever your point of interest, Two Brothers, starring a pair of tigers named Kumal and Sangha, is the perfect date movie…
Hope Floats
SAT 6/26 We’re pretty sure that most of the gay folks in town already know about the Pride Parade. But they aren’t the only people who will be there. “If you’ve had a really shitty day, march in the Pride Parade with the PFLAG contingent,” says Jim Null, vice president…
Wrong Wayans
Perhaps some day in the distant future, film scholars and academics concerned with race relations will devote papers and lectures and even entire books to Keenen Ivory Wayans’s White Chicks, in which two FBI agents, played by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, don Caucasian masks and impersonate white women in order…
Puck Off
SUN 6/27 Comedian Jay Mohr once noted that hockey players get paid millions of dollars “because they can skate backwards.” Mohr has clearly never played the game. To anyone who has — or has even caught a few minutes of the Stanley Cup playoffs — it’s obvious that hockey requires…
Hang in There
Through June 26 at Midtown Art Center, 1423 Holman, 832-651-5287. $8-$10.
Blue Ball
SAT 6/26 Last year, Vivid Video sent out a few contract starlets to clubs around the country for the first Porn Star Ball tour. The company even dispatched a star or two to a club around these parts (see “The Jizz Age,” October 16). Well, guess what, you tossers? The…
Capsule Reviews
Cabin Fever Theatre Suburbia has a bona fide hit on its hands with Mark Dunn’s feel-good comedy-drama Cabin Fever. Perhaps the theater could be persuaded to extend the show’s run. Not only is Dunn’s gentle play an absolute joy, but its exceptional performers delightfully flesh out their characters with heart…
What Was That?
For a man who reportedly never took LSD, Theodor Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, sure had one bizarre imagination. In the course of more than 50 books written ostensibly for children (but often with adult subtext), the writer-illustrator created an utterly unique world populated by a chapeau-wearing feline, a Lorax, a…
The Old-School Bus
Through July 3 at Moody Gallery, 2815 Colquitt, 713-526-9911.
Through July 3 at New Gallery, 2627 Colquitt, 713-520-7053.