Bikini Wax
FRI 7/1 It’s so hot outside, clothes are a real burden. But there’s good news: 1415 Bar and Grille feels your pain. At the Summer Skeet Skeet party happening there this weekend, folks will be partying in their skimpiest summer attire. As if the dance floor couldn’t get any hotter…
24-Hour Pouty People
So little time, so much trouble. In the 24-hour period that’s dissected in Heights, the first feature from Harvard/Cambridge/USC film-school-educated Chris Terrio, an aspiring Manhattan photographer named Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) gets cold feet about her upcoming marriage to a dull but pleasant lawyer named Jonathan (James Marsden); a needy Broadway…
Cole Hearted
Tall, dapper, smoother than silk and able to make white America swoon during the segregated ’50s, Nat King Cole was a helluva role model for a black kid. That’s the premise behind Gregory Porter’s Nat King Cole and Me — A Musical Healing, currently playing at the Ensemble Theatre. The…
Tandoori Enchiladas
The Indian chicken enchilada at Cafe Monsoon on Westheimer is a crepe rolled around some curried palak (spinach) studded with chunks of tandoori chicken and topped with melted cheese. It is served with rice and beans on the side — if you’re willing to count dal (seasoned lentils) as beans…
No More Drama
On a fine recent evening spent drinking on the patio with a few of my white friends, I was surprised to find that our boozy conversation wasn’t about pressing social issues or how the Man was keeping us all down. No, instead it was about how we’re obsessed with “Trapped…
Last of the Hard-Core Troubadours
Montrose legend Randal Calcote has been many things in his life: child country musician, poet, actor, hemp activist, pirate radio impresario, folk troubadour, rock and punk promoter, and member of the bands Backyard Epics, Southern Pikes and Yellow Number Six. He’s also worked some straight jobs: He’s repaired both transmissions…
Addicted to Love
He says it’s been two weekends since he last saw her, counting this weekend. Today is Thursday. He stands, barely five feet tall, in his gravel driveway in Magnolia, that Hispanic expanse to the east of downtown, between the Maxwell House plant and the Ship Channel. “Dad, how come you…
The Show Band that Wouldn’t Die
Musically speaking, the Fourth of July is all about the tried-and-true. Nobody goes out to celebrate America’s independence by checking out the latest progressive electro-hop grime act or what new and fresh innovations have emerged on the intelligent dance music scene. Nope, this day is all about stirring, old-school anthems…
Binge Benefits
There are two rules you have to follow, my buddy tells me, when hanging out in cantinas. One: Don’t stay for more than a couple of drinks, otherwise you’re giving people enough time to figure out how to fleece you. And two: Don’t order Mexican beer; only gringos drink that…
The Flairest One of All
“Hey, fuckers, you ready for me to give away some free fucking shit?” Rod Ryan, not bound by the constraints of the FCC, is making a point to the crowd at the Westheimer location of Sherlock’s Pub. Namely, that he curses like Richard Pryor when not being eyed closely by…
Jailhouse Crock
Houston city officials said hiring a troubled division of the University of Texas Medical Branch to run the health service in the city’s jails would be a smooth and efficient move (see “The Fix Is In,” June 9). It didn’t turn out that way. City Council had the five-year, $11…
Heartless Bastards
Halfway through 2005, nothing should set off a music fan’s cred alert quicker than a band whose sound falls almost exactly between those of the White Stripes and the Strokes. Cincinnati’s Heartless Bastards fit that description — and yet such simple comparisons come nowhere close to doing justice to the…
Pimp My Ride
Metro has famously made some “adjustments” to the $2 billion transportation plan approved by voters in 2003. Basically, areas of town represented by influential Congressmen Tom DeLay and John Culberson, both former rail opponents, will now be getting rail; minority communities promised rail will be getting…buses tricked out to look…
Eisley, with Lovedrug and Pilotdrift
On the face of things, Eisley ought to be the shittiest group ever. After all, the group features siblings Chauntelle, Sherri, Weston and Stacy DuPree, who range in age from 15 to 22 and look like a casting director’s dream. Thank goodness comparisons to the Partridge Family end there. The…
Letters
What a Player Now that’s dedication: Coach Bradford is off to a great start, and I hope that his administrators acknowledge his efforts and success [“Out of the Park,” by Mosi Secret, June 16]. Somehow, athletes from Austin High have been overshadowed by their peers, many of whom live within…
Corrosion of Conformity, with Alabama Thunderpussy, Crowbar and Suplecs
When Corrosion of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan sings “I once was blind / but now I see,” it’s an allusion-packed phrase. The line echoes Black Sabbath’s “Snowblind” and name-checks CoC’s own Blind, the 1991 breakthrough release on which the North Carolina natives outgrew thrash’s two-minute time frame while maintaining its intensity…
Final Tally
Houston Press writers were well represented in a national competition for alternative newsweeklies as well as in a statewide journalism contest open to all print media. In the Association of Alternative Newsweekly Awards national contest, Press food writer Robb Walsh placed second in the Food Writing category for “The Cow…
Gross Encounters
Quite simply and quite literally, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds is Close Encounters of the Third Kind turned inside out: They’re still out there, only this time the aliens are out for our blood, which they spray all over the countryside like so much red…
Killer Idea
Ira Levin knows how to spin a yarn. The author of novels The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, he also wrote Deathtrap, the yummy confection of a theatrical thriller playing at the Alley Theatre. Directed by James Black with irreverent glee, this walk on the dark side offers all the…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, June 30 Whatever your devious little mind may have planned for today, we think it should include dinner (as hedonism is always more enjoyable on a full stomach). And while you’re pondering the “where to eat” question, keep in mind that a host of local restaurants will be taking…
Capsule Reviews
The Hollow So, which one of the extended Angkatell family has killed the philandering husband John Cristow (Rich Adamus-Delgado)? Is it his mousy wife, Gerda (Amber Gugino), who’s found standing over his dead body with a revolver? Is it the ravishing film star Veronica Cray (Kelley Goode), whose advances John…
Fringe Benefits
With Monty Python’s Spamalot! garnering the most Tony nominations on Broadway this year, sketch comedy seems to be moving off the tube and back onto the boards. In fact, the success of shows such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Saturday Night Live, The Kids in the Hall and SCTV owes…
Art Lite
Deborah Colton Gallery is located in the David Adickes compound on Summer Street, whose parking lot — which is filled with gargantuan sculptures of presidents’ heads — is itself worth a trip. Martin Van Buren stares zombielike into the distance; George H.W. Bush sits revoltingly high on a pedestal. I…
Explosive Action
MON 7/4 So you like bright things and loud noises. Don’t be ashamed, simple friend; come July 4 and its plentiful pyrotechnics, all Americans will be reduced to wide-eyed zombies. Or maybe that’s just the booze. If you’re into combining drinks and fireworks, then leave it to the pros and…
Capsule Reviews
“Dan McCleary” The title of the painting Man Weighing Himself (2004) by Dan McCleary pretty clearly describes what’s going on in the work. A man in white pajamas stands in the doorway of a bathroom, looking down at the dial of a scale between his sock-covered feet. The scene is…
Swingers Group
WED 7/6 You members of Generation Broke know a little something about moonlighting. It’s a sign of the times that so many of us have little side hustles: waiting tables, delivering papers, giving sensual massages…But you know the economy has gotten bad when people in professional sports start getting second…
Scrumptious Salad
In the world of food, few combinations work better than tart and sweet, which is why balsamic vinaigrette is so good. It certainly makes the spinach salad ($8) at District 7 Grill (1508 Hutchins, 713-225-4950). Each baby spinach leaf is completely coated in the stuff, as are the raisins, pecans,…