Eastern Bloc-heads
Precious and cloying, Harrison’s Flowers sets out to prove itself a story of hope and human endurance, but swiftly deteriorates into a terribly obvious melodrama and rough-hewn vanity project for lead actress Andie MacDowell. (One can almost hear the echo of her shouting to her agent: “Hey, Meg Ryan landed…
Age-Old Axiom
Remember that old, um, axiom about how the more things change, the more they stay the same? It seems that the downtown spot now housing the Axiom cannot — try as it might — escape its past as a music venue. First the building at 2524 McKinney was home to…
Game Face
In the original Resident Evil video game — named Biohazard in its Japanese incarnation — a brash young American infiltrates a large manor house, only to find it inhabited by terrifying, soulless zombies. But since Gosford Park had already come out, the makers of the Resident Evil movie had to…
A Time to Chill
This is the weirdest straight night around!” This is how local house DJ Champa Moore describes “Tastylick @ The Davenport,” the weekly shindig that goes down every hump day at the Davenport Lounge (2117 Richmond). But don’t misunderstand Moore’s choice of words; he’s referring to the puzzler of how a…
Confess, Greg
One day, years ago, Gregory Mcdonald was playing tennis with a man he’d known since they were both 12 years old. It was hot, the middle of summer, and Mcdonald was playing a good game–doing that tricky shit, making with the kind of moves that get under an opponent’s skin…
Grits Just Wanna Have Fun
Olivette, the posh restaurant at The Houstonian Hotel, serves chilaquiles that look an awful lot like migas, we all agree. Bill and Cheryl Alters Jamison both ordered the Mexican breakfast dish, while I went with two eggs poached in milk over cornmeal muffins. This column is called “Lunch With,” but…
Shrimpy Alice
Lobster Alice sounds like a cool idea. The play, by hometown girl-turned-Juilliard playwriting fellow Kira Obolensky, is based on the strange and serendipitous moment in pop culture history when surrealist Salvador Dalí went to work for Disney. Apparently, in the 1940s the cartoon company hired Dalí to create a short…
Liver Lover
It’s not easy finding liver and onions on restaurant menus anymore. It’s a generational problem: Older folks may find themselves almost teary-eyed as they reminisce about growing up on the stuff, but young whippersnappers wouldn’t eat it if it were the last thing on earth. Comfort food or uncomfortable food;…
Humor on the Orient Express
Ever since Vienna’s Emperor Joseph II quipped that Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio had too many notes, the composer’s first opera in German has weathered an outpouring of criticism: The derivative libretto’s foiled getaway climaxes in silence; the score’s solemn culminating moment is interrupted by the jarring outburst of…
American Breadwinners
As an interviewer, Maria Chanas-Ordoñez is more engaging than intimidating, but between her new freezer breaking down, a reporter’s unannounced visit and the imminent arrival of her accountant, she doesn’t have a lot of time for small talk. The pint-sized 32-year-old leans forward, fixes the young woman from Mexico with…
Crunch City
It’s 3 p.m. on the West Loop, and Daren Wright is approaching the dreaded intersection of 610 and 59. Wright is heading back to work, driving a 1997 Dodge Neon north on the West Loop. He’s coming from getting his vision checked at the Wal-Mart off the South Post Oak…
Flesh-Eating Oysters
The crew at Afton Oaks Barber Shop had a gentleman’s agreement with one of their neighbors along the tiny business strip on Richmond Avenue: The barbers would cut the hair of employees and selected friends at the Ragin’ Cajun restaurant. And the eatery would reciprocate with food for barbers Melvin…
A Man’s World
The thin, attractive blond stood up before a room of Rent-A-Center’s top execs — the only woman in a sea of white shirts, dark suits and ties — and began delivering her report on the company’s tax situation. She didn’t get far. Before Leigh had completed two sentences, Ernie Talley,…
Joey Ramone
The Ramones always embraced paradoxical concepts — they were intelligently stupid, subtly crude and maximally minimal. But nothing can prepare you for the conflicting emotions engendered by Joey Ramone’s Don’t Worry About Me. Joey’s last release is one of the most optimistic albums you’ll hear this year, but also the…
Getting Mooned
Getting Mooned A rave for Dave: I enjoyed the article about Dave Criswell [“Moonstruck,” by Wendy Grossman, February 28]. Dave has been a good supporter of research here at UH Clear Lake through the Institute for Space Systems Operations. We appreciate his vision and your nice article. Tom Harman Clear…
Yolanda Adams
“I’m not trying to preach to you,” Yolanda Adams sings on her new release, Believe. On one level, you wanna, well, believe her — you wanna think that, unlike many of today’s single-minded, creatively stunted gospel performers, she knows the difference between singing about God and hammering the belief of…
Good for Yucks
It’s not often that one gets to see a children’s exhibit as blunt as Space Center Houston’s “Grossology.” Based on the books of Sylvia Branzei and appealing to grade-school potty humor, the show uses fart jokes to convey facts about urine, pus, puke and other bodily fluids and functions. “The…
The b-sides
Any indie band that releases a “best of” compilation of tracks from four unreleased and unrecorded albums is either blatantly presumptuous, supremely confident or possessed of a really messed-up sense of humor. In the case of North Carolina quintet the b-sides, it’s likely all of the above. The liner notes…
The Bush Enigma
The political ascension of George W. Bush is difficult to explain. He put forward the unthreatening face of a man who couldn’t care less about the presidency for a party so desperate to attain it that they’d embrace him even though they considered his father a traitor or — worse…
Danilo Perez
When writing about Danilo Perez, seasoned music journalists end up sounding like foodies, spicing things up with language best suited for the latest Latin-fusion cuisine. The piquant clichés are tough to resist — especially when it comes to Motherland, the pianist’s most recent project. Billed as an “homage to the…
Pierogi Paradise
Franek tilts back his head and closes his eyes as he chews another ruskie pierogi. His beard is glistening with grease, and the hint of a smile comes over his deeply lined and usually stern face. There’s a Polish phrase for a transcendent culinary experience like this: Niebo w gebie,…
Five Pointe O
It takes a number of elements to stay ahead of the redundancy curve if you’re part of the nu-metal pack. But the qualities that save Five Pointe 0’s bacon are as old as rock itself. Combine solid songs, catchy harmonies, a big hook or three, some variance in texture and…
Brave New World
The World Café (1340 West Gray, 713-520-9696) has had more makeovers than a River Oaks housewife, but its essential raison d’etre remains the same: Even beautiful people with expensive cars love cheap drinks and free buffets. My recollection of its last incarnation as Blue Agave is little more than a…
Constant Billy
Though often lumped for convenience in the Celtic category, Houston’s Constant Billy is more accurately described as pan-British folk. Irish, Scottish and Welsh tunes constitute just a fraction of their repertoire; they work in old English ballads and sea shanties as well (including one in which the limey seaman applauds…
Cheap By Damn Cheap
Austin likes to think of itself as the Live Music Capital of the World, an unctuous bit of hyperbole if ever there was one. But this weekend, during the South By Southwest Music Festival, the silly slogan — also used by Branson, Missouri — may actually be true. With nearly…
Frozen Dinner
Ice Age posits a heretofore unfathomable question: Is it possible for computer-generated characters to go through the motions? Everything about this endeavor — from 20th Century Fox, playing cartoon catch-up after 2000’s Titan A.E., which smelled like something stolen from Saturday-morning television — feels pilfered and stitched together. There’s not…
Moment in the Sun
Irony is a lot like cholesterol. There’s a good kind and a bad kind, and an unhealthy amount of the latter is clogging America’s bloodstream. What sets Clem Snide apart from any number of ironic indie bands is that bandleader Eef Barzelay realizes that irony should elicit more than a…