South By Southwest
By John Lomax “I’m 70 years old and I ain’t never been drunk. Now I’ve been unstable from time to time, but the trick is, you don’t mix anything with your liquor, you drink it straight.” — Andre Williams South Congress during SXSW is the coolest place you can be…
The Hype of March
Ah, March, the time of year when the music business heats up, the world’s hot bands descend on Texas and the hipsters get their marching orders on which groups to worship for the next few months. By the time you read this, Racket will be in Austin, wallowing in the…
Where Carnitas Meet Foie Gras
The fajitas plate lunch at Matamoros Meat Market No. 4 turned out to be a stew with small chunks of fajita beef and half-circles of sausage in it. The plate came with three handmade flour tortillas and two sides. But the lady behind the cafeteria line told me in Spanish…
Um, This Box Is Baroque
Aeneas is quite the literary hero. You may remember him as one of the few survivors of Troy, a city that goes to hell when the Greeks hole up in a big wooden horse and pay a surprise visit to the snoozing Trojans. In desperate need to relocate an entire…
Oscar Pimpin’
So last week, Three Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” won the 2005 Oscar for Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song), and predictably, many are outraged. Some are furious over the stereotypical images of blacks the song conveys. “It was another example of how…
Dust to Dust
John Fante’s novel Ask the Dust, published in 1939 and all but forgotten till its 1980 reissue with a Charles Bukowski foreword, is very much a work of thinly veiled autobiography; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Its protagonist, a struggling writer named Arturo Bandini, shared…
South By Fun Land
Thanks to Austin’s South By Southwest festival, bands from all over the world (1,100 and counting) have descended upon the Lone Star State. And while some musicians stay for just the festival, a majority take advantage of the opportunity to showcase their music beyond the capital. Today, a good chunk…
Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3
Steve Wynn apparently has spent a pile of cash on home renovations. After listening to his latest CD, it’s obvious that he added on a cavernous garage. Hunkered down with his backing trio, Wynn adds fresh batteries to the fuzz box, hauls a Hammond B-3 and Farfisa out of the…
Jingle Hell
It can’t be easy making films about war. It’s so inherently dramatic that, as a setting for art, it’s overdetermined; it drips with meaning even before the first scenes are set. And so much has been said already: War is hell. War is noble. War is surreal. War is absurd,…
Back and Black
Thousands of black people left behind after a ravaging hurricane. Daily reports of high crime. Police brutality in inner-city neighborhoods. Damn, don’t you wish that the Black Panther Party were still going strong? This crew of mad, black and proud brothas and sistas started in Oakland in the ’60s and…
Jack Johnson and Friends
That Jack Johnson’s newest album would be a collection of kids’ songs for the Curious George soundtrack isn’t so surprising. This is a guy who makes hits singing about “Bubble Toes” and “Banana Pancakes.” Johnson always did have a Raffi vibe. The laid-back, beach-bum guitar licks make singing about recycling…
Cold Serial
Who knows? Maybe he developed writer’s block. Or joined Up With People. Or dropped dead from shock the day Bush got re-elected. In any event, the notorious Northern California serial killer who called himself, rather grandiosely, the Zodiac, hasn’t fired off a single letter to the editor since April 1978…
Schlepp to the Cinema
If spring allergies are leaving you farklempt and kvetching about nothing to do, head indoors to a cool, dark spot for some quality Jewish cinema. The second annual Jewish Film Festival showcases 14 films from around the world, including several making their Houston debuts. Today you can catch a screening…
Shawn Camp
Nothing I knew about Shawn Camp prepared me for the amped-up twanging hillbilly rock that came blaring out of my speakers when I punched “play” on Fireball, although the photo of him with a red Tele on the cover should’ve been a tip-off. This collection of co-writes with a checklist…
Nuts to You
Hollywood’s a sucker for cross-dressing. When the American Film Institute chose the 100 greatest comedies of all time, a pair of drag films Some Like It Hot and Tootsie earned the top two slots. From Operation Petticoat to White Chicks, slapping falsies on a dude is the fast road to…
Bare Bones Production
Okay, so there’s probably a more fitting month — say, October, perhaps — for such a delightfully morbid show. But we’re guessing you’ll get past the timing and step to the time in Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre’s last installment of their Danse Macabre series, Danse Macabre Part III: The Dance of…
Capsule Reviews
Bus Stop In the 1950s theater world, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright William Inge did for the Midwest what Tennessee Williams did for the South: He brought it sex. His 1955 comedy Bus Stop is a primer on various facets of love: the getting, the losing and the keeping (although when the…
Three Fantastic
Three Fantastic
See Also: Vexing
The posters for V for Vendetta read, “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.’ Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multilayered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it’s certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel…
Bayou City Ballet
From the first scene of “Dance Houston Does Houston,” when a visitor disembarks (from Continental, of course) and steps onto our city’s sweltering streets misguidedly dressed in his cowboy best, the inside jokes fly. “We’re trying to give it a look that will feel familiar,” says Dance Houston founder and…
Show Me Yours
Do you mind if people look in your medicine cabinet? How about if they peer at the contents of your purse? Well, two photographers are doing just that, presenting intimate but anonymous portraits of people through the stuff in their bathrooms and purses. Coke Wisdom O’Neal’s “Portraits” and Chuck Ramirez’s “Purse Portraits” at Finesilver Gallery…
Say Anything, with Vedera, Anathalio and Machine Elvis
All right, kids, try to follow along with this: Real-life L.A. pop/punk trio Say Anything’s debut CD is called Say Anything Is a Real Boy. It’s a concept record about the rise and fall of an L.A. pop/punk group called Say Anything with a lead singer named Max Bemis whose…
Blurry Snapshots
There are two reasons you should attend art openings in this city, and one of them is definitely the art. The other is the booze. So attending the grand opening of FotoFest 2006 is a no-brainer. Okay, full disclosure here, the Press is a co-sponsor. But I don’t need the…
The Stars Are Out
For Lorna Landvik, author of six best-selling novels, writing is an issue of character. “I don’t write anything consciously by design,” she says. “It’s the characters who direct the stories.” It appears, then, that we have the homely Violet Mathers to thank for Landvik’s latest, Oh My Stars. The novel…
Capsule Reviews
“Alex Katz” Alex Katz made his name with hard-edged, flattened portraits. But just shy of 80, the painter has loosened up considerably. He’s still interested in flat color and abstracted form, but his work has gotten looser and brushier. His show at Texas Gallery features a lovely collection of small…
Tommy Castro
Tommy Castro is one of the good guys, an artist who refuses to let his blues become a clich or an antique. On Soul Shaker, Castro finds those deep, driving Southern soul grooves that have been making Delbert McClinton a good living for 30 years. Written with some of the…
Uncle!
Anton Chekhov is arguably one of modern theater’s most innovative playwrights. Writing at the turn of the 20th century, the Russian genius dared take on the banality of life and turn it into heartbreaking, hysterically funny theatrical poetry. Nothing was beyond the scope of his lyricism bad love, old age,…
Green Day
We all know that alcohol and exposed flesh make one do bad things in the eyes of God, but today you can wipe the slate clean. Start off your sinful St. Patrick’s Day at 10:30 a.m. with a morning mass at the University of St. Thomas (3800 Montrose). Once you’re…
A Real Knockout
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Platform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS2, PSP, Xbox
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 8 (out of 10)
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, with Duke Spirit
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists will never make it in pop music. They have no fear of searing guitar solos, odd breaks and meters, bass leads or, come to think of it, any damn thing in the musical vocabulary that might serve their song. The Pharmacists have built their reputation…
Hoop Dreams Come True
Through the Fire (Disney) He’s averaging just nine points in his second season for the Portland Trail Blazers, but considering where he came from and what he’s overcome, Sebastian Telfair is doing just fine, thank you. Jonathan Hock’s fascinating documentary takes us back to the young New York basketball legend’s…
A Riverdance Runs Through It
Few professional gamblers would have bet that a show mixing Celtic music, hokey Irish history and dancers whose upper bodies remain stiff while their legs beat up the floorboards would have had much of a life. But since its 1995 debut, Riverdance has become a genuine cultural phenomenon, with more…
Our top DVD picks for the week of March 14
All Dogs Go to Heaven/All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (MGM) American Psycho (Lions Gate) Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (Warner Bros.) Basic Instinct: Ultimate Edition (Lions Gate) Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo — The Little Black Book Edition (Disney) A Fish Called Wanda (MGM) Get Shorty/Be Cool (MGM)…
Randy Weeks, with Tony Gilkyson and Mike Stinson
Okay, so it’s Sunday night and you’re thinking Screw it, I’m just gonna eat some leftovers, watch some tube, hit the sack. Big day tomorrow. Too bad, because Randy Weeks and his “Three Men, Three New Records” ensemble will certainly qualify as one of the best $5 shows to ever…
Smoke Signal
When the owner of Byzantio Cafe & Bar (403 West Gray, 713-520-6896) is cooking souvlaki ($2 each), his outdoor barbie billows mouthwatering smells and plenty of smoke into the air. These Greek kebabs are available from 6 p.m. to midnight Thursdays through Saturdays, and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays…
A Snaking Plot
“There might not be a pithy way to describe Ouroboros,” says director Robert de los Reyes. In fact, he says, the latest show from Main Street Theater could be hard to take in with just one viewing. “Understanding it all might require a beer,” he adds. “Or three.” Ouroboros is…
Bois and Grrls
One girl was called Jane Marie Another little girl was called Felicity Another little girl was Sally Joy The other was me, and I’m a boy — the Who Everything was fine until George Jorgensen Jr. came along. In 1951, surgeons in Copenhagen turned the Bronx-born George into Christine, and…
Fred Eaglesmith
Mary Gauthier is one of the hottest commodities in Americana right now. She did only two covers on her wildly successful breakthrough album Mercy, and one was a drop-dead version of Fred Eaglesmith’s “Your Sister Cried.” Gauthier’s take on the Canadian songwriter? “He just shames us all. Fred is so…
Star Powered
Not too long ago, Mark Seliger was a teenager and blossoming artist from Bellaire who was hoping to make it into the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts’s prestigious art department. He didn’t. “Somehow, my brother Frank talked me out of walking away completely,” says Seliger. He somewhat…
Scenes from a Theater
As a young gay man in late-’70s Colombia, artist Miguel Angel Rojas used to hang out at the Faenza cinemas in Bogotá, a popular gay casual-sex hot spot. Amid incognito hookups in the bathroom stalls, Rojas photographed the theater (as well as the frisky business in the stalls via a…
Scooby-Dooby-Done
In the end, Cynthia Sinatra never posed much of a threat to the bizarre reign of U.S. Representative Ron Paul in District 14, getting beaten pretty handily in the GOP primary March 7. But she didn’t go down without providing one of the stranger finales to any recent congressional campaign…
The Hellacopters, with Nebula, Illuminati
One overlooked aspect of the Great Garage Rock Revival of 2002 had more to do with geography than any kind of “who can ape the Stooges most closely” contest. Specifically, what the hell was it with all these bands from Sweden? Led by the nattily dressed Hives, this Viking invasion…
He’s So Shy
Though he shares his birth name with the legendary R&B singer, Andre Williams — a.k.a. Shy FX — makes music that is worlds apart. Since he came onto the scene in 1994, Shy FX has become one of the most accomplished drum ‘n’ bass DJs around. The Londoner will be…
On the Right Track
Maybe it’s the UK rock trio the Subways’ youthful energy — they have yet to reach the legal drinking age in America — that has struck the right three chords with rock-loving fans in their target demographic (i.e., fans of The O.C.). Drawing influence from Nirvana and UK bands such…
Displaced in the Diaspora
It’s Election Day, and a dozen volunteers have descended upon the Thicket Apartments near Bush Intercontinental Airport, block-walking in an effort to turn out voters last week. Lawrence Spain is making his way up and down dusty stairs, gripping the rusty railings and clutching campaign literature. The political volunteer doesn’t…
Nine Black Alps
Say it with me, in your best Jerry Seinfeld: Could there be more buzz bands coming out of the UK right now? England is almost as much of a next-big-thing factory as Brooklyn was last year, what with the Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, the Magic Numbers, the Subways, the Cribs…
Charlie in Charge
Life could’ve been really crappy for Eddie Murphy’s older, less photogenic brother. But Charlie Murphy’s exploits with Eddie back in the ’80s proved to be golden material when they became “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” on Chappelle’s Show. Soon, he was known as “Charlie Murphaay!” or as “Darkness” — whatever…
French Martini
I leave my downtown job at a quarter till midnight in search of a bar where I can have a drink and catch a little Mardi Gras action. The view from outside the windows of the Red Cat Jazz Cafe and Bar (924 Congress, 713-226-7870) looks all too inviting. Although…
Letters to the Editor
School Reports A suggestion: Thanks for a ranking of schools that’s not based on TAKS scores alone [“Houston’s Best Public High Schools,” February 23, and “These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston,” March 2, by Todd Spivak]. Perhaps next time you can stretch this to a…
Andre Williams
A bluesier, raunchier one-man version of the entire Brat Pack, the suave and debonair Andre Williams returns to the Continental Club after last year’s old-school pimpalicious show. The author of such classics as “Shake a Tail Feather” and the Keith Richards-approved proto-rap “Jail Bait” brought down the house with the…
Rounding It Out
London electronic duo The Orb is as indebted to Brian Eno as it is to Chicago house music. Since 1989, core member Alex Paterson has seamlessly blended soothing, ambient tones over dense, throbbing beats to create what some call ambient house — and others call “the music that calms down…
Image of the Week
Fat Tuesday in New Orleans officially ended 90 minutes ago, but even at 1:30 on Wednesday morning it’s clear that the Big Easy and all its great Mardi Gras traditions are back, baby. Click here to enlarge…
Leela James, with Kem
“It’s been a long time since you’ve heard it like this… / Ain’t nobody bringing it quite like this,” contends neo-soul belter Leela James on “Long Time Coming,” the closing track on her 2005 debut, A Change Is Gonna Come. And while these claims might smack of hyperbole, James’s album…
Cowboy Up
Despite the protests of PETA, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo — or RodeoHouston, as it’s known — has remained the premier annual event on the H-town calendar. Sadly, the events get roped up this weekend. Today’s closing rodeo events at Reliant Stadium include the Finals Performance for ropin’, ridin’…
Luke Doucet
There’s enough liquor in Luke Doucet’s new album to derail the best-laid plans of a dozen AA chapters. The Canadian singer-songwriter (and onetime Sarah McLachlan guitarist) dances across his rivers of whiskey like a Fred Astaire of the barfly set, surefooted and insouciant as he runs through dirty blues stompers…
Duff’s Enough
When Hilary Duff starred on the Disney show Lizzie McGuire, we knew — though it made us feel like one of those weirdos who lurk around in vans — that she was future babe material. And look, now Houston’s own 18-year-old phenom is a star of screen and radio, and…