Night & Day
Thursday March 18 There’s one dance group in town that doesn’t much care whether we ever get a concert hall for contemporary dance. Leslie Scates and her crew of primary-color-costumed dancers take their choreography to the streets — well, the greenbelts, anyway. Drive By Dancing is designed to give the…
Forever Fresh
Two of Edward Albee’s earliest one-acts, The American Dream and The Zoo Story, have been pulled from the shelf and dusted off for the Alley’s Neuhaus Arena Stage. This stunning pair explains why Albee has become an icon of the American theater. These bite-sized plays, directed by the playwright himself,…
Loving Lop Seeks Carrots and Commitment
Easter’s coming, Cadbury bunnies are clucking away on TV, and pet stores are full of cute, cuddly rabbits. Parents buy a bow-tied bunny for their kids, who love the rabbit for a day and then throw him in the hutch in the backyard and forget about him. The bored bunny…
Fools Dive In
Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre has hit the (relative) big time. After three years of putting on charmingly crude and not-suitable-for-children short shows at bars and underground arts events, the puppet people took a giant leap toward a broader audience with their new two-act, evening-length play at DiverseWorks. Based on a story…
Gods and Monsters
In 1976 minimalist composer Philip Glass collaborated with theater director Robert Wilson (a Waco, Texas, native and UT alum) to create the “portrait opera” Einstein on the Beach. Glass’s hypnotic music — lyrics such as “armed robbery is punishable by 20 years in jail” were repeated over and over and…
Friendship in a Box
In 1915 artist Marcel Duchamp arrived in New York, where he would turn himself into a work of art and invent the future of American art. The sophisticated Frenchman had set himself the ambitious goal of making art from nonart, and with his “readymades” (as he called works using found…
See. Be Seen. Don’t Eat.
The Sambuca Jazz Cafe chain opened its Houston outlet last October at one of downtown’s nightlife revival epicenters, the arcade of the Rice Lofts. Since then, the restaurant has been crammed with wall-to-wall crowds most every weekend, an overnight sensation I’m still trying to figure out. It’s partly about hip…
Allah My Children
The last decade has been an extraordinary period for Iranian cinema. Restricted by minuscule budgets, filmmakers have been forced to fall back on exactly those qualities that Hollywood thinks it can afford to ignore: character insight, social analysis and unadorned storytelling. The success of Abbas Kiarostami, Iran’s best-known moviemaker, at…
Animal Magnetism
Filmed in Las Vegas, Monster Magnet’s video for “Space Lord” comments on all that’s wrong with hard rock. The “song commercial” borrows symbols from hip-hop — scantily clad dancing girls, smooth rides and phat gear — and recontextualizes them to show just how far away from excess that rock and…
Tame Old Story
At the movies, the fun-loving temptress has been liberating the buttoned-up clod ever since Katharine Hepburn’s leopard made off with Cary Grant’s dinosaur bone in Bringing Up Baby 61 years ago. Maybe even longer, if you count pioneer vamp Theda Bara’s effect on a long succession of speechless men. In…
Soul to Sell
Bob Irwin spends his days sorting through the vaults of record companies, listening to songs long ago hidden away from the general public, songs either too bad, or too good, ever to escape from the tomb. During the past decade, he has been responsible for freeing the Byrds’ best-and-rest from…
Top Rank
Jimmy Cagney brought the same electric physicality to gangsters that he did to song-and-dance men. He gave a bright-eyed mug such as his character in Public Enemy extraordinary powers of attraction and repulsion. In The General, Brendan Gleeson plays a real-life criminal chieftain, Dublin’s notorious Martin Cahill, with a belly-hanging-out…
Heeerre’s Johnny!
Quiz: Since 1957, what has been the leading cause of nights of passion in the United States? a) Barry White, b) Frank Sinatra, c) Cinemax After Dark or d) Johnny Mathis. Okay, “Skin-emax” is wrong because solo nights of passion don’t count. As for Messrs. White and Sinatra, either one…
Farm to Market
“It teaches hard work. It teaches that, hey, nobody’s gonna give you anything in life. You’ve got to get out there and you’ve got to compete and you’ve got to work at it. And besides that, probably one of the best things it does: It reminds them that if you’re…
Rotation
The Disco Box Discs 1 and 2 Rhino Records My ideal life has been lived out by an impostor. I’ve always thought the cowbell player in KC & The Sunshine Band should’ve been me. There’s no question I could’ve done as serviceable a job as anyone else in a sequined…
Chucking It All
This story begins with an escape. It was 1979 in Middletown, New Jersey, and nothing was happening. Probably nothing was ever going to happen. And Bryn Tustin knew it. He was 21 and was working as an electrician and park ranger, being forced to bust other people for smoking pot…
Confessional Confections
Sebadoh has become a critical and underground favorite, partially on the strength of its intimate sonic portraits, crafted mostly by frontman Lou Barlow. To wit … “I don’t think I’m direct and honest,” says Barlow. “I don’t think, ‘Wow, this is really weird, I shouldn’t be singing about this.’ I…
News Hostage
Workin’ Overtime During his stint as the Chronicle’s main baseball writer, Alan Truex never seemed to be one of those many Chron sportswriters who automatically take the owners’ side in any pay dispute, knee-jerkedly slamming athletes for not being happy with what they were getting. Now we know why. Truex…
As Seen on TV
March came roaring in for Houston chef Claire Smith, owner of the much-praised Daily Review Cafe in north Montrose [3412 West Lamar, (713) 520-9217]. By the end of the month’s first weekend, Smith seemed to be everywhere at once. Her big-time media blitz began when the March issue of Cooking…
Good News
Two Houston Press reporters have recently received word they are winners in separate journalism contests. Brian Wallstin is a winner in the Texas Medical Association’s Anson Jones M.D. Award, which honors excellence in health communication. Wallstin won for his story “A Question of Life,” which told how administrators at Texas…
Hot Plate
Drive-thru dee-light: Ah, Houston, foodie heaven, where great eats are served everywhere, even in your car. Best case in point: the grilled swordfish sandwich ($5.75) at the drive-thru window of Beck’s Prime, as good as its burgers, at notably lower calorie count. A firm-textured, quarter-pound swordfish fillet, lightly grilled over…
Fire Alarm
At work guys grabbed his butt, crotch and shoulders, says Chris Boone. Co-workers told him to drop to his knees and do what he does best. “Give me the best blow job of your life,” he remembers them saying. They brought Vaseline. Boone, 26, was an oil-spill technician at Garner…
Brunch of Champions
Sunday brunch is best approached in one of two ways: an all-you-can-eat buffet or dim sum. The buffet enjoys a major advantage — it is all you can eat, and every Sunday should include its share of decadence — but that option also suffers drawbacks. First, you have to get…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *In January, North Dakota legislators decided against a proposal to crack down on impatient motorists who relieve themselves while driving and then toss their urine- and even feces-filled plastic containers to the side of the road. The containers create hazards when cleanup crews accidentally smash them with vehicles…
Letters
Love to See Red I compliment you on bringing back the original “Red” Connelly, the man with the gift of ironic understatement and sarcasm, in your News Hostage column. I really missed Connelly’s “Sports for Heretics” column at the Public News, and it’s a delight to see his wit gracing…
Enron’s Earth (Day) Quakes
Fortune magazine may have voted Houston-based Enron the most innovative company four years running, but the natural-gas giant has an old-fashioned approach to controversy. It runs from it. Case in point: the corporation’s decision to ban Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas Inc. from participating in Earth Day Festival,…
Wong’s War on a Reggae Club
City Councilwoman Martha Wong put on an unusual show-and-tell session in her City Hall office two weeks ago, but the subjects of the show weren’t allowed to attend. In an effort to pressure reggae nightclub Jamaica Jamaica to move from its strip shopping center on upper Kirby at Richmond in…