The Beer Cellar
It’s Saturday, and I feel like trying a new bar, so I invite a friend over to The Beer Cellar (3140 Richmond, 713-528-6435). “Hey, meet me at the Cellar.” ‘Where is that?” she asks. “It’s on Richmond by that cabaret, you know… “Oh…by the Pink Pussycat.” Why is the Pink…
Playful Pics
At first glance, the work in Demetrius Oliver’s new show “Extracts” could be thought of as just an artist having fun with his body and a digital camera. Oliver snaps himself with a lump of coal in his mouth in Lump, shoots his feet in cellophane in Fin and his…
No-Balls Buzz
Every city in America is cursed with a “wacky” morning show on FM, where outlaws who can’t be tamed by the FCC or those suits in corporate push the envelope and stick it to The Man. In Houston, one of those shows belongs to Rod Ryan on The Buzz. So…
Get Down with Dave
The world premiere of Dave Chappelle’s Block Party at the Toronto International Film Festival last September had the vibe of a sold-out concert all those spotlights beaming to and fro in front of a venerable old theater, all that pushing and shoving for the best seats, all those celebs in…
Gray’s Anatomy
In the jazz lexicon, there are two usual suspects: straight-ahead and contemporary. The first — unless you’re a traditionalist — can get pretty tedious as you try to follow the machine-gun-assault of notes. The second can leave you near suicidal, as you endure schmaltzy poppy melodies designed to hook you…
Letters to the Editor
Donte’s Inferno Humbled: Thank you for “Crossing Lines” [by Margaret Downing, February 16]. I have been a supporter of the School of the Americas Watch for a few years now and felt virtuous for writing a few letters and making the occasional small donation to the cause. After reading about…
Hard Ride
Didn’t Richard Donner retire? A 1980s star-director name, among many, that should now send bolts of discouraging dread down your spine, Richard Donner may well be seeing his filmmaking skills peak with 16 Blocks — even if saying it’s his best, least flatulent, most efficient film is tantamount to saying…
Hometown Love
“Any kind of sell-out for modern dance is an accomplishment,” says Karen Stokes, whose “modern dance musical,” Hometown, packed the house at its premiere performances in 2003. Makes sense that Houstonians would love it; the show not only features an all-star cast of local dancers (working as the Travesty Dance…
The Also-Rans
This article is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston”Even we were surprised by some of the well-regarded schools that didn’t crack the top ten in our survey. After all, some of these have the kind of reputations that cause…
Mardi Gras, Sans Prozac
Despite being a lifelong Texan, a onetime Catholic and the daughter of parents who were proudly BOI (born on the island it’s a Galveston thing), I’ve never attended Mardi Gras Galveston. Blame it on my debilitating social anxiety disorder; I won’t even go to the grocery store on weekends. However,…
All’s Mel
At last year’s Grammys, singer Melissa Etheridge blew away the audience when she channeled Janis Joplin in the tune “Piece of My Heart.” But it wasn’t just Etheridge’s raspy, blues-infused vocals that made the performance memorable: She had just finished chemotherapy for breast cancer and was completely bald. Today, she…
Methodology
This article is a sidebar to this week’s feature, “These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston” The methodology employed by Children at Risk to assess the schools began with a series of informal interviews with Houston-area superintendents, researchers and educators on ways to determine the top-performing…
Soaring Swan
What does a 1985 Rutger Hauer flick have to do with a revamped 1895 ballet? Both shows’ heroines are birds by day and fair maidens by night. Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch took inspiration from the Hauer/Michelle Pfeiffer vehicle Ladyhawke for his new version of Swan Lake, borrowing from…
Oscar Wild!
Attention, celebrity gawkers: The 78th Annual Academy Awards are upon us. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay home. You can see how many little bald guys Brokeback Mountain gets during a night on the town. The women-only Crave Oscar Party is a luxurious evening featuring all the best…
Best Served Cold
She Wants Revenge will perform between Electric 6 and Rock Kills Kid on Thursday, March 2, at
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…
Bodies of Work
“Difficult bodies” don’t make it in the dance world — right? In the “diptych” performance of Retrospective Exhibitionist and Difficult Bodies, Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People confront this harsh dance-world mantra. The colorful Brooklyn-based crew uses its in-your-face, goofy brand of modern movement to explore the effects — good…
Van Gogh with a Resonator
“Willie Dixon once told me, and I know this sounds like a clich, but he told me, ‘Son, you’ve got to live the blues if you want to play the blues.'” So reminisced Dan Whitley, the younger brother of Chris Whitley, who passed away here in town at the age…
Capsule Reviews
“Andrea Bowers: Letters to an Army of Three” For her installation at the Glassell School of Art, Andrea Bowers has constructed a video around actual letters written to the “Army of Three” — Pat Maginnis, Rowena Gurner and Lana Phelan, three women who worked as abortion advocates and as a…
Her Prince Will Come
If you were watching SNL a few weeks ago, you got a chance to see and hear Houston R&B singer Tamar singing her single “Beautiful, Loved, and Blessed.” You also got a chance to see and hear Minneapolis’s favorite man formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known As Prince. Today,…
Standing Behind the Man
Elvis may be the “King” and Little Richard the loudly self-proclaiming “architect” of rock and roll, but it’s Chuck Berry who has the firmest claim of paternity on the genre. By blending country and R&B rhythms, a distinctive guitar sound, a clear voice and teen-friendly subjects, tracks like “Johnny B…
Back to the Future
Last fall, Microsoft hyped its pricey Xbox 360 by promising to reinvent gaming as we know it. The blockbuster “next generation” titles were supposed to harness the machine’s awesome power to deliver high-definition graphics and impossibly realistic action. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. The…
Chill to the Next Episode
Wes Allison — a.k.a. Wes Alloy — is programming a new and unique show for Houston nightlife, simply called Episode. The DJ’s cast for this pilot includes Alloy himself and Houston’s legendary drum-and-bass/dancehall DJ BMC. Also starring are Genuine Fraud and Dunnock, who will offer up a multi-media, laptop-created electronic…
Hollywood in Houston?
Houston’s much-publicized All-Star Weekend it’s our fair city’s big chance to play host to a who’s-who of rich and famous celebrities. Elaborate and expensive All-Star-related parties are happening all over, mostly at clubs newly minted enough to avoid that not-so-fresh feeling. One such newbie is Hue, which is hosting the…
The Great Cash-In
Walk the Line (Fox) No matter what a junkie does with his spare time — say, redefine country music, or forge one of history’s most enduring personas — movies about junkies are a drag to watch. So it’s too bad this Johnny Cash biopic is a by-the-numbers fall-and-redemption tale. A…
Go West, Young Woman
More than just your favorite chicken dish, King Ranch is a dusty Texas spot — larger than the state of Rhode Island, in fact — where myths and legends of the American West once thrived. That bygone era has been immortalized in “Two Women Look West: Photographs of King Ranch…
Adrian and the Sickness
Manic metal guitarist Adrian Conner’s new album, Adrian For President, is as raw and edgy as a Supersuckers after-party at the Playboy Mansion. Her attitude is determined and single-minded she takes no prisoners. Her relationships are incendiary, here now, gone in the flick of a Zippo lighter with one wrong…
Our top DVD picks for the week of February 28
Annie Duke’s Conquering Online Poker (Big Vision) The Avengers: The Complete Emma Peel Megaset (A&E) Battle’s Poison Cloud (Cinema Libre) Bleak House (BBC Warner) Camara Oscura (Warner Bros.) Charmed: The Complete Fourth Season (Paramount) Death Tunnel (Sony) The Hobart Shakespeareans (Docurama) The Ice Harvest (MCA) The Lords of Discipline (Paramount)…
Cedric’s tha Bomb
In 2002, Cedric the Entertainer found himself in a mess of controversy when in the film Barbershop, his smack-talking character Eddie pontificated that Rosa Parks wasn’t a hero because she didn’t give up her bus seat to a white man — she was just “tired.” Eddie also noted that O.J…
Chris Hillman and Herb Pedersen
Between them, these two have written entire chapters in the history of whatever you want to call what happened when rock met country, when Acapulco Gold and blotter acid met Bill Monroe and the Louvin Brothers, when the light show met the moonshiner. You could play word-association games with Chris…
Taking the Plunge
The plot seems straight out of Montel. Guy, who’s looking to hook up his lonely buddy, finds him the perfect girl: his own wife. But the story goes beyond daytime trash in the new play What About Luv? Based on Luv, the popular 1963 play by Murray Schisgal, What About…
Buckethead
Obscurity seems the standard for avant-garde guitarist Buckethead (who actually does wear a KFC bucket and a Michael Myers-style mask when he plays). While he may occasionally enjoy brief snatches of the limelight most recently as guitarist for whatever passes for Guns N’ Roses these days his career mostly has…
White Grits
Ever wonder how dishes get their names? The La Gringa ($11.95) at Maria Selma (1617 Richmond, 713-528-4920), a menu specialty, is an interesting example. It consists of thin slices of pork marinated in Mexican seasonings, fried with oodles of onions and tropical pineapple, and topped with melted white cheese. According…
All About Audra
It’s quite a feat for any actor to win four Tony awards during his entire career. In a classic case of overachieving, Broadway star Audra McDonald has done exactly that — winning three of the four before she was 30 years old. (Her fourth came in 2004 for her role…
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
In the Doonesbury comic strip, resident musical chameleon Jimmy Thudpucker shamelessly shape-shifts to adapt to the moment’s hot sound, be it grunge, young country or the Great American Songbook. Rarely in non-fictional rock music do such genre-jumps work, but in the case of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the band not…
Pacing Themselves
Although he plays for a rival team, Jermaine O’Neal makes it hard for Houston Rockets fans to root against him. At the recent celebrity game during All-Star Weekend, the Indiana Pacers forward scribbled his autograph for every screaming kid who stormed the bleachers. And he was genuine about it —…
Ramblin’ and Raucous
It’s hard to imagine that the John Evans Band could rock any more, but that’s supposedly the case on the band’s new album, Ramblin’ Boy. Today, you can be the first to check out JEB’s raucous mix of roots and rockabilly — with a little bit of punk, natch —…
Relient K, The Rocket Summer, Maxeen
If all Christian-rawk groups were as good as The Rocket Summer, we all just might have to go and find Jesus. Bryce Avery, the multi-instrumented singer/songwriter behind the band, writes straightforward pop songs that are irresistibly catchy and tend to incite sing-a-longs. The ebullient 22-year-old (and Colleyville native) has been…
Beast of an Actor
You may remember the Super Bowl commercial where the Budweiser Clydesdales are having a friendly game of pigskin in front of an animal audience. Suddenly they’re interrupted by a sheared sheep that “streaks” and saucily shakes its butcher-friendly hind quarters. Two laconic cowboys are watching the contest, and one delivers…
Get Your Drank On
With DJ Screw living by and ultimately overdosing on codeine syrup, and Big Moe proclaiming Houston as “Purple City,” it’s clear that the mind-numbing cough suppressant known as “purple drank” is really hot in the South. So it’s no surprise that purple is also this month’s theme at DJ Cashless’s…
Ariel Pink, Belong, Slovak Republic
With more and more albums being released with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, it’s refreshing to hear something like Los Angeles’s Ariel Pink every once in a while. In the three albums he’s put out for the Animal Collective-backed Paw Tracks label, he’s mastered the art of ultra lo-fidelity by…
Colored Classics
If you’ve ever traipsed through James Turrell’s trippy light tunnel called The Light Inside at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, you’ve probably marveled at his use of manmade light fixtures. But did you know that he also designed the Live Oak Friends Meeting House? For years, people have been…
These Kids Go to the Best Public High School in Houston
The Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions is this area’s best public high school. It produces studious, high-achieving, self-assured brainiacs. The student body is a model of diversity: half the kids come from poor families, and students are evenly divided among African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics. That’s what the…
OK Go
Chicago’s entry into the ’00s-meet-the-’80s pop-rock gold rush, OK Go, is made up of four dandies with a taste for paisley and flowered patterns in their garb and hooky, feisty, near-hyperactivity in their songs. But behind their almost-too-eager-to-please energy, mix ‘n’ match sartorial flair and wacky dance moves (on shameless…
Two to Tango
Warning: If you take tango lessons with Andres Amarilla, you may quit your corporate job, move to Buenos Aires and spend the rest of your life dancing. At least that’s what happened to Meredith Klein, Amarilla’s partner. The one-time development consultant began studying tango in Massachusetts in 1999, and then…
The Crudo at Bice
The maître d’ at Bice, the trendy new Italian restaurant in the Galleria, led us to a choice table despite our appearances. In our ensembles of baggy blue jeans, droopy sweaters, and scruffy jackets, we would have been the first to admit we looked out of place in a sleek…