This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, March 31 Today, that beacon of learning, University of Houston, turns into a carnival. At Frontier Fiesta, the Tejano group Solido performs at a free concert, while country crooner Robert Earl Keen takes the stage Friday night, with rapper T.I. following on Saturday. Parts of the campus will host…
Hooked on Garlic
Garlic aficionados are singing the praises of the grilled jumbo shrimp ($11) at Julia’s Bistro (3722 Main, 713-807-0090). Four giant butterflied shrimp swim in a pool of mojo de ajo, an oil-based sauce heavily laced with garlic, tiny cubes of red pepper and tomato (which add a brilliant touch of…
Cut and Paste
A spin-off of a sequel, Beauty Shop plays like most Hollywood comedies these days: as tepid sitcom, benign product and cynical afterthought. If last year’s Barbershop 2: Back in Business was little more than a dilapidated retread of the charmingly lightweight 2002 hit Barbershop, consider this incarnation condemned for teardown;…
Doin’ the Hustle
FJones will be featured in a One Pocket tournament honoring Breit at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 4. Cue & Cushion, 510 Shepherd. For information, call 713-861-7644 or visit www.onepocket .org. Free.
The Seoul of Sharpstown
Yao Ming is getting unfairly bashed by the mainstream media, according to the sportswriter at Saigon Tex News, Houston’s Bilingual Vietnamese Weekly. That newspaper and nearly a dozen others targeted at Houston’s Asian-Americans were piled in the front lobby of Sam Bo Jung, a vintage Korean restaurant located behind Sharpstown…
Rose in Bloom
When the great playwright Arthur Miller died in February, many admirers took stock again of his most enduring creation, Willy Loman. A delusional idealist who finds himself failed and felled by the American dream, the tragic hero of Death of a Salesman has for half a century been the most…
Mekas Proud
FRI 4/1 Jonas Mekas is independent cinema’s Che Guevara. The Lithuanian-born “filmer,” who escaped the Nazis for a life in America, dedicated more than 40 years to preserving, protecting and advocating experimental film. An outspoken critic, Mekas was arrested on obscenity charges for screening Jack Smith’s controversial, sexually charged film…
Finder’s Fee
Damian Cunningham has the face of an angel — calm and cool blue eyes perched above freckled cheeks and a benevolent grin — which is only appropriate for a seven-year-old boy who speaks with the late, great saints, among them Peter, Joseph, Claire and, of course, Francis of Assisi. Damian…
Butt In
SAT 4/2 Here comes that sense of dread in the pit of your thick-with-Chuck E. Cheese belly. You’ve just sat through Ice Princess, and one more episode of Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego? will make you snap. What the hell are you going to do with your…
Road Rules: Israel
Most contemporary thrillers aren’t concerned with moral dilemmas; the emphasis is on action and intrigue. The Israeli film Walk on Water — which, conveniently for American audiences, is primarily in English (the rest is Hebrew and German with English subtitles) — not only raises questions about right and wrong, but…
Bring the Hookahs
THU 3/31 You hear it all the time: “Oh, this is totally the rage in London.” But sometimes the hype is real. In London, hookah bars are everywhere, Arabic/South Asian music is practically mainstream, and if you don’t know who Aishwarya Rai is, then you might as well move to…
Hallmark Theater
Sylvia Regan’s eternally optimistic Morning Star is a sugary throwback to better days. The play opened on Broadway in 1940, during an era when the American dream promised a glowing future to anyone willing to work. In keeping with the cloying hopefulness at the heart of the play, Main Street…
Serenity Now!
THU 3/31 The last piece Jennifer Wood choreographed for Suchu Dance featured dancers in clashing plaid outfits against a cacophonous background of mixed patterns. That’s why this time around, everything’s white. “I’m a little bit hyper, so I was trying to make myself slow down,” says Wood. The all-white dreamscape…
Capsule Reviews
Bad Dates An icky date can happen to anyone. But Theresa Rebeck’s one-woman show is a reminder of how hilarious they can be in retrospect. The whole production takes place in single mom Haley’s bedroom, where she primps and dresses for several dates as she tells us about her life…
Elf Rock
It’s no surprise to learn that, as a child in Montana, Decemberists front man Colin Meloy wanted desperately to be an elf. And it follows naturally from that for him to have grown into being a huge Morrissey and Robyn Hitchcock fanatic, as those are two of the most elfin…
Africa, Via Switzerland
Quick — name 15 African countries. Come on, you can do it; out of 54 African countries, surely you can name 15. If you can’t, don’t despair: Our own president thinks the continent of Africa is a country. And our geographic unfamiliarity is just the tip of the misconceptual iceberg…
Steal These Albums
Hip-hop wasn’t always about Pimp My Ride antics and paint-by-numbers hit singles. Back in the day, some rappers had shit to say about racism, police harassment and growing up dead broke in the ghetto. This list of my personal Top 10 Most Radical Hip-hop Discs Ever includes some of the…
Capsule Reviews
“Amy Blakemore: Recent Pictures” Amy Blakemore has photographed her subjects with a delicate, subtle skill, capturing lovely images that feel like accidents and have a warm, faded nostalgia about them. Blakemore uses a plastic Diana camera, whose low-tech cheapness imparts a hazy aesthetic to her subjects. Diana cameras tend to…
The Return of the Band of Rhythm and Pleasure
Fifty or so years ago, a local columnist described Houston as a “whiskey and trombone town,” to distinguish it from Dallas, where the socialites were too priggish and status-conscious to revel in either rotgut or Dixieland jazz. And never did this town rollick with whiskey and trombones more than it…
Wretched Excess
In a Tanglewood office tower, visitors who feel the urge can ride an elevator to the top floor, round a corner and walk into a small restroom. They can gargle from a complimentary bottle of Cool Mint Listerine or use the toilet bowl covers, known as Health Gards, free of…
A Room with a View
Think you can’t find a hotel room downtown for under $100 a night? Understandable, but wrong. Way wrong. In fact, you can have a bed to rest your weary head for a fraction of that — a mere $26, after tax and “key rental.” I know what you’re thinking: “I…
Uncivil Action
The goings-on at the University of Texas Medical Branch hospital in Galveston were certainly creepy: Body parts illegally being sold (including hundreds of fingernails and toenails, at $15 a pop), cremated ashes being mixed together, families left wondering just what had happened to their loved ones’ remains. Lawyers got involved,…
M. Ward, with Norfolk and Western
You run into a lot of people lately who say they’ve heard of Portland’s M. Ward but haven’t heard his music. I suppose that makes sense, given that Ward’s creaky folk is so guileless, his voice a husky warble that won’t hold your attention if you’re not willing to meet…
DeLorean Lives On
In a bright warehouse, mechanics tinker with a handful of old sports cars with rock music blaring. Steve Gibson, a tall guy who wears a beard and a baseball cap, works under the hydraulic lift. Justin Lawson, with his boyish face and close-cut hair, buffs out a door. Workers labor…
Okkervil River, with the Decemberists
Hundreds of artists have created odes to the black sheep, but no one has depicted the evergreen antihero quite like Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, who alternates between sketching him literally (as an untamed beast wandering the wilderness) and voicing the profound alienation that can make any jilted lover feel like…
Life on the Sunny Side
She wrapped herself in plastic and lay down carefully on the bed. It was the only thing she could figure out to do. They’d taken her to the room earlier, told her to stick around. And Brenda, someone who hears many voices and sounds, somehow heard theirs through all the…
Richard Dobson
A native of Tyler and Houston currently living in Switzerland, Richard Dobson has been described as the Hemingway of Texas music. A contemporary of Townes Van Zandt and a favorite of John Prine, Dobson was a key figure in the group of Texans who coalesced in Austin in the early…
Letters
TSU: Firing Back A caring college: I want to compliment the newspaper and others on pointing out the most negative aspects about TSU [“Books, Bullets and Guns,” by Mosi Secret, March 17]. What happened to Miss Sloan is very unfortunate, and my prayers are with her and her family. But…
Neil Hamburger, with Tennessee
Q: Why did God create the Paris Hilton sex videotape? (See last paragraph for answer.) Okay, comedy’s corollary to Schrodinger’s cat is finally out of the, er, box. There it is, right on the Internet Movie Database for all to see: one Gregg Turkington, officially credited with “playing” Neil Hamburger…
Recognition Time
Houston Press food writer Robb Walsh has been named a finalist in two prestigious contests sponsored by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. He is a finalist in the association’s Bert Greene Awards for Food Journalism for “Sex, Death and Oysters,” an accounting of the oyster industry in the Houston…
Sponge
No, it’s not some lame April Fools’ joke. Sponge is back with a new lineup and hopes to reclaim some of the fame it experienced in the mid-’90s. Remember Sponge? Written off by most as a poor man’s Stone Temple Pilots (who were actually a poor man’s Pearl Jam), the…
TRU Music
, on the For information, call 713-348-5878 or visit www.ktru.org. Free.
Color Bind
If nothing else, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, co-directed with Frank Miller (and Quentin Tarantino, for a few seconds), will be remembered as the most faithful comic-book adaptation ever put on film (or high-def video, anyway). Rodriguez uses Miller’s hyper-noir serial, published over a ten-year period, as storyboards for the movie…