Drinking Is Allowed (and Encouraged) at the Prima Volta Opera
There have been shows in laundromats, inside old bomb shelters and parking garages and water tunnels, and, with the aid of a gas-powered generator, at a cemetery. Prima Volta, a local classical music organization, is also about taking a concert out of the hall and off the bandstand and into…
Mr. Right Shows How Rom-Com Heroes Are Pretty Much All Psychopaths
Clowning, bullet-riddled rom-com Mr. Right is awfully charming in the best and worse sense of the phrase. It’s often kind of awful but also weirdly, effervescently charming, a movie that salves, with its stars’ radiance and charisma, even as it grates. What hurts: lots of vaguely comic hitman drama, with…
The Brawler of Hell’s Kitchen: Daredevil‘s Fight Coordinator Talks Season Two’s Greatest Battle
Superhero fans may not know stunt coordinator Philip J Silvera’s name, but they do know his work. Silvera’s choreography turned heads in such recent comic-book adaptations as the Arkham Knight and Arkham Origins Batman video games, the record-breaking Deadpool film and Netflix’s Daredevil. Silvera’s imaginative, brutal work on Daredevil’s first…
Michael Jackson (Jazz) Revisited
The heavy hitting SFJAZZ Collective has tackled the songbooks of John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, and Thelonious Monk. Arguably, none have been as massive, varied, hit-making, and luminary as Michael Jackson’s. “Most of the people in the band see him as a musical icon,” says Robin Eubanks, the trombonist…
Filling the Gaps at the Original Pizaro’s
I’ve lived in Houston for 23 years. It took me 16 of those to visit the Rothko Chapel for the first time. I didn’t eat at Ninfa’s on Navigation until I’d counted myself a Houstonian for nearly a decade. I still haven’t eaten at Frenchy’s. The list of glaring omissions goes…
What Happens After We Die? “Remote Houston” Looks at Our Options
Have you ever been to the Alley with somebody who just couldn’t sit still? Fidgeting, opening candy wrappers or – the worst-of-all-theater-going sins – checking their smart phone for likes? If so, then this new pedestrian-based live art experience might just be “up their alley.” Creator Rimini Protokoll – an…
Report: There Are 65 Flint, Michigan-Type Water Systems in Texas
A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project says that an alarming amount of Texans are drinking poison and that state officials are underestimating or flat-out ignoring the problem. For the past two years, arsenic concentrations in 65 Texas community water systems (which serves more than 82,000 people) have exceeded…
Jay Hunter Morris Returns to Texas for Siegfried at Houston Grand Opera
Jay Hunter Morris says when his young son hears him practicing at home, running through scales or tackling the various roles he’s taken on, he asks his father why he sings so loud. “This craft is born of hundreds of years of necessity. They didn’t have microphones. Not only are…
Don’t Miss Houston’s New Spring Menus & Features
Spring is here, and with it has come a blossoming of tasty new menus from Houston’s hottest eateries. From brand new brunches to springtime favorites, here’s a look at what’s new this season: Alamo Drafthouse – Vintage Park, 114 Vintage Park The Vintage Park location has stepped up its patio game…
The Hottest Restaurants in Houston for April 2016
What are Houston’s hottest restaurants this month? Here are the places with the new, the notable and the most coveted tables. For convenience, we’ve listed them by formality so you know when to dress up and when you can get away with showing up in jeans. We also give a…
Hard-Rock Queen Lita Ford Looks Back Over a Runaway Life
Living Like A Runaway: A Memoir By Lita Ford Dey Street Books, 272 pp., $26.99 Shortly before hitting her commercial peak in 1988 with her third solo record, Lita, and its two monster singles and videos – “Kiss Me Deadly” and “Close My Eyes Forever” (the latter a duet with Ozzy Osbourne)…
Team Behind Helen Greek Food & Wine Gear Up for Arthur Ave Italian American Restaurant in the Heights
Seasonal Greek restaurant Helen Greek Food & Wine in Rice Village met with instant accolades and success with their first endeavor, including a nod as a James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. Now, the team hopes to make diners fall just as much in love with their new endeavor,…
Art Car Parade Revs Up: New Location, Same Flair
The Houston Art Car Parade cruises into town this weekend, this time with a brand new route. Although Houston’s omnipresent road construction cannot slow down the city’s beloved tradition, it can make it change course. Due to construction along Allen Parkway, the world’s largest gathering of art cars will roll through…
This Week in Houston Food Blogs: A Houston Re-Plant’s Food Year in Review
This week, we have a recipe to help you kick your body into gear on those rough early mornings, plus a review of a seasonal spring menu and a few guides to help you branch out of your dining-out comfort zone. Hank on Food visited Songkran Thai Grill, 2258 Texas…
Singer-Actress-Artist Bridget Barkan Coming to MATCH
Actress, singer, multi-media genre-bending shape-shifting storyteller: New York- based talent Bridget Barkan has quite a range and isn’t afraid to show it. “Every show is always new, but there’s always a tale that is woven to my journey as a woman, as a spirit, as an artist, as a child actress,” Barkan explains,…
Zapruder Analysis of Heisman Winner Troy Smith’s DUI Video
When professional football players retire, conventional wisdom says that they can always return to the cushy lair where they played their college football and run the streets with fun and frivolity unfettered, and the more “college” the college town, the more leeway those former athletes have. Well, there is no…
The Cultural Revolution May Be Over, but Something New Is Happening at Asia Society Texas Center
The Cultural Revolution is “so last week,” at least as far as the young artists (born after 1976) featured in “We Chat: A Dialogue in Contemporary Chinese Art” are concerned. For these creatives, the one-child policy has always been around (only abolished at the end of last year), the skyline…
The Lucky Fig Food Truck Showcases Italian Fare From a National Food Star
Many Houstonians might not realize that there’s a MasterChef winner in their midst. Luca Manfé won Season Four of the competitive cooking show in 2013. Now, he’s serving lovely, handmade Italian cuisine, even complex pasta dishes, right here in Houston from a food truck called The Lucky Fig. In some ways,…
Villanova Wins a Game for the Ages
And so it came to pass that there was an actual good basketball game played inside NRG Stadium. A game with two really good basketball teams that ran actual plays on offense and played decent defense Teams that ran the court with confidence and made baskets and blocked shots. And…
So, the City of Houston Is Among the Nation’s Most Efficient Spenders. Really?
A new WalletHub study says the City of Houston is the fifth-most efficient spender in the country, a ranking that would likely leave most Houstonians wondering, ‘Wait, what!?’ The study measured cities’ expenditures on law enforcement, education, and parks and recreation. Nine other Texas cities made the top 50, though…
Check Out All the Beers at BrewFest — Early-Bird Prices End This Week
Houston beer lovers, it’s time to start getting excited about the 2016 Houston Press BrewFest event. No matter what style you love, you’ll find it at this popular annual tasting event. Beers from 38 local, regional and national breweries have already been confirmed. (The extensive list is below.) Food from…
At Classic Theatre Company, Democracy Is for The Birds
Under Director Philip Hays, Classical Theatre Company’s production of Aristophanes’ classic comedy The Birds is getting a 21st century facelift. You may ask: Why this play? Why now? As the saying quite-nearly goes, ancient theater is all Greek to me. On this front, Hays is quick to retort: “It’s pretty topical considering the light of…
Upcoming: Chris Robinson Brotherhood, Guns N’ Roses, Junior Brown, L7, Peasant, PVRIS, Rogue Wave, Wye Oak, etc.
Note: Events in bold reflect highly recommended shows. 3rd Annual Crawfish Boil: With TKOH, Funktion, Bad Boyfriend., Sat., April 9, 1:30 p.m., Free. Floyd’s Cajun Seafood/Sugar Land, 16549 Southwest Fwy., Sugar Land, 281-240-3474. 420 Sixteen: With B L A C K I E, Free Radicals, MC Lyro, Biz, Pitter Patter,…
David Liebe Hart Performs Songs to Meet Aliens By
If there’s one item that separates David Liebe Hart from his outsider music brethren (such as Jandek, Wesley Willis, and Arthur Doyle) and pushes the 60-year old into the depths of the left-of-field, it’s the subject matter in his songs, based on what he says are real-life experiences. “In 1980,…
Bollo Offers Some Top-notch Pies, But Not Consistently
A row of fire-tending rakes and shovels hangs on the white tiled wall behind the large-domed oven, the breathing, pulsating heart of the restaurant. The pizzaiolo grabs a prepped pie from the low counter behind him, sliding it into the mouth of the oven. Two and a half minutes later,…
Onward Christian Soldiers: In the Era of Trump-Style Politics, Evangelical Voters Are Not a Monolith
If we ever needed proof, we got it when Donald Trump opened his mouth at Liberty University and made his infamous reference to “2 Corinthians.” After wiping off the drool from laughing so hard, evangelicals knew with certainty that he was not one of us. Every American evangelical spanning the…
How to Amuse Yourself in a Massive Music-Festival Line
It’s not so bad, I think. Some people really dislike the sensation of a thin trickle of sweat that’s passed the small of the back and ventured further south. Standing here with few things to contemplate besides my own bodily functions, this is a realization I’m prepared to stand by…
Lawsuit Claims Harris County Jailers Ignored Severely Ill Inmate Before He Died
The last time that Kathryn Green saw her son Patrick, he said he was feeling confident in his addiction recovery. He was doing time in the Harris County Jail for a probation violation after he relapsed and found heroin again, his parents say. But he had access to a drug…
Mumford and Sons Give the Pavilion Crowd What They Want to Hear
Mumford & Sons Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion April 3, 2016 I guess Marcus Mumford read our review of his last show. When last we left our intrepid non-family unit (September 2013), they really didn’t seem like they were having a very good time. Chalk it up to September swampiness or…
NASA Is Sending an Inflatable House to the International Space Station
NASA is about to send a new prototype for an inflatable house into orbit. That may sound like something that Ray Bradbury dreamed up, but it’s true. On Friday afternoon, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft will take off on its eighth mission to tote the usual supplies for scientific experiments and daily living…
10 More Albums We’d Like to See Played Live
These days it seems like the biggest attraction in live music is the opportunity to hear our favorite bands perform entire classic albums live. In the last ten years or so, almost everyone has jumped on that bandwagon. Just recently, Houston got to see Underoath play all of They’re Only…
With Wide-Ranging Sympathy, Louder Than Bombs Surveys Strife on the Home Front
A fractured film about a fractured family, Louder Than Bombs takes a potentially tired premise and reshapes it before our eyes. It opens on a newborn’s tiny hand helplessly clinging to a father’s finger, and ends with a different father watching his two sons sleep. In between is a story…
In Demolition, a Finance Bro Finally Gets Hands-On and Feels Something
Jean-Marc Vallée’s Demolition presents an interesting experiment: What if you told a story of tragedy but withheld all the tenderness and emotion from it, so that you were left — at least until the very end — with just literal and figurative wreckage, disconnected fragments seeking to be put back…
Capital One JamFest Caps Off a Giddy, Exhausting Weekend
Capital One JamFest feat. Maroon 5, Pitbull, Flo Rida & Aloe Blacc Discovery Green April 3, 2016 Dear Final Four visitors, You got lucky! Sincerely, — Houston weather It was one of those rare, late spring, not-yet-summer weekends in Houston where the temperatures were bearable, the mosquitos were nonexistent, and even…
Wrestlemania 32: 4 Winners, 4 Losers
Seth Rollins, John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Nikki Bella, Cesaro, Tyson Kidd. What do all of those names have in common? Well, two things. First, each of those WWE performers walked out of the ring a year ago at Wrestlemania 31 in Santa Clara wearing WWE gold. Those six performers held…
Dish of the Week: Spring Pea Bruschetta
From classic comfort foods to regional standouts and desserts, we’ll be sharing a new recipe with you each week. Find other dishes of the week here. This week, we’re sharing a seasonal take on an Italian staple, bruschetta. From the Roman verb bruscar – meaning “to roast over coals,” bruschetta…
What Will It Take to Close the Gender Gap in Sports?
Last year, head coach of the Houston Dash, Randy Waldrum, got on camera to basically beg fans to come to the games. He was disappointed with low opening-day ticket sales. Season ticket sales were low, too. And so were large-group sales, he said. His pleas were near doomsday-like, and in…
Fall Out Boy & Panic! at the Disco’s Youth Appeal Is No April Fool
Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco March Madness Music Festival Discovery Green April 1, 2016 Shortly after my 15th birthday, a friend introduced me to a band that would become something of a soundtrack to my teenage years. Their songs tugged on my prepubescent heartstrings while simultaneously quenching my…
War Between Pro, Anti-Campus Carry Groups Gets Personal
Last month, Students For Concealed Carry offered $5,000 to any “anti-campus carry conspiracy theorists” who could prove that pro-campus carry group is funded by Tea Party groups or large gun-rights groups like the NRA. The group described it as an “offer they can’t refuse.” Which may have been a bit of an…
Houston Texans Re-sign QB Brandon Weeden — What Does It Mean?
When the Houston Texans broke training camp last season, they did so with a two man depth chart of Brian Hoyer and Ryan Mallett at quarterback. Meanwhile, Brandon Weeden was Tony Romo’s backup in Dallas for the Cowboys. After Romo went down with a broken clavicle early in the season,…
This Week in Houston Food Events: Menu of Menus Is Upon Us!
Monday, April 4 Monday Brunch at The Burger Joint This week, The Burger Joint at 2703 Montrose is kicking off Monday Brunch with a special brunch menu that includes a burger Benedict, French toast, chicken fried chicken, micheladas and more. The brunch offerings will be available from 11 a.m. to…
Thom Pain (based on nothing) a Searing Lesson in How Life Is Messy and Wonderful and Sucks From Time to Time
The set-up: Life sucks. That’s not a direct quote from the eponymous “hero” (George Parker) of Will Eno’s tantalizing 75-minute monologue, Thom Pain (based on nothing), but you get the idea. Brought to searing life through Catastrophic Theatre, Pain – or should I say playwright Eno – is too smart…
Trickle-Down Islamophobia In Texas Public Schools
On Friday, a 12-year-old Fort Bend ISD student told reporters his teacher called him a terrorist because he’s a Muslim. Which, unfortunately, isn’t even all that surprising now, especially when you consider the tenor of state and national politics — or the fact that Islamophobia keeps popping up around Texas…
The Freaks Come Out Early for the Melvins, Napalm Death and More at Numbers
Arriving to Numbers at 5:30 p.m. on Friday night, er afternoon, set me off a little. Early door times are a killer for everyone and there was no way I was going to miss the opener. With no time to grab dinner and having to fight the ever-present Houston traffic…
Consider Yourself Informed: Oliver! Starts This Week at the Hobby Center
He’s an orphaned boy, beaten and underfed, sold into an apprenticeship which takes him away from the workhouse to which he’s been sent. Alas, things go no better for him there and he ends up a runaway in 19th century London where, despite all his experiences, he remains naïve and…
Things Are Bad for the Oil Industry and They’re Going to Get Worse
The U.S. oil industry has been struggling for more than a year now, and if the price of oil doesn’t go up a bit or at least stabilize, the whole situation will likely go from bad to worse. That’s pretty much the only thing that industry analysts are certain of…
Chris Stapleton’s Underdog Days Are Over After Sunday’s ACM Sweep
It’s still a little hard to make sense of Chris Stapleton’s domination of Sunday night’s Academy of Country Music Awards, but it was still pretty cool to watch. It’s not quite the surprise his takeover of last fall’s CMAs was, but Stapleton has yet to receive the kind of traction…
The Waco Biker Gang Shooting Investigation Is a Complete Mess
It’s been nearly a year since nine bikers were killed in a chaotic shootout between the Cossacks and Bandidos gangs at a Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, and we still don’t know much about what happened or who did what. And while 177 bikers we arrested at the scene, we…
A Supernova Named Kendrick Lamar Torches the March Madness Music Fest
Kendrick Lamar March Madness Music Festival Discovery Green April 2, 2016 Moments before Villanova decided to unleash the perfect offensive game against Oklahoma inside NRG Stadium, Kendrick Lamar was prepping. He was discussing basketball with the TBS crew of Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Clark Kellogg. Even when…
Shows of the Week: Emo Reborn, Bieber Redeemed & M83’s White Oak Opener
DR. DOG House of Blues, April 6 Starting with 2005’s Easy Beat, Philly six-piece Dr. Dog could be counted on to deliver one reliably Beatlesque album — melodic, eclectic and charismatic — every two years or so, a pattern that held through 2013’s B-Room. Now, their “new” album happens to…
They Might Be Giants Bring a Flood to Warehouse Live
The Might Be Giants Warehouse Live April 1, 2016 The world has changed significantly since nerd-rockers They Might Be Giants (henceforth abbreviated to TMBG in the interests of time and writer laziness) released their — to date — only platinum album, 1990’s Flood. Free passage between the two Germanys had…
Did Villanova and North Carolina Finally Solve NRG Stadium?
It’s been pretty much established over the years that college basketball games played at NRG Stadium are awful games. There’s something about the layout of the court and of the stands that makes it hard on depth perception. So the games become a contest of missed shots ands sluggish play…
DuPont Will Shutter La Porte Plant Where Chemical Leak Killed 4 Workers
On Thursday DuPont announced that it will close its troubled La Porte plant, a key part of which has been shuttered since a November 2014 gas leak that killed four workers. Officially, the chemical giant decided to shutter the plant, which in recent years employed nearly 500 workers, because of…
Video: 10 Years of Praia Urbana
Just ahead of its 10th anniversary kickoff event April 2 at Last Concert Café, Praia Urbana founders Bobby Blyss and Steven Towers sat down to discuss a decade of “urban beach” dance parties in Houston. “Praia Urbana is an all-day electronic music festival. It started off as a smaller party…
Moores Opera Center Presents Anna Karenina With a Sweeping Romantic Score
It’s a relatively new opera – although as Buck Ross, director of the University of Houston’s Moores Opera Center, puts it, “I think a lot of people think it’s been an opera for years.” Probably because its themes of love, loss, tragedy and heartbreak are perfect for this art form…
Final Four Hits Houston This Weekend
The pinnacle of the college basketball season has arrived with the Final Four hitting Houston and NRG Stadium this weekend. The action gets underway tomorrow at NRG Stadium with Oklahoma and Villanova tipping off shortly after 5:00 and North Carolina and Syracuse tipping off about half an hour after that…
City in Mourning Over Fire Cadet’s Death
Houston firefighters and city officials are mourning the death of Houston Fire Department cadet Steven Whitfield II, who collapsed during training Thursday, five months after he joined the department. The cause of the 32-year-old’s death is still under investigation, Interim Fire Chief Rodney West told the Houston Chronicle. The Chron…
City Will “Encourage” Companies With Tax Breaks to Be Better Employers, But Won’t Require It
Last month, workers’ rights advocates gathered outside City Hall to demand that the City of Houston stop giving companies millions of dollars in tax incentives when those employers are not even required to pay their workers a livable wage. In a recent report, the Texas Organizing Project and Workers Defense…
The Four Best Places to Watch the Final Four
When it’s time for you to reach that “One Shining Moment” that is the NCAA basketball championship, you want a nice, comfortable place to do it. This year, with the Final Four in Houston, you might be tempted to, you know, see it in person. But why? It’s expensive, crowded…
Animal Data: An Interview with Distant Worker
If you haven’t yet heard Distant Worker, fret not, we’ll fix that shortly. These beatnik dub-punks work from an esoteric playbook, favoring auspice over practice, and they’re 66 percent not from around here anyway. Jen and Richard Kimball, both formerly of the Fiskadoro group, live in Greater Angleton and offer…
