Through the Camera Lens
Though best remembered for his beloved books Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll actually picked up the camera well before the pen. From 1860 to 1885, Carroll (the pseudonym of the Reverend Charles Dodgson) dabbled in the relatively new field of photography, snapping thousands of portraits…
Consumer Culture
Kiss your remote good-bye. Heretic Brian Heiss wants to do away with that ultimate convenience and fundamentally alter the way we interact with our televisions. Heiss, who was trained as an architect, creates quirky TV-based objects that exist comfortably in the fine art realm while cleverly culling ideas from the…
Don’t Try This Anywhere
WED 3/12 The most popular clown in America right now wouldn’t be caught dead with oversize shoes and a water-squirting flower. This pot-smoking, tattooed degenerate tosses back more beer than most standing people and taunts danger in the way bullies tease band geeks. His name: Stephen Glover, a.k.a. Steve-O on…
Men in Tights
Balanchine said that ballet is woman, but it’s the men of Houston Ballet who are eye-catching in the company’s winter repertory program. As yet there is no one to wear the crown of Carlos “Air” Acosta, but longtime company member Dominic Walsh comes closest with his charismatic dancing. Among the…
The Fonde-mentals
The legends’ shoes still squeak on the hardwood. You can imagine the training sessions that Rocket Moses Malone, reigning MVP of the NBA in 1982, gave a novice Nigerian hoopster named Akeem (later changed to Hakeem) Olajuwon. Even today at Fonde Community Center, you might see pickup games among Rockets,…
Choose Wisely
It doesn’t take long to dig to the heart of Worth & Choice, Douglas Mitchell’s thin pair of one-acts running at Theater LaB. The central question hovers large and obvious as a dirigible: How do we determine the value of human life? First on the bill is “Suffer Little Children.”…
Chickens Beware
In case you don’t have enough to worry about, listen to this: By just walking around in the American Southwest, you can brush up against stinging nettles that can wreak neurological havoc on your body. Visiting Australia? Watch out for the venomous blue ring octopus — it’ll kill you. And…
That ’60s Show
This is a story with a happy ending, because, so far, nothing bad has happened to indicate otherwise. There are no ratings to sweat over, no network executives to fight with, no cancellations to suffer through. The rough territories lie ahead, over the horizon of 8:30 p.m. this Sunday, when…
Fly South By Southwest
Sick of big-budget Hollywood flicks? You don’t have to travel all the way to Cannes or Park City to find out what’s happening in the indie film world. Austin’s South By Southwest Film Festival will screen 153 films by groundbreaking independent directors. (Oh, and there’s also that little matter of…
Whirled Cuisine
A half-pound of medium-rare Black Angus hamburger meat smothered in melting Gorgonzola and topped with a pile of wispy batter-fried onions sits atop a honey-wheat bun bottom. I pick up the top half of the bun, which has three black lines attesting to its recent toasting on the grill, and…
The World According to GYBE!
WED 3/12 When was the last time your mind was blown? Well, that’s too long. Get thee to the Engine Room to see Godspeed You Black Emperor!, a Canadian post-rock/experimental music collective. The group mixes tape snippets, field recordings, film clips and some of the most menacing and beautiful instrumental…
The Bellrays, with the Lazy Cowgirls and Magnetic IV
Weld Tina Turner’s pipes to the raw power of the MC5 and you get the Bellrays. Singer Lisa Kekaula’s aggressive style is a force not to be trifled with; she delivers her music in a way that avoids contrived stage maneuvers and leaves no doubt about her seriousness. In town…
The Power of Three
The power of three: The Taos empanada ($6.25) at The River Cafe (3615 Montrose, 713-529-0088) takes the classic south-of-the-border treat to new heights in a totally vegetarian way. Inside the baked puff pastry dome, spinach, corn, onions and carrots are bound together with melted feta cheese. The feta adds a…
Bye-Bye, Bistrot?
Could award-winning chef Monica Pope be pulling up stakes? Maybe. Her lease for the Boulevard Bistrot space at 4319 Montrose Boulevard expired February 28. Pope and her partner, general manager Andrea Lazar, had hoped to sign a long-term lease for the 2,500-square-foot space nestled in the heart of the Museum…
The Boob Scotch Tour
Bob Log III is a one-man wrecking crew who specializes in raucous Delta blues on slide guitar played through cheesy pawnshop amps. He filters this devil’s music through a primitive rock sensibility and accompanies it by singing into a telephone receiver affixed to a motorcycle helmet, which he always wears…
Here’s Mud in Your Ear
It’s one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, Detroit time, and Dirtbombs singer-guitarist Mick Collins has been awake, well, since his sister yelled for him to come to the phone. “I’m just getting up. We played a gig last night and had to load out. It was late,” he says. “But…
A Killer Nanny
Charlotte Foster tutors four boys, is active in the Junior League and is a board member of the Children’s Museum of Houston, where she conducts tours for first-graders. She volunteers at her three sons’ schools, drops off treats for Christmas coffees she can’t attend and says her time is not…
Apocalypse Cow
I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet. — Captain Benjamin Willard, Apocalypse Now By the end of the night, the press box at Reliant Stadium was starting to seem something like the unholy grail. It hovered there, high above the…
King Kinder
Rich Kinder didn’t wear a tie. And he wasn’t in a hurry. There was no reason to be. He was on top of the world. The analyst conference had gone perfectly. The main ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel had been filled with money managers, hedge fund whizzes, equity analysts…
Cindy Scott
Conventional wisdom has it that you position one of your strongest songs as the first track of a disc. The same theory applies to baseball: The lead-off hitter should have a high batting average. Scott puts a new twist on that logic by slating “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If…
A Paige from the Past?
Frank Watson says he was just following the orders of then-HISD superintendent Rod Paige on that summer day in 1998 when he walked into that first meeting with Larry Marshall. Watson, a 32-year district employee, was assistant superintendent over workers’ benefits and claims management. Paige, he said, had told him…
Doyle Bramhall
Though this Texas troubadour is often mentioned for his association with the Vaughan Brothers or as the dad of ex-Arc Angel/ current solo artist Doyle Bramhall II, no one doubts his pedigree in Lone Star blues-rock and soul or his grasp of the genre’s forefathers. He pays tribute to many…
Rocket Rodney
The Houston Rockets officially unveiled their latest hotshot at the monthly meeting of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority board, but he didn’t have the height of Yao Ming, the cat-quick speed of Cuttino Mobley or the jumping ability of Eddie Grifffin. Instead, he was Rodney Ellis, the plumpish, wisecracking state…
12 Rods
When an act severs ties with a major label, the next logical step is to sign with an indie stronghold and keep plugging away at the craft, a step that usually allows said act to expand its palette to incorporate elements that would have been too risky under the former…
Letters
Strike Up the Music Strings attached: I’m a member of the first violin section of the Houston Symphony. I also serve as Webmaster for the musicians’ site at www.upbeat.org. I’d like to thank you for your article in the Houston Press [“Going Baroque,” by Jennifer Mathieu, February 20]. It was…
Phat Chance
You know Internet dating’s become totally mainstream when Disney cranks out a bland comedy featuring a randomly selected pair of mismatched stars to take on the subject. Bearing the unwieldy and meaningless title Bringing Down the House, said comedy is predicated on the biggest pitfall of cyber-flirting, the idea that…
Stupendous Human Tricks
Here’s the situation: The kingdom has no king. A court jester is temporarily running things while two generations — a group of grotesque old birds and some younger, more progressive feathered friends — struggle for power. Sound like real life? It’s actually the story line of Alegría, the latest Cirque…
God Forsaken
Ever since Amores Perros burst onto the international scene two years ago, Latin American cinema has been experiencing one of the most fertile periods in its history. Encompassing such works as Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También and Walter Salles’s Behind the Sun, these socially conscious, frequently brutal portraits of…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, March 6:Thomas Arvid paints pictures of the good life. In one, an abandoned table is littered with an empty wine bottle, glasses with a few sips left and a corkscrew. The viewer is free to insert himself into the painting, letting warm memories of eating, drinking and possibly even…
SEAL Appeal
John Shaft went to Africa, so why shouldn’t Die Hard’s John McClane? In the new action romp Tears of the Sun, Bruce Willis undertakes a jungle rescue operation on the Dark Continent, and for his part it’s a McClane adventure in camouflage, minus all the sass and most of the…