Pacific Rim Shot
Grilled oysters $10
Shrimp and avocado $9
Hot-and-sour soup $5
Shrimp à la Hunan $22
Duck à la Jadeite $28
Call It What You Will
Let’s face it — “Patagonian toothfish” just doesn’t have the same tantalizing ring to it as “Chilean sea bass.” But that’s the official name of the fish found only in the southern seas, which created its own culinary craze stateside beginning in the mid-’90s. In Chile, it’s also called bacalao…
Somethin’ Serious
“I’m glad to be home — all the love in Houston, the love in New Orleans, the love in the free world, is definitely a blessing, for real.” A few months ago, former Geto Boy and solo star Big Mike probably would never have imagined he would be talking to…
A Fable
“I really despise musicals and operas and poetry. I wanted to make a great rap album, and inadvertently I’ve made an opera, a musical and poetry.” So said Mike Skinner, a.k.a. the Streets, in the pages of NME about his new album, A Grand Don’t Come for Free. And he’s…
Three-Ring Circus Maximus
Ian Varley does not have any children. This is readily apparent by the way the keyboardist for Drop Trio unthinkingly drops the F-bomb in the lobby of Monterey’s Little Mexico, oblivious to the wee small girl with her mother paying for their taco dinners only feet away. He is married,…
Sudden Impact
Fourteen-year-old Roderick Victor arrives at the AMC theater at First Colony Mall on this cold February 6 night with a few friends and no definite plans. The Sugar Land movie theater is a place to hang out, a place to chat up the girls — not necessarily a place to…
N.E.R.D.
A couple of years back, when the Neptunes — introvert Chad Hugo and extrovert Pharrell Williams — popped out from behind the control boards to step front and center as musical outfit N.E.R.D., their most engaging attribute was their stubborn refusal to be defined. Their debut, In Search Of…, was…
Pulp Fiction
It started much like any other office romance: Boy notices girl across a sea of cubicles. Boy flirts with girl on smoking breaks and at the Christmas party. Boy thinks girl is into him, so he asks her out. In this case, though, the girl in question wasn’t interested, and…
Hound Dog Taylor
The boogie slinks out of the grave like the midnight creeper on this 14-cut disc of previously unreleased performances by this, the rawest of Chicago slide-slingers. The honor roll of Delta-style Chicago bottleneck bossmen scrolls through blues annals: Muddy Waters, Elmore James, J.B. Hutto, Left-Hand Frank…And Hound Dog Taylor, six…
Hey, PAL: Get Lost
There are going to be plenty of cutbacks in the proposed budget Mayor Bill White is expected to deliver sometime around May 20. One thing the city won’t likely be stinting on, though: the creation of future gang members. The Police Activities League, a well-respected 22-year-old organization that keeps about…
Hop Sing
When you first pop in Hop Sing’s debut EP, you’re immediately reminded of the Old 97’s. But to simply consign them to the ever-more-bulging bin of Old 97’s imitators would be a mistake, as Hop Sing has a grittier sound. Steve Hitt’s raspy croon helps in that department, as does…
Letters
Scratched Out For the record: What a great story [“House Music Scratches for a New Vibe,” by Michael Serazio, May 6]. Finally someone writes about the downfall of electronic music. I never got into the rave scene; I discovered the music just as the law was cracking down on massive…
Playbill
Soviet Army Chorus Four guys huddled around a table full of gear, bobbing their heads and flashing penlights at the knobs they twiddle might not sound like an exciting Saturday night out, but Soviet Army Chorus has found a way to make it just that. Their sound is a melodic,…
Shining Star
Olafur Eliasson has got a little something in common with Prometheus, the Greek god who stole fire for mankind. He brought the sun to England as part of an epic installation at the Tate Modern in London. When the work, called The Weather Project, lured record crowds to the museum,…
Nice Pussy
The first few minutes of Shrek 2 are cluttered with more references to the movies than David Thomson’s thick, rich history text The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Watching it is like sitting next to an ADD patient with access to a remote control and a hundred premium cable channels;…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
THURSDAY, MAY 20 As the son of singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Colin Gilmore’s got music in his blood. But that doesn’t mean he has the exact same tastes as his pop, who plays a blend of country, folk and rock. The younger Gilmore began his music career in Austin with…
A Good Buzz
The first time through, you might dismiss Coffee and Cigarettes as a filmmaker’s recess, playtime before the serious business of making a real feature. Jim Jarmusch never intended this new movie, a collection of 11 shorts made over the last two decades, to be a movie at all. It began…
The Passion of Brian
In the beginning, Monty Python created Life of Brian. And in this 1979 tale, the Pythoners — Graham Chapman (Brian), John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (who also directed) — begat some of the best satire ever put to celluloid. Brian of Nazareth, born in…
Radio Free Haiti
Every once in a while, you encounter a person who seems to have been born under an urgent, righteous star — a person who is both a fiery activist lit with the passion of his convictions and a dramatic storyteller who naturally occupies a place in the public eye. When…
It’s a Shame About Ray
How to Draw a Bunny chronicles the life and death of a bohemian He appeared to be backstroking, said the last witnesses to see artist Ray Johnson on the evening he jumped into the cold waters of Sag Harbor, Long Island. Johnson, an enigmatic figure associated with Andy Warhol’s Factory…
Capsule Reviews
“Fade In: New Film and Video” This Contemporary Arts Museum exhibition, curated by Paola Morsiani, presents a group of works by eight international artists. American Luis Gispert’s installation, Foxy Xerox (2003), is a witty take on the appropriation of hip-hop culture by white America. On one wall, a blond girl…
Rage in a Cage
Amateurs have a go at extreme fighting SAT 5/22Boxing is the “sweet science,” studied by tough guys whose Bunsen burners are jabs and hooks. But it’s not the only form of combat that distills the chaos of fighting into an ordered, practical art. Tae kwon do, wrestling, jiujitsu, kickboxing and…
Capsule Reviews
The Hotel Play The collage of disturbing moments that make up The Hotel Play’s script takes place over the course of one day in a hotel somewhere in the tropics. More than 50 characters meander through this world, but we learn almost nothing about most of them. One man complains…
How Hospitable
Feel like a god at Byzantio Cafe TUE 5/25 When you have had all the bread and wine you want, you shall tell me where you come from and what your troubles are. — Eumaeus, Homer’s Odyssey Back in ancient Greece, gods walked among humans disguised as all kinds of…
Sleepy Street
The most exciting moment in 42nd Street, now running at the Hobby Center, happens right at the beginning of the show. A painted crimson curtain rises a couple of feet off the floor and then stops for a moment, revealing a stage jammed full of youthfully energetic, tap-dancing feet. They’re…
Rev Up
Get ready to get rowdy with Trans Am Like a lot of highly personal music, Liberation, the new disc by Washington, D.C., post-rockers Trans Am, reflects the atmosphere of the band’s hometown. But since this trio lives in the same ‘hood as George W. Bush, local flavor has a whole…
Riding the Word Wave
I always thought it would be cool to be able to surf. I figured it would be kind of like waterskiing but without being tethered to a boatload of drunks. Surfing always had this minimalist, Zen thing to it — you, alone, riding the surface of the ocean on an…