Explain Your Most Played
Coming in at Number Seven… There’s a lot of games you can play with iTunes and winamp players and whatever. There’s magic iPod. There are those Myspace-type questionnaires that everybody fills out and forwards but nobody reads. And there are those “What’s on your iPod” features that are everywhere these…
What the Ice Ages Couldn’t Finish Off, the Feds May
Keith Hackland has pretty much devoted his life to birds since setting up a bed and breakfast (for birders) in the Rio Grande Valley. A birder, guide to birders and a nature writer, he is aghast at the latest plans Congress has for border security – namely: a solid fence…
The Curse of the Certified Letter
Baseball is a sport of superstition. Players refuse to step on the foul line when going on or off of the field. Wade Boggs was known for eating chicken before every game. Teammates don’t talk to the pitcher throwing the no-hitter. Pedro Cerrano and Jobu. And let’s not forget the…
Pick Up the Phone
Last chance for high school students to submit camera-phone photos for our monthly contest. The photos can be of whatever you want, so long as they’re captured between checking voicemails and typing out text messages. Send all submissions to studentphotos@houstonpress.com. The deadline in midnight tomorrow night. Click here and here…
Parade Patrol
It turns out Draka the Dragon was not the only car tossed out of this year’s Art Car parade. It wasn’t even the first. Tom Massimin, who drives the Roachster, says he was thrown out of the parade too, despite having (unlike Draka) all the proper entry forms and approvals…
Pretty Soon Basketball Trainers Will Start Using That Magic Spray That Instantly Heals Severe Leg Injuries
Salon’s King Kaufman has an item talking about former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy’s recent remarks on flopping. (To wit: He thinks it sucks.) I’m behind JVG one hundred percent on this one. If this trend of intentionally falling over gets any worse, basketball is going to become soccer. –…
Nine in a Row
Well, the Cincinnati Reds must not have gotten the memo. How else can one explain the Reds beating the Astros 2-1 last night? Some ugly numbers: that’s nine straight losses, and 11 losses in the last 12 games. The team is 11-16 for the month, with two games left. The…
The Eleventh Eleventh Hour
Lee Child is on his 11th Jack Reacher book and in this one he comes up with one great opening scene. A man with two broken legs is brought by stretcher onto a helicopter. What looks like a mission of mercy, rapidly devolves into something else. A few pages later,…
Out of Order
For a while there, it was a nice conspiracy theory. A local reader e-mailed to complain that he/she was trying to get the new Christopher Hitchens’ book God Is Not Great through the Harris County Public Library System, as were at least 13 other people, if the library’s Web catalog…
Lasting Impression
www.tv.yahoo.com Darrell Hammond is a busy man. But last week, Saturday Night Live’s longest-running cast member fit us into his schedule between rehearsing for the show, getting ready for a Broadway play and picking up lunch. “Sorry, I’m in a cab right now,” Hammond told us. “Fuck, I’m listening to…
Robb’s Review: On the Menu
Why was the nation of Venezuela named after Venice, Italy, and what does any of this have to do with a new pastry shop in Braes Heights?…
Robb’s Review: On the Menu
Why was the nation of Venezuela named after Venice, Italy, and what does any of this have to do with a new pastry shop in Braes Heights?…
Comcast Aside
Looks like all you folks with houston.rr.com email addresses are SOL. From the Chron: [W]hen Comcast announced last year it was taking over the Time Warner cable franchise in Houston, its broadband Internet customers started to get nervous. A change of Internet providers usually means a change of e-mail addresses,…
Answer the Call
Only three days left to get us those camera-phone photos for our high school contest. The deadline is the end of the month. Show us what you got. — Keith Plocek…
Live Shots: Chingo Bling
Photos by Dana Donovan…
Live, from Chicago…
…it’s the Astros update. And all that I’ve got to say is that I’m damn glad that I was out of town and didn’t get to see the last two games of that series with the D-Backs. And it’s one thing to get swept in a three-game series, but these…
Aw, Hell, the King
The back of the book blurb says that by “taking barbecue grilling to new heights” TV host Ted Reader has been dubbed “A King of the BBQ by GQ magazine.” Kind of weird to hear someone from Canada called that, especially if you’re reading him from Texas, but OK. I…
Aw, Hell, the King
The back of the book blurb says that by “taking barbecue grilling to new heights” TV host Ted Reader has been dubbed “A King of the BBQ by GQ magazine.” Kind of weird to hear someone from Canada called that, especially if you’re reading him from Texas, but OK. I…
Anyone Out There Like Unconditional Love?
If you’re planning on dog shopping this weekend, we suggest heading down to the Bureau of Animal Regulation and Care (BARC). We got word today from Kathy Deffebach, BARC Foster Coordinator, that the place is completely full and, unless these four-pawed cuties get a home, they’ll be euthanized. The adoption…
Tunnel Mole on Speed
Tunnel Mole™ has learned about a new religious holiday–hey, it’s the one we celebrate this weekend! Coworkers tell TM that Sunday is NASCAR Day; what with the Coca-Cola 600 and the Indy 500 on the same day. I don’t know about you, but I feel the need for speed. One…
Longhorn Love
The new Drakkar Noir The boys over at the bestest-ever college football blog, Every Day Should Be Saturday, are delivering the goods once again. They’ve been running a series of open letters on how to seduce fans of specific colleges, and this time it’s Texas in the barrel. The post…
Artist of the Week: Tony Vega
HouStoned Rock’s first Artist of the Week is bluesman Tony Vega, of the Tony Vega Band (TVB). Fresh off yet another successful Eurpean tour, Vega is currently hard at work promoting his latest CD, Glorybaby. The current TVB line-up includes Vega on guitar and vocals, Jeremy Pierce on drums and…
Shouting “Fire” in a Crowded Dugout
Drayton McLane spoke to Chron scribe Jesus Ortiz yesterday, vowing to answer some of the tough questions that had been submitted by the fans. He must not have got my questions to answer, because there were no responses to any of the ones that I submitted. But I’m going to…
We See They’re Point
Meanwhile, across the street from where there isn’t any price gouging going on, there’s a small group of concerned citizens holding up signs in support of deporting illegal aliens. Good for them, I say. You know what I hate most about those damn illegals? The way they’re corrupting the fine…
Parking Lot Plot
So we get a call, an anonymous tip from a concerned citizen, a Deep Throat for the new millennium, as it were, that a little bit of price gouging is going down over in the parking lot nearby the federal building on Smith. It’s passport season, lines are long, and…
I am a Pedestrian Report: Bellaire
Another month, another long-ass Houston street to conquer. This month, David Beebe joined me again, and the river of concrete we decided to take on was Bellaire Boulevard. We would commence at the Mission Bend Park and Ride just west of Highway 6 and head back down to Little Woodrow’s…
They Sure Can Fit a Lot of Clowns in That Thing
The Astros went down to defeat last night, losing 9-1 to the Arizona Diamondbacks. And the game was not as close as the score indicated. This was the fifth straight defeat for the Astros, and seventh loss in the last eight games. My editor – and yes I do have…
FDR U Experienced?
For almost all Americans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt might be as ancient as one of the Founding Fathers, and reduced to the easy clichés such icons are always reduced to: Washington is the cherry tree, wooden teeth and crossing the Delaware; FDR is the wheelchair, beating the Depression and winning WWII…
…and You Thought the Property Tax Was Killer
So a few weeks ago I drove out to Katy to check out a new neighborhood designed with Martha Stewart in mind. I’ll admit I’d planned on showing up, making a few prison jokes and calling it a day, but the houses really were pretty nice – full of natural…
Re: KA Paul Charged with Being a Really Sketchy Dude
In other Kilari news, His Sketchiness’ former right-hand-man has been missing since September, according to the man’s family. Douglas Fred Dodson disappeared shortly after giving a deposition in which he allegedly discussed the inner workings of Kilari’s organizations. He was last seen in his Tijuana apartment, says his daughter, Jessica…
KA Paul Charged with Being a Really Sketchy Dude
Courtesy of Global Peace Initiative Maybe he’s got a future with the Catholic Church. It’s been a while since we heard from our favorite leper-stealing, orphan-hording fake minister Anand “KA Paul” Kilari. And I don’t know how else to say this, so let’s just report that Lieutenant Mitch McCann of…
Romancing the Beautiful Game
It’s passion like this that makes soccer great. I want to love soccer. I really do. Oh, we’ve had our torrid flings in the past. In fact, I’ll never forget the first time we hooked up. It was the summer of ’96 and I was young, carefree and looking to…
That’s a Lot of Coffee Squirts
KHOU has an item on the Houston dude who’s trying to visit every single Starbucks in the world. Back when Hair Balls talked to him in 2004, he’d visited 4,200 of the almost 5,000 outlets then in existence. Now, according to KHOU, he’s visited 7,200, but he’s still got about…
That’s a Lot of Coffee Squirts
KHOU has an item on the Houston dude who’s trying to visit every single Starbucks in the world. Back when Hair Balls talked to him in 2004, he’d visited 4,200 of the almost 5,000 outlets then in existence. Now, according to KHOU, he’s visited 7,200, but he’s still got about…
Bring on the Reds! Please!
I could never be a major league baseball manager. You see, if I was faced with a team where nearly every starter is involved in a major slump, and I needed to do something to jump start the team, my solution would not be to bench Lance Berkman, nor would…
Savage Love
Cannes, France — The Cannes Film Festival is chiefly revered as a showcase for prolific, careerist auteurs, so the appearance of Savage Grace, the first feature in 15 years by New Queer Cinema co-instigator Tom Kalin (Swoon), was certainly striking — not that a film in which Julianne Moore stars…
Plague Park
Wolf Parade side-projects tend to sound a lot like Wolf Parade. Thats a good thing if you like Wolf Parade and cant wait for their next record. Its not such a good thing if youre a band concerned about being typecast. Handsome Furs, however, is not a Wolf Parade clone,…
“A Thing Called Early Blur”
Katrina Moorhead couldn’t bring the Blaffer Gallery to Iceland, so she brought Iceland to the Blaffer Gallery. Her exhibit “A Thing Called Early Blur” is a collection of paintings, drawings and installations inspired by a two-month stay in Reykjavík. Moon Huge and Low and Does Not Leave reflects the city’s…
Palme d’Hoberman
Cannes, France — Sometimes the competition is actually competitive. No one disputes that the official section at the 60th Cannes Film Festival has been the strongest in recent memory. The heavy favorites are the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men; Julian Schnabel’s surprisingly restrained and bizarrely chic French-language adaptation…
Noticeably Negro
So far this decade, Chicago emcee Serengeti (Dave Cohn) has released some half-dozen albums on nearly as many labels. Of the bunch, Noticeably Negro is both the most unified and the most cryptic. While his 2005 breakthrough, Gasoline Rainbows — which the Houston Press called one of the top ten…
DOLCE VITA’S
Depending on the night, Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca (500 Westheimer, 713-520-8222) can be your friendly neighborhood pizzeria with simpatico staff, or it can be more trendy and upscale, with haughty staff and still haughtier clientele. I discover its friendlier side on a Saturday night with my friend Romy, a blond…
Is There a Doctor in the House?
I never gave much thought to the subject of health insurance until, in October of 2005, an odd swelling in my groin prompted me to make one of my infrequent trips to the doctor’s office. A referral to a urologist and one ultrasound later, the diagnosis was indisputable: testicular cancer…
Keren Ann
How anyone could not fall for Keren Ann is beyond me; she’s charmingly humble, and, so far, she’s ever so confident in her Feistian approach to bare-bones songwriting. Her third stateside release, Keren Ann is a slight departure from her stark offerings of the past. She’s still wispy in a…
Cannes and Abel
Cannes, France –“Whaddya love about it so much?” Abel Ferrara — director of the strip-club-set Go Go Tales, my favorite film at Cannes — is interviewing the interviewer. Well, I say it’s consistent with the Ferrara oeuvre — King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game, et cetera — in…
Eliot Lipp
IDM, blip-hop, glitch-bop, beatronic — whatever you want to call it, very little music remains as pure, untouched and uniquely refreshing as that of electronic music producer Eliot Lipp. After ten years, the self-proclaimed “Rachael Ray of electro” continues to defy labeling and cheeky monikers with his remarkable knack for…
Funny Business
“Humor is a response to frustration.” — Kurt Vonnegut *** Local comedian Paul Oddo is leaning against the bar talking to the bartender at the Proletariat on Richmond. He’s there for Mob Rule, a showcase of local comics on the first Wednesday of the month. Comedians bring only new material…
Morrissey
As front man of The Smiths, Manchester-raised singer/songwriter Morrissey, with his striking physical features, ambivalent sexuality and gracefully grieving yet uplifting voice, established his place in contemporary pop music history, not to mention in all the hearts and minds of his passionate, almost rabid cult fan base. Nearly 20 years…
Funny Business: Playing with Boys
Sarah Tollemache is onstage at the Laff Stop open mike. It’s March, but she’s wearing a long-sleeved hoodie; last week she wore a thick sweater. Tollemache says she has done this for years, ever since another comedian made a comment to her before she took the stage. “[I] go up…
Tower of Power
Now in its 40th year, this Oakland group has become an institution. With a huge horn section and deep grooves, the Tower of Power sound is one of the most recognizable around. In their stage shows, they segue easily from funk to smooth jazz to blue-eyed soul. This ability to…
Melt Banana
Four Japanese lunatics escaped from a funny farm and are now touring the United States as a band named Melt Banana. Or at least that’s what you might guess the first time you see one of the noise-rock band’s ear-splitting shows, where everything is played at breakneck speeds. Melt Banana…
Art Car Parade, Bad Street Repairs, Rep. Ted Poe
Draka the Dragon is legendary, among the kind of people who think art cars and kinetic sculpture can be legendary. It’s a 112-foot-long piece on three trailers, it’s appeared at Burning Man and it’s won an award at the 2005 Art Car Parade. So why was it unceremoniously dragged out…
Pep Torres
Los Angeles has a long tradition of Latino rockers, and the jumpy retro act of Pep Torres comes straight out of that Richie Valens school of early rock and roll. While Torres is fully fluent in R&B and even a little blues, his signature is loose-jointed, swinging rockabilly featuring a…
Five Wines That’ll Blow Your Mind
Ever since the movie Sideways, Americans have been drinking more Pinot Noir and less Merlot. Are we crazy to be taking wine advice from a geek named Miles, who, by the end of the movie, ends up drinking out of the spit bucket? This week we asked Rick Jamail, the…
Mail Call
Shame on you! Did you really find it necessary to put Doug Supernaw’s mug shot on the cover of your paper [“Doug Supernaw,” by John Nova Lomax, May 10]? Did the person who made this decision even read the article inside the paper? I’m very disappointed in you and your…
Bug
The most volatile, least easily psychoanalyzed of ’70s auteurs in Peter Biskind’s classic New Hollywood tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, William Friedkin may have mellowed since unleashing The Exorcist, sliding into box-office hell and marrying a major studio boss. Indeed, the recovering bad-boy movie brat — now 71, believe it…
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
And so Disney’s immense, booty-busting, pro-piracy epic has come to an End. I doubt very much that Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is, in fact, the last we’ll be seeing of Captain Jack Sparrow and, you know, all those other people. How could it be? Treasure remains to…
No Sleep for Brooklyn
I really don’t like looking at the back of a record and seeing the word featuring a million times,” says Brooklyn rapper, producer and Definitive Jux overlord El-P. Incidentally, his new album, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, features cameos from members of the Mars Volta and TV on the Radio,…
Art Capsule Reviews
“Allison Hunter: New Animals” “New Animals” is a continuation of Allison Hunter’s “Simply Stunning” series, which showed at New York’s 511 Gallery last year. The Houston-based photographer’s recent work concentrates largely on animals, and the images reflect a progression toward emancipating creatures from the worldly environment. Sheep and deer inhabit…
Twenty Love Songs
Infernal Bridegroom Productions’ red-lipped funny-lady Tamarie Cooper spent a decade accumulating fans with her hilariously silly Tamalalia series. Cooper herself was always the annual summer show’s main character, and the wonderfully absurd story lines sent her off on grand Lucille Ball-esque adventures that involved everything from time-traveling Sit ‘n’ Spins…
New Orleans Legend Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and a Guilloteen’s Swan Song
If you have ever been to New Orleans during Mardi Gras, your benders have been sound-tracked in no small part by temporary Houstonian Al Johnson’s stone-cold classic “Carnival Time.” The upbeat 1960 recording kicks off with a jolt a trio of tenor saxes blown by Robert Parker, Lee Allen and…
The Sad Kermit Video
My roommate introduced me to the world’s most revolting web phenomenon, something worse than the Virginia Tech shooter’s manifesto, worse than cell phone footage of Saddam Hussein’s hanging. That’s right — the sad Kermit video. Available at sadkermit.com (if you must), the short is a parody of the last video…
Stage Capsule Reviews
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Stephen Sondheim supplied writers Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove with this show’s radiantly sunny score and peerlessly clever lyrics. The story’s source is arguably ancient Roman “vulgar” comedian Plautus, with his classic plots involving wily slaves, lovesick Juvenals, egocentric warriors,…
Blog Critics’ Greatest Rap CDs List
A pair of bloggers compiled a list of the 25 “greatest” rap albums of all time recently by polling 101 critics, almost all bloggers themselves. Something stuck in my craw about it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until I realized, it’s the same damn “Greatest Hip-Hop Albums”…
Mexican American Culture
Dear Mexican, I was going through a local state college’s academic program the other day and found that they offer a bachelor’s degree in Chicano Studies. My question is, in what field of work would someone with a bachelor’s in Chicano Studies land? Here are a few jobs I came…
A Guide to Being Cool
Sporting Trifles Yankee Stadium blaring Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At?” during JumboTron blooper reels. Consider it the electro-house version of “Yakety Sax.” Macho Antics Burger King announces a new “Start a fistfight at a Ben Folds/Boston Pops concert and get a free Whopper” promotion. Have some onion rings while…
Fu Fu Cafe
My first soup dumpling was a disappointment. You get four to an order at Fu Fu Cafe on Bellaire, and they come to the table extremely hot. I was so impatient, I picked one up and nibbled into the dough. Predictably enough, all the soup ran out. Soup dumplings are…
Spider-Man 3
Publisher: Activision
Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: T (for Teen)
Score: 6 (out of 10)
Hellogoodbye’s Bad Grammar
Dear whatsyourname — I wonder whyyou find it necessary torun all the wordsinyourname together? Is Hellogoodbye really all that muchcooler than Hello Goodbye? It makesitvery hard to read yourname. And yourfriends Alexisonfire, is that Alex Is On Fire? Or Alexis On Fire? See that’sreal messedup. We don’t evenknow whoisburning, Alex…
Oporto
The salada de bacalhau ($8) is one of the many tapas plates available at Oporto (3833 Richmond, 713-621-1114) after 5 p.m. It consists of dried, salted cod cooked in olive oil with potatoes and hard-boiled egg. Visually, it’s hard to distinguish between the three ingredients, since all are as white…
Good Clean Smut
Porky’s: The Ultimate Collection (Fox) When writer-director Bob Clark was killed by a drunk driver in April, the obits trumpeted his holiday classic A Christmas Story…but were somewhat reluctant to mention that, oh, yeah, he also wrote and directed Porky’s. But there’s no question which is the more important movie…
Milan Nightclub
It’s just after midnight at Milan (809 Congress, 713-247-0809), and the club is packed with college students. I’m standing in the leather-laden VIP area near the DJ booth, posing a number of frivolous questions to Michelle, president of the Delta Phi Omega sorority. Delta Phi, one of two Greek organizations…
Forever Hold Your Peace
What would make a boring wedding interesting? An interruption of the ceremony, à la The Graduate. Radio Music Theatre’s Forever Hold Your Peace follows Pete DuPugh, who believes he is on a mission from God to stop a wedding in the fictional city of Dumpster, Texas. As anyone who’s seen…
Our top DVD picks for the week of May 24
Afro Samurai (Funimation) Airwolf: Season Three (Universal) Alone With Her (IFC) Breaking Point (Fox) The Complete Matrix Trilogy (Warner Bros.) Epic Movie (Fox) Escape to Canada (Disinformation) Fay Grim (Magnolia) The 40-Year-Old Virgin: Unrated 2-Disc Double Your Pleasure Edition (Universal) The Good German (Warner Bros.) The John Wayne Collection (Paramount)…
Night School
The DVD Night School documents a 2002 concert by bassist Stanley Clarke at the Musicians Institute, showcasing the talents of the young players from the music school and rocking out with an impressive lineup of industry heavyweights. The guests on this well-structured jam include violinist Karen Briggs, Police drummer Stewart…
“Candy Unwrapped”
“The nice thing about this exhibit — you can eat it!” says Tadd Pullin, President and CEO of the Health Museum, about “Candy Unwrapped.” We admit that all the museum had to do was say “candy” and we were in. The exhibit features interactive stations such as Pucker Up, where…
America Cannes
Cannes, France — The world’s preeminent film festival celebrated its 60th birthday party — the opening banquet catered by the world’s hippest, or is that once-hippest? — filmmaker. Hardly the disaster many feared, but far from the triumph others anticipated, Wong Kar-wai’s first English-language feature, My Blueberry Nights — starring…
120 Days
Norwegian quartet 120 Days has managed to create a murky, driving album that puts the relentless pulse of synthetic percussion and old, cheesy keyboards to good use. Like New Order and the other ’80s dance pop bands they obviously emulate, 120 Days has found a way to make an angular…
“The David Whitney Bequest”
It takes a great artist to create excitement; it takes a great collector to make that chatter into a movement. David Whitney, who died in 2005, helped shape pop art as a curator, writer and collector. His social and professional circle (often one and the same) included Andy Warhol, Jasper…