MC Paul Barman
On one hand, New Jersey’s MC Paul Barman has got to have the blandest name in hip-hop, bereft as it is of flash and imagination. Then again, it could also be seen as the boldest; it takes a really confident cat to use the name that’s on his birth certificate…
Breaking In to the Movies
Rhys Southan admits that yes, he is somewhere in Austin, Texas, and yes, he is an undergrad at UT. But he’s quick to add that he’s not taking classes this semester, and the implication is obvious: Those who are looking for him need not search the campus. The 23-year-old film…
Calling the Behavior Police
Good-bye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge by the new Kevin Kline vehicle, The Emperor’s Club, then the notions that a self-sacrificing boarding school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that the terrible furies of adolescence…
Over and Out
At a champagne-soaked dinner Dr. Akhil Bidani thanked Baylor College of Medicine administrators for putting their trust in him. The festivities at Montrose’s swank Colombe d’Or celebrated Bidani’s appointment to the prestigious, $2 million endowed chair in pulmonary medicine. Baylor spent eight months courting Bidani, an MD with a Ph.D…
Moore, and Less
Writer-director Todd Haynes’s loving recreation of a 1950s-style Hollywood melodrama (think Douglas Sirk) is a puzzling affair. Watching Far from Heaven is like taking a trip back in time — not to the real world of 1957 but, rather, to the reel ’50s, as personified by such classic “women’s films”…
Backstage Pass
Former Fox 26 reporter Lloyd Gite is suing the station over his termination, and if the trial is anything like the depositions, it’ll be must-viewing for anyone who wants to revel in backstage drama. We’ve gotten a look at Gite’s deposition, and he’s not shy about naming names as he…
After Schlock
The advantage to making a Christmas movie is that no matter how mediocre your final product is, it’s all but guaranteed to show up on at least one TV station, at least once a year, in perpetuity; even such woeful losers as the Nicolas Cage-Dana Carvey comedy Trapped in Paradise,…
Hounded by the Pound
Hounded by the Pound Editor’s note: Wendy Grossman’s November 7 feature “In the Doghouse” generated far more reader responses than the Press has room to print. Excerpts from some of the letters are below. Horrified: I am disgusted, disturbed and sickened. Thank you for drawing attention to the cruelty that…
Take My Breath Away
Ever since Cats turned T.S. Eliot’s widow into a multimillionaire and won the poet a Tony almost 20 years after his death, it has seemed like almost any shred of our odd culture could be banged into Broadway-bound material. After all, if a musical based on an obscure book of…
Buddhism and B-boys?
Buddhism and hip-hop are as different as can be. And yet African-American artist Sanford Biggers, who spent two years teaching English in Nagoya, Japan, sees a connection between the two. “There’s a correlation between hip-hop being adopted by many cultures, and Buddhism being globalized,” he explains, “and a co-opting of…
Shattering the Glass
There is an axiom in art that says the talent of an artist is inversely proportionate to the size of his signature. Dale Chihuly signs his drawings really big. First and foremost a glass artist, the drawings are the worst thing in Chihuly’s show at McClain Gallery, but they are…
Heimat Sweet Heimat
Somewhere between the extremes of the Third Reich propaganda films and the 1960s confrontational New German Cinema, German film had a deserved identity crisis. “After the War, Before the Wall: German Cinema 1945-1960,” a new series at the Museum of Fine Arts, focuses on this therapeutic postwar era, when the…
Mr. One-Man Show
This is the story of David Cross as told only by David Cross, since no one else contacted for this story, this oral history, would comment on the subject of David Cross. That is not entirely true, as no one else was actually contacted for this story; really, who has…
Mud Boy
“Houston, wow. I have the best and the worst stories on the road from Houston,” says Chris Robinson, former front man, lyricist and lightning rod for the Black Crowes. The low point came during a stop for the 1992 “High as the Moon” tour, when a PA tumbled over, injuring…
The Luck of the Gnocchi
Americans are often surprised to learn that a great many South Americans claim Italian ancestry. Over 85 percent of the population of Argentina are descendants of European immigrants, and of that the majority are Italian. To avoid having to explain this confusing situation, many South Americans in the Italian food…
Too Hot for Love
They’ve always been enamored of glam metal, but on their first major-label record and fifth release, Spend the Night, in-your-face punk hotties the Donnas manage to sound more like Mötley Crüe than Mötley Crüe has since, like, Girls, Girls, Girls. “We’d watch MTV and see Mötley Crüe on Headbanger’s Ball,…
Dating Hazard
By their very nature, blind dates are supposed to entail a certain amount of surprise. So I waited and waited and waited in the reception area of Kim Son (2001 Jefferson, 713-222-2461). Finally I resigned myself to the fact that I’d be dining alone, and for that I needed a…
Sweet…and a Little Sour
Kim Hill — the soul singer, not the Christian folk/rock guitarist from Mississippi — is not a bitter woman. The following profile may lead the reader to believe that she is, in fact, a bitter woman, but believe me, bitterness is not a vibe the 27-year-old, Syracuse-born Hill regularly emits…
Pasta Perfect
Too frequently, pasta is the only vegetarian alternative at a restaurant. And too frequently, it’s merely acceptable. But the spinach and cheese lasagna ($7.95) at Barnaby’s Cafe (604 Fairview, 713-522-0106; 1701 South Shepherd, 713-520-5131; 414 West Gray, 713-522-8898) is superb. It has four layers of perfectly baked pasta with ricotta…
The Wreck of the Record Rack
The fabled 2100 block of Lexington has been razed, and nearby on Shepherd, things aren’t looking a hell of a lot better for the Houston music scene. For one thing, the CD Warehouse near Westheimer is going out of business. Much sadder than that is the loss of the Record…
Come Fry with Me
When you cut into a fried green tomato slice at Valdo’s Café, you can’t help mopping up some of the overlapping puddles of warm red gravy, chunky pico de gallo and cool sour cream beneath it. The batter-crusted tomatoes are not only amply sauced, they’re also topped with lots of…
Gin and Vamoose
This is the story of two special, high-profile parties that happened on the exact same night. It was last Tuesday, a brisk evening. On one side of town, there was a crowded affair with free food and alcohol as well as delicious musical entertainment. On the other side, there was…
Culture
Nearly three decades after roots reggae bubbled out of a handful of recording laboratories in Kingston, Jamaica, and spilled onto the world’s airwaves, only a few of the original practitioners can still command a stage. There’s Winston Rodney of Burning Spear; Neville “Bunny Wailer” Livingston, the last of the original…
Deep Ella
With the loose, laid-back, bluesy feel that its name implies, local band Deep Ella succeeds by employing simple hooks and sweet, airy vocals that don’t just speak of emotions but act as conduits for them. But they fail when they strive for too much diversity of sound, as on their…
Glenn Tilbrook
Glenn Tilbrook and his partner Chris Difford were the finest British pop-rock songwriting team since Lennon-McCartney, and their band Squeeze had the charm, intelligence and musicality that made the Beatles so beloved. If you expect a solo Tilbrook to be only a shadow of the band, think again. His debut…
Gary Jules
Gary Jules isn’t your typical folkie. For one thing, there’s too much L.A. street grime coating the songs on his self-released critical smash Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets; for another, Jules covers not Dylan or Seeger when he looks for outside material but early Tears for Fears. Jules’s spare remake of…