Nine Inch Nails, with Queens of the Stone Age
Oh, gracious. These days, hard rock is a most denigrated genre of music, is it not? With all those Mudvaynes and Slipknots besmirching the landscape, how can any self-respecting individual bang his head without feeling a wee bit peevish? Luckily, the clouds occasionally part for such honorable acts as this…
Funky Pizza
Lemongrass isn’t a likely ingredient for a pizza. And a squeeze of lemon? Even less so. But it’s precisely these delicate flavors that make the lemongrass pizza ($7.50) at Lemongrass Cafe (5109 Bellaire Boulevard, 713-664-6698) so intriguing. The nine-inch, super-thin-crust pizza makes a perfect appetizer for two or meal for…
Switch Hitter
In many ways, attorney Jim Blackburn has been the strong right arm of the environmental movement in Houston for decades. The Rice professor has fought landfills and concrete batching plants and even helped force the state to come up with a plan to deal with Houston’s dirty air. He’s won…
Crowe Flies Home
It happened almost with the first step off the plane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened…
Rockin’ Renewal
Some years back, I had a conversation with City Councilman Gordon Quan about our city’s lack of a proper entertainment district, and he put forth an idea. Old Chinatown, he said, was primed for a boom. It was centrally located. There was ample parking. And there were plenty of cool…
A Different Drum
Louise Erdrich is a poet who happens to be a novelist, or a novelist who happens to be a poet; either way, her identity crisis is working. After 11 novels, including Love Medicine, The Beet Queen and The Master Butchers Singing Club, she’s remained a rarity: a prolific writer who…
Keira Get Your Gun
Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you may not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, daughter of…
Chicken-Dancing Margs
My buddy Joe is standing in the front of the dining room at La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant flapping his elbows, trying to sell his son and daughter on the coolness of the Chicken Dance. His kids, as well as the diners at nearby tables, are looking at him like he’s…
Art, Music and Crap
SAT 10/15 Okay, so there won’t be any jousters on Rollerblades. But there’ll still be plenty to take in at WestFest Compressed — the latest permutation of the hallowed Westheimer Street Festival — which promises lots of art and music mashed into several venues on four blocks. “We’re hoping to…
Countdown to 12
Some films leave an indelible impression upon the heart and mind. Innocent Voices is one of those films. Set in El Salvador in the early 1980s, during that country’s protracted civil unrest, the movie depicts the nightmare of warfare through the eyes of an 11-year-old boy. The fact that it’s…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, October 13 This week, events all over town are spreading love for Latinos. Comedian Eddie Cruz wants to spread some laffs, too, with a special edition of his Laffin’ with Latinos comedy show. Headlining is funnyman Juan Villareal, who’ll be supported by guests Flo Hernandez and Gary Saenz. “Juan’s…
Poor Baby
Saying anything even slightly negative about Ken Ludwig’s ultra-nice, insignificant world-premiere comedy Be My Baby, presented by the Alley Theatre, is a bit like kicking a puppy, but those Scrooge instincts just won’t stay buried: A little kicking needs to be done. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with writing an old-fashioned,…
Buy Sexual
Dennis Hof rolls around in a flashy red Mercedes SL and a Bentley Continental. The tattoo on his left arm bears the names of his ex-girlfriends, with some of the names scratched out, like bedpost notches. (“I keep one smokin’-hot blond and brunette, and they’ve gotta be bisexual,” he says…
Capsule Reviews
By the Bogs of Cats The past weighs heavily upon the residents of the desolate, wind-swept peat bogs of rural Ireland — especially for Hester Swane (a fiercely determined and utterly believable Michelle Edwards). Hester was abandoned long ago by her father and mother, and now she’s losing her lover,…
Water You Doing This Weekend?
SAT 10/15 They tell us not to mess with Texas, but clearly some people haven’t listened. That’s why the participants in this weekend’s Styrofoam cup competition at the 34th annual Buffalo Bayou Regatta are stepping in to clean up their mess. The person who picks up the most trash along…
The Way We Were
Rough-hewn, figurative and creatively cribbed together from scrap materials, Lawndale Saturday Night (1998) embodies a particular Houston aesthetic. A collaboration between Noah Edmundson and Don Kennell, the work evokes early Lawndale nostalgia. It’s a part of “Lawndale Art Center: Still Crazy…After All These Years, Celebrating 25 Years of Contemporary Art…
Meow Mix
SAT 10/15 Caroline Herve, a.k.a. Miss Kittin, is well aware that the first thing most guys check out on female DJs is their look, not their sound. “People will first pay attention to our appearance, figure, clothes and makeup,” she says. Oddly enough, unlike her male counterparts, who often receive…
Capsule Reviews
“David Fulton: In and Of” David Fulton’s paintings are filled with snaking, overlapping lines that make reference to geography — the paths of rivers, the edges of coasts, the outlines of lakes. For this exhibition, Fulton has expanded the scale of many of his works. Conversion (2005) is the standout…
A Wedding and a Funeral?
WED 10/19 The year is 999 AD, and the Vikings want to loot and plunder England. Ye olde king, woeful over the impending apocalypse of the new millennium, gives his blessing to a most unfortunate alliance between a Norman princess and a 14-year-old “Lord,” in a last-ditch effort to keep…
Can’t Stop Giving
When Salvation Army workers arrived at their Pasadena distribution center the morning of October 2, they were startled to see all three truck bays of the facility had been jimmied open. Someone obviously had broken into the place. “Their hearts just dropped to their feet. They thought, ‘Oh, no, all…
Destroying Babylon
For the record, Efrem Schulz does not regularly hang with Gwen Stefani. “We’ve been to Europe and talked to people from magazines, and it’s really funny,” the front man of SoCal metalcore outfit Death by Stereo says on the phone from his home. “They’re like, ‘Oh, Orange County. So how…
Swing Time
This story is related to this week’s feature, “Pick Me Up.” Late at night in southwest Houston, a pale man in braids, shorts and a tie stands in a foyer in front of a dry-erase board that says, “Pussy rules the world.” He hands us a complicated release form to…
The O.G. of Love
It’s hard to believe, but in the late 1940s, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Johnny Copeland, Joe Hughes, Albert Collins and Little Joe Washington were all living within a few blocks of one another in the Third Ward. And until 1950, there was even a sixth musical great among them, a boogie-woogie pianist’s…
Why We Need DVDs
Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second…
If It’s Not Scottish, It’s Crap!
Glasgow, Scotland, is a well-respected center of music and culture, having birthed such native sons/daughters as Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, the Pastels, Bis, the Delgados and Teenage Fanclub. None of these bands sound alike; the only thing they really have in common is critical acclaim and rabid cult followings. Where…
Prophecy Not Fulfilled
Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside, drinking coffee. Should you take the time to…
C.J. Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band
As Hank Williams Jr., Lisa Marie Presley, Jakob Dylan and Julian Lennon can attest, choosing the same career path as your musically famous father brings both rewards and dangers. Doors will open and opportunities arrive simply by virtue of a familiar last name — but so does constant comparison and…
Our top DVD picks for the week of October 11.
Alicia Keys: Unplugged (J) Audioslave: Live in Cuba (Sony Music) The Best of the Chris Rock Show: Volumes 1 and 2 (Warner Bros.) Bomb the System (UMVD) The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Warner Bros.) The Dresden Dolls: Paradise (Fontana) 11:14 (Warner Bros.) The Ellen DeGeneres Collection: The Beginning/Here &…
Heybale
Honky-tonk is rarely performed on such a high level as when the Austin supergroup Heybale takes the stage. With Merle Haggard guitarist Redd Volkaert leading the ensemble, these Austin Continental Club Sunday-night regulars can set boots to scootin’ and cause that old cheatin’ impulse to come front and center at…
Pick Me Up
It started with her legs. “I’m not going to lie,” Tucker says. They were the kind of legs that pull you way up on a smooth trip that ends, through no fault of their own, too soon. Tucker, 25, knew what that was like. He had been flying high as…
Ludo
St. Louis’s Ludo can’t be accused of lacking ambition. This past summer alone, the quintet not only traveled across the great Midwestern expanse to Cleveland to play shows hyping a new cell-phone company but also opened for Goldfinger at SOKA Fest and released a new album, Broken Bride. And now…
Game Four: A Bitter Sweep Ending
Astros fans everywhere should get on their knees and thank Brad Lidge for doing what hes been doing best lately: giving up the winning run. Otherwise wed still be watching Morgan Ensberg and Adam Everett getting out with men on base. Theres only so much a fan can take. The…
The Black Dahlia Murder, with Cephalic Carnage, Between the Buried & Me and Into the Moat
A few years ago, the Black Dahlia Murder opened for rap-rock travesty Saliva at a Texas pavilion. “Not a lot of converts that day,” recalls guitarist Brian Eschbach. The quartet, known for its melodic death metal, now keeps better company, having spent the summer on Ozzfest before kicking off its…
Letters to the Editor
Quest for the Best Say what? You listed the Houston Aeros’ Sonic Boom as the Best Cheerleading Squad in the 2005 Best of Houston issue. I am almost at a loss for words. The only thing I can wonder at this point is who the writer/editor is friends with over…