Riled Ones
Scotsman Irvine Welsh became a literary sensation in Britain with the publication of his first novel, Trainspotting; and Danny Boyle’s film version of this depressing look at the underbelly of Edinburgh brought Welsh fame in America as well. Now director Paul McGuigan makes his feature debut with an adaptation of…
Men in Black
There are some rappers who are just pure id. They’re men (and occasionally women) who literally bounce off walls to make rhymes and grab your attention. After years of uninterest in hardcore, humorless, fuck-wit-me-and-you’ll-get-a-cap-in-yo-ass rappers, a lot of performers are channeling their personal idiosyncrasies into their music. Busta Rhymes, that…
String Along
Wes Craven — purveyor of fine horror movies, including A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and the Scream trilogy — has apparently decided to go legit. And with Music of the Heart, he has done so with a vengeance. The film’s only death is the result of…
Utility Bassist
Christian McBride is like oxygen. He’s everywhere. Pick up a mainstream jazz album from the ’90s, and there’s a good chance McBride’s on it. The straight-ahead bassist of choice, McBride, at last count, has appeared on somewhere between 150 and 200 albums since 1989. From stalwarts like Jimmy Smith to…
Placed in the Discard Pile
Cynthia Flood has lived in the Fourth Ward most of her 38 years, the last nine in a cockeyed two-story rent house at 1809 Wilson Street. Cynthia’s mother lived in the same house many years ago, and her mother, Minnie Johnson, was living there when she died in May 1998…
Rotation
Dixie Chicks Fly Monument Let’s not consider this a review per se of the Dixie Chicks’ latest release, Fly, but more of an experiment in deconstructing that most inexplicable, ever-evolving and fun-to-piss-on musical genre, country and western. “The new country is gay,” comedian Norm MacDonald bellowed on The Late Show…
Strangers in Paradise
On the fuzzy TV where the rabbit ears struggle in vain to pull in an adequate signal, an antic, fiercely smiling home-shopping host is incredulous that he’s asking only $900 (after rebates) for an Intel computer. Christine Ramzi, a dark, pretty teenager only months removed from the vicious battleground of…
Local Rotation
Kayfabe The Hellen Keller Tapes Kayfabe Redundant. That’s the overriding impression of Kayfabe’s new EP, The Hellen Keller Tapes. The trio’s execution is solid, but the material is so unoriginal and ponderous that it hurts to open your ears to it. Formed in 1996, Kayfabe, formerly known as Hellen Keller…
Serial Killers On-line
Andy Kahan sits at his Compaq computer and summons forth the Internet auction house eBay, which boasts of helping “people trade practically anything on earth.” Among the items up for bid are more than 90 pieces of speciality collectibles — locks of hair, photo prints, autographs, artwork, even authentic samples…
Amplified
We$theimer $treet Fe$t? No, the Fuzzgun Records/Houston Press/ Mausoleum stage at the Westheimer Street Festival last week was not for sale, contrary to popular rumor. The fiction and friction all revolves around four players: the bands Dune, TX and the Fondue Monks as well as Sixtone Records and stage sponsor…
NOD So Naughty
Legend has it that in 1972 Rice students at Wiess College emptied all their alcohol into a tub and stirred it with an oar. The resulting punch was so potent it removed the varnish, says Wiess past president Ethan Schultz. The students brought their mattresses to The Commons to party…
Playbill
Grunge’s Prayer For a guy who sings, “Talking is just masturbating without the mess,” on his band’s latest record, Happiness Is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace front man, Raine Maida, is surprisingly forthcoming about his group’s shortcomings. “We’re definitely not changing music,” he says. “It…
Promises, Promises
Morgan’s Point resident George Paulissen remembers when the Port of Houston took over the town. In exchange for condemning half of Morgan Point’s land and driving off a third of its voters, the Port Authority offered several amenities. The two that everyone remembers were a park along the water and…
Oh, Brother!
Oh, Kay!, by George and Ira Gershwin, is a hop back to a “quaint” time when bootleggers and flappers occupied American pop culture. Oh, for those sweet, simple times when women had no rights, Jim Crow laws kept blacks under wraps, and the great depression loomed. But the myth of…
Broken Promises
On the morning of July 19, 1997, about 75 people gathered in the chapel of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church on Clay Street to talk about how to redevelop an 80-block area of town, stretching from I-45 west to Taft Street between Dallas and West Gray. As he wrapped up a…
Blunt Object
Actor Frank Whaley has appeared in more than 30 movies, including Swimming with Sharks and Pulp Fiction. But none of them cuts as close to the bone, I suspect, as Whaley’s debut in the writer-director ranks, Joe the King. Set in the ’70s and carefully described by its maker as…
Downing
The man spotted his wife through the large glass doors and windows inside the front of the building. Kept locked, the doors open only at a signal from the front desk. That didn’t prove to be much of a deterrent on October 3 around 6 p.m. Corey Harrell Cruise, authorities…
News Hostage
You Can Still Trust Me For 33 years, until he retired in May, avuncular, low-key anchor Steve Smith delivered the news to KHOU television viewers. Now he’s dealing out paid political propaganda. Smith has shown up in advertisements touting the proposed billion-dollar Bayport project, the Port of Houston’s plan to…
Child’s Play
Children’s theater in Houston, and elsewhere, is all too often an afterthought. Skimpy sets, half-assed scripts and hammy acting are pretty much the rule for audiences who are presumed to be easily amused. It’s dinner theater for the Lunchables crowd. But a live theater experience can be a terrific way…
News of the Weird
According to a story on the Agence France Presse wire, Stepan Kovaltchuk, 75, emerged from 57 years of living in his sister’s attic in remote Montchintsi, Ukraine, in September, having hidden first from the Nazis and later from Soviet military recruiters. He apparently was not aware of Ukrainian independence and…
Mack Attack
Don Quixote had Sancho Panza. Wyatt Earp had Doc Holliday. Conan O’Brien has Andy Richter. And KBXX DJ Madd Hatta has James Garrett, better known to the ballers and shot-callers of H-town as Jay Mack. Every weekday, between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., Mack serves as a right-hand man, a…
Dish
Exactly one year and three weeks after the original Hobbit Hole restaurant closed its doors on South Shepherd, brothers Raymond and Forrest Edmonds have reopened as the Hobbit Cafe [2243 Richmond, (713)526-5460] in new digs just south of the old location. “That’s right, we’re glad to be out of the…
Shopping Mall Cajun
When a friend first told me a Cajun restaurant had set up in the parking lot of the Home Depot store at Highway 59 and the West Loop, I imagined a ramshackle food booth on a fairground midway. I pictured the same quaint sort of pushcart entrepreneur who sells roasted…
A Bit Player
Sake Lounge opened in 1997 in the clunkishly titled Bayou Place and immediately became a hip oasis in a downtown scene just beginning to shed its desert-isle image. Sake’s elegant industrial atmosphere, New Age cross-cultural Japanese menu and innovative signature drinks attracted a loyal following, not to mention a slew…
Green-Light Project
Craig Lucas’s The Dying Gaul is a strange and unruly script. As directed by Rob Bundy at Stages Repertory Theatre, the show is rich in spots, with moments when the original drama is so provocative and wildly intelligent that it inspires a sort of face-tingling, edge-of-your-seat rapture that is rare…
Hot Plate
Tricky Treats: Drop by Andre’s Pastry Shop and Cafe [2515 River Oaks Boulevard, (713)5243863] for Halloween goodies that grown-ups will like as well as the kiddies do. There are buttery sugar cookies luxuriously iced with white chocolate, tinted to make green-faced witches, jolly orange jack-o’-lanterns trailing vines, and winged, grinning…
That Verdi Magic
There’s no simple recipe for the magic in Giuseppe Verdi’s operas. Most agree that Rigoletto, the tale of a humpbacked court jester, has lots of catchy melodies. Few can resist Violetta, La Traviata’s beloved prostitute who refuses a normal life on principle. But Aida’s appeal can’t be traced to favorite…
Gothic Houston
LOG ON. TUNE IN. BURN OUT. That was the rallying cry of the net.goths on the USENET newsgroup alt.gothic as it rang out through cyberspace in 1994. And for Houstonian Christopher K. Derrick, it was the inspiration to organize what would be the first and most influential North American gothic…
The Antihero
In 1995 Bill Davenport glued four cardboard toilet paper rolls together in a little cluster and called it sculpture. In the mid-’80s he cast the puckered dome of a citrus squeezer and the head of an ax in bronze. He has crocheted a protective cover for a washing machine and…
Deadheads Redux
Like Widespread Panic, like Phish and, yes, like the Grateful Dudes, moe. is a jam band. It does everything long — songs, guitar solos, transitions, whatever. Yet it’s hard to mistake moe. for a modern jazz act or masturbatory “jam” band. Unlike Widespread Panic and Phish (but like the Dead),…