The God Squad
Like a cosmic knuckleball, God often works in mysterious ways. The Houston Astros, of all people, should understand that. Twice this season, fate has seemed capricious. First there was July, when these preseason favorites couldn’t hit the side of a barn door and dropped to four games under .500. All…
Faux Fox
The sticker on this record reads, “Hey CMJ Reporters! Dig Gary Newman and Suicide? Meet Faux Fox. Make Out. Have Babies.” I don’t know what Gary Numan would think of that rampant abuse and misspelling of his name, but I’m guessing he and Suicide’s Alan Vega would agree that these…
Letters
Buyer Beware Friendship over and out: I live in Austin, and a very similar thing has happened to me here [“The Specialist,” by Craig Malisow, September 2]. My nightmare realtor was a friend of 37 years. I bought one of her rent houses, and she lent me $10,000 at closing…
Orbital
After orbiting near the top of electronic-music crop circles for a decade and a half, the bit-meddling siblings of Orbital have reached the end. Though the thought that it’s over may bring some down, Blue offers plenty of ups. Blue’s second track, “Pants,” proves who wears them in the Hartnoll…
Fonda Film
On film, some of Peter Fonda’s characters live as outlaws. But it wasn’t a pound of weed that caused the actor-director’s mid-’70s run-in with the local Johnny Law. Instead, it was harboring underage skaters. “I was filming Future World down at the Johnson Space Center,” the 64-year-old remembers. “And the…
Shell Shock
If Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence were a live-action sequel, there would be a lot of gossip about star histrionics, creative conflicts and so forth. Since the original Ghost in the Shell, first released nearly ten years ago, made an anime icon out of its star — the frequently…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, September 16 Leave it to Rice Cinema to present two films that offer up more “huh?” plots than an entire David Lynch festival. Today, you can get a glimpse of the strange inner workings of Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s romantic life. In the feature-length Cowards Bend the Knee, we…
Days of Future Passed
Fortune smiles on groovy egregiousness. In the case of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the filmmakers’ investment in their weird visions is wildly unorthodox, but the payoff is oddly satisfying. The movie features myriad killer robots, raucous underwater dogfights and Laurence Olivier’s best work since he died 15…
Reality’s Bite
During the first part of 2001, Indian author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni was working on a book about the immigrant experience in the United States. But before she’d completed it, there came a terrible interruption: the attacks of September 11. “I knew I had to write about it,” says Divakaruni, author…
Gallo’s Pole
Rare is the film that caters to fans of rabbits, motorcycles, Gordon Lightfoot and fellatio, but now, thanks entirely to Vincent Gallo, we’ve got that demographic nailed. With The Brown Bunny, the cinematic enfant terrible who gave us the awful pleasures of Buffalo ’66 returns, but don’t expect a retread…
Artsy Ambling
THU 9/16 Break out that beret and those thick-soled Timberlands, art lovers: Downtown Stomp Around is back around. For the sixth year running, the event is heralding the start of the Houston arts season. Five different downtown galleries are putting on lavish simultaneous openings, and we — artistic aficionados, consumers…
Vote No
Silver City is being marketed as a biting, bitter send-up of George W. Bush. Hence the copious use of trailer footage in which Chris Cooper, as Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dickie Pilager, stumbles over simple sentences, dodges reporters’ questions with mindless macho explications (“My message to the criminals is this: You…
Ice Dreams
SUN 9/19 There’s nothing like seeing cute little girls smiling and dabbing their eyes atop a podium to give an entire nation of preteens Olympic fever — and give their parents a headache. No, softball won’t do. It’s time to buy the leotards and tights, folks; gymnastics and figure skating…
I Hate It
Every once in a while, a film comes along that so blatantly disregards emotional authenticity that one fears for the sanity of its director. Can he actually believe that people talk this way? Act this way? Do these things? Worse, can he think he has made a coherent and feeling…
Ladies Who Lust
SAT 9/18 For most guys, erotic literature means the sticky Penthouse letters page. But more popular among the ladies is the classier “erotica.” The latter will be examined in Urban Aphrodite: The Exploration of Erotica by Women, the latest installment of theatrical readings from dAdA Productions. “In pornography, there’s a…
Going Gray
Lately, war has been much on the minds of most Americans. With over a thousand U.S. servicemen and women now dead in Iraq, and with all the campaign tap dancing over which candidate served where, when and how, it’s virtually impossible not to be moved by the 1968 antiwar musical…
What a Ruckus
SAT 9/18 Admit it: You’re just not getting enough primates in your entertainment lately. The folks at Theatre Illuminata understand. At their performance/fund-raiser “Circus Ruckus Cabaret,” you can hang with, snap photos of and share grooming tips with a guy in a gorilla suit. Keep an eye on him, as…
Capsule Reviews
The Cat’s Meow Even if the cinematic names Marion Davies, Elinor Glyn, Thomas Ince and Louella Parsons are unrecognized by contemporary movie audiences, the uninformed will still be fascinated by the Jazz Age sex and Hollywood scandal in Country Playhouse’s production of Steven Peros’s The Cat’s Meow. In 1924, pioneering…
Some Kind of Slugger
The labored hum of an aging, industrial-strength air conditioner emanates from near the manager’s office at the visitors’ clubhouse in Shea Stadium. A rival drone can be heard from outside the clubhouse door as water-sucking Zambonis attempt to dry a corridor in the belly of the 40-year-old stadium. A 45-minute…
Form School
The photograph Jerome, Arizona 21 shows dark pieces of paint flaking away from a white ground. Somebody may have tried something similar in your Intro to Photography class, but this is the picture that started it all. Aaron Siskind’s 1949 photo has become an iconic image in the history of…
Golden Homies
For maturing hip-hop fans, there’s a pervasive yet elusive hope that the genre will return to its golden age. While the actual dates for said golden age are debatable — and some would even contend that there have been two or three — most self-styled experts will agree that hip-hop…
Capsule Reviews
“Chris Akin: Recent Drawings” and “Matthew and Dayna Linton: American Bikers/Views from the Sissybar” The exhibitions in the upstairs galleries of the Galveston Arts Center are a study in contrasts. On one side are Chris Akin’s quiet, precise drawings, which he furtively created while on the job as a museum…
Mystery Bopping
Music and food-gathering have always gone together. Cavemen sang and hammered bones off skulls on the eve of big mammoth hunts. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, peasants frolicked and puked away market days to the sound of little bands that would come to town to serenade the big…
Soup to Cry By
The soupe à l’oignon gratinée ($6) at Le Mistral (1420 Eldridge Parkway, 832-379-8322) is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and a warmth in your stomach as the piping-hot, dark, hearty beef broth burns its way down to the very center of your being. This classic rendition of…
Mild On Houston
E! Entertainment Television is in the house tonight for a taping of their popular hit Wild On, and the beautiful people are turning out. Or that’s the story, anyway. Outside, a young man with neatly trimmed facial hair approaches and informs Club Go (2001 Commerce) owner/manager Zia Ahmed that he’s…
Osso Buco Me? Osso Buco You!
“If you don’t like it, there’s the door. Pay your bill and go. And don’t come back,” says Alex Salmassi, the owner of Portofino Ristorante Italiano, pointing to the exit. I seem to have a knack for getting myself thrown out of restaurants. This time, the fracas is over a…
Keeping It Real
The Houston area has never been renowned for its historic preservation. Land is cleared, buildings razed, historic populations are routinely re-sorted in aggressively profitable fashion. Moving to something newer has meant condos, concrete and mini-mansion houses with an edging of saint augustine. So a two-county enterprise undertaken to set aside…
Playbill
Cat Power Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, has the most dubious reputation for live performance of any national touring act since the Replacements. While it was de rigueur for the legendary ’80s Minneapolitan geniuses/underachievers to show up so drunk that they could barely stand up, let alone play, nearly all…
Can You Keep a Secret?
A local chat line for ATVers recently took up the question of the navigability of Spring Creek and whether the new state law applied to them. Several of the chatters were rattled by the prospects of a $500 fine for an offense, prompting this exchange: Spring Creek is open for…
Dizzee Rascal
A quick refresher on the evolution of the snare drum in hip-hop music. American producers have always ratcheted the pop to beats two and four — boom, pop, boom, pop — which dance-floor peacocks harness to propel their big booties in many exciting directions. In the Caribbean, however, Jamaican dancehall…
Bash-Free Zone
The annual Texas Book Festival was lovingly nurtured by Laura Bush back when she was first lady of Texas. Now, some say, the festival is returning the favor. Authors have been grumbling that the Austin event, scheduled for October 28-31, is taking pains this year to ensure that criticism of…
Gibby Haynes and His Problem
I can already hear Gibby Haynes fans bitching about how his new band, His Problem, sounds nothing like the Butthole Surfers’ insane psychedelia of yore. It’s not that I don’t agree; I, too, miss the crazy days of Locust Abortion Technician. But come on. The Surfers lost their acid-drenched edge…