Shake Your Goth Thang
By day, she’s Cynthia Cupach: a mild-mannered wife, mother, dance teacher and respected member of the art community. But by night, she’s Samuraa. She wears fangs. She dresses up in a belly-dancing outfit and dances to doom-and-gloom Gothic rock. Tattoos adorn her body, and she shakes them for tips. She…
Dish
All Wet First fire, then flood — what’s next for restaurateur-slash-developer Tilman Fertitta: swarms of locusts? His troubles began in February with the two-alarm blaze that closed Willie G’s, the popular seafood outlet on Post Oak Boulevard. The attic bonfire wreaked an estimated $1 million in damages, and rebuilding still…
Hot Plate
Don’t go looking for Tikka in your world atlas. I did, and couldn’t find it. There’s a very good reason for that. Tikka is not a place. It’s a fillet — as in lamb tikka and chicken tikka. I owe my atlas an apology. I should never have thrown it…
Static
Dumb as a whip… In its continuing effort to spice up the bland bouillon that is Buzz radio’s “new alternative,” Jacor Communications is eyeing other cities’ leftovers. And it looks like the Kentucky-based conglomerate, which unceremoniously snatched up the Buzz (KTBZ/107.5 FM) earlier this summer, is ready to pounce on…
More Blues Than You Can Use
Longtime residents of the Third and Fifth wards can testify directly to a legacy now finally being appreciated by others: Houston is home to some of the best blues ever made. From the late ’40s through the ’60s, many of the genre’s most influential clubs, artists and business enterprises were…
Clubland
Get ready to duck. There’s a disco-ball war brewing on the Richmond Strip. Polly Esther’s, an upscale ’70s- and ’80s-themed dance club chain with nine other locations nationwide, has moved into the former Rock Bottom Brewery, much to the chagrin of another retro-trendy nightclub, Boogie Nights, just across the street…
The Boy Next Door
It’s not something that jumps out at you right away. But dig deeper, and the evidence is all there: Lenny Kravitz is one of the most conservative rockers out there. Who else writes so pervasively (and so frequently) of such time-tested themes as love, religion and family? And though he’ll…
No Respect?
Go straight to the source, and he’ll say the reason for the upcoming Missiles reunion show is one of simple economics. “We’d just like to make a third of what the Road Kings make on their reunion shows,” says Charlie Sanders, the Missiles’ bassist and lead cutup. “I mean, they’ve…
Readers’ Choice Winners
Eats & Drinks Best appetizer: Cajun egg rolls, Houston Brewery, 6224 Richmond, 953-0101 Best beer: Houston Brewery, 6224 Richmond, 953-0101 Best bloody mary: Mama’s Cafe, 6019 Westheimer, 266-8514 Best breakfast burrito: Taco Cabana, multiple locations Best burrito: Ninfa’s Mexican Restaurant, multiple locations Best cheeseburger: Becks Prime, multiple locations Best chicken:…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *Sweden’s Social Democrat party and England’s Vegetarian Society released controversial erotic video ads in August. The Swedish commercial was shot by the party’s youth wing and featured a young couple in bed discussing how cool their “first time” was (meaning, first-time voting). In the English spot, phallic-shaped chiles,…
A Winning War
One of the true ironies of gorgeous theater is that it often blooms from a dark soil of deeply felt grief and great human tragedy. More than 620,000 Americans died in our civil war. April 12, 1861 marked the first official gunfire of this conflict, the war on which the…
Night & Day
Thursday September 24 You thought Lilith Fair had come and gone from our lovely city for the year, right? Well, you’re right, but if you want to keep that all-female vibe going, check out the Weave Dance Company tonight at DiverseWorks. The two-year-old dance company performs Out of Our Skin,…
Manafest Destiny
Salseros and Tejano acts dominate the Latin radio market here, but Rock en Espanol is making inroads. Led by a Guadalajara-based foursome called Mana, the international movement is gaining time on the airwaves and space in the CD racks. The future, it seems, will belong to Latin groups who’d rather…