Egg Man
And now, speaking on the subject of Richmond Rail… We love going to City Council meetings. Sure, most of the time you’re just watching a live version of C-SPAN, but come time for public comments, there’s always a character or two in the crowd who’s ready to get rowdy while…
What, No South Fondren?
You know, on second glance, it does kind of look like he’s giving someone the boot Looks like Johnson Space Center got the Houston slot on the new Monopoly board. We’re a little miffed the folks at Hasbro didn’t go for any of our suggestions. — Keith Plocek…
But the Big Game Was On…
…making Houston proud. America’s favorite war profiteers are in the news again. Unsealed on Friday, a whistleblower lawsuit filed against Kellogg, Brown & Root claims the Halliburton subsidiary used military supplies for its own Super Bowl party. (We were going to blog about this yesterday, but we didn’t want to…
That’s Just Super
Just another babe in tights, or a Brechtian metaphor for the absurdities of interpersonal communication? As the Night & Day editor, I get more than 200 e-mails a day and — disregarding the kind souls who take time out of their day to inform me about Canadian pharmacies, free iPods…
Pick a Side
What? Were you expecting something controversial? All the endless debating about the Iraq War wearing you down? How about gay marriage? Do you even care anymore? And when was the last time you heard someone say anything new about immigration? Sounds like you’re suffering from Big Issue Fatigue. But fear…
Maria’s Montrose Tacos
Robb Walsh Maria and the gang at Tacos Tierra Caliente on Montrose Tierra Caliente (it means “the hotlands”) is a part of Michoacan that’s famous for high temperatures, a unique musical style and great marijuana. In Houston, the hotlands are also getting famous for tacos, thanks to Maria Samano and…
Maria’s Montrose Tacos
Robb Walsh Maria and the gang at Tacos Tierra Caliente on Montrose Tierra Caliente (it means “the hotlands”) is a part of Michoacan that’s famous for high temperatures, a unique musical style and great marijuana. In Houston, the hotlands are also getting famous for tacos, thanks to Maria Samano and…
Six Degrees of Separation
Way to go, NAFTA U.S. Border Watch has organized a rally this Saturday in response to Labor Day marches by pro-immigrant groups, and you can expect plenty of hooting and hollering about all the bad stuff those damn Mexicans are bringing into this here country. We don’t necessarily want to…
No Gerrymandering Required
“I’ll be practicing my two-step for next season.” Tom DeLay wants your vote. No, not on the ballot this November, even though his name’s still on it. Don’t vote for DeLay. That would totally screw things up. (Just think Brewster’s Millions.) DeLay wants you to vote for Sara Evans on…
Todd Snider
One encounters the term “folk rock” today about as often as one reads the liner notes to Fairport Convention boxed sets, but it still works best for true hybrids like Todd Snider. Formerly more of a bar-band wiseacre, Snider now comes bearing unimpeachable folkie cred. He has endorsements from singer-songwriters…
Why Do Mexicans See the Virgin Mary in the Stupidest Things?
SPECIAL MOTHER EDICIÓN Dear Mexican, I heard that Mexicans at an Orange County candy factory think they saw the Virgin Mary in a pile of melted chocolate. Why do Mexicans always see the Virgin Mary in the stupidest things? Nonbeliever Beaner Dear Wab, It’s not just Mexicans who find the…
Joe Doucet
You might be tempted to say that Bayou City Blues author Roger Wood discovered Joe Doucet, but “discovered” is too strong a word. Doucet played the blues in Louisiana as a young man, but he got out of the music business when the disco craze hit in the mid-’80s. He…
Letters to the Editor
Sow Divided Swine slammer: I guess his being uneducated on the subject is why Todd Spivak looks like a jackass [“Hog Wild,” August 24]. I’m a hog remover. I get rid of the pesky, pain-in-the-ass, dangerous animals so pencil-pushing dumbasses like Spivak don’t have to get their hands dirty. I…
The Hacienda Brothers
Chris Gaffney and Dave Gonzalez certainly weren’t looking for a project to come out of a jam session at a mutual friend’s birthday party. Gaffney was already splitting time with Dave Alvin’s band and his own Cold Hard Facts, and Gonzalez was the longtime front man of San Diego-based roots-rock…
Alien Secretion
The Montrose hipster staple The Proletariat (903 Richmond, 713-523-1199) is a fantastic place to check out a band and shoot some pool. Unfortunately, it’s not always a fantastic place to get a drink. I’m reminded of this as I’m waiting at the bar for ten, 15, 20 minutes, trying to…
Tool
Record labels treat most bands like sweatshop workers, pushing them to produce, produce, produce. Tool has been an exception. Having released only four albums since it exploded into the grunge-dominated scene 13 years ago with Undertow, the band enjoys complete creative control. Of course, between 2001’s Lateralus and this year’s…
Enchiladas Your Way
At Taco Milagro (2555 Kirby, 713-522-1999), you can customize your sweet-potato-and-chard enchiladas ($6.45) at the salsa bar. Not that it’s necessary — the dish can stand alone, too. Two enchiladas are filled with sweet potatoes and Swiss chard, whose sweet and bitter flavors balance each other, and topped with a…
Hank III
When you’re Shelton Hank Williams III, everyone naturally expects you to be a musician. But just like Hank Sr. and Jr., Williams likes to do things a little differently. So, yes, Williams does play country music — kinda. That’s his Hank III and the Damn Band show (Joe Buck on…
Sparklehorse, with Danny & the Nightmares
There’s rarely been a better chance to get on intimate terms with the positive musical results of chemical imbalance than this Proletariat show. Mark Linkous, alias Sparklehorse, has been releasing increasingly lush sound-sculptures for more than ten years now, and his brand-new Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of…
Lost in Translation
Gertrudis Cortez’s house has seen better days, but it’s bustling with life: overgrown potted plants, barking bulldog, clucking chicken, gobbling turkey; Busch cans, hammock, shell of a Toyota van; diapered toddler, wobbling in the doorway, staring blankly past his grandmother at the construction on Lyons Avenue. Cortez emigrated from San…
Euro-Tex-Mex
The chips and hot sauce at Europa Cafe & Grill in Rice Village were disappointing. The salsa had zero bite, and the chips, though heated, were extremely stale. Which didn’t bode well for the nachos I’d ordered for an appetizer. When they arrived, Europa Cafe’s nachos looked beautiful. They were…
Here We Go Again
It hasn’t been easy being a fan of the Houston Texans, and last season was the worst of all. Now the team is promising a new start, with a new coach, a new dedication to actually doing something on offense, and a new chance to stop sucking. We hope it…
Hollywoodland
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on ’50s…
Sloppy Seconds
Bare-chested and grinning, nine-year-old Trevor giggles madly as he stands in the center of a large aluminum tub under a hot August sun. Around him, adults are filling the tub with buckets of warm water and dumping in loaf after loaf of rotting white sandwich bread. The stuff comes up…
The Wicker Man
A couple of questions arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult-remembered genre work — namely, what’s in this kind of malarkey for gender combat provocateur Neil LaBute, and why was such a high-profile film tossed into theaters last Friday without letting critics see it first? The two…
Image of the Week
Kenni and Sheri Gibson light up their balloon at dusk so that spectators can bask in its glow. It was all part of the RE/MAX Ballunar Liftoff at Johnson Space Center. Click here to enlarge…
Heart Stopper
Larry Kramer is no shrinking violet. Screenwriter (Women in Love), AIDS activist/provocateur (he co-founded NYC’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT-UP) and novelist (Faggots), Kramer always says what he thinks in a take-no-prisoners style that constantly gets him in hot water with politically correct types. His prescient novel Faggots, published…
Hard Rock Pawty
Danny Nick, bassist and vocalist for the New Orleans-based heavy metal band Suplecs, laughs when asked if he minds talking about Hurricane Katrina and the storm’s effect on the band. “Not at all. Katrina and everything that happened is pretty much at the forefront of our lives,” he says. “Heck,…
Capsule Reviews
The Dying Gaul Playwright Craig Lucas, who delivered gentle magical realism in Prelude to a Kiss and genuine romance in Longtime Companion, delivers neither in The Dying Gaul. In fact, this bleak, graphic little shocker doesn’t even bring decency or common sense to the table. Wannabe Hollywood screenwriter Robert (a…
Get Busy Living
“The elderly have so much to offer, sir. They’re our link with history.” “I don’t want to be your goddamn link, damn you. I want to feel Floris’s naked thighs against my own.” “I wonder how long I’m gonna live sometimes.” “Some young lazy slut has charmed away my brains.”…
Pop Rocks
In the documentary POPaganda, on view at the Station Museum as part of the “Power Pathos” group exhibition, artist Ron English says billboard liberators are modern-day superheroes. These alterers of advertisements move among us, their lives fairly normal on the surface, but they have secret identities, secret hideouts and a…
Up in Smoke
Health nuts are gonna feel pretty stupid someday, lying in hospitals, dyin’ o’ nothin’. — Redd Foxx Here we go again…City Hall is a-rumble once more with talk of a smoking ban in bars. And no, they aren’t responding to a groundswell of popular support — they are acting at…
Capsule Reviews
“Courbet and the Modern Landscape” Realist painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) is widely considered the forerunner of the impressionists for his “radical” self-expression at a time when the popular French Salon championed conservative, narrative painting. That said, don’t expect anything as provocative as his 1866 works The Origin of the World…
People’s Lives
Jack’s Mannequin front man Andrew McMahon was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia last summer. After chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, McMahon is in remission — and on the road. Net proceeds from all ticket sales of his 19-city “Tour for the Cure” will benefit the Dear Jack Foundation, a…
Necessary Evil
United 93 (Universal) A suggestion to those who’ve put off watching the year’s most wrenching and essential film: Before rolling the feature, first watch the documentary in which the families of those who died on the plane give the filmmakers their blessing, without reservation. If the mother, father, and sister…
Jeannie Ortega
It’s a crowded field of pretty girl thugettas trying to make a mark on the hip-hop world, but Jeannie Ortega might actually have a shot. With her debut release, No Place Like Bklyn, Ortega proves she’s no junior J. Lo; she’s more than just a blow-up doll with a standard-issue…
Grateful Dead
The mall in Dead Rising is pretty much like any other you’ve visited. There’s a bunch of women’s clothing stores, a movie theater, and of course the obligatory food court. The only real difference is that it’s teeming with enough zombies to fill a stadium. Dead Rising opens with freelance…
Pat Green
Country-pop singer Pat Green earned himself lots of fans — and ridicule — with his unlikely Top Ten hit “Wave on Wave.” What the hell was that song about? Water? Love? Sonic booms? Nobody ever knew. Anyway. Now Green is back with Cannonball, and there’s not a wave in sight…
Our top DVD picks for the week of September 5
The Abbott and Costello Show: 100th Anniversary Collection, Season One (Passport) Ace Ventura Deluxe Double Feature (Warner Bros.) Amarcord: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Anne of Avonlea (Koch Vision) Blade Runner: Director’s Cut (Warner Bros.) Broken Trail (Sony) Clive Barker’s The Plague (Sony) Commander in Chief: 2-Disc Inaugural Edition Part 2…