The genre title “world music” is a limp, sad stab at unknown sonic terrain. It’s just plain bogus that what we generally call pop (stuff made primarily by and for the United States and U.K.) is rigorously sub-classified (i.e. rock, hip-hop, country, R&B, punk), while sounds recorded elsewhere are often…
“I’m a bitch that love to fuck,” begins Sheryl Underwood’s routine on an early ’90s Def Comedy Jam appearance. “My legs be open so much my IUD pick up cable channels, goddammit! … I love to fuck more than I love to eat. You put a dick between two slices…
For the life of me, I just cannot keep plants alive. Hope, yes, but plants, no. However, if I could garden, I’d definitely be down for growing some sort of herbs. Herbs are good for you, they spice up any dish you whip up, and they’re totally legal to grow…
“Heterosexuals can’t understand camp, because everything they do is camp,” opined an associate of the old Playhouse of the Ridiculous, a New York theater known for its good-natured, anarchic sexual farce—a piece like Turds in Hell, which offered a farrago of sodomy, sadomasochism, incest, coprophagia, bestiality, homosexual behavior of every…
Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker is a full-throttle body shock of a movie. It gets inside you like a virus, puts your nerves in a blender and twists your guts into a Gordian knot. Set during the last month in the year-long rotation of a three-man U.S…
Can I borrow your leg warmers? Synthesizers and electronically programmed instrumentals have the amazing ability to evoke images of neon, shoulder pads, parachute pants, side ponytails and everything else ’80s. So do songs such as “Wish I’d Known All Along,” and “Heat of the Moment” by the band Asia. With…
The Women’s Museum in Fair Park is reversing those summer doldrums thanks to Roberta Harris’ Up. The Houston artist will be showcasing her vibrant and stimulating artwork inspired by the concepts of hope, joy and peace. If the themes sound a little abstract, wait until you see her work: Jackson…
Whenever I was bored and hungry during my undergraduate years, I looked for a student art show. These shows provided free entertainment with art and people-watching, and free food and drink, usually in the form of plastic cups of red wine and cheese and fruit plates. For a fun and…
The connection between videogames and music goes back to the monophonic bleeps and bloops of the earliest games. But by the 1980s, some of the catchiest music ever recorded (well, programmed) came from videogames. Anyone between the ages of 20 and 40 could hum the theme to Super Mario Bros.,…
The Kids Observation Station at the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary is a lot less creepy than it sounds. Kids are wild sometimes–ever seen siblings fight over the TV? But the Kids Observation Station is actually an interactive observation program for children age 16 and younger, from 2…
In case the poem doesn’t ring in wedding bells, I’m referring to weddings: The day most girls have dreamed about from the time they got their hands on their first Barbie doll and tulle dress. OK, maybe I’m just referring to myself, Jennifer Lopez in The Wedding Planner, and Kate…
If you need a conspiracy theory in Dallas, you’ve got options. You can head down to the corner of Elm and Houston, where the big-bellied guys with too much time on their hands stand beside photo montages of JFK’s bloody scalp, pointing out inconsistencies in the autopsy. Or, this Saturday,…
Summer has arrived, heat and all, my friend. To kick off this favorable season, Primo’s and the Quarter Bar in the heart of Uptown are throwing a good old-fashioned block party this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Big Al from KHKS-106.1 “KISS FM” will MC the event, and…
What is it you people want out of original theater these days? What will make you come in droves to fill in rows of seats before yelling “Bravo!” and tossing all manner of cut flowers upon the stage? Mark-Brian Sonna had penned drama, personal accounts and comedy and had been…
He’s got a decent rank in Comedy Central’s list of greatest stand-up comics of all time. He’s white and middle-aged, known for politically incorrect humor, attacks on the media, politics and various other favorite comedy punching bags. Half-Catholic, half-Jewish. These could describe any number of notable stand-up comedians, but we’re…
As if watching your roommates interpret DIY assembly instructions for IKEA cabinets couldn’t get any funnier, imagine a crew of Irving’s finest assembling a 3,000-piece model of one of China’s most famous displays of architecture. The Smithsonian Institute loaned Irving Arts Center its hand-carved, 9-foot-tall, one-to-five ratio model of the…
Kelly Garrett Rathbone has a habit she can’t shake. The faces, heads and creatures that live in the dark corners of her imagination? She sculpts them, again and again. “My sculptures make up my personal cabinet of curiosities,” says the 26-year-old artist, who recently finished an artist residency at the…
Her voice walks a full block ahead of her body, sort of comforting in the same way that Fran Drescher’s voice is a knife in your brain. But Wanda Sykes is a unique entertainer in many ways. Let’s forget about that little bugaboo at the White House Press Corps Dinner…
Love stinks. Take Dan for example. Dan meets and falls in love with a stripper after seeing her get hit by a car. Over time she becomes needy and he gets bored, eventually breaking her heart. Dan falls in love with someone else, but is rejected and reduced to stalking…
Sometimes, after a long, hard day, I just want to snuggle under the covers with a puppy and have someone read me a story. And, come on, deep down, everyone–no matter how old or how hip or how masculine–just needs someone to read them a story. That’s why the Semyans’…
Chick lit–love it or hate it, it’s here to stay. ‘Tis the season of the “beach read,” and Dune Road, by Jane Green, fits that mold marvelously, right down to its beach town setting. The story follows a single mother who works for a novelist with a dark secret while…
Fewer than four months after recording and mixing their latest album, Mandala (out July 21), the progressive rock alchemists in Rx Bandits are touring in support of the mature, slightly Latin-infused followup to 2006’s …And the Battle Begun. And the new sound? It’s one stained by life experiences, dusty hitchhiking…
