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SPRING BREAK!

Contents

VOL. 28 | NO. 9 | MARCH 3-MARCH 9, 2016

Make It Count!

STAFF WRITERS Meagan Flynn, Craig Malisow, Dianna Wray FELLOW Leif Reigstad EDITORIAL OPERATIONS MANAGER Richard Hebert CONTRIBUTORS Melissa Anderson, Sam Byrd, Brandon Caldwell, Adam

Castañeda, Sherilyn Connelly, Phaedra Cook, Willie D, Corey Deiterman, Alexandra Doyle, Jessica Goldman, D.L. Groover, Aaron Hillis, Michelle Orange, Sean Pendergast, Alan Scherstuhl, Vic Shuttee, Bill Simpson, William Michael Smith, Randy Tibbits, Scott Tobias, Brooke Viggiano WEB CONTRIBUTORS Jeff Balke, Sam Byrd, Ashley Clos, Phaedra Cook, Willie D, Alexandra Doyle, Jef With One F, Catherine Gillespie, Jack Gorman, Nicholas L. Hall, Whitney Hodgin, Alexandra Irrera, Matthew Keever, Erika Kwee, Kristy Loye, Francisco Montes, Adam P. Newton, Joanna O’Leary, Jeremy Parzen, Sean Pendergast, Mai Pham, John Royal, Bob Ruggiero, David Sackllah, Ericka Schiche, Bill Simpson, Nathan Smith, William Michael Smith, Matt Stieb, Valerie Sweeten, Randy Tibbits, Marco Torres, Brooke Viggiano, Pete Vonder Haar ART ART DIRECTOR Monica Fuentes PRODUCTION PRODUCTION MANAGER Brian Cook LAYOUT EDITOR Mya Dale CORPORATE MARKETING GRAPHIC DESIGNER Natalie Silva GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sarah Wall ADVERTISING RETAIL SALES DIRECTOR Allisen Picos CLASSIFIED SALES DIRECTOR Juan Rojas OPERATIONS MANAGER Dana Donovan SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Joe Espelage, Char Koehler ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Karinn Brenes, Joshua Brettschneider, Joel Cirilo,

Coby Culpepper, Arielle Lipsen, Courtney Mitchell, Jennifer Smith, Leslie Taylor HOUSE ACCOUNT MANAGER Sophie Cole DIGITAL OPERATIONS COORDINATOR Jessica Candler DIGITAL MARKETING AND SALES COORDINATOR Lisa Fegen REGIONAL MARKETING DIRECTOR Jennifer Robinson PROMOTIONS COORDINATOR Colleen Sexton MARKETING INTERN Tessa Chronister

Courtesy of Aaron Taylor

Cover Story ▼

Post Season

Life as an NFL player — structured and demanding — can be a glorious ride until the ever-after part hits. BY SEAN PENDERGAST |

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The fate of Houston’s new bike plan is pretty much in the hands of drivers. MEAGAN FLYNN |

PAGE 6

A Question of Balance

Saltillo Mexican Kitchen has some great entrées, but needs to pay more attention to its side dishes. BY PHAEDRA COOK |

PAGE 33

Food Editor Opening

The Houston Press is looking for a Food Editor who will work with our lead food critic and other food writers to craft our restaurant and food coverage both online and in print. Candidates should be knowledgeable about food, write and report well, and be very organized and accurate. Knowledge of photography is a plus. The position is fulltime and on staff with benefits. The Food Editor will report directly to the Editor-in-Chief. Interested applicants should email a résumé, cover letter and samples of their own food writing to margaret.downing@houstonpress.com. No phone calls.

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| HOUSTON NEWS |

Share the road? The faTe of housTon’s new bike

plan is preTTy much in The hands of drivers. MEAGAN FLYNN

udith Cruz Villarreal has heard some version of “Get your ass on the sidewalk!” countless times while biking through Houston, in the bike lane. Despite the fact that drivers are protected by a ton of metal, they’re often the ones yelling, Cruz Villarreal said, often unaware that bicyclists are just as entitled to use the road as they are. “They always want to push us onto the sidewalk,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know that we’re allowed to be on the streets, that it’s illegal for us to be on the sidewalk.” That’s the attitude from drivers that Cruz Villarreal and hundreds of other bike commuters like her regularly experience. Houston is a car city. While City Council has made several efforts in recent years to make bicycling safer —

VISIT HOUSTONPRESS.COM FOR MORE BREAKING NEWS AND FEATURES like requiring drivers to give them three feet of space when passing, and announcing a plan to end bike fatalities — cycling in Houston remains dangerous. Within a year after City Council enacted the safe-passing ordinance, there were still 950 bike-related crashes — 250 of which were hit-and-runs. Much of the problem is due to the lack of protected bike lanes (there is only one in the city) and the lack of connections among different bikeways, making it much more likely that bikers will have to deal with heavy traffic at multiple points on their trip.

While the ambitious bike plan just released by the city has been called the solution to a lot of these issues, the problem is that its future is in the hands of drivers. Save for projects already funded through ReBuild Houston, the plan is largely unfunded, meaning it may depend on bond referendums and votes from all of Houston’s drivers — not just the 0.5 percent who commute on bikes — to provide the $300 million to $500 million this plan may cost. Which has people like Cruz Villarreal and other cyclists wondering: Will any of this matter if drivers’ attitudes don’t change? Released last month, the Houston Bike Plan marks the first time the city has drawn up a comprehensive blueprint to overhaul Houston’s biking infrastructure in 23 years. In the next couple of decades, it seeks to add over 1,600 miles of bike lanes, 700 of which may materialize in the next five years, and add key connections from downtown lanes — like the random Lamar Street lane that doesn’t really connect to anything — to off-street trails. Right now, just half of Houston’s roughly 500 miles of bikeways are “high comfort,” meaning the lanes are well separated from car traffic, and the vast majority of those lanes are on trails running east to west along the bayou. Only 39 miles of highcomfort lanes exist on actual streets—and that lack of accessibility can easily deter casual or beginning bikers from commuting. The new Houston Bike Plan would change that on a mass scale. But if it’s going to depend on support from Houstonians, then attorney John Clark, who represents injured bicyclists, said that the city is going to need to start campaigning to raise the public’s awareness about why this plan is so crucial. Just last week alone, he said he’d learned of three people hit by cars — one accident was fa-

tal, one involved a drunk driver, another was a hit-and-run. Last year, he represented the family of Chelsea Norman, who was struck and killed in a hit-and-run while cycling home from Whole Foods, and he spoke at City Hall months later, after cyclists brought their bikes and staged a “die-in” on the front lawn to raise awareness about victims like Norman. Until the city can establish a sense of urgency among drivers about this problem, he said, it’s unlikely the bike plan will go very far. Here’s some of what Clark told us: “Half of my clients are hit-and-run victims. That tells you something about the fourth-largest city in the nation, when people are literally left in the street to die of their injuries. When you have issues like that and attitudes like that, it doesn’t matter what a plan says; the voters aren’t going to come around until they understand that this is an epidemic. It’s a public awareness issue that needs to be transformed first and foremost. Angie Cabrera, with the biking group Toxic Shock, said it’s the Houston Police Department’s responsibility, too, to start ticketing drivers for not following the three-foot rule when passing bikers (and sometimes, she said, yelling at them to get off the road). That way, at least there is an actual incentive to start learning how to share the road. “They need to start having more police on bicycles so they can realize what bicyclists are going through,” she said. “I don’t think they enforce it, because they don’t realize how it works. I think they’re just kind of turning a blind eye to it, and because of that, drivers are just like, ‘Eh, I can do whatever I want, because nobody is going to make me respect the cyclists.’” The fact that the Houston Bike Plan could take ten to 20 years to materialize fully could be either good or bad for the cycling community: good because with time, attitudes might change; bad because, as Clark put it, drivers need to learn how to share the road right now. Michael Payne, executive director of Bike Houston, which partnered with the city to help develop the plan, said that some projects, such as constructing those key connections at dangerous intersections, will be prioritized over others. He addressed a room full of more than 100 bikers last week in what was his final annual meeting before stepping down from the post this spring. And while the turnout was encouraging, to Payne, the people who didn’t attend are just as important as those who did. Payne says there are about a million and a half people who own bikes in the Houston area. But for many of them, their bikes stay parked in the garage. “If those people actually did something and engaged, we would be able to deliver this infrastructure and improve our city and the quality of life for generations to come,” he said. “United we will be successful. Divided we will be…sort of at the mercy of single-occupancy vehicle drivers.”

Buzz Kill sTaTe Gop snubs local

republican marijuana reform Group. MICHAEL BARAJAS

n the past few years, marijuana reform has taken root across the country. Four states and the District of Columbia have

legalized small amounts of pot for recreational purposes. Numerous other states have passed varying types of medical marijuana bills. Even in Texas, which still has some of the harshest marijuana laws in the country, local prosecutors and police departments are starting to change how they handle small-time pot possession. Evidently one place marijuana reform hasn’t reached is the Republican Party of Texas, which turned away a well-known Republican marijuana reform group that applied to set up a booth at the state party convention in May. In a post on the Republicans Against Marijuana Prohibition (RAMP) website, Zoe Russell, the Houston-based group’s assistant executive director, called the party’s decision “unaccountable censorship.” Russell says the decision to bar RAMP from setting up a booth at the convention was made by the party’s executive committee, on which some RAMP members actually sit. According to RAMP, the state GOP’s executive committee made the decision in executive session, which means they did it in secret and don’t have to tell anybody why. “This is an abuse of power, and it signals to Republican activists that our hard work can be thrown to the wayside based on the whims of a select few, none of whom can be held accountable,” Russell wrote. It’s unclear why the state party feels it should distance itself from marijuana reform efforts. While proposals to reform the criminal penalties for misdemeanor pot possession in Texas failed at the legislature last year, those bills got more traction than ever before, which reformers count as an encouraging sign. Governor Greg Abbott even signed a very limited, albeit first in the state, law allowing some epileptic patients access to cannabis-derived treatments. On the local level, policies to ease penalties for first-time marijuana offenders have been central to the “culture change” Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, a Republican, has been calling for in the local criminal justice system. Polls continue to show that the majority of people in Houston and across the state favor decriminalizing marijuana or at least lowering criminal penalties for pot possession. Political opinion has shifted to the point where a farright East Texas Republican is calling for the total decriminalization of marijuana in the state. Local police officials have urged the state and the feds to make big changes on pot, calling the drug war a “miserable failure.” The kind of roadblock set up by the state GOP only threatens the party’s future, Russell argues: “If the Republican Party is to thrive both in Texas and nationally, it must stop eating its young, and treating hard working activists as useless, simply because members of a backroom committee disagree with them on one issue. This act by the RPT signals that a significant portion of Republicans, including the vast majority of Republicans under 40, are not welcome or valued — even if we agree with 99 percent of what happens to be in the everchanging Republican Party of Texas platform.”

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Max Burkhalter

mer college All-American and first-round pick in the 1994 draft had been prudent with his money and invested wisely. He had no debt, no wife, no kids, a Super Bowl ring he’d earned with the Green Bay Packers, a degree from the University of Notre Dame and a house in Southern California. The world was his oyster, and all in all, retired life for Aaron Taylor was pretty goddamn perfect, right? Well, for a while, perhaps, yes. “At first, retiring for me was a huge relief because I was in so much physical pain, I was glad it was over,” recalled Taylor. “And the

first couple months of retirement are actually fun because you’re missing OTAs [organized team activities] and minicamp, and you feel like you’re playing hooky. But that euphoria doesn’t last long.” Eventually, NFL training camp rolled around in 2000, and for the first time in his adult life, Taylor had nowhere to be and nothing to do. It was scary as hell, and Taylor soon found himself in a dark place that, sadly, a majority of NFL players experience to some degree after retiring from the game — an empty daily existence fraught with depression and identity is-

sues whose figurative seeds are sowed, unbeknownst to the players, the moment they enter the National Football League. “From the time we arrive in the NFL, we are handed a schedule and a game plan for everything,” Taylor explains. “We are totally programmed, and all we’re asked to do is go execute. It’s the ironic beauty of football — it’s a vocation that allows us to excel without thinking too much. The problem is that it’s all-consuming, so when it’s over, you’re left literally wondering, ‘Who am I without the game of football? What is my purpose here?’” >> p10

arch 3 - 9, 2016 MonthMXX–M onth XX, 2014

t was March of 2000, probably a few years earlier than Aaron Taylor anticipated retiring when he entered the NFL in 1994, but at that point, the pain in his surgically repaired knees was in that medical purgatory where it was far too agonizing to continue playing offensive line but they were fortunately still functional enough for him to lead a normal life. So while a six-season NFL career wasn’t exactly what he drew up on the chalkboard, Taylor outwardly was in a pretty glorious place in retirement, all things considered. The for-

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high you get is like the high we got from competing in the NFL.” Anderson retired in 2011 after six seasons in the league. A seventh-round draft choice in 2006 out of Colorado State, Anderson was able to overcome his relatively diminutive size, carve out a decent living and leave the game relatively healthy. “I never needed any surgeries,” he said. “Just a few concussions, that was it.” While he still enjoys watching the game of football, Anderson has no desire even to toss a football around as a form of activity. “I’ve played thousands of pickup basketball games and soccer games since I retired,” said Anderson. “I’ve played maybe 45 minutes of football, tops. I can’t do it. It’s not the same. It’s depressing.”

T Courtesy of Aaron Taylor

Aaron Taylor says that the hardest part about retirement was the loss of identity and purpose. Post season from p9

With a pending billion-dollar lawsuit against the league (not to mention a 2015 feature film, Concussion) that is centered on brain disease and head trauma in former NFL players, the average football-watching fan is likely more aware of the pain endured by retired football players than he was, say, five or ten years ago. However, the misery Taylor and countless other players have undergone is a little more latent and harder to detect from the outside than the physical injuries, in part because of the intangible nature of emotional discord, and in part because NFL players have always been conditioned to subdue emotion and never show vulnerability, which works fine on the football field but horrifically in real life. “From the time we were drafted, coaches demanded that we have on our ‘game face’ and show no emotion,” said Taylor. “If we’re being honest, the only thing the NFL truly values is a player not being a pussy. So as a result, we suffer in silence, and unfortunately we continue to suffer in silence once we’re out of the game. We do that until we hit rock bottom.”

or retired NFL players, rock bottom can mean bankruptcy, divorce, chemical dependency or some combination of the three. A 2009 study found that 78 percent of retired NFL players experience one or more of these hardships within two seasons of retiring. Taylor was one player in that 78 percent, having drunk himself silly through the first year and a half of his post-career identity crisis before eventually seeking help, going through the 12-step process and getting sober practically two years to the day after he retired from the NFL. “I was an ax-swinging motherfucker when I was in the league, man,” said Taylor. “So finding the humility to admit I needed help was the hardest part for me.”

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Like Taylor, former Patriots linebacker and current Houston talk show host Ted Johnson retired from the game with championship hardware (three Super Bowl rings in all) and universal respect, both of which made him a tremendously popular player in a sports-crazed town. Unfortunately, a decade of using his head as his prime weapon for tackling — Johnson was known around the league as “Cement Head Ted” — left him with countless concussions, which led to his retiring prior to the 2005 season. Physically, Johnson was ready for retirement, but emotionally, as with many players before him, life in the real world was a daunting prospect. “You go from having seemingly every minute accounted for in your day to having nothing to do,” Johnson said. “It’s hard to explain, but you leave the game and there’s almost a level of shame in trying to acclimate yourself to everyday life. It feels like you no longer have a purpose.” Johnson’s difficulties post-career were exacerbated by not only his concussions but also his courageous decision to go public in a 2007 New York Times interview in which he revealed that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick forced him to practice with concussions in 2002. The backlash from that interview left Johnson ostracized in the Boston area and contributed to chemical dependency issues that sent him to rehab on multiple occasions. While some players are able to dodge the trappings of post-retirement financial, marital or chemical problems, some degree of depression is nearly unavoidable, and whether they like it or not, players will end up executing the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief for the end of their careers the same way they executed a play-action pass downfield. “I don’t care what anybody says, no player is prepared for the void you feel after retiring from football,” contends former Houston Texans wide receiver David Anderson. “I’ve never taken crack, but I would imagine the

he degree to which players are able to adjust to life after football, or at the very least quell some of the despair that comes from the void created by retirement, seems to be proportional to the support groups and resources available to them. Former Houston Texans center Chris Myers retired last year after being released in March 2015, concluding a ten-year career that saw him make several million dollars along the way. Married with a family of four, Myers has enough distractions at home to at least keep him busy, even if he experiences the same aftereffects that take some guys into a much darker place. “The first thing you notice is the emptiness,” Myers said. “There was a structure to every sin-

gle day, and not having that anymore, there’s a sense of loss. The bad thing is, without football, guys can wind up dealing with their families the same way they dealt with football, and that type of aggressiveness doesn’t work at home. The transition to being outside of the football life can be really difficult.” Myers deals with the change by almost subconsciously reinserting some version of football structure into his life on a daily basis. “Certain guys don’t like the monotony of football, but you live it and you still live it afterwards,” he said. “I still wake up early every morning at the same time I did when I was in the league. “For ten years, I knew what I was supposed to do every day, and now, well…” Perhaps the biggest contributor to the postfootball career trauma experienced by former NFL players is the asymmetrical nature of their life experience and career timelines compared with those of regular, everyday folk. Most people experience the competition of establishing themselves in some long-term career path in their twenties and early thirties and then achieve their biggest fiscal earnings in their forties and fifties or later. Conversely, football players are the exact opposite. They do a massive chunk of their earning before they even turn 25 or 26 (that immaturity being a major reason why there are so many bankruptcies, by the way), and find themselves at their “real-world” starting line in their early thirties, competing in a race >> p12

Max Burkhalter

Former Texan Chris Myers’s transition to retirement has included work in radio and coaching.

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where the system they experienced in the NFL can impede their ability to hit the ground running, if they ever get running at all. On top of that, Detroit Lions safety James Ihedigbo, a nine-year veteran who is nearing his retirement years, maintains that an unhealthy view of wealth exists around the league. “Guys are taught from their rookie year moving forward that they’re supposed to take the money they make in the NFL and make it last a lifetime,” said Ihedigbo. “That creates a foolish sense of security and a stagnant mind-set that I think contributes to guys’ not knowing what to do once they’re out of football.” Myers goes as far as to say that there are numerous players who lack even basic financial literacy. “I’ve seen guys who have filed taxes for two or three years and not known what a W-2 is,” Myers claimed. “I’ve seen guys who don’t even bother to put money in the league’s 401(k), which matches two dollars for every one dollar up to $10,000. There are guys actually forgoing a free 20 grand every year!” If more coaches and management viewed NFL players as actual people rather than chess pieces, some of the post-career adjustment problems might be mitigated somewhat; however, the league is a cold business. Players are employees, no more, no less. In a 2015 Newsday survey, 85 percent of 763 former NFL players polled said they did not believe the NFL adequately prepared them for life after football. “While we’re playing, the league doesn’t really educate players at all on finances and life after football,” claims Ihedigbo. “The league cares about the league and making money. They don’t care about life after football. They want you to abide by the rules, carry yourself accordingly, and once you’re done, it’s ‘best of luck.’ No different than any other business, really. It’s up to the individual to be accountable.” So in a league in which 80 percent of retired players wind up financially or emotionally destitute within two years of leaving the game, and virtually 100 percent of retired players are dealing with various kinds of physical ailments, how does this transition phase, with all its metaphorical potholes and land mines, get fixed? Because it has to get fixed, right? Well, since the implementation of the new collective bargaining agreement in 2011, and even more so since he took over as president of the NFL Players Association in 2014, former Houston Texan and more recently Cincinnati Bengals offensive tackle Eric Winston has been focused on this very thing — the seamless transition of retired NFL players from the league to society. “In 2011, during the work stoppage, that was one of the big things,” claimed Winston. “We knew that we had a lot of guys who were out of the game, and they’re at Point A, and they know what Point B looks like, but they don’t know how to get to Point B, and we needed to find a way to get them there.” The solution was the NFLPA’s creation of The Trust, which is described on its website as “a set of resources, programs, and services designed to provide former players with the support, skills, and tools to help ensure success off the field and in life after football.” Its creation was a revolutionary step for a league and a union that had watched previous generations of battered players pretty much fend

Max Burkhalter

Still an active player and president of the NFLPA, Eric Winston (l) hopes to help make postcareer life better for all NFL players.

for themselves to find a post-football career and, in turn, a reason to wake up every day. The Trust claims to offer a “total wellness program.” In other words, it operates not only to assess, monitor and aid in the physical health of retired players, but also to assist those same players in getting started on post-football careers, with programs designed to help in everything from generating a résumé to networking with companies and business leaders in a player’s city of residence. Winston says The Trust executes a playercentric process that focuses first on the physical well-being of the player and then on his professional well-being. “One of the first things we do is help them get their paperwork filed for workmen’s comp and line of duty, and start getting them healthy,” outlines Winston. “Guys are broken and they need fixing, so we say let’s get ‘the person’ right first. “From there, The Trust asks them what they want to do,” Winston continued. “We can have them take an aptitude test, we can create connections in cities that allow networking, help them get their degree with tuition assistance, help build their résumé.” Anderson is one example of a player who has taken advantage of the tuition assistance, having had nearly 80 percent of his tuition paid for by The Trust and the NFL in receiving his graduate degree from the University of Southern California. Today, Anderson works for a sports analytics start-up company called Second Spectrum.

All the services The Trust provides are free of charge to players who have two or more years of credited service in the league. On paper, this is a huge benefit for former players, and acceptance of it is growing by the day. “It’s not an easy process, but we have 1,700 enrollees. The big thing is word of mouth and getting guys to buy into it,” said Winston. As someone who himself is nearing retirement sometime in the next few years, Winston is sensitive to the need for former players to have a purpose in life, and he knows that the plight and depression of those leaving the game are generated by everything from the game’s aggressive culture to the semantics of the word “retirement.” “I’ve thought for a long time that the worst thing we do is use the word ‘retirement’ when talking about football players because it implies some sort of finality when it comes to actually working,” Winston said. “It’s like that word implies that guys are done working, and it’s time to hit the beach and live the good life. It’s a dangerous word. I prefer to call them ‘former’ players, not ‘retired’ players.” While the long hours and soul-crushing grind of the NFL are a big reason players leave the game inadequately programmed for the real world, Winston theorizes that it can be those very things that make a former NFL player attractive to a company or organization.

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ommunication is a huge key to substantive change in the quality of the lives of former NFL players, specifically players’ doing away with the macho notion that they keep depression and anxiety to themselves. One of the flash points in the awareness of brain trauma and depression in former players was the 2012 suicide of Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, whose friends claim to this day that they didn’t see any outward signs that he was ready to take his own life. The fact is that the tougher a guy appears to be, the less those around him think he needs help. Seau obviously needed help in the worst way possible. “Junior Seau embodied an otherworldly level of toughness,” said Taylor, who was a teammate of Seau’s in San

Diego. “I knew he had issues; I took him to A.A. meetings with me. His death really shook people up.” If there can be a positive pulled from the fire of a tragedy like Seau’s death, though, it is indeed the resulting attention to the plight of bruised and battered retired players, and that the tide seems to have turned for them in their fight for resources and help after their careers. There is most assuredly still more work to do. On the NFL Players Association side of things, Myers believes more communication with players during their athletic careers on post-player planning is a necessity. “We need to come up with any program we can to communicate to guys and make them knowledgeable about finances and life after football while they’re playing,” said Myers. “I’ve even thought about a program that communicates this to guys before they get into the league.” Even with the enhanced post-career preparation programs available to players, there will always be a degree of trial and error when it comes to guys’ identifying their optimal career paths. Anderson flirted with a radio career before settling upon graduate school and his current employer (although he jokes that he would still rather just “roller-blade all day in a Speedo and spend the rest of [his] money”). Upon sobriety, Taylor backpacked through Europe for a couple of months as an active way to figure out his purpose in life. He thought it would be as a teacher, until ABC called to hire him as a college football analyst in 2002, a position that he now holds with CBS. Myers is moving his family to Philadelphia later this year, into a brand-new dream home that ten years in the NFL allowed him to build. He is still adjusting to life after football and for now appears to have taken a liking to coaching, specifically training NFL draft prospects, but he’s still figuring things out. Winston might come back for another year with the Bengals, but either way, his tenure as president of the NFLPA has given him a crash course in finding that post-NFL purpose. “It’s allowed me a glimpse at the future while I’m still playing,” Winston said. “I’ve learned a ton about running a business. Understanding, learning, it’s been out of sight.” The NFL has never been more popular and more lucrative than it is at this very moment. Every financial metric says the game is healthier than it’s ever been. It would stand to reason that the most important employees, the ones who truly are the product, would have a chance for similar health after they’re done playing, so there don’t need to be any more Junior Seaus and so that the 78 percent of retired players who are bankrupt, divorced or chemically dependent within two years dwindles to a much smaller number. There is an old, morbid saying that football players die twice — once when they retire and again when they actually die. It encapsulates the abyss of despair players have tumbled into for decades upon retirement. Going forward, Winston would like to see that metaphor turned completely on its head, and tell every retired player: “You climbed the mountain one time; you can do it again.”

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“Even the most well-adjusted guys struggle, and it’s strange: The longer they play football, the less qualified guys feel they are to do anything else,” said Winston. “Guys don’t realize, though, how unique it is that they’ve worked 12- to 15-hour days constantly for years, and how that stacks up when they’re working with regular people. Football players bring something unique to the table.“ Convincing and communicating to NFL players that their workplace, with its average career of a little more than three years and an average annual salary of $2 million, can somehow actually facilitate normalcy after they retire is a massive but necessary step. As much as we all enjoy our fantasy football drafts and our Sundays in the fall, it’s pretty eye-opening that the transition of the average NFL player to regular society probably best mirrors the transition of paroled prisoner Red in Shawshank Redemption, in which the character actually wishes he could go back to prison because he misses its mindless routine and draconian structure. On a related note, in that aforementioned Newsday survey from 2015, 61 percent of former players said they found it difficult to adjust to daily life after their NFL careers, and 89 percent said that, despite the medical and emotional difficulties they were experiencing as a result of football, they would do it all over again. When it comes to explaining the transition to life after football, Aaron Taylor prefers an analogy in which he sees every NFL player driving toward a cliff, and that cliff is retirement from the NFL. “We are all going to drive off that cliff, but some will do it with more velocity,” Taylor explains. “That velocity is generated by money, by resources. Guys like Drew Bledsoe, with their health and tens of millions of dollars in the bank, will go off the cliff at a high speed, fly far and land softly. Other guys, with less money, less resources, less velocity, they’ll plummet straight down and land hard. “Most guys in the league land hard,” Taylor conceded. While the removal of structure and interpersonal camaraderie with the other players is a huge reason retired players tumble emotionally, Taylor believes the biggest reason is that, unlike with other jobs, when players are fired from football, they are fired from the industry permanently. “Think about it. If you’re a banker or a chef or nearly any other occupation, and you get fired, there’s always another bank or restaurant or whatever,” said Taylor. “But there’s only one National Football League, and when you’re asked to leave, it’s forever. It’s hard to put into words how frightening that is for guys.”

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Parkour makes you look at the world in a different way.

New opera about celebrity, arrogance and royal power.

Learn about the evolution of flight in new amber exhibit.

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The Gite Gallery launches Afro-Cuban art collection.

Bikinis and Fur

While many voters might #FeelTheBern, local hipsters will be feeling a different type of burn at The Fashion of Burning Man, with art installations, an auction of canvases from last year’s event in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, and a runway show featuring 60 very different looks from this annual celebration of artistic self-expression. “At Burning Man, during the day it’s really hot and at night it can drop to 25 degrees,” says Barbara Roman, who is producing the event for Houston Core and The Mask Factory Art Group of Houston. “You can start the day in a bikini, and at night you’re wearing a fur coat. Those are things we consider when we think about our costumes,” says Roman. The lineup includes emcees Britt Vasicek (cheeky and fearless) and Elisabeth Padjen (biting wit, snarky attitude) — as well as nosh from Canopy. Proceeds offset the cost of art supplies for the next Burning Man. 6:30 to 11 p.m. Thursday. South Beach, 810 Pacific. For information, call 713-878-9575 or visit themaskfactoryartgroup.com. $45 to $1,039.95 (VIP table). SAM BYRD

VIC SHUTTEE

CuBists in CuBa

In the early 20th century, Henri Matisse showed Pablo Picasso an African mask, and Picasso raised an eyebrow. After Picasso’s 1907 visit to an ethnographic museum in Paris, he was hooked, saying au revoir to his Rose Period and launching into his protoCubist African Period, during which he painted Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Now local gallerist Lloyd Gite, on his first art-finding trip to Cuba, has discovered Picasso-esque works by Afro-Cuban artists (those who have mostly

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one-oF-a-kind ComiC

On Last Comic Standing, judge Roseanne Barr paid 30-year-old Tommy Ryman quite the compliment, saying she’d “never seen anything like him” and that Tommy was “one of a kind.” Two years later, that moment still thrills the young stand-up comedian. “Going into [Last Comic Standing], you just want a good set. I had no plans of moving on. Then, suddenly, all the judges are complimentary, and to have a legend

like Roseanne say that she’s a fan, that blows your mind.” Having previously toured with comedians Maria Bamford, Nick Swardson and Louie Anderson, Ryman spent ten years moving from “open miker” to touring headliner. Since coming into his own as a comic, Ryman has become friendly with people he grew up loving. “I had been such a fan of [Bamford], watching her work [since] The Comedians of Comedy documentary on Comedy Central way back when. All of a sudden, we’re at an open mike [together] and I hear her laughing in the background. I told her [she] was great, but then she cuts me off and screams, ‘No, you

SAT

Heeeyyyy wagon

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For cowboys and cowgirls who prefer a little more “heeeyyyy” in the wagon, Out At The Rodeo is bringing out-loud-and-proud to the country’s largest annual rodeo event, and it’s a lot easier than remembering which color bandanna goes in which pocket. Visit the organization’s website to order a T-shirt, wear it to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and then look for others dressed like you. The itinerary will be posted throughout the day using hashtag #OATR16, and they’re sure to

March 3 - 9, 2016 Month XX–Month XX, 2014

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Grady Carter

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West African ancestry). He purchased about 60 pieces from famous and emerging artists, including noted painter and engraver Eduardo Roca (Choco), and brought those works back to launch The Gite Gallery’s new AfroCuban art collection. “There are several artists who have incorporated that particular style [Cubism], which I love, but you have to realize that Picasso’s style came from Africa. So it’s only natural that that style of art would sort of linger on,” says Gite. There’s a launch party from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday. Regular viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays. 2024 East Alabama. For information, call 713-523-3311 or visit thegitegallery.com. Free. SUSIE TOMMANEY

Forget sidewalks

Few will forget that hilarious episode of The Office that opens with Michael, Dwight and Andy attempting parkour, after Jim (the instigator) mentions that it was used during a chase scene in 2006’s Casino Royale. It starts simply enough — with the trio jumping from desk to chair to door in their attempt to “get from point A to point B as creatively as possible” — but it ends poorly when Andy jumps from the rooftop only to discover the box he lands on offers no cushion. Expect a little less stupidity and a lot more fun when Urban Movement brings parkour to Discovery Green in a series of weekly training sessions. “It really makes you look at the whole world in a different way,” says Wes Hamner, founding member, senior coach and director. “After you get into training, you start to think of the whole world as your playground. Suddenly, a sidewalk doesn’t look like the only way; you see a small wall that you’d rather go over rather than go around. 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursdays. March 3 through June 30. 1500 McKinney. For information, call 713-400-7336 or visit discoverygreen. com. Free. SUSIE TOMMANEY

were great!’” Ryman chuckles, “It was weird.” 8 and 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Joke Joint Comedy Showcase, 11460 Fuqua Street. For information, call 281-481-1188 or visit jokejointcomedyshowcase.com. $16 to $18.

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manning up

As a baritone in opera, Ben Edquist says he knows he won’t get a lot of chances to do a deep emotional role. “You’re usually the villain or the sidekick,” he says. But in Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players, a chamber opera commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and premiering this month, he gets to play a very emotional and real-life role: that of Edward Kynaston, a Restoration-era actor with androgynous looks that enabled him to play female roles in the 1660s — a time when women weren’t allowed on the London stage. Edquist auditioned for the part last year after hearing from renowned opera composer Jake Heggie (who suggested he apply) that Floyd specifically (playing against expectations) wanted a baritone in the lead, rather than a tenor. “He wanted to make it clear that this was a man,” says Edquist, now a member of the HGO student academy. Edquist says Kynaston “was the talk of the country because he’s the best at what he does.” Accompanying that star power was a certain amount of arrogance, and it was actually his emotional objections about female actors, voiced to King Charles II, that hastened the change and the king’s decision to allow women and, in fact, bar men from playing female roles, Edquist says. There will be one intermission in the 90- to 100-minute production (they’re still fine-tuning), which is sung in English. 8 p.m. Saturday and Friday, March 11; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 13. Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. Through March 13. For information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25 to $80. MARGARET DOWNING

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Couples

Come over to our house and watch my husband and me fight. Sound like a night from hell? Well, famed playwright Edward Albee decided that was good material for an examination of the truths and lies in modern marriage and came up with the 1963 Tony Award-winning Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — a work not for the faint of heart in either content or length. Clocking in at three hours with two intermissions, it rips apart the relationship between college professor George and his wife, Martha, daughter of the college president, while a younger couple (Nick and Honey) look on and eventually, unable to escape, become embroiled in the evening’s events. “It’s not just two people screaming at each other,” says Stark Naked Theatre Company’s Philip Lehl, who plays George opposite wife Kim Tobin-Lehl as Martha. Matt Hune and Teresa Zimmerman play Nick and Honey. “It’s a reflection of society and our facades,” says Tobin-Lehl. “It’s stripping the cover off illusion in a marriage.” But all is not hatred and bile, Tobin-Lehl says. “It’s also about love. In order to have the stamina to fight, you have to have love.” 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and Monday, March 21; 3 p.m. Sundays. Spring Street Studios, Studio 101, 1824 Spring. Through March 26. For information, call 832-866-6514 or visit starknakedtheatre.com. $29 to $49. March 21 is pay what you can. MARGARET DOWNING

Front and Center

Michael Flatley, the dancer/choreographer who revitalized and built on Irish dancing by incorporating upper-body movement into his routines, is headed back to Houston for a onenight-only performance in what he says is his last tour with Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games. “My body has taken a severe beating over the last 20 years.” He says he feels like he’s dancing at a high level now, but “I don’t think I’d be at that level in another two years.” He’ll be dancing in two, but not all of the numbers. Flatley, who became world-famous as he

Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games is at Revention Music Center.

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took his troupe around The Alley Theatre the globe, says: “My presents Around whole dream was to the World in 80 make dance a center Days. act. It wouldn’t be just people in the background.” The show includes new numbers, costumes and special effects. But as Flatley makes clear: “The meat of the show is those big dance numbers. That hasn’t changed.” Fans will be delighted to know that he’s already working on a book, which entails his going back through a career’s worth of notes and photos — many of the pictures never made public before, he says. 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Revention Music Center, 520 Texas. For information, call 713-230-1600 or visit reventionmusiccenter. com. $62.25 to $409. MARGARET DOWNING

MON

tHe mind’s eye

Faster and Faster

Courtesy of Frank Publicity

3/7

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? According to artist Kathryn Rabinow, a former psychologist and teacher, it most definitely is. She uses the title of her exhibit at The Jung Center, “Abstract/Random/Concrete/Sequential,” to explain her hypothesis about the different learning and personality styles in adults. “It deals with a paradigm in terms of how people take in information and how they process it,” says Rabinow. “Concrete and abstract are ways of how people take in information. Random and sequential are the ways that people process information received.” For this exhibit, part of the FotoFest 2016 Biennial, Rabinow merges photography with her computer to produce vibrantly colored abstractions. There’s an opening reception 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, March 5. Regular viewing hours are 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Through March 30. 5200 Montrose. For information, call 713-524-8253 or visit junghouston.org. Free. BILL SIMPSON

TUE

March 3 - 9, 2016

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hit all the great attractions like Le Grand Wheel, the pig races and the Champion Wine Garden. Proceeds from the T-shirt sales benefit AIDS Foundation Houston. “This is a grassroots effort to gain a GLBT day at the Rodeo,” says event organizer Doug Mason. “We’re going to make it a party and have that party give back.” Swag bags, prizes (watch out for the prize posse) and spirited fun are all part of the plan. Noon to midnight, Saturday. NRG Center, Three NRG Park. For information, visit OutAtTheRodeo.com. $20 for the T-shirt; $10 for general admission to NRG Park and the carnival. SAM BYRD

3/8

In Around the World in 80 Days, writer Jules Verne told the story of Phileas Fogg, who wagers that he can circumnavigate the world as Victorians knew it in that amount of time. Alley Theatre now presents Mark Brown’s adaptation of the book for the stage, which sets a similar seemingly impossible task for actors — how to move at manic pace but somehow make it all comprehensible. Jay Sullivan will inhabit no fewer than 19 of the 42 distinct characters. Only Todd Waite as Phileas Fogg gets to play one role; everyone else at least doubles, Sullivan says. “There’s five of us telling this enormous story with as much efficiency, few people and as little waste as

Courtesy of Alley Theatre

possible.” Visiting actor/director Mark Shanahan (The Hollow) has the helm. “He has the right spirit for this play,” Sullivan says. “It’s old-school playing like backyard imagination — turning the swing set into the pirate ship kind of playing. Our motto for the production is that we’re going to magically do the impossible.” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturday, March 5; 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays (matinee performance only March 27); 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays. Through April 3. 615 Texas. For information, call 713-220-5700 or visit alleytheatre.org. $26 to $100. MARGARET DOWNING

WED

3/9

gigantotermes wHat?

Gigantotermes rex. It seems like the perfect name for a new species of termite that’s almost an inch long and was just discovered in 100-year-old amber. Scientists have long been fascinated by the 45-million-year-old specimens found in the Baltic region, but now researchers are all abuzz about huge amber finds in Burma containing insects, creatures and plant life from the mid-Cretaceous period. The Houston Museum of Natural Science is featuring more than 100 samples of these golden tombs in “Amber Secrets: Feathers from the Age of Dinosaurs.” It’s exciting stuff, with papers being written almost every week about the discoveries found in the samples, including feathers (yielding clues about the evolution of flight), diversity (explaining how our planet morphed from green to flowering color) and new species of termites (including Krishnatermes yoddha and the terrifying Gigantotermes rex). There’s a behind-the-scenes tour at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 7 ($17 to $27). Regular viewing hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Through March 26, 2017. 5555 Herman Park. For information, call 713-639-4629 or visit hmns.org. $30. SUSIE TOMMANEY

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Film

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot confirms that the movies don’t get Tina Fey.

BY MELISSA ANDERSON

WTF is essentially Eat Pray Love for embeds.

an artlessly inserted sequence of a group of women in blue burkas walking in the square — we are meant not to be appalled by her bigotry but to chortle along with her forthrightness. More distressingly, the actor playing Kim’s intermediary is Connecticut native Christopher Abbott (best known for Girls and James White), who apparently possesses the lone qualifications Hollywood demands to portray an Afghan native: the ability to grow a thick beard and look good in a pakol. Abbott’s Fahim Ahmadzai, at least, is constructed as a noble, if one-dimensional character. In contrast, Alfred Molina, as the corrupt, concupiscent attorney general, the other prominent “Afghan” in the film, has been instructed to play as broad as the Khyber Pass. Ficarra and Requa’s directorial debut, the zippy same-sex romantic comedy I Love You Phillip Morris (2009), which they

Busytown Confidential

Disney’s Zootopia paws at segregated city life. BY MICHELLE ORANGE

n Zootopia, animals do a lot of the things that animals in Disney movies usually do: They speak, to begin with; they walk upright and wear funny clothes; they exhibit attitudes that align or ironically misalign with their species’ appearance and reputation; they hold jobs; they experience outsize emotion and moral doubt; they sing and dance about their emotions and resolve those moral doubts. Which is to say that, in Disney’s almost-audacious new animated feature, the an-

also wrote, provided lead Jim Carrey with one of his greatest roles; the actor’s manic energy, refocused in that film, was divided equally between id and libido. WTF, however, confirms what’s been obvious ever since 2004’s Mean Girls, Fey’s first major film outing: that the performer and writer, who’s done so many outstanding things on the small screen, has frequently been illserved by the big one. Fey’s movies, WTF especially, not only reveal how limited her acting range is but also lead to extreme cognitive dissonance, as they’re often the kinds of pandering cultural products her TV shows would skewer. Unbreakable Kimmy Schimdt, like 30 Rock before it, brilliantly calls attention to the pathologies and absurdities of white privilege (the earlier show giving us the immortal phrase “white nonsense,” delivered by

imals behave less like actual humans and more like humans found in movies. What sets Zootopia apart from its dancing-bear kin is the way it uses the terms of anthropomorphism to emphasize its central questions: What does it mean to be civilized — i.e., to be human — what does it mean to be an animal, and is it possible to be both? If that sounds heavy, never fear: Zootopia also features a lion named Mayor Lionheart (J.K. Simmons), a bunny named Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and an anthem-belting gazelle (named Gazelle) voiced by Shakira. A biblical variety and number of God’s adorably styled creatures populate this allegory of discrimination and tribalism. The bunny is our girl: Raised on a farm with her 225 siblings, Judy’s dream was to move to Zootopia, “where anyone can be anything,” and become a police officer.

Sherri Shepherd’s Angie Jordan). WTF, which was produced by Fey (along with Lorne Michaels and others) and written by Robert Carlock, a chief collaborator on Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock, only lightly jabs at its heroine. “That is officially the most American-white-lady story I’ve ever heard,” a Lebanese colleague (Sheila Vand) tells Kim after she constructs a dopey metaphor involving that stationary bike seen in WTF’s opening minutes to explain why she’s in Kabul. But the American white lady’s story is the official one here, the horrors she is surrounded by mere backdrop to her self-improvement. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. With Tina Fey, Margot Robbie, Martin Freeman, Alfred Molina and Billy Bob Thornton. Rated R.

Like contemporary New York or Paris, the metropolis of Zootopia is also a sort of theme park — in this case a land of different climates and topographies where all animals live in peace, if not quite together. Boroughs like “Little Rodentia” and “Tundratown” separate the mice from the polar bears; despite its claim of harmony between species, Zootopia’s animals self-segregate, something the film suggests is inevitable within even the most inclusive society. The whole shebang hinges on the apparent eradication of the prey drive in the animal kingdom’s natural predators, including Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a swaggering fox with an all-day hustle. The animals have “evolved” past the prey instinct, though apparently their other respective drives remain intact (see Judy’s 225 siblings). With some effort, Judy aces the police academy, only to find that she is un- >> p20

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he title of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s strained dark comedy, in which the war in Afghanistan serves as the backdrop to an American woman’s self-actualizing journey, is the military phonetic-alphabet rendering of WTF. The mild Islamophobia and highly questionable casting choices in the film call to mind other texting abbreviations — namely, AYFKMWTS and GTFOOH. In the end, though, it’s an armed-forces acronym dating back to World War II that best describes this dismal project: FUBAR. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is based on reporter Kim Barker’s 2011 memoir, The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan (which I haven’t read). In the big-screen adaptation, the first “r” is dropped from the author’s surname (as are her escapades in the second country of the title), and her career is slightly tweaked: Kim Baker (Tina Fey) is a writer for a cable-news channel in New York, not a print journalist (Barker, formerly with the Chicago Tribune, is now on the Metro desk at The New York Times). The film signals her sad-lady status with the bottle of over-40 multivitamins on her desk, the exercise bike she rides in a grim windowless room and the “mildly depressive” boyfriend (Josh Charles) who never seems to be in town. Kim signs up for a threemonth assignment in Kabul in 2003, a post she stretches out to years. In the Afghan capital, the diffident journo blooms: She becomes a confident on-air correspondent, pounds both scotch and a Scottish freelance photographer (Martin Freeman) and, in what has become a prerequisite for all Fey vehicles, cabbage-patches to ’90s old-school jams. WTF is essentially Eat Pray Love for embeds, filled with jokes and sight gags that are repeated to ever-stonier spectator silence. The wearying, self-explanatory looks-inflation system known as “Kabul cute” — applicable to women only — is clarified to Kim twice within five minutes of screen time, first by a fellow reporter (Margot Robbie) and then by a Marine colonel (Billy Bob Thornton); though she picks up Pashto and Dari quickly, the new arrival to Afghanistan, it would seem, has trouble grasping the difference between the numbers 4 and 10. Incessant shots of mongrel-humping typify WTF’s disregard for the battle-ravaged Asian nation — which is actually played by New Mexico. When Kim remarks to her fixer, “I know you like your women to be beautiful, mysterious IKEA bags” — a dig followed by

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Busytown Confidential from p19 welcome in a professional cohort made up of rhinos, polar bears and other beastly types led by a hardass Cape buffalo named Chief Bogo (Iris Elba). Like everyone else, Bogo believes Judy to be unfit for the job — she’s too small, too weak, too soft. In case we miss the analogies for sexism, racism and bigotry that run somewhat rampant in Zootopia, screenwriters Phil Johnston and Jared Bush (the latter also has a directing

credit, together with Byron Howard and Rich Moore) use language borrowed from debates on civil rights and diversity as well as the realm of political correctness and microaggressions. Judy insists she’s “not just some token bunny” and explains that only a bunny can call another bunny “cute.” Judy’s parents taught her that there is a biological basis for foxes’ bad behavior; Zootopia’s assistant mayor (Jenny Slate), a ewe, courts “the sheep vote.” At one point Judy calls Nick “articulate,” and he compliments her expert patronizing.

Nick claims that he entered a life of petty crime because the world didn’t expect any better from a “sly fox”; Judy must constantly transcend the “dumb bunny” trope. Zootopia feels most alert to its own mission when its characters — most centrally Judy “this is what a bunny looks like” Hopps — individuate while somehow staying true to their respective species. That mission gets clouded in scenes like Nick and Judy’s trip to a Zootopia DMV staffed entirely by sloths that behave…exactly like sloths. It’s an easy laugh, but one that cuts

against the movie’s diligent parsing of how insidious a silly stereotype can be. Nick and Judy’s relationship forms the heart of Zootopia’s edgy-cute exercise in consciousness raising: Stuck on the meter-maid beat but determined to prove herself, Judy catches Nick midhustle, then uses him to help investigate the disappearance of an otter named Emmet. Said otter is one of a dozen Zootopians — all predators — gone missing. In the course of her investigation, Judy uncovers evidence of predators suddenly “going savage” and attacking their fellow animals. Like a zombie outbreak, the savagery seems to be contagious, and the media begins force-feeding the population’s fears. Having recently shed their mutual prejudices, Nick and Judy find their partnership beginning to fray and fill with doubt. The problem, of course, with Zootopia’s framing metaphor is that predators are predators by nature, and thank God for that. Heavy with pop allusions and references to other crime underworld movies, including The Godfather and Chinatown, Zootopia is impressive in its visual conception and scope: At once straightforward and densely layered with wit and incident, it manages a lively clip and the odd fresh joke. But the movie’s limp resolution of the provocative questions it raises — aren’t we still animals, civilized but ultimately tribal animals, and won’t we always pose some kind of danger to one another? — had the Werner Herzog of my mind laughing loudest.

Zootopia Disney

Aren’t we still animals?

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Film

OPENING

ONGOING

Race — There is precisely one attempted coup de cinema in the Jesse Owens biopic Race, which otherwise defaults to the backlot handsomeness of other Great Men tributes from Hollywood. In 1935, Owens (Stephan James), then a Freshman sensation on the Ohio State University track team, returns to the locker room after practice and has a run-in with members of the unintegrated foot-

The Boy and the Beast: This animated feature film stars Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time), in a story about a nine-year-old becoming an apprentice to the beast warrior Kumatetsu in the beast world Jutengal. Some screenings are dubbed in English; others are subtitled in English. Friday, March 4, 7:30 and 10:45 p.m.; March 5-6, 3:15, 6:30 and 9:45 p.m., $9.50. Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Mason, 531 South Mason, Katy, 281-492-6900, www. drafthouse.com/houston. Cinderella: Part of Bank of America Screen on the Green, which offers favorite movies under Houston’s skyline. Pre-screening contests and activities begin one hour prior. Saturday, March 5, 7:30 p.m., free. Discovery Green Conservancy, 1500 McKinney, 713400-7336, discoverygreen.com. The Fifth Element: It’s another sci-fi thriller for action star Bruce Willis. This time he’s a 23-century cab driver who picks up the mysterious Milla Jovovich (Resident Evil), who turns out to be more trouble than he bargained for. This extravagantly styled tale of good against evil includes Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker. March 4-5, 11:59 p.m. Landmark River Oaks Theatre, 2009 West Gray, Thibault Grabherr, Focus Features 713-866-8881, landmarktheatres.com. Five Funny French Films: This is the sixth year for the Race Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Five Funny French Films, Anna Waterhouse, Wiki-skims through the fascinating basics. which brings the sophistication of French humor to the big screen. Sex, The relationship between Owens and Snyder is central, but Love & Therapy is about a womanizing ex-pilot who finds redemption Race follows the pattern of so many sports biopics in which it’s through a support group for sex addicts; parents vie for their children’s white patronage that makes black triumphs possible. Race also allegiance in Daddy or Mommy; and a village tries to recruit a parish has the surprising nerve to connect Owens’ story to that of Leni doctor in Home Sweet Home. The Elk fuses comedy with science fiction Riefenstahl, who’s shown documenting the Games for her 1938 in a quirky film about a stranger wearing an elk’s head, while Chic! tells masterpiece Olympia. She’s played with robust spirit by Carice the story of a prestigious haute couture fashion house on deadline. van Houten, but a Jesse Owens biopic is an unusual place to Friday, March 4, 7 and 9 p.m.; Saturday, March 5, 7 and 9 p.m.; Sunday, celebrate Riefenstahl. Rated PG-13. (Tobias) March 6, 5 p.m., $9. Brown Auditorium Theater, 1001 Bissonnet, 713The Revenant — The backbreaking, finger-freezing shoot for 639-7515, mfah.org/films. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s frostbit survival thriller The Revenant is Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Part of Movies Houstonians Love, this as good an explanation as any for why today’s movies are made month’s selection is by Gwendolyn Zepeda, Houston’s first Poet by actors in front of green screens: A flat and stiff final product Laureate. The film tells the story of an East Berlin musician who is a small price for ease and control. What’s marvelous about transforms him/herself after a botched surgery to form a band The Revenant is the improbable amount of control Iñárritu and called the Angry Inch, with tragic results. Monday, March 7, 7 p.m., director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki seem to wield, $9. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston - Brown Auditorium Theater, even out in the wild. To tell this simplest of revenge stories, 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7515, mfah.org/films. set in the American Rockies in the 1820s, the production shot Houston Jewish Film Festival: This annual festival screens films at for months in inhospitable stretches of Canada and Argentina, five locations: the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center; relying on natural light and the cruel whims of the weather. But the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Holocaust Museum Houston; the camera snakes through this wintry hell with all the dazzling Sundance Cinemas and Congregation Beth Jacob (in Galveston). fluidity Iñárritu displayed in Birdman. Early on, Pawnee ambush Visit erjcchouston.org/arts/houston-jewish-film-festival for DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass and his band of trappers; an intimate and complete schedule. Starting March 5, Saturday, March 5, 8 p.m.; ugly battle threads through the poplars, rich with brutal incident. Sunday, March 6, 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m.; Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, In one wheeling and impossible shot, Iñárritu follows a trapper or 5 and 7:30 p.m.; Wednesday, March 9, 7:30 p.m.; Friday, March 11, a Pawnee, then another coming from another direction, and then 1 p.m.; Saturday, March 12, 6 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, March 13, 1, 3 and another still. It’s a nerve-racking breakthrough for depictions of 6 p.m.; Saturday, March 19, 6 and 8:45 p.m.; Sunday, March 20, 1, battlefield chaos. Iñárritu seems to dare audiences to vacate the 4 and 7:30 p.m. Continues through March 20, $6 to $15. Evelyn theater. There are slogging minutes of near-death Glass crawlRubenstein Jewish Community Center, 5601 South Braeswood, ing through snow or wheezing with ice in his beard; there’s the 713-729-3200, www.erjcchouston.org. Malickian zone-out shots of the moon and sun burning through A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did: This 2015 documentary, made clouds; there’s the grunting lead performance from DiCaprio, in the United Kingdom and directed by David Evans, is an emotional who barely speaks; there’s Iñárritu’s take on the survive-theand psychological exploration as three men travel together to visit night-in-a-carcass routine, with a steaming abundance of horse the place where one man’s Jewish family was destroyed. Touches innards — it’s Matthew Barney meets The Empire Strikes Back. on the theme of how memory and time distort the truth. Tuesday, The sad thing, then, is that the story honored with such mastery March 8, 5 and 7:30 p.m., $8 to $10. Holocaust Museum Houston, is familiar journey/revenge stuff. Rated R. (Scherstuhl) 5401 Caroline, 713-942-8000, www.hmh.org. Triple 9 — Bad cop movies — whether bad movies about cops or Puccini’s Manon Lescaut: Fathom Events and the Metropolitan Opera movies about bad cops — can be like those Arctic core samples broadcast from the Met stage this obsessive love story of a country from which scientists determine long-gone CO2 levels, only girl who transforms herself into a Parisian temptress, while being they’re measuring American anxiety about police authority. pursued by a dashing student. Three hours, 35 minutes. Price varies Pop on John Hillcoat’s agonized pulp thriller Triple 9 in 20 years, by theater; visit fathomevents.com for additional venues. Saturday, and you’ll at least have evidence of the current wariness toward March 5, 11:55 a.m., $28.15. Edwards Houston Marq’e Stadium the militarization of that now-stouter-than-thin blue line. This 23 & IMAX, 7620 Katy Freeway, 713-263-7843, regmovies.com. is a bad cop movie in both senses of the phrase — one thick Culinary Movie Series: Red Obsession: The Culinary Institute LeNôtre with murderers, dope-sniffers and special-ops monsters, all and Kris Bistro host a movie night once a month with refreshments prepared to put their own concerns and safety above those of the and popcorn. Thursday’s film is narrated by Russell Crowe and offers public. An exemplary cast runs through the motions of shooting an in-depth look at the wine industry, including billionaire collectors, innocents and betraying each other. The story isn’t complex, but counterfeit markets and the art of the vineyard. Thursday, March 3, 1:15 and its telling is tangled. A character suggests to the Mafia one of 6:15 p.m., free. Kris Bistro & Wine Lounge, 7070 Allensby, 713-358-5079. those ideas so crazy that it just might work — in this case, the The Very Best of the Rural Route Film Festival: It’s an evening of “Triple 9” of the title. (It’s police code for an officer killed in the ten shorts about rare people and cultures, including cutting-edge line of duty.) The mobsters have tasked the team — featuring contemporary and archival work. Films include Belgium’s Marcel, non-entity characters played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, King of Tervuren, Ireland’s Home Turf, Canada’s When Elephants Norman Reedus and Clifton Collins, Jr. — with thieving a Who Dance, the Grass Gets Beaten, Lebanon’s The Bees, Ethiopia’s Salt, Cares from an Impregnable Wherever. How to buy the time for Australia’s The Hunter, Antarctica’s Travel Log: Antarctica and Ecuathe job? Trick a local thug into assassinating an earnest newbie dor’s The Last Ice Merchant. The United States has two entries: Anima cop (Casey Affleck) who has harassed him. The logic: Every P.O. Mundi and We’re Leaving, Zachary Treitz. Free for Aurora Picture in Hotlanta will rush to that scene instead of the heist. The ending Show members. Thursday, March 3, 7 p.m., $10. 2442 Bartlett, is grim, which perhaps is supposed to say something about crime 713-868-2101, www.aurorapictureshow.org.

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Deadpool — Deadpool is his film’s own junky, retrograde RiffTrack, cracking endlessly about balls and gayness, about burn victims and 90s bands and the conventions of superhero movies. Marvel comics’ “merc with a mouth” is a sort of shock-jock Spider-Man, with the Punisher’s arsenal, Wolverine’s healing powers, and the dialogue of one of those open-mic comedy dudes who believes its some kind of courageous truth-telling to point out that men like blowjobs. Onscreen, he can’t go a minute without a one-liner about jerking off, or calling bad guys “cock thistle” or “wheezing bag of dick tips.” In a tense moment in his pre-costume life, talking with his love (Morena Baccarin) over how he’ll dealt with the cancer that’s killing him, he spouts with some wistfulness, “If I had nickel for every time I spanked it to Bernadette Peters.” Between the patter, Deadpool’s about splatter, some of it memorable: Deadpool pinballs the severed head of Mook A to take out Mook B, and he cheerily loses the use of every limb, Monty Python and the Holy Grail-style, fighting the immovable Colossus (Stefan Kapičić), on loan from the X-Men movies. It’s all too much, by design, and it’s also by design that carping about it make you feel like a killjoy. Go ahead and go nuts if your life has a void in it that can only be filled by a superhero who gets an eyeful of Gina Carano and immediately declares that she must have a “wang” — and later compares her to Rosie O’Donnell. You just can’t pretend it’s radical, on-the-edge comedy when the hero picks the same joke targets as Donald Trump. Rated R. (Alan Scherstuhl) Eddie the Eagle — The sports media found a doozy of an inspirational story in British ski jumper Michael “Eddie” Edwards, a workingclass bloke with dreams of Olympic glory. Or it would have, had Edwards not finished dead last in two different events at the 1988 Games in Calgary — but whooped and flapped as if he’d won the gold. Now Edwards’ story has been packaged as Eddie the Eagle. A tacky embroidered sweater of a movie, it has the populist tone of those TV packages for the Olympics, only at 20 times the length. It tiptoes around the stickiest questions about Edwards’ (Taron Egerton) legitimacy, invents a hard-drinking American coach (Hugh Jackman) out of whole cloth and covers most of its hero’s athletic progress in a training montage set to Hall & Oates’ “You Make My Dreams Come True.” Short of outfitting Edwards with a beer helmet as he careens down the inrun, the film’s commitment to broad feel-good-isms is absolute. From director Dexter Fletcher’s perspective, there are only two types of people: those inspired by Edwards’ plucky resolve and the Finnish snobs or bureaucratic prigs who insist that he’s denigrating the sport. If there’s a reasonable position somewhere in the middle — the person who admires Edwards’ determination but respects the cruel meritocracy of athletic skill — Eddie the Eagle isn’t aware of it. The hero is a jumper-come-lately dodging a future as a plastering apprentice; the villains are Olympians who have been honing their craft since the age of six. Unless their stories are colorful, their achievements don’t matter. That’s true of primetime Olympics broadcasts — and of Eddie the Eagle. Rated PG-13. (Tobias)

not paying. But since Triple 9 riffs on, rather than examines, our ambivalence toward police state-ism, it illuminates nothing for us today. Rated R. (Scherstuhl)

London Has Fallen — The first, worst, and most profitable of competing presidential-assault thrillers from 2013, Olympus Has Fallen treated a terrorist attack on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with the utmost seriousness, like a scenario that had been gamed out on Fox News. In essence, it was another “Die Hard in a [blank]” shoot-’em-up, but because it was about totally plausible matters of national security, the only fun it offered was whatever one-liners Gerard Butler squeezed out. At the time, it felt like a Bush Administration relic that had slipped into Obama’s second term, a chest-thumping affirmation of American might against all threats foreign and domestic. And yet here is London Has Fallen, which moves the action to a monument-rich European capital but is otherwise the same generic, po-faced bore as the original. To a score flooded with choral wailings — this selection must be labeled “scary brown people” on the Hollywood soundboard — leaders from around the world arrive in London for a funeral, including U.S. President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), accompanied by Mike Banning (Butler), who leads his secret-service detail. It turns out to be an elaborate trap, with traitors working together to knock off heads of state. Banning and President Kick-Ass not only seem to anticipate such catastrophes, but actively train for them in competitive morning jogs and boxing sessions. Taking over for Antoine Fuqua, Swedish director Babak Najafi dutifully lays waste to the city, lopping the towers off Westminster Abbey and ensuring that at least one London bridge is falling down. The action never stops once the first car bomb is triggered, but the second half of London Has Fallen takes place mostly in the dark, where nobody can see the budget. Rated R. (Scott Tobias)

ball team, who pepper him with racist taunts. Owens’ enlightened coach, Larry Snyder (Jason Sudeikis), steps up and advises him to “block it out.” He does. The camera zooms forward in a mesmeric stutter and the sound drops to white noise, like a train tunneling through a mountain. This is a useful metaphor for Owens, who will win four Olympic gold metals a year later in Berlin. And it’s a useful metaphor for Race, which cuts an aerodynamic swath through the headwinds of history. In the filmmakers’ defense, the once-over-lightly approach to Owens’ story may be the only way to tell it efficiently; the ugly politics surrounding the Berlin Games are difficult to parse, to say nothing of the discrimination Owens faced back home. The screenplay, by Joe Shrapnel and

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Jack of the Red Hearts — Few would understand the trials and tribulations of living with a special-needs child, but as the mother of a son on the autism spectrum, director Janet Grillo (Fly Away) ably and unsentimentally immerses viewers in that demanding experience in Jack of the Red Hearts. AnnaSophia Robb stars as “Jack,” a septum-pierced teenage runaway who, in a quick-cash attempt to gain custody of her younger sister, impersonates a caregiver to a family with an 11-year-old autistic daughter named Glory (Taylor Richardson). Moderately streetwise but in over her head, Jack not only manages to fool the lowfunctioning girl’s perpetually frazzled mother (Famke Janssen), uncomfortably numb father (Scott Cohen) and frustrated teen brother (Israel Broussard), but also forms a bond with her young charge. Aside from some hallucinatory POV shots to illustrate Glory’s sensory issues, the film has the sterile look and feel of a made-for-TV melodrama, the situation and its lived-in details far more compelling than its blandly earnest plotting. There’s an unnecessary romantic interlude between Jack and the brother, and the inevitable crumbling of the delinquent’s facade — along with a denouement of good intentions and forgiveness — plays out exactly as it would on the Lifetime network. Still, it’s rare that a drama shows such specificity to the resilience of those coping with autism, and that sensitivity goes a long way. Rated PG. (Aaron Hillis) The Last Man on the Moon — The title A Trip to the Moon has been taken, but this wide-eyed there-and-back-again doc more than deserves it. The story of Apollo 10 and 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan, but also the story of the Apollo program itself, Mark Craig’s film at first resembles many other cultural-history docs: There are interviews, reenactments, and vintage home-movie clips touring us through NASA’s wild Sixties. The old footage is uniformly arresting, whether it’s showing us the kabooming beauty of liftoff or the astronauts’ wives smiling beneath their fetching bouffants. There are some rueful confessions — “We were not very good husbands. We weren’t very good fathers, either,” says Alan Bean — and choked-up bursts of feeling, as when Cernan reads aloud the letter he wrote to his daughter just before Apollo 10, the test-flight moonshot in which Cernan and co. did everything Neil Armstrong would later except land. But then the film vaults into orbit itself with its extended treatment of Cernan’s own time on the lunar surface during the last Apollo mission, in 1973. He speaks at affecting length about watching the Earth rise, about the silence and loneliness, about cruising in that buggy rover. We see all this, and because he’s a born talker — and because director Craig is careful and patient — we feel it all, too. The Last Man on the Moon puts you there and then asks why in the world we haven’t gone back. “I almost wish I didn’t come here today,” Cernan says in recent footage as he walks through what’s left of NASA’s old launch sites. Mostly, though, Craig’s film stirs emotions closer to what Cernan exclaimed when first stepping into the lunar dust: “Oh, my golly! Unbelievable!” Not Rated. (Scherstuhl) Only Yesterday (Omohide poro poro) — In spite of being Japan’s highest-grossing film in 1991, Studio Ghibli’s adult-oriented, non-make-believe Only Yesterday is only now enjoying its first U.S. release. It’s both an important part of Ghibli’s history and a gem in its own right. Taeko (Miki Imai) is an unmarried 27-yearold Tokyo native in 1982 who travels to the country to work for a spell on a safflower farm. Along the way, she begins to reminisce about being ten years old, living with her parents and two sisters while dealing with the indignities and pleasures of school and life. Only Yesterday alternates between the two timelines, with 1966 Taeko (Youko Honna) getting as much if not more screen time as 1982 Taeko — who, though not necessarily unhappy with her life, still wonders if she’s grown into the kind of person she wanted to be. 1982 Taeko is aware of her 10-year-old self as an active presence in her life; as she ruminates on the train, “I didn’t intend the ten-year-old me to come on this trip. But somehow, once she showed up … she wouldn’t leave me alone.” We then see young Taeko emerge from a curtain behind her older self’s back; she’s not a ghost, or a figment of older Taeko’s imagination, as the grown-up her doesn’t actually see her earlier incarnation. It’s in slices of life, most of them more mundane or painful, where Only Yesterday truly shines. The present-day scenes often have the pastoral reveries common in anime; the socioeconomics of safflower rouge production is explained in some detail, as well as the benefits of organic farming by 1982 Taeko’s potential love interest Toshio (Toshirô Yanagiba). Not Rated. (Sherilyn Connelly)

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Replaying a Classic

In honor of Ben Stevenson’s 80th birthday, Houston Ballet does him proud with a wonderful production of his signature choreography in The Sleeping Beauty.

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ing magnetism. The fairy tale the character appears in isn’t quite as well-known in the States as it is in Europe, but with Dunn interpreting the character, I couldn’t help thinking that I wouldn’t mind if the Bluebird had his own ballet. And of course, what would a fairy-tale ending be without a mazurka? With a work that’s three hours in length, one would think that the final sequence would feel like the final sprint in a marathon. It doesn’t, however, which is a testament to Stevenson’s ability to absorb an audience into a story and keep them there. As far as narratives go, the Sleeping Beauty tale is about as bare as they come. The protagonist sleeps for a hundred years, after all. But in Stevenson’s ballet, the stage comes alive with fairy-tale characters that feel less like archetypes than they should. Through dance, and his carefully designed variations, each character and scene carries its own weight. No detail is thrown away for the sake of escapism, but is used to create a fantasy that is as substantive as it is enchanting. the sleeping Beauty Through March 6. 7:30 p.m. Friday; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday at the Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For information, call 713-227-2787 or visit houstonballet.org.

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efore Stanton Welch, there was Ben Stevenson, who directed Houston Ballet from 1976 to 2003 and built the company into a force to be reckoned with among ballet companies. Part of his success was in his remounting and choreographing of story ballet classics, including 1990’s The Sleeping Beauty. Widely considered the most classical of narrative ballets, the fairy tale was originally brought to the stage by Marius Petipa with the music of Peter Tchaikovsky in the late 1800s. Stevenson’s grand production stayed true to the original’s formal qualities, but also made use of his signature storytelling and lush choreography. To celebrate his 80th birthday, Houston Ballet is reviving his The Sleeping Beauty, which runs through March 6. Ben Stevenson’s iteration of the fairy tale is wonderfully realized by Tony Award-winning designer Desmond Heely; his storybook sets and meticulously detailed costumes The Sleeping Beauty with artists of Houston Ballet, choreography by Ben Stevenson. give the impression of a Rococo was appropriately delicate yet magisterial in to four princes while balanced on one pointe painting brought to life. Every color and texher variations, and offered a smart contrast and promenaded by each prince in quick sucture of King Florestan’s court is rendered in to the toxic Carabosse. cession, was exceptionally controlled, mainsoft, wispy pastels, a daydream landscape Also of note on this evening was the corps, where the appearance of fairies is natural and taining Aurora’s regal qualities even in this which performed the large-scale group most difficult of positions. One of her signacommonplace. His costumes are so ethereal scenes with poise and precision. The Garland ture traits is her unparalleled musicality, and in aesthetic that they do not just complement she certainly did not lose that here even when Dance in Act I was a highlight, as was the LiStevenson’s richly mannered choreography, lac Fairy Attendants in the Prologue. These faced with the Rose Adagio’s severe technical but become an extension of it, highlighting dances are not to be underestimated, as they demands. The sequence is a beauty, and is exthe purity of these classical dance steps. hilarating when experienced live, but more so are what makes Stevenson’s three-hour-long The February 25 performance of The opus so digestible, even for the most restless with Gonzalez at the helm. Sleeping Beauty was made all the more magiBen Stevenson’s ballets are populated with of ballet-goers. Houston Ballet’s corps never cal by the performance of Karina Gonzalez in becomes mundane in its uniformity, but alwell-drawn characters, and in The Sleeping the role of Princess Aurora. Much has been ways pushes the choreography with maxiBeauty there are many, but mostly of the fairy said of the technical demands of this role, but mum energy and vitality. variety. Carabosse, the Wicked Fairy, was it’s also a challenging character to render beThe final act sees the joyful marriage of danced with aplomb by Soo Youn Cho. She yond a two-dimensional archetype. Aurora Princess Aurora and Prince Florimund. The doesn’t have the compelling backstory of Cin- made a nice foil to all the good fairy pitter royal couple and their court are joined by derella or a defining physical trait like Rapun- patter of the Prologue with her animated characters from across the fairy-tale universe, limbs and dynamic posturing. She’s less malizel’s great head of hair. In the Prologue, she is most notably the White Cat and Puss-incious than she is indignant at her lack of an an infant, and in Act I, she is a 16-year-old inBoots, danced to much comic delight by invitation to the infant royal’s christening. génue on the brink of marriage. Alyssa Springer and Rhys Kosakowski. Good and evil aside, it’s rude to single out Gonzalez, though, manages to elevate the But the real star of this party proved to be someone for exclusion, and Carabosse cuts a princess to a compelling figure of young striking figure of a lady who won’t be crossed. Derek Dunn as the Bluebird. Dunn has been womanhood. Her dancing was ravishing, as it stunning to watch in both classical and conAnd then there was Nao Kusuzaki as the always is, but her interpretation of the role temporary roles, but his compact body is a Lilac Fairy, a lovely image of saintly goodwas thoughtful, intelligent and, most imporperfect match for the technical demand of ness. For those who are familiar only with tant, believably realistic. She’s not a candied this featured part. He spends most of it in the Disney version of the story, the Lilac Disney princess, even though she does don flight, and makes use of the rare gift of being Fairy is the only fairy powerful enough to pink. Gonzalez’s Aurora is a heroine worth able to give the impression of levitation. The counteract the magic of Carabosse. It is she rooting for, and after Act I, so is Gonzalez clarity and precision of his dancing are couwho alters Carabosse’s fatal spell to a sleep herself. Her handling of the Rose Adagio, the pled with a fine stage presence and charmenchantment that lasts a century. Kusuzaki iconic sequence that sees Aurora introduced

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Ballet

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Stage

Here’s how Jill Conner Browne in all her bodacious glory came to be the main character in a musical at tuts underground.

By Margaret Downing

grow to make our own parts look tiny by comparison. There are doorways I can’t walk through. It makes our waists look like wasps.” Another turning point was in 1999 when the first of her books — The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love — came out and a public relations friend helped her set up a website. Browne, who had written the book on a typewriter, had to get a computer. She wrote posts explaining the Sweet Potato Queens, and started getting emails from people asking if it was real. “I said, ‘This is the deal and y’all can come. You can’t be a Sweet Potato Queen because

Paul Wolf

you’re too late; you missed the window. But you can be a queen of whatever you choose, and I encourage you to do that.’” In the year 2000, they came from 22 states, something that still amazes Browne. “We saw a sign in the crowd, ‘North Dakota loves the Sweet Potato Queen.’ To think about that: I am a completely unknown humor writer from Jackson, Mississippi, and that somebody in North Dakota based on nothing but that book took time off work, bought very expensive plane tickets — you know you can’t get here from anywhere — [paid for] hotel rooms to come to Jackson, Mississippi, to dress up funny and walk down the street with me.” She’s even had a group come from Indonesia, she says, which speaks to all her fans. “This tells us they are highly motivated, easily led, have lots of disposable income and possibly too much time on their hands, but they are my people and I love them. I am now the leader and the object of a worldwide cult. There are like 6,400 chapters in 37 countries.” Over the years, as the Sweet Potato Queen phenomenon grew, they had to move the parade. The St. Patrick’s Day parade was too tough on all her marchers and spoke to a different crowd than the one they moved to. (“We had some injuries. Beads just drive people crazy. I have seen people pick up their toddlers and put them over the police barricade into the street where they can run out under the wheels of a moving vehicle to get eight cents worth of beads.”) Now they’re in the more family-oriented Zippity Doo Dah® parade, which runs a week later, and they raise money for the local children’s hospital, an interest of Browne’s (she waives her usual speaker’s fee if asked to appear at any Children’s Miracle Network hospital). About 15 years ago, a mutual friend introduced Manchester to the first of Browne’s books. This came after a failed sitcom pilot (Delta Burke was going to play Browne and was “big fun,” according to Browne). Manchester read it and heard music, which made Browne very happy since turning her life into a musical had always been her dream, she says. “My voice written and spoken is obviously that of a Southern woman, but the experi-

ences are universal,” Browne says. The musical does take some license with her life, as her daughter who lives in Dallas discovered when she came to hear a workshop reading of the play at TUTS last year. “They had us living in a trailer. She was horrified.” Over the years, membership in the Sweet Potato Queens has varied as people have come and gone. Members of Sweet Potato Queen chapters are “men, women, gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor. We have not found a line we do not cross. There’s a chapter in Saudi Arabia [with the motto] No Veils for Us. So it apparently translates.” “When I say there “We have not found a line is no line, there’s a group that marches We do not in the parade every cross.” year that is totally blind. They are the Krewe No Vue. (They do have sighted people accompanying them.) The oldest one we have is Aunt Faye, originally from Midland, Texas; she lives in Flower Mound now. She started parading with us when she was 88. Aunt Faye was the grand marshal when she was 100. She will be 102 at the musical, and she is actively plotting my death because she wants my husband, who is known as the cutest boy in the world.” Jackson is known as the home of the late Willie Morris and Eudora Welty, famous revered writers. Jill Connor Browne has joined them, recognized wherever. “People tell me every day, ‘We were going through customs in Paris and they saw my passport and they said “Jackson, Mississippi.” Do you know the Sweet Potato Queen?’” Every year Browne says she has a better time at the parade than the one before. She really doesn’t care what anyone thinks; she’s having fun and crossing lines all the time. “I have the ashes of a dead woman. There was a Queen in Arizona that loved it more than anything, and she died. I don’t have all of her, but I have some of her in a special box with one of her hats, and she rides on the float every year.” Performances of The Sweet Potato Queens are scheduled for March 17-27 at the Hobby Center’s Zilkha Hall, 800 Bagby. For information, visit tuts.com or call 713-558-8887. $25 to $49.

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the sweet Potato Queen and her costumes have grown every year.

Houston Press Houston Press

n 1982, Jill Conner Browne was just coming off a divorce and her father had died. She knew she needed, as she puts it, “to perk myself up,” and was waiting for the opportunity to do just that. “Daddy told us that there’s not many things in life you really and truly cannot change, but when you do encounter one, you got to figure out either how to make fun out of it or make fun of it.” She was living in Jackson, Mississippi, and working as a trainer and program director at the local YMCA. It was probably hard to envision what would happen next — well, actually, it took a whole bunch of years — that led to her becoming a queen, attracting worldwide recognition, writing nine books and, most recently, seeing her story turned into a musical, The Sweet Potato Queens, by Melissa Manchester (music), Sharon Vaughn (lyrics) and Rupert Holmes (book) — about to premiere on a Hobby Center stage thanks to Houston’s Theatre Under The Stars Underground. “A friend of mine decided for no apparent reason that Jackson, Mississippi, needed a St. Patrick’s Day parade,” Browne explains. “It’s not like there’s a whole bunch of Irish people here; I happen to be one, but purely coincidental. I think it was more of an excuse to drink and drive.” Browne jumped at the chance and at that moment decided to become the Sweet Potato Queen in the parade. The fact that there was no previous Sweet Potato Queen did not deter her in the least. “You know, in the South we’ve got a beauty queen for every event, evthe first Year ery organization, every day of the week, every food group,” she says. “Even in 1982 I was pretty far removed from the beauty queen circuit, but I just declared it to be so. I just found it funny, and still do.” She told another friend that she was going to be in the parade. “She said, ‘What are you going to be?’ and I said ‘Sweet Potato Queen’ and she said ‘So am I.’” And the Sweet Potato Queens, plural, were born. Their outfits were a collection of Goodwill castoffs, and Browne herself wore her sister’s 1964 prom dress, size seven. “Which is a size I never was,” says Browne. “I zipped it up as far as it would [go]. It was a

lovely, low-back dress. And stuffed my front with green socks. And I had a little tiny tiara that I picked up from Hancock Fabrics.” There was no problem about being included in the Jackson parade. “It’s not like New Orleans. It’s not like a Mardi Gras krewe that you have to be born in or you ain’t getting in,” Browne says with a hearty laugh. They rode in the back of a pickup. A girlfriend had made hand-lettered poster board signs to put on the truck. “She misspelled ‘potato’; she used the Dan Quayle ‘e,’” Browne admits. Once Browne came up with the special outfit emphasizing voluptuous curves and breathtaking hair for Sweet Potato Queens, the whole thing took off, and Browne says everybody was clamoring to be a Sweet Potato Queen. About those outfits: “They have gotten exponentially bigger over the years, as have we,” Browne says. “The augmentations have had to

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| art CapSuleS |

Art

Capsule reviews by Randy Tibbits and Susie Tommaney “THE FENCE Houston” THE FENCE started a few years ago, beginning with a juried outdoor display of photographs arranged in a row along the heavily trafficked Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2012. Entering new cities each year, THE FENCE expanded to Boston in 2013 and Atlanta in 2014, and now has been installed along the 3500-3700 blocks of Main. Photographs by 40 artists are arranged in a double row along a 500-foot banner that begins on one side of the street and finishes on the other side. It can be viewed by pedestrians, by motorists or by passengers on the METRORail line. The exhibit is a partnership between two Houston entities — the Houston Center for Photography and Mid Main — as well as the originating organizer, Photoville (New York City). The competition is stiff with photographers from all over the world vying for the coveted spots. Two artists have been accepted over multiple years — Claire Rosen (creatures) and Gregg Segal (streets). There is much to contemplate about Rosen’s work, mostly along the line of “how exactly does she do that?” Her images depict animals at a banquet in a composition inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper and Pierre Subleyras’s The Feast in the House of Simon. Everything is arranged — down to the species-specific meal on the long table to the animals posing for the camera — and, amazingly enough, the vignettes are not the work of Photoshop. Somehow, in a magical Doctor Dolittle-animal whisperer sort of way, she induces elephants, honeybees, horses, birds, hedgehogs and turtles to act out these scenes arranged in the style of Dutch still life paintings of the 17th century. The Mid Main district has expanded parking opportunities along these blocks, making it easy to view the exhibit and then eat, shop, rock and enjoy neighborhood cultural events. Through March 31. 3500-3700 Main, fence.photoville.com/fences/2015-houston. — ST

| Stage CapSuleS |

“#Heatstroke3D” You won’t find anything like 2014’s Mannequins at the leatherbar: It’s starting to get crowded in Joel Anderson’s current exhibit at Archway Gallery, but while his new encaustics are decidedly more vanilla, they show a brave leap in a different direction. Inspired by a trip to the Museum of Modern Art, where he picked up a pair of 3-D glasses, he purchased a 3-D printer, which has influenced his current show. There were a few hurdles in communicating with the printer, as well as affixing the extruded plastic to his wax paintings, but he came out a winner in his battle of man versus machine. A Tale of 20 Pyramids shows a scorpion tail of red polyhedrons, curving in an ever-smaller succession against a creamy background, and Tale Spin shows truncated pyramids in a yin-yang dance against an ocean of blue. We also see a return of his gas lamp motif, which did well at Bayou City Art Festival last year. Für Elise a la Fleur de Lis contrasts the warm glow of the flame against the snowy depths nicely, and White Gas Lamp #1, with the frame of the lamp protruding from the canvas, is one of the best examples of his venture into the third dimension. He has several pieces that incorporate the hexagonal shape, a nod to the bees and their honeycombs that produced his wax, but their capped thickness gives the illusion that they were laser cut from thick sheets of plastic, rather than the laborious task of 3-D printing. There are some nice pieces in this category, including Di-Hexa Blue Sky, Deka Di-Hexa Pansy Variety Pack and Di-Hexa Texas Sunset. Through March 3. 2305 Dunlavy, 713-522-2409, archwaygallery.com. — ST “Statements: African American Art from the Museum’s Collection” It isn’t often that you get the chance to see in person a work of art that changed the course of history, but you can see one now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The work of art is The Cradle, a 1950 drawing of an anguished mother cradling her children in her emaciated arms, by John Biggers, founder of the art program at Texas Southern University. When Biggers, who was black, won the top prize for the drawing in a competition at the then segregated museum, he wasn’t allowed to attend the celebration to receive his prize. That shameful episode became the vehicle for opening MFAH to visitors of all races at all times: Art changed history, right here in Houston. Though the artists in the show are from all over the country, an exciting aspect

was going a mile or two over the speed limit the day he hit Danny. Jason has his whole life ahead of him, but he’s haunted and scarred and in need of the kind of absolution that even Becca’s forgiveness can’t give him. You may crawl out from under grief, but you sure as hell better be t prepared to carry it around with you forever. Through March 12. Theatre Southwest, 8944A Clarkcrest, tickets@theatresouthwest.org. — JG Rabbit Hole In David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning Capsule reviews by Jessica Goldman and D.L. Groover play Rabbit Hole, the landscape of grief and how we cope is up for examination. Becca and Howie are struggling to come to terms with Rabbit Hole In David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning the recent car accident that killed their little boy, Danny. But losing a play Rabbit Hole, the landscape of grief and how we cope is up for son isn’t the only struggle the couple is dealing with. That they have examination. Becca and Howie are struggling to come to terms with opposite methods of mourning is at best causing them to drift apart and the recent car accident that killed their little boy, Danny. But losing a at worst threatens to undo their marriage. Practical and slightly tetchy son isn’t the only struggle the couple is dealing with. That they have Becca wants to rid their home of Danny’s things and sell the house in opposite methods of mourning is at best causing them to drift apart and order for them to move forward as a childless couple. Howie’s healing at worst threatens to undo their marriage. Practical and slightly tetchy consists of endlessly watching home movies of his son, and suggesting Becca wants to rid their home of Danny’s things and sell the house in another baby is the answer. Meanwhile, salt is being poured in wounds order for them to move forward as a childless couple. Howie’s healing all around them. Becca’s wild-child sister Izzy is pregnant; Nat, Becca’s consists of endlessly watching home movies of his son, and suggesting opinionated mother, doles out unhelpful advice; the group therapy another baby is the answer. Meanwhile, salt is being poured in wounds sessions have been a disaster, with Becca refusing to attend; and Izzy all around them. Becca’s wild-child sister Izzy is pregnant; Nat, Becca’s suspects Howie of having a secret affair with another grieving mother. opinionated mother, doles out unhelpful advice; the group therapy Into this shaky ground comes Jason, the teenage boy who accidentally sessions have been a disaster, with Becca refusing to attend; and Izzy ran Danny over, asking to show the couple his science fiction story about suspects Howie of having a secret affair with another grieving mother. portals to other universes (Rabbit Holes) that he wants to dedicate to Into this shaky ground comes Jason, the teenage boy who accidentally Danny. Right off the bat, we realize that while there is plenty of anguish ran Danny over, asking to show the couple his science fiction story about on offer in Lindsay-Abaire’s play, this will not be an emotional cacophony portals to other universes (Rabbit Holes) that he wants to dedicate to of melodramatic sobbing and weepy heart-string pulling. This is grief in Danny. Right off the bat, we realize that while there is plenty of anguish constraint. Schofield as director starts us off on an excellent foot. Immeon offer in Lindsay-Abaire’s play, this will not be an emotional cacophony diately we’re treated with a superbly paced of melodramatic sobbing and weepy and utterly natural scene between soccer heart-string pulling. This is grief in mom-ish Becca (an uptight but kind Kelly constraint. Schofield as director starts Walker) and her younger wayward sister us off on an excellent foot. Immediately VISIt HOuStONpreSS.COM Izzy (played with perfect-pitch sass by we’re treated with a superbly paced FOr aDDItIONal art aND Jenna Morris). Walker and Morris together and utterly natural scene between exude sisterly warmth while allowing just soccer mom-ish Becca (an uptight but Stage COVerage the right amount of sibling animosity and kind Kelly Walker) and her younger button-pushing to underpin their interaction. It’s a shame, then, that wayward sister Izzy (played with perfect-pitch sass by Jenna Morris). Howie (the eager but unconvincing Jonathan Moonen) has to come Walker and Morris together exude sisterly warmth while allowing into the picture and disrupt the splendid timing and authenticity of just the right amount of sibling animosity and button-pushing to the show thus far. Howie is laid-back to Becca’s tight winding, but underpin their interaction. It’s a shame, then, that Howie (the eager instead of playing it with ease, Moonen too often tilts to smarm in his but unconvincing Jonathan Moonen) has to come into the picture capitulation to and placation of his wife. It’s Becca’s loose-lipped mom, and disrupt the splendid timing and authenticity of the show thus far. Nat (terrifically played by Stephanie Rascoe Myers), who disturbs and Howie is laid-back to Becca’s tight winding, but instead of playing it delights with her funny foot-in-mouth outbursts. A couple of glasses with ease, Moonen too often tilts to smarm in his capitulation to and of wine are all it takes for Nat to ramble with hysterical, cringe-factor placation of his wife. It’s Becca’s loose-lipped mom, Nat (terrifically flourish about the curse of the Kennedy clan, somehow thinking her played by Stephanie Rascoe Myers), who disturbs and delights with outrageous warnings against ending up like Ari Onassis are comforting her funny foot-in-mouth outbursts. A couple of glasses of wine are all it and instructive for everyone. Howie rails against the idea of talking to takes for Nat to ramble with hysterical, cringe-factor flourish about the Jason, but Becca, as usual doing what she wants, decides to meet curse of the Kennedy clan, somehow thinking her outrageous warnings the young man who accidentally took her boy’s life. Brown’s Jason is against ending up like Ari Onassis are comforting and instructive for soft-spoken and sensitive as he alternates between telling Becca stories everyone. Howie rails against the idea of talking to Jason, but Becca, of the fun he had at his graduation party and pathetically confessing as usual doing what she wants, decides to meet the young man who that maybe he was going a mile or two over the speed limit the day accidentally took her boy’s life. Brown’s Jason is soft-spoken and he hit Danny. Jason has his whole life ahead of him, but he’s haunted sensitive as he alternates between telling Becca stories of the fun he and scarred and in need of the kind of absolution that even Becca’s had at his graduation party and pathetically confessing that maybe he

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of “Statements” is that so many Houstonians are included — it must approach a third of the 37 represented — and that the curators have often explicitly mentioned their Houston roots in the wall text of the exhibition. It’s proof positive that art of value has been, is being and (by extension) will be made by African-American artists, in Houston as well as elsewhere. What a great message for MFAH to give viewers of all ages, races and places in the way that it can do best — by showing the art. And just in time for Black History Month. Through April 24. 1001 Bissonnet, 713-639-7300, mfah.org. — RT “Texas Originals: Six Bayou City Expressionists” Some grew up in Houston, while others arrived in the ’50s and ’60s, but these pioneers all went on to create significant works that helped place Houston on the national arts scene. Now, for the first time in several years, works by these modernists stand side by side at William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art. From Jack Boynton (1928-2010) are three small works on paper and three large-scale paintings: Event in Green, with its fiery red snake against an absinthe sky; the spiky fur of an unseeing monster in The Blind Beast; and the amethyst-plum grass Courtesy of William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art of Untitled (Purple Landscape). There are four vibrantly large oils by Dorothy Hood (1919-2000), “texas Originals: Six Bayou City expressionists” is at including the indigo-inspired Campeche Dawn, the William reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine art. minimalist Navajo Diptych with its bright reds and demonstrate a variety of styles from the muted and color blocked pinks, a somber Winter Sea, and the massive Comet Tangled in the expansive acrylics For Matisse and Gate, the rock-like formations Sun (a bifurcated oil with a corner of molten blocks erupting under of Hamlet and Home, and the radiating concentric circles of Time a tangerine sky). What’s most interesting about the large-scale oils After Time. Dick Wray’s (1933-2011) earliest piece is the dark and by Leila McConnell (b. 1927) is that the ghostly orb that appears in an moody No Good Black Magic from 1962, and his latest, from 2002, untitled piece from 1961 is seen again in a work from last year, though is a frenetic jumble of colorful strokes and black marks challenging this time set against a monolith. Charles Schorre (1925-1996) has five the viewer to find a focal point. Through March 19. 2143 Westheimer. vibrantly energetic large-scale acrylics in the show, as well as two 713-521-7500, reavesart.com. — ST smaller collages from the ’70s. Pieces from Richard Stout (b. 1934) forgiveness can’t give him. You may crawl out from under grief, but you sure as hell better be prepared to carry it around with you forever. Through March 12. Theatre Southwest, 8944A Clarkcrest, tickets@ theatresouthwest.org. — JG Straight White Men A theater and film artist known for her impressive résumé of provocative pieces that slap us awake with gender politics, Young Jean Lee tackles her first straight play using her NY theater company, plenty of improv and seminars with non-white college kids. Appropriately titled Straight White Men, it’s a noble work, naturalistic in presentation, as linear as Clifford Odets during his Group Theatre days, as it confronts us with hot-button, headline issues of liberal white guilt and privilege. Although it tries hard to waken us from our complacency, it’s slim in the extreme as it bumps and rattles over familiar ground, getting stuck in unnecessary ruts and detours. The script is propelled by the fine ensemble cast, to Stages’ credit, who delve deep into their stereotypical characters to bring them alive with much fuller detail than Lee provides. At its best, SWM is a warm dissection of family dynamics and dysfunction; at its worst and most annoying, it parodies a Bernie Sanders stump speech. The adult sons of widowed patriarch Ed (James Belcher) have arrived for Christmas. The setting is a most handsome family room, something right out of HGTV with its sweeping stone fireplace, elegant wainscoting and overstuffed furniture. Ryan McGettigan’s marvelous design bespeaks wealth and status. This is a successful man’s home. Youngest Drew (Jason Duga) is still a kid at heart, singing “I’m a Little Airplane” to distract middle brother Jake (David Matranga), newly divorced, from his video game. Eldest Matt (Adam Noble) lives with Dad as housekeeper and companion. This is his story. The boys roughhouse, reminisce, sing Matt’s high school anti-parody of “Oklahoma” and generally assume the roles they’ve always played growing up. They’re solicitous of their father to a fault, even donning the flannel pjs he buys them to wear Christmas eve. Only Matt seems estranged and preoccupied. During Chinese takeout dinner, all of them seated on the family room couch — passive-aggressively commanded there by Dad — Matt suddenly bursts into uncontrollable sobs. He says he doesn’t know why the meltdown and everybody please forget it, okay? Well, of course, nobody can. This is a terribly liberal household, the sons schooled by their parents from the get-go. Teacher Drew is immature; banker Jake is pompous and hypocritical, hating his wealth but reveling in it; Dad spouts platitudes. But they all want to help Matt. He’s obviously Dad’s favorite and the smartest among them. After ten years trying for his PhD, he now holds temp jobs at social service groups. Matt is the only character free of cant. Frozen with inertia, he’s also the most authentic, and Noble, with mountain-man beard and soulful eyes, has our heart. Does he care about the world? Is he a failure? We’ll never know, which is Lee’s ultimate ace. She treats him with respect, or the respect you’d show a wounded animal. She doesn’t talk down to him. We don’t know what his root problems are, only that they’re deep, searing and probably unfixable. Noble shows that magnificently. His performance is galvanizing and terribly touching — might I say noble. The other actors, good as they are under Leslie Swackhamer’s deft and rambunctious direction, just don’t have the depth of backstory to make their characters anything more than mouthpieces who spout slogans and placard talking points. To be absolutely politically correct and fair, what Straight White Men needs is another son, like a Ted Cruz surrogate,

to stir Lee’s low-simmer cauldron and add brazen tang. Young Jean Lee might have a cow — but a much truer, fresher drama. Through March 6. 3201 Allen Parkway. 713-527-0123. — DLG The Trojan Women The regal and imposing Qamara Black, Houston Theater Award-winning Best Actress 2014 for her searing portrayal of opportunistic, fearless Mama Nadi in Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, registers majesty even when bowed and broken — maybe even more so. As the imperious queen of Troy in Euripides’s famed ancient tragedy The Trojan Women, brought low with the utter destruction of her empire, this grandmother is to be pawned off as a slave to the victorious Greek general Odysseus — soon to have his own epic, The Odyssey, that details the ten-years-long punishment meted out by the gods for his hubris. Arthritic and pained with old age, she commands respect as her world collapses about her. Her husband, her many sons and all the men of Troy have been slaughtered; her youngest daughter, Polyxena, has been sacrificed at the altar of warrior-god Achilles; her seeress daughter Cassandra raped and given to Menelaus as concubine; her grandson Astyanax, feared by the conquerors for his parentage, is condemned to be thrown from the burning towers of Troy. All hope is gone, but Black’s eyes flash lighting and royal pride; she spits fury and grief to the old gods who have abandoned her; she scorns Helen, her impetuous young son Paris’s lover, whose abduction from the court of Sparta’s Menelaus started the Trojan War. The gods are silent and unforgiving. In Tom Stell’s staging, Euripides’s anti-war message is given a contempo tinge by having the distaff chorus and female court of Troy portrayed as black, the conquering Greeks, white. Black is a pillar of rectitude and sorrow, a maternal bedrock. With undeniable stage presence — you never take your eyes off her — she rules with elemental, natural grace. She’s such a force, everyone else pales. Alicia Stevens, as mad Cassandra, nearly rises to Black’s lofty position, but her fluttery delivery is more Ophelia than princess. As the Chorus, Bibiana Ohio is stately; Grace Ojionuka has feral presence; Andrea Sorrel and Erica Young Joseph handle their African folk-inspired musical numbers with flair and assurance. Seared by the horrors of war, Lauren Hainley, as snarky herald Talthybius, undergoes a neat transition from P.R. flack to sympathetic apologist when she carries in the dead body of Hector’s young son. Even the victors in war are irreparably changed. Although he appears only briefly in Act II, Stell mirrors Black in presence and ease of command. His voice is rich and full, and he exudes control and a stolid masculinity as ultimate conqueror. As Helen, immortalized two millennia after Euripides by Marlowe as “the face that launch’d a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium,” Amanda Parker plays this iconic image of beauty and seduction as if a Kardashian. In form-fitting cocktail attire, she flaunts her ample charms and flashes shapely gams to re-lure husband Menelaus Euripides wrote The Trojan Women as a reaction to Athens’s 415 B.C. massacre of the neutral island nation of Melos during the prolonged Peloponnesian War, the Greek city-states’s own version of the Trojan War. As an indictment of useless brutality and slaughter, the play won second prize at the acclaimed Dionysian Festival, the ancient Greek equivalent of Broadway’s Tonys. The winner was playwright Xenocles, whose works are entirely forgotten and lost, but whose dubious fame remains under Aristophanes’ withering rebuke, “he’s ugly and makes ugly drama.” Who needs war to be memorialized? Through March 5. Obsidian Theater, 3522 White Oak, 832-889-7837, obsidiantheater.org. — DLG

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January 30 – February 5, 2014

ST. PATRICK’S DAY GUIDE

13308 westheimer road • houston texas 77077 • 281-679-6112

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The biggest st. Patrick’s day celebration on the westside free admission + free irish fare, drink specials, green beer, $1 Jell-o shots, giveaways, live bagpiper and dj

elieve it or not, st. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Houston aren’t all about booze and bagpipes (though don’t worry, there’s plenty that are). the merriment surrounding Ireland’s foremost patron saint runs the gamut from family-friendly parades and Irish stew cookoffs to musical showcases and sexy kilt contests. It all starts with Griff’s 18-hole Greater Irish open golf tournament, where “beers, booze, babes and balls” await. And the games continue throughout the month. there’s the Goose Acre’s Irish Bingo, Lucky’s Pub’s st. Practice Day and the annual Cornhole tourney at Griff’s. Musical performances are all part of the action, too. Don’t miss the Houston Choral society’s Celtic Celebration or the all-day Irish jam session at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck. of course, there’s also that aforementioned booze. Get it in the form of a Jameson Irish whiskey dinner, green beer at Lucky’s Pub Downtown Post Parade Party or “leprechaun bombs” at Howl at the Moon. excited yet? We sure are, so we put together a list of all the fun. Here’s where to get your Irish on in Houston this month: By �ooke Viggiano

March 4

March 11

Griff’s Greater Houston Irish Open Golf Tournament

Lucky’s Pub 9th Annual St. Practice Day Golf Tournament

Wildcat Golf Club 12000 Almeda, 713-413-3400 griffshouston.net The 34th annual Greater Houston Irish Open kicks off the pub’s St. Paddy’s festivities. You can expect plenty of “Beers, Booze, Babes and Balls,” as complimentary beverages are all a part of the package. Your entry fee ($150 for individuals or $650 for corporate teams of four) also includes the green fee for 18 holes, a cart, a gift bag, free admission to all festival activities, lunch before the tourney and dinner after. Tee time is at noon, but you can come early for a putting contest starting at 11 a.m. Apply online.

March 5 Griff’s Old Timers Party

3416 Roseland, 713-528-9912 griffshouston.net Griff ’s offers the perfect spot for old-timers to get together and remind themselves how much fun they’ve had every St. Patrick’s Day. Expect drink specials all day and night.

March 10 The Goose’s Acre Irish Bingo

21 Waterway, 281-466-1502 thegoosesacre.com Hit this Woodlands pub for traditional bingo with an adult-friendly Irish twist. Hosted by DJ Socialite, the five-game bingo event features lively entertainment, amazing prizes from Guinness and the occasional visit to your table by a charming leprechaun. Green Jell-O shots will be abundant, but be careful…if there’s a tie, rumor has it, you may be challenged to a dance-off. Griff’s St. Paddy’s Day Queen’s Contest

3416 Roseland, 713-528-9912 griffshouston.net Help Griff’s select its queen for this year’s Houston St. Patrick’s Parade. Beauties who enter will compete in multiple categories to earn the honor. Applications can be downloaded online. Contest begins under the tent at 7 p.m.

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Wildcat Golf Club 12000 Almeda, 713-413-3400 luckyspub.com This festive golf tournament features 18 holes, complimentary drinks served by Lucky’s Lovelies, and complimentary VIP tickets to the Saint Patrick’s Day Festival at any of three Lucky’s locations. Apply online.

March 12 57th Annual Houston St. Patrick’s Parade

Downtown; hsppc.org Rain or shine, this two-hour annual parade, which is free to join and draws more than 100 entries each year, is always a blast. Celebrate Irish heritage through Irish music, step dancers, floats and green beer starting at noon. This year’s theme is “Paint H-Town Green.” The Goose’s Acre Sexy Kilt Contest

21 Waterway, 281-466-1502 thegoosesacre.com Kick off St. Paddy’s early with the pub’s annual sexy kilt contest, in which both sexes have the opportunity to impress the judges with their perfect Irish attire. Contestants participate in an interview and talent contest, with prizes awarded to the winning male and female contestants. Griff’s Parade After-Party & Irish Stew Cook-Off

3416 Roseland, 713-528-9912 griffshouston.net After the parade, head to Griff’s for the Irish Stew, Chili, Chicken and Open Irish Dish Cook-Off, which is happening all afternoon with music throughout the day and night. The Houston Choral Society Presents: A Celtic Celebration

Foundry United Methodist Church, 8350 Jones, houstonchoral.org The Houston Choral Society is excited to present Letters from Ireland, a beautiful choral suite arranged by Mark Brymer that includes Irish favorites interspersed with a moving set of letters from Irishmen to family and friends in America, authentically narrated by Ms. Elaine Edstrom and Mr. Doug Laughlin. HCS will also offer “Love Changes Everything,” by Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as other Celtic music to round out the evening.

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Lucky’s Pub Downtown Post-Parade Party

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Downtown, 801 St. Emanuel, 713-522-2010 luckyspub.com Head to the downtown Lucky’s for green beer and a Pre-Dynamo Party. The fun starts after the parade at 1 p.m. St. Patrick’s Day in the Historic Market Square

Weekly Specials! Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday (Double Sessions) • Paper packages start at just $10 • Electronic Bingo Packages start at just $25 Wednesdays Speed Cover-all Spectacular • Now playing (10) $500 cover-all games! $5,000 CASH paid out! • Paper packages start at just $20 • Electronic Bingo Starts at just $25 Super Saturday $750 Blowout! Triple Sessions • Featuring (9) $750 games • Paper packages start at just $15 Electronic Bingo Packages start at just $45

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21 Waterway, 281-466-1502 thegoosesacre.com What better way to honor the Irish than with an Irish whiskey dinner? The kitchen will prepare a delicious four-course St. Patrick’s Day meal in which Irish whiskeys are perfectly paired to enhance the food as the food enhances the whiskey. Reservations are required.

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Downtown, 801 St. Emanuel, 713-522-2010 The Heights, 2520 Houston, 713-862-2400 Cypress, 27126 Northwest Freeway, 281-758-2514 luckyspub.com Houston’s biggest and baddest St. Paddy’s Day party is at all three locations. Come for green beer, leprechauns, bagpipers, live music from bands and DJs, a broadcast from 94.5 The Buzz, and fun around every corner. Doors open at 6 a.m. for Downtown and at 11 a.m. for the Cypress and Heights locations.

Champion Forest and FM 1960 1960parade.com The 1960 Parade Committee is hosting its 38th McGonigel’s Mucky Duck Saint Patrick’s Day Annual 1960 St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which 2425 Norfolk, 713-528-5999 benefits Cypress Creek EMS Education Schol- mcgonigels.com arship programs, at 2 p.m. Harris County Sher- Explore all aspects of Celtic music at this meiff Ron Hickman will be the grand marshal this lodic under-the-big-top St. Patrick’s Day year. FM 1960 will be closed for the 5K Run event. From 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., McGonigel’s will and Parade between Champion Forest and showcase traditional and contemporary Houston Press — 3/3/2016 — Quarter Page Kuykendahl from 1 to 5 p.m. Celtic music and dance on two stages. There is seating both inside and outside on a firstcome, first-served basis. Get tickets for $20 in Lucky’s Pub Saint Patrick’s Day Mudbugs advance or $22 at the door. The weekend of Downtown, 801 St. Emanuel, 713-522-2010 St. Patrick’s Day, the club will keep the tent up The Heights, 2520 Houston, 713-862-2400 Cypress, 27126 Northwest Freeway, 281-758-2514 and host Reckless Kelly on Friday and Bob Schneider on Saturday. luckyspub.com Hit any of the three locations to feast on green beer and mudbugs. Saint Arnold’s Saint Patrick’s Day Party at the

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21 Waterway, 281-466-1502 thegoosesacre.com Since St. Patrick’s Day would not be complete without live music, this pub boasts just that. From noon to 2 a.m., catch the acts on two different stages — one upstairs, one downstairs — starting with acoustic sets and increasing to full bands as the day goes on.

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March 13

Tuesday- Saturday 7:30PM • Sunday 6PM • Closed Monday Separate smoking and nonsmoking areas Stay up to date: Text Triple to 72727 for promos and specials! 8921 Louetta, Suite A | Spring, TX 77379 281.257.2769

The Goose’s Acre St. Patrick’s Day Party

3416 Roseland, 713-528-9912 griffshouston.net Get ready for a festival of music, beer and friends all day and night. Get tickets early by purchasing them online.

612 Hadley, 713-658-9700 howlatthemoon.com/houston Join Houston’s favorite piano bar for two days’ worth of St. Paddy’s Day shenanigans, including but not limited to green beers, “leprechaun” and car bombs, and “get lucky” buckets.

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Market Square Park marketsquarepark.com Get lucky with tons of Irish fun in Historic Market Square. Stout Irish rock band Blaggards will be kicking the festivities off with traditional Irish music mixed with a whole lot of rock and roll. Afterward, visit the neighborhood’s eclectic bars and restaurants for drink specials and your Irish favorites.

beer and cheer at this awesome indoor/outdoor pub’s St. Patrick’s Day party.

March 17 The Ginger Man’s Annual Saint Patrick’s Day Tradition 5607 Morningside, 713-526-2770 thegingerman.com/houston You can expect live music alongside plenty of

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Brewery

2000 Lyons, 713-686-9494 saintarnold.com Houston’s oldest craft brewery will have its regular lineup of beers on tap, plus special casks of Divine Reserve No. 15, the Russian imperial stout released last year, and Irish stew bread bowls available for purchase from the kitchen. But the big show for the evening (besides the beer) is the Donegal Beard Growing Competition. Admission is $28 per person and includes beer (with one pint of cask-conditioned DR15) as part of the deal and a commemorative pint glass.

March 17-19 Mo’s Irish Pub Saint Patrick’s Day Festival

138 Vintage Park, 281-251-0715 1960parade.com One day wasn’t enough, so this Vintage Park pub is honoring St. Paddy with three. Starting on St. Patrick’s Day and running through Saturday, Mo’s will be partying with an outdoor stage, ten bands, Irish dancers, kids’ activities, green beer and party favors. Pay $10 at the door, or get a three-day entry pass for $15.

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Cafe

A Question of Balance

saltillo mexican Kitchen has some great entrées, but needs to pay more attention to its side dishes. nyone who has a question as to whether or not he likes lamb should try the sheep version of a T-bone at Saltillo Mexican kitchen. If people don’t like these, then no, they don’t like lamb. It would be a challenge to find any better in Houston than these thick, well-seasoned, slightly smoky renditions with ruby interiors, and exteriors neatly kissed with grill marks. People who order these beauties cooked to anything more than medium have only themselves to blame. Aside from the fine grilled meat, steakhouse Saltillo Mexican Kitchen lacks some of the luster of its predecessor, La Casa Del

The problem is that the sides haven’t had the same level of upkeep. It’s easy enough as it is for side dishes to be upstaged by glamorous, meaty co-stars, but when the kitchen acts as if no one has ever heard of the word “seasoning,” it’s a substantial issue. Good sides make the difference between a fullfledged meal and an unbalanced one. Simple chunks of roasted potatoes can be a real crowd-pleaser. However, roasted potatoes with no salt and little browning are a big, bland disappointment. Ditto for the creamy borracho beans cooked in Mexican beer. Without a dash of salt or heat, it was impossible for the otherwise worthy dish to live up to its full potential. At La Casa Del Caballo, the cheese enchiladas were the must-order side dish,

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especially with steak. That’s the kind of dinner that bridges both Texan and Mexican cultures — a dish that reflects Houston as much as Saltillo. Unfortunately, something bad has happened with both the consistency of preparation and the recipe. Instead of being hot, gooey and glorious, as they used to be, a dinnertime order of cheese enchiladas arrived at the table lukewarm. A second batch, at lunchtime a few days later, seemed hot enough, but the cheese inside stubbornly retained the shape of a oblong rectangle. Mozzarellalike queso Oaxaca is used in the center, and it’s not a cheese that readily melts. That said, the red chile-laden sauce is still a complex, smoky wonder, and the main

Saltillo Mexican kitchen 5427 Bissonnet #200, 832-623-6467. Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; noon to 10 p.m. Saturdays.

Cubos de queso frito $8 Coctel de camarón $17 Steak and enchiladas $30 Tampiqueña $34 Lamb T-bone $39 Tres leches $8 Carribean dark rum cake $7 Café de olla $6 Prado Rey Roble Tempranillo $12

March 3 - 9, 2016 Month XX–Month XX, 2014

Caballo. That has little to do with the relocation to a more humble space in a Bellaire Triangle strip center. Indeed, leaving the huge, two-story Montrose building that used to house La Strada was probably a wise economic decision. (It’s now a vast El Tiempo location.) The ornate, gorgeous paintings of beautiful horses that used to adorn La Casa Del Caballo (which means “the house of the horse”) hang on Saltillo’s walls, adding a welcome dose of drama and beauty to the humble digs. The stellar steak program has also relocated. The $190 tapa de lomo, or four-pound rib eye cap, is still one of Houston’s most coveted meals for sharing among friends.

coffee itself was cloyingly sweet. No amount of cinnamon could balance it. More disconcerting was the big thumbprint on the side of a smallish slice of tres leches cake. The attentive yet unobtrusive staff waiting tables at dinnertime was nowhere to be found on a lunch visit. My dining companion arrived mere minutes after I did, but we were, curiously, abandoned with nothing but water, chips and salsa for more than 20 minutes. If my fellow diner hadn’t taken the initiative to flag down a server and ask for our order to be taken, it’s unclear how long SalTillo we’d have still been Mexican waiting. The issue KiTchen’S seemed to be undercuiSine staffing — only two iS a good people on the floor fiT for to take care of 20 well-dressed suburhouSTon. ban customers. Speaking of being well-dressed: Don’t forget the wallet. These big, meaty dishes don’t come cheap. Very few dishes cost less than $24. Saltillo Mexican Kitchen’s cuisine is a good fit for Houston because of our shared reverence for cowboy culture. It’s a wonderful place for enjoying big hunks of grilled meat. It would be great to see the kitchen embrace a little more finesse and ambition, though. When La Casa Del Caballo opened, the food was exciting and interesting. That was more than three years ago, though, and the honeymoon is over. Saltillo is serving exactly the same menu items that La Casa Del Caballo made its name with, and there doesn’t seem to be any interest in innovations or improvements. The best outcome for any review is that noted issues are solved, and that is definitely the hope for Saltillo. Much of the essence of La Casa Del Caballo has been retained. Shore up the side dishes and service, and there’s no reason not to expect Saltillo to enjoy a long, pleasant ride.

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The lamb T-bones are thick, well-seasoned and deliciously smoky.

event — an eight-ounce rib eye — was just as tender and thick as in memory. Heat issues plagued the cubos de queso frito (fried cheese cubes), too. The quick deep frying led to pretty, frizzled exteriors, but finding a cube that wasn’t cold in the center was a game of chance. A better appetizer was the coctel de camarón (shrimp cocktail), which employed huge, firm specimens from the Sea of Cortéz. The cocktail sauce dipped ever-so-slightly to the sweet side, but the lively heat kept the taste buds engaged. Another issue with sides: The same combination of grilled rounds of zucchini with strips of red and yellow bell pepper shows up constantly. It makes the entrées seem tired and rote. The lack of interesting vegetable choices may be due in part to Saltillo’s Norteño heritage at work. The cuisine hails from an arid region of Mexico that evolved from a hunter-gatherer culture. Ranching lends itself to meat. Cheese comes from cattle and goats. The native wheat is incorporated into flour tortillas. Vegetables are of the hardy, ancient kind, such as squash, beans and corn. There is a selection of salads to appease those looking for lighter fare, but this is simply not a vegetable-driven type of place. One of the most interesting cuts of meat is cañita de diezmillo, or beef shoulder clod. Any concerns about tenderness evaporated after a Troy Fields hunk of the Angus beef was cut off. There’s more heft in a bite than in a steak, but the payoff is more concentrated beefy flavor. The Tampiqueña plate features this mighty hunk, as well as serviceable guacamole that was a little too warm, two enchiladas (in a richer, deeper mole sauce this time), a forgettable cheese quesadilla and a fine example of Mexican rice that benefited from the meat juices running across the plate. Desserts represent the same lackluster situation as the sides. As was the case at La Casa Del Caballo, the most interesting offering is a single-serving, rum-soaked Bundt cake. It’s fine if unsurprising. Steer away from the café de olla. The “handcrafted cookies” alongside were as arid and crumbly as a Mexican desert, and the

By Phaedra Cook

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| Eating...our words |

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ere’s a dirty little secret: Many beer collectors, even beer professionals, end up settling for a cool, dark cabinet or even a box for their beer collection. (By the way, if you’re aging beer, don’t forget to label it with the date it should be consumed. Elec‑ tronic label makers, such as the Brother P‑Touch series, are perfect for this.) However, there are better ways to store beer, and once you’ve amassed a collection, it’s time to start considering how best to pro‑ tect that investment. Most of these considerations relate to bot‑ tled beer since even amber glass is somewhat light‑transmissive. However, even aluminum cans should be protected, especially from heat. No one likes skunky beer. Stand Up or Lay Down?

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People who started out collecting wine au‑ tomatically believe that bottled beer should be stored the same way: horizontally in a wine rack. That’s not necessarily the case. Beer sealed with caps should never be stored horizontally. Joey Williams, beer man‑ ager of Spec’s, pointed out that there’s no concern of keeping a cork hydrated in this case. Laying the beer down means the air pocket will run lengthwise and oxidize a greater surface area of the beer. As for beer with corks, there’s a bit of dis‑ sension on how to store those. Williams said that in Belgium, many lambic producers and farmhouse breweries rest the beer on its side like wine. Many experts, though, disagree with this method. The Craft Beer Academy website has a storage guide and says that the humidity in the bottle should be sufficient for cork hy‑ dration. Furthermore, the site asserts that if the beer comes in contact for extended periods with corks — which are often

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a member of the Houston Let’s talk Craft Beer group shared a photo of his own setup that mixes cabinets and small refrigerators. note that all of the bottles are upright.

coated to better seal the bottle — off flavors may develop. Kevin Floyd of The Hay Merchant said, “People think that because you store wine on its side…beer should also be stored on its side. Beer is not wine. There are a lot of reasons to store wine on its side, but beer doesn’t share those reasons. Cork is porous, beer is under pressure and beer touching the cork can, over time, seep out through the cork.” A final problem with laying beer down is sediment. Floyd explained this issue: “Many beers that age well are bottle‑conditioned, which means there is live yeast in the bottle. As the beer ages, the yeast will drop [which is a nice way to say “die”]. If the bottle is on its side, the yeast collects along the length of the bottle, making it harder to pour clean beer and increas[ing] the risk of off flavors from excessive contact with the yeast cake. Also, bottle‑conditioned beer with wild yeast could begin to break the cork down if given enough time.” When it’s time to serve, the yeast cake will get stirred up and add undesirable tex‑ ture, appearance and flavor. It’s better to let this stuff settle on the bottom of the bottle, and be careful not to pour it into the glass when serving. Storage Methods

There are good, better and best ways to store beer. The goals are to protect it from its enemies: heat, light and oxygen. Storing it up‑ right as noted above helps with the oxygen is‑ sues. Let’s consider how best to protect it from heat and light. Good: A Dark Area in an Air-Conditioned Room

Most of my own collection is simply stored in a bottom cabinet in my kitchen. (Okay, fine, it’s two cabinets. You got me.) Anyway, while it’s not a sexy solution, it does at least protect the beer from big tempera‑ ture jumps and light.

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Kevin Floyd’s own beer fridge is controlled by an external thermostat.

This seems like the easy option for tem‑ perature control if you can afford to throw a few hundred bucks at a wine fridge or two. The more precious bottles of our collection — or the ones we’re actually anticipating drink‑ ing soon — go into the bottom of the wine fridge. (Okay, there are two wine fridges. Busted again.)

The biggest problem we’ve encountered is that we have wine, too, and those bottles take up the top racks. The more significant issue is that wine racks aren’t made for the wide variety in beer bottle shapes. Beer bottles are kind of like people shapes. Some bottles are wide and chunky. Others are small and narrow. Wine racks are made for wine bottles, which are fairly uniform. Another issue takes us back to where we started. If beer bottles should be stored up‑ right, then we can’t use the wine racks re‑ gardless. That means for people who collect only beer and not wine, the upper area of a wine fridge is utterly useless.

Best: A Refrigerator or Freezer With an External Temperature Control

Hardcore beer collectors go the extra mile and buy a dedicated refrigerator or wide freezer for their beer collection. Of course, these appliances don’t necessarily stay at the desired temperature for beer. So, to surmount that issue, an external digital thermostat can be purchased to better control the tempera‑ ture. The fridge/freezer gets plugged into the thermostat and then into the wall outlet. A probe hangs inside the cooling unit to moni‑ tor conditions. Want to go to the next level? Floyd says, “If you really want to be a badass, buy a freezer and pay to have the thermostat changed so you don’t have the extra cords and wires.” Storage and Serving Temperatures for Beer

The Craft Beer Restaurant website recom‑ mends different serving temperatures for beer depending on the style, as follows: • Malty, rich, high‑alcohol: 50 to 55 degrees • Ales, lager, cider: 46 degrees • Pale lagers, lambics, Kölsch, Berliner Weisse: 41 degrees The site also points out that if beer is poured into a room‑temperature glass, the temperature will rise by about two degrees. That’s why better craft beer bars use a star sink — an in‑counter sprayer that, when a glass is pressed upside down on it, sprays wa‑ ter into it. Besides removing any dishwasher detergent residue, it also cools the glass. The past few weeks, we’ve covered highly desirable, collectible beers, like barrel‑aged stouts and seasonal beers, and today was about how to store them. Next week, we’re heading in the opposite direction. >> p36

2/29/16 6:21 PM

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Featuring a Culinary Feast from Houston’s Best Food Trucks Including 9 New Trucks · Listen to live music on the Aruba Tourism Music Stage with local bands all weekend long · Hands-on fun for kids in the Adventure Kids Playcare Kid’s Zone · Watch artists from Archway Gallery paint a 40th anniversary art car Register to win a tent from Napier Outdoors And much more!

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Located at HCC Southwest West Loop Campus, Haute Wheels benefits the HCC Foundation. Tickets are $16 for adults and include $5 worth of drink concession tickets and a $1 donation to HCC Foundation. Children 12 and under free. Tickets are limited so get truckin’. For a list of trucks and entertainment visit www.hautewheelshouston.com.

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Have you ever seen a chef or the kitchen crew call for a stout while they’re working? No. The last thing a hot and sweaty person wants is a thick, intense brew. In our next installment, we’ll find out what the chefs drink — incidentally, the same beers that are just right for fun in the sun or even mowing the lawn.

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donates a portion of its proceeds to Never‑ Thirst, which provides drinking water to those in third‑world countries. El Topo taco truck has hit the streets to serve up traditional yet innovative and sus‑ tainable tacos. The menu includes breakfast offerings, chop salads and truck‑made pick‑ les, as well as standard taco offerings. Find the truck on Facebook to know where it’ll be parked next. Coffee and juice bar Republic Roots is in the midst of its soft opening at 18721 Uni‑ versity in Sugar Land. The offerings in‑ clude cold‑pressed juices (on the rocks or frozen, margarita‑style) and infused honey. Delivery services are available for the cold‑ pressed juices. Because of a violent robbery, Daddyo’s Pizza at 5009 Antoine is closed until further notice. Luckily, none of the employees were seriously harmed (or at least the Click2Hous‑ ton coverage of it doesn’t mention any life‑ threatening injuries), but the family that owns Daddyo’s needs time to recuperate be‑ fore reopening the restaurant for business. El Canton Firewood Pizzeria, 981 South Ma‑ son, is now open and offering up thin‑crust pizzas that have gotten raves from Facebook reviewers. If you go, be sure to check out the sweet pizza, which is loaded with Nutella, marshmallows, strawberries and pecans. Tomball’s newest gastropub, Craft Grill, is open at 25219 Kuykendahl and has not only a standard happy hour from 3 to 6 p.m. but also a reverse happy hour from 9 p.m. to close. The fare is contemporary Southern cuisine, and the drinks include craft beers, wines and specialty cocktails. VertsKebap, a fast‑casual, build‑your‑own gyro restaurant, has opened a new location at 8552 North Highway 6 in Copperfield. The chain began in 2011 in Austin and has opened dozens of restaurants across the state. Fast‑food Italian eatery Luisa’s Pasta, 1200 McKinney, is serving created pasta dishes, such as chipotle bucatini, as well as offering build‑your‑own pasta options. Laotian restaurant Banh Somtum is now open at 13420 Highway 249, as is Doux Café, a creperie and sweet treats eatery located at 865 Dairy Ashford.

March 3 - 9, 2016

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hanks to a mild “winter” (if we can call it that), crawfish season got un‑ der way earlier than usual. The har‑ vest started in mid‑January. According to native Houstonian Bill Collins, general manager of BB’s Café in the Heights, in some years crawfish season doesn’t start until the beginning of March. So, mudbug lovers get to enjoy the springtime treat six weeks longer than usual. Should people suck the heads? Some do, some don’t, but Collins explains why diners should. Contrary to popular belief, people who suck the heads aren’t consuming the brains. So, what is that tasty stuff in the head? Crawdads are big business for BB’s Café. The Heights location alone sells more than 12,000 pounds per week during the season. “We serve them every day at all loca‑ tions while supplies last,” said Collins. “Be ready to wait. We get pretty crowded on the weekends — but we have cold beer while you wait.” So, what’s Collins’s beer of choice for crawfish? “Abita Purple Haze!” he said without hesitation. It makes sense — a Loui‑ siana beer for a tradition long associated with the swampland. Louisiana isn’t the only state where craw‑ fish are raised. They’re harvested from fresh‑ water habitats along the I‑10 corridor, so some even come from southeast Texas. BB’s serves its crawfish with boiled shrimp, hunks of corn on the cob, potatoes and melted butter. Also available as a side item is a dip of mayonnaise, hot sauce and cit‑ rus, a very traditional dipping sauce for the crawfish tails. As the season wears on, the crawfish grow even bigger. According to Collins, the prime part of the season is just days away. “We’re able to serve a medium‑size bug right now. Within the next one to three weeks, we’ll be able to serve mostly a jumbo select crawfish.” So, mark those calendars and get ready to suck some crawfish heads, because the best are yet to come.

Revere to the Westheimer spot. In an inter‑ view with Greg Morago of the Houston Chronicle, Verma said she was instead build‑ ing an entirely new restaurant from the ground up at Kirby Grove, 2525 Richmond, and she’s going to revamp the menu before the new restaurant opens, including creating a lunch menu. Mary Li, a former bartender at Tony Mandola’s, is opening a new, authentic Chinese eatery at 4705 Inker, which La Fisheria re‑ cently vacated. The concept is called Ginger & Fork, and its soft opening was set to begin March 2 and continue through March 5. Of course, since Li is a top‑notch bartender, the cocktail program is sure to be off the charts. Paul’s Kitchen, 2502 Algerian, closed Feb‑ ruary 28 and is transforming into The Merrill House, an upscale banquet hall. Chef Paul Miller is still the owner, and, in an interview with Eric Sandler of CultureMap, he says that the space’s expansive dining room made Paul’s Kitchen seem uninviting, but it will be the ideal place for large gatherings at The Merrill House. The newest addition to the Torchy’s Tacos empire is now open at 4747 Research Forest in The Woodlands to help you satisfy those Tex‑Mex cravings when you’re north of town. Don’t forget to check out the not‑so‑secret menu while you’re there, which includes the Matador with chopped brisket, jalapeño, pickled onions, avocado and all the fixin’s. Specialty grocery store Borgo Food Station is now open at 3641 West Alabama, and, in addition to imported goods, you’ll find a wide range of ready‑to‑eat dishes perfect for your midday lunch break or to take home for the family’s evening meal. The market also sports an espresso bar. Sunday brunch has come to Holley’s Seafood Restaurant & Oyster Bar, 3201 Louisiana. The menu includes offerings from the week‑ day lunch menu, as well as a three‑course prix fixe meal and special brunch cocktails, such as a Texas mimosa with grapefruit juice. Wes Griffin of Eater received confirmation from Steel City Pops that the company will open its first Houston location at 420 East 20th in May. You can feel extra‑good about these gourmet popsicles, because Steel City

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iran’s Restaurant and Bar will be leaving its longtime home at 4100 Washington after its last day of service on April 9. Rumor had it that chef Kiran Verma was con‑ sidering moving into the former Harwood Grill building at 2300 Westheimer, but Berryhill Baja Grill recently announced that it would be relocating its original restaurant at 2639

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Chef Kiran Verma’s namesake restaurant will only be open in its current location for just over a month; soon, she will have a brand-new building on richmond to call her own.

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| rocks off |

d and Bun B Had pLenty to say Before Last Week’s gop deBate. CHRIS GRAY

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politics (or good writing) should read all five; try

And this dude is the Honey Boo Boo of this political pageant. PART 5: After a Ted Cruz rally at Mutt’s BBQ in the Low Country, where he comes face-to-face with the candidate, Bun heads to Greenville for the Conservative Review Convention, “a confab of right-wing infotainers and presidential candidates.” Inside, I spot a funnel cake concession stand and grab one because that’s what you do in the South. We wander past various right-wing talk radio booths and people milling around in campaign shirts, and eventually, we make our way to the spin room. Halfway through a pulled pork slider, I get word that Sean Hannity will be in shortly. I wipe the barbecue sauce off my beard and get ready. I ask him if he and Fox News will throw their support behind the winner of the GOP nomination, even if it’s Donald Trump. He tells me that he and Fox News are two separate things, and he deftly avoids giving me a straight answer. I thank him anyway. Leaving, he doesn’t just give me a handshake — he gives me dap. A good strong dap, too. Somebody has black friends, y’all. Last week, Houston was at the epicenter of the campaign thanks to the February 25 GOP debate at the University of Houston. >> p40

vice.com/author/bun-b. Just for a taste, though,

here are snippets of each one: PART 1: After a long day of attending rallies for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, Bun watches the Super Bowl at his hotel, in “without question the quietest room I’ve ever been in where there was a sporting event playing on the TV and an open bar.” I scan the conference room and realize it’s filled with some of the most powerful people in the Republican Party. How I got in here is anybody’s guess, but I’m in this bitch so fuck it, let’s mingle. Most of the reporters here are still reeling from Iowa. A good meal, a stiff drink and a football game is the perfect way to wind down. I watch Queen Bey rock the halftime show, while older white women quietly observe 20-plus black women shaking their asses in synchronicity. PART 2: Searching for a Donald Trump event that isn’t already at capacity, Bun stumbles across the Mercy of God African Market, “in the middle of fucking New Hampshire.” Shit is getting realer by the second. I go inside and learn that the market is African-owned and -operated. I ask if there is some large African population in New Hampshire that I haven’t seen or heard about, and I was told there was

March 3 - 9, 2016

an incident unrelated to the Geto Boys.) “I don’t think he has a heart,” Willie D told Yahoo! anchor Bianna Golodryga. “He’s a selfaggrandizing, insufferable douchebag.” It’s one thing for a rap group to fight back against the unwelcome use of its music and image in an unauthorized campaign ad, though. Heading to the front lines where the political sausage is made is something else. Somehow making room in what has to be one of the busiest schedules of any Houstonian, Bun B filed a series of in-depth reports for VICE in the days leading up to both the New Hampshire and the South Carolina primaries. With shades of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic election-season journals like Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ’72, Bun’s dispatches are part frank social commentary — in New Hampshire especially, he’s often one of the few people of color in the room — and part fish-out-of-water fairy tale, as the often-freezing rapper reflects on being “about as far from Texas in the continental United States as one can get.” Bun’s reporting even caught the attention of the mainstream media, although they were prone to using his name in quotation marks. The day before South Carolina’s GOP vote, he appeared on MSNBC to share some of his adventures with anchor Tamron Hall. Echoing one of the campaign’s biggest buzzwords, Bun told Hall he was brought in to provide an “outsider’s” perspective, and immediately called attention to

Rap the Vote Legendary Houston MCs WiLLie

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the GOP’s February 13 South Carolina primary was reaching a fever pitch, the Ted Cruz campaign went after rival candidate (and fellow senator) Marco Rubio with an ad featuring former adult-film actress (and Houston native) Amy Lindsay. Perhaps searching for a way to save face and/or change course, Team Cruz next went after Clinton with a parody of the “printer scene” from the 1999 Mike Judge comedy Office Space, where several characters destroy the infamous piece of toner-bearing equipment as the Geto Boys’ “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster” plays on the soundtrack. This ad, titled “It Feels Good to Be a Clinton,” features a Hillary lookalike destroying a similar device — obviously meant to be her controversial private email server — and lyrics like “a real Clinton knows they’re entitled, and you don’t get to know what they do.” Many Cruz supporters and a few pundits thought the ad was hilarious, but when news of the ad reached the Geto Boys, the group released this official statement: “We do not support Ted Cruz or his super lame ad using our music.” Responding to the Cruz backers who claimed the spoof did the group a favor by helping raise their profile, i.e., the exact wrong thing to say, Willie D elaborated on his Facebook page a few hours later: “While I’m always humbled by any interest in mine or the group’s music, I’m not so desperate for attention that I want my music to be associated with the

Music

not. I think about grabbing some cassava fufu, but there’s no time for that. We got shit to do. PART 3: Bun runs into Jeb Bush (or “Jeb!”), who eventually dropped out of the race after finishing fourth — barely — in South Carolina with less than 8 percent of the vote. I’m like six inches away from him, and the first thing I notice is how tall he is. I’m pretty sure Bush is bigger than Trump, and he’s in much better shape than he used to be, so I’m not sure why he lets Donald punk him so easily. PART 4: Bun arrives in South Carolina, or “South Cakalaka to the locals,” and heads to a Trump rally in Walterboro, about 50 miles west of Charleston. As Trump takes the stage, complimenting the sportsmen who introduced him as “very rich and very nice,” I get it. This isn’t about politics. This is about a famous person from television coming to town. This election isn’t really about the issues at hand — it’s a popularity contest, made for reality TV.

some rather obvious facets of the campaign that have nevertheless gone unremarked upon by most major media personalities except perhaps Stephen Colbert. “I don’t want to make it seem like all conservatives are racist or anything, but there’s definitely coded language and terminology that’s being used to kind of tiptoe around words that they know aren’t politically correct,” said Bun, also a comparative-religion professor at Rice University since 2011. “But most of all, I think people really aren’t paying attention to what most people care about. A lot of this has really just been about selfies and autographs, especially when you get around the Trump campaign.” Thus far Bun, a Bernie Sanders supporter, has written five articles for VICE from the campaign trail, three from New Hampshire and two from South Carolina. With Texas among the states voting on Super Tuesday, we can only hope he keeps it up closer to home. UGK fans have long known what a brilliant writer the King of the Trill is, and his VICE reports are full of sharp observations and strong opinions, often in the same sentence. Anyone who is interested in

houstonpress.com

he 2016 presidential campaign has been shifting into a higher gear, and with Super Tuesday upon us this week, it’s only going to get weirder from here. Dominated thus far by the rise of so-called “outsider” candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, as well as the difficulties faced by presumed sure things Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, by modern political standards the campaign reaches new levels of absurdity every week. What nobody probably saw coming, though, is the prominent role played by the two Houston rappers who have recently been thrust into the thick of things. Some background: As jockeying for votes in

devil’s advocate. Maybe that works for you but not me. Being happy that Ted Cruz is parodying my music, which speaks for the underprivileged, underserved, and underrepresented, is like a mugging victim being happy that the mugger filmed him or her being struck in the face, and uploaded it to social media for entertainment, because at least now everybody knows who they are. “Keep your press. We’re the Geto Boys. On the strength of our catalogue and loyal fans, our name and music will live much longer than Ted Cruz and any microwave publicity he garners due to running for POTUS. We don’t need Ted Cruz or his supporters to be relevant.” Willie D appeared on-camera the next day for a segment on Yahoo! News Live, during which he likened Cruz to the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. His calls for an apology from Cruz have thus far gone unanswered (as far as we know), and at press time the Hillary ad was still up on Cruz’s website. (Cruz dismissed his campaign’s communications director, Rick Tyler, last week after

3/1/16 12:26 PM

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Rocks Off from p39

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But imagine if it had been at Rice instead, and either Bun himself or his bosses at the university (or both) were able to pull the proper strings to land him a spot on the panel alongside moderator Wolf Blitzer. Finally, voters might have gotten some real answers for a change. And the questions would have been a hell of a lot more exciting, too.

Good omens ur-MetaL LaBeL suMerian

reCords is tHroWing itseLf quite a BirtHday BasH. COREY DEITERMAN

his year marks the tenth anniversary of Sumerian Records, and the metal label is celebrating by having a hell of a bash. The record label, notable for bringing us progressive and technical metal luminaries throughout the past decade, was founded by Ash Avildsen, already known for his work as a booking agent. Most labels might throw one big show to celebrate, but Avildsen is a unique figure in the world of metal. More than perhaps most record label execs, he gets the mind-set of a fan. He understands what listeners would like. With that in mind, it would seem he realizes that most would feel left out by just one concert to commemorate the anniversary. So instead Sumerian Records is conducting a full tour this year to showcase some of its greatest and most popular acts. This show will hit Walters on Saturday night, featuring three of the best bands ever to play “Sumerian-core.” First headliner Born of Osiris has been a Sumerian OG since their first EP in 2007, The New Reign. They’ve been crafting ace technical death metal ever since, slowly becoming more progressive and incorporating new features like clean vocals and EDM influences on new records like Soul Sphere. Second-billed band Veil of Maya signed with Sumerian for their breakout record, The Common Man’s Collapse in 2008. They’ve grown as a band despite multiple lineup changes, including incorporating new vocalist Lukas Magyar’s fantastic clean singing into latest album Matriarch. The third, After the Burial, is an especially significant choice for this tour. Many doubted the band could go forward after the tragic suicide of founding guitarist Justin Lowe last year. Far from being done, they’ve come back strong with their latest album, Dig Deep, which celebrates the life of their fallen bandmate.

They originally signed with Sumerian for their own breakout, Rareform, in 2008, and now are embarking on their second major tour since rebounding from the loss of Lowe. Progressive-metal projects Erra and Bad Omens, who signed with Sumerian in 2014 and 2015 respectively, will open the show. The two have been going for a while, but their signing to the label and opening slots on this tour should bring both some new acclaim and publicity. Given Sumerian’s track record, it’s definitely worth showing up early to check out the newcomers, who could well be headlining by next year. This is a can’t-miss tour for any metal fan, especially those who enjoy the more technical side of the genre. We’re just lucky that Sumerian realized a package this big couldn’t be contained in one city or one night. Sumerian Records’ 10-Year Tour pulls into Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, on Saturday, March 5. Doors open at 6 p.m.

Inky spot a reader’s tattoos are Causing trouBLe WitH His joB. WILLIE D

Dear Willie D: After looking for a job for six months, I finally got on at a trucking company loading hauls. Then, after being on the job for less than a month, I was pulled over by the police and arrested for an old traffic warrant. He said he pulled me over because I changed lanes without signaling, but I know it was because of my arm tattoos. I had my windows down, so I know that’s when he saw them. I had to stay in jail for a week, and when I got out, my job had fired me. So now I’m back where I started: tatted up and looking for a job. Why does being tatted affect your career or future when it’s only ink?

Only Ink: Tattoos are more than “only ink.” They’re a form of expression. Before an employer hires you, they study your look just as much as your skill set to determine whether they want you representing their brand. You may have all the qualifications for the job, but if you walk in trying to get hired with a tat on your face of a handgun, and bullets sprawled across your forehead, you’re not getting hired. Ask Willie D appears Thursdays at houstonpress.com/music.

mar 24 Shane Smith & the Saints

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Music

Loreena McKennitt

8 p.m. Thursday, march 3 aT cullen performance hall, 4800 calhoun, 832‑842‑3100 or enTerTainhousTon.com.

She may not be quite as widely known as Enya, but for followers of the realm where Celtic music dissipates into New Age, Loreena McKennitt is equally esteemed, if not more so. Her lilting vocals and otherworldly harp notes might sound beamed directly from the misty isles of Arthurian myth, but McKennitt was actually born in a much different part of the former British empire — the plains of Manitoba, southwest of Winnipeg. Since 1985 debut Elemental, McKennitt has sold more than

weeks back, ain’t quite ready to take his place among them just yet — there’s still a lot of zip in those old gut strings. chris Gray

Gary Clark Jr.

8 p.m. friday, march 4 aT Warehouse live, 813 sT. emanuel, 713‑225‑5483 or Warehouselive.com.

Gary Clark Jr.’s standing within the music industry was on display at last month’s Grammy awards, in which he and Chris Stapleton paid tribute to B.B. King with “The Thrill Is Gone” and were upstaged only a little by Bonnie Raitt. (She’s good.) Clark has been on a real hot streak lately, emerging as a major festival headliner and releasing last year’s The Story of Sonny Boy Slim, a sprawling update of Curtis Mayfield-style soul and dustings of folk, rock, P-Funk, G-Funk and hip-hop that is positively bursting at the seams with artistic growth. And for anyone grumbling that it’s

kowski’s poem “Fair Stand the Fields of France” is about as punk as it gets, too. chris Gray

The Vanity

WiTh second lovers, 8 p.m. saTurday, march 5 aT raven ToWer, 310 norTh, 832‑925‑7585 or ravenToWer.neT.

Houston has already been exposed to Austin five-piece rock band The Vanity via Summer Fest 2015, where they performed two impressive sets in sweltering heat, according to our man on the scene, Nathan Smith. The fast-rising outfit released its three-song debut EP, Strangers, a year ago; its Kings of Leon-ish vibe found wide acceptance with tunes that scream “dance, fools.” Led by Houstonian Alex Dugan, who claims to have a high tolerance for destructive behavior and vodka, the band has become one of the Live Music Capital’s top indie-rock acts in only one year and — barring any highly destructive behavior — looks to be on track to rise to the top of the rock charts with the release of its first full-length. Catch them at smaller venues like Raven Tower before they hit the arena circuit. William michael smiTh

Shawn Mendes

3:45 p.m. sunday, march 6 aT nrG sTadium, 1 nrG park, 832‑667‑ 1000 or rodeohousTon.com.

Joe Ely

Few people have done so much with six seconds as Shawn Mendes. With his voice and good looks, he became one of the most popular people on Vine, winning fans by singing six-second clips of pop hits. From there, the story goes as well as one could hope in the age of social media: tours with other Internet celebrities, Teen Choice Awards, a major-label alGary Clark Jr. bum and a slot opening for TayFrank Maddocks lor Swift on one of the biggest still not much of a blues album, Clark recently tours of the year. Yes, Shawn Mendes is proof returned home to celebrate the latest reopen- that viral success can in turn become actual success. Now he gets to show his stuff on the ing (and sixth overall) of Antone’s, the legbiggest stage in Houston, RodeoHouston’s roendary Austin club where he got his start as a walk-on at the weekly “Blue Monday” jams — tating stage. It’s a big opportunity, but the Sunday-afternoon gig seems tailor-made for a but this time he did it as one of the club’s co17-year-old with his career arc; Houston is owners. chris Gray probably jam-packed with teens with curfews who want to hear him in person instead of on MyDolls their phones. Enjoy one of the few rodeo perWiTh GreTchen’s disco plaGue…iT’s infecTious!, formances you’re likely to see where the talent no love less and vacaTion eyes, 8 p.m. friday, could compete in the calf scramble. cory Garcia march 4 aT WalTers doWnToWn, 1120 naylor,

Last month Joe Ely was inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association’s Hall of Fame, a fitting honor for an artist whose panoramic songs flow so naturally from his West Texas roots; this on top of his official title of 2016 Texas State Musician. At the moment he’s enjoying some of the best reviews of his long career because of last year’s Panhandle Rambler, a collection of songs that finds Ely examining his native South Plains with a sociologist’s eye for detail but a poet’s pen: Here are hobos, trains, migrants, victims, oil wells, brassy Southern belles, wild-man DJs, and the shades of past greats like Woody Guthrie and Buddy Holly. Ely, who just turned 65 a few

On the list of great Texas punk album titles, It’s Too Hot For Revolution! has to be right up there at the top. True, MyDolls’ designation as “punk” has always been more a reflection of the times in which they first appeared — 1978, when Houston’s artistic climate was quite a bit more conservative — than the style of music they play. Mostly, as the band’s Linda Younger told us last year, “MyDolls music just happens.” Collecting unrecorded songs from before the band’s original 1986 breakup plus “Don’t Fucking Die,” a Sonic Youth-style guitar meditation in memory of late guitarist Kathy Johnston, whose death sparked their re-formation about five years ago, Revolution! is actually an excellent art-rock record. But to be fair, their aggressive reading of Charles Bu-

14 million records by blurring the distinctions between medieval balladry and contemporary folk music, earning worldwide acclaim for albums including The Visit and The Book of Secrets. For her first visit to Houston in ages, she’ll be joined by longtime accompanists Brian Hughes (guitars) and Caroline Lavelle (cello); their work can also be heard on 2012’s Grammy-nominated live recording Troubadours On the Rhine. chris Gray 7 and 9:30 p.m. friday, march 4 aT mcGoniGel’s mucky duck, 2425 norfolk, 713‑528‑5999 or mcGoniGels.com.

713‑222‑2679 or WalTersdoWnToWn.com.

Fetty Wap

7 p.m. Wednesday, march 9 aT house of Blues, 1204 caroline, 888‑402‑5837 or hoB.com/housTon.

The curious thing about Fetty Wap is that he even managed to make it this far. Normally goofy, hard-boiled rap acts are only asked to merely be that. But last year saw a mammoth breakthrough for the New Jersey rapper/ singer, one in which he scored four Top 10 singles to become the first artist to do that in a single year in quite some time. Wednesday marks his first proper Houston show, and seeing how he’s dominated the radio ever since “Trap Queen” broke big, he’s aiming to serenade his fans and have fun — even with that croaky singing voice that’s made him a star. Brandon caldWell

3/1/16 12:27 PM

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The Maine

3/8 @ Walter’s Downtown The Floozies, w/ Sunsquabi + Flamingosis

3/10 @ Warehouse Live

saturday march 5th nick carter

The Expanders 3/10 @ Walter’s Downtown

Electric Six, Parlour Tricks, Roadside Union 3/11 @ The Raven Tower

Poliça, Clara-Nova 3/11 @ Warehouse Live

thursday march 10th the Floozies

Ron Pope, Jonathan Tyler, Truett 3/12 @ Warehouse Live Ra Ra Riot, Sun Club, PWR BTTM

3/15 @ Walter’s Downtown

DMA’S

friday march 11th polica

3/15 @ The Raven Tower

Music

Music listings are offered as a free service to Press readers and are subject to space restrictions. Send listings information by e-mail (musiclistings@houstonpress.com), fax (713-280-2496) or mail (2603 LaBranch, Houston, TX 77004). To change an ongoing listing, call 713-280-2486. Deadline is noon Thursday for the following week’s issue. Listings rotate regularly, as space allows. Our complete listing of shows is available online. For addresses, phone numbers and descriptions of venues, see our online listings at houstonpress.com/directory/clubs.

T H I S J U ST I N Al Staehely: With The Evelyn Rubio Band., Tue., April 19, 7:30 p.m., $20 to $22. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Bonbon con Trippy Cholo: Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., $5. Fox Hollow, 4617 Nett, Houston. Conflict: With Total Chaos, The Scandals., Sat., June 25, 8 p.m., $15 to $17. Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, Houston. Crown Larks: With AK’Chamel., Mon., March 21, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, Houston. Curren$y: Wed., April 20, 10:30 p.m., $30 to $40. Warehouse Live, 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Daniel Bachman: Sun., March 20, 7 p.m., TBA. Texas Gallery, 2012 Peden, Houston. The Darkness: Tue., April 19, 8 p.m., $25 to $45. House of Blues, 1204 Caroline, Houston. Dead Leaf Echo: With Golden Cities, Mojave Red, Delphine Coma (DJ)., Mon., March 14, 8 p.m., $10. Fitzgerald’s, 2706 White Oak, Houston. Disturbed and Breaking Benjamin: Sat., Aug. 13, 6 p.m., $29.95 to $92.45. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins, The Woodlands. Evelyn Rubio: Fri., March 4, 9:30 p.m., TBA. Emmit’s Place, 4852 Benning Dr., Houston. George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic: Thu., April 21, 8 p.m., $29.50. House of Blues, 1204 Caroline, Houston. Goo Goo Dolls: With Collective Soul, Tribe Society., Thu., Sept. 8, 7 p.m., $35 to $85. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins, The Woodlands. GuGu Drum Group: Fri., March 18, 8 p.m., Free. Miller Outdoor Theatre, 6000 Hermann Park Dr., Houston. Jerkagram: With Gato Guapo, the Dirty Seeds., Mon., March 7, 8 p.m., TBA. Satellite, 6922 Harrisburg, Houston.

Visit HOUstOnPREss.COM FOR ADDitiOnAl MUsiC COVERAgE saturday march 12th ron pope and the nighthawks

monday march 14th Further seems Forever

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John Evans: Thu., March 17, 8 p.m., $10 to $12. Armadillo Palace, 5015 Kirby, Houston. La Santa Cecilia: With La Sien., Tue., April 5, 8 p.m., TBA. Last Concert Cafe, 1403 Nance, Houston. Linus Pauling Quartet: Sat., April 23, 1 p.m., Free. Cactus Music, 2110 Portsmouth, Houston. Marilyn Manson: With Slipknot., Sun., June 26, 8 p.m., TBA. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, 2005 Lake Robbins, The Woodlands. Mean Mary in Concert: With Young & Rusty, Ken Gaines., Thu., March 3, 8:30 p.m., $10. Anderson Fair Retail Restaurant, 2007 Grant, Houston. Moon Honey: With the Wheel Workers., Wed., March 9, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Walters Downtown, 1120 Naylor, Houston. Murder Junkies: With Screech of Death, The Guillotines., Sun., June 19, 8 p.m., $10 to $15. Satellite, 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Nocha Caliente featuring Angelo Pagan: With Jimmie Morales, Oskar Cartaya., Sat., March 19, 8 p.m., Free. Miller Outdoor Theatre, 6000 Hermann Park Dr., Houston. Parquet Courts: Mon., May 2, 8 p.m., $15 to $20. Fitzgerald’s, 2706 White Oak, Houston. Poor Dumb Bastards: With Baron Von Bomblast, Punk Rock Project Houston, Layden & the Lion., Fri., March 11, 9 p.m., $5 to $8. Acadia Bar & Grill, 3939 Cypress Creek, Houston. Rihanna: With Travis Scott., Sun., May 15, 7 p.m., $30.50 to $151. Toyota Center, 1510 Polk, Houston. Rock It Science: With Joe B, Mr.Peabody featuring Trombophonix, DVS1, Hyplektro, Gina Keller, Photon Mechanics, Sons Of Conquering Lion., Fri., March 4, 8 & 10 p.m., $10. Satellite, 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Ronnie Milsap: With Rick Trevino., Fri., April 22, 9:30 p.m., $20 to $75. Stampede Houston, 11925 Eastex Freeway, Houston. Shmu: With Nikhoo, Whit., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $10. The Waughford, 15 Waughford, Houston. Stephanie Urbina Jones: Thu., April 21, 9:30 p.m., $20 to $22. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck, 2425 Norfolk, Houston.

Torche: With Eagle Claw, Omotai., Thu., May 12, 8 p.m., $12 to $13. Rudyard’s, 2010 Waugh, Houston. Turkuaz: Fri., April 29, 8 p.m., TBA. Last Concert Cafe, 1403 Nance, Houston. Widower: With Mastema, Malevolent Force, God Fearing Fuck., Mon., May 9, 9 p.m., $7. White Swan, 4419 Navigation, Houston. Zac Brown Band: With Drake White & The Big Fire., Fri., Aug. 12, 8 p.m., TBA. Minute Maid Park, 501 Crawford, Houston.

C LU B S L I ST I N G S

Sundays, 6 p.m., $25 to $ March 8, 7:30 p.m., $20 to Natachee’s Supper ‘n Punc March 5, 7:30 p.m., Free. The Nightingale Room: 308 9, 7 p.m., Free.

COUNTRY

ROCK Acadia Bar & Grill: 3939 Cypress Creek, Houston. In One Breath, with Ten57, In Silence We Sleep, For Dying Out Loud., Thu., March 3, 9 p.m., $5 to $8. Living Scars, with The Flamin’ Hellcats, Trynwreck., Sun., March 6, 7 p.m., TBA. AvantGarden: 411 Westheimer, Houston. 1st Thursday Manifesto Showcase, with Kris Smith, Jennifer Trussell, Raiska Mchnsk, Kali Schiska, John Muzak, Pop Tart, Markell Gibson, Derrick Rice, Jennifer Free, Eddie Conner, VII The Foreigner, The Black S., Thu., March 3, 8 p.m., Free. BFE Rock Club: 11528 Jones, Houston. Chaotic Justice, Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., TBA. Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main, Houston. Jittery Jack & Miss Amy, Mon., March 7, 8 p.m., TBA. Concert Pub (North): 2470 FM 1960, Houston. Uli Jon Roth presents The Ultimate Guitar Experience w/ Jennfer Batten & Andy Timmons, Fri., March 4, 6 p.m., $40-$200. Fitzgerald’s: 2706 White Oak, Houston. Kemo For Emo, with Kyle Hubbard & Fullmetal, Bottom of the Food Chain, Four Letter Language., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $10. Houston House Of Creeps: 807 William St., Houston. #veryjazzed presents Calico Club, with Dark Disco, Chase USA., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., TBA. Last Concert Cafe: 1403 Nance, Houston. The Hightailers, Thursdays, 8 p.m., Free to $10. Vanilla Whale, with Optimystic., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., TBA. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. John Evans, Sat., March 5, 9:30 p.m., $20 to $22. The Nightingale Room: 308 Main, Houston. Mikey and The Drags, with Muddy Belle., Thu., March 3, 7 p.m., Free. Daniel Eyes & The Vibes, Sat., March 5, 7 p.m., Free. Scubadiver, Tue., March 8, 7 p.m., Free. Notsuoh: 314 Main, Houston. Sullivan’s Vessel, with the High Mile, Retaboice., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., Free. Raven Tower: 310 N., Houston. Lost Element, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., $10 to $13. The Vanity, with Second Lovers., Sat., March 5, 7 p.m., $8 to $10. Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Houston. The Tyburn Jig, with Fire Moth, Vodi., Fri., March 4, 9 p.m., $5. Funeral Horse, with Descendants of Erdrick, Poor Unfortunate Souls., Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., $5 to $8. Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Jerkagram, with Gato Guapo, the Dirty Seeds., Mon., March 7, 8 p.m., TBA. Braver, with Action Frank, Sniper 66, Gutter Rats, No Resistance, Shut Out, & more, Tue., March 8, 8 p.m., TBA. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Super bob, with An Author, A Poet, Hindsight, From Under The Willow, The Flamin’ Hellcats., Sat., March 5, 6 p.m., $7. Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Planned Parenthood Benefit, with Heartplanet, Astragal, CLASP., Fri., March 4, 6 p.m., Free. Cave of Swimmers, Sun., March 6, 8 p.m., TBA. Walters Downtown: 1120 Naylor, Houston. Mydolls, with Gretchen’s Disco Plague (It’s Infectious!), No Love Less, Vacation Eyes., Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Born of Osiris, with Veil of Maya, After The Burial, Erra, Bad Omen., Sat., March 5, 6 p.m., $20 to $23. Hate Us Cuz You Ain’t Us, with Brokencyde, Justina Valentine, Challenger., Sun., March 6, 8 p.m., $31.74. The Maine, Tue., March 8, 7 p.m., $15 to $17. Moon Honey, with the Wheel Workers., Wed., March 9, 8 p.m., $7 to $10. Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Gary Clark Jr., Fri., March 4, 9 p.m., $36. The Waughford: 15 Waughford, Houston. Shmu, with Nikhoo, Whit., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $10.

POP Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Nick Carter, Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $29.75.

AMERICANA Armadillo Palace: 5015 Kirby, Houston. Micky and the Motorcars, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., $12 to $15. Big Top Lounge: 3714 Main, Houston. Nick Gaitan & The Umbrella Man, Thursdays, 10 p.m., Free. Dosey Doe: 25911 Interstate 45, Spring. Willis Alan Ramsey, Sat., March 5, 8:30 p.m., $58 to $98. The Trishas, Wed., March 9, 8:30 p.m., $10 to $15. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Radney Foster, Thu., March 3, 7 p.m., $35 to $38; Scythian, Thu., March 3, 9:30 p.m., $20 to $22. Joe Ely, Fri., March 4, 7 & 9:30 p.m., $30 to $33. Shake Russell,

Armadillo Palace: 5015 Kirb Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $6 t B&B Butchers & Restauran Butchers and Restaurant Bell, Jonathan Moody, C 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Starts Marc Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., Sp and Dave Perez., Thu., M Richards, Fri., March 4, 8: Houston Livestock Show & Aldean, Thu., March 3, 8 March 7, 8:45 p.m., $18 to The Green Room -- Wareh Chris Gardner, with Total

BLUES

Shakespeare Pub: 14129 Mem Thursday, 9 p.m., Free. The M time Murray & the Honeym Eazy Three with Matt Johnso The Big Easy Social and Ple and the Healers, Thursda March 4, 9:30 p.m., $5. B John Egan, Mondays, 8 p.m 8 p.m., Free. Big & Easy B

SINGER- SON

Anderson Fair Retail Resta in Concert, with Young & p.m., $10. Christine Albert $20. Susan Gibson, Sat., McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2 Sat., March 5, 7 p.m., $30 The Nightingale Room: 308 with DJ Gracie Chavez., F Super Happy Fun Land: 38 Lauren Marsh., Wed., Mar

BRASS BAND

Continental Club: 3700 Ma 5, 10 p.m., TBA.

CHORAL

Lone Star College - North H Concert Choir, Pop Singe March 3, 7:30 p.m., Free.

CLASSICAL

Cullen Center: 1200 Smith March 4, 8 p.m., TBA. Cullen Theater at Wortham Vilde Frang, Sun., March Jones Hall For the Perform Frang, Sun., March 6, 7 p.

Alley Kat Bar & Lounge: 37 p.m., Free. Flash Gordon The Flat: 1701 Commonweal Noey Lopez, Patrick Drew Flight 1701, With DJ Sun Butterfly Effect, with Ang 4-8 p.m., Free. Fox Hollow: 4617 Nett, Ho March 5, 9 p.m., $5. House of Blues: 1204 Caro 10 p.m., Free. Jet Lounge: 1515 Pease, Hou Sat., March 5, 10 p.m., TB KAPERS Houston: 13655 Thursdays, Thursdays, 3 p

3/1/16 5:49 PM

u., May 12, 8 p.m., $12 to $13.

COUNTRY

ston. 1st Thursday Manifesto fer Trussell, Raiska Mchnsk, Markell Gibson, Derrick Rice, Foreigner, The Black S., Thu.,

. Chaotic Justice, Sat., March

Jittery Jack & Miss Amy, Mon.,

ouston. Uli Jon Roth presents nnfer Batten & Andy Timmons,

on. Kemo For Emo, with Kyle the Food Chain, Four Letter 0. am St., Houston. #veryjazzed sco, Chase USA., Sat., March

n. The Hightailers, Thursdays, with Optimystic., Sat., March

BLUES Shakespeare Pub: 14129 Memorial, Houston. Sonny Boy Terry, Every other Thursday, 9 p.m., Free. The Mighty Orq Solo, Fridays, 6 p.m., Free. Sparetime Murray & the Honeymakers Blues Jam, Sundays, 9 p.m., Free. The Eazy Three with Matt Johnson and James Wilhite, Mondays, 9 p.m., Free. The Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club: 5731 Kirby, Houston. Luther and the Healers, Thursdays, 9:30 p.m., Free. Steve Gilbert, Fri., March 4, 9:30 p.m., $5. Brad Absher, Sat., March 5, 9:30 p.m., $5. John Egan, Mondays, 8 p.m., Free. The Big Easy Quartet, Tuesdays, 8 p.m., Free. Big & Easy Blues Jam, Wednesdays, 9 p.m., Free.

lk, Houston. John Evans, Sat.,

ton. Mikey and The Drags, with Free. Daniel Eyes & The Vibes, er, Tue., March 8, 7 p.m., Free. ’s Vessel, with the High Mile, ee. lement, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., Lovers., Sat., March 5, 7 p.m.,

e Tyburn Jig, with Fire Moth, eral Horse, with Descendants Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., $5 to $8. Jerkagram, with Gato Guapo, .m., TBA. Braver, with Action esistance, Shut Out, & more,

Super bob, with An Author, A Willow, The Flamin’ Hellcats.,

Houston. Gary Clark Jr., Fri.,

on. Shmu, with Nikhoo, Whit.,

uston. Nick Carter, Sat., March

. Nick Gaitan & The Umbrella

ng. Willis Alan Ramsey, Sat., Trishas, Wed., March 9, 8:30

, Houston. Radney Foster, Thu., Thu., March 3, 9:30 p.m., $20 to m., $30 to $33. Shake Russell,

ELECTRONICA Eastdown Warehouse: 850 Mckee, Houston. Awakening: An Electronic Music Experience, with Ahgi, DJ Icon Bandit, Jacob Andrew, Moses, Oxigenate., Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., $10 to $15. Rudyard’s: 2010 Waugh, Houston. Great Good Fine OK, with Handsome Ghost., Thu., March 3, 8 p.m., $10 to $13. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Mickey Avalon, with Dirt Nasty., Thu., March 3, 8 p.m., $20 to $75.

F E S T I VA L Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Wonky Power Spring Social, with Tax the Wolf, Handsomebeast, Gio Chamba, FLCON FCKER, George West, Rex Hudson, Camera Cult, Mind Shrine, Sand Dunes, Dj Squincy Jones., Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $10. Toyota Center: 1510 Polk, Houston. Winter Jam, with For King & Country, Matthew West, Crowder, Lauren Daigle, Red, Newsong, Sidewalk Prophets, K.B, Tedashii, Trip Lee, Stars Go Dim, We Are Messengers, Tony Nolan., Fri., March 4, 6:45 p.m., $10.

SINGER- SONGWRITER Anderson Fair Retail Restaurant: 2007 Grant, Houston. Mean Mary in Concert, with Young & Rusty, Ken Gaines., Thu., March 3, 8:30 p.m., $10. Christine Albert and Chris Gage, Fri., March 4, 8:45 p.m., $20. Susan Gibson, Sat., March 5, 8:45 p.m., $15. McGonigel’s Mucky Duck: 2425 Norfolk, Houston. Cheryl Wheeler, Sat., March 5, 7 p.m., $30 to $33. The Nightingale Room: 308 Main, Houston. Cameron Dezen Hammon, with DJ Gracie Chavez., Fri., March 4, 8:30 p.m., Free. Super Happy Fun Land: 3801 Polk, Houston. Sophie Auster, with Lauren Marsh., Wed., March 9, 8 p.m., TBA.

BRASS BAND Continental Club: 3700 Main, Houston. Brass-A-Holics, Sat., March 5, 10 p.m., TBA.

CHORAL Lone Star College - North Harris: 2700 W.W. Thorne Dr., Houston. Concert Choir, Pop Singers, and Symphonic Band Concert, Thu., March 3, 7:30 p.m., Free.

HIP-HOP Club Rhino: 9410 Richmond, Houston. Where Ya Barz At, Sat., March 5, 7-11 p.m., $30. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Monster Energy Outbreak Tour Presents: Fetty Wap - Welcome to the Zoo, with Fetty Wap., Wed., March 9, 7 p.m., $38.50-$48.50. Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo: 1 Reliant Park, Houston. Pitbull, Tue., March 8, 6:45 p.m., TBA. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 813 St Emanuel, Houston. Doeman, Thu., March 3, 8:30 p.m., $15 to $20.

L AT I N Arena Theatre: 7326 Southwest Freeway, Houston. Un Duelo Intocable: Day 1, Sat., March 5, 8:30 p.m., $85 to $299. Un Duelo Intocable: Day 2, Sun., March 6, 8:30 p.m., $85 to $299. Emmit’s Place: 4852 Benning Dr., Houston. Evelyn Rubio, Fri., March 4, 9:30 p.m., TBA. Revention Music Center: 520 Texas, Houston. Ana Gabriel, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., $79.50 to $150.

M E TA L CLASSICAL Cullen Center: 1200 Smith St., Houston. Cameron Carpenter, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., TBA. Cullen Theater at Wortham Theater Center: 500 Texas, Houston. Vilde Frang, Sun., March 6, 7 p.m., Ranges from $28 to $63. Jones Hall For the Performing Arts: 615 Louisiana, Houston. Vilde Frang, Sun., March 6, 7 p.m., $28 to $48.

DJ Alley Kat Bar & Lounge: 3718 Main, Houston. Nu Lounge, Fridays, 9 p.m., Free. Flash Gordon Parks, Wednesdays, 8 p.m., Free. The Flat: 1701 Commonwealth, Houston. The Kitchen Thursdays, with Noey Lopez, Patrick Drew, Brotha Jibril., Thursdays, 9 p.m., Free. Flight 1701, With DJ Sun & Friends., Fridays, 10 p.m., Free. The Butterfly Effect, with Angelo, Eriko, Tomahawk Bang., Sundays, 4-8 p.m., Free. Fox Hollow: 4617 Nett, Houston. Bonbon con Trippy Cholo, Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., $5. House of Blues: 1204 Caroline, Houston. Beer N Beats, Tuesdays, 10 p.m., Free. Jet Lounge: 1515 Pease, Houston. R E K L I N E R featuring VIRGINIA, Sat., March 5, 10 p.m., TBA. KAPERS Houston: 13655 Bissonnet St., Houston. International Thursdays, Thursdays, 3 p.m.-2 a.m., Free.

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Cactus Music: 2110 Portsmouth, Houston. Oceans of Slumber, Sat., March 5, 1 p.m., Free. Scout Bar: 18307 Egret Bay, Houston. Mac Sabbath, Fri., March 4, 6 & 8 p.m., $12 to $15. Walters Downtown: 1120 Naylor, Houston. Battalion of Saints, Mon., March 7, 8 p.m., $12 to $15. White Swan: 4419 Navigation, Houston. Anialator, Sat., March 5, 7 p.m., TBA. Witchaven, with Steel Bearing Hand, Six Brew Bantha, Cryptic Void, Holy Money, God Fearing Fuck., Sun., March 6, 8 p.m., TBA. Nervosa, with Suspended, Mastema, Saturnatas, Toxic Steel., Tue., March 8, 8 p.m., $10 to $12.

R&B Arena Theatre: 7326 Southwest Freeway, Houston. August Alsina & Tory Lanez, Fri., March 4, 8 p.m., $59.50. Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo: 1 Reliant Park, Houston. Jason Derulo, Fri., March 4, 8:45 p.m., TBA. Studio @ Warehouse Live: 813 St Emanuel, Houston. Andra Day, Sun., March 6, 7:30 p.m., $18 to $21.

ZYDECO The Big Easy Social and Pleasure Club: 5731 Kirby, Houston. Jabo, Sun., March 6, 8 p.m., Free.

Join us for Un-Rush Hours! Mon-Fri 4-9pm $3.75 Wells & Domestic Beer Complimentary Buffet 5-8pm

March 3 - 9, 2016

on. Micky and the Motorcars,

South Beach: 810 Pacific, Houston. Sharon Needles, Sat., March 5, 9 p.m., Free.

Houston Press

ouston. Planned Parenthood CLASP., Fri., March 4, 6 p.m., h 6, 8 p.m., TBA. ton. Mydolls, with Gretchen’s ove Less, Vacation Eyes., Fri., Osiris, with Veil of Maya, After March 5, 6 p.m., $20 to $23. okencyde, Justina Valentine, 31.74. The Maine, Tue., March th the Wheel Workers., Wed.,

D R AG

, Houston. In One Breath, with ng Out Loud., Thu., March 3, 9 Flamin’ Hellcats, Trynwreck.,

Armadillo Palace: 5015 Kirby, Houston. The Captain Legendary Band, Sat., March 5, 8 p.m., $6 to $8. B&B Butchers & Restaurant: 1814 Washington Ave., Houston. B&B Butchers and Restaurant Rodeo Weekends, with Justin Michael Bell, Jonathan Moody, Cody Joe Hughes., Saturdays, Sundays, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Starts March 5. Continues through March 20, Free. Dosey Doe: 25911 I-45 N., Spring. Larry Joe Taylor, With Deryl Dodd and Dave Perez., Thu., March 3, 8:30 p.m., $20 to $25. Jamie Richards, Fri., March 4, 8:30 p.m., $18. Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo: 1 Reliant Park, Houston. Jason Aldean, Thu., March 3, 8:45 p.m., TBA. Miranda Lambert, Mon., March 7, 8:45 p.m., $18 to $100. The Green Room -- Warehouse Live: 813 St. Emanuel, Houston. Chris Gardner, with Total Recall., Sat., March 5, 8:30 p.m., $10.

Little Dipper: 304 Main St., Houston. Deep Shadows, Sun., March 6, 8 p.m., Free. MKT BAR: 1001 Austin, Houston. Soul Sessions with DJ Tempty, Saturdays, 8 p.m., Free. Satellite: 6922 Harrisburg, Houston. Rock It Science, with Joe B, Mr.Peabody featuring Trombophonix, DVS1, Hyplektro, Gina Keller, Photon Mechanics, Sons Of Conquering Lion., Fri., March 4, 8 & 10 p.m., $10. DJ Night, with Feel This, Radagast, Mark OG, Normul., Sat., March 5, 8:30 p.m., TBA. Stereo Live: 6400 Richmond, Houston. Dirtybird presents Bill & Will’s Excellent Adventure, with Billy Kenny, Will Clark., Thu., March 3, 9 p.m., TBA.

houstonpress.com

ncert Cafe, 1403 Nance, Houston. nt Force, God Fearing Fuck., n, 4419 Navigation, Houston. & The Big Fire., Fri., Aug. 12, 8 awford, Houston.

Sundays, 6 p.m., $25 to $30. Sam Morrow and Jaime Wyatt, Tue., March 8, 7:30 p.m., $20 to $22. Natachee’s Supper ‘n Punch: 3622 Main St., Houston. CowJazz, Sat., March 5, 7:30 p.m., Free. The Nightingale Room: 308 Main, Houston. Chris King, Wed., March 9, 7 p.m., Free.

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100 Employment 105 Career/Training/Schools THE OCEAN Corp. 10840 Rockley Road, Houston, Texas 77099. Train for a new career. Underwater Welder. Commercial Diver. *NDT/Weld Inspector. Job Placement Assistance. Financial Aid avail for those who qualify 1.800.321.0298

110 Computer/Technical IT: FIS Management Services, LLC seeks Mgrs in Houston, TX to support Energy Trading & Risk Mgmt (ETRM) fin'l sys behalf of clients in energy & commodities trad'g sect'rs. Req's: Bachelor's or equiv in Comp Sci, Comp Info Sys, Info Tech, Eng'g or rel & 5 yrs exp wrkg in the Energy, Commod & Util Domain. Prior exp must incl Endur prod't exp using & implemt'g the following modules: Trad'g Mgr, Mrkt Mgr, Risk/Valuations, Confirm's & Settle'mts, Real Time Pos & Sched'g; creating incoming & outgoing interfaces in Endur; wrkg w/European or N.A. Energy Mrkts; config'g & running Endur EOD; utilizing Openlink Endur vers 8.0 & above; wrkg w/Exchange & OTC Trad'g apps, incl ICE & Tray port Global Vision; wrkg w/Endur extension tech: AVS, JVS & Open Components; Connex Srvcs & Gateways; core Endur simulations & MTM, PnL. Concepts; Ops Srvcs scripts (PRE & POST); particpating in Endur Upgrade or Migration Proj's; & util'zg Integration Tech, incl TIBCO to create Interfaces, RDBMS, PL/SQL & JAVA or .NET. Must have exp w/at least 3 of the following prod's: Gas, Power, Emissions, Coal, Crude, Fin'l & Future Contracts. 50% trav req'd to various & unanticipated client sites nat'ly. Pls send resume to J. Souvenir, FIS Management Services, LLC, 85 Broad St, NY NY 10004. Pls ref IM02092016HP. No Headhunters. NO CALLS PLS. EOE

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145 Management/Professional Category Professional (Houston, TX): Provides strategic guidance for assigned sub-commodities on regional basis. 40hrs/wk. Mail resumes: Brandy Valdez, Director – Global Compensation & International Mobility, Dresser-Rand Company, 1251 Lumpkin Rd, Houston, TX 77043, Ref. No. 9367. Database Analyst II Integranet Physician Resource, Inc., Houston, TX. Develop an understanding of client database, assess its integrity and quality, and recommend structural and performance enhancements. Must have Msc in Management Information Systems, IT, Computer Science, or related field. 12 months work exp as Database Analyst or Database Programmer. Email or Fax resume @ attn.: Kate Cevallos, HR Manager: kcevallos@ integranethealth.com, Fax: (832) 456-2636

Citywide ATM, Inc. in Houston, TX seeks Bookkeeper to perform routine bookkeeping tasks to ensure accurate entries & reconciliations for credit cards, loans & bank transactions by computing, classifying & recording numerical data to keep financial records complete. Perform routine calculations to obtain primary financial data for use in maintaining accounting records. Complete & distribute timely monthly, quarterly & annual financial reports. Process payroll, accounts payable & receivable. 2 years exp. in the job offered or 2 yrs. exp. preparing asset, liability & financial statements. For consideration, put job code ATM on resume and mail to: Augustina Curley, Citywide ATM, Inc., 10661 Rockley Rd., Houston, TX 77099. Direct Energy, LP is one of the largest retail providers of electricity, natural gas, & home services in North America. Resumes are being accepted for the following positions in Houston, TX: Senior Category Analyst (#0622645 – multiple openings) to support category management activities including, but not limited to, issuance of requests for quotation, pricing analysis, strategic sourcing, contract requests for proposal, client stakeholder management, market intelligence, supplier performance management & development, policy & process standardization, & continuous cost & performance improvement. Senior Analyst (#0621941) to ensure the integrity, validity, & control of the Planning & Reporting system, liaising with key internal stakeholders within the Shared Services & Finance, & other business groups. Oversee & recommend effective use of & changes to SAP hierarchies for profit & cost centers & GL accounts. Build & manage inventory of BPC & BOBJ reports used in planning & monthly reporting. To apply email resume to apply@directenergy.com with job title & job# in subject line. EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability ENGINEERING Stantec Consulting Services seeks Project Engineering Specialist (multiple openings) in Houston, TX, will prepare proj dlvbl incl one-line diagrams, wiring diagrams, & physical drwgs such as equip plan drwgs, bldg layout drwg, cable tray plan & detail drwgs, conduit plan & detail drwgs, & grounding plan & detail drwgs. Req MS in Electrl Engrg with a focus in Power Sys & 1 yr work exp in Electrl Engrg incl electrl sys design, modeling, & analysis OR a BS in Electrl Engrg w/ a focus in Power Sys & 5 yrs of progressively respbl, post baccalaureate work exp in Electrl Engrg incl electrl sys dsgn, modeling, & anlys. Addnl, the appl must have pro exp w/: (1.) Using comp-assisted design & anlys software such as SKM & ETAP & performing all power sys studies; (2.) Applying power sys concepts such as Power Flow, Power Sys Faults, Sys Protctn & Power Distrib in analyzing all sys study rslt & reports; (3.) Power indstry practices & procedures; (4.) Preparing electrl equip bill of material & evaluating vendor bids using material standards & spec while relying on exp & judgment to make rcmdtn for approval; (5.) Supervising a small tech team in creating a variety of electrl power sys drwgs using manual &/or comp software sys such as AutoCAD & MicroStation. Interested appls should email their CV to HRApply@stantec.com & ref position in the subj line. Mechanical Engineer: Optimal operation & reliability: safe, reliable & lowest C- cost & reliability threats; maintain & troubleshooting of equipment & bad actors: SMT, conveyor, reflow, selective & wave solder, DI water & clean system; administer programs & RCA; train assembly operators; design tools and fixtures for testing; BS/ME, 2 yrs' exp. in Mech. Designing, Machine T.S. & Maint.; GI Circuits; Houston, TX; cv@2815099000, Chen.

3/1/16 5:52 PM

167 Restaurants/Hotels/Clubs

Mud Logging Database Administrator - Requires bachelor's degree in Computer Application and 2-year experience in the position offered. Mail resume to Oilfind International LLC at work site 12651 Briar Forest #151A, Houston, TX 77077. Attn: Mr. Gan Liang.

SOUS CHEF NEEDED Do you have a true passion for food & cooking and a strong commitment to quality? 2+ yrs experience required. Afternoon shift + weekends. Apply in person, 2-4pm, Tuesdays & Thursdays or email resume: rusticoakoakwinebar@ gmail.com.

Thermon Manufacturing Company seeks a Project Design Engineer II (Job Code 517245) in Houston, TX to monitor the design of heat tracing systems; identify heat tracing requirements; prepare heat tracing isometrics, panelboard schedules, cable schedules, instrument schedules, wiring diagrams, BOMs, location plans. To apply mail resume with Job Code 517245 to: HR Reyes, 8880 Telephone Road, Houston, TX 77061. EOE. Universal Weather and Aviation, Inc. seeks the following for Houston, Texas: Solution Architect (Job Code: 512246) to develop and implement software architectures, with associated governance and management policies, for all strategic software assets within Universal Weather and Aviation's Business Technology Office- Operation, with a focus on Microsoft Dynamics AX technologies. Mobile Application Developer (iOS) (Job Code: 527338) to analyze customer business operations in developing, supporting, and enhancing mobile, enterpriseclass software applications, for iOS operating system. Mail resume with appropriate Job Code to: Universal Weather and Aviation, Inc, Attn: HR, 1150 Gemini Street, Houston, TX 77058.

167 Restaurants/Hotels/Clubs HOSPITALITY SPECIALISTS & SERVERS

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6100 Westheimer Rd. (Briargrove Plaza)

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Stone Mill Bakers 2518 Kirby Dr. at Westheimer

HOSTESS POSITIONS $14/hour ++. Day and/or night shifts. Experience preferred. Apply in Person at 1100 Westheimer or Email resume to matt@ underbellyhouston.com

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Parts Cleaner Parts Cleaner - ALL SHIFTS, 24 hour factory/ 3 shifts. The Parts Cleaner will remove excess flash and trims parts to final dimensions or prepares parts for next production process. The starting rate is $8.15/ hour. We will train. Excellent benefits! Apply in person to receive application. 9am-4pm at Dicar Inc. 1302 South Cherry Street, Tomball, TX 77375.

193 Employment Information IM LOOKING to hire 25 sharp guys and girls. You will be representing magazine companies by presenting the latest Fashion,Sports,Health and childrens publications. Must have a Valid I.D. A good attitude and a willingness to learn. Contact Ms. Nicholson 202-853-4041

500 Services 527 Legal Notices LEGAL NOTICE Application has been made with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a Wine and Beer Retailer's Off-Premise Permit by OTG Management IAH, LLC d/b/a CIBO Express Gourmet Markets, to be located at George Bush International Airport, 2800 N. Terminal Road, Terminal E, Space 18, Harris County, Texas 77032. Officers of said limited liability company are Brian J. Britton - President; Christopher J. Redd - Executive Vice President and Secretary; Eric J. Blatstein - CEO; and Joseph G. Ozalas - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

LEGAL NOTICE Application has been made with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a Wine and Beer Retailer's Off-Premise Permit by OTG Management IAH, LLC d/b/a CIBO Express Gourmet Markets, to be located at George Bush International Airport, 2800 N. Terminal Road, Terminal E, Space 37, Harris County, Texas 77032. Officers of said limited liability company are Brian J. Britton - President; Christopher J. Redd - Executive Vice President and Secretary; Eric J. Blatstein - CEO; and Joseph G. Ozalas - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. LEGAL NOTICE Application has been made with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a Wine and Beer Retailer's Off-Premise Permit by OTG Management IAH, LLC d/b/a CIBO Express Gourmet Markets, to be located at George Bush International Airport, 2800 N. Terminal Road, Terminal E, Space 29, Harris County, Texas 77032. Officers of said limited liability company are Brian J. Britton - President; Christopher J. Redd - Executive Vice President and Secretary; Eric J. Blatstein - CEO; and Joseph G. Ozalas - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

530 Misc. Services

LOWER YOUR TV, Internet & Phone Bill!!! Get Fast Internet from $15/mo - qualifying service. LimitedTime Offer. Plus, get a FREE$300 GiftCard. Call 855-995-4524 Today!!

WANTS TO purchase minerals and other oil & gas interests. Send details to P.O. Box 13557, Denver, Co 80201

Texas Construction Career Academy

FREE JOB TRAINING FOR THE HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY If you are SERIOUS about getting a job in construction, have a clear driving record, own your own car, are able to pass a drug test and background check, and are over the age of 18… Please Apply by March 15th.*

537 Adoptions

QUESTIONS ABOUT ADOPTION? Call 24/7 to find support & learn more about your options. Expenses paid. Call Adoption United 1-888-617-1470

QA Manager (Shipcom Wireless, Inc., Houston, TX): Performing UAT (User Acceptance Testing) & supporting SIT (System Integration Testing); Dvlp & execute s/ware Test Plan, Procedures & Execute Automated Test Scripts using tools like qTest, Bugzilla, JIRA, Selenium Quick Test Professional QTP/Unified Functional Testing UFT, HP Quality Center ALM 11.0 or higher, Test Director, MS Project; Setting up an automation test envrmt to Automate, execute, validate regression testing for various products deployments as well as execute performance testing using tools like LoadRunner or Jmeter, checking server logs & writing complex D/base queries using MS-SQL d/base Mgmt system; Participate in all phases of S/ware Dvlpmt Life Cycle using testing methodologies like Agile (SCRUM) w/ emphasis on Black Box Testing, Graphical User Interface testing, Regression Testing, Performance Testing, Unit, Integration, Regression & Functional Testing as well as defect tracking; Review Reqmt Docs & translate them to detailed test plans, test cases, scripts, test reports to cover functional, non-functional, smoke, integration & regression testing utilizing Perfecto Mobile for front-end GUI testing & navigation testing.; Work w/ multiple discipline teams to dvlp & execute test strategies & scripts; Maintain well documented test cases library & version control system for all testing materials & resources; Dvlp, modify, apply & maintain standards for quality methods, processes, systems & procedures by creating as well as maintaining SharePoint Libraries providing insight of testing activities performed on each s/ware update submitted; Analyze test results to ensure existing functionality & recommend corrective action; Exercise judgement within broadly defined practices & policies in selecting methods, techniques & evaluation criteria for obtaining test results; Automate, execute, validate regression testing for various products deployments as well as execute performance testing using tools like using LoadRunner or Jmeter, checking server logs & d/base entries using MS-SQL d/base Mgmt system; Proactively anticipate end-user scenarios or issues, communicate with dvlpmt as well as product teams & work closely w/ the dvlpmt engrs to understand the product reqmts & to document, track, & resolve testing issues; Scope workload & Create detailed test schedules & track & report status to ensure on-time delivery of final test results using tools like Test Director, HPQC-ALM or MS-Project. Min. Reqmts: Master’s Deg in Comp Sci/Engg, Info Systems Mgmt, Electronic/Electrical Engg, or related field PLUS 2 yr of exp in the job offd OR 2 yr of exp as a Test Engr or QA Engr engaged in checking server logs (using Microsoft Server 2008 or higher) writing complex D/base queries using MS-SQL d/base Mgmt Studio suite. Must have a high degree of 1 yr of test automation exp in setting up an automation test envrmt in-house using Selenium Quick Test Professional QTP/Unified Functional Testing UFT, HP Quality Center - ALM 11.0 or higher, Test Director, MS Project. Must have Strong communication skills. Must pass a background check including criminal history. Send Resume to: mkheyroolla@shipcomwireless.com (Subject line must be: “Attn: Shipcom Job Code QM0055”)

• • • • • •

CERTIFICATIONS INCLUDED: OSHA-10 for Construction Workers Certified Flagger Training Work Zone Safety Training Skid Steer, Backhoe, & Mini Excavator Hands-On Training Resume & Interview Workshop Financial Literacy Training

APPLY NOW!

HOUSTON, TX Texas Southern University March 28- April 8 8AM- 5PM Monday- Friday

Call 866.906.9190 Or 713.313.7925 jwillingham@uta.edu Applications Can Be Found Online at: uta.edu/ded (search: TCCA) *All Applicants Will Be Drug Tested and Interviewed

March 3 - 9, 2016

COUNTER SALES / CASHIER

185 Miscellaneous

LEGAL NOTICE Application has been made with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a Mixed Beverage Permit with a Mixed Beverage Late Hours Permit, a Caterer’s Permit and a Food and Beverage Certificate by OTG Management IAH, LLC d/b/a Republic, to be located at George Bush International Airport, 2800 N. Terminal Road, Terminal E, Space 34, Harris County, Texas 77032. Officers of said limited liability company are Brian J. Britton – President; Christopher J. Redd – Executive Vice President and Secretary; Eric J. Blatstein – CEO; and Joseph G. Ozalas – Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Houston Press

The isMelting Pot looking for

WAITSTAFF & BUSSERS Experience preferred. Afternoon shift + weekends. Apply in person, 2-4pm, Tuesdays & Thursdays or email resume: rusticoakoakwinebar@ gmail.com.

527 Legal Notices

Proposal Development Engineer (Houston, TX): Spprts Regional Sales effort of new equip. Regions in the Americas, Central America & Latin America. Must be fluent in speaking & writing Spanish or Portuguese to communicate the unique aspects of machine dsgn & attributes to clients in Mexico, Latin America, & Brazil. Trvl req'd 50% domestically or internationally. Job is 40hrs/wk. Mail resumes: Brandy Valdez, Director–Global Compensation & Int’l Mobility, DresserRand Company, 1251 Lumpkin Rd, Houston, TX 77043, Ref. No. 9014.

527 Legal Notices

houstonpress.com

145 Management/Professional

3/1/16 5:52 PM

houstonpress.com

CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS County of Harris

Are you ready to quit smoking?

NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: “You have been sued. You may employ an attorney. If you or your attorney do not file a written answer with the clerk who issued this citation by 10:00 am on the Monday next following the expiration of 42 days after the date this citation was issued, a default judgment may be taken against you.”

IT'S COMING!

The 19th Annual Menu of Menus® The restaurant resource for over a million foodies LOOK FOR IT APRIL 7, 2016

March 3 - 9, 2016

Houston Press

To: THE HEIRS AT LAW OF HELEN WILSON, DECEASED

YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to appear before the 215th Judicial District Court of Harris County, Texas in the Courthouse in the City of Houston, Texas at or before 10:00 o’clock A.M. Monday, the 14th day of March, 2016, being the Monday next after the expiration of forty-two days after this citation is issued, and you are hereby required then and there to appear and file written answer to the Plaintiff’s Second Amended Petition, filed in said Court on the 16th day of June, 2015, in suit numbered 2013-63169 on the docket of said court, wherein U.S. Bank National Association, as Trustee, in Trust for the Registered Holders of Merrill Lynch Mortgage Investors Trust, Mortgage Loan Asset-Backed Certificates, Series 2006-AR1, Plaintiff(s) sued Howard Wilson and Helen Wilson and the Heirs at Law of Howard Wilson, Deceased, Defendants. The Petition seeks an order to foreclose the lien on the property and assert a claim to the property located at 20319 Edworthy Road, Cypress, Texas 77433 and legally described as: Lot Twenty-Three (23), of Edworthy Farm, Section One (1), an Unrecorded Subdivision out of Carl Zube Survey, Abstract No. 947, and the Daniel Schiel Survey, Abstract No. 1428 of Harris County, Texas, and Being More Particularly Described by Metes and Bounds in Exhibit “A” Attached Thereto. GIVEN UNDER MY HAND AND SEAL OF SAID COURT at Houston, Texas this 4th day of FEBRUARY, 2016. Issued at the request of: Keith A. Taylor State Bar Number: 24088511 Address: 13105 Northwest Freeway, Suite 1200, Houston, Texas 77040 CHRIS DANIEL, District Clerk Harris County, Texas 201 Caroline, Houston, Texas 77002 By:__/s/ Marcella Hill_____________ Marcella Hill, Deputy District Clerk

The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory/ Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston is recruiting adult cigarette smokers ages 18-65 to participate in a treatmentbased study. ■ Receive free smoking cessation AND nicotine replacement therapy (patches) ■ Earn up to $120.00 in cash You might be eligible, contact our clinic at (713) 743-8056 for more information or a confidential pre-screen.

AHRL-SUTC

713.280.2400 Advertising@houstonpress.com

CITATION BY PUBLICATION THE STATE OF TEXAS County of Harris NOTICE TO DEFENDANT: “You have been sued. You may employ an attorney. If you or your attorney do not file a written answer with the clerk who issued this citation by 10:00 am on the Monday next following the expiration of 42 days after the date this citation was issued, a default judgment may be taken against you.” To: THE HEIRS AT LAW OF ROBERT L. CORNETT, DECEASED YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED to appear before the 129th Judicial District Court of Harris County, Texas in the Courthouse in the City of Houston, Texas at or before 10:00 o’clock A.M. Monday, the 21st day of March, 2016, being the Monday next after the expiration of forty-two days after this citation is issued, and you are hereby required then and there to appear and file written answer to the Plaintiff’s Original Petition, filed in said Court on the 17th day of April, 2015, in suit numbered 201522439-7 on the docket of said court, wherein HSBC Bank USA, National Association, as trustee, in trust for the registered holders of ACE Securities Corp., Home Equity Loan Trust, Series 2006-NC2, Asset Backed Pass-Through Certificates, Plaintiff, sued Robert L. Cornett and Kandy Cornett and The Heirs at Law of Robert L. Cornett, Deceased, Defendants. The Petition seeks an order to foreclose the lien on the property and assert a claim to the property located at 7519 Glassblower Lane, Houston, Texas 77064 and legally described as: Lot Thirty-Eight (38), in Block Four (4), of Replat of Westbank, Section Five (5), and Addition in Harris County, Texas, According to the Map or Plat Thereof, Recorded in Volume 296, Page 105 of the Map Records of Harris County, Texas. GIVEN UNDER MY HAND AND SEAL OF SAID COURT at Houston, Texas this 9th day of FEBRUARY, 2016. Issued at the request of: Keith A. Taylor State Bar Number: 24088511 Address: 13105 Northwest Freeway, Suite 1200, Houston, Texas 77040 CHRIS DANIEL, District Clerk Harris County, Texas 201 Caroline, Houston, Texas 77002 By:__/s/ Marcella Hill_____________ Marcella Hill, Deputy District Clerk

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TO PRE-QUALIFY FOR THE STUDY, YOU MUST:

Research Volunteers Wanted •Are you at least 18 years old? •Are you a smoker who does not want to quit? •Do you want to participate in research?

• Be between the ages of 18 and 55 • Have a diagnosis of ADHD If you qualify, all study-related medication will be provided to you at no cost.

There is no cost to you. If eligible, you will be compensated for your time.

Call TODAY: 713-794-4763

ARE YOU A CIGARETTE SMOKER?

If you or someone you know has been diagnosed with Adult ADHD, consider participating in the MEASURE Study.

713-527-8839

www.TheMEASUREStudy.com

ATTENTION: A CLINICAL RESEARCH STUDY FOR WOMEN

You may be eligible for a research study at Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center involving e-cigarettes and virtual reality cues. *Participants must be willing to visit the clinic 4 times.*

Are you currently using cocAine or MethAMphetAMine? and...

You may be eligible for a research study investigating potential treatment methods for stimulant addiction. Participants will receive some cash and/ or gift certificates as compensation. Research studies are sponsored by NIDA and conducted at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL:

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877.228.5777 sarp@bcm.edu

Local doctors are studying an investigational vaginal ring for birth control. If you qualify for the study, you may receive: • Investigational birth control medication at no cost to you for up to one year • Study-related care at no cost to you • Possible reimbursement for time and travel

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Inc. 713-831-6659

March 3 - 9, 2016

NOT seeking treatment... Between the ages of 18-55

Get involved in a new clinical study that is studying an investigational medication for birth control

Houston Press

For more information call 877-228-5777 or email sarp@bcm.edu

Local physicians are conducting The MEASURE Study, a clinical research study that is evaluating an investigational medication for adults diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The MEASURE Study will examine the effects of a new medication on inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity in adults with ADHD. It is not a stimulant medication.

houstonpress.com

MEDICAL RESEARCH

Do You Have Adult ADHD?

3/1/16 5:52 PM

houstonpress.com

2 Offices for Rent at 4009 Polk– Near downtown 1 mile east of George Brown Convention. Pictures at: driverslicensetraining.com Reasonable. Call Ruben at 832-715-2569.

ARE YOU READY TO QUIT SMOKING?

See our ad in Medical Research Section The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory/Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston 713-743-8056

MASSAGE - Package Price, $28/hr!!

Student Spa Treatments Now Available!! Courtesy of Phoenix School of Massage Students. SW & NW locations. Call Today, 713-974-5976.

TANGO DANCING SHOW & LESSONS March 19th, Saturday, at 461 W. Parker Road, 77091 7:30pm - 10:30pm. COAT AND TIE REQUIRED Call 713-726-6488 for reservations.

Are you a cigarette smoker? You may be eligible for a research study. Please see our medical research ad in the classified section.

See our ad in Medical Research Section The Anxiety and Health Research Laboratory/Substance Use Treatment Clinic at the University of Houston 713-743-8056

Are you a cigarette smoker? You may be eligible for a research study. Please see our medical research ad in the classified section.

FREE MONEY!!

WE PAY THE MOST FOR USED LP's, DVD's & CD's! SOUNDWAVES, 3509 Montrose. 713.520.9283

Glaucoma Eyedrops Interrupting Your Daily Life?

Do you feel like your eyedrops disrupt your routine? Participate in a study to advance research in dropless therapy.

Do you have glaucoma or high eye pressure in both eyes and: •Are at least 18 years old? •Have not had surgery for glaucoma?

March 3 - 9, 2016

If so, you may be eligible for ARTEMIS, a research study of a current glaucoma therapy being studied in an investigational dropless way. All participants in the study will receive active treatment in both eyes and be closely monitored by study doctors. Study-related medication, eye exams, and care for your high eye pressure will be provided at no cost to you. Plus, you may receive additional compensation. Your participation in the ARTEMIS study could help advance the future of research in dropless glaucoma therapy.

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Is your eating out of control? Do you feel disgusted or guilty after overeating?

To be eligible to participate, you must be between the ages of 18 and 55. Study-related care and medication will be provided at no cost to eligible participants, and you may be compensated for time and travel. Health Insurance or a doctor’s referral are not needed.

Please call us at:

1-855-DRUG STUDY

Call 877-825-7287 or visit www.EyeCareStudy.com to see if you qualify. Effective October 22, 2014 z 142705

Are you BINGE EATING?

If so, you may have binge eating disorder. Binge eating is the most common eating disorder and has the potential to impact the health of those diagnosed with the disorder. Doctors in your area are currently recruiting people to participate in a research study evaluating an investigational medication for binge-eating disorder.

ARE YOU READY TO QUIT SMOKING?

Houston Press

TANGO DANCING SHOW & LESSONS March 19th, Saturday, at 461 W. Parker Road, 77091 7:30pm - 10:30pm. COAT AND TIE REQUIRED Call 713-726-6488 for reservations.

(1-855-378-4788) 3/1/16 5:53 PM