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Soo Sunny Park's converts Rice Gallery into a landscape of surreal, shining space with her new installation "Unwoven Light," which opened Thursday, April 11.
Renowned local chef Monica Pope, whose prepackaged fare often fills a stall at the Rice University Farmer's Market, has completely overhauled her restaurant t'afia, now reimagined in the same location as Sparrow Bar + Corkshop. Nestled in the same midtown bungalow bestrewn with rope-lights, Sparrow presents Pope's commitment to locally sourced, seasonal flavors with a creatively exotic spin. In walking distance from the METRORail, Sparrow's environment mixes hip edginess with rustic romance. Alchemic touches, like water served out of Erlenmeyer flasks and salt stored in test tubes, lie atop dark, unfinished slab tables adorned with fresh wildflowers. Warm lighting emanates from glowing birdcage lanterns that hang from low ceiling beams and against exposed brick walls, and cushy red banquettes lend to an intimate homey environment. Roughly textured napkins give a tactile, rugged country feel. No detail goes overlooked; even the dessert menu arrived in a cute package, a note folded like something your third-grade crush might have handed you. The mellower sides of the Talking Heads and the Clash played softly over the din of forks, as well as some vaguely familiar acoustic Nirvana covers. It feels like Sparrow is trying to create some idealized home you never had. The food menu changes nightly, but the the wine and cocktail menus are solidly in place. The wine options are extensive, but they tend to get a bit pricey. The bar's main calling, besides the ultra-cool environment, are the $10 cocktails - nothing too creative or extraordinary, but sipped in a fancy cup in a cool place so close to the light rail, they are worth it. The food also was a tad pricey, with entrees starting at around $15. The dishes billed as smaller plates are generally savory enough to be eaten alone as a hearty bar snack or combined for a full meal. One of the tragic exceptions to this truth, however, was the shiitake mushroom dumplings plate, which was covered in a creamy blue cheese, honey and mascarpone sauce. Four petite lumps sat in the soupy sauce, but despite their rather sad appearance, the salty, earthy mushrooms blended perfectly with the sweet, cheesy sauce. One of the best sides was the crunchy brussels sprouts with miso glaze, which truly was life-changing to a self-declared brussels sprouts hater. The sprouts were grilled until they were slightly burned, which seemed to cure them of their usually detestable bitterness and made them delectably tender. Covering them with the sweet and sticky miso sauce made them as easy to pop in your mouth as candy. The Mac n' Cheese, which was served carbonara-style with peas and speck (juniper-flavored ham), was also especially rib-sticking, with a portion substantial enough to be an entire meal in itself. Perfectly al dente orecchiette pasta was the perfect medium for scooping up the salty egg and parmesan sauce in a classy, grown-up reinvention of the comfort-food classic. For an energetic bar and creative homestyle snacking, Sparrow is your place. It is definitely not the best place near campus to get the most out of your dollar, but it is worth a visit if you have something to celebrate - or you are just looking for an excuse to dress up and blow a little cash.
When I got back to Houston from studying abroad in France this spring, I knew there was one thing I would miss more than the boulevards, the tulips or the Eiffel Tower: the crepes. I thought my crepe withdrawal would be incur- able, but lo and behold, mere walking distance from campus is Sweet Paris, a brand new crepe restaurant in Rice Village.
The landscape is barren with a few stacks of hay, and somehow it looks very, very cold. Something about the farm looks uninviting, dangerous even; it feels uncomfortable and makes your skin crawl, even though nothing out of the ordinary is happening. This is the unnerving setting for the commune that title character Martha joins in Martha Marcy May Marlene, a new film that pushes the boundaries of independent-film tropes.
Ginsberg said it best: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness/starving hysterical naked through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix," and so Hunter S. Thompson, author of the The Rum Diary, the book that served as the inspiration for this movie, lived :raving, cynical and relevant. HST gave birth to gonzo journalism, a fast-paced, gritty writing that places the journalist at the epicenter of the story, in search of "truth," a fix to appease the deadline, often slathered in alcohol and drugs. That all came later, post the 1959 manuscript that lay fallow until 1998, when it was finally published under the name The Rum Diary.
When Rice Program Council was handing out free tickets to the 2009 Tony Best Play nominee "Dividing the Estate," it seemed to bode well for a great night of theater. This production did not live up to its Tony nomination, though, making the fact that tickets were free a lucky deal. The generally circular plot, repetitive dialogue, and frustrating characters made for a mild, easy play that may appeal to older audiences, but came off as dry.
Congratulations, new students. You have proven yourself to be among the most intelligent of this campus' population; no, not for the many essays you've written or your immaculate SAT scores, but for picking up the very first issue of this year's Rice Thresher and turning to the very best section in it! The Arts & Entertainment section, generally located in the very heart of the paper around page 10, is loaded every week with reviews of the latest movies, college performances, and even delicious places to eat close to campus. Also, every week this section includes a handy list of the coolest events happening off-campus, called The Weekly Scene. We even run semi-regular columns with interviews, opinions about music, movies and topics that wouldn't normally fit in other sections, like fashion or fine art. Instead of only dealing with events at Rice like the News or Sports sections, A&E will keep you connected to the Houston area, and guarantee that you never sit alone in your room on a Saturday night just because you don't know what else to do.
The summer after I turned eight, my father handed me a paperback book during a routine weekend trip to the beach. I flat out rejected it — Why would I, an eight year old girl who loved floral dresses and ballet, want to read a book with a boy on the cover? Not put out by his already angsty daughter's stubbornness, my father decided to begin to read the story out loud along with my little brother, who was then starting first grade and who happened to be sharing a room with me. The next day, my father found that I had sneaked the book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, from my brother's bedside and claimed the novel as my own, as would countless other children throughout the world over the next 12, and hopefully more, years. This July, along with a record-breaking number of other viewers, I eased into a plush theater seat and braced myself for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, wondering if this film marked the end of an era or the beginning of a new tradition of entertainment.
Congratulations to all of this year's winners, runners-up and ?theater participants.
We at the Rice Thresher love KTRU's yearly Outdoor Show: Not only is there free beer, tasty food and mind blowing music, but it gives us the chance to interview killer bands. After several hours of hyperventilation and a minor drooling incident, the Thresher got to hang out with Mister Heavenly, one of the Outdoor Show's headliners. We chatted about many profound topics, like music licensing, Abbie Hoffman, rural western Canada and shooting rats.
In this week's New Yorker magazine, Dr. David Eagleman, a novelist, neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice grad, is being profiled for his research and recent works. Dr. Eagleman does much of his current research on synesthesia and "neurolaw," which investigates the intersection of current knowledge of neuroscience and law making, criminal punishment and rehabilitation development, which he teaches a class about each fall (NEUR 525, Neuroscience and Law) at Rice. However, among his notable publications is Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, an internationally best-selling collection of short stories. In light of his feature in the New Yorker, as well as a recent appearance on PBS's NOVA, the Rice Thresher sat down to talk with Eagleman about his perspectives on the connection of art and science as well as his book Sum and the movement, "possibilianism," that sparked from it.Rice Thresher: Can you talk about the relationship between art, in your experience creativity in writing, and your experience with research and science? Specifically, how has your research on the brain affected the content that you write about?
Originally from Portland, Ore., the Decemberists released their first full-length album, Castaways and Cutouts, on independent label Hush in 2002. Now the Decemberists are signed to Capitol Records and are more popular than ever: Their previous album, The Hazards of Love (a rock opera of sorts), reached number 14 on the Billboard top 200. Their newest album, The King Is Dead, was released on Jan. 18 and is a mellow follow-up to The Hazards of Love.The Decemberists certainly like to keep an element of whimsy to their appearance, citing Orangina as the band's official drink and claiming that they travel exclusively by "Dr. Herring's Brand Dirigible Balloons." This eccentricity carries over into their lyrics, which tend to be imaginative and poetic, though they have been criticized for being too aesthetic, conceptual and intellectual (nerdy) to the point of pretension. Even though The King is Dead still has references to obscure historical figures of the Gilded Age (in "Calamity Song"), the Decemberists have majorly simplified their vocabulary from their past albums, a change that gives the album a relaxing vibe.
Swan Lake is an obvious ballet to use as a foundation for a psychological horror film; rife with supernatural occurrences, identity thieves and mistaken personalities, it seems unlikely that the ballerinas participating in the performance could not be emotionally affected. Darren Aronofsky, known for his other dark, cerebral dramas like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, creatively emulates a young ballerina's artistic struggle with her first big part and her resulting mental breakdown in his new film Black Swan.Black Swan's plot very loosely follows the plot of the ballet: Nina Sayers (V for Vendetta's Natalie Portman) is trapped, not in a swan's body, but in an overly competitive dance company, held captive by her bizarre and constraining mother (The Portrait of a Lady's Barbara Hershey). Nina becomes increasingly self-destructive as the pressure from her role, her competition with new company member Lily (Forgetting Sarah Marshall's Mila Kunis) and her developing sexual curiosity escalate. As Nina is pushed both emotionally and physically, her imagination consumes her, culminating in a dramatic opening night.
Police and ambulance sirens screeching through the heavy Texas air, the blaring roar of news helicopters hurtling to capture the latest development, the blinking lights of state-of-the-art medical buildings, the scent of freshly-ripped construction lumber wafting through the city stench - the metropolitan symbols perpetually resounding through the Rice campus make it easy to forget that the school is immediately surrounded by a residential community. All you need for a reminder, though, is to simply see the people milling about campus. Those in the residential community jog around the outer loop, attend sports events, use the library, come to art shows and populate summer programs with their children, some of whom may eventually go to college here. A few of the neighbors are alumni who loved Houston so much that they got jobs nearby and stayed in the area.
