Wes Anderson hatred abounds, buy y’all can all suck it.
Anderson: I always feel like there are specific things about Houston. There’s one museum in particular in Houston. So many of the things that I’m interested in now I can sort of trace back to that museum, which introduced me to them.
Cocker: What museum is that?
Anderson: It’s called The Menil Collection. There was this woman, Dominique de Menil—I think she was French, but she had one of the great Texas oil fortunes—and her art collection was vast. She collected lots of surrealist works—Salvador Dalí and René Magritte and Max Ernst and those Joseph Cornell boxes. She also collected abstract expressionist and pop art. So there were those John Chamberlain sculptures made from smashed-up cars and Dan Flavin fluorescent tubes and pieces by Donald Judd and Cy Twombly. There’s a building they call the Rothko Chapel that’s just these [Mark] Rothko pieces. I’d never heard of any of this before I walked through those doors. But there’s no place where I feel quite as much at home as I do in Houston. Even if Houston is not the place that I find the most exciting necessarily, it’s very peaceful for me to go there, I think, because I’m from there.*
If you’ve ever been to The Menil (my favorite museum in Houston (my favorite museum in the world is The British Museum)) and then watched The Royal Tennenbaums you can see the influence everywhere, from Eli Cash’s obsession with Indian masks to the (fictional) 375th St YMCA, which I’m convinced is modeled after the Downtown Y in Houston.
Brittanie’s a freelance writer that has amassed an incredible number of accolades as a journalist in a very short time, covering everything from food to travel to women’s issues. She is extremely literate but has a conversational style that makes reading a concert review seem like you’re hearing it from one of your friends. It also makes you wish you were there. Or that you performed better. ouch! Check out how she couldn’t stop running into Ralf Armin of Dead Roses the weekend of the last Free Press Houston Block Party.
— Very kind words about my work and life’s passion from Matthew Wettergreen, founder of the Caroline Collective Coworking Space and Bandcamp, a DIY school for local bands. Shucks.
There’s been a lot of lament lately for Houston’s concert-goers and their extremely bad manners. Of particular offense is a crowd’s collective tendency to TALK AT FULL VOLUME during a show. This is especially annoying when the talkers are right in front of the stage, taking up space that someone who is there to actually see the band might enjoy in their stead.
Sunday I saw Girls at Walters and reviewed the show for the Houston Press. In my review I wrote about how, in spite of a few idiots in the crowd, overall the audience was extremely receptive (to steal a phrase) and the synergistic feedback was awesome.
When this conversation first hit critical mass this summer, the resounding comment was “If people are misbehaving, call them out.” This is easy to say in retrospect but half the time the jackass is engaging in jackassery with a side dish of publuc intoxication, and I don;t know about you, but I’m not about to get my nose broken just because someone’s being a little annoying.
That said… I was at Girls and their first few songs were pretty mellow. And there was a couple behind me, a dude and a chick, and while they were debating whether baby-faced guitarist Ryan Lynch was male or female (“Because, why would they be called Girls if there wasn’t a girl in the band?” “I’m telling you, it’s not a girl.” “But what is it is? Maybe it’s just a butchy girl.”) I was beginning to silently seethe. As I worked up the courage to tell the to HOLY SHIT STFU then went outside for a smoke break and I was treated to four minutes of silence. But then they came back, and the chick was actually trying to TALK OVER THE BAND. So I turned to them, all nicely, and said, “Hey! Which band are you guys here to see?”
The guy replied, “Girls…”
“Really?! Me too! And it would be awesome if you didn’t talk over their entire set.”
The guy had a kind of sheepish look on his face, and he apologized profusely, while I just turned back to my notes and camera and tried very stealthily to control my nervous shaking, since I am usually a person who avoids confrontation at all costs, even to the point of making my own self uncomfortable. But after that they were SO TOTALLY COOL and graceful and they stopped talking and the guy even asked who I wrote for and all was copacetic man.
So. Moral of the story is that sometimes calling someone out works in your favor. I’m just glad I wasn’t stabbed or shot in the Walter’s parking lot after the show.
