A Beryl Grady sticker? There's your Inner Loop cred right there.

It's taken a while, but after years of self- (and external) loathing, Houstonians have largely come around to appreciating their city.

Houston's negative aspects can't be waved off: the heat and traffic are legendarily terrible, the sprawl threatens to make any trip outside our immediate environs an epic pilgrimage, and our so-called "feuds" with Dallas and Austin often either feel like we're trying to hard (at best) or we're secretly envious (at worst).

But from arts to food to music, Houston has plenty to be proud of, and it's always nice when someone from reality TV deigns to visit the Bayou City and confirm this. And that's just what George Motz did in a recent installment of Travel Channel's Burger Land.

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I rarely pay attention to any of Youtube's "suggested" videos, mostly because they are primarily paid advertisements hidden behind too-obvious product placement, or they are videos of cats with hats on. But for some reason I clicked on the highlighted video called "Amy Schumer: Compliments." I had read about Schumer's new show on Comedy Central, Inside Amy Schumer, but had been reluctant to give it a shot.

My reasoning behind not wanting to test the Schumer waters were two-fold. Firstly, Comedy Central has been steering me wrong as of late. Of the shows that Comedy Central has premiered in the past year, none have really grabbed me. I don't find The Jeselnik Offensive all that funny or even particularly offensive. I love Nick Kroll, but he shines more in supporting roles as opposed to leading the charge. And, hate me if you want, but I just cannot get into Key and Peele (I'm sorry; I've tried so hard to like this show).

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A spirit guide in handy form

When I lived in Mississippi on the edge of undeveloped land, our family spent a lot of time and effort beating back the kudzu during the year. We were beating it because it couldn't be killed. At least we never figured out how.

Kudzu was one of those well-meaning efforts to improve upon nature. Years earlier, as the story goes (and I believe it because I had a friend there who said he did this as a kid) Boy Scouts had been sent out to fight off erosion with this handy dandy import, planting it along fields and streams and everywhere a little green was needed. Turns out, as most people now know, kudzu is incredibly invasive and chokes the life out of native plants. It was a great bad idea.

In Houston, through the ages, we've made a habit of trying to improve upon nature as well, as Terry Hershey, co-founder of the Bayou Preservation Association, notes in her forward to the second and latest edition of The Bayou Planting Guide for Houston. And the results have been calculated in increased flooding and lost opportunities. We thought bayous weren't that important. Now we've changed our minds about that. And now, we could use a little help in putting things back together.

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Photo by Paul Kolnik

Everyone's favorite blue men return to Houston for an eight-performance engagement at Jones Hall from June 4 to June 9. Blue Man Group's touring production brings together all of its trademark elements: original instrumental rhythms, mind-altering video projections and unforgettable sound design. Part music concert, part multimedia art project, Blue Man Group is all parts theatrical spectacle. As any iPhone user knows, all things tech become dated, but there's a reason why this performing troupe has stayed a hot ticket since the early '90s. Underneath all that blue paint and computer-generated imagery, Blue Man Group has a heart.

"We say that no matter how high-tech things get, there's still something human there. We'll always need others, always need to collaborate," says co-founder and original Blue Man Philip Stanton via press materials." People still need to come together and look each other in the eye. Through the Blue Man's connection with the audience, we hope to encourage this human-to-human interaction, while helping people reconnect with their own sense of wonder and discovery, with their own sense of what is possible in their lives."

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If there's any sentiment I've heard consistently since last fall it's that this has been the worst season of Doctor Who since the 2005 reboot. Now that we've all had our brains thoroughly exploded with the season finale, it's time to put the whole thing in perspective and decide exactly how good or not Series 7 was.

14. Asylum of the Daleks: The opening salvo in the series remains a very good episode, if just slightly contrived. A look at a ravaged Skaro, the bizarre evolution and superstition of the Daleks, and the introduction of Clara in perhaps her most cheeky and wonderful role made for very enjoyable television. The bits about Amy and Rory divorcing because she couldn't bear children were honestly one of Moffat's more obnoxious failures with female characters, but he made up for it with some true terror, nods to past stories, and some of his best dialogue.

Rewatch Value: 9 of 10

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Photo by Wally James

Maggie Lasher is, in a word, vibrant. From the lights and fire that she weaves into her dance performances to the colors she dons around Houston, everything Maggie touches in Houston's art scene seems to glow.

Maggie currently serves as a dance professor at Houston Community College as well as the artistic director of her own company, China Cat Dance. After getting an MA in dance from Case Western University, obtaining an MFA in dance at Sam Houston State, and spending two years teaching in San Antonio, Maggie landed in Houston in August 2010.

Performing came to Maggie early, at a dance studio in her hometown of Flagstaff, Arizona. She always knew she wanted a career in the arts, although in her youth, she "hadn't really fleshed that out, besides 'movie star.'"

High school and college saw Maggie involved in performance art in a number of ways, including costume design, acting, tech theater, choreography, and teaching movement to pre-kindergartners. It was at Sam Houston State that Maggie brought together her various interests into one entity - China Cat Dance.

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Your humble narrator was part of a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast for the better part of a decade. I spent every Saturday night in Frank-n-Furter's fishnets singing "Sweet Transvestite" and soaking up the unique ambience of carnival and cabaret that comes from the experience. There is simply nothing like it. They don't call it a cult classic for nothing.

You can get the same experience once a month at the River Oaks Theatre here in Houston, but the After Midnight Cast specializes in rolling road shows that bring the magic and mockery to wherever it might be appropriate. This weekend at Comicpalooza they'll set-up shop with three different performances.

Of course they'll do Rocky, but the experience is somewhat different than the one people have been flocking to at midnight for the last three decades.

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This week marks the last run of classes at the Houston Metropolitan Dance Center's 1202 Calumet address. The company is moving to its new residence at 2808 Caroline, and the studios will be christened with free dance classes at the center's open houses on June 1 and 2. Every dancer loves new marley floors and air conditioned space, but it's still sad to say good-bye to the place where so many people learned to dance.

My own personal history with the Met began almost two years ago. After taking a summer modern dance course at Houston Community College, I began performing with the school's African Dance and Drum Ensemble directed by Julie Bata, who also happened to be the instructor of that summer modern session. African was great, but my body missed those triplet sequences, leg swings, Limón falls, inversions and spiral twists that I had started to train with on a daily basis. A quick online search for adult modern classes brought me to the Met, and there I found Studio A.

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David Shelton Gallery

Keith J. Varadi's oil paintings have something you can't quite put your finger on. They seem unexpectedly muted and soft. Even the boldest colors have a quiet quality to them.

That's because these oil paintings are copies of oil paintings, the original discarded in favor of this second life. It's a whole process that the Brooklyn artist developed to make the centuries-old act of painting fresh and surprising to him.

He starts off by making a painting on a stretched canvas. He then stretches a raw canvas over that painting while the paint is still wet and pushes the paint through the raw canvas without using a paint brush. Sometimes he leaves the end result alone, other times he may add paint to the stain, again without using a brush. Painting without a paintbrush? That's almost a cliché, but it makes for some beautiful results.

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Photo courtesy HISD

From left to right: Adam DeWalt, 18; Jyron Walls, 18; Jalon Archie, 18; James Francies, 17; John Koozin, 17; Jeremy Dorsey, 17

A group of students from Houston ISD's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts is now on a weeklong tour, representatives of one of only two schools in the country chosen as ambassadors of jazz and bound for the famous Jazz Kitchen itself.

Houston's own: Drummer Jalon Archie, 18; trumpeter Adam DeWalt, 18, guitarist Jeremy Dorsey, 17; pianist James Francies, 17, bassist John Koozin, 17 and saxophonist Jyron Walls, 18, are in the Indianapolis public schools this week, presenting "jazz informances." They'll play along their counterparts in the Indianapolis schools, both learning from each other.

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