Blogs

So resident dickwad of “The Hills” – Spencer Pratt, natch – is busy dispensing advice for Radar magazine.

The trouble is, I’m not sure what he is capable of advising people on. Dear Spencer, how do I stretch out my 15 minutes into 30 or at least 25? Dear Spencer, how do I hook up with a vapid blond suffering from extremely low self-esteem? Dear Spencer, how do I manage to show all my upper gums when I smile? Dear Spencer, how do I create an extremely low-budget music video showing my girlfriend cavorting on the beach flapping her hands a lot that will go on to be mocked online for months?

The thing is, Spencer is a gift…the guy we love to hate. He is a pop culture tidbit, a blip on the pop culture radar, a future “Where Are They Now?” And this move only further cements his place in our collective minds as all of the above. So in all honesty, I look forward to reading his work.

It was a tiring weekend. We helped a buddy move who's quite the record collector. Let's just say we think mp3s are really, really awesome.

12:44 a.m. at 13 Celsius and 1:18 a.m. at Pandora Lounge

Photog Bill Olive got the goods once again, this time finding love (and egregious breast implants) on Saturday night at 13 Celsius and Pandora Lounge.

Please keep in mind that Miss Pop Rocks was a preteen sensation back in the 80s, so if you’re looking for thoughts on “Sophie’s Choice” and “Gandhi” you’ve come to the wrong blog.

"Sixteen Candles": As a preteen girl, this movie provided me with multiple fantasies of what life with a hawt boyfriend would be like. Granted, I never quite figured out how Samantha Baker kissed Jake Ryan over that flaming birthday cake in the very last scene without catching that bridesmaid’s dress on fire, but whatever. The sad thing about this movie is when my gal pals and I watched it at my bachelorette party in an attempt to reconnect with our glorious youth, we realized it had some really sick elements to it, like the way it makes fun of Asian people and looks lightly on having sex with a girl who passed out from drinking too much. Life was so much easier when we were younger and didn’t have our self-righteous 1990s PC principles just yet.

"Dead Poets Society": The film that taught me about The Man, via Robin Williams jumping on desks and crazy shit like that. I watched this film multiple times for two major reasons. Reason one: Ethan. Reason two: Hawke. Meow. This film also made me wish I had been born rich and Protestant instead of middle class and Catholic. Rebelling against the WASP elite seems like so much fun when you have the requisite freewheeling English teacher who gets fired for thinking a little too outside the box, know what I mean? The only real problem I have with this movie is that it made everyone overuse the phrase “Carpe Diem.” There should be some type of legislation outlawing the utterance of this phrase at high school graduation ceremonies. Seriously.

Houston vocalist Kristine Mills was at a cocktail party when she bumped into artist/curator Wade Wilson. In between chitchat and mixed drinks, the two came up with Wade Wilson Art’s Second Anniversary Party, a combo art exhibit/jazz concert benefiting Texas Children’s Hospital and Houston Center for Photography. Joining Mills will be members of the famed Duke Ellington Orchestra. It’s a little pricey, but hey, cough it up – it’s for a good cause. 7 p.m. Today. 4411 Montrose. For information, call 713-521-2977 or visit www.wadewilsonart.com. $100 to $500. -- Olivia Flores Alvarez

To listen to an interview with Kristine Mills and Houston Press Night & Day Editor Olivia Flores Alvarez , click the button below.

And here are a few more tunes from Kristine’s newest album.

Click here for a slideshow.

Photographer Jonathan Hollingsworth traveled from San Francisco to Orange County, in California, with a stack of poster-board in hand. Along the way he stopped and asked people to write their opinions on the current war in Iraq. Then he took photos of the people holding up the signs. It's a simple enough idea, but the result is anything but simple.

"What We Think Now: Young People's Response to the U.S. Involvement in Iraq," both an exhibition (that recently closed at Stages Repertory Theatre) and a book, is surprisingly frank. One woman writes, “While trying to articulate my thoughts on the war I feel selfish uneducated and ignorant It doesn't affect me so I haven't paid attention. Isn't that sad..." In another shot a man writes, "Not my president, not my war!" Still another writes, "No matter what, support the troops."

As this week's Hair Balls column explains, we had a helluva time finding out who was on the Board of Directors for the Memorial Hermann Hospital System. But we persevered and now proudly present the list:

We now present the last of four clips from reporter Paul Knight's prison interview with Martin Draughon for this week's feature...

We now present the third of four clips from reporter Paul Knight's prison interview with Martin Draughon for this week's feature...

We now present the second of four clips from reporter Paul Knight's prison interview with Martin Draughon for this week's feature...

We now present the first of four clips from reporter Paul Knight's prison interview with Martin Draughon for this week's feature...

In an effort to stay hip with the times (always the Vatican’s primary objective, right?), the Catholic Church has decreed that there are seven new deadly sins (now, even deadlier!) that will accompany the old-fashioned original seven we’ve all come to know and love so well.

The new ones include becoming obscenely wealthy (not a problem for Miss Pop Rocks) and polluting. (I knew I should have recycled all those Miller Lite cans last week!)

The announcement got ol’ Miss PR thinking about what missteps our celebrities could make that could get them in hot water with the Gods of Pop Culture. So after a little thinking (and a few more Miller Lites), I’ve devised this list:

The Seven Deadly Sins: Celebrity Edition

Being Involved in a Sex Tape: Making or producing a sex tape, be it grainy, in black and white, night vision, or even Super 8 mm, is a major offense against the Gods of Pop Culture. It doesn’t matter if you’ve benefited financially from this tape or built a whole career out of it (paging Kim Kardashian), please…no more sex tapes.

We've loaded up a slideshow of select images from Chuy Benitez's show at Lawndale Art Center. The images present panoramic views of local Latinos, and they're a tad too wide (ahem, the images, not the locals) for our slideshow tool to do them justice. All the more reason to see the show in person. -- Keith Plocek

So this blog is about pop culture, and this post is gonna be about politics, but in my opinion, politics comes pretty close to serving as our pop culture, most of the time.

I want to write about Silda Spitzer, the wife of the ex-governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after it came out that he hired prostitutes (just a little recap for the under-a-rock crowd). I know the scandal has somewhat blown over, but Silda Spitzer’s face keeps popping up in television, looking spaced out and shocked as she stands behind her man while he apologizes and, ultimately, resigns his office.

I can’t get her out of my mind.

Do I think a man who visited a prostitute is any less capable of running a country or a state? No, not at all. I have mixed feelings about whether or not Eliot Spitzer should have resigned.

But I’m 100 percent certain that Silda Spitzer should resign him.

We’re still a little Peeped out, so let’s get right to the recap…

12:10 a.m. at King Biscuit, 12:45 a.m. at Sixth Street and 1:16 a.m. at Saez 'n Zouk

202 Tuam, former home of Hue (and Union before that), has reopened with a shiny new name, not to mention some late-night, girl-on-guy arm-wrestling action. Photog Bill Olive dropped by for some photos after hitting up King Biscuit and Sixth Street in the Heights.

Life Class is the latest Pat Barker novel, one that will again leave you feeling like an unschooled heathen because you’re ever so slightly underwhelmed.

Barker returns to the time of her famous, highly praised Great War trilogy. And the writing is fine as Barker traces the story of art students caught up in WWI.

Things happen, many of them Symbolic with a capital S. But there is ever hanging about a disappointing feeling that matters are never quite gelling to be as enthralling or affecting as you hope. And, since Barker’s books all come slathered with lavish critical blurbs and festooned with important awards, you can’t help feeling the trouble is not with her, it’s with you and your hoi polloi inability to recognize profound greatness when it’s right in front of your eyes.

If you can get over that nagging feeling, then Life Class will be as satisfying to you as the Regeneration trilogy. Which might, of course, mean you’ll be left wondering a bit at why you have that slightly underwhelmed feeling. – Richard Connelly