When I moved to Manchester, I was worried that I might never drink good tequila again. Most of the stories I’d heard were about a clear liquor that tasted like petrol. But one of my first Manchester Tex-Mex experiences, a visit to Chiquito’s at Salford Quays, put my mind at ease. A tequila sampler offered there featured (pictured from the darkest going clockwise): Patron Incendio (chocolate and chile flavored), Patron Reposado, Don Julio Anejo, and the Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia. Also pictured are a house margarita (left), a Negro Modelo, and an elderflower margarita (right). Houston, we are off to a good start!
from http://houstonfoodblog.com/houstonfood/houston-food-blogs/tequila/
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Eating Disorder Awareness Week may not be on the radar of most Houstonians, but for this one momma, February 26th through March 4th holds significant meaning. I am an advocate for adults and children suffering through this disease because I am a survivor. Today, twelve years removed from this horrific disease, I can proudly say that I […] The post When Eating Disorders Consume Your Family appeared first on Houston Moms Blog. from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HoustonMomsBlog/~3/0A1Dci6eFJg/ We are thrilled to once again partner with Reliant to bring you this sponsored guide. We hope you find it helpful as you plan your trip to the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo this year!It’s rodeo time in Houston, and we are beyond excited about all that this year’s Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo holds! From the […] The post Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo {Here is Everything YOU Need to Know for 2017!} appeared first on Houston Moms Blog. from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HoustonMomsBlog/~3/CkKYwwQp6g0/ "This is a life-threatening emergency," the city said on an emergency website. "Houston residents should avoid travel at all costs today."
Four of the deaths happened in hard-hit Harris County, officials said. The driver of an 18-wheeler was found dead inside the cab after he drove into high waters, a Harris County constable reported, and another man was found dead in a submerged car, the Houston Fire Department said. Two others were found dead after driving around a barricade on Houston's west side, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said. In neighboring Waller County, a 56-year-old man was found dead in a submerged vehicle, County Judge Trey Duhon said. "It is believed the car rode off the road and into a ditch," Duhon said. Crews performed 1,200 high-water rescues as of Monday afternoon, Harris County Emergency Management said. "There's flooding in every part of Houston," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said, telling stranded citizens. "We will rescue you." At least 1,000 homes were flooded in Harris County, according to Emmett. Some people were trapped in their homes or attics, fire department spokesman Ruy Lozano said. The water was too deep for crews to reach them in high-water vehicles, so rescuers were trying to get to those people in boats, he said. Nine hospitals in the region were closed to additional patients because of the flooding, the mayor said. Three apartment buildings were evacuated and residents were being sheltered at a mall, Turner added. Emmett said Monday afternoon he estimates 240 billion gallons of rain has fallen in the Houston area. That estimate may soon rise: Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for Houston through late Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. A flash flood watch is in effect for the Houston area through Tuesday morning, with "life-threatening" flash flooding possible Monday night, the weather service said. As little as an inch of rain could aggravate the flooding, it said. Emmett called it the most significant flood event since Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, which left 41 people dead. It caused more than $5 billion in property damage in Harris County alone, according to the county's Flood Control District. At the Royal Phoenician apartment complex in north Houston, the brown floodwaters submerged cars in the parking lot early Monday, a resident said. He posted video to Twitter later showing the waters had gone down slightly, though levels still reached car windshields. Another north Houston resident posted video of residents leaving their flooded homes in a canoe as the rain continued to fall. Portions of I-10 and numerous roads throughout the metropolitan area were closed, as were many government offices. City bus and rail service shut down early Monday amid "severe and ever worsening weather conditions." The storm snarled traffic at Houston's Hobby Airport, where nearly 200 flights were canceled by midafternoon, according to the airport's Twitter account. Around 45,000 customers in the region were without power as of Monday afternoon, emergency management officials said, down from a peak of 123,000 earlier in the day. Some areas had received as much as 16 inches of rain by Monday morning, according to the flood control district. The heavy rains forced seven of the city's many bayous out of their banks and created flooding in parts of the city that had not flooded for many years, Turner said. Flash flood warnings were up in about two dozen Texas counties across in the southern part of the state, including the Houston and Austin metropolitan areas. The situation is the result of a nearly stationary area of low pressure that has stalled over the western United States, allowing moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to flow into Texas over the last few days, according to CNN meteorologist Sean Morris. Very heavy rainfall is expected to continue through Tuesday before the system begins to move off to the northeast and weaken, he said. CNN's Sheena Jones, Dave Alsup and Shawn Nottingham contributed to this report. Flower Politics, Photo: Uncredited/Courtesy of Artist/Facebook
I would guess, that most people who read this know very little about the bedroom pop genre. The ever growing space in the music world is typically full of endearing and heartfelt artists who tend to fall between sugary pop and angst driven sadness. I also, don’t expect you to have heard of Houston’s Flower Politics, but you should know that the primarily solo artist has dropped over twenty releases over the past three years, and if nothing else, they’re prolific. On their latest record, New Beginnings from December of last year, they really stretch their wings and offers up one of the most endearing and honest sounding albums I’ve heard in a good while. Completely raw in its form, the songs have a depth that’s more universal than most people would understand on the surface alone while showcasing a mix of the immediacy of now and an unconventional approach to songwriting.
The lo-fi opening of “I hope I changed” offers up an echoed vocal that sounds like someone singing directly from the heart, while the strum of an acoustic guitar keeps the pace of the song before a dual vocal hops in to disappear pretty quickly. When it returns, there’s a third vocal that finds its way in while the hoarse undertones mixed with soft levels create a spirit that truly permeates your soul. Two songs later, a more produced or at least, higher production quality offers “give me your pain” up for the listener. Though the song is primarily acoustic guitar and vocals, the song feels like someone crying out to a world that won’t listen while echoes of artists like Mary Lou Lord and early Mary Timony seem to come through the heartfelt lyrics.
The honesty in the overall sound of the following song, “you’ve made a home” can at times remind you of Angel Olsen through the eyes of Waxahatchee, while never seeming to copy either. There’s just something gut wrenching to the sound of someone singing songs that sound like they have to get them out before the pages of their diary are burned in front of them. However that’s what happening here as Flower Politics offers up acoustic pop that you can identify with while loving every note of it.
The weight of the simple orchestration of “I will not go alone” says more without lots of instrumentation to get in the way. In fact, after just one listen, you can’t imagine the song with anything other than what’s on the track. The album gets closed off by what feels like a deeply personal narrative on “not done living yet,” where the lyrics sound like those of someone who’s been on either end of a rash decision. However, there’s a hope to the future that emanates throughout, making you hope that the music for Flower Politics is nothing if not at least therapeutic.
New Beginnings is possibly just that, a new beginning from an artist that’s stayed in the shadows long enough to exist without making a big to do about it. This album proves that you can steer from the norms of hook writing and general pop structure, while still existing in the genre without following anyone else’s rules but the code in which you yourself live by. There’s nothing formulaic about what Flower Politics is doing here, and that’s what I love about it. The raw and emotive nature of just wanting these songs out into the world should be enough for anyone, while the earnest employment of its immediacy shouldn’t be lost on the listener as well. You can catch Flower Politics when they perform with Naked Naps at Satellite Bar on February 27. The all ages show has doors at 8 pm and a TBA cover charge.
from http://www.freepresshouston.com/local-love-flower-politics/ Childrens Memorial Hermann Now Makes Pediatric House Calls! {The New Service Every Family Needs}2/24/2017 We are thrilled to partner with Q.care, associated with Children’s Memorial Hermann, to bring you this sponsored content. As busy moms, we were so excited to learn about this new service being rolled out in Houston, so we are thankful for the opportunity to share it with you too!It was a Saturday morning, and I […] The post Children’s Memorial Hermann Now Makes Pediatric House Calls! {The New Service Every Family Needs} appeared first on Houston Moms Blog. from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HoustonMomsBlog/~3/gIHb_F1-RAQ/ Dylan Tirapelli-Jamail.
Long time musician and native Houstonian Dylan Tirapelli-Jamail, who currently resides in Los Angeles, has been toiling away on an album, one which he wrote and performs by himself, for a over half a decade — and it’s finally come to fruition. Prior to the release of the album as well as a performance by his band True American on Saturday at The Secret Group, Free Press Houston caught up with Tirapelli-Jamail to discuss the release and his inspiration.
Free Press Houston: Can you tell me about your upcoming album? Dylan Tirapelli-Jamail: In a way it’s kind of a culmination of the past ten years of my life. The experiences I gained in Houston, not only as a musician but as a person, and being that I’ve always been a guitarist and songwriter, but most of the time I was living in Houston I was playing drums for a bunch of bands like The Manichean and Square and Compass. I never really got a chance to explore being a songwriter and I don’t think that I really started writing until I checked myself into rehab here in LA. The record, in a way, means me finally having the outlet that I’ve been searching for.
FPH: Since you wrote the songs, how did you see your experiences coming out through those songs? Tirapelli-Jamail: Mostly in metaphors, to be honest. The last four or five years that I was in Houston definitely had an impact on the sound and lyrical content of the record. It was kind of like writing a movie where you play every character because whether I’m writing about myself or writing about somebody else that’s involved in the story, it all stems from my brain and my memories of what happened. It’s an interesting feeling for sure.
FPH: Do you have a name for the album? Tirapelli-Jamail: Yes, it’s called Ghosts: The Aftermath of a Love Story. I kind of got this idea in my head, and this is what the album is basically about, is that reliving old memories and basically using them as a way to cope. So the memories in my mind are like ghosts, they’re pieces of the past that you still hold on to and it just sort of started to come out as a story. I didn’t intend to write it that way. Each song is entitled “Ghost” 1 through 5 and they all hold different small chapters of four or five years that I was in a pretty dark place.
FPH: You released the single “Ghost II” last month, was there a reason you released that song first? Tirapelli-Jamail: I decided to release that song first because it’s definitely the most personal out of all of them. Almost everything you hear in that song actually happened to me. Some of the other songs on the record are a bit more embellished for the sake of the story, but almost everything in that song happened to me or someone else and it’s really just the rawest point of emotion that I’ve found writing so far. It’s probably the most accurate representation of what our sound has been.
FPH: How did you find your inspiration for writing this album? Tirapelli-Jamail: My inspiration mainly comes from different places, my first long term relationship and years of addiction. The writing about relationship stuff started as a therapy, but the openness about my addiction came from a place that once I started to get help, when I was in the worst throws of what I was going through, once I got help I realized how normalized addiction has become and especially among people of our generation. I wanted to find an outlet to tell that story in a way that could hopefully benefit other people who may not realize that you can live without that pain. The inspiration stemming from that, the actual writing did become a therapy and helped me get through what I was going through at the time. I could go on for days and days about what the process really entailed, but it was a long time and I just had to stay patient. There were certain times that I wanted to jump the gun and just find people fast and start playing shows, there were times I wanted to just put the whole thing down and walk away, but I tried to keep my cool a little bit and realize that I was doing something good and just let the process unfold as it did and try not to go insane.
FPH: Do you see this album as an evolution of your sound? Tirapelli-Jamail: Absolutely. Like I said before, this is really the first time that I’ve truly explored myself creatively and I wrote the entire album and I actually performed all the instruments on the album as well. I have a band here in Los Angeles that plays with me live and they’ll be more of a part of the process as we go forward as far as writing and recording, but this record, aside from two guest vocalists and an engineer, was all me. I think it’s sort of a jumping off point for what I’m going to be doing in the future.
FPH: Since you played every instrument, how did that go and how arduous was that process? Tirapelli-Jamail: Honestly the recording process was pretty smooth, it was really the writing process that was arduous. I spent three and a half years writing the record and it started when I was in rehab. I bought this cheap guitar when they finally let me have the privilege to go out, I could check in and check out, and I bought a guitar and I just started writing as a therapy to be honest. The recording process was smooth, I got a chance to record with Brian Baker at Sound Arts Recording Studio, who I’ve been recording with for over 10 years now. We got in there and it was just like old times. It was pretty quick, we tracked the entire record in five days.
FPH: What was it like to create and release an album that was so intensely personal? Tirapelli-Jamail: It was very weird. It’s very therapeutic. It’s very painful. Reliving old memories is always hard, it’s strange just to talk about it now. I just hope that someone who might be going through what I was going through can hear me when I say that there is a way out if you’re dealing with stuff like that. Addiction is hard, but the more people that bring it to light and turn it into art like I’m trying to do, I feel like that will be able to help. Even if it’s painful for me to relive those memories, it’s not as painful as what somebody else is going through now. If I can help them in any way, then that’s what I want to do.
FPH: How do you think you’re going to move forward after working on this project? Tirapelli-Jamail: I’ve already started writing the next record. The next one is going to be a full-length and the rest of the band will be more of a part of the writing process from this point forward. The sound is definitely going to evolve and I can kind of see where it’s going at this point, but there’s really no telling. We’ll just kind of see what happens.
True American will release “Ghosts: The Aftermath of a Love Story” on Saturday, February 25 and will perform that day at What’s It: A Benefit for Girls Rock Camp Houston at The Secret Group. The album will be available on iTunes and Spotify. from http://www.freepresshouston.com/true-american-an-interview-with-dylan-tirapelli-jamail/ Moody Center for the Arts opens its jaw dropping building on Rice Campus this Friday, February 24. The 52,000-square-foot facility, designed by LA based architect Michael Maltzan, will serve as an experimental platform for creating and presenting interdisciplinary arts and collaboration. Working with the arts, sciences, and humanities the facility will not only serve to present experimental works, but to act as a flexible teaching space to encourage new modes of creating and a forum for creative partnerships nationally and internationally. The facility broke ground January of 2015 and has had a multi-million dollar campaign behind it. Funders include The Moody Development, as well as support from The Brown Foundation, The Elkins Foundation, The Gilder Foundations, Nancy and Clint Carlson, with additional programming support from Suzanne Deal Booth, and Leslie and Brad Bucher. The open layout of the new facility creates a welcoming dialog for new projects and programming as well as a providing an easy orientation point of view for all students, scholars, artists, and visitors.
The new center at Rice presents its facilities at an optimal time for Houston and its ever growing creative community. Free Press Houston was invited on a private press tour of the new building, and the plan laid out for the new programming is outstanding. An intro was provided by Executive Director Alison Weaver and architectural insight by Michael Maltzan laying out the vision behind such a large arts campus. Once inside the new space you are greeted with a beautiful open airy interior with vaulted ceilings and natural light coming from all directions. Within the main space Olafur Eliasson’s new project Green Light, commissioned by The Moody Center for the Arts. “Green Light, an artist workshop, addresses the international refugee crisis and the current geopolitical issues surrounding global migration. It gives the green ‘go ahead’ light to asylum seekers, refugees and economic migrants by inviting them to participate in the multifaceted modular green lamps, as well as language courses, seminars, artist’s interventions and film screenings.” The crystalline lamps lay out on tables with components and 3D printed parts laid about. An installation of the lamps are presented on the main wall displaying the clean, simple, and yet complex concept of the project as a whole.
The main gallery presents the inaugural opening show of works by Thomas Struth. “Nature and Politics” reconsiders how the process of imagination and fantasy works in our collective minds and to show the imperceptible manifestations of technology and science shape our reality. For the past decade Thomas Struth has photographed sites of techno industrial and scientific research, including space stations and operating theaters, visually exploring topics of technological innovation and the constructed landscape. The large scale images command the room with vast and vibrant imagery or the tranquility and chaos of the scientific landscape. From the disturbing images of a table of silicone body parts and breasts to the clean fine edges of a research structure perched on the edge of a bay or lake, Struth presents an almost fantasy view of technology.
The building’s programming exhibitions provide an all-senses experience with new media project by teamLab, a Tokyo-based interdisciplinary group of ultra technologist. Their installation “Flowers and People, Cannot be Controlled But Live Together – A Whole Year per Hour,” is a 2015 interactive installation that addressed the theme of the seasons, which is central to Japanese culture and frequently reflected in Japanese art. The viewer enters a door which leads you through a pitch black corridor and spills you into a large squared room with 360 projections of animated flowers gradually budding, blossoming, growing, and fading. It’s only after a few minutes inside the flower womb that you realize the petals and flowers are growing uncontrollably around you wherever you are standing. Soon creating a colorful blur and mess of flowers and blooms. The entire building, its programming goals, and direction is stellar and a massive creative leap for Rice University. Wondering through the new building unveils exciting make spaces, meeting rooms, hidden projects, virtual reality work rooms, and many more hive environments. It was truly amazing to see such a well funded project, not only completed in what appeared to be lightning timeline, but to have an endless vision and collaboration for the surrounding city, creative realm, and its campus.
Ribbon-cutting with Mayor Sylvestor Turner kicks off the celebratory four day weekend on Friday, February 24 at 4 pm. The Moody Center for the Arts opens to the public with a dedication ceremony, cutting-edge exhibitions, premiere performances, and free parties for Houston and Rice University later that evening from 7 to 10 pm. More information about the full weekend schedule can be found at www.moody.rice.edu. from http://www.freepresshouston.com/preview-moody-center-for-the-arts-at-rice-university/ Milo Yiannopoulos. Photo: @kmeron
Editor’s note: Since this article was written Yiannopoulos has resigned as the senior editor of Breitbart, lost a book deal with Simon & Schuster and was uninvited to speak at CPAC.
Breitbart senior editor and infamous alt-right celebrity Milo Yiannopoulos was a guest on Real Time With Bill Maher recently, an appearance that brought significant online backlash and the cancellation of regular guest Jeremy Scahill thanks to Yiannopoulos’ hateful, and oft-times rather nonsensical, rhetoric. Those familiar with Maher and Yiannopoulos predicted what we’d get was probably two people notorious for railing against political correctness (or as Neil Gaiman likes to call it, treating other people with respect) backslapping each other because freedom. The fact that mainstream free speech “activism” is almost entirely the domain of white men is a little telling, you know, but that’s a topic for another day.
The headlines the next morning, though, were mostly thanks to another guest, Larry Wilmore, telling Yiannopoulos to go fuck himself. What brought on the expletives from Wilmore was Yiannopoulos going off on a tangent regarding trans people as sexual predators and mental deviants.
People book Yiannopoulos for venues because he has a large fanbase you can always count to spread his gospel, but the stated reason is because the subject under debate is free speech. This is how Yiannopoulous certainly frames it, seeing protests in response to scheduled appearances or his Twitter ban as censorship. Of course, between his book deal, being the editor of a mass media outlet and appearing on a highly popular HBO show, it’s fair to say he isn’t really having a problem getting his voice heard.
So let’s set aside Yiannopoulos’ free speech issue as the made-up thing it is because I have some advice for anyone who wants to have the man in their venue in the future. You need to brush up on your basic reading of trans issues because Yiannopoulos is going to bring them up in a damaging way, and he needs to be rebuked. Anything less would be irresponsible.
One of the things he said on Maher’s show was that trans people are disproportional involved in sexual assaults, with the implication from other comments on the show that they are the perpetrators of said assaults and we have to protect our little girls from them. Thing is, Yiannopoulous is technically accurate, but misleading in a terribly unethical way. Trans people are disproportionately involved in sexual assaults… as victims. Reports show that as many as 66 percent of trans people experience sexual assault, and that number goes up further when singling out people of color or the disabled. Contrary to what lawmakers all over this country would like you to believe, if you’re in the bathroom with a trans person, you are far more likely to rape them than they are to rape your child.
That is a statistic that should frighten and sadden anyone who reads it, and it needs to be shouted at people like Yiannopoulos wherever they go lest someone naively believes him in his scaremongering. There’s no time in an interview to Google this. You need to know it.
Yiannopoulos has a long and vicious history of going after individual trans people in online harassment campaigns and articles. They were regular marks for his GamerGate audience when he was that crazy movement’s media mouthpiece, partly because many prominent GamerGate opponents were trans women and uniquely vulnerable to the hacking of deadnames and outing to their communities. Much of the backlash against his appearances at colleges is because he outed and harassed a trans student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at one. And contrary to Yiannopoulos’ statement on Maher’s show, that trans woman was still a student at the university, as reported by Breitbart itself. Even his harassment of actress Leslie Jones, which finally got him booted from Twitter, follows this pattern. Jones is cis, but her stature, short hair and brash demeanor clearly offend Yiannopoulos’ delicate standards of femininity, and make her an easy target for the people who share his views.
I don’t know whether Yiannopoulos is sincerely transphobic or if this harmful anti-trans crusade he’s been on for several years is merely deplorable performance art, and I don’t particularly care. The effect is the same either way. What matters is that he regularly uses his platforms to spread poison about trans people, as individuals or as a group. He traffics in the false information that they are dedicated sexual predators looking to infiltrate and hurt the rest of this, and it’s just not true. No case where it is claimed to be true ever checks out. It’s a lie, and it’s a lie Yiannopoulos will not waste an opportunity to tell, and anyone having him on best be ready to throw that lie back in his face like the bloody cocktail of hate it is.
Wilmore was there to do that, and I’m thankful. He was also there to remind Yiannapoulos that a primary problem in marginalized people’s lives is how society treats and considers them. To quote Wilmore, “If society said ‘we’re fine with gay people’ and it’s 1890, do you think in 1990 people are going to have an issue with it?”
That’s the actual free speech conversation that needs to be had, not whether or not a man whose words reach thousands or millions is experiencing censorship because a college cancelled his speaking engagement. The question of free speech is what effect speech has, and how can the negative ones be reduced without compromising basic freedom. That’s a far more interesting and meaningful discussion than whether you can scream “FEMINISM IS CANCER” and not have any consequences.
from http://www.freepresshouston.com/if-youre-going-to-have-milo-yiannopoulos-on-be-ready-to-talk-trans-issues/ |
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