Toss that guidebook, because we’ve checked in with a handful of loyal Houston locals [including Chandra Wilson of Grey's Anatomy] for a tour of some of the city's top to-dos. From the big flavors of Houston cuisine to cultural events that attract arts lovers nightly, you’ll quickly see why the city inspires extreme devotion among its residents.
The Works Progress Administration did it. Musician Sufjan Stevens has done a bit of it. Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey got a whole bunch of people to do it. And, um, [my co-writer] Sophia [Dembling] and I are deep into our own version of it.
The it in question? Exploring, one by one, what makes each of the 50 states unique—and looking for the threads that tie them together. Now it’s time to add another to the list: The 50 States Project. Every other month, 50 photos—one from each state—will be posted on the site. Flyover America checked in with Stuart Pilkington, the U.K.-based (we’ll get to that) creator and curator of the project to find out what it’s all about.
The NBA may have lost its Sonic boom, but it's gained a more natural rumble. Following a lawsuit between the SuperSonics organization and its former host city, Seattle, the team's owners moved the franchise to Oklahoma City starting with the current 2008-'09 season. But the franchise didn't just change cities: It changed its identity. Now called the Thunder, the team gives Oklahoma City a permanent presence in the NBA.
In case you find yourself here come game day, check out our poll of the city's biggest boosters--its residents--on the best spots to eat at before and after the game as well as where, besides courtside, to cheer on the mighty Thunder. Since no one can live by basketball alone (okay, some can, but quite frankly, missing out on other Oklahoma City attractions would be a crime against fun and culture and steak), we also asked in-the-know residents for their locals-only knowledge of some of the city’s other must-see spots.
It was early 2004, and the heated November presidential election was inching closer by the day. Michael Kantor and Laurence Maslon had just wrapped the PBS documentary series about the history of New York theater called Broadway: The American Musical, and they realized that America was tense. “There was something about the moment in time and the country being polarized that made me think, ‘We could use a good joke right now,’ ” Kantor says. Better yet, he thought, a century of good jokes. So Kantor and Maslon set about chronicling the history of humor in the United States for a new book, Make ’Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America (Twelve Books, $45), and its accompanying six-part documentary series of the same name, which will air on PBS in January. The duo gave us the scoop on their entertaining new project.
There's no doubt that music fans enjoy telling tales of their favorite rock gods' outrageous behavior as much as they love listening to those artists' tunes. But flip open to almost any page of Lost Genius, a biography by Kevin Bazzana (recently released in paperback) about twentieth-century piano prodigy Ervin Nyiregyházi, and you’ll find that rockers didn’t invent the bad-boy thing. We take a look at Lost Genius as well as three other recent memoirs and biographies to see which musicians have really earned their reputations.
