October  Fridays

Kevin Hart
@Toyota Center

Friday 10/19/2018 7:00 PM
Saturday 10/20/2018 7:00 PM

 


Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish's film "Night School" opened several weekends ago as the top box office grossing film for the weekend.

Hart makes his way to Houston with his stand-up at Toyota Center.

The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania native began his career by winning several amateur comedy competitions at clubs throughout New England.

Hart's first gig was at The Laff House in Philadelphia under the name of Lil Kev, which did not go well. His career suffered a slow start, as he was booed off stage several times, once even having a piece of chicken thrown at him. After those initial unsuccessful shows, Hart began entering comedy competitions throughout Massachusetts, and his fortunes soon turned for the better.


It took time for Hart to develop a unique comedic style. After an early period of attempting to imitate comedians like Chris Tucker, he found his own rhythm by delving into his insecurities and life experiences. "Because of what I do, it has to be an open book," he has said. "But right now this is a book that is being written."

Hart's comedic style can be described as routines based on his racial, physical, familial and gender role experiences. His stand-up frequently invokes self-deprecation, derived from his experiences as a shorter-than-median (5'2"), black, adult male, with an extended black family, trying to navigate his career and personal paths in life. He frequently talks about his fears of being less than ideally physically gifted, the resulting ways in which they intersect with his masculinity, sexuality, traditional male gender role, as well as the experiences and dynamics of his social interactions, and how he fails to live up to the traditional definitions and notions of them.


Kevin Hart has spoken about both his acceptance of his vulnerability with the issues and the painful experiences with his perceived shortcomings as well as the society and family he belongs to as being the primary sources of his comedic material and humour. In particular, this has included acceptance of both his height and the resulting roles in both his personal and professional life he's often given.

Hart said, “My frustration with Katt Williams comes from, you keep pointing at Hollywood. ‘Hollywood this, the White man this and this,’ when are you going to take responsibility for your actions?"


Recently a fued between Hart and Katt Williams began when Hart said, “My frustration with Katt Williams comes from, you keep pointing at Hollywood. ‘Hollywood this, the White man this and this,’ when are you going to take responsibility for your actions? You had the shot! You were the guy! You were set up to be the star. YOU didn’t show up to work. YOU f*cked off promo shoots. YOU f*cked off your promo trips that they set up for you. You became a risk to the studios, which is why the studios stopped f*cking with you.”

Katt Williams responded telling ebony.com, "After calling Hart a “f*ck a*s ni**a,” on Instagram Live, Williams claimed the Night School actor pays Los Angeles gang members for protection. Even still, Williams is ready to go toe-to-toe."

[Editor's note: Katt Williams was arrested on Sunday, October 7, 2018 for assault involving a limo driver.]

Kevin Hart
Toyota Center
1510 Polk St.  Houston, TX
Directions
Friday 10/19/2018 7:00 PM
Saturday 10/20/2018 7:00 PM
view tickets

Costume Discounters

Roy Orbison - In Dream Tour
Smart Financial Center

Friday 10/26/2018 8:00 PM

 


It’s been done with Prince and Michael Jackson and we're talking hologram tours. These post music artist celebrations through technology seem to be catching on. This weekend at Smart Financial Center it’s the late Roy Orbison.

The Hologram Tour started this fall with a 28-cirt run. It is being reported the creators of the show did okay in Europe with attendance. Like those performances, the show will pair the Rock Hall singer with live orchestration and “newly recorded, never-before-heard, digitally remastered arrangements of his classics.”


WOW. Sounds like a good evening to reminisce about Roy Orbison. Orbison was born in Texas, the small town of Vernon, Vernon is in Wilbarger, Texas and is the county seat. This is near the panhandle in northern Texas.

Orbison began singing in a rockabilly and country-and-western band in high school. He was signed by Sam Phillips, of Sun Records, in 1956, but his greatest success came with Monument Records. From 1960 to 1966, twenty-two of his singles reached the Billboard Top 40, and he wrote or co-wrote almost all that rose to the Top 10, including "Only the Lonely" (1960), "Running Scared" (1961), "Crying" (1961), "In Dreams" (1963), and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (1964). What a catalog.

Orbison’s popularity eventually declined from the 50's and 60's and it was 1987 when his music stared to rise again. Orbison was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen, who concluded his speech with a reference to his own album Born to Run: "I wanted a record with words like Bob Dylan that sounded like Phil Spector—but, most of all, I wanted to sing like Roy Orbison. Now, everyone knows that no one sings like Roy Orbison."

 

"Roy looked at all of us and said, 'If there is anything I can ever do for you, please call on me'. He was very serious. It was his way of thanking us. It was very emotional."


In response, Orbison asked Springsteen for a copy of the speech, and said of his induction that he felt "validated" by the honor. A few months later, Orbison and Springsteen paired again to film a concert at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles. They were joined by Jackson Browne, T Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Jennifer Warnes, James Burton, and k.d. lang. Lang later recounted how humbled Orbison had been by the display of support from so many talented and busy musicians: "Roy looked at all of us and said, 'If there is anything I can ever do for you, please call on me'. He was very serious. It was his way of thanking us. It was very emotional." The concert was filmed in one take and aired on Cinemax under the title Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black and White Night; it was released on video by Virgin Records, selling 50,000 copies.

Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC


Orbison is regarded as a rock-and-roll pioneer and has been cited by numerous critics as one of the genre's most influential musicians, but his style is notable for how it departed from the rock and roll norm.


Roy Orbison - In Dream Tour
Smart Financial Center
18111 Lexington Blvd.  Sugar Land, TX
Directions
Friday 10/26/2018
view tickets 

Since you are here...
Houston's Weekend Planning Guide is updated on a continuous bias for all in the Greater Houston Area. We haven’t put up a paywall or asked anyone to log-in to see our content. We want to keep it that way. We accept advertising, but the revenue from that area is not enough to support us. If everyone who reads our weekend entertainment blog, who likes it and helps to support it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $1 or more, you can support Houston's Weekend Planning Guide – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

 

Houston's Weekend Planning Guide
Fall Events Guide the Download is Free

Houston's Online Weekend Entertainment Guide

Our weekend picks

 

Karol G & Piso 21
NRG Arena
1 NRG Pkwy.
Houston, TX
Directions
Friday 10/19/2018 8:00 PM
view tickets

 

Glenn Beck
Revention Music Center
520 Texas St.
Houston, TX
Directions
Friday 10/26/2018 8:00 PM
view tickets

Astros' Weekend

 

Houston's Online Weekend Entertainment Guide

Weekend  Friday Listings

Looking for that Friday weekend event and can't find it, try our custom "Google Search"