Dish-Houston

Rotary Skyline and Pepperdine Houston Chapter welcomed past Step Forward Day sponsors and many guests to their Kickoff Reception for Step Forward Day 2012, where about 80 attendees took in the beautiful views from The 43^rdRestaurant & Bar atop the Wedge Building while enjoying drinks, quesadillas, and delectable finger foods.

Guests were welcomed by Rotary Skyline President Ovi Galvan who participated in the traditional exchange of the club banners with visiting Rotarian Roseann Higgins (Phoenix 100 Club). Then Rotary Skyline Founder & Pepperdine Houston Alumni Charter President Corbett Parker provided an overview of how Step Forward Day was started 24 years ago by 2 Pepperdine students. These folks simply recognized the need for volunteers in the local community and wanted to share their passion for service with others.  Step Forward Day has grown to include 4,200 service hours across the globe and growing every year. 

Step Forward Day is described as a simple yet significant way for the community to be a neighbor and to participate in our mission and calling.  It is a great way to start the year out right, the chance to make new friends, and to prepare oneself to always "step forward".

The location of this year's focus will be Westview School. The Westview School is a private, non-profit school for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.  The school was founded in 1981 to provide a structured, nurturing, and stimulating learning environment for children with learning differences which prevent them from being successful in regular programs.

SFD 2012 Co-Chair Michelle Bohreer provided an overview of this year’s service projects which include installing a water feature with a solar powered pump, nature garden, butterfly garden, hummingbird garden, working with Westview student to create an indoor mural or mosaic, Christmas play set painting, library re-organizing.  Donna Marshall, Head of Westview School and John Moring, Development Director were on hand as well. Some of the tid-bits of information they provided is every 11 minutes a child is diagnosed with an ASD. Boys are 4:1 more likely to have an ASD. ASDs receive the lowest funding of research dollars in the United States.

The question now is how you can help as well!

DISHIES can plug into Step Forward Day 2012 by:

• Confirm attendance on Step Forward Day 2012 Facebook Page & invite others – There is no cost to attend.
• Let Co-Chairs Michelle Bohreer (MichelleB@bohreerzucker.com) or Corbett Parker (Corbett.Parker@gmail.com) know you want to be a part of the planning. Or just come to upcoming Rotary Club of Houston Skyline meetings.  
• Attend Tuesday, Aug 28 (6pm-7:30) art creation @ The Mad Potter - River Oaksfor benches being installed on Step Forward Day. Afterwards, attendees will take in a Houston Resturant Weeks dinner together.There is no fee to attend Mad Potter. Dinner is on you.
• Attend Tuesday, Sept 4 (6pm-8:00) prep work day @ The Westview School to ensure all is prepared and ready for Step Forward Day the following Saturday. Prep work will no doubt be followed by happy hour.

See you there, DISHIES! Can't wait to serve with you!

Well this has already started with some drama!! The screening for the Bachelor Pad reality show is coming up and of course there will be a party with our very own local gal Erica Rose. She is on the show again this season.

She recommended another local guy be on it as well and all seemed fine and dandy until...dun dun dun....it turns out he was caught trying to oust her on the very first episode!! WHAT??? YES, Girl!!

More drama! It seemed that was put behind them until this party happens! Yes, the one DISH is about to invite you to attend! His (we aren't mentioning his name on purpose) name was on the invite and he was also supposed to be there when he BACKED OUT!! After all of that work on so many people's parts and he backs out saying he had fallen in love and was going to be out of town with his new girl. WHATEVER! If you give your word and make a commitment your arse better be there! Love, if it's love will be there in an hour! UGH!

Another little inside info about this thoughtless jerk, apparently he showed up at one of DISH'S events and one girl was trying to get people to take pictures with him and you couldn't pay folks to! Not because he was some reality show wanna be but because no body knew who he was! What a TOOL!

Good thing he won't be there on the 30th or he might have gotten a face full of DISH! =)

Anyway, put it on your schedule! June 30 at Capitol at St. Germain!

You and a Guest are Invited to attend a special screening of ABC’s "The Bachelor Pad"

HOSTED BY HOUSTON’S NOTORIOUS TV Single

Erica Rose

Benefiting Holly Rose Ribbon Foundation

Monday, July 30th 6:30 until 9 pm

The Capitol at St. Germain: 705 Main at Capitol

$20 Suggested donation

Includes A Complimentary Dripping Springs Vodka cocktail and Delectable hors d'oeuvres From Chef Ed Roberts.

Kindly Respond to: lilypax@yahoo.com

Surface parking located Directly Across Capitol, Garage Parking on the Corner of Capitol and Fannin

See you there, DISHIES!

The Turrell Skyspaceopened to the public on the Rice University campus on June 14 to great gasps at it's beauty. At first you wonder what the UFO looking thing on top of the hill is and what purpose it serves, those thoughts vanish the second you get inside. The Texas pink granite benches are poised within the specialised plaster walls which hide speakers. This space wasn't created just for the sunrise and sunset light shows but for a one of a kind music experience.

During the summer, the skyspace will be closed on Tuesdays for private events but will be open to the public throughout the rest of the week. Two light shows are held daily, the morning light show begins 40 minutes before sunrise, and the evening light show begins at sunset. Want to know when Sunrise is??The calendar for Skyspace is here skyspace.rice.eduand shows the time of sunrise and sunset for each date and includes notices about when the skyspace will be closed to the public.

DISH Pink with the grey sky (which was actually a bright light blue!)The pyramid-like Turrell Skyspace towers above a 12-foot-high grass berm (What DISH lovingly refers to at the Milti-Million Dollar Hill with a Hole in it) sits just east of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. Visitors seated on the skyspace’s lower and upper viewing areas can gaze up at the 72-by-72-foot white roof, which offers a view of the sky through a 14-by-14-foot opening. Lights projected on the ceiling will change colors as the sun rises and sets, and these will impact the color of the sky as seen by visitors. Although the color changes on the ceiling can be viewed from outside the skyspace, the magical color changes of the sky through the opening in the ceiling can be experienced only from inside the structure.

Thomas Phifer and Partners served as the architect for the skyspace, and Linbeck was the contractor. The roof is a composition of several specifically engineered materials with a carbon-steel knife edge. The seating area on the lower level is made of pink and gray Texas granite from Marble Falls; on the upper level, poured-concrete benches provide seating. A sequence of LED lights installed in the upper level is programmed to create the light show on the ceiling in sync with sunset and sunrise. The show lasts about 40 minutes, and the light program can operate in a variety of weather conditions.

Rice has the first Turrell skyspace to be engineered for acoustics. As mentioned earlier, twelve state-of-the-art speakers are “hidden” in the special accoustic transferring plaster walls. Although music will not be played during the sunset and sunrise light shows, Turrell is creating additional light shows for use by the Shepherd School for live performances as well as for use by students who participate in the Rice Electroacoustic Music Labs. On Tuesdays the students from the Shepherd School will hold classes there. Can you imagine walking by on a cool, crisp fall afternoon to the gorgeous sounds emitting from the Skyspace? Sounds like a perfect dream!

Mustard Gold with the light blue sky! It's about to start!The Skyspace on the Rice Campus is not the first, over the past four decades, Turrell has created skyspaces in 25 countries. The skyspace at Rice is his 73rd and one of the largest.

“Each is unique,” he said. “I wanted this one to feel open because it’s a very public space and at the same time it’s an enclosure.”

Turrell said the relation of inside to outside is very important.

“This is one in which you will see the sky be almost any color you like, in fact, quite some surprising tones,” he said. “If you take a photo of the sky in this skyspace, the color you see in the opening is not actually going to show up in your camera because in fact it is not there.

“This is a gentle reminder that because we give the sky its color and can then change the color of the sky, we create the reality in which we live. The light that we make is something that changes the reality of how we perceive the sky. We do create the world in which we live to a much larger extent than we are willing to take responsibility for.”

For a little more information about the Turrell Skyspace, watch the video below!

See you at Twighlight Epiphany!

Summer is usually a time of being carefree, relaxed, taking vacations, not having a care in the world. That is not reality for a lot of people. Homelessness is still a very real problem in Summer, especially in Houston. There are news stories everywhere how Houston is booming with jobs so people will come down with their families to look for work and end up in the shelter because the jobs aren't the right ones or have been filled because there are hundreds applying for the same one job. The kids are out of school so they are eating more meals at the shelter daily than during the school year.

At the Star of Hope's Women and Family Center one evening this week there were 106 women and children sleeping on pallets on the floor because the 296 beds have been filled for 3 years. Yes, the homeless shelter has been over capacity for over 3 years.
When these folks wake up they don't have anything. That is where you come in.

Help make this a Summer of Hope for those who need just a little hope. Start them off right with a toothbrush, soap, a hair brush, toothpaste. All of these things we take for granted they don't have everyday.

You can help, and it doesn't take much. A small financial donation, a food donation or a goods donation goes a very long way in the world of someone who doesn't have anything. Can you imagine not even having a toothbrush?

Give Hope today...CLICK HERE to make a positive difference in someone's life.

Most of us know Richard Grieco as an actor who's big start was on 21 Jump Street with Johnny Depp. He's earned his chops as an actor and a musician but most people don't know he is an accomplished painter and has been for almost 20 years.

My Emptiness by Richard GriecoOver the weekend Grieco's passion hit a new height. One of his pieces landed the highest bid at ART PROJECT LA. Not only did his creation land the highest bid of the night, it beat out a Picasso and a Warhol.

Although his work is most often categorized as Abstract you will also see a bit of expressionism, surrealism and cubism to name a few. Combining the greatest qualities of many art styles has resulted in him pioneering a style of art in it's own right that he has coined
 "Abstract Emotionalism".

Grieco sums is up this way:

“My work is capturing lighting in a bottle. It’s a pure unbridled emotion. I am a painter who puts his emotions on canvas and honestly my work is as much part of my life as breathing.”

Celebrities and art lovers gathered this weekend for Art Project Los Angeles – the third annual red-carpet art auction and gala event benefiting AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA). The event raised over $180,000 for APLA, which provides direct care services and HIV prevention programs to more than 11,000 Angelenos. 

The evening began with a slew of celebrity guest arrivals on the “red” carpet, which was actually a grassy trail that served as the first introduction to the “California” theme of the evening. Celebrity guests included Richard Grieco (21 Jump Street / Booker), Kathy Griffin, Robert Herjavec (Shark Tank), Alex Lombard (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), Alfred Molina (Chocolat, Raiders of the Lost Ark), Mark Ordesky (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring), Judy Tenuta, and Marni Wing.

All proceeds benefit APLA, one of the nation’s largest AIDS service organizations, which relies heavily on private support to operate a range of HIV care, prevention, testing, and advocacy programs.

Since DISH only focusus on the local the question is begging to be asked, why would we write about this??

Because, Richard Grieco will be having a show here in Houston in September as a kick off to his very first Las Vegas November 9th solo art exhibition at Planet Hollywood. His friend and art advisor and DISH Lover Reyne Hirsch is putting together an invite only viewing of his art to launch the Vegas event. If you are lucky enough to attend the Houston event, which Grieco himself will be attending, you will automatically be invited to the Vegas red carpet event. One ticket in fact buys two! WOOHOO!

More details to come on the Houston event...it's being planned as we type!

For more information on Richard's art CLICK HERE