The album is a flex, a groove, a vibe and after a couple hard years here, it’s just what the doctor ordered. In another image, she adds a cowboy hat, some rhinestone fringe and feathers to the getup. Many saw Lady Godiva or Bianca Jagger’s brief ride at her Studio 54 birthday celebration in 1977. The images teasing the release gave a taste of the lush, bouncy world she had in store for us on “Renaissance.” The first portrait showed the nearly naked star in a metallic, sexy bit of jewelry-as-armor astride a luminous horse.
Thumbs Up: When Beyoncé says dance, we say ‘how groovy?’ The Houston-bred superstar released her first solo studio album in six years. The disgrace of a Texas institution is never easy to swallow but in today’s post-truth reality, there’s hope for Blue Bell’s savvy marketing team who need only argue that the national ice cream of Texas isn’t made with fake ingredients - merely alternative ingredients. Other readers were unfazed, noting they hadn’t touched the stuff since Blue Bell’s 2015 listeria outbreak, which was tied to three deaths, 10 hospitalizations and resulted in the company paying the largest-ever criminal penalty following a conviction in a food safety case: $17.25 million. The little creamery in Brenham is among nine ice cream brands that “use the lowest quality ingredients,” including thickening agents such as cellulose gum, food starch and artificial colors, according to food magazine “Eat This, Not That!” The magazine also dished on a Mashed survey showing a majority of people found Blue Bell to be “the worst store-bought ice cream,” leading writer Steven John to lament: “How about just regular milk, cream, and sugar?” While the gatekeepers of Texas pride dismissed the article as a New York City writer’s plot, others reveled in faux bewilderment: “I guess next you will tell me that the cows don’t think Brenham is heaven,” one Chronicle reader commented. Nostalgia was always Blue Bell’s choicest ingredient but these days it might be the only one we can still pronounce. Thumbs Down: “Blue Bell - the best ice cream in the country…” That’s the folksy, sweetly sung slogan that many Texans grew up on. Which is kind of an odd sort of morality, isn’t it? Standing up for equal opportunity promiscuity but shunning the scurrilousness of a loving, long-term, legal commitment. Lest anybody think arch-conservative, Trump-boosting, Elmo-bashing Ted Cruz is reinventing himself as a gay-rights crusader, the senator reminds us that he opposes the high court decision that legalized gay marriage. Of course, that decision and others based on the idea of privacy could be at risk now that another privacy-based decision, Roe v Wade, got the ax. He reportedly even supports repealing Texas’ now-dormant statute that once banned gay sex until the Supreme Court held the law unconstitutional. Ted Cruz - and actually, not even him but his spokesman - tells the Dallas Morning News that “consulting adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity.” Even gay people! What a guy, that Cruz. Shouldn’t that position be a given in a party that portrays government as “the problem” rather than the solution? Isn’t it just inferred in all those “don’t tread on me” T-shirts that personal liberty extends to the bed sheets? And yet, we must stop and take note when Republican U.S. A Texas Republican made news this week for saying that the government should stay out of our bedrooms. 'RENAISSANCE' by Beyonce? is out July 29. Elizabeth Conley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Show More Show Less 2 of2 Brown Convention Center on Thursday, June 16, 2022. Ted Cruz, addresses delegates during the Republican Party of Texas convention at George R.