Beyond the Pain
Of all the details the doctor remembers, he forgot that a lunch appointment typically includes lunch. “Just a minute,” said Alan Blum. “I want to show you something.” He led the way to his office, where on the floor were several large boxes of scraps and tatters. They were faces…
Punk Parents
Teach your children well, their parents’ hell did slowly go by … Crosby, Stills and Nash Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat … The Ramones True story: last summer, dozens of Houston’s punk rock and post-punk cognoscenti gathered in a…
President Who?
Darkness had already fallen two weeks back when 20 leading members of Houston’s Hispanic community gathered in an East End classroom. The chalkboards still bore the dusty tracks of lessons, and the adults had to wedge themselves into desks better suited for teenagers. To an outsider, the gathering might have…
The Insider
Up to His (Rear End) in (Excrement) If there’s one thing Houston Chronicle publisher Richard J.V. Johnson hates more than having one of his sacred cows butchered in the paper’s pages, it’s subjecting readers to scatological references and other profane turns of phrase. Johnson bitterly complained to editor Jack Loftis…
Lloyd Kelley’s Dream House
Dozens of times over the past few years, Wiley Smartt has been asked the same question. He might be taking out the trash or washing his car in front of his Woodland Heights home, when a passerby would stop, point at the old brick house next door and ask: “What’s…
Letters
Roost the Bird? I read Hobart Rowland’s piece on noise [News, “Down by Law,” November 30] and thought, “How apropos.” I am one more complaint away from filing with the district attorney’s office on the howling dog at my back fence. The offender Mr. Rowland forgot to mention is the…
Press Picks
thursday december 21 Not necessarily the “Night Before Christmas” Christmas lovers of all ages are invited out to hear readings, not of Clement Moore’s A Visit from Saint Nicholas, but of parodies, satires and imitations of the venerable tale. This is the second annual of these whimsical readings, and hearing…
Taking It to the Street
Every afternoon, as the sun begins to set and shadows start stretching out toward the east, the tin-roofed parking lot and patio of the Latino Tire Center on Fulton begins a transformation. Pickup trucks laden with Igloo coolers and stock pots pull onto the slab, and boxy iron grills welded…
Rotations
Various Artists Def Jam Music Group Inc. 10th Year Anniversary Def Jam In the middle of the ’80s, Def Jam records opened shop to mine the potential of a rap market that most industry giants lacked the foresight to see. Ten years on, Def Jam is a label with plenty…
Play till You Drop
Making a living off of other people’s music has a way of snuffing out ambition. After all, regardless of how flashy, funny and technically adept you are, you can only go so far aping other musicians’ work before your credibility levels off, motivation wanes and the once-sustaining party-band circuit shrinks…
Post-Cold War Crazies
From Russia — with love, and tongue firmly planted in cheek — Limpopo offers up a vodka-dazed zaniness that can only be described as, well, intoxicating. The four clownish comrades who make up this Soviet quartet have been kicking around the States for about two years now, and they’ve managed…
Season’s Greetings
“Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!” If you have 45 minutes to spare before Christmas, you absolutely must meet (or reacquaint yourself with) who says this, and to whom, and why. The singular pronouncement is from Truman Capote’s charming semi-autobiographical short story A Christmas Memory, adapted by Beth Sanford in 1982…
Sad Country
Some films are perfect products of their time; other films are such that they transcend their time; and then others are simply lost in time, flailing about in search of a focus and desperately needing something, anything, to root them in a particular place. Unfortunately, Cry, the Beloved Country, the…
Power Trip
Near the very end of Nixon, Oliver Stone’s surprisingly evenhanded examination of this century’s most notorious U.S. president, there is a scene that has Richard M. Nixon (Anthony Hopkins), drunk on Scotch and self-pity, on a final stroll through the White House just a few hours before he departs in…