Press Picks
thursday may 23 Mixed repertory program The Houston Ballet is billing this as a celebration of 20 years under the artistic guidance of choreographer Ben Stevenson, and is merely mentioning that this production will be one of prima ballerina Janie Parker’s final performances. Maybe they’re hoping she won’t really go…
Hot Stuff
Houston’s Indian restaurants may not be as numerous as, say, our corner taquerias or our upscale Italian cafes, but there are plenty of them, and they’re generally of high quality. So I wasn’t particularly surprised recently when I found that Haveli, which has been in business across the street from…
Saxy Stuff
Over the last few months, musicians’ “summits” — mini package tours of virtuoso musicians — have been popping up on the Rockefeller’s schedule with increasing regularity. From that, one can only assume there are actually people in Houston willing to shell out significant amounts of cash (upward of $50, in…
Weird Without Choice
Before each tour, the five bandmates in the Iowa-born, San Francisco-bred Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 gather together and choose the songs they’d like to cover in concert. Each member is allotted one pick, and the song list they assemble tells a lot about the band’s collective musical mindset. For…
Rotation
Soundgarden Down on the Upside A&M Why is it that while many of Seattle’s sons of grunge have dropped down a gear (Pearl Jam), dropped out (Mudhoney) or simply dropped dead (Nirvana), Soundgarden has been able to push forward on all fronts, evolving and, most important, improving? Maybe it has…
Gunning for Laughs
What would you get if you mixed the sibling rivalry and bad food of white trash culture with physical comedy and a little Harold Pinter? Probably something like Media Darlings, local playwright Joey Berner’s new production at the Zocalo Theater. Playing fast and loose with black comedy — the black…
Static
Uncle Walt remembered… Houston’s extended singer/songwriter family was devastated Mother’s Day weekend by the news that much-loved Walter “Uncle Walt” Hyatt was a passenger on ValuJet Flight 592, the 29-year-old DC-9 that crashed into the Everglades May 11. Hyatt, 46, was traveling to his daughter’s college graduation after a series…
Slow Death
Every great filmmaker is allowed at least one grand folly. Jim Jarmusch, the poet laureate of sub-zero cool and laid-back absurdism, has channeled his distinctly late 20th-century sensibility into a wide-screen, black-and-white Western titled Dead Man. Why? Because he wanted to. Why should we care? Because even when an artist…
Muy Mexican
A relative who used to work on the east side of town has long encouraged me to visit Merida, an establishment I’ve driven past many a Friday night while on my way to Ninfa’s, its neighbor on Navigation. The fact that Merida’s parking lot was usually full boded well, I…
Mission: Irrelevant
Get a load of this: Tom Cruise thinks fast, and acts faster, to get out of harm’s way in a Prague restaurant. With the aid of some explosive chewing gum, he blows the bejeepers out of a huge lobster tank — and the three big fish tanks overhead — to…
Down the Drain
If not for the low thrum of industrial traffic from Highway 90 on the south, Sheldon Reservoir might seem to be 1,000 miles from civilization. Flocks of ducks, egrets and herons scour the 1,503 acres of pond and marshland from above while alligators and beavers forage below. Along the shoreline,…
Sputnik at Colonus
He’s still a warship of a man, his armor-plating dented and battle-scarred, his voice booming like a 16-inch broadside. As he passes, heads swivel and mouths drop in his wake, and the question always arises: “Who was that?” That, my friend, was none other than Sputnik Monroe — 235 pounds…
Roots Rasslin’
There are many things a professional wrestler can’t afford to forget. One of them is: if you don’t chew gum, someone’s gonna get hurt — and it might be you.mmmm Get a cottonmouth, lose communication with your opponent, get hurt. Got it? And when the ropes are coming at you…
Roots of the Sting
Harry Terry was in Dallas one morning in May 1993 when Larry Miller, the chief clerk of Houston’s Municipal Courts Department, caught up with him by phone. Terry, a Houston businessman, was acting as the local agent for West Capital Financial Services, a California-based company awaiting City Council approval of…
The Insider
The Eternal Freshman Anyone looking for more evidence of the alienation of mainstream Republicans from Newt Gingrich and 9th District Congressman Steve Stockman would have found it in abundance during the House speaker’s appearance at a May 18 rally and fundraiser for Stockman at the Galleria-area Marriott. The affair had…
The Boy Scouts
On January 18, 1990, Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry was enjoying a pipe of crack cocaine in a room at the Vista International Hotel when FBI agent Ron Stern burst through the door. Barry, who had been lured to the hotel room by an ex-girlfriend working undercover with the FBI,…
Letters
All Is Forgiven, Ken Thanks to Mitchell J. Shields for the entertaining exposure of DIFFA’s “little problem” [“Oh, Ken! Oh, Aladdin!” May 2]. I was fortunate enough to have seen Jeff Owen’s Foam Party before it was taken into custody at DIFFA. The piece is creative, unique and, yes, naughty…
Beat the Heat!
Summer isn’t just a word or a season. It’s a state of mind. Think about it: when you describe someone as “summery,” what do you mean? You mean they’re bright-eyed, effervescent, happy. They’ve thrown aside the cares of winter, taken advantage of the rebirth of spring and opened their doors…