Static
A new era at HMC?… For the last few months, local producer/indie label entrepreneur Darrell Clingman has been going on about what he’d do to improve the Houston Music Council if he were in charge. Now, he says, it’s time for him to back up his rhetoric. So next Monday,…
Sound Check
What is it about summer that makes people go out and have, as one person once put it, “hot, lovely relations?” Is it the skimpy clothing? The heat? The extra daylight? The humidity? Whatever, summer has always been a time for music to park to. Sure, you could pop in…
All-Terrain Vehicle
Not long ago, a certain Houston club manager came to the following conclusion about one of his favorite Texas acts: “The best thing about Old 97’s is that people think they’re a country band. But they’re not; they’re a pop band.” And therein lies the magic of the puckish Dallas…
Lilith Fair-ness
Sarah McLachlan has only herself to blame. After all, in a country where Baywatch can pass as high drama, her idea to put together Lilith Fair, a pop music road extravaganza spotlighting women artists, was bound to score inordinate media attention on such pertinent issues as goddess worship, sex, lesbianism,…
Computer Terror
Most of us already fear our computers. Bad things happen to good data all the time: Disk errors! Unreadable files! Crashed servers! You may question God’s existence, but you feel sure that Satan whirs, inscrutable, right there on your desktop. Duane Franklet approaches such evils more rationally. The president and…
Perfect Mess
In Picture Perfect, Jennifer Aniston tells a whopper of a lie partially to win the attentions of a guy who has heretofore ignored her, interrupts a wedding and humiliates a guy at his workplace. This follows on the heels of My Best Friend’s Wedding, which found Julia Roberts trying to…
Superzero
John Leguizamo is lithe and full of juice — he’s like the shy boy who suddenly discovers he can dance and can’t keep still. Given his need to express himself physically — in his first one-man stage show, Spic-O-Rama, I don’t think his feet ever hit the ground — it’s…
Flunking Out
187, a number favored by adolescent thugs, is the California state penal code number for homicide — and a harsh sentence for all involved in this hopeless, hapless movie. The gifted Samuel L. Jackson stars as a high school teacher who cracks under the constant threat of rabid teen machismo…
Helter Shelter
When Jennifer Franklin’s boyfriend found out that she and her four children were staying at a battered women’s shelter in Pasadena, she decided it was time to leave. After all, he’d threatened Franklin with a gun, gotten her four-year-old drunk, thrown a TV through the wall and driven her to…
Fourth Ward or Bust
Jacqueline Beckham didn’t know whether to laugh or start packing. It was almost noon in the chapel of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church on Clay Street downtown, where Beckham and about 80 other people gathered two Saturdays ago to listen as an authoritative black man with a salt-and-pepper beard outlined the…
The Insider
Woodman, Whack That Tree! Parker Estates was once one of the most intriguing green spaces near downtown and had been considered as the locale for a city park. The site of the family mansions of Colonel James Baker and other old-line Houston movers and shakers at the turn of the…
Letters
Haute Bourgeois Whiner So ex-assistant district attorney and former cokehead Kristen Pain believes she was treated “unfairly,” singled out, as it were, by a vengeful prosecutor [“Pain for the Prosecution,” by Steve McVicker, June 25]. “Most people” who are convicted in similar cases don’t draw jail time, she whines. Let’s…
Press Picks
thursday july 31 Live Downtown Contest You’ve been hearing about all that downtown warehouse space being converted to “lofts,” living spaces too hip for the homely appellation “apartments.” The Annual Downtown Home Tour invites you to peek at these spaces and even sign up for a chance to reside in…
Just Desserts
A few years back, Tennessee novelist Jesse Hill Ford wrote a magazine article about an old family friend who always began his meals by eating dessert. After watching him do this day in and day out, Ford finally mustered the courage to ask him why. Well, the friend replied, given…
Funk Flashback
Getting to the heart of that dirty and devilish genre known as funk can be somewhat akin to searching out nude pictures of Martha Stewart on the Internet: The real deal is often more accessible to some than to others (and you can trust that, in either case, it is…