Press Picks
thursday August 21 Major Thoroughfare Proposal How often do the city and all its bigwig decision-makers invite us lowly citizens to participate in that high-in-the-sky decision-making process? Okay, so if you were obsessed with city government, you could go as often as you wanted to City Council meetings. But many…
The Art of Cooking?
Okay, so I was wrong. So sue me. A couple of weeks back, after a deliciously delightful experience at the University of Houston’s Barron’s Restaurant, I delivered myself of the opinion that student-run cafes were treasures to be sought out, unknown gems unfairly passed by because of a bias toward…
Colonel Tom’s Folly
To commemorate last week’s 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, MGM Home Entertainment has released a video gift set containing all 31 of Elvis’s movies in a guitar case. Maybe it should have packaged them in a coffin, instead, since the balance of the King’s film output has more in…
Rotation
Brian Eno The Drop Thirsty Ear Colin Newman Bastard Swim By no means technically accomplished or perfect in the classical sense, Brian Eno and Colin Newman’s singing have some things that are much more important when it comes to rock and roll: character and an endearing uniqueness. But you won’t…
Static
The real Skinny… The late Dwayne Goettel wasn’t a founding member of Skinny Puppy, but he might as well have been. When Goettel joined the Vancouver band in 1986, his synth flourishes and inventive sampling broadened the band’s dense creative canvas as much as lead singer Nivek Ogre’s ludicrous vocals…
Plugged In
Prodigy’s number one debut notwithstanding, music industry watchers remain leery of electronica’s potential for success — as they should. So far, the craze is hardly shaping up as a commercial windfall to rival that of the early-’90s grunge explosion. When you get right down to it, electronic music — with…
Here Comes the Sun
As countries go, Suriname is tiny. Its smallness is particularly apparent when measured against the enormous size of Brazil to its south and the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to its north. In this former Dutch colony, dense jungle drapes most of the landscape, rugged banks of sand and…
Butch-ered
In G.I. Jane, Demi Moore’s Naval Intelligence officer, Lieutenant Jordan O’Neil, is recruited as a test case to be the first female Navy SEAL. She gets a buzzcut and loses her period. She endures the indignities of the male volunteers snickering at her in the food line. She rolls huge…
Slaying Mantis
When the beautiful entomologist rips open the chest cavity of a huge bloodthirsty insect in the sci-fi nightmare Mimic, it turns into Thoracic Park. This movie, like Spielberg’s, features evolution gone haywire and dramaturgy gone to hell. In the prologue, the heroine — the reckless and courageous (or foolhardy and…
Peace and Lite
When Time magazine columnist Walter Shapiro recently referred to himself as part of a generation that still believes “A Thousand Clowns holds all the secrets to human existence,” I thought he must be daft. Yes, high school students took Herb Gardner’s hit comedy about an urban dropout (played by Jason…
What Went Wrong at the Rice School?
Marvin Hoffman recalls giving David Cohen a ride to the airport in the fall of 1993 after a presentation to a committee planning what would become the Rice School. Cohen, an expert on experimental schools from the University of Michigan, was the latest in a string of high-powered specialists brought…
Skin Deep
The miles passed and a world slipped away, and it was late afternoon when we entered the land of livestock. Somewhere between Brenham and Navasota, as we turned off the dirt road into Live Oak Resort, I expected to see the naked people in the distance, like a herd of…
The Insider
Dog’s Days of Summer It’s been a long, hot summer for City Controller Lloyd Kelley, whose missteps have been so many and so flagrant you’d think he was deliberately trying to get attention in all the wrong places. First it was in the pages of the Chronicle, where it was…
Letters
From McVicker, That Was a Compliment Steve McVicker’s report [“Death of an Informant,” July 24] was okay, but it was too long. His referring to a certain bar as a “dimly lit dive” is a sorry bit. I am a customer of that bar and that was an insult to…