Free-for-All
The opening seconds of Free Radicals’ debut CD, The Rising Tide Sinks All, are ungodly cacophony. So many instruments — horns, flute, drums, saxophone, guitar, you name it — sound off toward different ends that it’s hard to know whether to laugh or to cringe. But, before you know it,…
The Day the Music Hall Died
This week, Theatre Under the Stars bids farewell to the Music Hall, its longtime home, and settles in to wait for the construction of its new quarters, the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts; the latter’s scheduled to open in 2001 on the sites now occupied by the Music Hall…
Static
Priscilla’s pull… The wrath of Elvis has no expiration date. Just ask Barry Capece, who’d have sworn he was in the clear after a seemingly decisive court ruling more than a year ago that allowed his local bar, the Velvet Elvis, to keep the reference to the King in its…
Irony Deficient
Only a week after lizards came crawling across the nation’s screens in both Godzilla and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hope Floats comes lumbering along, scourging all in its path with saccharine sentimentality and bogus emotions. Let’s start with the title: two words whose juxtaposition is neither evocative nor…
Clubland
A deserted, sand-blown shell for two years, the weathered structure on Galveston’s Poretta Beach that used to be Blisters nightclub is back in business under the rather longwinded moniker VooDoo Daddy’s Beach Grill and Swamp Bar. Houston-based Triangle Entertainment — owners of Groove and Roxy, among other local venues –…
Monster Mash
The “Size Matters” marketing campaign for Godzilla is far more ingenious than the movie. It’s also highly annoying — and somewhat misleading. After all, as the ads for a new film called Plump Fiction remind us, “Width matters, too.” Perhaps the best thing about this week’s ballyhooed arrival of Godzilla…
Rotation
George Jones It Don’t Get Any Better Than This MCA Don Walser Down at the Sky-Vue Drive-In Watermelon/Sire Music critics love to play the “greatest whatever” game. But the problem with that is, music isn’t quantitative, it’s qualitative. Sure, any dedicated listener has his or her idea of what is…
Tracking “Eric the Red”
A lot of people have wanted to end the controversial medical career of Eric Scheffey — from the dozens of patients who’ve filed malpractice suits against him to the frustrated members of the state medical board who wanted to take away his license — but Noe Santana is the only…
Sardines and Skivvies
As I squeezed through the opening-night crowd of the Alley Theatre’s Noises Off, I heard a man ask his companion, “This is British, right?” When his friend said yes, the man exclaimed, “Good!” and all but clapped his hands in approval. Why, I wondered, was he so happy? To figure…
Pushing a Project
Jerry King doesn’t like to talk about the past. The new director of the city’s Public Works Department prefers to focus on how his agency will function properly in the coming months rather than its massive failings under former director Jimmie Schindewolf. Still, King must shake his head every time…
Bliss at Bayou City
Dishes have been named for sopranos (peach Melba), actresses (crepes suzettes), ballerinas (Pavlova), novelists (Chateaubriand), entrepreneurs (bananas Foster), chefs (fettuccine Alfredo), diplomats (beef stroganoff), battles (chicken Marengo) and even states (baked Alaska). But until Chris Mannery came along, no one, to the best of my knowledge, ever thought of naming…
Summer Reruns at Hotel Six
So near and yet so far. Before Judge David Hittner declared a mistrial last Thursday, the hung jury in the Hotel Six trial had come within one vote during its deliberations of agreeing that former Houston city councilman Ben Reyes was guilty of bribery. In the end, the panel was…
Hot Plate
I don’t understand the antipathy with which some people regard lamb. Lamb is a gift from a beneficent God. And if you doubt that, you owe it to yourself to visit Khyber North Indian (2510 Richmond, 942-9424). Khyber serves some of the best lamb dishes around. That’s no accident. At…
The Insider
Bagging the First Boyfriend’s Mom Woodlands area school teacher Helen Pierce had an alarming interruption to her morning class at Sally Ride Elementary earlier this month. The principal summoned her to the office to take an urgent call from the U.S. Secret Service. Pierce’s 20-year-old son, Matt, had acquired instant…
Letters
Reyes War “Record?” I want to congratulate the Houston Press on the recent update [by Tim Fleck, May 14] on the City Hall bribery scandal: specifically, for reporting the admission by former councilmember Ben Reyes that he was not wounded in Vietnam, as he has for years indicated. As the…
Passing the Bucks
In newspaper terminology, there’s what’s called a “Hey, Martha” story. That’s when a guy glances over a page of the paper and sees something so incredible that he has to share it with his wife/girlfriend and yells out, “Hey, Martha!” Well, a story on the Houston Chronicle’s front page last…
‘Round Yonder Virgin
BLANCO — Jesus in a tortilla. The Virgin Mary’s shadow in a tree. Elvis at the Rothko Chapel. We Texans are used to seeing holy apparitions in unexpected places. Yet I was unprepared for what I saw, just this month, at a Russian Orthodox monastery/ersatz trailer park deep in the…
Aria Speedwagon
Ornate edifices filled with the besuited and begowned, hefty divas clad in period finery, the inescapable air of formality, ticket prices that might make even Les Alexander squeamish — opera’s stereotypical image has helped keep the masses at arm’s length for the better part of the century. But there’s nothing…
Night & Day
Thursday May 28 It’s curtains for the venerable warhorse called the Music Hall following Theatre Under the Stars’ production of Victor/Victoria; the building’s scheduled to be razed in early June, following the last performance of this Blake Edwards/Henry Mancini collaboration (for info about Sunday’s related “Wrecking Ball,” see page 42)…
Dish
Chain Reactions The Orlando, Florida-based Darden Restaurants is sniffing around Houston to find a likely spot for a restaurant concept called Bahama Breeze. Darden is the company that brought you Red Lobsters and Olive Gardens by the hundreds, as well as a few (read: failed) China Coasts. Bahama Breeze has…
Under(ground) Achievers
For most anyone with a taste for real country music, “Nashville sucks” is a convenient rallying cry, and a contention easily borne out by the suburban pop pabulum that litters today’s commercial country-radio play lists. A large part of the pseudo-movement known as alternative country takes the anti-Nashville ethos to…
Hail Caesar
Years later, the lines still resonate. As a little boy, most nights I’d sit down with my family to enjoy a night of programming on Black Entertainment Television. The inevitable commercial break would arrive, and I’d be riveted by the image of a child about my age handing his mother…