Real Life
After POLO Magazine lost its court battle with Polo Ralph Lauren last month, it seemed the rich would have to struggle on once more without instruction on jewel mining, truffle farming, the manufacture of single-malt scotch or how to hire a good private chef. What ever would they do? To…
Culture Shock
Sam Smith has had a tough time with women. At the age of 17 he married his high school sweetheart because she got pregnant and he was a churchgoing man. They were together for ten miserable years before she started seeing a psychologist — you know, “where they teach you…
The Write Stuff
“Writing is easy,” the late journalist and biographer Gene Fowler once said. “All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.” Or you sign up for an Inprint Writers Workshop. “Some writing workshops are like boot camp,” says…
Wunderkind
Christina Jennings performs Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra with the Houston Symphony at 7:35 p.m. on Thursday, September 9, at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana Street. Call (713)224-7575.
White Boy Blues
All it took was a smile to let Vince Converse know he could really play the blues. It happened one night about eight years ago when Converse was 17 and was playing the Matinee Ballroom in downtown Houston with his band Sunset Heights. The group was opening for a couple…
Roundabout Way
The Cornell Hurd band performs Friday, September 10, at 9 p.m. at Blanco’s Bar & Grill, 3406 West Alabama. Call (713)439-0072.
Local Rotation
Vince Converse One Step Ahead Mystic It’s hard to tell whether Vince Converse is coming from or going toward true blues. But this is mostly a good thing. On this local boy’s first international debut there are songs to indicate Converse has already honed his chops on backwater ballads and…
Playbill
It’s a choice bands in America are forced to make in the quest for stardom: get on the radio or take it on the road. For groups such as Los Angeles-based Static X, radio isn’t really an option. Even though commercial radio’s “heavy band” quota has been filled by Korn…
News Hostage
Of course, it was borderline mawkish — it was local TV, after all. Matters of taste aside, there was something striking about the August 27 edition of Channel 13’s The Debra Duncan Show, which consisted of a tribute to longtime Channel 11 anchor Sylvan Rodriguez, who’s now battling cancer. At…
A Stir of Bacon
Whether it’s bad or good commercial luck that the thriller Stir of Echoes follows so closely on the heels of The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan’s wildly successful ghost-story sleeper, it’s bad critical luck. The film has some startling parallels with The Sixth Sense: Both concern psychic communication with the…
News of the Weird
Under a bill expected to become law next year, the government of the Netherlands recently proposed to loosen restrictions on euthanasia for pain-wracked, incurably ill people, even extending the right to children as young as 12. In principle, those age 12 to 15 would also need parental permission to choose…
Danish Dealers
Danish film has been claiming a place for itself the past few years, starting with Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves and Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, and venturing onward with the semi-celebrated status of the so-called Dogma Manifesto, which limits filmmakers to working with handheld cameras, available light and hard-to-like…
View From the Kitchen
Hospitality should have nothing to do with the hospital; accidents shouldn’t happen. But sometimes, even at the best of restaurants, bad things happen to good customers. And like an I Love Lucy episode, bad just gets worse. Below are a few of the funnier mistakes we’ve made at my restaurants…
FAT! SO?
Bikinis are what Cathy Woods and her mom argue over. Cathy, 35, likes wearing bikinis. Her mother, Ruby Lee Woods, would rather see her in a one-piece, maybe something with a skirt. Cathy doesn’t think she has anything to hide: She’s 500 pounds and proud of it. She sews her…
Working Every Angle
In the spring of 1996, city planning director Bob Litke had a problem: Under what circumstances should the city give public money to private developers? The problem arose after homebuilder Steve Peacock asked for $2 million to build the streets, water and sewer lines, and storm-water drainage to support a…
Amplified
E-mail Anthony Mariani at anthony_mariani@ houstonpress.com.
The Insider
If urban sports facilities are the modern equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids, an early taxpayer-supported construction extravaganza, then Houston will soon be on an even playing field with Giza. In short order we’ll have a baseball stadium, a basketball arena and a football stadium, all built with a massive outlay…
Breeze from the Northwest
For months Houston foodies have been buzzing about McCormick & Schmick’s. Word on the street held that it was not just a good seafood restaurant but a great one, ready to present Houston with delights rarely if ever offered here before. The chain, which began in Portland, Oregon, emphasizes the…
Cash Box
The Port of Houston Authority wants to end the confusion about the contents of those thousands of cargo containers that come to town via ship and then leave on the backs of trucks and trains. Local television viewers have been saturated of late with the image of cranes lowering containers…
Hot Plate
Messing with Texas: I rely on the menu at Goode Company Seafood. It’s a buffer in a chaotic world, an almost unchanging lineup of fried and mesquite-grilled fish, shrimp, oysters and crawfish, varying only with the seasons and the catch of the day. It’s Texas stuff, with only a few…
Real Life
On stage, the skinny guy with the thin blond hair appears almost too brittle for show business. There are no big hand gestures; his motions are few. But he doesn’t stumble over his words, and he doesn’t forget his lines, and he is able to make 200 people laugh. “I’m…