Cajunese Cuisine?
The surprise about Super Steak & More is exactly how much “more” there is. This small charmer of a cafe, nestled next to Becks Prime and across from an increasingly comatose Hard Rock Cafe on Kirby Drive, does indeed favor steaks and burgers, but the rest of its menu is…
The Sweet Hereafter
Jonathan Harvey’s beautifully titled Hushabye Mountain, currently running at Theater LaB Houston, embraces a strange and lovely hodgepodge of subject matters. On the surface the play would seem just another addition to the chin-high stack of plays about AIDS, but once inside that familiar framework Harvey examines a quirky and…
Hot Plate
Sweet Surprise: The “Authentic Buddha’s Bananas Foster Bread Pudding,” $4.35 at Café Aviño [2404 Montrose, (713)459-1355], is more than a mouthful to request, it’s a mountain of sticky rich bliss to consume. Towering layers of bread alternate with slices of ripe bananas flambéed with brown sugar and rum, sweetly topped…
Souvenir Hunting
Art collecting as a social habit has been around since ancient Greece but truly became a spectator sport in the 20th century. The rise of art super-prices — $53.9 million for Van Gogh’s Irises in 1987 and $82.5 million for the Dutch painter’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet in 1990 –…
Prodigal Son
When Cory Morrow’s emotions overcome him, he takes off in his red ’94 Suburban. “When I’m pissed off or even happy,” he says, “I just get in the car and drive.” It’s a Texas thing. Well, where else but in the country’s second-largest state can you just burn rubber and…
Building on Perfection
How do you make a sequel to a nearly perfect film? Toy Story, the 1995 hit from Disney and Pixar, was not only the first fully computer-animated feature, it was also as brilliantly written and directed a film as any of the classic Disney releases. Pixar did nearly everything right,…
Swamp Ghosts
Although New Orleans is the main attraction in Louisiana for music fans, as too many House of Blues T-shirts attest, the state’s real musical magic, and maybe the best food too, is actually found in the heart of Cajun country to the west of the Crescent City. In fact, the…
Terminate This
The last time Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in an apocalypse-themed action movie with a Guns N’ Roses theme song, it was Terminator 2, the biggest and loudest action movie that had thus far ever been seen. Since that time, he has produced one bona fide balls-to-the-wall action flick (True Lies), one…
High Art
It is well into the night, and the only discernible noise on the southwest corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy is the boom-chick-boom-chick-boom seeping through the walls of a cafe that looks like a grounded tree house. It doesn’t sound this way round here often, mainly because Lowbrow, the six-member multipiece…
Swede On Her
They’re calling it Show Me Love outside of Sweden, where writer-director Lukas Moodysson’s seriocomic account of discontent teenagers sold almost as many tickets as Titanic. Back home, however, this deliberately rough-edged but warmhearted movie was known as Fucking Amal. Don’t laugh: Amal is a place, not a person. And judging…
Crimson Tide
With its politically incorrect bitch-slap of a name, lots of bourbon-induced musicianship, skulls and Confederate imagery and a female roadie named Opie Taylor, Alabama Thunder Pussy is at the forefront of the proudest tradition of society-shocking, sin-loving, do-it-for-its-own-sake rock and roll. Being based in Richmond, Virginia, has allowed ATP to…
Bungle in the Jungle
The daily report for the Houston Zoological Gardens’ small-mammal building, dated Friday, November 6, 1998, notes “gas smell in north section” and indicates that a maintenance worker arrived with a detector, which read negative for natural gas. Again the next day, the daily report notes a gas smell in the…
Rotation
Beck Midnite Vultures Geffen Nerdboy is feeling frisky. Beck’s “official” follow-up to the Grammy-winning, critic-pleasing Odelay sounds like what happens when the boy/man spends some time ruffling the sheets, playing Atari and watching Shaft. All at the same time. This futuristic horniness is manifest in Beck’s acoustic-blues-hip-hop, which this time…
No Secrets
John Griffith has been a psychiatrist for 40 years, during which time, like all physicians, he has had to stay abreast of the latest treatments and medications available to his patients. He has also had to put up with the changing business of health care, which, in Griffith’s view, is…
Local Rotation
Chadd Thomas and the Crazy Kings Shake Alive! Hi-Fi Rhythm Records Recorded music can take us different places, different eras, and that’s cool. Contemporary musicians who can build on — not merely imitate — the people who inspire them are creative. Others, imitative. That distinction forms the background against which…
Vegas Dreams
In her dream, Mary Iacono stands in front of a slot machine. She drops a silver dollar in, pulls the lever and the machine flashes WINNER. She doesn’t know how much money she wins — but she knows it is a lot. Mary believes in dreams. Most things she sees…
No Mo’ Moshin’
Fitzgerald’s is trying to lose its reputation as a punk rock joint. No big deal, right? Well, from a Houston music lover’s point of view, this change of heart should stop you in your army-boot-wearin’ tracks; because not only will Houston one day lose its best, biggest place for rowdy…
Captive Market
Time and time again, when the call from the jail came, she hopped in the family station wagon and bailed her daughter out of jail. But Maria (she asked that her last name not be used) tired of her child’s misdemeanor frays — truancy, shoplifting, public intoxication and other minor…
Jazz Couplet
The duo of vibraphonist Harry Sheppard and bassist Erin Wright crosses musical boundaries and generations. The seventysomething Sheppard, who moved to Houston in the mid-’80s, is deservedly a legend around town. Back in the ’50s, Sheppard was playing in New York City with the likes of Billie Holiday and Benny…
Downing
On November 19, 1998, Robert Arthur Pearson interrupted a substance abuse users meeting at a building on Harwin Drive. Police report those in attendance said Pearson acted in a bizarre manner and said he wanted to commit suicide. Police were called, and officers took him to the Ben Taub NeuroPsychiatric…
Rock Slide
Somebody snitched. A reliable somebody. So an undercover officer of the Harris County Organized Crime Narcotics Task Force waited outside as the person went into the one-story brown brick house and emerged with a beige rock of crack cocaine. The informant said he bought the crack, with task force front…
Brave Talk, Bleak Prospects
It was obvious that super political consultant and flamboyant self-caricature James Carville hadn’t spent much time on the ground in Texas lately. Windmilling his arms and raising his voice to a preacherly shout, the bald-headed keynote speaker at the annual Democratic Johnson-Rayburn Dinner in Houston last week exhorted his pre-Thanksgiving…
Fondle with Care
Channel 2’s Ed Laskos, the most melodramatic reporter in town, did himself proud with a piece November 15. With a theatrically furrowed brow, he intoned in his patented Dragnet style that a play was about to go on at Jersey Village High School, but without the drama teacher. The drama…
Crash Course
I’m a nervous driver. I always wear my seat belt. I bought my Saturn for its safety rating. I avoid left turns without a light. And for the first two years that I lived in Houston, nightmares about speeding 18-wheelers and crazed commuters kept me off its freeways. Ironically, I’m…
News of the Weird
Lead StoriesPolice in North Platte, Nebraska, have been looking for a man who has appeared several times in public since early July wearing baby clothes and have taken to naming him (after his most prominent article of clothing) “The Big Bonnet.” He was last spotted on October 29, bending over…
Weird TV
“Some people might fall asleep in front of the television watching something like Masterpiece Theatre and wake up to a provocative image on The Territory,” says Museum of Fine Arts film curator Marian Luntz, “and they’re not always happy.” It’s only natural that some tender viewers might think The Territory,…
Sidebar
CLIP ‘N SAVE! From the Houston Chronicle: Green Beans Oregano 6 cups green beans (frozen are fine) 6 to 8 slices crisply cooked low-sodium bacon 2 (10 3/4-ounce) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup 2 (3-ounce) cans sliced mushrooms, drained 1/2 envelope onion soup mix 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed…
A Suburban Gem
Finding the tiny Thai Emerald restaurant in the fast-food flatlands off Fuqua requires more than a street address and a map. Your best bet is to navigate by franchise signs. “Turn off the freeway feeder when you see the Black-eyed Pea,” the waitress patiently explained over the phone, talking me…
All You Can Eat — Neatly?
Imagine Benjamin La Count’s surprise to find himself suddenly persona non grata at the Fu Kim restaurant in Webster [1333 West Bay Area Boulevard, (281)332-4336]. La Count describes himself as one of Fu Kim’s most faithful customers since it opened seven months ago, dropping by at least once a week…
Thanks for Nothing
Every year, on a Monday in late November, the Houston Chronicle publishes its annual pre-Thanksgiving Food section and in doing so, unleashes some of the year’s worst recipes on unsuspecting, holiday-addled readers. Last year the atrocities included a microwaved whole turkey; two different green-bean casseroles made with cans of cream…