The Dream Home: A Cautionary Tale
You may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful house. And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? — Talking Heads The date stamp says January 26, 1999, 10:21 a.m. Lucy Young is holding the camcorder, purchased the night before for this very purpose, sitting in…
Starting from Scratch
It’s been a long time since anyone in Houston has tried to do what Joe Nolan is doing right now: start a news operation from scratch at a TV station that actually has a ratings pulse. Nolan is the news director at KHWB, Channel 39, and he says that by…
All’s Dell
Purple Plymouth Prowler purring. Purple hair riffling in the breeze. Nate Hess motors away on his lunch break from the hottest company in the hottest industry in one of the hottest economies in America. Pedestrians’ heads snap as Hess wheels his vivid retro roadster to a parking place near Manuel’s,…
Letters to the Editor
Right on TrackYour feature article on track is great [“A Dying Race,” by Jesse Washington, May 11]. Our daughter, Kelley Wright, lives to run. You built in so much good advice from real athletes that have made it — not just to a big contract but to winning in a…
The Pershing Eight
A game resembling hot potato broke out last week at a gym class at Pershing Middle School. But the object being passed around was a white-and-chrome lighter shaped like a handgun. According to student accounts, it changed hands numerous times, with some kids waving it like a gun. One girl…
Pie in the Sky?
Maybe success in politics and the restaurant business share similar requirements. Mickey Kapoor was asked last week about the reasons for the failure of his second attempt in three months to run a successful eatery at 2207 Richmond, where a number of previous tenants have gone the way of the…
Added Costs
At City Hall, some call it spin, and some call it fact. The spin is that Houston homeowners are about to get a substantial decrease in rates on their flood insurance premiums. The fact is that Houstonians could have been banking on that savings for up to nine years, if…
Brother from Another Planet
Leave it to some white guy from Houston to adopt the moniker Harlem Slim — and title his first CD Delta Blues and Piedmont Ragtime — and make it kinda work. By choosing to represent the Mississippi Delta and southern Atlantic coastal Piedmont regions, not to mention New York City’s…
Back to the Future
It was hard to believe, when the Houston Press first raised the question in February 1999, that Houston Independent School District teachers and principals might be cheating on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test for students. Amid ample praise for pumping up TAAS results, Kashmere Gardens Elementary principal Margaret…
Moving Up the Food Chain
I never visited the original Ostioneria Puerto Vallarta on Lawndale, so I never mourned its passing the way some of my friends do. Apparently the original cafe was small and crowded and funky, steamy with good food smells, and made everyone’s list of Top 10 “dive” spots in Houston. I…
Fatal Femmes
The following is a list of women who have been raped, mutilated, tortured, enslaved, crippled or murdered — and often, all of the above. In some cases these women have also suffered miscarriages, been rendered infertile, contracted horrific diseases and gone insane. Some of them have even been killed twice,…
Symphony for Orchestra and Bullhorn
If someone asked you to write a piece of music that exemplified Houston, how exactly would you go about doing that? With a sampling of car horns? A cymbal roll signifying the hazy air quality, or a smeary-toned trombone perhaps to represent our sinuous spaghetti bowls of overpasses? It would…
Serial Muralist
Ask any of the Chase Bank PR guys why they commissioned Suzanne Sellers to do the 41-foot by 94-foot mural on the side of the Houston Club Building, and you’ll get the standard answer: “Because of the Houston Press building,” they say in absolute earnestness, as if referring to its…
Name Above the Title
To: Zumm Escudier, executive chef, Angelika Cafe and Bar From: Dennis Abrams, Houston Press Subject: Groveling Mr. Escudier, I may owe you an apology. As I’m sure you remember, I wrote a rather scathing review of the former New Renata’s (see “Out with the New,” December 30, 1999) when you…
Theatrical Truffles
Back in high school, Howard Crabtree wanted to join the Ice Capades more than anything. A “drama queen” of the highest order, he pranced about school dressed in furry, spotted cowboy chaps and a spangled vest. It didn’t matter that “Mrs. Roundhole,” his spinsterly, uptight guidance counselor, told him he’d…
Hot Plate
A Thorny Subject: You may have seen them in grocery stores and wondered how the hell they were used. They are the pale green pads of the prickly pear cactus, sans thorns, known in Spanish as nopales. Nopalitos are nopales cut into thin strips. They are a traditional ingredient in…
Brain Freeze
William Finn’s A New Brain follows composer Gordon Michael Schwinn (Roger Hanson) as he stumbles his way through a life-threatening disease. Naturally enough, because Schwinn is a songwriter, he sings a lot of tunes as he eases not so gently down this winding road of sickness. Funny thing is, everyone…
Industrial Revolutions
The industrial revolution, musically speaking, has been touted as a potentially all-consuming force for more than 20 years now. Ever since the first Moog analog bleeped and gurgled its way onto the stage in the early 1970s, there has been some Herbert with a keyboard or a computer waiting to…
Contemplative Spaces
Some people live for NASCAR, and some painstakingly build sailboats out of matchsticks. You see the same extremes in art, from Red Grooms’s riotous pop environments to minimalist Robert Ryman’s investigations of white. Four artists currently on view at James Gallery and Devin Borden/Hiram Butler Gallery weigh in on the…
E-jukebox
On a random guitar case behind the Buzz stage at the Westheimer Street Festival “In Exile.” On a wall in Fitzgerald’s. Even in the men’s room of the Office Depot on Kirby. 420radio.com, in the form of thousands of white-lettering-on-black-background bumper stickers, is attempting to create street-level awareness in local…
T-Rex in Mouse Ears
Dinosaurs used to be cool. In 1969, if you had asked me what was the best movie ever made, the answer would likely have been The Valley of Gwangi, in which a group of cowboys in the Mexican desert find a gully full of leftover dinosaurs, animated by Ray Harryhausen,…
Rotation
The Jayhawks Smile Columbia/American Recordings While the group’s No Depression contemporaries, Son Volt and Wilco, have received more attention, many consider Minnesota’s underappreciated Jayhawks the Americana genre’s best band. Its Hollywood Town Hall made several major “Best of ’90s” lists and its follow-up, Tomorrow the Green Grass, proved just as…
Roadkill
Road Trip makes American Pie look like Fast Times at Ridgemont High; Fast Times like Animal House; and Animal House like Citizen Kane. It ranks (indeed, it is rank) among the most soul-deadening movies ever made. It has no pulse and seeks to steal yours with a cynical vengeance. Oh,…
Local Rotation
Leon Sam and the Zydeco Dots Tribute to Clif Klarity Zydeco, more than anything else, is about socializing. It creates an atmosphere in which people can drink, dance and share dirty thoughts. That’s why the music is best experienced in a juke joint. Attempts to record zydeco in a studio…
Small Pleasures
Woody Allen is back on screen in Small Time Crooks, a bittersweet comedy that in many ways could have been lifted straight from the ’30s. For the most part, it’s Woody Allen Lite, which is not at all a bad thing. While one doesn’t want to penalize Allen for his…
End the Innocence
While Neill Kirby McMillan Jr. was watching the Grammy Awards in 1989, something spooked his mojo. After seeing Don Henley pick up an award for the aptly titled The End of the Innocence, McMillan, who is better known as Mojo Nixon, jumped up from the couch to scribble some words…
The Play’s (Not) the Thing
When stars get popular enough (or win enough Oscars), they start to call their own shots. Thus we have The Big Kahuna, the debut release of Kevin Spacey’s production company. Kahuna also marks the film debut of stage director John Swanbeck and screenwriter Roger Rueff. And boy, can you tell…
Skirting the Issues
Amy Knight didn’t want to wear satin or sequins to her Northbrook High senior prom. She wanted to step back into Scottish history and create a Queen Elizabeth-style dress. The renaissance is her favorite time period. She bought gillies, laced-up Scottish dancing shoes, and peacock-feather earrings. The only accessory left…