Beat of a Different Drummer
Calling the striking Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie a classical soloist hardly does her justice. How many other classical musicians have appeared on MTV’s Unplugged or co-written an alternative hit with Iceland’s eccentric rebel-vocalist Bjork? Since Bjork can’t read music very well, recording “Oxygen” required Glennie to improvise, a skill set…
Draught Dodger
Earlier this month, Houston was supposed to be treated to a little nubbin of Baja Oklahoma taste, sophistication and glamour, something sorely needed in our sultry, sweaty, sodden, sinful port city on the Mexican Gulf. Shannon Wynne, the Dallasite who introduced Houston to his celebrated Metroplex watering hole, 8.0, back…
Currying No Favor
I can’t decide if the first sign of trouble at The Classic Tandoor restaurant was the décor or the Musak. I suppose it couldn’t have been the décor, because it was such a relief to enter the dark, cool interior after crossing the endless acres of scorching parking lot, to…
Hot Plate
Crustacean Creation: Experience has taught me that whenever a restaurant lends its name to a dish, it’s probably the best thing on the menu. The Shrimp Crostini appetizer ($9.95) at Crostini [2411 South Shepherd (713)524-8558) further confirms the theory. It’s an architectural masterpiece. The base is polenta, crusty on the…
Art School Style
Ahhh, the unforgiving foibles of the art-rock fan: Playing Magic, watching hockey, “reading” Danger Girl or Fathom (or any other comic book titles that feature vavoomy babes as heroes), pausing between rounds of Tomb Raider to dig into neatly wrapped packages of culinary calamity (e.g., fast food) and listening to…
Road Rage
Imagine being a band in a tiny college town called Houghton in northernmost Michigan. The nearest “big” city is Green Bay, Wisconsin. And next to Cheesetown, the only other “cities,” Madison, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, are both seven hours away by car. You’d probably bolt for Louisiana, too. For pop quartet…
Breakin’ Up the Bands
Though door receipts might indicate otherwise, I am I and Coterie are two of the brightest talents in town. While I am I’s sound, full of harmonious vocal lines and heavy, melodic riffage, is radio-friendly and Buzzworthy, Coterie’s is sparse, ominously beautiful and introverted, the kind that sublimates the average…
Pass the Salt
Veruca Salt, once so full of promise, is down to one original member and trawling for listeners. After scoring acclaim with the 1994 power pop single, “Seether,” from its American Thighs debut, Veruca Salt (named after the rich-bitch kid from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) seemed primed to take…
Sexual Orienting Onscreen
Throughout the first six decades of commercial cinema in America, the love that dared not speak its name was not entirely invisible. But you had to know where to read between the lines, to decipher the mixed signals sent through cracks in the censorious Production Code. Never mind the occasional…
Lean Beefcake
Giddy retro kitsch, talking-heads documentary and intensely campy melodrama are just a few of the ingredients tossed into the mulligan stew that is Beefcake. The nominal subject is Bob Mizer (1922-1992), the notorious L.A. photographer and publishing mini-mogul who joyously celebrated the male physique in low-rent movies and under-the-counter magazines…
Transferring assets
Last fall formed a new beginning for Krystal Crane, on the sandy edge of the waves sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean. She and brother Jared had just arrived in time to enroll as sophomores at Malibu High School. They had the blond hair and good looks to fit in…
Love in the Time of Chundering
To begin, let us discuss puking. You know, upchucking, barfing, yacking, Technicolor yawning, blowing cookies, driving the porcelain bus, screaming at one’s shoes, and, for you Aussies, chundering. Always unpleasant — and yet usually a great relief to a queasy gut — a nice vomit can be provoked by just…
Have Gavel Will Travel
Maybe it seemed like retired judge Tom Sullivan was just another tourist when he got off the airliner in France and began taking in the sights of Paris in 1999. Or when he checked into the Ciragon Palace Hotel in exotic Istanbul the previous year. Or aboard a cruise ship…
Inside the Soap Box
Michael Moore often worries about being seen–and worse, dismissed–as the plump, ball-cap-wearing windbag who barges into company headquarters, demands to see the chairman of the board, then gets kicked out or even arrested. He frets about being reduced to a stuntman of shtick, Captain Ambush, the guy called upon whenever…
Catching Flack
It’s official. At the University of Houston’s School of Communication, the flack-led forces are in. And the advocates for hands-on, hard news training are on the outs. The influences are apparent in the school’s 21-page blueprint called “Plan 2000: Redesigning the School of Communication.” News-based academics say the plan will…
Bound to Tradition
Helene Hanff’s autobiographical 84, Charing Cross Road is a traditional bibliophile’s dream. A working-class Yank who couldn’t afford more than a year of college, Hanff was a self-taught writer who adored great books written by dead white guys. Across the Atlantic was Frank Doel, a stodgy but quaintly sweet English…
Breaking the Mold
T. H. Rogers is one of the most sought-after schools in the Houston Independent School District. The pre-K through eighth-grade facility houses three groups of kids from all over the district. It is an enlightened matchup of children in the Vanguard program, the deaf and those with multiple handicaps. Parents…
Letters
The CondemnedSince your story is about the “latest condemnation of homes,” it would appear that Mr. Hansel does not evaluate his mistakes in past condemnations and correct them [“The Dispossessed,” by John Suval, May 11]. Using the children as messengers is not legal. This tactic was used in the Highland…
Telling Stories
iana Strassmann learned a lot at graduate school, though not always what her professors intended. In one seminar, an eminent economist claimed that the marriage tax was efficient and fair. It encouraged married women to stay home and care for their small children instead of working, he said, and thus…
Former Editors On The Move
Two flamboyant former editors who left legacies of notoriety at the Houston Chronicle and The Houston Post took different career tracks this week. One got a new job, and the other resigned. Former Chronicle chief editor Philip G. Warner helped make or break jurists in his role as the paper’s…
District 25’s Rudy Giuliani
D uring his successful primary run against opponent Tom Reiser for the Republican nomination in Houston’s 25th Congressional District two months ago, political newcomer Phillip P. Sudan Jr. blitzed local TV with a painfully corny ad designed to introduce the candidate to the electorate on the basis of what he…
Winner in OT
Houston Chronicle sportswriter Alan Truex raised some eyebrows last year when he filed a federal lawsuit claiming the paper refused to pay him for four years’ worth of overtime. Get ready to raise the other eyebrow: the Chron has reportedly settled the suit for a tidy sum well into the…
The Curbside Critique
Mention the outdoor “Journey: Sculpture 2000” exhibit, and you’ll probably be greeted with perplexed stares. But refer to the giant rusty metal sculpture on the west side of Allen Parkway as “Pinhead from those Hellraiser movies,” and people will know exactly what you’re talking about. Jim Robertson’s Wildman is just…
Here’s Johnny
It’s the Saturday before Easter, and minister Johnny Jeremiah, otherwise known as former crack dealer Johnny Binder, is doing the Lord’s work in a big, loud way. Everything about Binder — his bald black head, his two gold teeth, and especially the small diamond mounted between those front teeth –…