Press Picks
thursday april 13 Images of Vanishing Nature In some circles, the topic of dying species can generate much controversy. For others, the issues involved are more exotic, more distant. However, the Museum of Natural Science, in hosting the premiere showing of this exhibit of wildlife art, shows us that several…
Annals of Downtown
Lunching in downtown Houston is nothing if not a Darwinistic ordeal. You’re competing with many fellow apes for a precious few sources of acceptable sustenance, rushing to, rushing through, rushing back to whatever odious treadmill you were on in the first place. Do much of this and you will experience…
French Paradox
Writing about a two-week-old restaurant is a fool’s errand. Ordinarily, anyway. But talented chef Olivier Ciesielski has made such a promising start at the trim little L’aventure Cafe — and it fills such a gap in Houston’s French-poor culinary scene — that I’ll play the fool gladly. Right now, in…
Kicking the Genre Habit
Pete Anderson’s solo debut, Working Class, brings to mind a couple of local quotes. Joe Hughes has some great lines about how his goal was to be a musician, not a bluesman, and Gene Kelton claims he learned the blues from frequent ass-kickings during 20 years of playing country. There’s…
Rotation
The Stone Roses Second Coming Geffen In an act of overweening arrogance, the Stone Roses meander through four and a half minutes of guitar noodling and quasi-Moroccan rhythms before kicking into “Breaking into Heaven,” the first song on their long-awaited second album; at the end of the song they just…
Less Than Skillful
The skills in Keyboard Skills belong almost entirely to the actors and director of Stages Repertory Theatre. This insignificant comedy of political manners by Lesley Bruce — which, for reasons I couldn’t determine, was a 1994 winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to outstanding women playwrights –…
Folk the Odd, Old Way
It’s interesting to wonder what the folks who went to Lollapalooza last year — folks who were seeking out the pop-friendly likes of Green Day or perhaps Smashing Pumpkins — thought when they wandered to one of the side stages and discovered Will Oldham, a young (no Lollapalooza problems there),…
Not So True Confessions
Your hooey detector will probably start beeping about ten minutes into British filmmaker Antonia Bird’s controversial melodrama Priest when Father Greg (Linus Roache), a young man of the cloth newly transferred to a blue-collar Liverpool parish, rises to address his congregation. These days, he complains from the pulpit, we are…
Even the Normal (Get Lucky Sometime)
After 20 years in the rock and roll business, Tom Petty still hasn’t really made it. Unlike a Springsteen or a Dylan, Petty has yet to elevate to first-name status. Bruce is Bruce, and Bob is Bob. But Tom is definitely Tom Petty. Yet Petty is everywhere. Wildflowers, his second…
Where the Boys Aren’t
“Don’t you want to deal with problems when they happen?” Rachel demands. She’s just moved in with someone and, being level-headed, isn’t quite prepared for the answer: “No, I’m in therapy.” The couple fight, break up and see other people before getting back together, with Rachel seeking her soul mate…
Action by the Book
There’s no denying that Bad Boys follows Hollywood’s action comedy formula by the book. But where most films only end up bombing in the process, Bad Boys takes the laughs and thrills quotient to its limits — and then some. Bad Boys cuts straight to the chase. Rather than worry…
Transformation of Robert Campbell
Robert Campbell’s friends had a hard time getting from Houston to the little Panhandle town of Claude to bury him. It was St. Valentine’s Day, and snow and ice had closed the Amarillo airport. Along with Campbell’s parents and brother and sister, they were stuck in Dallas for several hours,…
Class War
Betsy Frost is a River Oaks resident whose husband and father-in-law both attended River Oaks Elementary. But much has changed in the Houston Independent School District since then, and now Frost can’t automatically send her two children to the school that bears the name of their neighborhood and which, as…
Cook Is Beard Finalist
Houston Press staff writer Alison Cook has been nominated as a finalist in two categories of the prestigious James Beard Journalism Awards. The Beard journalism awards — established in 1992 by the James Beard Foundation — are among the highest honors that can be bestowed for food and beverage reporting…
Selena, Crossing Over
“It’s like watching a cop show right in your own front yard.” — Allison Shantz, who viewed the police standoff with Selena’s accused killer from a balcony of the Corpus Christi Days Inn, quoted in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times “Selena looked like the majority of us and she was beautiful…
Vote Fraud Made Easy
Wheelchair-bound septuagenarian Roy H. lives in a tidy brick house at the end of a shady block lined mostly with burned-out or collapsing shanties and overgrown lots in the northwest Houston community of Acres Homes. Roy’s wife moved to a nursing home late last year after she was hospitalized for…
Cook Is Beard Finalist
Houston Press staff writer Alison Cook has been nominated as a finalist in two categories of the prestigious James Beard Journalism Awards. The Beard journalism awards — established in 1992 by the James Beard Foundation — are among the highest honors for food and beverage reporting and reviewing. Cook is…
Letters
George Koury Speaks An anonymous heckler sent my daughters and me a copy of your recent article about the plight of Samual Templeton [News, “Sam’s Farewell,” by Brian Wallstin, March 9]. Journalism should require that the story is well researched and the facts are correct. Both this and the previous…