Night & Day
Thursday April 16 San Francisco and Houston couldn’t be more different: One’s blessed with bounteous beauty, the other’s a swamp; one’s compact and constrained by natural boundaries, the other’s gargantuan and growing; one has elegance and style, the other’s in Texas. But the cities do share an affinity for art…
The Last Photo Show
The sign, of course, has been a familiar landmark to Houstonians for decades, with its vertical, art-deco letters spelling out “A-L-A-B-A-M-A.” But in the image hanging on the wall, there’s no Bookstop or Cactus Records store nearby. Instead, there are hundreds of well-dressed men, women and children clamoring to get…
Seemen Mixer
So how does one land a gig whipping up compressed-air-powered robots? For Iowa-born Kal Spelletich of San Francisco’s extreme-technology/postindustrial folk-art collective the Seemen, it required resume-building stints as squatter, dishwasher, carpenter, auto mechanic, day laborer, “street scammer,” plumber, grocery clerk, salesman, teacher, union activist, stagehand and “fix-it guy.” Today, the…
Hot Plate
Prego’s (2520 Amherst, 529-2420) always manages to intimidate me. The place is so earnest, it puts me in mind of Lenin’s Tomb. A friend claims that she’s never seen anyone laugh here and, come to think of it, neither have I. But I do drop in from time to time,…
Avoid the Crowd
Elvis might be dead, but Sisyphus isn’t. He lives — at least in spirit — in the person of a busboy at Clive’s. No, he’s stopped pushing a rock up a hill. The topography at Clive’s rules that out. This time he’s enduring a more terrifying fate: replenishing water glasses…
Dish
Good-bye to Rio The half-life of the radioactive restaurant location at 1512 West Alabama remains short — as proven by the March closing of Rio de Janeiro South American Grill. On Saturday, March 28, the twentysomething brothers Allen and Nathan Rosas (see “The Boys from Rio,” July 3, 1997) hosted…
Fresh Spin
Though noticeably older, Chris Duarte is often mentioned along with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Jonny Lang as part of a new generation of guitarists carrying the blues to a new generation of fans. In doing so, though, it’s likely Duarte will continue to ruffle the feathers of so-called aficionados. And…
You’re Not from Texas
Scotland’s Duncan McLean knows more about Texas swing than most Texans; it’s an avocation, a pure-hearted love of the form, that sucks up much of the Aberdeenshire-born author’s time. McLean now lives in Orkney, an isolated island chain off the Scottish coast. When he’s not packratting around the mainland in…
Rotation
Page & Plant Walking into Clarksdale Atlantic When all is said and done, the Led Zeppelin output that endures best isn’t the straight blues jams or the acoustic ballads, but, quite simply, the rock and roll — that is, the sound made when all at once you heard John Bonham’s…
Static
A rose by any other name… Granted, it was an inane moniker. Hell, even the band members knew how juvenile it was: Pull My Finger, a name that conjures up sulfur-tinged memories of that kid in seventh-grade gym class always willing to let one rip for anyone willing to yank…
Too, Too Much
In the early ’90s, Tony Kushner won two Tonys, a Pulitzer and just about every other major award a playwright can get. The prizes honored his Broadway smash Angels in America, a seven-hour, two-part epic that the New York Times heralded as “a true millennial work of art.” The accolades…
Love and Abstinence
With I Love You, Don’t Touch Me!, first-time filmmaker Julie Davis has made a low-budget movie about love and abstinence among under-30s that looks less to the films of her generational peers — Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming or Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy, for instance — than to Woody Allen’s…
Art Car Macho
Mike Scranton is skinnier, and sometimes dirtier, than the stray dogs that scavenge around his warehouse. The steel toes of his work boots shine like twin bald spots through their worn leather. His right collarbone juts forward in an unnatural dome, from the time he wrecked his motorcycle, grabbed the…
A History of Houston’s Testosterone-Fueled Art
1986 Beyond Thunderdome Urban Animals founder Scott Prescott’s Ghetto Blaster didn’t have an engine, but it did have a flamethrower. 1988 Urge Overkill Scott Gordon may have been the first to decorate his car … with another car. 1992 Repo Men At the Art Car Ball, Louis Perrin and Noah…
Tales From the IRS
The Whistle Blower If there was anyone who respected the Internal Revenue Service, it was Jennifer Long. She was born and raised in Austin, where her parents had worked all their professional lives as auditors at the IRS regional headquarters. While Long was enrolled at the University of Texas, she…
The Lying Game
Pulling off a caper requires cunning. Pulling off a caper movie requires cunning and artistry, especially in an era when special effects have made film reality suspect. First, the moviemaker has to convince an audience that he’s laid his cards on the table. Then he has to reshuffle and switch…
Poop Happens
The birds hung limply, their necks tangled in fishing line. Dead or dying, they’d been unable to spot the light-blue monofilament line that for the first time barred them from the trees they’d roosted in every night for years. They’d flown unknowingly into an almost invisible deathtrap. Others had managed…
One Little, Two Little, 40 Little Indies
If it’s April, then Worldfest-Houston — Houston’s biggest annual film festival — must be back. Never mind that after 30 years here, Hunter Todd, Worldfest’s eminently quotable director, was musing publicly about making Charleston, South Carolina, the number-one wife in his cinematic harem; he now says that Houston is safely…
Mysteries of Hotel Six
As the government ties the final ribbons on its case against the Hotel Six this week, some nagging questions have survived the playing of the FBI’s hottest audio- and videotapes. How did former councilman Ben Reyes really spend the $50,000 he gratefully accepted from an FBI undercover agent at a…
Shuffling Funds
As evidence mounts that the Public Works & Engineering Department routinely broke city rules governing construction contracts, the department continues to scramble for excuses. With the latest disclosures pointing directly at upper management, however, those excuses are sounding increasingly weak — and desperate. In the wake of several audits by…
Letters
Abuse of Authority I just wanted to respond to your article in the April 2 issue about Madison High School’s unruly principal [“Power to the Principal,” by Shaila Dewan]. I think it is disgusting when people abuse the gift of authority that they were given. Mr. Ervin is the epitome…