Momma’s Girl
Past the azaleas, the crape myrtle and magnolia, there’s a guesthouse in River Oaks of many windows and much sunlight. In the late morning, a black woman was sweeping the floor, and Grace Greene lay smoking in an antique bed. Her hair was twisted from sleeping and not sleeping. Her…
What’s Wrong With Wheatley?
For more than an hour, the principal of Phillis Wheatley High School had been showing off the improvements he and his staff have been making at one of Houston’s worst-performing public high schools. Like a town sheriff, Horace Williams strolled Wheatley’s halls, a two-way radio in his back pocket and…
The X(erox) Files
Erin O’Shey was sleepwalking through another uneventful day at Kinko’s last spring when a couple of customers, a man and a woman, came in bearing a half-dozen photographs they wanted duplicated. What first piqued her curiosity about the pair, the 26-year-old O’Shey recalls, was their desire to supervise the copying…
The Insider
Some Days Chicken, Some Days … All the newspaper and television coverage of Tom DeLay’s “shoving match” with Wisconsin Democrat David Obey last week omitted some crucial information — exactly what it was that the two congressmen said to each other. Their hands-on exchange occurred during an acrimonious House debate…
Letters
Strange Changes Thank you for the in-depth piece [“Off Line,” by Bob Burtman, March 20] on the strange metamorphosis of the Houston Post into the Daily News into Houston Today. It is a great loss for all citizens of Houston that this latest venture has unraveled thus far. May that…
Press Picks
thursday april 17 Fotofence ’97 A while back, some innovative educators got the idea that putting cameras into the hands of students would improve their abilities to communicate. The result is a rare chance to see what life is really like for little kids — the way they see themselves…
Mex, Not Tex
In a town filled with 99-cent taquerias, where enchiladas in their brownish-yellow sauce are king, the concept of upscale Mexican food may seem not just an oxymoron, but unnecessary. With so much good, cheap Mexican food available, why bother with anything more expensive? Actually, anyone who’s eaten at Las Alamedas…
Rotation
Townes Van Zandt The Highway Kind Sugar Hill The late Townes Van Zandt has been heralded as one of the finest songwriters of our time, but his peculiar genius is hard to define. Not an overwhelming singer or guitarist — though his fingerstyle technique shows a mastery, and delicate revision,…
African Electric
Though this year’s International Festival has an Asian theme, the heart of the musical action is likely to once again be the World Music Stage, thanks to the indelible harmonies of Zap Mama, the insistent dance rhythms and celestial singing of soukous godfather Pap Wemba, Majek Fashek’s take-no-prisoners fusion reggae,…
Broadcast Power
Radio is repetition. And since repetition breeds familiarity, and familiarity puts asses in seats, radio is also everything to an up-and-coming band. This is one of the few constants of the music business, and Vallejo, an Austin-based Latin-rock outfit, is now in the enviable position of finding out virtually every…
Jazz Royalty
It’s 8:30 a.m., an hour when most musicians are on their second or third dream, but jazz keyboardist George Duke is wide awake and ready to talk. What kind of musician would be up at this ungodly hour? “I guess people who wanna sell a record,” Duke laughs. Duke should…
Static
Manholing the competition… Houston’s Manhole recently scored a victory in a scuffle to retain exclusive rights to its name. Late last month, the local heavy rock institution won a lawsuit that pitted the female-fronted group against a West Coast band with the same moniker. A federal judge found that the…
Dead Heads
Remember this joke? Question: How can you lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Answer: Cut off your head. Well, according to the press kit for 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, the average human head — dead and drained of blood — weighs 4.4 pounds. I can’t imagine the heads…
Sssssssucks
One of the biggest discussion topics among cinephiles — courtesy of the recent Oscar season — is whether Hollywood is petering out because it can’t produce the kind of probing, intelligent films that independents crank out. The tragedy, supposedly, is that special-effects extravaganzas are all the studios know how to…