Letters
Actually, Hakeem Said It First Satan and Hakeem? Your lack of class was apparent in your recent story [“Geezer Follies,” by Richard Connelly, March 19]. More than once you made reference to Hakeem turning to Satan due to a brawl that erupted a few weeks ago. You give journalists a…
The Pain in Spain
Tio Pepe, when we first visited, was very nice, very pleasant, and very, very empty. It was Monday, of course. A quiet night for most restaurants. Even so, the waiter seemed startled to see us. He was finishing his dinner when we arrived and was watching a soap opera –…
Hard to Kill
A recent MTV Online editorial opined that heavy metal is “the dog bone buried in the background of pop culture these days.” If that’s the case, then Megadeth’s singer, guitarist and residing conscience, Dave Mustaine, is undoubtedly one of the fiercest pit bulls digging around the pen. After all, this…
Write or Wrong?
In November 1996, New York Times reporter and rock critic Neil Strauss crawled into the hot tub at a Holiday Inn in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with desperate-to-shock rocker Marilyn Manson. Strauss was there to write an article for Rolling Stone, and Manson was ready to take full advantage of the…
Women on the Verge of a Historic Breakthrough
Lately, the Ensemble Theatre has been producing plays full of social and political commentary that can make for terrifically ambitious theater. Bertolt Brecht, August Wilson and Aristophanes have shown how to raise a political issue out of the polemical mire, then frame it into the wondrous landscape of human experience,…
Rotation
Semisonic Feeling Strangely Fine MCA In the increasingly disposable world of ’90s pop, Dan Wilson is a hooksmith without peer, and one of the most shamelessly sentimental songwriters of his generation. But then, what exactly is Wilson’s generation? Given his brief tenure with the Minneapolis trio Semisonic, the singer/guitarist would…
A Boy’s Guide to Death
Rosie O’Donnell sure makes a believable nun. In the kids’ movie Wide Awake, she plays Sister Terry, a sports-loving teacher at a swanky private school in the Philadelphia suburbs, a sympathetic good egg in whom the troubled 10-year-old hero (Joseph Cross) confides. There’s not a minute when she isn’t convincing…
Static
Ego run amuck?… It had to be the easiest $1,000 Houston’s Ezra Charles ever made. Hired by oldies station KLDE/94.5 FM to open for creaky classic-rockers Three Dog Night at the Children’s Festival in Hermann Park March 21, the insufferable leader of the soul- and blues-tinged revue the Works threatened…
I Wanna Be Sedated
What’s six feet tall, giggles incessantly and is known as both “the Elvis of the preschool set” and “The Purple Antichrist?” Whether you’re grateful for the free baby-sitting he provides or dying to slice him into tiny purple ribbons, you can’t deny the overwhelming power Barney the Dinosaur has wielded…
Clubland
Richmond Strip entertainment mogul and City Streets owner Jeff Meineke has been keeping plenty busy. He recently presided over the massive image overhaul of Blue Planet, turning it into Powerplant, a high-end Outer Loop partier’s Taj Mahal — and one that he’s dubbed the “radio-active dance factory,” no less. Next…
Oys and Girls
Some of the smartest, most surprising films about women have been made by men; and some of the best films about men have been made by the rare women who can score budgets for their projects. Think about it, and you start to realize: Directors should dare to speak for…
Hot Plate
The trifle I gorged on as a child was a monstrous thing, including among its list of ingredients a jelly roll, slivered almonds, peach slices, grated chocolate and lots and lots of sherry. God, how I loved it. No more, though. These days, when visions of trifle dance in my…
All in a Day’s Work
It’s graduation day at the Service, Employment & Redevelopment Center, or SER, and Tejano music and the smell of fresh tamales fill the hallways of the one-story building in the Gulfton area of southwest Houston. About 80 people from more than a dozen countries have crowded into an empty classroom…
Happy Trails
For all the nasty letters that artist Robert Rauschenberg’s camp exchanged with art dealer Alfred Kren during their business dispute [“Culture Clash,” by Shaila Dewan, February 26], by their own account they have settled their dispute quite amicably. So amicably, in fact, that they will be doing business together in…
Up-in-the-Air Ball
You might think with the unveiling of a high-priced scale model of the new baseball stadium, the beginning of construction on the real thing and the constantly upbeat assessments by officials of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, that everything’s in place for the Ballpark at Union Station. You’d be wrong…
Wrong Turn
When the U.S. Olympic hockey team flopped badly in Japan, sports columnists across America were quick to castigate the athletes for partying instead of practicing. Players were seen out late at night at bars, and after the team was eliminated, some members went on what was described usually as a…
First in the Nation
Bob Burtman, a staff writer for the Houston Press, has been named the national winner of the 1998 John Barlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism. The award, given by the Medill School of Journalism of Northwest University, honors the memory of John Barlow Martin, whose magazine stories about…
See Jane Become Dick
“You can’t do … many things that are more transformative or more mind-bending than, you know, having a sex change.” This profound understatement is made by Max, formerly Anita, a writer and one of the subjects of the never-not-fascinating documentary You Don’t Know Dick: Courageous Hearts of Transsexual Men. Transsexuals…
Night & Day
Thursday April 2 Fans of post-folkie Shawn Colvin know she has a ringing bell for a voice and a knack for slugging the occasional lyrical/ironic pop home run (like the upbeat downer “Round of Blues”). Speaking of irony, how strange that Colvin’s overdue breakthrough came with “Sunny Came Home,” a…
Power to the Principal
Warner Ervin, the principal of Madison High School, was patrolling the halls when he spotted a stray student. Three years before, the burly Ervin had taken over Madison with a mandate to bring the school under control — and one aspect of that control was to stop students from roaming…
The French Connection
Woody Allen is slouching on an interviewer’s couch, saying “Tres facile.” Next, there are some shots of TV news, then a professional soccer match, then a fashion show with a bit more flesh than you usually see in Houston, Texas. On a recent Wednesday night, a large ballroom at the…
Below Standards
Of the hundreds of public works projects designed and built during the administration of former mayor Bob Lanier, none was as sweeping or massive as the Greater Houston Wastewater Program, the $1 billion overhaul of the city’s sewer system that’s just now being completed. The model for many of Lanier’s…
Made for America
The American reissues of Jackie Chan films have met with declining box-office success since Chan burst onto the scene in 1996 with Rumble in the Bronx. With any luck, the latest Chan opus to be recut and redubbed for Americans, the year-old Mr. Nice Guy, should reverse the trend. No…
In Their Own Words
The young African-American woman representing the Houston Police Department tentatively stepped forward in the Hotel Six bribery-conspiracy trial to face federal Judge David Hittner. Assistant City Attorney Sandra Robinson had come to the tiny courtroom on the eighth floor of the Federal Building to request that the judge kill a…
Dish
Dead Moose My fax machine was the bearer of sad tidings recently: an announcement from longtime restaurateur Bill Sadler, et al., of the closing of the two-year-old Moose Cafe, Sadler’s high-profile experiment with Pacific Northwest smokehousing. Sadler and crony Charles Watkins of the Sierra Grill intend to offer a new…