Warded Off
Wayne Bruce and his wife, Shirley, were gently walking his mother through the wide halls of Heritage Sam Houston nursing home when another elderly resident flew out of a doorway in front of them, knocked face-first to the floor by a nurse’s aide. Immediately Bruce called the police to report…
Favored One
Gee, was it very difficult to tell who the Chronicle wanted to win the April 11 GOP runoff for the District 7 congressional seat? It endorsed businessman Peter Wareing in the hard-core Republican district despite his seeming handicap of having regularly donated campaign money to such liberal Democrats as Sheila…
Cloning for Cash
Within the snug, yellow-walled confines of Texas A&M’s reproductive sciences lab, a black-and-white portrait of a dog hangs with the dignified air of a head of state. It is not any dog, of course, but Missy, the mixed Border collie whose California owner believes she is so unique he wants…
Letters
Down the Drain Industry has long used “dilution is the solution to pollution” to solve their waste disposal problems, and according to your article [“Reeling,” by Bob Burtman, April 6], Lake Sam Rayburn “has reduced its surface area by 25 percent.” Since the dilution factor has significantly decreased, might I…
Deep Six
Work should be humming along on the $19.3 million project to expand five miles of State Highway 6 in Fort Bend County: The contractor broke ground in October, there are no money woes, and the weather for the most part has been cooperative. Instead, for the past two months work…
Absent a Mother
Karen Shrader has not seen her children since April 1997, when she stopped by Lindsay Park in Tyler on a cool day to watch Nicholas and Allison play in a soccer tournament. Shrader, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with long, straight brown hair, hadn’t been at the park more than an…
No More Waiting Room
Caroline DeLuca was a baby who couldn’t crawl, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even sit up straight. Getting on her hands and knees was beyond her; her feet would shoot out behind her in a spastic motion. Eventually diagnosed with cerebral palsy, that awfully vague term covering an awful lot of brain…
Hole Foods
I first visited the Hobbit’s new home last fall, about a month after brothers Raymond and Forrest Edmonds finally reopened in a half-timbered house between Portsmouth and Richmond. After a quarter-century on Shepherd, then construction delays on Richmond that seemed again as long, the Hobbits were no longer “in the…
Notes on Cool
1. A sensibility, as distinct from an idea, is one of the hardest things to talk about. — Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” Buffalo Exchange buys, sells and trades used clothing, but even the most fashion-impaired can see immediately that Buffalo is not a thrift store. Buffalo’s prices run higher,…
Stick a Fork in It
Fondue’s popularity peaked, more or less, in the ’70s, which explains why nearly everyone I told about my long-forked foray at The Melting Pot snickered and said something about disco and Saturday Night Fever. I’ve since learned that fondue was the meal du jour of bourgeois sophisticates during the Me…
Wareing Thin
The rhythmic chant “Go, John, Go” rolled through the Mesa Grill on the Katy Freeway as state Representative John Culberson broke the news to a wall-to-wall crowd last week: Opponent Peter Wareing had just called to concede defeat in the District 7 congressional race. Back at the Westin Galleria ballroom,…
Stargazing
Polls and surveys on U.S. food preferences routinely show pizza to be the most popular choice for those dining out, taking out or delivering in. How this minor item of Neapolitan cuisine came to conquer a nation, the majority of whose citizens have difficulty pronouncing “mozzarella,” is fodder for a…
Fatman and slobbin’
A mildly retarded man who works in a grocery store believes he is Batman, the Dark Knight on a mission to free Gotham City from the clutches of The Joker. An actress playing the role of Wonder Woman becomes a spokeswoman, then scapegoat, for the Commie witch-hunters working for the…
Hot Plate
Nothing Fishy Here: I had been eating at Van Loc [3010 Milam, (713)528-6441], one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants, for nearly two years before I discovered the short spare ribs cooked in fish sauce ($8.95). Tasting nothing, absolutely nothing, like fish, these bite-size rib chunks emerge steaming from the kitchen…
Having His Say
Read about enough “ethnic” writers, and you notice they are often confronted by the same problem: If they write books enjoyed by a mainstream audience, they’re accused of selling out, assimilating; but if they write something that naturally appeals to people of a similar background, then their books get sectioned…
School’s Out Forever
The Furgason home has the relaxed feel of a place where you could take a nap in the middle of the afternoon without guilt. A squeaking ceiling fan churns the warm air inside the modest rent house, isolated from its working-class neighborhood by three-fourths of an overgrown acre. Two mismatched…
Welcome to the Funhouse
Saying that anything can happen during Talent Night at King Leo’s Club is a massive understatement. It’s more like anything will happen during this popular lip-synch competition. On one occasion, a lady known as “Choice” came up to perform Mary J. Blige’s “Your Child,” and her wig flew off right…
Thus Spoke Edward Albee
Edward Albee’s newest script, The Play About the Baby, making its American premiere at the Alley Theatre under the playwright’s own direction, begins its journey as a wild carnival ride for the intellect. Spinning and twisting as it goes, the first act scales up and down a great tower of…
Dready Metal
Jangly, quickly strummed, hard-edged guitar lines and popping bass riffs shuck and jive over stuttering, nearly danceable beats in the song “Buckle Down,” off the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ eponymously titled 1984 debut. The voice of lead singer Anthony Kiedis is distinct: “Hah / On the ice / No holdin’…
Memory Play
“I can’t seem to get the hang of any of you,” says Vi (Deborah Hope), the dead mother of three idiosyncratic sisters who come home to bury her one long winter’s night. Vi stands in her bedroom reliving the lonely past as her daughters try desperately to bury it. But…
Fancy Footwork
Quick Step Maneuver is a rarity in the world of punk-alikes. The band is pure and unadulterated punk. Not hardcore or pop-punk. No Mohawks or politics. Quick Step’s music is vaguely observational and occasionally humorous, with catchy songs, played loosely yet well. Not bad, considering Andrew Harper (bass), Gabe Deluc…
A Georgia Peach
In Cold Sassy Tree, novelist Olive Ann Burns tickles readers with her tale of a Southern town outraged when one of its leading citizens, just weeks after burying his first wife, marries a “damn Yankee” half his age. Will Tweedy, who sounds like a backwoods Georgia version of Huck Finn,…
International Festival
Step Rideau and the Zydeco Outlaws American Music Stage Saturday, April 15 If the dancing feet near th stage, itself covered with banners from the likes of KILT, KPRC and Oldies 94.5 (media outlets that wouldn’t know an accordion from boudin) were any indication, Step Rideau’s brand of R&B zydeco…
Caution: Swoon Zone
Let’s say you hate contemporary art. You really hate it; you find it overrated, inexplicable, absurd, boring, obscure or a classic case of the emperor’s new clothes. Then, lost soul, you need to see “Outbound: Passages from the ’90s.” It is the art world equivalent of a tent revival, and…
Two A.M. Special
With its art deco facade (essentially two huge slabs of black onyx), projector room, sloping concrete floor and cavernous interior, The Liberty Theater in Rosenberg gives the impression that it’s one heckuva place to see a flick and luxuriate in the moviegoing experience. Which no doubt it once was. The…
Boot Camp
Why aren’t there more submarine movies? It seems like a no-brainer formula for success: claustrophobic setting, invisible enemy whose approach must be estimated, inherent threat of both drowning and depth pressure, and from a budgetary standpoint, only one key set piece to worry about. There’s even a solid track record…
Rotation
Django Reinhardt The Complete Django Reinhardt and Quintet of the Hot Club of France Swing/HMV Sessions 1936-1948 Mosaic Records Swing with its own rules. An apt description of Django Reinhardt’s largely unrefined sound, a mirrorlike reflection of the man and the time in which he played. Yet when Reinhardt on…
Clang!
Love & Basketball is divided into four quarters; thank God there’s no overtime. The directorial debut from writer Gina Prince-Bythewood, who once penned scripts for A Different World and Felicity, is a film built upon transitions so weak and obvious it’s astonishing the entire thing doesn’t collapse on itself. You…
Local Rotation
Jody Hughes Jody Hughes Self-distributed Japanic Red Book Plethorazine One-man prog-rock band Jody Hughes and the synth-pop quintet Japanic apparently desire the same thing: that it were 1981 once more. Pac-Man. Dungeons & Dragons. Christie Brinkley. The dawn of MTV. And let’s not forget the peak of new wave, in…
Do You Want to Know a Secret?
In the rich mythology of The New Yorker, a periodical renowned for the quality of its writing and the quirks of its writers, no legend carries more weight than that of Joseph Mitchell. On the occasion of the magazine’s 75th anniversary, it is currently great sport among the literati to…
Shtick and Move
When promoters book an act into the International Ballroom, it usually means they expect a mess. In the case of Slipknot, promoters undoubtedly have already scheduled cleaning crews to break out fire hoses the next morning. But if the nine members of this relentlessly boorish, mask-wearing metal band from Des…