Snipping Away in Margaritaville
The opening night of this social experiment had a couple of glitches. The drizzle that beleaguered the city for most of the day made the makeshift patio area, complete with bar and DJ table, unusable. As soon as the clouds parted and it looked like things could go on as…
Deke Dickerson & His Ecco-Fonics
Bald as a cue ball and with more hooks than a convention of Long John Silver impersonators, Deke Dickerson bounces deftly between jump blues, western swing, surf rock and cornball rockabilly. On stage, the lively, lean guitarist unleashes puerile barroom jokes and sometimes trades in his double-necked guitar for a…
Clear Channel Cajun Invasion
Father Emmanuel Domenech, the Catholic missionary who in the 1840s was the first-ever French visitor to the Bayou City, was singularly unimpressed by what he found. “Houston,” he wrote in his journal, “is a wretched little town composed of about 20 shops, and a hundred huts, dispersed here and there,…
Anti-Pop Consortium
Not since Disposable Heroes of Hypocrisy has there been a rhythm-and-rhyme crew named more distinctively and astutely than Anti-Pop Consortium. Ever since APC formed in the late ’90s, the four-man East Coast collective — MCs Priest, Beans, M. Sayyid and beat man E. Blaize — has been on a mission…
Independents’ Day
For founder and director J. Hunter Todd, WorldFest Houston isn’t just a job, it’s an adventure. And over the past 13 months, it’s been even more of a cliffhanger than usual. “Last year, we were booted out of our Galleria offices by the new management company,” Todd says. “We had…
The Immigrant’s Song
The showdown at City Council came in late February, during the vote on an African-American minister’s controversial $90 million affordable housing plan. Despite mounting criticism of the financial stability of the Reverend Harvey Clemons’s Pleasant Hill Redevelopment Corporation, Mayor Lee Brown had made it clear that he saw this as…
Reel Guilty
Joseph Finder’s 1998 novel High Crimes reads like a movie, and a derivative one at that, borrowing scenes and elements from the likes of Sleeping with the Enemy, Primal Fear and especially A Few Good Men. It piles on several ludicrous twists, all at once, for the finale, and throws…
Earth Quake Day
In 1996, Houston had an ample schedule of springtime festivals heavy with headliner bands. But Earth Day was different. Admission was free, although the sponsoring Citizens’ Environmental Coalition sought a donation of $1 or a contribution of recyclable aluminum cans or paper. The event at the City Hall reflection pool…
Her Back to the World
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” wrote philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. I wish. Faced with the luminous paintings of Agnes Martin on view at the Menil Collection, I’d like nothing better than to just shut up and bask in their glow. Alas, the critic does not live by…
Dropping the Ball
The Orange Show Foundation’s Art Car Ball, that once wild and edgy happening atop downtown parking garages, has been relegated to memory lane. By most accounts, it died of its own success. In planning the Art Car Weekend that begins April 26, the foundation scrapped the signature ball that drew…
Georgia Justice
The year is 1914, and the priggish Leo Frank is none too happy to find himself stuck in Atlanta, Georgia. The bespectacled, college-educated Jewish manufacturer from Brooklyn has ventured to the underside of the Mason-Dixon line to run his father-in-law’s pencil plant. But he’s a fish out of water and…
Policing the Politicos
Most everybody agrees the Texas Ethics Commission is ineffectual in enforcing state campaign laws, but some folks would like it to stay that way. After all, asking state lawmakers to pass legislation to fix it is a bit like banking on an Enron executive to take a voluntary lie detector…
Controlled Explosion
Bored out of my skull by a party at The Stag’s Head (2128 Portsmouth, 713-533-1199), I looked to the bartender for something that might liven things up. What finally shook the place was Kevin’s Exploding Irish Car Bomb. He dropped a shot glass of half Jameson Irish Whiskey and half…
Criminals Beware
It was a big story for Channel 2: A twentysomething woman had been arrested after “luring” a 12-year-old boy over the Internet. The woman drove from Michigan after corresponding with the boy in a chat room, the station reported March 28. And because they reported it, they had to bring…
Vanguard Vitriol
Vanguard Vitriol Jones defender: Your article did not exhibit good, fair and accurate journalistic skills [“The Great Divide,” by Margaret Downing, March 7]. You interviewed Vanguard students who have no firsthand knowledge to make such remarks. For example, freshman Jarrett Mostiller said there are about three good teachers there, but…
Out on the Town
Yeah, sure, there are plenty of 5K run/walks raising funds for something or other, but this is a driving town. To be in motion in Houston without a steering wheel in your hands is like Hansel without Gretel, a teeter with no totter, it’s all to and no fro. If…
Paris Matched
David Garrido hacks off a huge piece of steak and then uses the already loaded fork to stab a few crispy french fries. The Austin chef is an old friend of mine, so he isn’t shy about opening wide for the oversize mouthful. He washes it down with a slug…
Niche Kitsch
One look at a rickety old reel film projector, and you’re back in high school health class watching low-budget corny movies — complete with wobbly music and hairs dancing across scratchy pictures — meant to educate us about the dangers of automobiles or the mechanics of sex years after such…
Power House
It’s 15 minutes before the second Sunday service at Lakewood Church is scheduled to begin, but already half of the 7,800-seat sanctuary is filled. By the start of the service, it will be packed all the way up to the rafters. As the people take their seats, a slight buzzing…
Fritter Away
Nothing says “Floribbean” cuisine more than rum and coconut. So when I discovered the coconut fritters ($4.95) at Floridita Seafood Grill (3401 Kirby Drive, 713-524-1900), I knew I’d be island-hopping in my mind before long. The coconut flakes are formed into golf-ball-size rounds with the consistency of a dense doughnut…
This Is It
Every once in a while, there comes a record you want to play for everyone you can. Will Kimbrough’s This is one of those albums. This has everything the alienated rock fan desires: intelligent songs addressing stuff that matters, and tuneful and infectious melodies garnished with imaginative touches. It’s the…
Border Town Blues
For singer/guitarist Bryan Contreras, the son of a Mexican father and an Anglo mother, the historical is personal — especially when it involves the Rio Grande Valley and that snaky river that separates Texas from Mexico. “I’m intrigued by the whole area of the Valley, the whole idea of two…
Traffic Jam
For Gary Hartman, co-head of local independent promotion company Tapir Productions, the moment of truth came after the jam band String Cheese Incident played the Fabulous Satellite Lounge in 1998. “It was about their fifth show there,” he says, “and they still weren’t selling the place out. Then they went…