End of the Line
Only the appearance of the spectator seemed to separate this sentencing from the rest of the routine business of the Harris County criminal justice system last week. Defendant John Shike stood before the judge and listened as his attorney inquired about the woman in the audience of misdemeanor court. Is…
Letters 08-10-2000
Pickett FencingAs a founding member of the Texas Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, I want to thank the Press and writer Brad Tyer for being the first news organization in Texas to expose the current threats to Texas public beaches and the Open Beaches Act [“This Sand Is Your Sand,”…
Subpoena Envy
When Harris County Republican Party Chairman Gary Polland got back from the Republican National Convention late last week, he found himself included on an unexpected invitation list for a distinctly uninviting event. In action that escaped media attention, the Texas House Committee on Judicial Affairs voted the week before in…
Berry Simple
A map of Mexico supplied by a beer company hangs by the bar, but the music comes from Motown. There’s nobody on the bandstand, but the girl in the tube top is already dancing to the tunes on the sound system while she sits in her booth eating a combination…
Born Again?
“Please hold for Tammy Faye.” The few seconds between those words and those that follow, uttered by the woman who once haunted pay-to-pray TV like a mascara-ed harlequin, are interminable. Until a month ago, the notion of talking to Tammy Faye Bakker-Messner, once the most adored and reviled figure in…
Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise
At 8:25 p.m. on a typical Thursday evening in August, a somewhat humble reporter enters Carrabba’s [3115 Kirby Drive, (713)522-3131]. Since it is a typical weekday evening, the foyer is packed with waiting customers. The bar area seems as crowded as a New York subway car at rush hour. All…
Two Girls Talking Bad
[Telephone rings] “Hey, CeCe. How you doin’, girl?” “Oh, I’m fine. Whatcha doing this weekend?” “I’m going to a theater downtown. Cullen Theater, in Wortham Center.” “To see what?” “It’s called I Can Do Bad All By Myself.” “Aw, shit, girl. You gonna see one of them damn gospel plays?”…
Two Baboons and a Body Bag
Let’s get one thing straight. The artwork featured in “Out of the Ordinary: New Art from Texas” may not be ordinary, but it’s not necessarily from Texas, either. Some featured artists emigrated from Europe or are in the process of moving to Missouri, and their work doesn’t reflect any regional…
Immigration Problems
Alberto Falchetti worked as a waiter at some of Houston’s best eateries in the 1970s. While he toiled at Tony’s and elsewhere, he dreamed of opening his own restaurant someday, and the restaurant he dreamed of was an authentic Argentine parrilla. In Spanish, parrilla means “grill,” and like the English…
Raising the Bar Too High
In his classic book The Physiology of Taste, writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin boldly stated, “The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a star.” In the same bold spirit of overstatement, we’d like to suggest a corollary: The discovery that a restaurant does…
Chicken Run
If you’re seeking an escape from the sublime, but rich, spinach-and-corn enchiladas at Jalapeños [2702 Kirby, (713)524-1668], you need look no further than the Pollo Moran ($10.95). Of course, the only healthy thing about this dish is the chicken breast, which is promptly dredged in flour, sautéed in butter, drizzled…
Jug Ugly
So 27-year-old Aaron Loesch is going round and round trying to describe his — and by extension, his band’s — operative aesthetic, and in his mind anyway it has something to do with old beat-to-hell cars and Danny Elfman’s spooky soundtracks and 1920s jazz. He searches for the word “orchestral,”…
Elizabethan Drawl?
Legend has it Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor to honor a royal request. Elizabeth I apparently wanted to see Falstaff, the lecherous old fool from Henry IV, fall in love. If the legend were true — and most likely it is not — the queen would probably be…
Lady Belts the Blues
The four words “drastic change” and “Marcia Ball” have never really fit well together in the same sentence. The Louisiana-bred piano player has lived in Austin for decades; has performed with the same bass player, Don Bennett, for 18 years; and has been with the same roots-music label, Rounder Records,…
Pumping Up the Volume
Only Shakespeare, in all his audacity and brilliance, could pen the scene in which mighty Othello is brought to his quivering knees by the slimmest of lies and a lady’s errant hankie. It’s a wonder of literature, magnificent to behold, even when it’s being screeched across the stage of the…
Singin’ in the Rave
Five years ago, Brian Transeau was programming soon-to-be-famous techno dance mixes in his bedroom. Now, he has snubbed a big-boy contract with Warner Bros. to sign on with ultrahip Nettwerk Records. BT, as Transeau is known, has taken some lumps, most coming in the City of Angels. In a phone…
Picking at Scabs
There’s no explicable reason for the existence of The Replacements, which is to the football-film genre what Major League was to the baseball movie: sports rendered as sitcom. The Replacements, which takes as its cue the 1987 National Football League players’ strike, is stocked with every cliché and every stereotype…
Grooving in Greenbacks
There are a couple of good explanations for Mikel Fair’s success. Just over the past six months, the electronic artist, who’s commonly known as 303Infinity, has earned nearly $80,000 from MP3.com as part of the Internet music provider’s Payback for Playback program. In an environment where MP3 artists are rewarded…
Makeup Remover
In a perfect world, any documentary about televangelists narrated by RuPaul and a couple of sock puppets would be hailed as the unquestionable conceptual masterpiece of the year. Alas, those stodgy Academy voters just don’t understand cross-dressers, religious broadcasting or foot-warmers made to look like dogs. And so the best…
Hear Them Tweet
As the chicks part of the Dixie Chicks find themselves at the vanguard of the second wave of “new” — or “hot,” “young,” “rebel,” whatever — country, they’ve got a distinct advantage over most of their peers: They’re not prepackaged phonies who grew up as, say, KISS fans and learned…
Watering Down the Drinks
Okay, so there are these beautiful ladies in tight clothes, right? And — get this — they serve alcohol while dancing suggestively! Sound cool? How about we make a movie about them? The premise oughta be enough to draw in the guys, and we’ll call it “female empowerment” so their…
A Real T-E-X-A-N
Well-Traveled Marchman Though a well-traveled musician, both internationally and in the United States, Houston Marchman doesn’t perform as frequently on the Texas Gulf Coast as he does in the northern reaches of the Lone Star State. Raised on his father’s ranch in Meridian, Marchman, despite his given name, still apparently…
Ring Dings
“Kick ‘im in the nuts!” A Saturday night in Humble. An 11-year-old girl screams from her seat inside a dusty bingo hall, watching a collection of dreamers act out the pain pageant that is Texas All-Star Wrestling. “Kick ‘im in the pay-nis!” The girl’s white-haired godmother hollers advice to the…
CanCell That Subscription
Say one thing for Texas Monthly publisher Michael Levy: He is discriminating about his readership. Levy banned state inmates from subscribing to the magazine after advertisers complained that too many convicts were mailing in postage-paid cards for free brochures about dude ranches, fine furniture stores, elite health care and other…
Science Friction
At first glance, the Johnson Space Center looks less like a hub for the nation’s space program than a college campus in the summer. The green, geometric grounds are virtually deserted, NASA’s brain trust of purposeful scientists and engineers hidden away in low-slung, sand-colored buildings distinguished from one another only…
Conventional Wisdom
We knew that the Houston media’s coverage of the GOP convention was going to get weird when we read the Houston Chronicle’s front-page teaser July 29 for the next day’s convention preview: “Philly’s Rebound: Once a decaying city largely governed by Democrats, Philadelphia is enjoying a revitalization, helped by an…