Superjoint Ritual
Far below the surface, in the murkiest recesses of the 15-year-old male subconscious, there is a slumbering wraith coiled like a black mamba, a kundalini-like force poised to issue a torrent of well-used obscenities at the first motherfucker to trip its hair-trigger. It is a hate-filled ant lion in the…
Tempting Teens
The driver parks his sedan across the street from Burbank Middle School, opens the door, and staggers out. He looks drunk, too drunk to realize he left the car running as he stumbles down Bauman Street just north of Loop 610. At the same time, two kids are walking and…
Jennifer Fitts
Spring Branch native Jennifer Fitts caught the singing bug while doing a mandatory drama department musical at UT-Austin. Reinforcement came when she stumbled onto Toni Price during a college bar crawl. “When we walked in, there was this tiny woman in this sequined dress dancing like crazy,” she says. “Then…
Menacing Mayor?
On July 28, the fax machine in Governor Rick Perry’s office whirred into action, spitting out an urgent message from John Scott, the director of Galveston County’s Water Conservation Improvement District 12: “William E. King is a frightening person and I have the deepest concern for the board of directors…
Ray Wylie Hubbard
The 2002 Kerrville Folk Festival was rolling merrily along with the usual outdoorsy overlap of sincere folk songs, silly campfire hootenannies and late-night avant-gardism. Then on the deal’s final weekend, Ray Wylie Hubbard came as a thief in the night. Up against the wall, pal — Ray Wylie stole the…
Burying the Past
The symbolism was hardly subtle on the front section of the August 6 Houston Chronicle’s metropolitan section. There — on what columnist Thom Marshall used to call “this edge of the page” — was a long photo of a shovel. It turns out the Chron, in what is the first-ever…
Into the Sunset
Kevin Costner appeared in his first western when he was 30 and looked to be in his early 20s. He was a slender, restless actor in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado, the 1985 film in which Costner played the blithe brother of a somber Scott Glenn — all giggles and gunshots, a…
Letters
Hutton Chops Any biased trash on the relatives of other Hollywood celebrities besides Mel Gibson [“Holy Father,” by Wendy Grossman, July 24]? I hear that a certain actor/director of note has a parent on death row for murder. An interest? Many stars have cross-dressing communists and convicted puppy killers in…
Uptown Down
With its ominously square title suggesting a feature-length Billy Joel video, Uptown Girls arrives in theaters smelling a bit spoiled, and not only because annoyingly precocious Dakota Fanning plays a pampered eight-year-old going on 58. Everything about it, from its after-school-special premise (girl teaches woman how to act like an…
Chump Change
But all ever ask (and I would say this to her face) is only she remembers who is who and not to go around with her or Gracie either with this attitude. “The Past is Past, and this is Now, and so Fuck You.” — Teach, in David Mamet’s American…
Trivial Pursuit
When Sean Joseph Casey crawls out of the dark, his life is in a sorry state. Old and washed up, with no place to go and no apparent friend in the world, he’s living out his last days holed up in an abandoned building, crooning to Judy Garland records and…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, August 14 For a second consecutive year, Houston hosts the GOODE Water Ski National Championships, and in this heat, you’ll want to get as close to the wet-and-wild action as possible in the hopes one of the competitors soaks you with a giant rooster-tail plume of water. Born at…
Right at Home
This was the first year Lawndale Art Center’s annual Big Show charged an entry fee. The $15 to enter three works was as much an attempt to keep the entries down to a more manageable number as an opportunity for the non-profit to generate some revenue. With 838 entries from…
My Dinner with Funny
“Art films” aren’t really Hollywood’s specialty. But it’s even rarer for a comedian to direct one. Take Melvin Goes to Dinner. Written by Michael Blieden (formerly of The Daily Show) and directed by Bob Odenkirk (of Mr. Show fame), this story can be described as My Dinner with Andre, Get…
For Love of the Game
He knows there are people, too many, who do not like him. He has to know. They’ve told him to his face–the studio executives who slice and snip the scenes he loves the most and suffer his outbursts for it, the directors he’s pushed out of the way so he…
(East) Indian Summer
SAT 8/16 No other city in Texas or the entire Southwest can match up with Houston’s diverse population. In fact, only two other cities in the nation can claim more residents from more countries around the world than the Bayou City. This Saturday, the India Culture Center of Houston hosts…
Hothouse Flowers
This year was nothing short of a watershed for the Houston Press Music Awards. This time a year ago we wrote, “here’s what we want for 2003: More. More categories, and thus more bands, and thus more people at the showcase and more venues participating.” We got all of that,…
SEAL the Deal
You’ve heard the rumors about hellish calisthenics, training runs through downpours and the yelling, yelling, yelling. It’s all true. Welcome to Houston’s original outdoor boot camp, created in 1997 by best-of-the-best Navy SEAL, Jack Walston. Led by a crew of Special Forces instructors, Walston’s class integrates principles of discipline, motivation…
History’s at Steak
There is a pleasant aroma inside Brenner’s Steakhouse and it isn’t my medium-rare New York strip: I sent the steak back. My dining companion, who ordered a medium filet mignon, sent hers back too. Both were too rare. My tablemate detects the same aroma, sort of like the inside of…
Animal Farm
Carol Adams and her family started up Carol’s Country Place 21 years ago with two acres and a modest menagerie of animals. At age 60, Adams now owns 25 acres of land with rides, picnic tables, and a slew of critters including hedgehogs, prairie dogs, llamas and a pet deer…
Between Friends
The sign on the door to Bunky’s Soul Food Café (7265 Scott, 713-747-3663) reads “Feed people good food at a fair price, make a friend along the way.” Samuel Nelson told this to his granddaughter, Jessica Limbrick (aka Bunky), who is now studying at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA)…
Hushing Up
It’s been slyly hyped for weeks now. Flyers have circulated. Word-of-mouth has spread. You might have spotted the ad in our music pages, consisting of just one word in bold-ass letters: Hush. But what exactly are we supposed to be quiet about? This Thursday, you can finally find out. If…
Dirty Dancing
FRI 8/15 In the market for some fresh modern dance with a little controversy on the side? Sara Draper’s Dancepaththeatre, Houston’s newest dance company, might be the ticket. Draper’s new opus, Life Museum, taps the body as the source of moving ideas. “The body is a living museum for your…
Soaring on the Wings of a Demon
It’s a ubiquitous sign for the ages. Whether thrown in rapture or irony, the pinky-and-index-finger extended “devil horns” might mean something different to UT sports fans or Shakespearean scholars, but to fans of classic hard rock and heavy metal it means, quite simply, Ronnie James Dio. Nobody has thrown the…
Rage Against Shawn Pander
They are Houston’s own spin on the Rage/Soundgarden/ Audioslave story. Lead singer from a popular band splits off to pursue a solo career, remaining members recruit equally known lead singer from another band and create a new group with a new name and sound. But given the comments from members…
Racket
The spring Arbitron radio ratings book is out, and there’s a shocker in it. Long-time country market leader KILT (100.3) has been toppled — not by its rival Q Country, but by Q’s Cox Communications sister station Country Legends 97.1. That’s right, the number one country station in one of…