Letters
Anime Crackers Heavy on the geek: A very nice article indeed [“Tooned In to Anime,” by Melissa Hung, August 2]. A little biased in the direction of “all anime fans are geeks,” perhaps, but that’s better than anything else I’ve seen so far. It seems that anime has been able…
The Mild West
On the lips of many moviegoers, the name of Joel Schumacher is tantamount to blasphemy. Visions of a blue-skinned Arnold Schwarzenegger and a head-bobbing George Clooney in rubber nipples instantly come to mind, inducing shudders of revulsion and indicating an oft-held view that Mr. Schumacher epitomizes the worst that American…
Free Verse
The ex-con, poet and screenwriter of Blood In, Blood Out, Jimmy Santiago Baca, decided to write the story of his life after hearing one too many Hollywood script doctors say they had this book they were going to write, as soon as they finished this one last project. The last…
One Madcap Moll
The end of summer means one more loopy, annual installment of the series from Infernal Bridegroom Productions. Happily, Tamalalia 6 is as zany as it gets. We find our heroine Tamarie Cooper (who also directs, choreographs, and co-writes the show) in an element all her own — a 1930s speakeasy…
Start Making Sense
Corporations are finding that sponsoring educational programs is a good way to put forward a friendly, kid-caring face, while promoting their chosen message to the next generation. The danger is that often the message has more to do with PR spin than scientific value (oil companies with bad environmental reps…
Branson on the Bayou
Sit through The Theater Under the Stars version of Smokey Joe’s Café — The Songs of Leiber and Stoller, now at the Wortham, and you won’t have to travel to all the way to Branson, Missouri, to get a night of scrubbed-clean crooning. Lawrence-Welk styled versions of such familiar tunes…
Chow Time
What does a pissant television market such as, for instance, Midland, offer its viewers that Houston, fourth largest city in the United States, second largest port and 11th largest media market, does not? Let’s try some thing simple, something that speakers of Farsi and Fulani have in common, something that…
The Not-So-Great Outdoors
Most of us profess to love nature, although few of us have any sustained, unprotected contact with it. During the Song dynasty, Chinese scholars and artists presented contemplative, elegant and idealized views of nature. A solitary figure would be shown in thoughtful repose in a landscape. After the Mongol invasion,…
Fish Story
An old Italian legend tells of a poor woman who stood at the docks each evening begging fishermen for scraps from their daily catch to feed her family. She took the assortment of seafood home and made it into a wonderful soup, variations of which grace dining tables in every…
Bagels Rip My Flesh
Reuben: $5.85 Fish plate with nova: $7.25 Fish platter for two: $16.75 Chopped liver luncheon plate: $5.20
Stirred and Shaken
When a seaman arrives in Houston, whether he is a Jack Tar from Yokohama from the automobile carrier Senzuri Maru or a Ukrainian from Odessa with the crew of the grain transport Krasnaya Pizda, chances are he’ll end up at the Hong Kong Disco (8025 Clinton Drive, 713-673-8027, a seven-days-a-week…
Sumpin’ Filthy
Filthy McNasty is one of those performers you can’t keep to yourself. Hell, you’re kinda pissed no one has told you about him sooner. McNasty, also known as Brian Michael McManus, hasn’t been around quite long enough to be considered the city’s dirty little secret. McNasty has been around for…
Prodigal Sons
When Johnny Cash speaks to you in your dreams, you better pay heed. That’s exactly what Mark Stuart did after several nocturnal visits from the Man in Black, who spoke to the San Diego musician about, well, stuff, and also about playing country music. “Yeah, they were weird dreams. Don’t…
Racket
One of the more engrossing sites on the Web is www.jumptheshark.com. On this site, which takes its name from an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz water-ski jumps over a Great White to win a battle of wills with some California toughs, Web surfers attempt to trace the…
Publishing Gulf?
November 2000 must have seemed, to Dave Hamrick, like an awfully good time to be getting into the publishing business in Texas. Hamrick, a longtime regional community relations manager for Barnes & Noble in Austin, was on a roll. Widely known and respected among Texas’s literary set, he had been…
The Turn of the Screw
A few weeks ago, club owner Jay Ferrero gave his Richmond Strip sports bar Club Chico’s a total overhaul. Named after the moniker he was given when he was stationed in the army in San Antonio (apparently he was the only Puerto Rican around), the New York-born Ferrero decided to…
End of the Bend?
Bill Ivey sits on the rickety wooden bench in front of his Terlingua Trading Company, listening to the grand silence that can be the Big Bend — not even a cicada thrums in this suffocating summer heat. It’s before noon, and the mercury is far past 100 degrees. Here is…
Our Lady Peace
From the land of the deep freeze, and apparently the home of the deep thinkers, comes the latest release from Toronto post-grungers Our Lady Peace. It seems you won’t find these brainiac musicians grappling over skateboard ‘zines or drooling over the newest copy of Maxim. The CD is inspired in…
Blurred Vision
Jim Kennedy seems like the kind of man who would be welcomed by any community. A longtime resident who made his money from hotel and property management, this grandfather has always taken an interest in improving his hometown. Back in the early 1980s Kennedy made headlines when he founded and…
VuDú Café
At first listen, it’s easy to find shades of Marc Anthony, Chris Perez, Santana, Maná, even a little Ricky Martin, to VuDú Café. But the truth is VuDú sounds like only VuDú. VuDú Café was formed by guitarist Jesse Flores and drummer Steve Salazar in 1998. Flores, originally from San…
Olympic Dings
The Houston 2012 Committee has enlisted the Internet in its high-powered push to bring the Olympic Games to the city. But type “Houston 2012” into most Internet search engines, and you’ll come up with a site that would make the Bayou City boosters cringe (if they bothered to look at…
Playbill
True triple-threat talents are very rare in any music, and to this general rule the blues is no exception. While thousands can play the blues on the guitar, perhaps only 10 percent of those can also write great songs, and a smaller fraction of those can also sing. Fewer still…
Don’t Mess with Garnet
Police hauled state Representative Garnet Coleman to jail last week on misdemeanor assault charges filed by a Montessori school principal. Just three days before that, a contact called The Insider to complain that the legislator was out of control. Coleman, explained the source, had put himself on the board of…
Playbill
There was a day when MTV’s Unplugged segments were actually worth waiting for through the myriad of ads for pimple cream and shampoo. Yet in 2001, any young stud or studette with one cool rock song in their repertoire gets a shot at playing acoustic guitar. And hey, how about…
Cutting Through the Fog
Perhaps City Hall’s richest political spectacle in a long time occurred last week, during a debate over a proposed ethics ordinance that would force city employees to resign when they run for municipal offices. Fathoming the political crosscurrents requires a flowchart that goes far beyond the cryptic Houston Chronicle coverage…
Minibill
Though they prefer to categorize themselves as “melodic hardcore,” this Orange County-birthed quartet solidly melds punk and metal, finding the common ground between early Green Day and early Metallica (and especially that Kirk Hammettesque guitar). The group, founded in 1998 by members even now barely out of their teens, consists…
Up in the Air
With a sharply contested election less than three months away, there’s nothing an incumbent mayor likes more than a glowing profile in a nationally read magazine. So there’s good reason for Mayor Lee Brown to be smiling as broadly as he is on the cover of Continental Airline’s current in-flight…
Greek Tragedy
The social lessons of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, all of them suitable for framing in just about any dorm room, are these: War is bad. Love is good. The Italians love to sing, even when they’re supposed to be at war. The Greeks are freedom fighters. And whatever you do, don’t…