Brutality a LaBute
As the lights came up after a screening of the new Neil LaBute movie Your Friends and Neighbors, a colleague next to me growled disapprovingly, “That was a nasty movie.” For LaBute — whose divisive debut film, In the Company of Men, is probably the worst date-movie ever made –…
Spicy Proposition
Young girls played a crucial role in the early success of the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Now, substitute the Spice Girls for either of those rock and roll pioneers, and you’re presented with an interesting hypothetical: Could it be that the Spice Girls will one day be as revered as…
Bad Science — or No Science?
Is Zonagen a legitimate biotech company, or is it simply a group of slick opportunists trying to make a buck off other people’s innovations? Indeed, the only commodity Joe Podolski’s crew in The Woodlands seems capable of producing is common stock for the easily excited. Aside from Bonnie Dunbar’s zona…
Clubland
Big-city decadence will be the rule at Instant Karma when the club hosts a Velvet Underground tribute show Saturday. Local acts scheduled to perform: Texas Guinness Lovers, Rusted Shut, Rosebud, the Jeepneys, Senator Gravity, Hersling, StarTruck, Treehugger, Nobody Jones, Gandhi in Vegas and Invisible Robot Fish. All, of course, will…
Biological Disaster
On the afternoon of October 7, 1987, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar nervously paced the sidewalk in front of 1301 McKinney. Upstairs, in the offices of Fulbright & Jaworski, attorneys were putting the final touches on her application for patent protection of a specific protein clone that, when injected, inhibits fertility in…
Hot Plate
Seeing it from the street, you’d never guess that Otilia’s (7710 Long Point, 681-7203) is a Mexican restaurant. That’s because it’s housed in what looks like a wooden chalet — the kind you’d find in Germany’s Black Forest. It takes some getting used to. Each time I enter this place,…
Stirring the Pot
Weekends are typically money nights for Dan Robinson’s Voodoo Lounge, but this Saturday may be different. Noticeably on edge, the New York native surveys the mostly deserted interior of his newly renovated Shepherd Plaza nightclub. It’s almost 11 p.m., and the place is barely a quarter full. Those who’ve shown…
Dish
Tossing Some Salad Around Look out, Souper Salad. There’s a new posse in town offering up buffet-style health-conscious fare. The San Diego-based Sweet Tomatoes introduced its first Houston location off I-10, with a planned five to seven additional area restaurants on the drawing board. And based on an initial visit,…
Hound’s Hell
As tough as life has been for young Bruiser Tesar, don’t expect him to talk about it, even to a grand jury. Bruiser has a good excuse for his silence. He’s a 15-month-old labrador retriever. Houston police and city Animal Control officials can talk, but they are refusing to say…
The Insider
Party Showstopper Fiery Padilla political launch blows up There are ways, and ways, to embark on a political career, but 26-year-old native Houstonian Melina Padilla probably picked one of the worst in her maiden speech as a candidate for state representative. When the former aide to Democrat state Representative Jessica…
Letters
Maxey Flats II? Thanks for Shaila Dewan and Stuart Eskenazi’s powerful account [“Trench Warfare,” July 23]. Once the radioactive waste (mostly from commercial nuclear reactors) goes into the sand at Sierra Blanca, companies like Houston utilities and Texas utilities unload their responsibility for it on Texas taxpayers. Apparently, utility money…
Night & Day
Thursday August 20 Legendary dancer/choreographer George Balanchine once said, “All leading dancers want to dance Swan Lake at least once in their careers, and all audiences want to see them dance it.” And audiences will want to see leading ballerina Lauren Anderson, native Houstonian and one of Houston Ballet’s most…
Rugrats Roll In
Marketing-mad behemoths like Nickelodeon don’t often pass up a chance to sell tons of merchandise, but the kids’ cable network got caught flat-footed with Rugrats. Only two seasons of the cartoon were commissioned, ending in 1993. But the reruns of those episodes never left the air, and they proved so…
CottonEyed Cho
Actress and comedian Margaret Cho remembers vividly the last time she was in Houston, although it had nothing to do with her scheduled gig. “I went to this country and western club, and they had this big cow skull on the roof and a disco-ball saddle hanging from the ceiling,”…
Sexual Healing
The artfully turned opening of Vocessitas/Little Voices is the essence of filmic storytelling. The tale’s female protagonist leaves work and heads home in her car, which breaks down in a blighted neighborhood. The doe-eyed twentysomething grows increasingly agitated as she wanders the deserted moonscape seeking a human presence or a…
Setting a New Standard
I’ll try to be calm, but I can’t promise I’ll succeed because, in the past seven days, I’ve been to Tasca twice, and the experience both times…. Oh, what the hell! I might as well come right out and say it: The experience was extraordinary. My first visit left me…
Devil Inside
When local heavy-metal diehards Meanpeace perform at one of the many venues around Houston, lead singer Andre Chenier often throws homemade cassettes of the quartet’s music to audience members — small audio samples, if you will, of the unseemly experience they just witnessed. But the fact is: No four-track demo…
Party Hearty
Infernal Bridegroom Productions calls its red-haired, voluptuous, sassy-lipped actress Tamarie Cooper the “Lucille Ball of the Houston theater set.” But with her new play Tamalalia 3, currently at Stages Theatre, Cooper proves that her thoughtfully ironic though thoroughly silly and self-deprecating imagination might be more closely aligned with early Woody…
Brother Alone
The print advertisement for Neil Finn’s new album, Try Whistling This, places the artist smack dab in the middle of the road — literally. In the ad’s picture, it’s a fine day, the sky shielded by a thin layer of clouds. The artist, smartly clad in a dark suit, shoes…
Arias for All
Opera never truly belonged to the people until the Italians began religiously dedicating it to the masses a century ago. In Rome, it’s not unusual to see almost nothing but families basking in the cool, autumn air and the melodies of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, surrounded by the ancient baths…
Static
The mechanics of change… “How’d you notice that? You’re the first person that’s said anything.” Mary Cutrufello knows she’s been found out, and she reacts with a curious mix of embarrassment and pride. She averts her eyes, grins and giggles like a kid who’s just been fingered in a scheme…
Escapism from Houston
When successful romance authors pick the settings for their sappy, melodramatic novels, they know better than to conjure scenes of windswept lust in a fish-packing plant or the cubicle of an accountant’s office. According to the rules, after all, love only comes to those who dwell within lush and dreamy-eyed…
Rotation
Snoop Dogg Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told No Limit Eightball Lost Suave House Those who dare to seek parallels between the lanky, low-wattage Snoop Dogg and the corpulent, Southern-fried Eightball will be surprised to find that some do exist. Each, on their respective new CDs,…