Zoned Out
The Myrtle Cruz Inc. accounting company usually gets between 250 and 500 pieces of mail daily at its downtown office. So it was unusual when not even one letter arrived on a recent day. Office manager Mary Jarmon found it even stranger when nothing was delivered on another day in…
Letting Go
Brenda Jones wasn’t supposed to have a chance. When her son was arrested last February for having marijuana on campus, Bellaire High School principal Bill Lawson said he had no discretion — the Level IV offense meant the sophomore would have to go the district’s alternative education campus for an…
One for the Geezers
Management at local television stations went 1-for-2 in the past week when it comes to litigation. KPRC somewhat easily turned aside a suit by a former cameraman who claimed he was fired for refusing to use a counterfeit media pass in order to interview then-governor George Bush (see News Hostage,…
Mercenary or Media Martyr?
Pick a heroine for the lead role in a national judicial showdown on the rights of journalists to protect sources, and you couldn’t get much worse than self-styled Houston crime writer-without-portfolio Vanessa LeVrier Leggett. After years of promoting herself as a soon-to-be-published author investigating assorted spectacular murder cases, Leggett has…
End of the Road
Far too often, those who work in the music industry are so concerned with making a living they often forget they’re capable, at their best, of making history as well. They sacrifice art and artists in the name of commerce, then sleep soundly wrapped in bedspreads made of silk and…
Truth Be Told
For Texas music royal Lee Roy Parnell, it’s odd to have a town like Macon, Georgia play such an important role in his development. After all, Parnell’s dad was a close friend of and performed with Bob Wills. Lee Roy debuted at age six with Wills and The Texas Playboys,…
Letters
Twin Piques Shed no tears: I am a Houston police officer who dealt with Reginald and Robert LaVergne [“Lost Boys,” by Wendy Grossman, August 9]. I was the first officer on the scene of Robert’s “altercation” with Officers Chaison and Higgins, who are two fine officers and citizens. I think…
Midnight Pumpkin
Like a father nervously awaiting his daughter’s return from her first date, the smitten, fiftysomething überfan paces around the Continental Club, leaning on a cane. Occasionally, he ventures onto the sidewalk on Main Street. She’s running a bit late, and the concern is etched across his bearded face as he…
Furniture for Dummies
The Furniture Guys, Ed Feldman and Joe L’Erario, have an unusual theory about DIY projects. While most of the bright-eyed fixer-uppers on cable cheerily suggest adding a whole new roof, or guest room, or even suggest redecorating the whole house, Ed and Joe offer how-to instructions in the possible –…
Racket
For Tim Murrah, Metropol’s eccentric owner/DJ/Britpop guru, it’s not about style. Most downtown clubs try to create buzz with their exclusivity, high covers, dazzling lights, and flavor-of-the-minute dance trax piped in direct from New York and LA. Not Murrah’s Metropol. Murrah’s idea is revolutionary in its simplicity. On a downtown…
The Hilarious B.I.G.
“I do comedy part-time, but I’m a full- time pimp,” says comedian Bruce Bruce. (The name, he maintains, appears on his birth certificate). Although the six-foot, one-inch, 350-pound Atlanta native (and father of three) insists he’s merely joshing, you can’t help but think that, in the back of this dude’s…
Playbill
No one is more aware of a trend’s limited shelf life than a record company executive. Lucky Boys Confusion learned this fact when its blend of ska, punk, rap, and reggae attracted the attention of Elektra. Since ska hybrid bands are so 1996, the label goaded LBC to elevate its…
Shellfish Behavior
The three-and-a-half-pound lobster is seductively presented with the tail cut into easily accessible halves, the massive claws pre-cracked, and the head section standing festively upright. A veritable vat of drawn butter rests between the curls of two bright red antennae. My mouth is watering like Pavlov’s dog, and all of…
Playbill
People who are surprised by Bobby Bare Jr.’s post-punk leanings must not have been listening when his daddy was recording. Papa Bare was pretty hip himself, having released what is perhaps country music’s first concept album in 1973, a collection of Shel Silverstein songs called Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends…
Cattle Drive
While there’s no shortage of Inner Loop restaurants ready to rustle up red meat, we recommend a drive to the new Ruth’s Chris (14135 Southwest Freeway, 281-491-9300) in Sugar Land. This spot is as gracious as a Southern gentleman, and more like a country club than the Richmond location. Try…
Fanboy Theater
Beware the filmmaker who looks through the camera’s lens and sees only himself on the other side, blowing kisses. He’s the fool who confuses “personal vision” with “jacking off,” and he’ll try every time to convince you there’s something meaningful and imaginative in the shallow and hackneyed. He is so…
Stirred and Shaken
Who is T.K. Bitterman? The answer is, there is no such person. Regardless, there is a T.K. Bitterman’s (2010 West Alabama, 713-529-8979), a Montrose-area watering hole that has been serving them up for some 16 years. It’s a bar where Houston’s tiny film community imbibes. Odd, really. The establishment, with…
As Good As He Gets
Woody Allen’s latest romp through Old New York combines (among other things) a skirt-chasing insurance investigator with the charm of a rodent, a wise-cracking Vassar grad who takes no guff and a nightclub hypnotist in a sequined turban who doubles as a major jewel thief. The year is 1940. The…
Puccini Goes Uptown
When Houston Ebony Opera Guild decided to stage La Bohème, Puccini’s tragic tale about struggling artists in Paris, director Talmage Fauntleroy searched for a way to tailor the composer’s most popular work to the company’s predominantly black cast. He found his answer in a section of northern Manhattan that, in…
Prose and Cons
It was almost 7 a.m., the hour Scott Nowell always set off for his accounting job at the prison furniture factory inside the Daniel Unit in West Texas. Every morning the routine was the same. He buzzed the guard on duty and waited for the familiar “pop” that meant the…
War Dance
On a late July day in East Texas, young Gilman Abbey sits at a big deerskin drum and beats out a slow, familiar rhythm. BOOM-boom-boom-boom. Abbey, descended from a legendary tribal chief, wears a T-shirt and shorts. His shoulder-length hair, streaked with premature gray, is gathered in a ponytail. His…
Your Cheatin’ Heart?
Anne Hudson Jones suspected it immediately. She’d just finished reading a Houston Chronicle review of the premiere of the play Heart of a Woman. The comedy tells the story of Texans Hannah and her husband, Duane, who dies and has his organs used for transplants. Hannah, who is having trouble…