Hot Shots
There’s a scene about two-thirds of the way through Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado where the stylish villain of the piece, a white-suited drug lord named Bucho (Joaquim de Almeida), orders one of his underlings to dispose of someone who has aroused his displeasure. But the underling isn’t meant to simply shoot…
Heavenly Stroll
A glance at the names associated with Like Water for Chocolate director Alfonso Arau’s big budget filmic fable A Walk in the Clouds is enough to strike terror in the heart of any Like Water cultist. They might well wonder if Arau’s pulsing, sexy vision could survive the Zucker Brothers…
The Trouble with Larry
Larry Don McQuay is trying to remember how many children he’s molested in his 31 years. He doesn’t have a precise count, but as best he can estimate, it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 240. It’s enough to disgust even him. Or so he says. McQuay is perspiring, having just…
The Insider
Go Figure The federal government works in mysterious ways. Take the ongoing dance step between banking regulators and Houston financier Charles “Chip Chop” Hurwitz, scourge of the redwoods and operator of the lagging Sam Houston Race Park. A few weeks ago the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation filed a long-delayed lawsuit…
Beat It, Bud
Just when it looked like the Oilers were going to turn things around, maybe go 5-11, along comes the moving-to-Nashville distraction, forcing you and me and Bob and Elyse and Russ Small and Dale Robertson and everybody else with a modicum of civic pride to come to grips with the…
Party Pooper
After the drubbing they took last November, you’d think local Democrats would be getting themselves together before Republicans end up holding every elected office in Harris County. But if you thought that, you’d be wrong. They’re Democrats, after all. At the center — or, some say, the root — of…
Woof, Woof
If Snow White were in her fifties, she would probably look something like Sonya Fitzpatrick — pressed and painted and polished, her hair fluffed just right. Maybe she would also have a pink-and-green parlor like Sonya Fitzpatrick’s, and maybe, like Fitzpatrick, she would be selling her skills as an animal…
Press Picks
thursday august 24 Party on the Plaza As the sweaty, sticky people of Houston wait for another summer to end, the Party on the Plaza people bring us a sultry Southern concert. The Reverend Horton Heat and Southern Culture on the Skids play rowdy, unrepentant music that would thrill any…
Diner’s Notebook
Old: While we’re more or less on the subject of red meat, let me offer a plaintive paean to the changeless Hofbrau, where inexpensive steaks can be had on a regular basis with things a reasonable gastronome might like to eat. One of said things is the deliciously wilted, immoderately…
Troubadour for a Lost Generation
Todd Snider must have had plenty to think about all those hours he spent sitting in the darkness. As a troubled teenager on the lam from college and a screwed up family life, he’d escape to the roof of his brother’s Santa Rosa, California, house when desperation set in. Snider…
Promises,Promises
Cranberries guitarist/songwriter Noel Hogan sounds surprisingly carefree as he ponders the expectations that surrounded the band after its million-selling debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, made the group one of modern rock’s brighter hopes. “We just get on with what we have to do because, like,…
Critic’s Choice
It’s not a natural instinct to pity your betters, but you almost have to feel sorry for Lyle Lovett. In a way, Katy’s own local-boy-made-good flew a tad too close to the sun, and the sun — for a moment — threatened to burn him back down to earth. That…
Rotation
Naughty by Nature Poverty’s Paradise Tommy Boy If any rappers deserve to be called poets, Treach and Vinnie of Naughty by Nature do. The two don’t plumb the depths of human existence, but man, do they love to play with words. They fire off line after line chock full of…
Letters
Gone to Canada (And Taking Our Suspenders) I am so tired of your paper’s knee-jerk, fuzzy-headed, yogurt-eating, suspender-wearing, tree-hugging liberal bias. I want to scream! I refer specifically to your cartoon about our dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima [“This Modern World,” by Tom Tomorrow, August 3]. So let’s get…
One Man’s Meat
Flipped inside out of its shell, and scored to unfold like a chrysanthemum, the two-pound Australian lobster tail looked as if it were not entirely of this earth. And it wasn’t. “It’s $69.95,” murmured the waiter at Lynn’s Steakhouse, presenting his exhibition platter of mountainous raw meats for our inspection…
Bittersweet Pill
You oughta know by now about Alanis Morissette, whose Jagged Little Pill has turned spite into a selling point. But what you might not know about are the secrets hidden beneath her spitfire attitude. Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” on heavy rotation at radio stations all over the country, has become…
Got On the Bus
On a recent Saturday morning at the Zocalo Theater and Performance Art Company compound on Feagan street in the Heights, the sun beat down on a scene animated with the frantic scurrying of a kicked-over anthill. The two acre light-industrial property, leased by Zocalo from landlord and District Attorney) Johnny…