Home Again
The first people to greet Roy Criner when he emerged from the Montgomery County Jail were the camera crews, swarming like gnats around the door of the squad car that had escorted him from the rear gate. Slowly he made his way to the makeshift podium for a brief statement…
Luna
Though she has taken a moon-based moniker and has a spacey writing quality to match, Luna is actually 20-year-old Houston native Cindy Duhe, who has been playing piano for more than half her life. This 15-minute, nine-track EP is her musical introduction as singer, player, composer and arranger. And a…
Nowhere to Land
Tim Ramey is an unfortunate 26-year-old soul whose mother loves him dearly even though four years ago he almost raped and killed her. Mentally ill, he will always need structure, medication and guidance. Because of his problems he won’t be able to get that living with his parents. “I want…
Melissa Adams
Don’t blame Bob Dylan for this CD, or James Taylor or Joni Mitchell. It’s not their fault that sometime during the 1960s and 1970s the singer-songwriter genre became popular. The conceit goes a little something like this: My life, thoughts and inspirations should be heard in song. So I’m going…
Memory Lanes
“Toinaments,” Monica Chieco says. She bowls in regional “toinaments.” She lugs around heavy “bohls.” Sometimes she throws strikes, and sometimes she throws “speh-uhs.” In anyone else, that mix of bowling talk and nasally vowels would threaten to erupt into the kind of New York meanness that unnerves Southerners. But when…
Conjunto’s King
Flaco Jimenez is the heavyweight champion of conjunto, a style nourished here in Texas. What honky-tonk was for working-class whites, conjunto was for working-class Texan-Mexicans. The 61-year-old Jimenez, the son of the son of an accordion player, has the sound in his blood. And then some. Jimenez makes the accordion…
The Bit Player
“I’m not the celebrity type,” says Vincent D’Onofrio, and he does not lie. His is a household name in very few neighborhoods; it appears in film credits buried just beneath those of actors more famous, or just luckier. Rare is the filmgoer who utters the words, “Dude, let’s go check…
King Diamond
When Marilyn Manson was just a skinny punk practicing his pentagrams in the margins of his Algebra II textbook, King Diamond was already recruiting thousands of headbangers worldwide into the Brethren of Beelzebub. First it was with his hugely influential, early thrash/black metal band Mercyful Fate, then with his own…
Arena Wars
The Houston Rockets have acceded to County Judge Robert Eckels’s demands for changes in an agreement between the team and the sports authority. So you’d think the court would be clear for a fast break to a November referendum on the downtown basketball arena. But with time to mount a…
Greater Houston’s Greatest Pits
1. Austin’s Barbecue Eagle Lake, (979)234-5250. Established: Store opened circa 1950 Type of pit: Fabricated steel cylinder on wheels Style: Meat market Atmosphere: This former filling station has no charm; it’s the barbecue outlet of the old Austin’s Grocery Store next door. Get it to go. What to get: Austin’s…
Letters 08-24-2000
A Ring of Reverence Heartfelt choke holds: Jesse Washington did a wonderful job on the article about Texas All-Star Wrestling [“Ring Dings,” August 10]. It was great. I’ve been watching TASW for only a short time, but I thought the interviews were awesome. If I could pick a favorite, it…
Same As the Old Boss
You may not have noticed it, but the Democrats held their convention last week. As compared to how the local media blanketed the Republican convention two weeks earlier, the Dems made barely a blip on the local radar screen. Imagine our disappointment. We had been so hugely entertained by Channel…
The Barber’s New Clothes
In staging Gioacchino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Houston Ebony Opera Guild abandons European pantaloons and petticoats in favor of a new English-only production that features North African garb and a true Moorish feel. Rossini’s great comic opera — still familiar from classic Bugs Bunny cartoons — is a far…
Full of Manure
Just this past August 11, the mighty American Broadcasting Corporation, via its employee John Stossel, issued an apology to all viewers of ABC’s investigative journalism program 20/20, for a story he had anchored in February that had been rerun in July. The organizations that he cited as having caused him…
Down But Not Out
Houston is not the fight town it was in the ’50s and ’60s, though the city does still have strong connections to the sport. Evander Holyfield trains in Houston, and George Foreman was raised here. Still, past efforts to promote regular fights here have been inconsistent. For the past three…
Godfather on Ice
It’s nine o’clock at night on the Kemah Boardwalk, and it’s still unbearably hot. I’m sitting in a deck chair outside the Bamboo Bar of the Aquarium [11 Kemah Waterfront, (281)334-9010], praying for a breeze. I take another big slurp of my Goombah Splash and feel the frozen rum do…
Location Be Damned
The legend of 1512 West Alabama has developed like a spellbinding gothic novel, beginning with a few blessedly naive souls who refused to believe in the “curse” and progressing through a series of “grisly discoveries” that have forced the entire town to come to grips with the mysterious, ominous powers…
The Art of Smoke
There are three men sitting on a bench in front of Dozier’s Grocery on FM 359 in rural Fulshear. I pause on the wood-plank front porch to read the handwritten notes on the bulletin board. A pickup truck honks as it passes by. The three men look up and wave…
The Great Divide
Rational as we denizens of this corporate technocracy are, no amount of science can undo our voodoo fascination with identical twins. From the mythical Romulus and Remus to the pubescently perky Mary-Kate and Ashley, look-alikes have always captured our imagination. These mirror images are walking, talking symbols of yin and…
Pillow Talk
Despite Houston’s current love affair with South American beef, for this meat lover’s money, the veal pillows at La Mora [912 Lovett, (713)522-7412] are the stuff of sweet dreams. Officially called cuscinetti ($17.50), the dish features three cushions stuffed with mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and thinly sliced prosciutto. Grilling gives the…
Clash of Cultures
Speaking off the toque: Carl Walker, executive chef at Brennan’s, 3300 Smith Street, (713)522-9711 Q. What is the difference between Cajun and Creole cuisine? A. First of all, Cajun is country, and Creole is more of a New Orleans, city style of cooking. You think of it as more refined,…
Everyday Art
Monkey Men from Mars Invade the North Pole is one of many possible names for Erick Swenson’s untitled tableau of weird space baboons dressed in exquisitely tailored denim and fleece snowsuits. The leader has a coordinating denim body bag/backpack for the retrieval of any possible lost member of this polar…
Forgotten Lines
Imagine walking into a studio and finding an unreleased recording of a Jimi Hendrix concert, a missing Beatles tape or the Beach Boys Smile sessions. A few years ago, producer Randy Miller unearthed something not that historic, but of supreme importance to many Houston musicians: early recordings of the late…
A Wasted Mind
Make no mistake: The Cell is, easily, the most unforgettable film of a pedestrian, forgettable summer. You walk out of the theater grateful for the light and the heat; it is, in places, a rather chilling and claustrophobic film. In places, The Cell is also a rather dazzling film; there…
At the Crossroads
Hadden Sayers likes control. More often than not, only his hands are on the steering wheel of his career. He makes every decision that affects his work, and labors over details. He fronts two eponymous bands, one for live gigs, the other for recording. The latter has been taking up…
Turn of the Screwball
“Be cool, get chicks.” While that’s paraphrased and boiled down, it’s nonetheless the essential creed of Dex (Donal Logue), the corpulent connoisseur of carnality who lumbers through this debut feature from Jenniphr Goodman as if he were Paul Bunyan and every woman in sight were a tree. Overweight and underemployed,…
Mornings with Woody
Around 1995, the Gavin company, a radio research firm, introduced the format Americana. The name itself led to the obvious question, What the hell is it? Like pornography, the prefab format’s defining qualities were elusive. But you knew it when you heard it. And over time, you learned to recognize…
Accidental Sexologist
Back in 1986, when the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality gave University of Houston sociology professor William Simon its distinguished achievement award, he joked, “It’s because I’m the only person who has succeeded in making sex both dull and unprofitable.” By helping this often taboo subject to seem…
Last Call
Some people get their kicks jumping out airplanes. Others by injecting potentially lethal substances between their toes. And yet others from living vicariously through others. For adventurous white boys who have always wanted to re-enact the much-loved scene from Weird Science in which Anthony Michael Hall’s character gets sloshed with…
Room to Crow
When Betty Heacker moved her business, the Wabash Antiques and Feed Store, down Washington Avenue in 1990, the new location included a cinder-block building and a chunk of Houston history. Beside the building stood a majestic pecan tree once known as the West End Jail. In the ’20s, prisoners were…
Laptop Liberaces
Rows upon rows of binary code scroll up Kim Kraft’s computer screen. Like a player piano, his CPU reads these hieroglyphs and generates music. Though the song sounds like just another progressive house tune, it isn’t. It’s an example of an under-recognized genre called tracking — music made by non-musicians…
Throwing Away the Key
Steven Russell knew justice would be swift; he just hoped it would be merciful. After a day and a half of testimony last week, a Walker County jury found Russell guilty of escape charges in only 13 minutes, and that included the time it took to elect a foreman. That…
Stuck Mojo
Though she has taken a moon-based moniker and has a spacey writing quality to match, Luna is actually 20-year-old Houston native Cindy Duhe, who has been playing piano for more than half her life. This 15-minute, nine-track EP is her musical introduction as singer, player, composer and arranger. And a…