Out of the Closets
The idea, explains Judy Reeves, came from Rainbo de Klown. His real name is Rick Hurt, Judy explains, but in the GLBT community, everybody knows Rainbo. Just like everybody knows that GLBT stands for “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender,” the polite, inclusive, 12-clumsy-syllables way to say queer. Last summer, on…
Rotation
Sonic Youth nyc ghosts & flowers Geffen Melancholy often feels good. It can be a restorative, reflective state. Unlike depression, melancholy holds a certain glow, the enlightenment of realizing the glass is always exactly half full and half empty. Bleakness, on the other hand, is a void. If any sensations…
Andy, Opie and the Almighty
A sign saying “Lemonade 5 cents” hangs over the door. An American flag is on the far wall, and a drab Persian rug lies on the floor. The right wall is taken up with the false front of a happy yellow house. The front porch is potted in fake daisies,…
Nothing Small About It
“This is why women get fat,” Eva said. She slid her fork aside in surrender, her initial lust for the chocolate “zuccoto” cake at Maggiano’s Little Italy now melting into wariness. “They order something like this, take it home, get depressed, and then they eat the whole thing!” I couldn’t…
The Talking Penis
I am Vlad the Impaler, Joe Eszterhas’ penis. You know Joe, right? Bigfoot-looking son of a bitch, like Jerry Garcia after he swallowed Brian Wilson on an Acapulco Gold high? The guy who wrote Basic Instinct and Showgirls and Flashdance and a whole lotta crap for which he was paid…
Ethnic Explorer
The jellyfish is nice and crunchy. Long slices of the transparent sea creature are marinated in a rice vinegar dressing with lots of fresh ginger. “Too salty,” Jay Francis says dismissively, about the $3.95 cold jellyfish salad. “I like salty,” I protest. “Try this double spicy chicken!” he insists. I…
Not Fade Away
Certainly no one can claim that Buddy Holly didn’t work fast. In the tragically short span of his life — a mere 22 years — Holly (born Charles Hardin Holley in 1936) not only secured a legacy as one of the architects of rock and roll with a string of…
Secret Storm
It was like a scene from a touring stage version of The Wizard of Oz at Enron Field on July 23. The roof was closed to keep out the stifling afternoon heat, of course, but as a freakishly strong storm rumbled across downtown, things got a little dicey in the…
Bombs Away
Nearly 20 years ago, on a well-lit stage in a popular San Francisco comedy club, Jake Johannsen experienced the sweet pain of bombing. He stammered his way through five minutes of material that he cannot recall, shaking and stuttering until he found the nearest exit. Discouraged? A little. Scared? Out…
Letters 08-03-2000
Pollandaise Sauce I so much enjoyed your article on Gary Polland being boss of the Harris County Courthouse [“GOP Inc., by Tim Fleck, July 20]. I have spoken to many lawyers, and even filed a grievance, but could not convince anyone that Polland was string-pulling. Most people did not believe…
Saturday Night Special
Annabelle Weenick’s Saturday Night in Uncertain is stuffed with the sort of East Texas good ole boys who would actually buy one of those singing largemouth bass toys at Eckerd’s. Predictable as their brand of beer, the twang-talking fellas, who hang around Lou’s Fun-n-Fish Lodge, also manage to create enough…
A Tale of Two Fishes
If you’ve never been baited by the fish or shrimp tacos ($3.25 each) at Berryhill Hot Tamales [2639 Revere, (713)526-8080; 1717 Post Oak, (713)871-TACO], let us be the first to tell you: They’re the kind of thing you can easily get hooked on. Invented there in the early ’90s, these…
Attack of the Killer Developers
Houston’s civic ethos is change. Change for the better, it is hoped, but change above all. “New and improved” is not an advertising cliché for Houston’s leadership — it is a mantra. Houston began in the area around Market Square because Allen’s Landing, down the slope on Buffalo Bayou, was…
The Horror
Anyone who has seen Richard O’Brien’s cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show knows that the best part of the ridiculous old film is the devoted fans who have raised the pedestrian act of midnight moviegoing to a bawdy art. They shout at the screen, dance in the aisles and…
Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Popular
Unless your name is Miles Davis or Duke Ellington, it’s not hip to be a commercially successful jazz musician. Witness the current backlash against Diana Krall. The singer-pianist’s When I Look in Your Eyes has been sitting on top of the jazz charts for a year and, depending on the…
The Jury’s Still Out
A juried exhibition is the art-world equivalent of the lottery, but with significantly better odds. Say an artist completes a conceptually and physically weighty sculpture he would like the world, or at least some people in Houston, to see. He decides to enter it in a juried exhibition, an action…
World Jazz
Here are some of the noteworthy performers taking the stage this year as part of the Houston International Jazz Festival, August 4 through August 6. Tenor sax player Stanley Turrentine’s trademark “sugar” sound consists of a precise, huge-toned bluesy feel that’s delivered seemingly without effort. By the time Turrentine was…
The (Balding) Eagle Has Landed
Think of it as Armageddon for moviegoers with grown-up attention spans. Space Cowboys, perhaps the most pleasant surprise of this long, hot summer at the megaplex, is an immensely entertaining and unabashedly retrograde drama about four over-the-hill heroes who grab their last best chance for extraterrestrial adventure. Clint Eastwood, Tommy…
Americana Psychos
Early in his career, the late Townes Van Zandt was tagged as a “songwriter’s songwriter.” As best as can be reckoned, this glib and overused morsel of critic-speak translates as “too damn good to have a hit record.” Still, Van Zandt was quite an artist. If anyone knew tunesmithery, it…
Invisible Id
There are many, many productive paths a bright, ambitious young fellow can pursue in America. He can, for instance, start a mediocre rock band and try to make music for beer commercials. He can also design a Web site to advertise Web sites about Web sites. Or there’s always the…
Rotation
Attrition The Hand That Feeds: The Remixes Invisible Records Founded in the early 1980s by electronic innovator Martin Bowes, Attrition has always stood apart from its gloom-and-doom contemporaries. While dark, Attrition’s music has always been geared for dance. Back in the day, dour goths had yet to realize that bands…
Saturated Fat
For one moment — and that’s all you can stomach — really look at Eddie Murphy’s filmography. You will notice how his bad films (and most transcend that feeble definition, falling more often into the “wretched” category) far outweigh the good. You will see that those few good films –…
Local Rotation
The Council Relentless Undagrounpresha Fresh-out-the-box local rap duo the Council is attempting to break from Houston hip-hop conventions. Just look at the cover of its debut, Relentless. Sure, the boys are ripping off the whole white-suited stance DMX and Nas made famous on the poster for the movie/flop Belly, but…
Can’t Stop Running Water
The practice of motion picture production in China is clearly in flux. While films have long emanated from government studios, political changes in the past decade or so have led to co-productions with other countries — Farewell My Concubine (with Hong Kong, then a British territory), Dr. Bethune (with Canada…
Outta Sight
Everyone knows there are only a handful of special events a week — other than weekend fare, of course — really worth setting down the remote control for. Two have just gone off the radar. Which means two more will have to fill the void, which will happen — someday…
Left For Dead
It was Saturday night, and 17-year-old Kevin Rivas and his best friend, Robert Hidalgo, were cruising southeast Houston. It was the weekend after Thanksgiving, 1999, and the two high school students randomly decided to steal a white Honda from a woman. Kevin drove his mother’s Mazda MPV around the cove…
Debt Releaf
Everybody who has ever smoked a cigarette in any one of a few Houston venues knows this scenario: You’re bracing yourself up against the bar, content not to fight the crowd for a better look-see of the band, and you’re holding your beer in your armpit while retrieving a pack…
Tax Lean
Joan Harmon, the assistant controller at Lamons Metal Gasket Company, takes a moment to reflect on the $8.5 million tax exemption that both the city and county approved for the company to stay in Houston and build a new factory. “That’s a nice chunk of change not to have to…
Subject: Hardcore
Designs for Automotion, the current album from Buffalo’s Snapcase, is pure hardcore. While labelmate Earth Crisis has broadened its base, moving its own brand of hardcore a step toward the mainstream, Snapcase hasn’t budged an inch. Rather, as evidenced by the new disc, the band pulls the mainstream toward it,…
Innocent at Last
After three years of denial, Montgomery County District Attorney Mike McDougal could no longer ignore the truth: Roy Criner did not rape Deanna Ogg, a crime for which he has served almost ten years in prison. McDougal recommended clemency in a July 28 petition to the Texas Board of Pardons…
Rodney Hayden
Rodney Hayden — In explaining how she eventually started singing the same music as her famous father, Rosanne Cash observed that you have to have lived a bit before you can appreciate country. The Man in Black’s daughter made this cogent observation more than two decades ago, back when country…
Murphy’s Law
According to West End legend, one evening Billy Murphy stood in front of his home on Inker Street and shook his fists in the direction of Jax Grill. Murphy, an animated man, says he would never make such a gesture. But witnesses at Walter’s Ice House, two doors down from…
Astroturf in a Glass
El Tiempo Cantina Tres Caballos [502 Main, (713)221-1695] is a restaurant with a lot of names. I translate the Spanish in my head: the time, bar, three horses. The place is old-fashioned with monochromatic paintings of horses and Mexican villas on the walls. The bar is a huge island with…