Letters
Young, Pretty and Deluded I had to chuckle to myself when I read the article about the hard feelings of the Empire Cafe employees toward the restaurant’s owner [“Counter Revolution,” by Megan Halverson, July 7]. The employees’ method of creating customer loyalty by giving away food and coffee would definitely…
Press Picks
thursday august 8 Could It Be My Thyroid? Yes, yes it could. Thyroid disease is more prevalent and sneakier than you might think. Learn all about it at the Museum of Health and Medical Science with Dr. Sheldon Rubenfeld, founding chairman and medical director for the Thyroid Society for Education…
No Escape
Snake Plissken is back, and he’s still pissed. This singularly surly antihero first appeared in Escape from New York, John Carpenter’s 1981 cult classic. Still a popular rental item on home video, the movie imagines a not-so-distant future when Manhattan has been turned into a maximum-security prison. When Air Force…
They Grow Up Fast
Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to William Bennett agrees that, given the societal changes of the past two decades, today’s children have to grow up a lot more quickly than their parents did. Now we have two very different movies that offer comic takes on this phenomenon. One is a sweetly…
Winter blasts Macbeth
That Shakespeare in the park works well doesn’t come as much of a surprise. After all, it’s about the closest we can get to the pleasures of the original outdoor productions in London’s Globe Theatre. And though Miller Outdoor Theatre certainly lacks the ambiance of the orange carts and beer…
The Insider
Armed and Caucasian Last week we told you of a memo distributed by Harris County personnel director Janie Reyes that included a profile of potential perpetrators of workplace violence. One of the 21 “clues” that could tip supervisors to underlings predisposed to commit on-the-job mayhem was is a Caucasian male…
Cuban Classic
It probably should have been preceded by a drum roll, but instead, the faux-wood bowl slid through a curtained opening between Cafe Latina’s kitchen and dining area with no fanfare whatsoever. Picked up and placed on a counter, it looked like the subject of some great unknown painter of Caribbean…
Sounds Like a Winner!
Houston music fans are nothing if not reliable. Year in and year out, they stick by their favorite local artists; for evidence, just take a gander at the names that have proven themselves hardy perennials in the Press Music Awards. It’s hard not to be in awe of such unfettered…
Where the Art Is
After Bob and Nancy Mollers bought their first serious piece of art, an Enrico Baj collage, it went with them to downtown Chicago’s Drake Hotel, and sat in a finely upholstered Chippendale chair while they ate dinner. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. Something about the avant-garde collage…
Split Decision
With none of the public posturing that accompanied the initiation of the investigation, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office has quietly dropped its probe into the forensic techniques employed by Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, the head of the medical examiner’s DNA laboratory. The D.A.’s Office subpoenaed Johnson to appear before a…
Last Flights
Celestis Inc. vice president Charles Chafer is decked out in nice cowboy boots, clean jeans and a spiffily striped Izod sport shirt, and he’s sipping a 32-ounce Big Gulp soda while discussing the statistical “cremation densities” of various geographic areas — about 22 percent in the United States, compared to…
Grassroots Activism
They came. They saw. They sprayed … weed killer. On July 11, a band of angry lesbians invaded Pearland. Armed with Round-Up herbicide, they spelled “HOMOPHOBIC HIGH” on the lawn of Pearland High School. Outside the southwest corner of the nearby school administration building, they sprayed “HATE KILLS.” And then…