King of the Pile
Butch Forest is 53, on the tall side, gregarious, strong, nondescriptly handsome, with the sort of casually bearish bearing and the sort of textured skin tone and the sort of thatchy blond forearm hair that begs he be described as sandy. Central casting might pitch him as a car salesman…
Chorus Classic
Crisis came to George Frederick Handel in the summer of 1741. His failing health and flagging career threatened to ruin his prominence as the preeminent opera composer of his day. The German-born composer — whom the English claim as their own — was paralyzed by a stroke and beleaguered by…
Carbonated Cash
Late in the fall, the Center for Science in the Public Interest released a “Liquid Candy” study warning that soaring soft drink consumption by kids constitutes a very real long-term health threat. Forty years ago, kids drank twice as much milk as cola. Now the reverse is true. Researchers linked…
Weighty Rap Power
Mia X — Salt-n-Pepa tanked big-time with their last album. Queen Latifah and MC Lyte are barely registering on the hype-o-meter with theirs. You know the state of female rap is in trouble when the soon-to-be-released new album from ghetto nymphet Foxy Brown is the most highly anticipated female rap…
Battle of the ‘Bots
The point of ELEC 201, Dr. John Bennett said, is to prove that engineering, and engineers, aren’t dull. Explaining the joys of creation, Dr. Bennett quoted Sartre (“to do is to be”); he quoted John Stuart Mill (“to be is to do”), and he quoted Sinatra (“dobedobedo”). All semester long,…
Hot Plate
What to order when you don’t know what you want? Try the $8 Mediterranean salad plate at the Daily Review Cafe (3412 West Lamar, 520-9217). The Middle East-inspired medley caroms from hot to cold, sweet to spicy and creamy to crunchy, all on the same satisfying plate. The crispy fried…
Coming Down to the Liar
Former city councilman Ben Reyes dabbed wearily at his shadowed eyes and momentarily seemed on the verge of tears. As a defendant in the city hall bribery conspiracy sting trial, his last stint on the witness stand inched toward a conclusion last week. After hundreds of hours of court time…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (Alberta, Canada) announced in November that this year’s single permit to hunt an Alberta big-horn sheep was won by Sherwin Scott of Phoenix with a high bid of $405,000 (U.S.). The foundation will use the money for conservation. Scott said he was elated…
Letters
18-Wailers I read with some bemusement your recent article on the difficulties encountered by Pasadena police when trying to get trucking companies to obey the law [“Semi Safe,” by Bob Burtman, December 3]. A couple of years ago, the Internal Revenue Service tried to reach out to the local intermodal…
Pass the Gasfor Garza
You can’t fault Enron Oil & Gas chief executive Forrest E. Hoglund for lack of enthusiasm about recently elected Railroad Commissioner Tony Garza, the Republican secretary of state under Governor George W. Bush. In his zest for raising late-train cash for Garza, who will now serve as a state regulator…
A Bug’s Life
To say that Karen Brandreth is an eclectic entrepreneur is something of an understatement. The pretty blonde with the big smile is a singer, a former owner of a Galveston tavern, a movie extra, a small-plane pilot, a real estate agent, an in-demand private chef … and she makes art…
Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot
Mitch Hedberg sounds like a slacker. Even stone-cold sober, on his way to a gig near his hometown of Minneapolis, the easygoing standup comedian mumbles like the marijuana-smoking teens in those “Just Say Nah …” radio ads. It’s probably just the fumes from a career in overdrive. This year alone,…
Gutsy George
Sunday in the Park with George, inspired by the life and art of George Seurat, is one of Stephen Sondheim’s most ambitious pieces. Musicals rarely run much deeper than happy entertainment. But this 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the lonely and obsessive nature of an artist’s life is a moving…
Okay, We’re Getting Really Serious Now
In a two-in-one effort, www.houstonpress.com and Hypercon, Inc. present “Christmas (Holiday) Cards from the Edge” Gallery & Contest at www.houstonpress.com/extra/postcard/index.html. You can: 1. Send us a special holiday scene that catches your eye. Take a photo (color or black-and-white) and send it to us right away. We want to showcase…
Hedonist Theater
It looks really good. It looks really good. It looks really good. Would that it were not my job to come up with something more than that to say about the current Dan Flavin/Donald Judd exhibit at the Menil Collection and the new permanent Flavin installation at the museum’s Richmond…
Night & Day
Thursday December 17 This is your last chance to see “Collection in Context: Selected Contemporary Photographs of Hands” from the Henry Mendelssohn Buhl Collection. That’s right, hands. The slightly fetishistic Mr. Buhl has collected nearly every photograph taken in the last 50 years that has anything to do with these…
Whale’s Tale
On May 30, 1957, the Los Angeles Times reported that the body of “the distinguished film producer and director James Whale” had been found floating in the swimming pool at his home in Pacific Palisades. Fully clothed, Whale’s corpse exhibited a head wound. “Whale,” the Times went on to point…
Dish
Dacapo’s Downfall The lady did protest too much: Despite co-owner Leticia Guzman Graham’s repeated claims to the contrary this summer, it now appears that Dacapo’s Cafe on the Parkway truly was in trouble. Recently-weds Leticia and Kirk Graham boarded up Dacapo’s doors on November 17, blaming “irreconcilable differences” with the…
Labor of Love
Robert Guediguian’s Marius and Jeannette invents its own genre — the left-wing working-class romantic fairy tale. This French import succeeds so well, and so charmingly, you’ll wonder why somebody didn’t try the formula sooner. (Of course, maybe they did, and their efforts simply never reached our distant shores.) It also…
Those Boys from Brazil
I last visited Brazil Brasilero in August and loved it. It was a simple storefront then, tucked in a frankly ugly strip center at the corner of Kirkwood and Briar Forest. The restaurant offered a quirky jumble of Brazilian foodstuffs, Portuguese language videos for rent and a handful of mismatched…
Return Mail
Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it’s always a pleasant surprise to find a decent one like Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Ephron, of course, made her bones five and a half years ago with the huge hit Sleepless in Seattle, but since…
Rotation
B.B. King Blues on the Bayou MCA More than any other performer, B.B. King has personified modern blues. At home and abroad, people of all (or no) musical interests can readily identify the genre’s defining superstar. Since first recording in 1949, he has won more Grammys, been given more honorary…
Exodus Lost
DreamWorks’s grandiose attempt at an animated feature for adults is a flimsy musical about Moses — a Sunday-school filmstrip ultralarge and decked out with the spectacle of Hollywood Bible epics. Slender sermons nestle among flashy action sequences and diaphanous fashion statements from the more tasteful pages of the Nefertiti’s Secret…
A Practical Angel
With all the pre-millennial hooey about angels, let’s not forget that real life, as screwy and base as it can seem these days, does indeed have its angels. I’m not talking about divine apparitions announcing virgin births or offering words of salvation to help those near death somehow survive; if…
All Good Dogs Go to Heaven
Shadows from the oaks sweep down across these few green acres of Southwest Houston, where barking guard dogs summon forth an unshaven man in a faded T-shirt. Caretaker John Alpert silences the canine sentries and shows a visitor the Houston Pet Cemetery, open since 1938. Living in a cottage on…
On Beyond Christian Rock
“I think I’m pretty hungry tonight,” says Doug Pinnick, vocalist/bassist for Houston-based, internationally-known, hard-rock band King’s X, glancing over the menu at Mama’s Cafe on Westheimer. “I think I’ll go with the catfish. Grilled. With a side of spinach and corn.” It’s a full meal, though he probably should be…