Violence, TV and Demagoguery
Politicians are usually at their most pernicious when they’re spouting homespun homilies for C-SPAN. So you knew the republic was in danger when, during the October 20 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on television violence, chairman Ernest Hollings scolded TV executives for stalling on promises to take the gore off the…
Auntie Maim
Mercy killing as madcap mayhem. Corpses hidden, moved, buried and discovered like dogs at the bone. Insanity brushed aside as the eccentricity of personality. Sweet old sisters who wouldn’t think of committing a beloved nephew to a mental institution but then relent if they can go too. A villian hard…
Letters
Crash and Learn Responding angrily to music criticism because of differing opinions seems a ridiculous waste of breath and bile. But I feel that Brad Tyer did Crash Worship a disservice in the November 18 Press by lumping them in the same category as the men’s movement and modern primitivism…
A walk down Telephone Road, catching a vanishing Houston
I was attracted to Telephone Road by its comfortable human scale and sense of place. In 1990, I began to come here with my camera to catch the remnants of a Houston that thrived before the advent of freeways, shopping malls and hyper-markets. My goal is to preserve in photographs…
And I Ran (From the ’80s)
Blame it on Bloodfart (they won’t care), but the ’80s revival has hit Houston — for better or worse — with a vengeance. De Schmog vocalist Diane Koistenen says she spent the past three months hanging around bars, chatting with bands and singing stupid songs, before the idea of a…
Journey to the South
Nature is an active force in the South. Indigenous live oaks, Spanish moss and the ever-present kudzu flourish. Snakes, possums and raccoons populate the countryside. The impenetrable atmosphere softens form; nature pulsates with a quickened cycle of life. This is not a passive environment, but one that imposes itself on…
Fatwa This
Thanks to an occassional entry in the old Worldfest film festival, we knew that Iran was why past tense? in a surprising filmmaking boom. The surprise comes in part because of sheer numbers — the country produces scant? generous? 50 films a year — but mostly because it’s hard to…
Mrs. Doubtfire
Imagine Robin Williams playing a character who crossdresses as a 60-ish woman so that he can get a job as nanny to his children, whom he misses dreadfully, now that he’s divorced. Now imagine that his ex-wife has a maturing yuppie boyfriend, with whom Williams-Woman is required to spend some…
The Heavenly Twins
The mysterious symbiotic relationship between identical twins is penetratingly rendered in Christa Ritter and Rainer Langhans’ documentary, The Heavenly Twins. Gisela and Jutta Schmidt’s unique synergy unfolds through candid interviews with these famous German sisters. It’s supplemented with comments from friends, family and observers, and with photographs and home movies…
Boys’ Shorts: The New Queer Cinema
There’s not much new in Boys’ Shorts: The New Queer Cinema, a feature-length program of six short gay films. In mostly uninspired ways, it rehashes general aspects of gay life that most people are probably familiar with. The most interesting is Christopher Newby’s Relax. Not for what it says –…
The Final Conspiracy
Attorney-at-law Brad Kizzia is hardly able to contain himself. Punching his phone to put the caller on hold — in mid-conversation — he sputters excitedly to a visitor in his office: “Do you know who this is?” “It’s Mark Lane!” Kizzia blurts, unable to await a guess. “The Mark Lane.”…
Picks
Thursday December 2 John Mooney Testimoney is Mooney’s latest effort on Viceroy Records, and it’s the final nail in the coffin of anyone who claims there’s a more distinctive white blues player anywhere. Mooney studied with Son House in his hometown of Rochester, New York (Mooney says that sitting at…
Thai and Thai Again
Nit Noi Thai restaurant’s gracious atmosphere is so charming, it’s easy to become a member of the restaurant’s “family,” a customer who returns often to exchange pleasantries and stories with the staff as well as to enjoy their excellent fare. Now they have opened Nit Noi Too in the Rice…
Hendrix: Dead, Live and Unearthed
A British dance band called Beautiful People recently released a full-length CD called If 60’s Were 90’s, and if the title’s question causes a tiny back-of-the-throat hippy-hating retch, it probably shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. Because, you see, Beautiful People’s claim to fame on this disk (you ever heard of them…
Cormanosaur
What with Steven Spielberg’s dinosaurs stomping through Jurassic Park, Roger Corman’s got left behind in the prehistoric shuffle. ThatÕs right, the king of B movies — auteur of Big Bad Mama, Eat My Dust, Rock and Roll High School, eight Vincent Price-Edgar Allen Poe classics — made a sci-fi monster…
Being There
Since the public seems ready to accept Oliver Stone’s quirky version of November 22 events as history, we figured there was no one better to discuss assassination theory with than the man who actually played John F. Kennedy in the movie JFK. Not credible enough for you? OK, he also…
Uncivil Liberties
“They got the kids and we got the house,” said Jay Jacobson, director of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, as he recently assessed the often bitter divorce between the Houston ACLU and the Clark Read Foundation, the former fundraising arm of the Houston chapter. It is…
The Park at the Heart of Our City
Everybody who grew up in Houston loves Hermann Park, based on a childhood memory of going to the zoo, to Miller Outdoor Theatre, to family picnics in the Shelter. Everyone comes here as a child. In fact, if Houston had a Central Park, this would be it. All cross-sections of…
New Blues
When Keith Richards finally got around to starting a band, he was regarded as a blatant and cheap imitator of Chuck Berry. “I used to slavishly copy Chuck Berry,” Richards recently admitted. But it was Richards’ adoration for the blues/boogie style that set the stage for one of the most…