Real Life
Even though Lara Naaman is a 100 percent purebred Jew, she celebrates Christmas. Once, when she was younger, Lara lined up eight miniature Christmas trees and lit one each night of Hanukkah. Her mother had a pink and green tree color-coordinated to match her living room, as well as stockings…
Fatal Attraction
A Texas A&M University student belts out commands like a Marine drill instructor. His crew of ten college kids in storm-trooper helmets plays the most macabre game of pickup sticks imaginable. The crew grabs a heavy log, about eight inches in diameter and eight feet tall, lying several yards away…
Pump Up the Volume
Broadcasting to every PC and laptop with a tight pair of speakers and a Prince Paul album in the CD deck, PleasuredomeRadio (www.pdomeradio.com) is a cyberspace radio station for the shut-in club-hopper. And this Internet music temple, which transmits on the weekends from right here in Houston, is operated by…
Gag Me with a Suit!
Members of the Seabrook city government may be among the most thin-skinned municipal officers in Texas history. Last month the town fathers filed a libel suit against five activists, charging that a recall petition that sought to remove them from office was slanderous. As libel goes, the accusations were rather…
Dueling Dickenses
In 1843 Charles Dickens was badly in need of a hit to re-establish his reputation and fill his dwindling coffers. The 31-year-old author’s Martin Chuzzlewit had fizzled, and the public wondered if Dickens had lost his touch. He dashed off A Christmas Carol just in time for a holiday publication…
Bishop’s Endgame
In the often Byzantine world of Harris County Republican politics, George Bishop was a player, a behind-the-scenes icon always willing to help, an angel to those seeking elective office. He was a Republican when being one wasn’t cool in Texas, when virtually the only recognizable local name in the GOP…
All in the Familia
Three business-suited men strolled down Main Street during a recent weekday lunchtime, enjoying the sun and breeze while scouting for someplace different to eat. They stopped in front of the newest restaurant along this feverishly regenerating downtown street and peered curiously inside. “What sort of restaurant is this?” one of…
That Is Not a Traffic Jam
Who says that the news media runs only bad news? Who says that newspapers always look for the negative? Not Houstonians. We have the Houston Chronicle, stalwart defender of the proposition that Houston is a terrific place to live. A few months ago the paper was trumpeting the fact that…
Clucking and Trilling
Everything I’d ever heard about Bryan’s Messina Hof Wine Cellars made me hunger for a visit. The winery has racked up ribbons in national competitions and has even beaten California wines on their home turf. Co-owner Paul Bonnarigo is a seventh-generation wine maker from a family that’s still in the…
News of the Weird
Lead StoriesIn November in Tokyo, a passenger was killed in a car accident that occurred when the driver, Ms. Tomomi Okawa, 25, rammed a concrete pole; according to police, she lost control when she missed the brake pedal because of her trendy but clunky platform shoes. And in September, schoolteacher…
Nickel and Dining
Sometimes, no matter how charmed you are by a place, a restaurant will have one waiter or one habit or one dish that’s so irritating it colors an otherwise pleasant experience. Café Toulouse is such a place. It’s the first restaurant I’ve ever known to charge for bread. And let…
Damming Up Sabine
The first rumble of trouble concerning Sabine [1915 Westheimer, (713)529-7190] reached my ears last month, when I heard that the neo-Southern restaurant’s general manager, Keith Thompson, had jumped ship to owner/chef Frederic Perrier’s self-named cafe [Café Perrier, 4304 Westheimer, (713)355-4455]. Not such a big deal, in and of itself; such…
Hot Plate
Lunch Lounge: Next time you’re cruising through downtown at noon, try the grilled ahi sandwich ($7.99) at Sake Lounge [500 Texas Avenue (in Bayou Place), (713)228-7253]. It’s not so much the sandwich — although that’s quite good, I hasten to add — a firm fillet of fish thickly coated with…
Whadda Doll!
Forever in blue jeans? We don’t think so. Turn on your heart light and cut and paste together your very own Neil Diamond doll! Dress up Neil in his various personae: Hasidic Jew Neil, “Great Lei” Neil and Viva Las Vegas Neil. Neil Diamond performs Friday, December 3, at Compaq…
Rappies
At the corner of Jones and West roads in the northern part of town stood a launderette where Larry Gardiner used to take his family’s clothes every Sunday morning. Feeling inspired one particular Sunday five years ago, Gardiner brought with him a legal pad and pen. By the time his…
Rotation
Fiona Apple When the Pawn… Clean Slate/Epic Fiona Apple sure is full of herself. The title of her record is a poem she wrote to Fiona Apple to remind her not to let bastards get her down. Give Apple credit for being somewhat, er, unpredictable: first with her earnest and…
Time of Arrival
Flashback to 1994. Houston’s Music Hall. It’s the performance showcase segment of the Houston Press Music Awards, and a perennial favorite in the “Best Heavy Metal” category, deadhorse, has taken the stage. “A lot of people were there,” says former deadhorse guitarist Mike Haaga, “until we played.” But that’s not…
Growing Pains
Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing is, above all, sweet. Two boys come of age in the middle of a rough-and-tumble London housing project. Beating all kinds of odds, including abusive parents and tough-guy expectations, they manage to find tender adolescent love in each other’s arms. Lightweight, though potentially moving, the play…
Tiny Tunes
Forget about the millionaire musicians upset with their multi-album recording contracts; Jimmy Scott is an example of someone who was really screwed by the record business. Yet he doesn’t complain. The 74-year-old singer is too busy enjoying a career renaissance. Scott doesn’t look like he’d be able to take on…
Public Radio Inc.
This is what came out of a local public radio station last week: A DJ said, in between songs, that an area auto dealership “specialize[s] in excellent service to your car” (emphasis added). Sounds pretty normal, right? Well, that word “excellent,” while okay to say on commercial radio, is a…
Local Rotation
Poor Dumb Bastards Valley of the Dogs Septic After their first divorces, Dean and guitarist Mike Porterfield started PDB in 1991. Plenty of musicians have been part of the band since. The current lineup includes Dean, Porterfield, Ruben Dominguez (guitar), Bob Lederer (drums) and James McGee (bass). Whatever its incarnation,…
Teley Blues
The Fender Telecaster has been the older, clunkier brother of the Stratocaster for nearly 50 years. And while the sexiness of the Strat is suitable for Jimi Hendrix’s atomic divebombs or Eric Clapton’s elegance, the Teley fits nicely in the hands of workaday bluesmen like Albert Collins or Jimmie Vaughan…
Into the Line of Fire
Lasse Hallstrom chuckles heartily as the skeleton tumbles out of his closet. Yes, he admits without a trace of shame, he helped to launch the global superstardom of ABBA, the disco darlings from his native Sweden. He directed many of the band’s most infamous music videos, including “S.O.S.” and “Dancing…
Fire and Ice
An Amarillo teen who was convicted of manslaughter for intentionally driving his Cadillac over a 19-year-old punk rocker initially told police the victim had slipped on the ice and fallen under his car. Dustin Camp’s written and oral statements to Amarillo police, taken just hours after the December 12, 1997,…
The Gay Life
“A Joel Schumacher film.” Are there any four words more guaranteed to send shudders of revulsion down the spine of any Gen-X film geek? Ever since he allegedly ruined the Batman film franchise, Schumacher’s name has become almost the equivalent of a swear word on many Internet film sites, and…
Blueprint
Montrose’s leafy, languid, mid-density mix of early-century bungalows and small, affordable, garden-style, postwar apartment complexes is under siege. Looming some four stories above traditional homes on the once low-rise residential streets, the outsize, unsubtle town homes for upwardly mobile, suburban-conditioned buyers are taking over. And there appears to be no…
Heart of Darkness
A coal-black darkness pounds in the heart of David Mamet’s Edmond, a savage and utterly thrilling play about a middle-class white man’s search for meaning in a “world that seems to be crumbling.” Under the demonic direction of Infernal Bridegroom’s artistic director, Jason Nodler, the company’s blazing production of this…
Stadia Watch
Rockets fans don’t come much more avid than Mike Foulard. The oil trader bought season tickets when the Rockets moved to Houston in 1971, and he faithfully renews them no matter how abysmal the team’s record. Foulard reckons that over the years he has spent close to $1 million on…
Larger Than Life
Until about five years ago, there lived in this town at least one grasping old man with an enormous appetite for pretty young women. His name was J. Howard Marshall II, and for many years, he lived respectably, doing something dull with oil. At last, he diversified his interests. He…