Live Shots
La Mafia Saturday, November 26 George R. Brown Convention Center Packing the George R. Brown Convention Center, drawing international press from Mexico and Belize and scoring a Double Diamond presentation (for more than two million copies sold) from label Sony Discos — not a bad night for a local group…
Humping to Please
The Bayou City may be a bit short on medieval pageant wagons and Whom Seek Yees, but that doesn’t mean modern Houstonians ignore the opportunity to celebrate the season with excess and pageantry. At least a dozen area churches will have live nativity scenes, and the number of commercial and…
Soup Weather
At this time of year, solace and fortitude are more liable to be found steaming in a soup bowl than sitting naked on a plate. There is no set of circumstances, for instance, that cannot be improved by Irma’s caldo de pollo: a fragrant chicken broth in which bob hunks…
Press Picks
thursday december 8 Appaloosa Horse Show Committee Auction On October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said, “Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” (This is one of the most…
Trish Sans Darin
There are those who said it would never happen (and they said it wearing expressions of everything from faith to fear), but singing siblings Trish and Darin Murphy, and the band that carries their name, are soon to be no more. The rumor floated across this desk mid-week, and sure…
Playing the Season
Courtesy of the Houston theater scene, I received my Christmas presents early this year. And, I’m pleased to report, my stocking didn’t contain one lump of coal. Sure, a couple of the shows I saw were, like a gift of underwear, more practical than desirable, and, yes, a couple of…
A Brilliant Red
For several years now, I’ve wondered if I simply didn’t get the movies of Krzysztof Kieslowski, the Polish filmmaker who specializes in fare so abstract, obtuse and overtly symbolic that it’s nearly impossible to read them fully and accurately in one sitting. The first film of his that I sat…
Hot and Bothersome
Adapted from Michael Crichton’s bestseller about sexual harassment and office intrigue in a high tech Seattle computer company, Disclosure is a lavishly photographed, smartly acted, superbly directed piece of hooey. Director Barry Levinson, who gave us such upper-middlebrow entertainments as Bugsy and Rainman, and screenwriter Paul Attanasio, whose script for…
Shame, Shame, Shame
In the opening scene of A Low Down Dirty Shame, a maid rolls her cleaning cart down a hallway of an upscale high-rise hotel. Opening a door before a response can be offered, she intrudes upon a fat guy sitting on the pot. She makes a face and says, “Can…
Hanging the Judge
Cynthia McMurrey’s remark to Lupe Salinas seemed innocent enough that night last February, when McMurrey and a group of fellow lawyers, many of whom practiced in Salinas’ court, gathered in her home to toast the judge on the announcement that he had been tapped for a position in the federal…
Harsh Sentences
Considering that state District Judge Mary Bacon deals with scores of hardened criminals who pass through her court on the way to prison each year, you’d think she would be unfazed by a few angry yet heartfelt words in a handful of letters sent to her by high school students…
Nightmare on Pech Road
Jack Yetiv was, at one time, that rarest of creatures: a Spring Branch landlord in good standing. While the area’s rundown, low-income apartment units were being demolished and replaced by swanky red-brick Georgians, Yetiv became a poster child for what city officials called the “responsible” renovation of dangerous buildings. In…
Letters
Giving Credit Where Proper Credit Is Due Matt Zoller Seitz’s “Cyberdreams” [News, December 1] is a well-written and pretty darn thorough history of the making of No Resistance. One thing worth noting, however: in addition to directing, cowriting, shooting and editing the project, Tim Thomson — not me — was…
A History Lesson
In a city where flux is the constant, the Confederate House has lived through five decades by staying the same. Even a move from its longtime Westheimer location a few years back (the windowless one where the big antebellum plantation mural set the tone) didn’t alter the essential character of…
A Uniquely Pervis Perspective
Does it matter, in the critical/theoretical, women-in-rock-think-piece sense, that Dallas’ Pervis is fronted by two women? It’s hard to tell from their four song eponymous EP — I can’t figure whether that “Fuck you / Leave me alone” line, from the sociopathic “Some People,” was written from the Uniquely Female…
Rotation
The Cranberries No Need to Argue Island So this is what it’s come to. You want a hit record, which right off the bat means that you’ve got no qualms about manipulating people’s emotions to further your own ends. Problem is, the twentysomething global village information highway traveling folks who…
MC 900 Ft Jesus Brings the Noise
Mark Griffin is the kind of guy who spent a good amount of time in high school thinking, “Wow, I want to be a high school band director, because that’s the coolest thing in the world to do.” (He got over it). He’s the sort who, after graduating college with…