A Visit to Gatesville
Last month, I traveled with Houston-area state Senator John Whitmire on a site visit to the Gatesville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The central Texas unit is the largest of the three penitentiaries clustered together in Coryell County, where all the state’s female inmates are imprisoned. Gatesville…
Hightower Corner
Let me hit you with two facts. Since about 1950, some 70,000 new chemical compounds have been introduced into our environment. Fact number two: Since about 1950, the number of breast cancer cases has increased from one in 20 women to one in eight — a 150 percent increase. Now…
A Dangerous Woman
The marketeers evidently knew they had a tough sell on their hands with this one, a story about (among other things) a sexual triangle between drunken handyman Mackey (Gabriel Byrne), society woman Frances (Barbara Hershey) — whose house he works on — and Martha, her daffy-to-mentally handicapped sister (Debra Winger)…
Lost Cyberweekend
High holiday for computer hackers, a roller-coaster ride through a virtual art gallery, and a Subgenius Devival: This weekend’s CyberCulture Houston ’93 will be all that, and more. While funky robots roam the Commerce Street Artists Warehouse and Gallery, CCH will host a tour of cyberspace with art exhibits, performances…
Picks
Thursday December 9 Beausoleil Haven’t had a chance to see this outfit since they played NYC’s Central Park about six years ago, but the group’s contemporary Cajun stylings, highlighted by the so-pretty-you-could-cry work of fiddler and vocalist Michael Doucet, are pretty well state-of-the-art in the gumbo-loving world. And since Christmas…
Snow Job
There are elements of life that defy reason. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be counted. Each month the foreign-trade division for the United States Census Bureau tabulates, categorizes, subdivides and duly attaches a ten-digit commodity code to all export items leaving the country. The computerized figures are recorded on…
Cuisine des Beaux Arts
To the small patheon of Houston culinary originals, add the name of Tom Meredith — breakfast genius out of southwestern Louisiana and resident talent at a radically homespun new coffeehouse called Cafe Artiste. From his rustic cornflour pancakes to his souffle-quality eggs, Meredith’s creations will not remind you of anyone…
Letters
Digging in the Dirt In the November 18 Press, Jim Sherman wrote an article on community gardening [“And in the city’s desolation…”] in which he refers to Seymour Schwartz as a curmudgeon-around-town. Schwartz went to considerable trouble to find someone to grow food on his vacant lot to feed the…
An art, not an afterthought
That’s what java is elevated to at PJ’s Coffee & Tea Co. Originally established in the vieux carre, PJ’s has the fine food attitude, mas yeah. Beans galore, of course, and Bodum and other Italian and arty coffee makers and fetish items for caffeine fiends. Also in the art department,…
Hiatt Regency
Perfectly Good Guitar John Hiatt A&M Records John Hiatt has always been highly regarded among the songwriting set — those critics, fans and peers who set a large stock in intelligent lyrics, smart tunes and musical craftsmanship. Hiatt’s songs are heavily covered by other artists who value the can’t-miss quality…
Grunge Puppy
There are an awful lot of last week’s Next Nirvanas wandering around out there in the American guitar-pop landscape, dragging their shaggy heads in the sand and bemoaning the vagaries of timing and whim that branded them also-rans. Paw isn’t one of them. Paw is from Lawrence, Kansas, which, being…
Last of the Catal Barons
Two weekends ago, Catal Huyuk, the most recent in a string of punk and alternative rock clubs to occupy the warehouse at 2524 McKinney, closed its doors. Monday-night regulars Bloodfart found themselves temporarily unemployed, and rumors were flying as to the method and means of Catal’s demise. According to investor…
The Chill is Gone
Bad news is a blinking red light. Thanksgiving morning I was puttering around the house when I noticed someone had called and left a message. I rewound and heard the normally exuberant president of the Houston Blues Society quietly saying sometime in the night, “Jim, Linda… Albert Collins just passed.”…
I AM What I AM
Eric Bogosian’s lacerating one-act Talk Radio, currently in a compelling production at the West-Mon Repertory Theater (through December 18), leaves the odd impression of being both topical and dated. The theatrical outgrowth of solo performance pieces by Bogosian beginning in the early ’80s, and first produced for Joseph Papp’s New…
Re-visions of Sugar Plums
It’s 1:30 on a pollution-free, bright, cool Sunday afternoon in November, the kind of day that makes me feel guilty if I’m not outside. But today I’m in the bowels of Wortham Center, backstage where the floors are black and the lights are dim and it is almost reverently quiet…
“My Culture Is My Beauty”
“I love films that project the culture of the filmmaker, that make observations about his world and his background,” Iranian filmmaker Bahram Beizai said last month at a breakfast interview at the Wyndham Warwick on the weekend his acclaimed 1986 movie, Bashu, The Little Stranger, opened the Museum of Fine…
Rich Man, Pork Man
Jamon Jamon, the intriguingly titled film by the Spanish director Bigas Luna (he has a rather wonderful name himself), opens with a shot of a landscape that not many American filmgoers will recognize as European. There is no vegetation in sight, and this earth hasn’t seen rain since Noah; the…
Was This Disaster Necessary?
To paraphrase Woody Allen, Houston is like a shark: When it quits moving, it is dead. Since the late 1970’s, through four mayoral administrations, the Housing Authority of the City of Houston (HACH) has never wavered from its intent to demolish Allen Parkway Village and return the 37 acres at…
Wearing Two Hats
“If you fix a woman, then you fix the generations that follow her, or you have a much better shot at it,” believes warden Susan Cranford, who supervises close to 2,000 inmates and 867 staff members at the Gatesville Unit. “So we have an opportunity to really do some investment…
Following the Rules
We waited, shivering in the cold, for what seemed an endless half-hour. We stood outside the double rows of ten-foot chain-link fence, topped by four-strand electrified barbed wire and endlessly looped concertina, slanted inward to make it more difficult to climb. The wire pointed toward the low-slung red-brick buildings within…
Arming Peggy MacGregor
Twenty-two years is a long time for a lady with a broken arm to stand around in the middle of a city. Even when the lady in question is a bronze sculpture given to the city in 1927. You can go by and see her anytime — on Richmond just…