Chucked Up
Retiring District Attorney Johnny Holmes Jr. recalls underling Chuck Rosenthal asking the casual question: Could he make it to an upcoming fund-raiser in Rosenthal’s campaign for D.A.? “Chuck, I don’t do much nighttime shit,” Holmes remembers telling him. Holmes said to let him know when Rosenthal set it up and…
Southern Comfort
Nobody is innocent in America, but there is one segment of the population that seems doggedly determined to deny its own ignorance, ugliness and violence. So hands up now, who really likes rednecks? The sludge on the bottom of the melting pot, this embarrassing offshoot of European ancestry continues, to…
The Clothes Made the Woman
Houston is a lot of things, but a fashion mecca isn’t one of them. Sure, the socialites spend thousands on ball gowns and such, but they stick to the same established designers year after year. And the rest of us, well, we buy designer knockoffs — on sale. It’s an…
The Road Less Traveled
The heroines of Gavin O’Connor’s offbeat road movie Tumbleweeds are a struggling single mother named Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) and her feisty 12-year-old daughter, Ava (Kimberly J. Brown), who set out together from a back hollow in West Virginia to make a new life, or something like one, in…
Out There
What makes the abstract minimalist music-drama of Philip Glass look like an old-fashioned Puccini opera? AlienNation Company’s latest experiment, MIRAK. Instead of arias, violins and ballerinas twirling before sun-drenched palaces, this multimedia show features pretaped video, 3-D animation and dancers who drive computer-generated music. MIRAK does, however, have a plot…
Raw Deal
As the harsh smell of raw crude oil grows overpowering, Joe Nelson peers over the bow of his aluminum skiff. “There it is,” he says, pointing to a 20-foot-wide ribbon of black that winds across the murky waters of Galveston Bay. The oysterman follows the trail of oil for about…
That ’70s Place
I believe restaurateur Michael Valentine has an eye for architectural white elephants. Before he and wife Hanh settled on Evelyn Wilson’s grand three-story building at 3704 Fannin for their new restaurant and piano bar called Valentino’s, they took a shot at renovating a pigsty. Almost literally. They tried to bring…
Child’s Play
Intrepid Channel 13 investigator Wayne Dolcefino has e-mailed to say that the writer of this column is a “silly cynical weaselhead” for somehow doubting the earthshaking importance of his latest sweeps-week strip bar exposé. We immediately assumed Dolcefino was a thin-skinned hypocrite who gets the vapors at the slightest hint…
Ode to a Grecian Way
At one time or another, we’ve all been there. We’ve all sat forlornly at some wedding reception where the only people we knew were the ones who had dragged us to the “blessed event.” Sometimes we have sulked until it was time to go, but other times, when the setting…
News of the Weird
Lead StoryAccording to a November Boston Globe story, upper-crust restaurants in New York and Boston have taken to adding genuine gold flakes to some dishes, not merely as garnish but with the expectation that they be eaten. Boston’s Riba restaurant recently offered “risotto of summer’s golden squashes with leaf of…
Metal Manifesto
The Battle of Los Angeles is Rage Against the Machine’s first album in three years. That the stridently political act released its most pointed statement to date on Election Day, November 2, 1999, is not a coincidence. Everything about Rage Against the Machine drives home a point to fans, casual…
Dinner and a Movie
Dinner and a movie is a concept so firmly ingrained in our collective psyche that it has become the classic American date. The notion of sharing a dinner at one dimly lit location and then a film at another has even been tacitly supported by the theater chains, which for…
Space Truckin’
The show was spectacular, in every way. The 13-member ensemble came out wearing robes, gold lamé shirts, sequined vests and all manner of homemade space hats, antennae poking out everywhere, singing, “We are the Sun Ra Arkestra, and we are here to entertain you.” The group played for more than…
Hot Plate
Casting a Wide Net: The house specialty fettuccine del mare ($15.95) at Prima Pasta has all the ingredients tradition dictates, such as jumbo shrimp, tender scallops and impeccably cooked pasta tossed with a perky red marinara sauce, just a little sweet and well seasoned with garlic. It’s those unexpected, off-the-beaten-path…
Homeward Bound
Say you’re an impressionable kid growing up in Houston surrounded by a family of larger-than-life characters with wild senses of humor. They’re poor, hard-drinkin’ people who drive cars too fast, play Hank Williams songs in icehouses and take spur-of-the-moment trips to Galveston. And say your house has all the trappings…
Rotation
Melanie C Northern Star Virgin Contemporary pop music blows. The current revival of bubblegum, which we all thought died in the early ’90s but which has somehow found its way back into our ears, has been leaving people more jaded and bleak than happy or peppy or bursting with love…
Local Rotation
Rick Porter & The Music Unlimited Ensemble Live at Cezanne… Before the Night Has Flown Rick Porter A product of the New York City jazz scene, 69-year-old Rick Porter earned his credentials first, then moved to Houston. Those credentials, while not enough to make Porter a bona fide jazz star,…
Heavy Neglect
It’s not exactly a garage, but it’s a big, uninhabitable space you could park a car in. It’s about 22 feet by 22 feet and padded all around — to keep any noise in. It’s attached to a house, so, technically, if you had to call it something, you’d be…
Helping Hands
Though Elbert “Pops” Stewart has never headlined a show, the versatile bassist is well known on certain Houston bandstands. Playing behind a variety of blues, R&B and zydeco front men, he has been a reliable source of funky riffs, good humor and rock-solid musical knowledge. A former trumpeter in the…
Holiday Hokum
In their efforts to capitalize on the holidays — think family-size ticket sales — artistic theater directors across the city dig through their dusty shelves looking for some sort of show that will warm the heart and rake in the dough. Sometimes these efforts work. But more often than not,…
Bar Fight
Margaret Lindsey is not by nature an angry person. Most of the time she’s as good-natured as she is now, standing over the kitchen sink of Blondie’s. In her short cutoff jeans and closely cropped marigold hair, the La Porte bar owner dutifully peels 25 pounds of shrimp by hand…
As Good As It Gets
For the past ten years the Alley Theatre produced an almost quintessential version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The show was full of humor, bright color, Victorian ambience and good holiday cheer. Amazingly, Stephen Rayne’s new production of the classic play is every bit as captivating as the old one,…
No Miracle on Main Street
Every day and every night, Cheryl Ann Young’s vast ceiling fills with the sounds of faint thunder. Over her head is the constant 60-mph rumble of semis and sedans atop the concrete roadway of a U.S. 59 overpass, shortly before it becomes the Southwest Freeway. Young’s only trees are sequoia-thick…
Not Your MTV
Just a month or so ago, I was seated, much against my better judgment, on an inordinately large panel convened to discuss artists in the community, or the art community, or some such well-meaning topic. Doubtless there was among the 14 of us someone with something interesting to say, but…
The Katy: Railing On
Edd Hendee, owner the Taste of Texas steak house with his wife, Nina, is a veteran of road construction, a survivor of the Sam Houston Tollway tidal wave that crushed many businesses at the Katy Freeway-Beltway 8 interchange more than a decade ago. In the end, the toll road would…
E.T. on Death Row
Have you ever endured a relationship in which your partner beat you up mercilessly, just so he or she could “heal” you and play the redeemer later on? Granted, that’s a weird question and perhaps one better explored via Akbar and Jeff in Matt Groening’s Life in Hell strip, but…