Drag King
Eddie Izzard knows precisely why he wanted to become a performer, be it an actor or stand-up comedian or, for that matter, a street performer entertaining passers-by for spare change. When he was 6 years old, Izzard was living in South Wales with his parents and older brother. Before that,…
Bugged Out
Rick Anderson dreams of a more trusting society. And one way to achieve it, the president of National Telco Inc. argues, is to secretly record people’s conversations. This year the Houston telecommunications company began offering a service that allows customers to use their telephones as recorders. A person with a…
Letters
Shining Example Expose injustice: Thanks for your article on the ACLU and Will Harrell [“Left Return,” by Steve McVicker, January 18]. I’m especially grateful for the inclusion of the Tulia story in the article. I’m one of several grassroots Tulians who have been trying to bring this matter to public…
Culture Shock
Houston is the best city for test-marketing a restaurant in the USA,” enthuses Scott Demick, the manager of Fire + Ice [2801 Kirby Drive, (713)522-4500], a restaurant whose owners are remodeling the imposing neoclassical building that housed the Hard Rock Cafe for more than a decade. For those Houstonians old…
Ghost Writer
“I’m not conceited. I’m not arrogant. But I believe that I’m one of the best writers in the world.” Now, it’s kind of difficult not to perceive someone as conceited or arrogant after he says stuff like that, but Donyail Linsey believes he has the chops to back it up…
Isn’t That Special?
Speaking off the toque: Janice Beeson, owner of the Daily Review Cafe, 3412 West Lamar, (713)520-9217. Q. When a customer is told about a daily special, he may, logically, interpret the phrase in several ways. What does the term “special” or “daily special” mean to people in the restaurant business?…
Your Friend, the Germ
Not to make you paranoid, but they’re everywhere — in the air, on your clothes, even on this newspaper. And they’ve killed millions throughout history. They’re germs, the stars of Microbes: Invisible Invaders…and Amazing Allies at Space Center Houston. “For so long we thought they only did bad things, like…
A Live One
The fish are biting at Basil’s Cafe [2811 Bammel Lane, (713)529-1314], or so it seems with the blue-corn-roasted snapper ($16.50). The taste is so fresh, you’d think this pescado had just been plucked from the water. It’s dipped in egg wash then rolled in small bits, not crumbs, of blue…
Stirred and Shaken
The dining area at the Angelika Cafe and Bar [510 Texas Avenue, (713)225-1609] was packed with moviegoers. A group at a nearby table was speaking German. That got me thinking about Marlene Dietrich. One of the drinks on Angelika’s cocktail menu is a peach-martini variation called a Cosmic Angel. I…
Wandering Son
If you want to break into the music business, sometimes it helps if your daddy is a star. Ask Ziggy Marley or Rufus Wainwright or Jakob Dylan. But sometimes it doesn’t. Just ask Carlton Pride. His father is three-time Grammy-winner Charley Pride, one of country music’s biggest names in the…
Rock of Ages
Mention the words “Christian pop,” and most people become as wary as a vampire around a crucifix. Some might immediately picture tan, pompadoured crooner Carman, who integrates Tom Jones dance steps with good-versus-evil theatrics. Others might visualize a clean-cut boy band like the Newsboys (basically, a holy roller ‘N Sync)…
The Reluctant Romantic
Amy Rigby didn’t set out to be a musician. When she moved from her native Pittsburgh to New York City in the early 1980s, Rigby’s plan was to study art. As for music, she was merely a fan in those embryonic days of punk rock, when just about anyone could…
Playbill
Does the world really need another Grateful Dead cover act? Every city seems to have its own half-assed band whose sole purpose is celebrating the music of Jerry Garcia and Co. Even more redundant are the names of these acts — Sugar Magnolia, Dead Beats, etc. While non-Deadheads (and some…
Overblown and Underrated
Houston is a place where reputations are made and lost each day. Come to think about it, so is just about every other place in the country. Nevertheless, our city produces events, people and trends that make their mark in history, one way or the other. But do these things…
Playbill
When Link Wray’s song “Rumble” was banned from radio in 1958, the controversy had nothing to do with cursing, misogyny or cop killing. The guitarist merely played an instrumental filled with raw power and distortion, but given the tune’s title and potency, some thought Wray was encouraging “teenage gang warfare.”…
Out of Africa
…The cock that crows in the morning belongs to one household but his voice is the property of the neighborhood. — Chinua Achebe, Anthills of the Savannah “There are those who wonder if gold could rust, what will iron do?” Chido Nwangwu said, smiling softly as he spoke. “If we…
Skin Deep
Watching this film is like watching a donkey being beaten for 90 minutes, so egregiously is the titular character treated and so powerless does she appear against her offenders. That the abuse is treated in a comedic fashion for a good part of the film makes it even more unacceptable…
Lawyerly Liaisons
“It just happened,” says Houston attorney Mitch Gaspard, sounding like a teenager who lost track of time or kissed someone other than his steady. But Gaspard is talking about the much more serious matter of having sex with his client, something that some attorneys say should never “just happen.” It’s…
Keeping the Faith
There is an eerie sense of familiarity wafting through The Invisible Circus, a pervasive whiff of déjà vu that intensifies with each passing minute. Regardless of whether one has read the novel of the same name by Jennifer Egan, it’s impossible to deny that there’s ample foreknowledge of where this…
Upstairs Down – and Out?
Less than four months after it opened, the inpatient unit at the NeuroPsychiatric Center is losing money at a rate that may force local health officials to shut it down. The board of trustees of the Mental Health & Mental Retardation Authority of Harris County, the agency that operates NPC,…
Listless in Beijing
Restless has the unique distinction of being, apparently, the first mainland Chinese-American feature co-production. Given the potential tensions in such a project, it’s not surprising that the film carefully avoids even the slightest intimation of politics. There’s nothing wrong with this: Restless is billed as a romantic comedy, and most…
Goodnight, Miss Moonlight
Miss Moonlight’s memo(rial): Around 500 people showed up for Maxine Mesinger’s funeral. They were the gossip columnist’s subjects, her sources. “Bigwigs” and “celebs,” Maxine would have crowed in the Houston Chronicle. She’d have listed their names in boldface type: former mayor Bob Lanier; jet-setter Lynn Wyatt; retired newsman David Brinkley;…
War or Peace
It’s hard for scholars to appreciate how amateur Alexander Borodin could have composed any kind of magnum opus. Unlike Russian icons Rubenstein and Tchaikovsky, Borodin wrote music during his off-hours or when he was simply too sick to carry out his duties as a professor of organic chemistry in St…
The Mark
Saturday, January 20 — I am strolling aimlessly through the Grand Ballroom of the Radisson Astrodome hotel. The occasion is the 25th (and final) Anniversary Reunion Tattoo Convention. A fat man’s fleshy back is covered with photo-intricate dot-matrix stippling in the image of his children. My fellow strollers have cut…
Songs in the Key of Life
Austria is an extraordinary place, a land filled with paradox and drama. It gave us Mozart, Schubert and Hitler — great beauty and unbelievable horror. It is the perfect setting for Jon Marans’s Old Wicked Songs, an elegant, understated play about art, music and the terrible power of history. It…
Celebrate Good Times
Seldom has America experienced a more joyous, uplifting and inspiring Inaugural Day than when George W. Bush took the oath of office January 20. At least, that’s the impression you’d gather from reading the next day’s Houston Chronicle. We got a ten-page special section about “A Day of Deep Cold…
Split Personality
The booth with a view of the aquarium looks like a better bet than the table by the window at Saba Blue Water Cafe. On a Tuesday night in January, the tropical fish are a lot livelier than the downtown sidewalks. Posh bars and upscale restaurants continue to open at…