Fork in the Road
Breaking up is actually kinda easy… when you’ve got another gig. Houston’s much-venerated rockabilly outfit the Road Kings are soon to be no more. Songwriter, guitarist and frontman Jessie Dayton called an official halt to the project almost a month ago, and back-to-back gigs at the Satellite on February 18…
Lost African-American History
The African Company Presents Richard III, a historical drama presented by Texas Southern University’s Lyceum and Cultural Arts program, is itself about classic repertory theater and often-slighted aspects of the history of American theater. While black and white cultures were entirely separate and schools and hospitals manifestly unequal, there remained…
Best-Laid Schemes
If you’re a regular theatergoer, every now and again you see a performance so complete, commanding, individual, that the player is a glorious reminder of why you continue to go when so many productions merely suffice, if not disappoint. That’s what happens watching James Hansen Prince’s astounding performance as the…
It’s All Great
Shortly after the 1941 premiere of his classic Citizen Kane, Orson Welles was prevailed upon by Nelson Rockefeller, the State Department’s coordinator for inter-American affairs, to become a special ambassador to Brazil. The U.S., on the verge of entering WWII, was concerned about Axis influence in Latin America and wanted…
Getaway from Me
For nearly half its length, I thought the current remake of The Getaway would be just one more failed thriller. The idea of casting Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger in the roles originally played by Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw seemed like a stunt, and the resulting movie a vanity…
Anything Goes?
What’s wrong with a movie musical? Everything, apparently. Preview audiences so hated the musical version of I’ll Do Anything that mindful writer/director/producer James L. Brooks cut the songs and re-edited the film at the eleventh hour. Contemporary moviegoers, unlike generations before them, just won’t willingly suspend their disbelief at characters’…
Press Briefs
Pop-off as You’ve Never Heard It… The best line uttered at last week’s City Council meeting never made it to the ten o’clock news or either daily paper. Even cable TV’s municipal channel, in its interminable replays of Council gatherings, bleeped over this part of last Tuesday’s “pop-off session” (in…
The Voices of Los Rockets
When KXYZ/1320 AM broadcaster Danny Gonzalez announces a Houston Rockets road game, he sits in the station’s studio with his finger on a 13-inch Hitachi screen, as if touching the television connected him physically to the faraway contest. On this night, thanks to their quick and tenacious defense, the Rockets…
Betting on Seabrook’s Future?
When a political issue heats up in Seabrook, southeast of Houston, Mayor Larry King has what he considers a sure-fire method of gauging the pulse of his municipality. With clipboard in hand, King stands in front of his city’s sole Kroger supermarket and polls the populace. Located at the intersection…
Letters
Kemicals-R-Us Your rebuttal of the Knapp/Thomas letter on the organochlorines article [Press Briefs, “Fool Us Once…” by Josh Daniel, January 20] was uncalled for! Like many Houstonians, I am very interested in reducing the pollution caused by the “bad” chemicals in consumer products, their manufacturing byproducts. Also, like many Houstonians,…
Press Picks
thursday february 10 More than Just Slaves The second workshop in a four-part series presented by Imam Haywood S. Talib of the Sister Clara Muhammad School. Talib will describe African-American achievements in our history. These workshops are a small part of the schedule for the Houston Public Library’s salute to…
Hot Dish
Pie-Lover’s Lament It’s been a bad week for pie — but then, every week is a bad week for pie unless you make the damn things yourself. Or your mom does. Or the ladies who stage the not-at-all-famous Annual Pie Social in North Ferrisburg, Vermont, near where I spent my…
The Other South American Restaurant
A Houston restaurant that presumes to serve South American cuisine automatically invites stringent comparison: so skillfully have the Cordua brothers defined the genre at Churrasco’s and Americas, upstarts are doomed to labor in their loooong shadow. That’s why Los Andes, a hard-working Greenway Plaza newcomer with a talent for grilling…
Defending the Indefensible
Behind the wood-paneled courtrooms of judges Ted Poe and Joe Kegans, like most other Harris County felony courtrooms, is a dark, nasty place called a holdover area. Above one of the two barred cells, which smell like the large urinals they basically are, read the words “Maximum Occupancy: 4.” Inside…
Doctor of All Trades
If it’s true that you can judge the depth of a musical legend by the number of nicknames he’s acquired over the years, Dr. John (a.k.a. the Old Night Tripper, Funk Physician, Bayou Sorcerer, Mac Rebennack) is on par — legend-wise — with the city that sired him, New Orleans…
God Listens But He don’t buy records.
The music of King’s X has long eluded categorization. It’s a sound that encompasses prog-rock, art-pop, metal, alternative, grunge and on and on and on. The Beatles meet Metallica with lyrics reading like some evangelical version of The Wizard of Oz. It’s no wonder that King’s X has had trouble…