Takin’ It to the Street
He is the best-selling mystery author in the UK, having moved more books there in 2002 than John Grisham, Patricia Cornwell and even Agatha Christie. But while his gritty adventures starring the rebellious, middle-aged Scottish detective John Rebus have a cult following in the United States, Ian Rankin is still…
Steal This Movie
This should really piss you off: What follows is a story about a very funny movie you will have absolutely no chance of seeing any time soon. The powers that be who distribute movies–who copy prints, print up posters, deliver them to theaters, collect receipts, split profits (well…)–do not want…
The Downtown Aquarium
Seafood restaurants are probably the only ones where you can see the relatives of what you’re eating. In some cases, you can even pick which lil’ critter will end up on your plate. Why aren’t there any steak houses with grazing cattle in the parking lot? Why don’t KFCs have…
The Strategy of Sarcasm
Basic geometric forms, truth in materials, the removal of evidence of the artist’s hand through industrial fabrication — these are the hallmarks of the minimalist sculpture that emerged in the 1960s. The movement was an essentially idealistic endeavor that sought to create what Donald Judd called “specific objects,” objects that…
Chocolate Bayou Festival
Not to be outdone by Atlanta, with its National Black Arts Festival, or New Orleans with its Essence Festival, Houston has started a citywide African-American celebration of its own. At the Chocolate Bayou Festival, you can chow down, shop or check out a high school step show or a three-on-three…
Homeburger
Tucked away between the spiffy lofts and towering town homes of Midtown, Lankford Grocery and Market (88 Dennis, 713-522-9555) is a throwback. The 1940s icehouse comes complete with wood-paneled walls, lumpy booths, plastic tablecloths, down-home service and a dandy retro burger ($3.50). Lankford handles this all-American classic with unwavering attention…
Gem on Jones
A large party at the front of the restaurant is getting a lot of attention. A Taste of Portugal’s chef jokes with them as he carries dishes out to their table. You just don’t see that kind of personal touch in a Houston restaurant anymore. “What a find!” I muse,…
Rockin’ the Cradle
Uh…yo. The word on the street is that the ‘Drzej is back at the helm. “Who?” you rightfully ask. Why, cinematographer-turned-director Andrzej Bartkowiak, of course. He’s the…er…”dog” who, under the auspices of producer Joel Silver (Richie Rich, The Matrix) created the hip-hop bang-bang chop-socky flicks Romeo Must Die and Exit…
College Throwback
“You don’t exactly strike me as the kind of guy to order a salty dog,” said the bartender at the Ocean Grill (2227 Seawall Boulevard, Galveston, 409-762-7100). Apparently, the typical drinker of a salty dog is a seagoing fisherman just returning from a few days out on a shrimp boat…
Master Blaster
MusicCody ChesnuTT is an anomaly, but he shouldn’t be: He plays rock and roll and can righteously wail on a guitar, one of many such artists to arise since black musicians essentially invented the genre more than 50 years ago. Yet when the Atlanta-bred, Los Angeles-based ChesnuTT steps on stage…
Appetite for Reconstruction
The first time Megadeth guitarist Dave Mustaine caught “Vanishing Cream” on the radio in 1996, it stopped him in his tracks. When he heard what he thought was James Hetfield growling his way through the vocals, he thought Metallica had finally gotten its shit together. (And if anybody should have…
Last Frights
A funeral is supposed to comfort the living. It’s a time when friends and family can bond together in their pain and sadness, and resolve anew to live their lives to the fullest. We acknowledge death in this ceremony, but we do so by celebrating the life of the deceased…
Willie Nelson
In 1960, a broke Willie Nelson left a steady gig at Houston’s Esquire Club for Nashville. Despite finding instant success as a hit songwriter for premier Nashville talents like Faron Young, Patsy Cline, Ray Price and Billy Walker, a frustrated Nelson returned to Texas in 1973 having recorded 14 albums…
Deal of a Lifetime
The urge hits, and Yolanda Ross is out her parents’ door. The 33-year-old mother needs to get high. She says she hates this thing inside her that makes her do this, but there’s no fighting it tonight. Plus, she’s got money, so she won’t need to sell her body this…
The Hulley Gulleys
Though the cover art and the band’s retro-kitsch image elicit thoughts of surfing, cruising and the frugalicious dancing of the early 1960s, much of the spirit of this record lies in the 1980s. (More specifically, with the Waitresses, the new wave band of “I Know What Boys Like” fame.) This…
PISD Plans to Quit CEP
After spending five years and $5 million for a private company to educate troubled kids, Pasadena Independent School District plans to call it quits with Community Education Partners. The planned withdrawal from CEP by the 44,000-student Pasadena district follows a similar decision made last year by the Dallas school district…
The Briefs and Fabulous Disaster, with the Kimonos
No one could ever accuse Seattle punks the Briefs of being too subtle. The cover of their debut long-player, Hit After Hit, shows band members Daniel J. Travanti, Chris Brief, Lance Romance and Steve E. Nix brandishing baseball bats, chains and nunchakus. Some of the disc is as violent as…
Urban Dilemma
Perhaps it was the day lawyer David Theodore Marks found a drunken man sprawled and snoring away amid empty beer cans in his daughter’s tree house. Or it could have been the excrement-smeared toilet paper that occasionally flutters across his backyard in west Houston’s affluent Saddlewood community. Then again, the…
DJ Vadim
The world is certainly a better place with Brit-Russian rap record-wrecker DJ Vadim in it. Okay, maybe not the whole wide world, but the hip-hop demimonde, at least, seems suddenly full of possibilities. His latest release, U.S.S.R.: The Art of Listening (Ninja Tune), is a cornucopia for the hip-hop geek…
Too Quiet
It was big news, splattered across the Metro section of the Houston Chronicle Tuesday, February 18: The city was dropping its “Funday in the Park” program. The news was so big that it…well, inspired isn’t the right word; in any case, it spawned a column the next day by Thom…
Simon Bruce
Phenoms aren’t so rare on the instrumental side of the music business, but it’s downright astonishing to find a songwriting talent this developed and mature in an 18-year-old. Australia’s Simon Bruce made his American debut three years ago at the Nashville songwriters’ haunt Bluebird Café; while in that city he…
Private Playgrounds?
Private Playgrounds? Driving off beachgoers: While I realize that all sides needed to be presented in this article [“Line in the Sand,” by Richard Connelly, February 13], I feel that an atmosphere of doom for vehicular beach access was cast throughout it. The final two paragraphs leave the reader with…
The Eyeliners
Nothing drives conscientious punk rockers crazier than having their shtick absorbed by MTV. You might think the Eyeliners would be smarting badly right about now, what with tough-girl bubblepunk having come full circle from the platinum Go-Go’s to the underground Muffs and back into the Top 40 again with the…
March to Lysistrata
If you’ve got a problem with America’s impending war with Iraq, speak up or quit your bitching. On the weekend of February 15, 750,000 people took to the streets in London, 500,000 made their voices heard in New York, and 150,000 marched in San Francisco. But in Houston, the fourth-largest…
Max Factors
Hitler as artist…Hitler as artist… Damn. So much for the ol’ “summarize plot, tease overpaid actors, pontificate wildly” formula. Reviewing Max — about the wonder years of Der Führer (Noah Taylor) and his eponymous, fictional Jewish benefactor Max Rothman (John Cusack) — looks to be something of a task. Set…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, February 27 Gaetano Pesce makes special household items that you won’t find at Gallery Furniture (not to dis Mr. Mac). The revered Italian industrial designer wants his resin furniture to have imperfections so that each piece is different from the last. After all, mistakes are reminders that the works…
Niche Markets
A decade before they hit the big time with shows like Ragtime and Seussical the Musical, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty banged out their brassy Broadway style in another bit of musical fluff: Lucky Stiff. Based on Michael Butterworth’s novel The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, the…