Static
Jinkies’ last stand… Leave it to the Jinkies to turn in what was possibly their finest performance ever on the eve of their unraveling. And leave it to a Houston audience to barely acknowledge that irony, let alone pry their asses out of their seats and cheer the glorious passing…
Rotation
Pearl Jam Yield Epic Eddie Vedder has always been a better star than artist, and don’t let any critic who slept through Ten and raved about No Code tell you otherwise. He’s best at grand gestures, belting out “Alive” or vowing to bring a concert-ticket monopoly to its knees. But…
Ready for Recess
The most interesting time in a band’s career is often when they’re on the edge of mainstream success. Marcy Playground are at that point now, poised either to explode or to fizzle. Sales of the New York City-based alterna-pop trio’s self-titled debut CD are starting to take off, and the…
Jazzed
Pat Metheny is a unique jazz entity. He doesn’t identify with the retro-jazz purist movement, nor is he a smooth jazz or hard-core fusion commodity. His music is rarely played on jazz stations, contemporary or traditional. “We don’t fit anywhere,” Metheny says of his group. Yet the guitarist, whose melodic…
Last Year’s Model
The members of Twiggy aren’t exactly musical innocents. No earnest sentiments such as “we’re really trying hard to land a record deal right now” or “I know I can make a living doing this” issue from their lips as they assemble in the cramped warehouse rehearsal space they share with…
The Politics of the Real
In Washington, Ken Starr, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky may have momentarily cornered the market on political drama (or farce, depending on your point of view), but here in Houston, we’ve got our own version of governmental theater. True, ours may not be as hot, saucy and downright dirty as…
Conversion Experience
We’re a skeptical lot, we Lawlors. Consider our coat of arms: a crossed knife and fork on a silver field and, below, the motto “Eater Beware.” Never tell us you’ve discovered the perfect hollandaise or the ultimate ganache. Twaddle, we’ll say. Things like that simply don’t exist. They’re grails of…
Around the World in 21 Films
Only two months in, 1998 already seems to be the year for film festival and festival-ish series resurrections. First came the Museum of Fine Arts’ “Local Spin” series, a return of 1995’s “First Look.” Now Ancestral Films, a small Houston nonprofit, is reviving its 1996 Pan-Cultural Film Festival. This year’s…
On the Lam
John Woo has generated plenty of American disciples in the decade since his Hong Kong action films began playing film festivals in the West. Even before he began his Hollywood career with 1993’s Hard Target, bits of his action shtick started showing up in the work of savvy young filmmakers,…
Heart of Glass
Set in 19th-century Australia, this tale of two gamblers — Oscar, a failed minister, and Lucinda, a glassworks owner — is too wispy to be an art thing and too heavy to be a toy. Its key symbol is a tiny glass teardrop. The “Prince Rupert drop” can’t be smashed…
A Question of Life
The little girl began to smile as the red rubber ball was dribbled on the wooden bench. With some effort, she turned her head toward the sound. The rhythm — slap-thunk, slap-thunk, slap-thunk — was slow at first, then began to pick up speed, faster and faster until Sidney Ainsley…
The Insider
Hands On! Lee Brown’s travails in hiring people to fill his administration continued last week when Rice University flack Mike Cinelli turned down an offer to become Brown’s communications director, leaving the new mayor to implore several consultants to find him somebody — anybody — to fill the job. Brown…
Letters
Almost Emetic After reading your January 15 cover story [“The Trophy Son,” by Randall Patterson], I had to control my urge to vomit. Many of us who live in Hearthstone (not to mention the Cy-Fair school district) are appalled that we have to spend our precious tax dollars defending this…
Spin Out
One of the finest novels about American politics is Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, first published in 1946, the year that Bill Clinton was born in that little town called Hope. Warren’s book is built around the character of Willie Stark, the populist governor of a small, backward…
Press Picks
thursday february 5 “Bound/Books by Artists” Many of Houston’s top visual artists (and a couple of out-of-towners) contributed to this group exhibition focusing on the medium of the book “as a vehicle for the artists’ self-expression” and/or “a point of departure.” And there are a few departures. Bill Davenport’s Things…
Hot Plate
As we reported last week, much has changed since the Cortes Deli, now the Cortes Restaurant, moved from a humble strip center on Alabama to new premises at 404 Shepherd. But there are continuities as well: Many of the faces here will be familiar to Deliheads, and so will some…
Dish
When Irish Eyes Are Glued to the Screen The Claddagh Irish Pub and Grill, normally so jolly, was subdued when I visited one recent Saturday. Just before I got there, this watering hole popular with fans of British soccer had been rocked by bad news: The game they’d come to…