Press Picks
thursday february 9 Student reading Middle and high school students who’ve worked in the Rice/HISD School Writing Project will read from their works. Isn’t this brave of them? Public speaking is often tough for slick, highly paid CEOs, and here are school kids getting up in front of the public…
Stepson of Ruggles
The battlefield of the volatile, ego-ridden restaurant world is littered with sundered partnerships. Add to the casualty list the short-lived collaboration between Bruce Molzan (whose Ruggles Grill was recently rated by the people’s-choice Zagat Guide as Houston’s most popular restaurant) and Tom Dietrich (whose three Auntie Pasto’s Italian spots were,…
Blasters Redux
In the early ’80s there was no hotter live band than the Blasters. Led by brothers Phil and Dave Alvin, the group performed some of the most memorable shows of Fitzgerald’s pre-kid club era. The good news is that the Blasters are returning to Houston. The bad news is that…
Seaside Bliss
First-time feature filmmaker David Frankel’s Miami Rhapsody is so fleet-footed, cheerful and entertaining that it’s tempting to dismiss it as just another piece of popcorn entertainment. But there’s clearly a certain craft — even art — to creating a motion picture that makes you feel this swoony, giddy and grateful,…
Pop Moment
You can kick a good woman out of her time slot, but you can’t keep her down… Hometown radio fans may remember DJ Donna McKenzie from her recent stint at KLOL, or her prior gig at Z-107 before it made the move to “alternative,” or her “Made in Texas” program…
Live Shots
Henry Qualls and Kinney Abair McGonigel’s Mucky Duck Thursday, February 2 A “blues” performer usually calls to mind a solo act, most often male and black, playing guitar to illustrate personal stories. That traditional profile lives on in Henry Qualls of Elmo, Texas, the latest in a long-standing fraternity of…
Flyin’ Alone
Halfway into her debut solo album Wild Seed — Wild Flower, Dionne Farris follows a bluesy, plucked guitar into a soaringly soulful rendition of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” that, in many ways, transforms the chestnut into Farris’ personal anthem: “Blackbird singing in the dead of night / take these broken wings…
Hot Plate
Shiva: Worth Celebrating Five years is a ripe old age for a restaurant, many of which don’t survive to see their first birthday. So the fifth-anniversary buffet thrown a few weeks back by Shiva, the slightly quirky Indian restaurant in the Rice Village, qualified as a festive occasion. Twenty bucks…
Cooperate — or Die?
Get ready for the Greater Houston Partnership — and I’m not talking about the chamber of commerce. Never before has there been such a public display of camaraderie between our three major art institutions: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Menil Collection. For starters, CAM…
Death Done Wrong
It would seem that Death and the Maiden couldn’t miss. A psychological thriller set somewhere in South America after the fall of a dictator, it concerns Paulina Escobar, a woman kidnapped and tortured during the dictatorship, her husband Gerardo, a well-respected lawyer who’s just been appointed to head a human-rights…
Tears and Fears
“Don’t tell anybody about what you’ve seen,” a strong-willed matriarch warns her daughter-in-law in the quiet soap opera Women from the Lake of Scented Souls. “If you do,” the threat continues, “I’ll tear your tongue out.” Misery endured in a type of silence that screams out on screen is one…
Casualties of War
Last December, as Houston’s Vietnamese read their newspapers through the steam from bowls of pho, a name from years ago stared back like a reproachful ghost. The name appeared in bold, in small ads in papers such as Asian American News. “The FBI is investigating the murders of five Vietnamese…
Letters
The Real Question Michael Berryhill’s article in the January 19 issue, “The Curriculum Question,” would be better titled “The Privatization Question.” Mr. Berryhill’s article displays both ignorance of the reading programs and a basic misunderstanding of the issue at hand. As a first-grade teacher with experience in both DISTAR and…
Re-Hanging the Judge
If Judge Lupe Salinas emerges unindicted from his extended engagement with the criminal justice system, it won’t be for lack of trying on the part of the Harris County District Attorney’s office. Having chewed through three grand juries in their pursuit of sustainable indictments against Salinas on perjury allegations, prosecutors…
Plume Frazzled
Although the streets in Memorial Bend are named after operas, the small, quiet subdivision in west Houston doesn’t normally serve as a setting for mystery and theatrics. But the trucks and drilling rigs that appeared unannounced on Tosca Street one day last October, blocking driveways and sidewalks, served notice to…