Raising a Red Flag
On a Wednesday afternoon in late October, about two weeks before Texas voters went to the polls to re-elect the governor and decide several close statewide races, the numbers somehow got loose. They were poll numbers, the results of the Texas Poll, the most widely publicized pre-election poll in the…
Tommy Lee Uncensored!
Today, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee owns the most famous penis on the Internet — but his generously proportioned man-part wasn’t the source of his initial burst of fame. Lee’s been a popular personality since the early ’80s, when he and bandmates Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars burst…
Status Report
Following a vote of a panel of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, confessed murderer Walter Waldhauser Jr., also known as Michael Lee Davis, is once again a free man. Last October, the Press reported (“Making a Killing,” October 22, 1998) that Waldhauser/Davis, the middleman in four inheritance and…
Unconventional Conflict
Writer-director Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, the filmmaker’s adaptation of James Jones’s 1962 bestseller about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal, arrives in theaters with an almost unbearable weight of expectation. After graduating in the first class at AFI’s Advanced Film Studies program and working briefly as a…
IB or Not IB
Jonathan Wolfe’s dad died just when high school was getting hard — especially hard, since the sophomore was in Lamar’s prestigious, challenging, for-smart-kids-only International Baccalaureate program. Jonathan’s dad was an intellectual, and Jonathan was becoming one. They debated whether black and white were really colors; they went to lectures at…
Twisted Sisters
Genius can be a terrible, destructive gift. Jacqueline du Pre, the brilliant British cellist who enraptured audiences in the sixties and seventies with her musical passion and intensity, lived a life not only of great renown and acclamation, but also of harrowing loneliness and emotional turmoil. Her story is movingly…
Down For The Count
Questions began innocently enough in the survey that showed up three months ago in the mailbox of a North Harris County home. The recipient, a white-collar professional in his late forties, started thumbing through its inquiries which sought basic biographical information. Soon, however, the 16 pages of questions took a…
L.A. Pass
Because it revealed the coke-snorting, ego-fueled corruption of Hollywood in the early 1980s with such acid wit, David Rabe’s play Hurlyburly became a huge audience hit when it burst onto Broadway in 1984. Here was the inside stuff from the Left Coast, gotten up in a frenetic new language combining…
State Board of Touchy-feely?
Reiki, an Asian touch therapy that traces its origins to Buddhist monasteries in ancient Tibet, is supposed to channel divine love rays to heal the human body. But the exact opposite effect occurred with a bill filed last month by Texas Representative Debra Danburg to give the state hands-on regulation…
Porn of Plenty
Opening night at Theater LaB was packed. But what else would be expected when the show bears the rather provocative title Shopping and Fucking? What self-respecting, TV-watching, mall-browsing, movie-going inhabitant of the pop-culture-gone-ballistic 1990s wouldn’t be a wee bit curious about a play with such a naughty little name? It…
Letters
Low Rent-a-Cop Hell of an article [“False Sense of Security,” by Steve McVicker, December 31]! As a former retail security guard for more than 13 years, I am well aware of the riffraff posing as security guards. The sad thing is that little is being done about it. Hopefully, this…
Hot Plate
Humble hoecakes get the Hollywood treatment at benjy’s in the Village (2424 Dunstan, 522-7602). Executive chef James Nakayama adapts a technique he first saw at Robert Redford’s Sundance restaurant to make roasted corn cakes fluffy and light without cornmeal. Then he “short-stacks” them with thick layers of cured salmon and…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *In December a deer hunter in upscale Nantucket, Massachusetts, stumbled across the hatch that leads to the eight-by-eight-by-seven-foot-deep underground squatter’s apartment of Thomas Johnson, age 38. Johnson said he built the place ten years ago when he was on the lam from drug charges in Italy. His apartment…
The Dinosaur Hunters
The fossil, a vertebra from a big Jurassic plant eater, was nothing special. The world is full of those pieces of backbone: They’re big and tough and survive the elements better than the delicate little stuff that Lace Honert prefers. Lace likes to look for prehistoric plants, flowers, birds. And…
Dance Fever
Fly Dance Group’s rehearsals look more like basketball game warm-ups than dance concerts these days. As the heavy bass of house music fills the tiny duplex studio, five young men in baggy jeans, bright T-shirts, tennis shoes and gold chains move across the wood floor in intricate passing patterns, with…
Mild Child
Rita Rudner’s sitting in Palm Springs hoping Houston won’t be humid because her hair’s been doing really well lately. Too bad for her. At least her wit is dry. Rudner’s funny in a polite, calm, nonconfrontational way. Her gentle observations are delivered with big eyes and a soft little-girl voice…
Night & Day
Thursday January 14 “The worse my life gets, the funnier I become,” lamented Dana Gould six years ago in his critically acclaimed, autobiographical, one-man play, Insomnia. His life seems to be on an upswing as of late (he’s currently working on the NBC sitcom Working), but thankfully he’s got enough…
Dish
Please Send Money An enterprising con artist from Madison, Wisconsin, recently attempted to rip off Houston restaurants with a variation on the old “victim of spilled coffee” scam. The trickster mailed out a very polite letter explaining that during his recent business trip to Houston a waiter at the target…
Wow on the Waterfront
You’ve gotta hand it to restaurateur/developer extraordinaire Tilman Fertitta: He’s not one to be slowed by mere acts of God. Less than four months after the force-three tidal surge of Tropical Storm Frances pounded across his Kemah Waterfront, Fertitta’s 14-acre empire has risen from the wreckage. The boardwalk, ripped from…
Hot Nuits
Hector Berlioz made no secret of the fact that Symphonie Fantastique was one long opium dream, the fevered imaginings of a bereft lover haunted by memories of his fickle beloved. Like a typical romantic, the poor soul tries to poison himself with opium, only to end up in a deep…
Back in Black
A fable: Once upon a time (say, 1986) there was a band in Boston called the Pixies. They sounded a bit caustic — combining roaring guitars and odd rhythms with a love for strong melodies and a kooky sense of humor, often dark. Lead singer Black Francis sang about UFOs,…
Rotation
Celine Dion These Are Special Times Sony 550 Music Having spent 15 years in both the French Canadian pop ghetto and the adult contemporary star machine, Celine Dion is a survivor. But more than that, she’s a revolutionary. No, really: When she entered the drive-at-5 pop world in the early…
Overseas Transmission
You might figure that the German band Kraftwerk and their 1977 single “Trans-Europe Express” would mean about as much to the history of hip-hop as, say, Rick Springfield and “Jesse’s Girl.” Wrong. In his new book Hip Hop America, critic Nelson George praises this rather obscure track — he calls…
Killer Weed
It was at Browning Elementary, a neighborhood public school near the Heights, that The Beast first made its appearance. Ron Jones, a biologist with the local field office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had volunteered to help the school build and maintain a Wetlands Demonstration Pond as a…
Blowing His Own Horn
Houston native Calvin Owens has, in his own words, “straddled the fence musically” for more than half a century. Moving freely between jazz and blues, the master trumpeter has worked in and directed big bands and combos, playing what he labels simply “our music” and defying those who might limit…