Static
Local music.com… Surfing the Internet in search of anything worthwhile about the local music scene is sort of like surfing the Gulf of Mexico: It’s largely a wash. I recently tried using the keywords “Houston” and “music” and turned up 78 website matches, which any hacker will tell you isn’t…
Rotation
Scarfo Scarfo Broken Rekids 60 Ft Dolls The Big 3 DGC Any power trio worth its muscle knows how to burn energy efficiently. When only three are doing the work normally assigned to four or more, efficiency isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity, and the friction generated from a band…
Aw, Twern’t Nuthin’
Though he has experimented with a multitude of styles, the way Mike Henderson sees it, there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. As for Henderson, he plays good music. A veteran of hundreds of recording sessions, Henderson is the real deal: a critic’s darling, a…
Louvin It Up
The Louvin Brothers were country music’s best-ever brother team, and when they titled their greatest album Tragic Songs of Life, they weren’t kidding around. Over the course of that record, a woman wanders “this wide world all over,” leaving her abandoned lover to contemplate suicide; a man, rich beyond his…
Comic, Tragic, Tedious
Drag has a long history in theater. From The Trojan Women to Torch Song Trilogy, actors have bravely stuffed their size twelves into pumps, shaved extra close and applied blush from cheekbone to jaw in preparation for telling the whole, dirty truth. Sister Coco — a.k.a. actor Jimmy Phillips –…
Cold-Blooded Sacrifice
Okay, metaphor buffs: An Albino Alligator, we’re informed in the movie of that name, is what the other alligators in a group send out as a sacrificial lamb. Members of another group of gators attack the albino, and the remainder of the first group violently dispatches their competition for their…
Manhattan Melodies
World governments may topple, stock markets may soar and crash, deadly viruses may mantle the globe, but one constant remains: Woody Allen still hankers for a Cole Porter-ized New York. You have to be a deep-dish romantic, or else a blinkered snoot — or maybe both — to persist in…
Ashley Yount Can’t Hear You
Julie Yount lugged clean laundry into her son’s room, where her daughter, ten-month-old Ashley, was playing. Ashley didn’t turn around, but Julie chattered baby talk anyway as she loaded Blake’s clothes into his bureau. Life was good: Julie liked this new house in Beaumont, so far out in the country…
Minimal Theories
Over lunch at the pricey Grotto restaurant in Highland Village, Bill Miller is defending the tactics of the Save Jobs for Houston Committee, the PAC formed to defeat the so-called “Living Wage” initiative on the January 18 ballot. Miller is an Austin-based consultant and lobbyist who’s become a ubiquitous figure…
The Insider
Elective Surgery? Members of Commissioners Court traditionally have regarded the county treasurer in the same terms in which one thinks of one’s appendix — that is, a small, worm-shaped tube whose only apparent function is to become a big pain when it acts up. The treasurers, on the other hand,…
Letters
100 Percent Marjoram-Free Zowie!! What a treat that was — the return of Alison Cook [“Year of the Rat,” December 26]! And what a mad coincidence that La Colombe D’Or was featured on your Cafe page simultaneously. [“Seriously French,” by Joanne Harrison]. But tell us, o food gurus, did any…
Press Picks
thursday january 16 Captioned Ransom The good people of Silent Entertainment present a captioned screening of Ron Howard’s thriller about a self-made millionaire (Mel Gibson) who attempts to rescue his kidnapped son. The theater holds 300, and organizers urge those in the hearing-impaired community to turn out early to secure…
From Start to Finish
I was certain that someone in the kitchen had made a horrible mistake. I’d ordered dessert; what was placed in front of me looked more like breakfast. Two dark triangular wedges rested against each other, their outside obviously fried crisp. French toast, without question. “Excuse me,” I started, “I wanted…
Dish
Soup’s On It would be hard to imagine better weather for Temple Emanu El’s Fourth Annual Chicken Soup Cook-off than what we’ve been having. While an ice-slicked road may make travel difficult, a little cold snap does a lot to remind a person of just how pleasant a steaming bowl…
Lee Way
Back in 1990, Houston was one of a handful of stops for the JVC jazz festival, which featured icons such as Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and George Benson. Also on the bill was Lee Ritenour, a less-hallowed guitarist whose ace band of top studio talent nonetheless nearly stole the show…