Jon Dee Graham
The ascension of Austin stalwart and former True Believer Jon Dee Graham to the status of respected solo artist is a gratifying development. Sure, he’s a skillful songwriter with a knack for encapsulating the big and the small moments within his lyrics. He’s also a subtly fierce and cunning guitar…
Fat City
The chalkboard menu above the bar at Naturally Yours Café includes a lot of Southern dishes you don’t usually see in health food restaurants: chicken wings, barbecue, smothered steaks. Most of them are available in both the original and vegetarian forms. I order some vegetarian chicken wings, cleverly advertised as…
South Park Mexican / 8-Ball
Let’s forget for a moment South Park Mexican’s legal troubles and attempt to judge Never Change on its own merits. Yes, you can listen to the Mexican’s latest without all the percolating drama getting in the way. What you won’t be able to get past is the mixed message the…
Attack of the Surf Punks
The Magnetic IV all love 1950s and early-’60s B movies. The seamy underbelly of the “I Like Ike” years as chronicled in films like B movie titan Roger Corman’s Bucket of Blood — in which a nerdy waiter at a beatnik coffeehouse murders his clientele and turns their corpses into…
David Morales
Let us now praise the famous David Morales. The Brooklyn-born spinner/producer/remixer has a list of accomplishments that hangs over our heads like Nicole Kidman on that swing in Moulin Rouge. He has remixed tunes for such überfamous pop folk as Mariah, Whitney, Luther, Tina, Toni and both Michael and Janet…
Pigeon with a Fine Pinot
Born in San Antonio and raised in Houston, Chris Olbekson studied cooking in the Art Institute of Houston’s Culinary Program and graduated with the school’s first class in 1994. He worked at the Redwood Grill, Anthony’s and Tony’s before becoming the executive chef at Ouisie’s Table (3939 San Felipe, 713-528-2264)…
Joseph Murrail Jackson Memorials
Local drummer/percussionist/vibist Joe Jackson died suddenly behind his drum kit on January 12. Jackson was known for the band the Buddhacrush, as well as for his work in the JMJ Trio and in the Afro-Cuban Ensemble. Although he was apparently in good health and only 34 years old, the cause…
Script Doctor
Houstonian Pavan Grover is pretty successful as far as doctors go. The Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital pain specialist had his own television show, Asian Network, while he was still a resident. His pioneering surgery involving a pulse-driven simulator was broadcast on network television and got him an invite to the…
Hell and Back
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, based on reporter Mark Bowden’s factual account of a 1993 U.S. Army operation gone dreadfully awry in Somalia, doesn’t just kick your ass. It pummels your entire body; it leaves you trembling. Once the premise and setting are established, this brutal combat adventure doesn’t catch…
Cross Ways
A few weeks before America eats Thanksgiving dinner each year, another harvest festival is celebrated: the Jewish holiday Sukkoth. The Hebrew word translates to “feast of tabernacles,” in honor of the temporary, tentlike rooms that families and synagogues build to observe the holiday. An American sukkah (the singular form of…
Devil’s Advocate
It should be so easy to hate this man sitting on a couch in a high-priced hotel suite, this man sharing his bottle of Evian. He is, after all, a demon dressed head to toe (or tail?) in slate gray, the Satan of Cinema. Attacking him has long been regular…
Anatomy of a Promotion
Every September, Chuy’s sets up big outdoor chile roasters in the parking lots of its restaurants. They’re the same kind of roasters you see by the side of the road in New Mexico during the harvest season. The peppers tumble in a wire basket while a set of propane burners…
Death Is in the Details
Though it took Actors Theatre a few months to regroup after leaving its longtime home on South Boulevard, the now traveling troupe has finally opened its new season in borrowed space at Unhinged Productions. Unfortunately, the company’s sluggish production of Steven Dietz’s very dated Lonely Planet doesn’t offer much to…
Out of my Gourd
Ravioli di zucca or butternut squash ravioli tossed with sage butter sauce ($11)? Somehow, the English description of this dish at Mingalone Italian Bar & Grill (540 Texas Avenue, 713-223-0088) sounds a lot better than the Italian. Nothing, however, can fully describe the splendor of the six large homemade, misshapen…
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
The curatorial assistants at the Museum of Fine Arts were frustrated. It was the summer of 1997, shortly after ground had been broken for the new multimillion-dollar Audrey Jones Beck Building that eventually would help the MFA leap from the 30th-largest art exhibit space in the country to the sixth…
Trip Out
Thomas Iocca had just finished teaching medieval literature to his seventh-grade English students and wanted to reward the kids with an end-of-the-semester holiday treat. So he planned for 125 Attucks Middle School students to see Lord of the Rings on opening day. After all, the movie is filled with life…
Hanging Up
Austin attorney Keith Hampton was on the phone last year with a witness in Amarillo. Hampton’s client was on death row. The witness’s information could, literally, have been a matter of life and death. Hampton ended the call when he discovered that some one was eavesdropping on the other end…
Brown Wins Historical Award
The American Heritage-Historical Association has honored Mayor Lee P. Brown with its 2002 Distinguished Award of Merit for his unique restoration program. A prestigious nonprofit society of scholars, AH-HA annually recognizes heritage projects that most closely adhere to historical accuracy. The panel of AH-HA jurists noted that the award is…
War on bin Laden — or Unions?
Jeanell Walker looked forward to a crowded work calendar as the new year began. After all, the 25-year federal employee wore two hats in the U.S. attorney’s office in downtown Houston. She’s a financial litigation agent for the government as well as president of the American Federation of Government Employees…
It’s Still News
Those intrepid Investigators from Channel 2 were at it again January 10. With the “Exclusive” tag firmly entrenched at the bottom of the screen, the team exposed how Harris County Judge Robert Eckels has abstained from voting in Commissioners Court for more than two years. His actions “raise questions of…
Brother, Can You Spare the Time?
Charlie and Bruce Robison, the crown princes of Texas country music, each had pretty good years in 2001. Charlie’s Step Right Up generated impressive radio play, while his pointed public comments on the state of contemporary country garnered him plenty of ink. Bruce asked Sony to free him from his…
Bad Breath
Bad Breath The L-word: Having moved from Houston in June, I’ve kept up with the happenings of the city through your Internet version of the Houston Press. Thank you for that service. While I’m not a Houston native (I lived there only 18 months), there were many aspects of the…
Musical Chairs
The Good Luck Band bears that name for a reason. They never know if enough people will show up to play a gig, but somehow, through six years of flying by the seat of their pants, they’ve made every one. After stints at the Last Concert and Mary Jane’s, the…
Universal Circus
What goes on underneath the bright blue-and-yellow big top of Cirque du Soleil is a scale model of what’s going on in the world as a whole. Just as every major city becomes a melting pot of ethnic neighborhoods, this strange modern circus is an eclectic mix of styles and…
The Privilege Pilgrimage
When the clock strikes two on a Saturday or Sunday morning in downtown Houston, club and bar owners clear out their joints like cops dispersing the crowd from a horrific yet hypnotic crime scene. Drunk women walk out clinging to their dates for dear life. Wired guys look frantically for…
Of Melodrama and Music
With the centennial of John Steinbeck’s birth upon us, it’s not surprising that arts organizations are staging Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck’s theatrical adaptation of his 1937 novella tells the familiar story of two itinerant farm workers — one with a hulking presence and a weak mind, one with a…