Pop Moment
Okay, here’s a joke: what does the Deadhead say when he runs out of weed? Wow… this band sucks…. Now that that’s out of the way, there’s serious business to attend to, like the mending of fences. A couple of weeks back, when I was compiling my year-end roundup in…
Live Shots
Banana Blender Surprise Wednesday, January 11 The Pig “Live” Send in the Crowns, Banana Blender Surprise’s year-old debut CD, was riddled with a sort of goofball hi-jinx and food humor that struck me as indicative of a joke band that might be funny for a (very) little while, but probably…
Quick Change Comedy
The thing about camp, darling, is that it is ultimately a very serious business. Under the pretext of fun, camp sends up conventions. It criticizes through love and subverts through affection, survives through wit and celebrates through outrageousness — all the while displaying soul, since it seeks to exorcise malign…
Baseball’s Rough Beast
While Tyrus Raymond Cobb may or may not have been the greatest baseball player of all time, there’s no question that he was the meanest player in the history of the game. Known for sharpening his cleats — the better to impale opponents when sliding into base — Cobb was…
Mother Lode
It’s not at all surprising that now Susan Sarandon has finally edged away from earthy sexpot roles and begun embracing characters with maternal streaks, she’s done it with the same warmth, clear-headedness and street-smart charm she’s displayed throughout her long and fruitful career. In the past six months, she’s played…
The Curriculum Question
When Houston businessman John Privett talks about fixing the schools, he still burns with anger at the way Houston’s education leaders treated him. In the spring of 1993, Privett thought he had something magical going. The teachers of three elementary schools and one middle school had voted overwhelmingly to get…
Newman’s Own
In 1986, when Paul Newman finally won an Oscar as best actor, there was some grumbling. It’s not so much that people begrudged him the honor. It’s just that some people thought he didn’t deserve to win for a performance in The Color of Money that was basically a reprise…
Unequal Opportunity
Sure, Tony Brigham was hoping to make some money when, in May 1992, he sent a letter to Mayor Bob Lanier and the Houston City Council asking that they consider him for a piece of city business. But Brigham, a black man struggling to make ends meet with a small…
Caught Dead In an Opera
According to the public notices, the gathering at the Contemporary Arts Museum last week was convened to discuss the Houston Grand Opera’s premiere of Harvey Milk, a production based on the life of a gay politician who was assassinated by a fellow member of San Francisco’s board of supervisors. A…
Praise the Lord, Pass the Copy
It wasn’t on the order of the Virgin Mary’s likeness appearing on a tortilla, but the quasi-religious apparition that materialized on the premises of the Houston Post recently set plenty of journalistic tongues on fire. Without warning, there was Pat Robertson, inspecting the paper’s presses during the evening hours of…
Letters
Shots in the Dark Thank you for your article on “Shooting In the New Year” [News, by Steve McVicker, December 29]. Here are a few ideas I had in regard to this public safety issue: 1. Gun stores could sell and promote the use of blanks. 2. Public service announcements…
Press Picks
thursday january 19 The United Nations: A New Humanitarian Order Stop watching so much CNN! That’s no way to learn anything, except maybe how many ties Judge Ito owns. For a detailed update on the United Nations, check with Erskine Childers. Given the UN’s financial difficulties and recent ineffectual responses…
Hot Plate
Meat Matters If life were fair, the grub at Pete’s Fine Meats & Deli would be terrific. There’s that poetic name, for one thing, and the nostalgia factor of a genuine Texas meat market that serves barbecue and burgers on the side. Not to mention the sentimental edge conferred by…
Vietnamese Variety
Part Las Vegas, part late-period Saigon, all glitter and brilliantly illumined glitz, the Song Long Bistro is less a French-Vietnamese restaurant than a high-wattage visual experience with built-in refreshments. Past a canopy twined in white lights, behind a window-wall hung with shiny strips of Mylar, it glints in the far-Bellaire…
Rotation
The Panic Choir Soul and Luna Bay Leaf Productions You might expect a band with “panic” in its name to have some sort of edgy quality, some end-of-the-millennium angst, some fear and loathing maybe — some attitude of some stripe, at least — but you’d be wrong. Soul and Luna,…
MegaStoopid
Way back in the bad old days, when some of us inexplicably thought it might serve us well to gain a theoretical basis for the act of argument, we signed up for high school debate classes, where we learned instead to twirl Bic sticks around our thumbs and sneak cigarettes…
Talkin’ Townes Van Zandt
Troubadour Townes Van Zandt carries the sort of reputation that invites hyperbole, and I’m only one among the many writers who have tripped over their tongues trying to put into words the wholly justifiable esteem with which a small but intensely loyal crowd of admirers regard his songwriting. Maybe it…