The Used, Taking Back Sunday, Blood Brothers, New Transit Direction
Homeless and drug-addled, the members of the Used are not the stuff Mormons are typically made of. Their home base in Orem, Utah, hasn’t deterred them from unleashing an onslaught of rock on the world, replete with the requisite blood and vomit. The live show — one that would make…
Fresh Starts
In politics, timing may not be everything, but it’s a big chunk of the equation for successful campaigns. Just ask Congressman Chris Bell of the 25th District and Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Sylvia Garcia. The two veteran Houston Democrats last year hit the right seams at the right times…
The Year of Living Dangerously
In order to distill the essence of a year in cinema, one must first appraise the year itself. In a word, 2002 was about strife. Fortunately, on the big screen, 2002 was a year of bravado and surprise. Squishy Robin Williams and squeaky Tom Hanks finally played heavies! A mousy…
Feeling Lucky?
It’s lunchtime and all ten tables at the Lucky Pot noodle shop are taken. Aside from me and my dining companion, the only other Anglo in the joint is wearing a blue cap with a City of Houston insignia on it. A health department inspector and a restaurant critic –…
Tango and Cash
Al Capone himself probably couldn’t kill Chicago. The bawdy Kander and Ebb musical has been charming theater audiences since 1975 with its gleefully jaundiced view of life, and Rob Marshall’s inventive movie version will likely win a lot of new friends for the stagestruck murderess Roxie Hart, her sharpie lawyer…
A Child Shall Lead Them
A Child Shall Lead Them Cut the Star Kids crap: I just thank God all this New Age/alien bullshit wasn’t around when I was a kid [“Alien-ated Kids,” by Dylan Otto Krider, December 19]. Back in the Dark Ages (1969), I was not conferred the title “Indigo” or “Star Child”…
Wooden Nickleby
Those who seek a polar opposite to Michael Caine’s kind but firm patriarch Dr. Wilbur Larch in The Cider House Rules will find it in Jim Broadbent’s horrid, one-eyed headmaster, Wackford Squeers, in the new adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. Author John Irving cribbed extensively from Charles Dickens to create his…
Year of the Hyena
Prison can change a guy. He can become a hardened criminal, an upstanding citizen, or…a comedian. That’s what happened to Ali, owner of Houston’s newest urban comedy club, Hyenas. While serving a six-year sentence for drug charges, Ali practiced cheering up fellow inmates with his fledgling material. “To me, therapy…
Old Masters and Young Guns
The ten best pictures of 2002: 1. I’m Going Home. The most beautiful film ever made about aging by the world’s oldest working filmmaker, 94-year-old Manoel de Oliveira. 2. Far from Heaven. Todd Haynes’s Douglas Sirk-inspired melodrama about race and gayness in the 1950s is more timely than ever, thanks…
The Anti-Marthas
Despite her recently marred reputation, Martha Stewart still represents perfection — at least in terms of homes, weddings, flower arrangements and food. More perfect still, in terms of marketing, anyway, is Stewart’s message: You too can be perfect, if you buy her magazine or watch her TV show and can…
Old News
It’s never a good sign when somewhere in the vicinity of half of my most memorable moviegoing experiences in a given year come from reissues of films at least three decades old. But there it is: In my memory banks, 2002 may well be remembered as the year of the…
Main Street Improv
Main Street Improv has expanded beyond its original mission of improvisational ensemble games and comedy (think Whose Line Is It Anyway?). Every Thursday night, Main Street’s extemporaneous insanity is counterpointed by the scripted hilarity of Bosco’s sketch comedy troupe (“Think Saturday Night Live, but funny,” Atomic Cafe owner Wayne Wilden…
Back to the Future
Four of the top ten films I saw this year don’t actually open in the United States until 2003, but they played at various film festivals during the year. By listing them here I not only alert readers to films they should watch out for in ’03, but also make…
Adzom Paylo Rinpoche
Adzom Paylo Rinpoche, the renowned lama from Tibet, began his studies at age five, went into full-time retreat at age 11 and became a teacher at 13. Now 30, the lama lectures at major monasteries in Tibet. He’s come to Houston to impart his knowledge of Tong Len, the Tibetan…
Art and Soul
There were lots of good movies this year, but few great ones. I resolved to see as many as possible way back in January, and did okay; there are still one or two I missed, and while Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights probably would not have been a best of…
Ultimate Demise
The bender had lasted nearly three days. Hanging out with thirsty country singers from Austin will eventually be my demise. At the end, we found ourselves drinking White Russians at the Westcott Drive-In (6603 Westcott, 713-862-1417), shooting pool until we gambled our last nickel. It was five in the afternoon,…
Far from Happy
In all, a far better year than any in recent memory, so much so it feels impolite and irresponsible to choose a mere ten best among the annum’s offerings. This list remained in flux till the last possible moment; five seconds ago it featured, among others, Signs, Full Frontal, Human…
Special Sauce
How do you make a spinach salad stand out? The Nantucket Bleu Spinach Salad ($6.50) at Redwood Grill (4611 Montrose, 713-523-4611) does it with an unusual vinaigrette. Into a traditional olive oil and vinegar base is added tangy Roquefort cheese, pecans for extra crunch and lots of blueberries. The blueberries…
Deen’s List
Georganne Deen hit puberty in mid-’60s Fort Worth. She was part of an affluent and conservative family — her grandfather was a four-term mayor and her grandmother wrote books about women and Christianity. If you have even a glancing familiarity with the time period and the social mores of women…
Mag Hags
“American music magazines suck.” Rolls off the tongue, don’t it? These days it’s rolling off everyone’s. Saunter down the length of a magazine rack and scowl at the teen-pop hoochie starlets, the drooling trend-pigism (“The Strokes! The Hives! The White Stripes!”), the outrageously vapid rock-star puff pieces, the gutless corporate-blow…
“Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland”
In Lady with an Ermine, a coolly elegant young woman of 500 years ago sits clutching a silky weasel. She is thought to be Cecilia Gallerani, the niece/mistress of Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan. (Apparently “niece” and “mistress” were not mutually exclusive titles in 15th-century Italy.) The Leonardo da…
Pander Bare
He knows that it sounds like a crock, a story concocted from the fertile imagination of a fiction writer or press agent. But Shawn Pander swears it’s true. When he was ten, a homeless man stopped him, handed over a guitar and portentously told Pander to (drum roll, please) “make…
Mystery Café
Wonderfully weird kitsch is what every droopy soul needs during the post-holiday doldrums. And there’s no better place for good old American middle-class strangeness than the Marriott West Loop Hotel, where the Mystery Café serves up London broil, penne pasta and a show every Friday and Saturday night. The newest…
Crimson Tide
Much like skinning cats, there’s more than one memorable way to scream in a song. There’s the artfully abrasive method: a full-throated screech with enough primal intensity to make Edvard Munch stop and stare. There’s the discordant and painfully deranged animal cry: Think of a confused Jim Morrison wailing at…
A Figure to Die For
Kaye Parsley had always been overweight. When she was 16, her family sent her to what she calls fat camp in Kerrville, where she and her hefty sisters spent long days waging war on their waistlines. It worked. She lost 30 pounds at camp and 20 more when she went…
The Whole Package
At first glance, Medicine Show seems like a traditional bluegrass band. Their basic setup is the usual assortment of string instruments: mandolin, banjo, guitar and washtub bass, occasionally augmented by a female guest on a fiddle. They also do the über-purist Del McCoury thing and play their solos in one…
For Whom the Belt Tolls
In late 1999, Bradley Wayne Barker received a call from fellow stuntman Christopher Wentzel, offering him a movie gig. The grunt work in the California desert paid $450 a day. Wentzel picked up Barker at a Los Angeles airport, took him for a boat ride in the bay and then…
Cat’s Eye
The third and final set of “The Groove,” the soul/jazz showcase that goes down every Sunday night at the Red Cat Jazz Cafe (924 Congress), is by far the most important set of the evening. This is how it works: After the featured artist finishes his or her 20- to…
Skin Game
As lawyers busy themselves with fleshing out the facts, new twists have emerged in the sexual harassment lawsuit against a veteran lobbyist for Baylor College of Medicine. Thomas Kleinworth, Baylor’s senior director of government relations, was sued by his then-administrative coordinator Annette McManus. She described him as a virtual sex-crazed…
“These Shoes Are Made for Walking” Benefit
Nothing can give you a blistering case of the blues like a pair of ill-fitting shoes. For most of us, taking care of the problem is as simple as exchanging them. But when you’re wearing battered hand-me-downs, returning them for a better fit is not an option. That’s why the…
Mary’s to Remain
First, it was Christ. Now Mary’s has been resurrected as well. Last month, it looked as if Mary’s Lounge, the venerable Montrose gay bar, would be closing its doors forever (see “Zipping Up Mary’s,” December 26). But Michael Gates, owner of Michael’s Outpost, stepped forward to pay off Mary’s debts…