Big Trouble at Brittle Spy
Spy (112 Travis) has become the Bobby Brown of Houston nightclubs. Bad news just seems to cling to the place. Federal authorities seized the club’s assets after the owners were arrested in an alleged international ecstasy trafficking ring last September, and in November a shoot-out with police ended in the…
Showdown at the Bar X
It’s 7:30 in the morning on the day before Thanksgiving, and here comes Helen Phillips in her pickup truck. You can set your watch by Helen. She shows up at her little blue office at 7:30 every morning, except Saturdays, when she shows up at nine. Only on Sundays does…
Erasure
James Taylor’s stab at “Everyday” was just underwhelmingly twee; Andy Bell makes the Buddy Holly tune full-blown gay, which is precisely the point, since few singers are so loud or proud about their sexuality as the Erasure singer (emoter, really). Erasure’s “Everyday” plays even sweeter than the original, but not…
The Rooster That Fell from the Sky
On a cold, gray afternoon last week, Becky Earle was visiting her Woodland Heights neighbor Margaret Storer. Their chat in Storer’s back driveway off Tenth Street was interrupted by the sudden barking of Storer’s white boxer, Tilly. Earle recalls that the yelping sounded “like a danger bark,” but the two…
Ty Phillips
Black cowboy hat: $75. Faded blue jeans, pressed: $29. Leather belt with big-ass gold buckle: $65. Warm, confident voice and having “Ty” as a first name: Not exactly priceless, but a hell of a good start in the fickle world of country music. Beaumont’s Ty Phillips enters the fray backed…
Getting THMPed
A person with HIV spends a lot of money on pharmaceutical drugs — estimates run up to $15,000 a year. Texans too poor to afford them can get help from the state’s Texas HIV Medication Program (THMP). State law allows people making less than $17,720 a year to get the…
Mind Games
Compiled in the cold light of day, Chuck Barris’s contributions to American culture are the Top 40 ditty “Palisades Park,” which he wrote in 1962, and his discovery, a few years later, that many people are willing to make complete fools of themselves in front of a TV camera. Barris’s…
On the Defense
The concept seemed simple enough in 1989, when the legislature established an indigent defense service for convicts accused of prison crimes. But recent years have brought all-out feuds on a variety of fronts for the beleaguered State Counsel for Offenders office. Rampant staff turnover, an investigation by the prison system,…
A Toothy Grin
Once upon a time, in the town of Darkness Falls… “Wait,” you’re probably saying to yourself, “Darkness Falls is the name of the town?” Yes. Yes it is. And it’s haunted by an evil tooth fairy. Are you sure you want to know more? Okay, good. Because once you get…
Indulge Your Inner Yao
Two weeks ago the creator of YaoMingMania.com was one frustrated Webmaster. A Fox Radio network in California had aired an audio tape of Laker center Shaquille O’Neal taunting Rockets super-rookie Yao Ming with a derisive mock-Chinese dialect. “Tell Yao Ming,” cracked Shaq, “ching-chong-yang-wah-ah-soh.” Although a columnist for AsianWeek blasted O’Neal’s…
Year of the Woman
Let’s start this movie year off right. Let’s talk about women — in film, that is. Oftentimes, women in film act a lot like men in film. (Behold, an almost complete history of men in film, condensed into six words: talking smack and/or cracking skulls.) Of late, however, it has…
Crashing the Sidecar
Crashing the Sidecar Pub for the pub: Music editor John Lomax’s recent coverage of Sidecar Pub’s “Houston Press Don’t Just Live With It” show clearly indicates that the goals of the show were valid [Racket, January 9]. Having set up the show, I can clearly say that we were not…
Dancing Around the Subject
It’s 1911, and New York City is ablaze with new ideas. Women march to vote, and radicals fight for better pay. But ballroom dancing, with all its touching and swirling and dizzying intimacy, is still something good girls don’t do. Poor nice-guy meatpacker Henry Ribolow (Thomas Prior), who dreams of…
On-the-Job Training
For critically acclaimed satirist George Saunders, the path to greatness hasn’t been a straight shot. Before publishing his debut collection of short stories, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, in 1996, he’d worked as a convenience store clerk, a Beverly Hills doorman, a guitar player in a Texas cover band, an oil…
Bloody Brilliant
The first opera I ever attended was a performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; I fell in love with the genre that night. Lucia has everything: breathtaking bel canto, goosebump-inspiring duets, true love, madness, murder, betrayal, suicide, more suicide. I cried. It probably didn’t hurt that I was mad…
Chicken Scratch
Couch potatoes, take note: There’s a new video game that’ll force you to exercise. To play Cockfight, you must don a high-tech cock costume, complete with feathers and beak, and use your body as a joystick — that is, act like a deranged bird. The catch: Your only chance to…
Ties That Bind
According to Sanford Biggers, Buddhist monks and graffiti artists aren’t as different as you might think. Take O.M., for instance, the floor installation for “Afrotemple,” his first Texas exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum. Rendered in pop colors of turquoise and orange, and stylized beyond decipherability, the letter shapes on…
Bob Zany
A 15-year-old Bob Zany began his comedy career on The Gong Show in 1977, reading directly from his notes onstage. The program was famous for its mean-spirited treatment of novices, and Zany wasn’t just gonged, he was yanked off the stage in a net by a man dressed as a…
Randy Twaddle
Randy Twaddle’s charcoal drawings depict curled slips of paper like those found inside fortune cookies. But the artist’s messages don’t predict long life, journeys or happiness; their wisdom comes from common phrases, subversively rearranged. The list began when Twaddle wrote “The Vandellas and Martha” in a sketchbook. He’s recently added…
Gay Men’s Chorus of Houston
Armistead Maupin began publishing his serialized column, Tales of the City, in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976. Later, the daily installments were pulled together into a book, kind of a collective diary of gay men’s lives in pre-AIDS San Francisco. Maupin has gone on to publish seven more volumes,…
Blood Money
Just as writer-director Menno Meyjes’ Max was premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, Overlook Press was shipping to bookstores Frederic Spotts’ Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. Meyjes’ film and Spotts’ book say essentially the same thing: Adolf Hitler was a reluctant dictator, a potentially insignificant man who wanted…
Barbecue Breakout
Sandwiches That You Will Like was the name of the PBS documentary that aired on January 8. Produced by KQED in Pittsburgh, the show featured extraordinary sandwiches from around the country. Houston was ably represented by the brisket sandwich at Thelma’s Bar-B-Que (1020 Live Oak, 713-228-2262). Her sudden fame came…
Goat Doughnuts Go Global
The sky is deep blue and bright outside the plate-glass window at Hot Breads bakery on Hillcroft. On the shopping center sidewalk, a young man runs by windmilling his right arm in an enormous arc. “Wow, he must really like this weather,” says my lunch companion, mistaking his gesture for…
Cold Relief
British musicians have a charismatic swagger that Americans have been lusting after ever since the Beatles, the Stones and the rest of the British Invasion bands started showing up at U.S. press conferences in the 1960s. The mop tops entered the media fray fully armed with a deadpan sense of…
Sensory Overload
As the sun sank slowly in the west, a sharp wind howled down the Westheimer corridor, blowing dust and construction debris into my eyes. A beat-up Ford pickup truck gunned it through the light and damn near creamed me into a telephone pole. Great, I thought, broad-sided and blinded in…
Fallout Shelter
“George Bush says a lot of shit. It’s a lot of bluster,” says Nuclear Assault bassist Danny Lilker. “He has to say stuff so all the flag-wavers can go, ‘Oh, yeah, we ain’t gonna take no shit.’ ” Lilker’s pace accelerates. “I feel that it would be disastrous for us…
UFO Sighting
What could possibly entice people to form a line in the middle of a cold, wintry night, waiting for a store to open its doors at 7 a.m.? Pies. Not just any old pies, but one-of-a-kind, handmade, chock-full-of-goodies pies. The Flying Saucer Pie Company (436 West Crosstimbers, 713-694-1141) has been…
Compton’s (Back) N the House
Hip-hop purists disagree about who deserves credit for birthing gangsta rap. Some observers cast their votes for artists such as Schoolly D, Slick Rick and KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions, whereas others cite early-’80s tracks such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” which slammed a socially conscious…
Musical Chairs
The Houston Astros used to be infamous for their multiplayer trades. Remember in 1994, when the ‘Stros shipped Ken Caminiti, Steve Finley and mullet shortstop Andujar Cedeño to the San Diego Padres for Derek “Operation Shutdown” Bell and mullet shortstop Ricky Gutierrez? In 1998, Caminiti went on to lead the…