Native Storyteller
The fact that there are readers in this town is indisputable — Barnes & Noble doesn’t keep the lights on solely with the profits of the lobby Starbucks. But Houston’s literary scene is typically noticed only when a group like the Margarett Root Brown Houston Reading Series brings in writers…
An August Occasion
With its sun-bleached red linoleum floor, its faded leather couch and its list of lazy rules posted so long ago that nobody bothers to read them anymore, Becker’s run-down taxi stand makes the perfect hangout for the bunch of idiosyncratic men who populate August Wilson’s Jitney, now running at the…
The Tickler
Yaqi takes his name from Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, which teaches that enlightenment can be attained through unusual channels. His unusual channel of choice happens to be tickling. That’s right, tickling, and to hear the Houston native describe the practice, it’s the path…
The Seer
The paintings of Rachel Ranta bring to mind the saying “Still waters run deep.” Her straightforward images are deceptively simple. Her colors are soft and warm and slightly luminous; the paintings seem to provide their own light. And she has always tended toward quiet subject matter — weeds, fruit, flowers,…
What’s in a Name?
It can’t have been the easiest year for Anthrax. The band had enough on its plate trying to record a new CD and looking for a reasonably high-profile record label. Then, in the aftermath of September 11, the band’s once-esoteric name became a household word, and not because the aging…
The Good Doctor
Houston television viewers are familiar with the congenial Dr. Michael Glyn Brown. In advertisements, he appears in immaculate attire, pitching his Hand Center that specializes in procedures for carpal tunnel syndrome. Until recently, he had every reason to be smiling. That medical practice earned him an estimated $2.5 million annually…
Hayes of Wine & Roses
It’s hard to write a song when you’re three-fourths gone. — Hayes Carll With his lanky six-foot-three frame slung haphazardly on a worn-out couch, tousled blond hair hanging in his eyes and a pair of bare feet that could still use some growing into, Hayes Carll could be a frat…
It’s About Time
In the last school year, Zoe Bubier was devastated when she got the news that she wouldn’t be able to go to kindergarten — she’d missed the cutoff birth date. A year later, older and wiser, this seasoned veteran of day care finally got her big moment. But because she’s…
Version 2.0
Only at Earthwire.net studios can a person attend a reggae-themed live hip-hop concert that begins with a raucous sports talk show and ends with a blues harmonica virtuoso jamming to live techno on stage. In the clapboard former garage in the heart of darkest Montrose, the atmosphere is loose. There…
DR. UBI’S
Gaping at the television, I knock my water glass over with my elbow and make a mess all over the table — exactly the sort of thing I was trying not to do. Unfortunately, eating the sampler plate at Droubi’s Bakery & Delicatessen while watching a big-breasted belly dancer in…
Booty of the Month Club
It’s Tuesday night — Ladies Night — at the Roxy (5351 West Alabama), and while the customers are drinking themselves silly with cheap bevvies, managers Brian Riggs and Cory Johnson and KRBE DJ/club MC Scott Sparks are sitting around the manager’s office, skimming through copies of the latest Hawaiian Tropic…
Size Does Matter
Were I a doubting Thomas, I might view Kenny & Ziggy’s claim of the “World’s Largest Chocolate Éclair” ($6.95) as mere New York braggadocio. My first glimpse, however, of this thing of beauty at Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen (2327 Post Oak Boulevard, 713-871-8883) was proof enough: Its length…
Money Mark
Fans of the sprawling ethereal song-scapes Money Mark crafted for the Beastie Boys won’t be disappointed with Change Is Coming, a heavy yet lighthearted romp through 12 avant-garde instrumentals. Many listeners may not recognize this keyboard mercenary, but a quick gander at his résumé will reveal that this former L.A…
Texas Johnny Brown
How often do we observe an artist improving in his advanced years? Rarely, given the inevitable effects of aging and burnout to which most succumb. Even in blues music, where senior citizenship is revered, many old-timers fall short of their former verve and glory. But, as his latest CD eloquently…
The Strokes
It’s been a storybook year for the Strokes. Like Jimi Hendrix, the scruffy New York City quintet broke big in England before returning home to near-hysterical buzz for their debut, Is This It, which also perched atop many year-end best-of lists. They’ve been name-checked in songs by Courtney Love and…
Natalie MacMaster
Bubbling beneath the surface, those polite, resilient Canadians maintain a loopy, near-neurotic relationship with their musical sons and daughters. They love it when fellow Canucks are nominated for Grammy Awards, but scream “Sellout!” when those artists reach a certain stature in the home and native land and then start courting…
The Weary Boys
Austin’s Weary Boys dress and look like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band circa 1971 and play their instruments like it’s 1947. There’s little of the sound of Texas to them; in fact, they sound like much less a Texas country band than a Kentucky hillbilly band that happens to call…
K-Otix
When the Press last heard from K-Otix, the local hip-hop trio was scheduled to perform at our star-studded Music Awards Showcase last summer. But in keeping with their reputation for elusiveness, they failed to show. Not that we hold it against them, mind you. K-Otix just may be the closest…
Moth-Eaten
Just a few decades ago, the American landscape, particularly the rural American landscape, was a site for huge looming things inducing strange visions in the locals, accompanied by horrifying screeching noises. It was a different world then, and, for lack of a better name, we called these things “drive-ins.” Well,…
Catching a Big One
The idea of indoor fish farms never really worked for Galveston big shot Robert Moody; the company he invested in to produce the surefire idea was pretty much a sham. But the luck of the already rich — and a Galveston jury — has given Moody the chance to share…
Sam I Slam
Sean Penn began 2001 by directing one of the year’s most deeply felt films, The Pledge, in which a frazzled, disconnected Jack Nicholson played a retired cop obsessed with solving the rape and murder of a young girl. He begins 2002 by acting in the woefully manipulative and oppressively pandering…
Learning Curve
Covering Enron — beyond simply reprinting company press releases — is still something of an acquired taste for Houston’s Leading Information Source. The collapse of Ken Lay’s house of cards is the biggest local business story to hit the city in years, but for the Houston Chronicle, making the shift…
Hero and Villain
Miguel Piñero was poet, playwright and actor — and thief, liar and junkie. If everyone has within them a mix of the beautiful and the ugly, few of us have either to the extremes Piñero did. He was in Sing Sing by his early twenties, the iconic leader of New…
Fire Away
Fire Away Sprinkle it on: Your story about the Houston Fire Department was very good [“Riding Short,” by John Suval, January 10]! There is one thing you left out: You did not mention that the Four-Leaf Towers did not have automatic fire sprinklers installed in the building. If it had…
TV or Not TV?
Talk long enough with any television exec over 55, and sooner or later he’ll get around to mentioning the La Brea Tar Pits, that enormous shimmering stinkhole in Los Angeles where the liquefied remains of some 660 species of organisms still burble. These old-timers, with skin light brown and pockets…