Hot Plate
Mmm-mmm, chili pie: It’s a puzzlement to Yankees and a sentimental icon for Texans. When your inner child cries out for a little Southern comfort, feed it at the Fox Diner [905 Taft, (713) 523-5369] on real chili pie made with Fritos ($9). Chef Tom Williams’s chili is dark and…
French Twist
First things first. This ain’t your father’s Life of Jesus. In fact, it’s no life of Jesus at all, not even an allegorical one. Which is just as well for the health of first-time writer/director Bruno Dumont, given the graphic sex — and that’s putting it mildly — he’s put…
Dish
Tortilla Twin? Strike one against fledgling restaurateur Gildardo Leon: He opened his new Tex-Mex restaurant, El Jarrito [870 S. Mason Road, (281)392-7277], in the same strip mall spot where Monterrey’s Tex-Mex Cafe already bit the dust. Strike two: His modest operation is smack across the street from a Ninfa’s outlet…
What the Chronicle Correction Left Out
A correction published in last Monday’s Houston Chronicle failed to tell the entire story. It read: “A story in Sunday’s Chronicle on the Tuesday inauguration of Gov. George W. Bush contained a typographical error in the Spanish translation of the ceremony’s theme. The inauguration’s theme is ‘Together We Can –…
Smart Pop
Between the Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” and Fastball’s “The Way,” there was barely any time left to have Semisonic’s “Closing Time” driven into your skull by the radio this summer. It was hard to let a day go by without hearing the Minneapolis band’s breakthrough song (from their second record,…
Letters
Info:Correction Date: 02/04/1999 Letters Oh, Brother … Reading “Business As Usual” [January 7], the first thing that struck me was the tone of the prepubescent squeal that passes for Richard Connelly’s writing — that and his total disregard of the rules for what I understood to be his craft. Connelly’s…
Stressing Strauss
Most strangers to classical music don’t realize it, but they really do know Richard Strauss. If nothing else, they’re sure to recognize the pounding drums of the opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra, immortalized by Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not to mention scads of TV commercials that have relegated…
Tricky Dick
If ever days were ripe for a good political satire, these are they. Wondrously, as if right on cue, Stages has pulled some timely magic from the theatrical closet. Artistic Director Rob Bundy had the foresight to choose the Russell Lees play Nixon’s Nixon, about Nixon’s last late-night meeting with…
From Zero to Hero
There are reasons, upon first inspection, that Remy Zero’s second record, Villa Elaine, should suck: Bio says they sound like Radiohead; first record not so good; long-standing friendship with singer from Counting Crows; from Birmingham, Alabama; both Daniel Lanois and Courtney Love championing the band. Actually, Villa Elaine doesn’t suck:…
Teen Scheme
You can’t escape it. No matter where you run, no matter where you hide, you just can’t escape the arsenal of teensploitation flicks that’ll be coming out this year. Dawson’s Creek star James Van Der Beek has already shown up on the big screen defiantly scoring touchdowns in Varsity Blues…
Internalizing the Blues
The shadow of Janis Joplin has been following Susan Tedeschi for almost as long as she can remember. “I have known who Janis was ever since I was little,” Tedeschi says. “I mean, believe it or not, I’ve always had that comparison ever since I was little … See, the…
Fighting the Power
The drug dog stopped in front of the black minivan and wouldn’t move. The German shepherd smelled alcohol, so Alex Golubitsky was pulled out of economics to unlock his van. “May I see your search warrant?” Alex asked the HISD policeman standing in Lamar High School’s parking lot. “I don’t…
Rotation
Miles Davis The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions Columbia Legacy Over a quarter century after it shocked the music world, Miles Davis’s watershed album, Bitches Brew, still generates controversy. Considered the most important jazz work of the past 30 years by some and penultimate commercial bastardization by others, Bitches Brew changed…
On Back Order
On December 8, Public Works Department director Jerry King met with senior secretary Plachette Williams, who had filed discrimination complaints against the department. Williams told King about the harassment she’d experienced in the field. She told him about the broken promises. She explained why she’d taken action. The director said…
How to Divorce a Millionaire
Georgette Mosbacher always seemed a very Houston type: shamelessly materialistic, an entrepreneur, a trophy wife who clawed her way out of obscurity and had a great manicure to show for it. With her third marriage, she made herself precisely what she wanted to be: the wife of Rob Mosbacher, the…
Hammerin’ Helen and Mister Mild
For the past year, freshman Councilman Bruce Tatro has been telling associates an anecdote to illustrate the ways his predecessor, the outspoken Helen Huey, has allegedly tried to run District A behind his back. In recent months, however, the punch line to the tale has lost much of its humor…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *Since July the Totenko Chinese restaurant in Tokyo has been offering an all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet (that regularly cost $16 per person) to the first 30 diners per day at the price of about 30 cents per minute, measured by a time clock that diners punch when entering and…
Lost in theYarbrough Triangle: $10,000
City Councilman Michael Yarbrough may be awaiting trial on bribery and conspiracy charges in the FBI City Hall Sting, but it hasn’t stopped him from making creative use of his campaign accounts. In his latest escapade, revealed in a campaign finance report, Yarbrough spent nearly $10,000 from his Council campaign…
School Ties
Wes Anderson spent months searching for the perfect private prep school for the filming of his second feature film, Rushmore. “Then my mother sent pictures of my own school,” he says, “and I realized that’s what I was trying to find all along.” The fledgling filmmaker’s alma mater is St…
A Keyboard Band for the Intelligentsia
It’s hard not to compare twisted tutu to Laurie Anderson. Like Anderson, tutu — the duo of composer/vocalist Eve Beglarian and keyboardist Kathleen Supove — uses hyper-rational technology to express the soupy contradictions of the unconscious. Neo-Fluxus, you could say; even part of the “tradition” of late 20th-century performance art…
Night & Day
Thursday January 28 What will we be driving in the year 2000? According to the Houston Auto Show, we might be cruising around in an Audi TT, a Mercedes-Benz S-class, a BMW M5, a Jaguar S-type or the world’s first alternative-fueled sport utility vehicle, the Jeep Commander. I guess we’ll…
Sweet Music
It must be a restaurateur’s worst nightmare: Into the jangled, nervous flurry of a long-delayed opening weekend walks … a reviewer. The kitchen’s incomplete, the staff is new, the menu’s a quick photocopy; a proprietor needs a critic at this moment like his salmon en croute needs a bicycle. Polite…