Dems’ New Year Vow: Oust GOP Judges
This week Harris County Democratic Party chair Sue Schechter unveils what party officials hope will be the slate that breaks the Republicans’ iron grip on county-wide judgeships. She’s recruited the latest crop of candidates with a siren song based on the county’s changing demographics, plus an expected surge of Hispanic…
Gutless Politicians
Gutless Politicians Stop the floods: It is time to change the City of Houston’s rules and be proactive [“Out of Control,” by Brian Wallstin, December 20]. Should we surpass the federal requirement, if the federal requirement is inadequate to Houston’s needs? Maybe we should force additional cost on developing in…
Winging It
Lindsey Hunt came to Houston with nothing but a dream and a suitcase full of ambition. After performing with a comedy improv group in Dallas, he set out to start his own club, which he hoped would become nothing less than the Second City of the South. Not seeing many…
Gays with Guns
A Vietnam vet and mechanic, Dan Weiner admitted his bisexuality to himself only eight years ago, when he was 43. (“As a Libertarian, I should have known better,” he jokes.) While he was closeted, Weiner heard his fair share of “guy talk,” and he knows violence against gays is nothing…
This Dog’s Going to Heaven
The hot dog is to the United States what the choripan is to Argentina — only the choripan is a whole lot tastier than its American counterpart. The new Argentine restaurant El Buen Bife Grill (4527 Lomitas, 713-523-6373) serves choripan (an abbreviation, but not much of one, for chorizo and…
Mountain Mohawks
Nashville’s Villager Tavern is a place where the locals go in a tourist town. It’s an oasis of laid-back beer-joint grit in the rapidly, to coin a tongue-twisting word, trendrifying Hillsboro Village district. It’s also been the birthplace of many bands, most recently Starlings, TN, an odd space-pop/old-timey bluegrass trio…
Toro! Toro! Toro!
One might best adapt a famous line from Dickens to describe this year in Texas music: It was neither the best nor the worst of times, and sometimes it was both. But while it was both a banner year and a bummer, compared with the general downturn in the music…
Gardeners of the Music World
A Nashville music business veteran once told me a story that you might think beautiful or sappy; though given the man’s sincerity, I lump for the former. Explaining why he had spent the better part of his adult life managing artists who were often outwardly ungrateful, selfish, childish, dishonest and…
Bertrand Burgalat
While Julie Andrews twirled around the Alps as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s favorite singing fräulein, little Lord Bertrand Burgalat, the son of a minor government official, languished in Corsica. Forced to learn classical piano under the threat of constant Brie, he grew up to not only dazzle jet-setting Euro-hipsters but to…
Bowling for Soup
From Wichita Falls via Denton, BFS is one happy punk band. Vocalists/ guitarists Jaret Von Erichead and Christopher Van Malmsteen, along with the rhythm section of Erik Rodham Clinton (bass) and Gary Wiseass (drums), may have started in death metal bands, but gone now is all but the distorted guitar…
Rassol Relief
There is a time for cocktails and a time for their cure. Every New Year’s Eve party around the world induces New Year’s Day hangovers. There are many home remedies, but the villagers of old Russia swear by cucumber pickling brine, or rassol. A Moscow-based brewery called Ochakovo even began…
Losin’ It
1. Behind the Sun A simple story with the power of a myth, from Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station). Ravishing. 2. Amores Perros A film of raw power and crippling brutality that exposes viewers to a world drenched in grime, sweat, greed and, finally and unexpectedly, the barest glimmer…
Free Radicals
Ever since Free Radicals invaded the Houston music scene in 1996, the continually evolving collective has been ballyhooed as “the most unique” band in Space City. And as clichéd as that sounds, there is no better way to describe this innovative group and its eclectic fusion of jazz, funk, ska,…
An Introspective
We all have our prejudices, and when people start talking about “transcendence,” I head for the door before Shirley MacLaine and Ramtha show up. While people may experience this kind of metaphysical reverie, attempting to describe or explain it can render it schmaltzy, trivial or dismembered. If an artwork possesses…
Party of Helicopters
With vocals that sound something like the Byrds circa Turn! Turn! Turn! and guitar riffage that calls to mind today’s metal/math rockers Don Caballero and the Fucking Champs, Ohio’s Party of Helicopters is a band that defines contradiction. The lyrics only fuel the confusion — far from being a leather-clad…
Lay of the Land
Houston, or at least that part of Houston occupied by the city’s elite, was flying high in the early part of 2001. They had their man in the White House. In fact, if you drove through the Rice University area some very quiet nights, you could still hear James Baker…
Otherworldly
Generally, in the realm of motion pictures, producers are evil, actors are pathetic, screenwriters are delusional, agents are bottom-feeders, and true directors scarcely exist. Contrary to the glitzy stories the mainstream media continually jams down your throat, making movies is quite often an ugly, unpleasant business, based on the ultimate…
Agent of Doom
John Kahler didn’t know much about the chemical that dripped from the C-123s he guarded at Tan Son Nhut air base as a strapping lad of 18. His air force job in Vietnam was to help keep the base secure, and he did so with a minimum of fuss. Throughout…
Rescue 9/11
Normally, these year-in-TV columns are a breezy, easy write–a plea for good shows buried somewhere in an embittered litany of bad ones. In recent years, it has felt as though the proliferation of channels and choices has given us only more of the wretched and less of the watchable; satellite…
Playing by Heart
When Joseph Samuels first sits down at the black Yamaha piano in the main atrium of the Texas Medical Center’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, the man and the instrument seem incongruous. The piano is a sleek, simple piece full of lines that curve just so. Joseph, a dark-haired 38-year-old with olive…
Slim Comfort
The anemic macaroni and cheese, crusted with its clever little bread crumbs, ruins the whole thing. What were they thinking? It was such a great start: meat loaf, sliced thick and served with stewed tomato sauce, a hot and hearty entrée for a cold winter night. The plate was adroitly…
Calling On the Governor
You’ve come home from work — late as usual. Dinner is done; your wife is frustrated; the kids are out of control. It’s time to get them to bed, but they haven’t even been fed. The phone rings and you pick up, hoping for a pause in the disaster. Although…