The Great Land Grab
Julio Laguarta stood in a busy hallway in the City Hall Annex, looking tense and uneasy. It was early October, but for the squat, burr-headed homebuilder, it was getting uncomfortably late in the game. For almost two years, Laguarta had been quietly making deals to buy up an 80-block area…
The Lion in Manvel
There were deep rumbling sounds outside, as though from the depths of a cave. Do you want to see her? Paula Tholen asked. She opened her back door, and there in the center of a tall chainlink cage was a genuine African black-maned lioness. Lying behind the mobile home, she…
The Insider
In Like a Lion In case you’d forgotten about it, the FBI investigation of alleged corruption at City Hall is still out there, but the seeds won’t start poking up at the federal building until at least mid-March. Indications are the government’s sting all-stars, as drafted by the grand jury…
Killer Art
Inside every mass murderer, it seems, is a sensitive artist waiting to blossom. Charles Manson wove his voodoo dolls, and John Wayne Gacy, before he went to his reward, painted his clowns. Other lesser-known serial killers also have taken brush or pencil in hand to cater to the ghoulish yet…
Letters
Depth Perception You are to be commended on pointing out that the content of MFA’s exhibits are thought by some in the community to be lacking depth [“Deal of the Art,” by Megan Halverson, January 9]. It is to be hoped that your very balanced reporting and mild criticism will…
Press Picks
thursday january 30 Audrey Jones Beck Building groundbreaking With age comes girth: a truism for investment portfolios, adult humans and our own Museum of Fine Arts. The MFA will turn 100 in 1999, the same year the Beck Building will open and double the museum’s exhibition space; today, our community…
Colombian Supremo
Though located in a brightly lit strip center on Richmond west of Fondren, Anoranza’s Tavern Restaurant is easy to miss. Because it’s tucked in the crook of where the center makes an L-turn, it’s all but invisible if you’re heading out of the city. Even if you’re traveling eastbound, Anoranza’s…
Modest Intent
A few years back, an odd little story (or perhaps a rumor) began circulating about the Connells. As the tale went, the group had just finished a show at some Maryland dump, and its members had spread out inside the emptying club to hang out with friends from the audience…
Lo-fi, High Expectations
In Lou Barlow’s Boston apartment, it’s always easy to know where you stand. As Barlow, the auteur of the subterranean lovesick blues that have made his band Sebadoh an indie icon, describes his home, it sounds like a comfortable place to crash: books and guitars everywhere, wine-colored carpet, intricate woodwork…
Shocking Salome
When Richard Strauss’s Salome premiered in 1905, it caused considerable scandal. Its sensuous nature was just too much for the audiences of the day. Over the years, though, the opera’s impact has been muted as crowds have become more jaded. But in its new production directed by Canadian filmmaker Atom…
Sound Check
Is it just me, or does it strike you as a bit unnerving that Pearl Jam is held up as modern rock’s shining example of perseverance; that, these days, four releases equal a lengthy career — or perhaps even more distressing, a career in its twilight? After only three months…
S R O
Mixing It Up Anyone wondering just how riveting theater can be should have been in the audience for Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, which finished a weeklong run at the Wortham last Sunday. It’s unlikely that Houston will see anything else approaching its quality this year. The finale…
Static
Just in from the Metroplex… To most Houstonians, the rock scene in Dallas is pretty faceless, if only because most of its artists so rarely show their faces around here. Austin acts appear in town like clockwork, but Dallas … well it’s still considered a minor event when a Dallas…
For Love –or Money
Jean Baptiste Poquelin, known to most of the world as Moliere, was born a child of privilege. That he chose to enter the theater and, worse, become an actor as well as a playwright, took his social status down several notches. That loss of standing, however, provided fodder for his…
An Intimate Moment with Mary
“Really, there’s not that much sex at all,” says Mary Gaitskill of the stories in her new collection, Because They Wanted To. At first blush, she’s wrong. The book contains more variations than an average Hustler: There’s role-playing; there’s train-pulling; there’s anal sex, oral sex and a dash of lesbian…
Days in the Park
Playwright Herb Gardner managed to immortalize retirement-age concerns on the American stage with his 1986 Tony Award-winning I’m Not Rappaport, and now his film version — which he also directed — comes along to try to reclaim geriatric humor from the Grumpy Old Men gang. Of course, one of those…
Time and Crime
The narrative of Andre Techine’s Les Voleurs (Thieves) opens shortly after the story’s climax. A gangster’s corpse is brought to his isolated home; his widow grieves; his eight-year-old son silently assimilates the news; a few mourners arrive. The climactic scene is the bungled caper during which the gangster has been…
Mothers Against Deliberate Dying
Terry George, the director and co-writer (with Jim Sheridan) of Some Mother’s Son, has more complicated feelings about Northern Ireland than he can express coherently. They shoot out in piercing shards of action and potent gutter or pulpit rhetoric. Some Mother’s Son is about the fight to save the lives…