Ritalin on Trial
Steven Keene is a man obsessed. He’s also a man who says he can point to the source of his obsession with unusual clarity. It was a fall day in 1994, and the divorced graphic artist had driven to Katy to pick his son up from his ex-wife. At the…
Monkey Shines
Once again, Terry Gilliam has seen the future, and it’s a mess. In Brazil, his exuberantly paranoid vision of a post-1984 totalitarian state, he offered us a spectacularly seedy world filled with retrograde decor, malfunctioning artifacts and condescendingly sinister bureaucrats. But the day after tomorrow looks even less inviting in…
Four Rooms, All Vacant
Biologist Thomas Henry Huxley was counseling medical students, not hip young filmmakers, when he noted, not entirely in jest, “There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life.” But Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, the hotshot directors responsible for Four Rooms,…
Positive Diagnosis
While there seems to be no shortage of questions about attention deficit disorders and the use of drugs to treat them, there is also no shortage of parents who say that the diagnosis and medication have radically improved their lives. One of those people is Peter Hubbard, who, after watching…
Book ‘Em
The way 17-year-old Adriana Garza remembers it, her first visit to jail was one big, ugly surprise. It all began on the morning of September 27, as her schoolmates at Sam Houston Senior High were making their usual migration from class to class. Garza and her friend Veronica DeLeon were…
The Last Battle of Chau Minh Nguyen
When a customer walked into his store and pulled out a gun, Chau Minh Nguyen was playing with his children. That was the first time Discount Liquor #5 was robbed, and Nguyen lost $800. But two weeks later, he was laughing as he told about it — as though having…
The Insider
I Have a Scheme… It appears there will be two parades this year to commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., although it’s questionable how much of an honor that will be for the slain civil rights leader. Since the first MLK parade was staged downtown in 1978, with…
Letters
Bill of Disappointments Your article chronicling the efforts of Mr. Johnson [“Lenwood Johnson’s Last Stand,” by Brian Wallstin, December 14] was fascinating but heavily slanted in two ways that are disappointing, considering the clout you carry. The first disappointment is that you gave no coverage to the opposing (prevailing?) body…
Stupid Is as Stupid Sells
Do you know how Ozzy Osbourne’s metal-cult guitar hero Randy Rhodes died? In a plane crash, sure, along with Osbourne’s hairdresser and pilot — that much is rock and roll mythology. But do you know why the plane crashed? It was buzzing Ozzy’s tour bus on a street near Orlando,…
His Generation
Christian Arnheiter has every excuse to sit and sulk. For two decades, his band the Hates has been thrashing away in blissful obscurity, all the while upholding the tattered flag of the punk aesthetic. And now he has to watch as bands such as Green Day, Rancid and the Offspring…
Sound Check
In a decade that’s quickly becoming the era of the signing frenzy, a year hasn’t gone by without its lion’s share of overlooked releases — and 1995 is no exception. For those inquiring ears that care to listen, plenty of swell music exists that simply got swept under the rug…
Regular Treat
With the hubbub of the holidays behind us, what’s needed is a peaceful evening with some close friends, such as the crowd that shows up every Sunday night at the Third Ward’s El Nedo Cafe to hang around with Eugene Moody. There’s probably no regular among the east side’s steady-gig…
Burger for Breakfast
I’m one of those diners who tend to get in a rut. I find a favorite menu item at a favorite restaurant and I order it over and over. At the New York Coffee Shop, when I’m breakfasting half-awake, I only have to engage a small part of my brain…
Press Picks
thursday january 4 Piaf This saucy play, penned by respected British playwright Pam Gems, explores the life of France’s most infamous chanteuse. Edith Piaf came from a less than genteel background; the illegitimate daughter of an acrobat father, she was abandoned by her street singer mother when she was a…
Finger Food
Although I’d eaten Ethiopian food several times before at Awash, I was mystified about how to tackle the lunch special of lamb stew I was recently presented with. I knew Ethiopian fare was finger food, that the servers didn’t bring a knife and fork unless so requested. I knew the…
Static
Reflections ’95… Now that I’m a five-month veteran of the Houston scene, I feel that maybe I have the minimum experience required to mouth off a little; perhaps in a year, I’ll mouth off a bit more. So, as we usher in 1996, I hold these bounded musical truths to…