News Hostage
Workin’ the Rails There’s nothing like an alleged serial killer to bring out the sober, judicious side of television news. In addition to testing newly found Spanish accents as they roll off the alliterative name of Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, in addition to showing enough footage of (killer-free) freight trains to stock…
Original Punks
Gotta admire the longevity and stamina of Christian Arnheiter, elder statesman of the Bayou City’s punk rock scene. Long after the vast majority of DIY punks have traded in their three chords for three kids and shredded T-shirts for shredded office building blueprints, he continues to lead the Houston-born and…
Houston Press Story Prompts Indictments
Last week, a Dallas County grand jury returned 39 indictments against 32 people in an alleged $2.7 million viatical fraud scheme — the result of a state investigation triggered by a Houston Press article. The Texas Department of Insurance began its investigation after the Press article [“Making a Killing,” by…
Loud Library
Robert Sye is a “flusterated” musician. As much as he always wanted to play the trumpet, he couldn’t. When, as a sixth-grader in the late 1930s, Sye decided to take up the instrument, Mr. Miller, his music teacher, told him, “Sye, we’re all outta trumpets. You can play either the…
Drugged Out
Harris County judges have had remarkable success the last four years in reducing the backlog of criminal cases on their dockets, but things may get tougher now that they have lost a key component in that effort. Since 1995 two cramped courtrooms on the eighth floor of the Criminal Courts…
El Queso Grande?
Recently I overheard a local restaurateur whose opinion I respect proclaim that the “best true Tex-Mex” in town can be found at Bravos Mexican Restaurant. This piqued my interest on sooooo many levels. For starters, any randomly selected bunch of Houstonians would be more likely to agree on the number…
Out on the Town
Dressed in a sharp black pantsuit that she had borrowed from her mother, 18-year-old Courtney Fuqua ran her hand through her short haircut and looked around at the gaggle of teenagers hugging, dancing and enjoying the prom night Courtney had been helping plan since early May. The theme was “A…
Hot Plate
The proof is in the pastry: I can’t decide which I love more, the top crust or the bottom crust of the country-style peach cobbler at Mama’s Oven [9295 South Main, (713)661-3656]. The thick, soft bottom crust is swimming in ruddy brown cinnamon-sugar syrup; the top crust is even thicker,…
Letters
An A for B-boys I read your article on Mrs. Wood and Fly in an ecstatic state [“B-boys to Men,” by Lauren Kern, June 17]. I was one of her students more than ten years ago, and she honestly changed my life. She gave me permission to be who I…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *In April the Unique Recoveries collection agency in Bombay, India, hired six eunuchs to go to the homes or offices of obstinate debtors to embarrass them into paying up, by dancing around and threatening to lift their saris to expose their “genitallessness.” Unique’s director said he expects his…
After-School Aftershocks
First they brought out the little children. A trio of tiny violinists, hidden from the audience by the sheets of music before them, was followed by two Mexican dance segments, a “Walk Like an Egyptian” line routine, country cloggers and a student-created miniplay. The crowd applauded loudly, educators beamed and…
Circle Those Wagons!
University of Houston System Chancellor Arthur Smith took an unusual public relations step last week. Miffed by media coverage of sex discrimination charges against his general counsel, Smith went on the offensive, putting his gripes in a five-page, single-spaced memo to his top lieutenants and deans. He closed the missive…
Night & Day
Thursday July 1 When last we left the excruciatingly rural residents of Texas’s third-smallest town, Tuna, there were many questions to be answered: Did Cupid’s arrow hit Bertha and Arles? Did Didi receive otherworldly information from a UFO? And did Stanley succeed in the taxidermy trade? Well, Red, White and…
(Dis)order in the Court
The politics of the three Harris County juvenile district courts can only be described as… well, juvenile. Pat Shelton and next-door court neighbor Mary Craft are both Republicans but clearly cannot stand each other. In recent elections both faced primary challenges by candidates widely viewed as allies of the other…
The Original Christian Rock
The idea of portraying Jesus Christ as the world’s first self-confessional hippie rock star was downright blasphemous in 1971. But today, Jesus Christ Superstar is not only one of the most enduring musicals from the hefty catalogs of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, it’s a stage institution and a…
Back to School
Last summer ex-Houstonian Rob Nash brought his one-man show Freshman Year Sucks! to Stages for a successful premiere. Loosely based on Nash’s high school experiences at Strake Jesuit, the play focuses on the angst-ridden lives of three “nonconformists,” gangly teenage boys who struggle to find themselves. Early on they meet…
Art Imitates Life
Ridley Pearson wasn’t always a writer. He spent his twenties playing rhythm guitar in a bar-band based in Providence, Rhode Island. Pearson was trying to break out of the music business — which, he says, “was making me $50 a night and very tired” — when he saw Peter Falk…
Splendor in the Crass
It all happens in a “pissant white-bread town” in Colorado. Just outside Denver is this strange place where people spot UFOs and the school nurse has a conjoined dead fetus on her head. South Park, the hit Comedy Central show, started with Trey Parker and Matt Stone creating their short,…
Guest Doesn’t Outlast Welcome
The first week of June was executive chef Aaron Guest’s last at Sabine [1915 Westheimer, (713)529-7190], according to owner Bill Johnson. Guest had joined Johnson from the get-go, back when Sabine was housed in a tiny space on Sunset with only a couple of burners and barely a pair of…
Gotta Get the Money!
Run Lola Run is proof that the influence of MTV on feature filmmaking hasn’t been all bad. The jagged stylistic excess that dominates short-form music videos can be exhausting and irritating when drawn out to feature length. But with the right story and a greater sensitivity to varying rhythms, all…
Superflies
Well, it’s that time again. As far as R&B summer package tours go, the Budweiser Superfest stands as the king of them all. Now in its 20th year, the Superfest has been crisscrossing the country, serving up popular soul and rap to regional audiences. Everyone from Kool & The Gang…
Bully on the Bench?
The proceeding before Judge Kent Ellis two weeks ago was odd even by the standards of the Harris County courts complex, where idiosyncratic judges flourish like toads in summer rain and almost every bizarre twist of the judicial process that can happen already has. There was fellow juvenile Judge Patrick…
Rotation
Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin Warner Bros. Too bad all bands don’t spend as much time thinking about what they do as the Flaming Lips. You, Beavis and Butt-head, probably know them from the band’s 1993 novelty hit, “She Don’t Use Jelly,” but there is more to the Oklahoma-based group…
Full Contact Paddling
The upper part of the course, the first 90 miles of the San Marcos River, is the most technically challenging. The river turns and narrows. It flows under water crossings too low for a boat to clear, and if you let yourself get swept under one, your boat is liable…
Unexpected Success
One of the prime tenets of Hinduism and its Buddhist offshoot is the notion that becoming unattached to temporal objects and issues provides the means to achieve nirvana. By giving up the small shit, we can get the big enchilada. Simple, right? Hardly. Life on this earth is so fraught…
Grade Charades?
The dramatic fall from grace continues for Kashmere Gardens Elementary, once a shining jewel in the Houston school district’s aggressive publicity campaign touting high test scores. The first results since a cheating scandal was uncovered this spring show a stunning drop in scores on the minimum-skills TAAS test for the…
Warming Up
University of Texas guest instructor David Neubert warmed up the double-bass master class with an easy, virtuosic tune, B.B. Wolf. Next, it was William Torres’s turn to try a waltz on an instrument that easily matched his height. The practice piece was Valse Miniature by Serge Koussevitzky. As the almond-skinned…