No Contest
Led by Steve McVicker, Houston Press writers swept four of five first-place awards for newspapers with circulations of more than 100,000 in the Houston Press Club’s 1995 Excellence in Journalism Awards. McVicker was named “print journalist of the year,” a new competition the Press Club established this year in its…
The Fine This Time
When you get caught with your pants down, sometimes it’s best just to admit it, pull them up and move on. Or, if you’re Exxon Company U.S.A., admit it, pull them up and then claim they never fell down in the first place. That, at least, appears to be Exxon’s…
Letters
In Defense of Dr. Johnson After reading your article about the controversy surrounding Dr. Elizabeth Johnson and the results of her DNA tests [“Blood Feud,” by Steve McVicker, May 30], I felt compelled to comment. I have been a practicing forensic biologist since 1984; my specialties are DNA analysis and…
Press Picks
thursday july 11 Community center multimedia arts program Not every screaming, squirming child wants to spend the summer pursuing organized sports; some want to embrace their artistic creativity. Fortunately for those kids, and for parents desperate to get kids out of the house by any means necessary, the city of…
A Place of His Own
There comes a moment in everyone’s life when it comes time to leave home and make one’s own way in the world. For someone in a family-run business, that moment might prove to be as challenging as it is crucial. After all, having the legacy of a successful dynasty behind…
Russian Surprise
Houston’s multifarious ethnic influences never cease to amaze me. Just when I thought I was as familiar as possible with certain neighborhoods, one day I spy a couple of signs with the words “Russian Cuisine” and “Best Taste of Europe” over two adjacent sets of glass doors, tucked away on…
McComb’s Second Finest
Kent Dykes — a.k.a. Omar of Omar and the Howlers — was born in the small Mississippi town of McComb, which also happens to be the birthplace of Bo Diddley. That fact has been driven home in just about everything written about Dykes since he moved to Texas two decades…
Skankin’ to Survive
Think the most recent ska revival is really nothing more than a passing phenomenon? History supports you. Back in the late ’70s — the last time ska was all the rage — the fun lasted all of a few years. Other than that, the form’s got little to show for…
Straight Forward
“Sorry, you’ll have to keep it short; Vinnie’s running behind.” It’s the sort of notice a journalist hates to hear down the phone line from the handler of major band, especially when the usual rock-star allotment is only about 30 minutes to begin with. Then again, when you’re Vinnie Paul,…
Rotation
Terry Allen Human Remains Sugar Hill For Human Remains, Terry Allen is joined by his wife Jo Harvey Allen, a herd of Maines (Lloyd included), a couple of Sextons and Lucinda Williams (without whose distinctive wail no recent release would be complete), and still this CD is pure Allen. In…
Static
Jackets optional… Just by looking at All Mod Cons in their casual, everyday attire, you’d never think them capable of the sort of cocktail jazz-pop fusion to which they aspire — and often achieve — on their local debut CD, Romp! Three-fourths of the band are graduates of the High…
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Since 1974, Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy has been a hit in libraries. Our heroine is serious and uncute, an obsessive notebook-keeper and a solitary sneak. The book consists chiefly of Harriet M. Welsh and what she thinks. The Nickelodeon film, however, consists chiefly of Harriet M. Welsh (the very…
Art with Heart
This year, the Museum of Fine Arts devotes its entire Summer Cinematheque series to one director: the recently deceased Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. Marian Luntz, the museum’s film and video curator, says the one-man summer program is intended to please film buffs and mainstream movie lovers. “We are determined to…
Home Economics
When Bob Lanier introduced an ambitious housing initiative called Homes for Houston last year, the mayor optimistically projected it would create 20,000 units of affordable housing, both apartments and single-family homes, by the year 2000. The program was designed to increase the role of private, for-profit developers in construction of…
Homeboy
“It is not merely a commendable thing for man to be kind and bountiful to the poor, but our bounden duty ….” — “Duty of Charity to the Poor, Enforced and Explained,” from The Works of Jonathan Edwards Stephen Fairfield’s improbable destiny was approaching fulfillment on a rainy spring afternoon…
Counter Revolution
It wasn’t the faux Tuscan paint or the arch paintings of seminude glamour girls that led David Brown to apply for a job at the Empire Cafe, a stylish coffee bar-cum-hangout on Westheimer’s antique row. The ponytailed idealist says that when he started behind the counter in the spring of…
The Insider
Creative Campaign Finance 101 Normally, the campaign finance reports for city officials make for pretty dry reading, which is why the cabinet drawer that housed them in City Secretary Anna Russell’s office once bore the sarcastic label “graft and corruption file.” Maybe Russell had some premonition of coming trouble, because…