When Greek Meets Geek
If there’s any truth to reincarnation, the spirit of Napoleon may walk among us today. It’s not unreasonable to conjecture that he has taken up residence in Bill Gates or Joel Silver, but — perhaps more likely — the little conqueror with the big hat has fragmented and landed in…
The Anti-Clapton
The last thing I want is another story where it’s ‘Rocky’s checked out of secret Cirrhosis-By-The-Sea and he’s doing well,’ ” says a gruff, deeply Texan voice over the phone. It’s Rocky Hill, perhaps the wildest and scariest — both on stage and off — of all the white-boy Texas…
Sunny Delight
It’s daunting to hear that John Sayles’s new film, Sunshine State, is almost two and a half hours long, and consists mostly of calm conversations. But don’t be deterred, or you’ll miss out on a study of character, class and changing times that puts Robert Altman’s stodgy Gosford Park to…
So Retro
Mike Snow feels like an old fart on Wednesdays. That’s the night that the 38-year-old veteran local DJ (this month marks his 18th year in the record-rotating business) pulls his car full of record crates up to Spy (112 Travis) and serves as the main spinner for the club’s ’80s…
Fight Club
A pal asked last week, “Who you writing about?” Told him, “Art Linson,” which screwed his face into a big ol’ question mark. “He’s a movie producer. He made Heat, Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Untouchables, Car Wash…” Said said friend upon hearing that last one, “Dude…
Moby
At the heart of all pop music is theft. Almost by definition, popular music borrows the more palatable elements of the underground to forge an easier and softer version, perfect for mass consumption. The final product should be friendly, but also deep enough to make any listener feel hip, like…
Did She or Didn’t She?
Long before Stephen King bloodied up the silver screen, or John Carpenter slithered up our spines, or Hitchcock became the master of pins-and-needles, there was Bayard Veiller, the great-granddaddy of all scary storytellers. In fact, back in 1929, when Veiller’s stage play-turned-screenplay The Thirteenth Chair came before a newly assembled…
El-P
You can hear the rumbling of some sort of hip-hop future on a few recent releases. It grumbles through the Anti-Pop Consortium’s Arrhythmia; it unsteadies your balance on Prefuse 73’s Vocal Studies & Uprock Narratives; its knees buckle within Cannibal Ox’s The Cold Vein. It’s the sound of the steady…
Land of the Free
“Let the eagle soar…she’s far too young to die, you can see it in her eye…” Ah, the immortal song stylings of John Ashcroft, our esteemed attorney general, former senatorial candidate who couldn’t beat a dead man, and devout Pentecostal songster. Searching the Net for patriotic inspiration on the eve…
Illinois Jacquet
Illinois Jacquet led the charge of the tenor saxophone freaks of the 1940s. Initially famous for his adrenaline-driven solo on Lionel Hampton’s 1942 hit recording of “Flying Home,” the Louisiana-born, Houston-bred Yates High alum mixed swing, blues and a hint of bebop into riff-rich improvisations, which, on up-tempo numbers, inevitably…
The Gong Show
Yongsheng “Jason” Wang sits at the worn wooden table that serves as his desk. The 39-year-old physicist spends his days in a dark bedroom, writing and faxing countless letters to members of Congress, begging U.S. politicians to help stop China’s persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. A clothesline stretches over his…
Butthole Surfers
My landlord knew a drug dealer in high school. The dealer had a bunch of acid — two sheets’ worth of quarter-tab — stashed in his sock. It was a hot day. His feet got sweaty, and he absorbed most of the blotter. After a week in the hospital, the…
True Believer
For more than four years, local Lutheran pastor Don Carlson has had the darkest of clouds hanging over him. He may finally be able to start seeing some light. In March 1998, federal agents searched his home and seized his computer. A year later a federal grand jury indicted Carlson,…
When Jeffrey Met Thelma
The brisket at Thelma’s Bar-B-Que on Live Oak has a tasty black char on the top, but the inside is slick with juice and as tender as the white bread. How Thelma gets it so soft is a head-scratcher. She swears she doesn’t wrap it in foil. She says she…
Medical Alert
Houston physician Eric Scheffey has a record of shoddy care and noncompliance with the standards of his profession. Some unwary patients have risked going under the knife of one of Scheffey’s surgeries. Now a new Web site by Public Citizen provides records of more than 1,000 Texas doctors who, like…
Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken
The menu at Tila’s Restaurante and Bar (1111 South Shepherd, 713-522-7654) simply calls this entrée Chicken Endive ($12.95). But that doesn’t do the dramatic dish justice. A bare chicken breast marinates in lime juice and cottonseed oil before it’s rolled up, tied together and stuffed with sautéed endive salad and…
Mayoral Minority Report
Some of Houston’s best political precognitives are hard at work this summer trying to prevent what they foresee as an electoral disaster. Operating out of the Department of Pre-Elections, these agents have detected a frightening scenario in the making: Houstonians wake up after the first round of the city elections…
Masta Ace
Somehow, some way, amid all the talk of shaggy bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes saving rock and roll from its absurdly glamorous self and Alicia Keys inspiring roughneck sistas all over the country to take up the piano, Masta Ace managed to put out a hip-hop album…
Column Calamity
Changes continue to bubble up at the Houston Chronicle under new editor Jeff Cohen, and two of the paper’s high-profile columnists are the most recent targets. Cohen, people at the Chron say, has told columnists he wants them out there being reporters, not just recycling press releases or offering up…
Tony Joe White/Mike Barfield
Mention Tony Joe White, and many people think of “Polk Salad Annie,” his 1969 hit that later became a signature song for late-period Elvis. Thanks to other covers by the likes of Ray Charles and Tina Turner, White’s songs are more widely known than the man himself. But there’s more…
Breaking the Mold
Breaking the Mold Lemon aid: Texas should have a lemon law for homes [“Buyers’ Remorse,” by Wendy Grossman, June 20]. A home is a huge long-term investment (more so than a car), and it only makes sense that the builders should have to stand behind their work. With a lemon…
Dirty Vegas, with Moby and Azure Ray
It makes sense that Dirty Vegas would tour with Moby. The U.K. dance-pop trio is most famous for that Mitsubishi commercial with the pop-locking white girl riding shotgun on a nighttime drive. What better group to hook up with an artist who reportedly sold every song on his album Play…
Hands of the Clock
The grief of losing a parent is something most of us eventually will have to experience. And when it happens, we’ll probably think of the questions we should have asked. When artist Elena Lopez-Poirot’s mother passed away, it became her mission to find out about her mother’s past. “When you’re…
Frost, with Angelina and NB Ridaz
It’s been 12 years since Frost’s debut, Hispanic Causing Panic, dropped on the hip-hop nation and wised up a generation of Run-DMC, NWA and Public Enemy fanatics about how things get done in East L.A. — not to mention the fact that Latin rap is not all about being “Rico…
Poet in Chaps
Scott Hill Bumgardner’s lifelong passion for cowboy poetry began when his horse fell on him and broke his pelvis. He began penning poems to keep from going insane during his recuperation. Now he’s the president of the Cowboy History and Performance Society (CHAPS), where he strives to preserve cowboy history…
Ben Kweller, with My Morning Jacket and Little T & One Track Mike
Does the universe really need another scruffy yet nerdy boy in his early twenties strumming his guitar and singing about his girlfriend? When the boy is Ben Kweller, the answer is yes. Sha Sha, the debut album by this homegrown Texan (he’s from Greenville, an hour northeast of Dallas), is…
The Scent of Sunscreen
It was almost midnight, and the movie had just let out at the River Oaks Theatre. I was damned if I was going home to broken air conditioners and a dog that won’t stop yapping, so I headed to the first watering hole down the block. From the music coming…
Gary Primich
Rare indeed is the blues harp player who knows as much about taste and restraint as Gary Primich does; rarer still is one who combines that trait with the abilities to sing and write smart songs. (Think of him as the polar opposite of noodlemeister John Popper.) As a youth,…
Emo Over Easy
Long before the “No mo’ emo” uprising of 2002, during which the genre’s Kansas delegates bravely shrugged off the approach that had earned them hot-topic status nationally among power-pop teens, Lawrence’s Shiner made an equally bold decision. Back in 1997, the band attracted a thin yet rabid following with Splay…
One-Way Ticket
Joe Versus the Volcano was a misguided, unmemorable film, but it contains a small scene that resonates only now. Tom Hanks, who believes he has not long to live, emerges from a doctor’s office wearing a fedora too small for his head and a trench coat that hangs off his…
Seven Come Eleven
At some point between the last miserable day job and the first national tour, countless musicians have either chosen, or been forced, to take a new direction. Sometimes it’s a crafty decision that pays off; sometimes you simply screw up and — poof — you’re in the bargain bin. Sometimes…