Rotation
MC 900 Ft Jesus One Step Ahead of the Spider American The first time I considered MC 900 Ft Jesus, on the occasion of his Welcome to My Dream solo debut, I imagined the man behind the band name, Dallas’ Mark Griffin, sitting in some dark corner of a suburban…
Short People
It’s one thing for Cypress Hill’s B-Real to rap “A to the muthafuckin’ K, homeboy,” but put the same phrase in the mouth of a child and it complicates matters. Is it cool for a kid to compose rhymes about “sippin’ 40’s” when he/she is still a good five years…
Folk Hero
The world is full of folk singers half desperate to convince you that their vocal and acoustic guitar stylings contain some nugget of inviolable individuality that makes their perspective compelling enough to justify keeping your wandering attention. And every once in a while, out of that more or less indistinct…
Plastic Jesus
Raw, unrepentant and grisly, Paul Kittelson’s provocative new series of life-size figures is simultaneously elegant, seductive and beautiful. His “The Lesser Gods of Earth,” which is now showing at Hiram Butler Gallery, shows an insatiable taste for Gothic horror while exploring the invisible aspects of our inner beings. Not since…
The Age of Innocents
Here’s a movie that could have fallen flat on its face. By all rights, its juxtaposition of a mildly retarded Southern man and the Big Events of the past 30 years of American history, rendered partly through the trickery of Industrial Light & Magic, should have resulted in a cutesy…
Gotta Dance
That’s Entertainment comes back, bouncingly, for a second encore That’s Entertainment III didn’t sound like an appealing prospect. Part two of the series was a serious step down from the original, and approximately as much time had passed between That’s Entertainment II and III as between the Godfathers of the…
Blue Thoughts
If ever there were an avant-garde film that tested a cinephile’s resolve, it’s Blue: 75 minutes of a swimming-pool shade of the titular color projected on the screen without variation, accompanied by a soundtrack laden with meditations, noises and music. What are you supposed to see while looking at the…
The Gangs Among Us
It was well after the witching hour on the muggy morning of April 6, 1993. Korean-American businessman Choong Il Suh and his wife were asleep in the master bedroom of their ranch style house in the 1100 block of Plumbrook Drive in far southwest Houston, blissfully unaware that a strange…
Running on Empty
Brooks Smith, a self-described fourth-generation oil man, has sunk a lot of money underground lately, but so far he doesn’t have much to show for it. Smith, like many other owners of area gas stations, is spending his effort and his cash in a race against time to meet state-mandated…
Letters
No Truck with Tilman After reading “Food Fight” by Alison Cook [June 30], I am more inclined to dine at a Pappas before I dine at a “Fertitta’s.” If none of the “original seven” of the Landrys own “a big house in Memorial,” “two Mercedes” or their “own jet,” I…
Keen on Kaldi
“Eat Here,” commands a vintage luncheonette sign above the secretive alleyway leading to the Kaldi Cafe. Heights residents would do well to obey; this youthful starter restaurant run by a trio of twentysomething Brasil alumni is the kind of useful, charming place that makes a neighborhood livable. Not that the…
Flop Like an Eagle
I’m at something of a loss here, folks. To the best of my knowledge, no clubs closed down. As far as I know, no clubs opened. No bands moved to Austin, and nobody got arrested. The week was a huge spinning void of columnar nothing, punctuated by some of the…
Press Picks
thursday july 14 Gunther Gebel-Williams is back And in the big cage. Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a.k.a. “The Greatest Show on Earth,” comes to town with the world’s greatest animal trainer in his only Texas appearance. The man and his beasts are the special guest stars of…
Hot Plate
Diner Food, Cuban Style If the friendly little Cuban lunchroom in the Piquet Market is good enough for Rocket Carl Herrera — who arrives in his Mercedes, accompanied by his gorgeous wife — it is certainly good enough for the rest of us poor, non-slam-dunking mortals. At La Cocina de…