Three-peat Heat
While California angrily seeks recompense from Houston energy companies for their alleged profiteering in the state’s electricity crisis, a second key battle quietly rages under the radar. This one has the makings of a sporting classic. Houston and Los Angeles once again are neck and neck to be named America’s…
Playbill
“A stark musical setting” is how Mike Doughty describes the framework of his solo career, launched less than a year after the breakup of his band Soul Coughing. Since then, he has already logged three tours, all acoustic, all by himself. Doughty has been his own accompaniment, tour manager, driver…
Spaced Out
Walking off the baseball diamond at Bellaire High School, Andrea Keller spotted a black Labrador. She remembered her coach, Rocky Manuel yelling, “Get that dog off my field!” Luckily Keller, then a 15-year-old sophomore, saw a parent volunteer, who took the dog to Keller’s house. Keller made signs about the…
Playbill
Considering how splintered the rock biz has become in the past ten years, and particularly the punk genre, it was only a matter of time before Two Man Advantage came along. Indeed, micro-mini niches are de rigueur if you’re a punk rocker in 2001. Hailing from Long Island (the Big…
Hitting the Charts
The Houston Chronicle put together a lengthy package of stories July 8 on the city’s troubled Public Works Department, a thorough if not exactly groundbreaking look at what’s been happening there lately. Massive stories on public works departments, no matter what city they involve, tend to have trouble catching the…
Dyno Lite
A third Jurassic Park movie was of course inevitable, given that the second shattered box office records (it also shattered the conventional notion that any movie starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore and a bunch of dinosaurs had to be at least somewhat interesting). But when you have one of the…
Hair Line
Consider the power of hair: The hair-care industry is worth $50 billion a year. A 2000 Yale University study found that bad haircuts bring down self-esteem. Men especially, the study said, felt less smart, less competent, less sociable and more embarrassed on bad hair days. Who knows how much time…
Deep Thoughts
Festering somewhere between an after-school special and kiddie porn lies this frank but heinously melodramatic open wound from veteran Canadian director Léa Pool (Emporte-moi). Adapted by screenwriter Judith Thompson from the novel The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan, Lost and Delirious is about girl joy and girl sorrow, girl…
Klinky Sex
Robert Scott Crane insists he had no idea that people would be so fascinated with his famous father’s penis (or is that his father’s famous penis?). “We knew it would be big,” Scotty Crane says, “but we didn’t know how big.” He’s talking not about the member in question–of its…
Fully Realized Fantasy
Just so we don’t get too far off track here, it should be stated up front what Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is not, since what it is is a lot more interesting. It is not a replacement for flesh-and-blood actors. It is not Starship Troopers, although some of the…
Letters
A Wave of Laughter Grin and groan: This article is the best I have ever read on urban flooding [“Wading for Godot,” by Richard Connelly, July 5].Your writing is superb. One of the things that has always annoyed me about the media’s coverage of any emergency is that humor is…
A Star Is Born
After nearly 40 years, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s Funny Girl still glitters with all its old- fashioned, big Broadway-style razzmatazz. Filled with unforgettable tunes, tap-dancing chorines and sets that fly magically from the rafters, the grand show has everything ever associated with the Great White Way. And Theatre Under…
The Clothes That Bind
Anthropologists have long been trying to understand the human need to wear clothes. Since we started adorning ourselves, people have fairly consistently covered 80 percent of their bodies. The location of the exposed 20 percent has rotated with fashion trends, with the one obvious exception being the genitals, which usually…
Gallows Humor
Paul Foster’s Elizabeth I is a strange little farce about 16th-century politics. Dull as this might sound, the youthful production, directed by George Brock, is oddly entertaining. Still, with so many historical characters parading by, it helps to review a bit of Western civics before wandering into the theater. Here…
Days of Thunder
Since the recent closing of Jus’ Jokin’ on the southwest side, there hasn’t been a regular venue for black comedy in town, save the occasional appearance of Cedric “The Entertainer” at the Arena. Local funnyman All D. Freemon fully intends to keep the comedy train rolling. Seeking an outlet for…
West Coast Cool
A couple hundred crappy jobs ago, yours truly waited tables in Dallas with a former flight attendant who told Southwest Airlines stories while we rolled silverware. He talked about how one Halloween, the whole crew had dressed up as Coneheads, each carefully gluing on a huge pointed bald head for…
Science Made Easy
As any good epidemiologist with a knowledge of food-borne pathogens will tell you, this is the time of year — July and August — when cases of food poisoning reach their highest frequency. There are cases caused by salmonella and related species, by the very nasty E. coli 0157:H7 and…
North Guadalajara
Bright shades of clashing yellow and blue paint throb in the blinding summer sun. The tropical color scheme of Fonda Dona Maria’s exterior blurs into a fuzzy-edged optical illusion in my bleary eyes. Even with sunglasses I have to look the other way to maintain my equilibrium. It was a…
Renewable Energy
It’s an unlikely venue for the band’s groove/funk sounds and doesn’t exactly attract the usual crowd, but Soular Slide has no regrets about a recent Saturday night at the Time Out #1 on Fuqua. After all, the management is pretty cool, they pay well, and they even keep asking the…
Black and White
At Arcodoro (5000 Westheimer, 713-621-6888), the city’s only Sardinian restaurant, they take pearly white Arborio rice and cook it in squid ink, which turns the Italian grain black. It is also the only place in town you can find risotto al nero di seppia con gamberi ($17.50). Since the island…
Lucky Star
As a teenager living in Memphis during the ’70s, saxophonist Kirk Whalum became enamored with the work of two other reedmen: Wilton Felder and Ronnie Laws. Two of Houston’s favorite sons, Felder and Laws were trailblazing a new form of soulful R&B/funk-laced jazz that presaged today’s popular smooth variety. Whalum…
Stirred and Shaken
Whenever I’m in a giddy, just-had- a-Brazilian wax, Ellen Gilchrist heroine sort of mood, I know I must go to Brennan’s of Houston (3300 Smith Street, 713-522-9711) and have a Sazerac. No one in Houston can make “America’s first cocktail” as well as Reid McGaffin, lead bartender for the venerable…
Aim to Please
For Luther and the Healers, every show can be radically different from the last. This isn’t because of inconsistencies with sound or the band’s lineup. The biggest switch from night to night is the venue, which has ranged from sports bars to swanky downtown lounges to character-packed blues haunts. Equally…
The State of Things
When The Confederate House changed its name in June, an era ended in Houston. The oil paintings of Confederate generals are gone now. So is the CSA memorabilia. The State Grille (2925 Weslayan, 713-622-1936), as the restaurant is now called, has a new interior design and a new menu put…
Racket
There has always been a little intrigue in a trip to the Last Concert Cafe. Actually, in the early days of the joint, it was more than a sensation. The famed locked red door remains so now only for tradition’s sake, but back in the day it was bolted shut…
Pipeline to the Pros
Each summer, there is one top pick in the National Basketball Association draft. That is the dream. Each winter, there are more than 350,000 boys playing high school basketball. They are the dreamers. It’s a remote dream. It’s better to fantasize about being a surgeon or a CEO — at…
Treacherous Waters
“I started feeling picked on, okay?” This is what John Finlay remembers most about briefly running a club in the Galleria area. After only three months of operation, his late-night/after-hours combo, the Current Nightclub/Citrus Room (1800 Post Oak), officially closed its doors in June. Interestingly enough, one of the many…
Files Not Found
When the news broke in April that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had suddenly discovered thousands of previously missing documents in the case of Oklahoma City federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh, Dale Brown stopped what he was working on at his home office in San Leon. Unlike many Americans, Brown…
Rick Treviño
In the early 1990s, a young Austin-born Texas A&M student and part-time country singer named Rick Treviño got the break of which every would-be Nashville darling dreams: discovery, major-label deal, stardom. By the tender age of 25, he had already scored big with three albums for Columbia, all of which…
Murder, She Testified
Call it the case of the bookmaker and the book maker. In August 1998 bookie-to-the-rich-and-famous Robert Angleton was acquitted of capital murder in the killing of his estranged wife in their River Oaks home the year before. As it turns out, his legal problems are far from over. That also…
Sly Letter
From the get-go, there’s something just not right with this record. The lead-in guitar jangle on “Better That Way” seems derived from 10,000 Maniacs. That’s no criminal offense, but once the drab vocals begin spewing cryptic, introspective goo, it’s apparent this will be a trip to the center of the…