Blue Houston
An enigma never tasted sweeter than Blue October. A titillating jumble of alternative rock and trancelike mood music, wounded-child vulnerability and gut-wrenching misery, Blue October’s sound gnashes at anyone who’ll listen. After all, been-there, done-that front man Justin Furstenfeld has got an angst-y tale for every Gen-Xer: addiction, family woes,…
Sporting News
There it was again, in the July 11 sports section of the Houston Chronicle — Astros owner Drayton McLane whining about all the money he has allegedly lost on the team since he’s owned it. The Astros “have lost $130 million since 1993, including $17 million last year,” McLane was…
Dress to Be Repressed
With the population of downtown’s club scene seemingly expanding with every weekend, the dress codes for many of these hangouts have become stricter and more extreme. We might even say a little downright fascist. The clubs most guilty of heavily enforcing these Orwellian laws are primarily the hot spots around…
Letters 07-20-2000
Pass the Cocktail Sauce “The Long Haul” [by Melissa Hung, June 8] failed to adequately address the impact that shrimping is having on the resources of the Texas coast. The bottom line is that the resources that sustain the shrimp industry and the recreational saltwater fishing industry must be managed…
Leary of Home
Gotta love King’s X. Three cats from Missouri who relocated to Houston in 1985, landed a deal with Atlantic Records a few years later, lived through that and have continued doing things their way through fads like grunge and bubblegum. The band is one of this town’s richest cultural resources…
Rotation
Veruca Salt Resolver Velveteen/Beyond Records Among the slew of female-driven alternative bands that seemed to pop up in the mid-’90s with the frequency of Lincoln Bedroom slumber parties and Who reunion tours, maybe none had more initial promise than Chicago-based Veruca Salt. Co-singers, guitarists and bad girl/badder girl songwriters Louise…
Rotation
Young Dubliners Red Omtown/Higher Octave Irish bands that have tried to steer Celtic rock into the collective pop consciousness have a rather spotty record. Dexy’s Midnight Runners spiked in the early 1980s, when Kevin Rowland retooled his sound and scored a hit in North America with the fresh-sounding “Come On…
The Causey Way
For Causey, front man for this semi-eponymously named Florida quintet, getting guitar lessons from David Koresh was like the Flying Nun learning landing maneuvers from Christ himself. Causey once followed Koresh, believing in the same things (primarily that women should do the cooking and cleaning, men the hunting) and rocking…
Local Rotation
Pure Rubbish Tejas Waste One Hit Records From the looks of them, the faces of the two brothers on the back of Pure Rubbish’s new CD belong on the back of a milk carton. They are young. Really young. Surprisingly, their skills are comparable to those of older musicians –…
James Pineapple Esq. Is Dead!
Okay, maybe not dead dead. The local comic legend has still got a few days left before he’s laid to rest at the completion of his farewell performances at the Comedy Showcase. But the creator of the stage persona, James Ladmirault, lives on. That’s saying a lot for one of…
Spaced Out
Gil Baumgarten thought the J-shaped driveway would be the perfect finishing touch for his addition last year to his fashionable Bellaire home. Workers carefully cleared away the grass and put in a bed of sand to prepare for the pavement that would connect his corner-lot drive to both Valerie and…
Virtual ‘Cue
The neon sign above the front door of Lyndon’s Pit Bar-B-Q reads, “Open Pit.” But there is no fragrant smoke wafting through the restaurant. That’s because the two Southern Pride gas-fired, electric-powered rotisserie smoker-ovens at Lyndon’s are neither open nor pits. They are high-tech units that cook meat in a…
Hawaiian at Heart
That Texas halau,” the Hawaiians called Keli’i Chang’s hula school. Everyone knew about the group: First, simply because they were Texan, mainlanders who’d somehow landed a slot the Merrie Monarch Festival. To outsiders, the competition is usually described as “the Olympics of hula.” But that phrase is a cliché; and…
Claire Smith: Change of Venue
Serious Houston diners have gotten used to restaurants appearing and disappearing with the speed of an Italian government. This sometimes induces powerful feelings of stress in patrons who align themselves with these culinary disappearing acts. As an ex-policeman once explained to us in Florida, “You never mess with a man’s…
Suck-Up Time
Houston’s 14th Court of Appeals is poised for reconsideration — and likely reversal — of an earlier ruling by two of the court’s justices that the state’s homosexual conduct law is unconstitutional. Since the two GOP jurists, Chief Justice Paul Murphy and John Anderson, have been the target of a…
Rapture in a Glass
The urge to genuflect comes over me when I enter Mark’s [1658 Westheimer, (713)523-3800], the cutting-edge American cuisine restaurant located in a remodeled church. Beneath the high ceilings of the former chapel, a loud congregation of devout convivialists assembles nightly for good food and spirits. The bar is located where…
Cry for It, Argentina
Eva Peron lived a shooting-star life — brief, fiery, magical. Born illegitimate and poor, the future goddess snaked out of her small Argentinean town at age 15 and slept her way to Buenos Aires, where by the age of 27 she’d become president Juan Peron’s wife and the most powerful…
Dream Weaver
In the course of two hours, Neil Gaiman speaks 10,000 words (or damned near, when transcribed), and it seems a shame to waste a single one, since there is not an uh or y’know among them. Even the most eloquent writer gets lost in thought every now and then…uh…y’know? But…
Sings with the Fishes
No doubt about it. The tale of the doomed Titanic has reached true legendary status: It has finally become a Tony Award-winning, multimillion-dollar musical extravaganza titled, no surprises here, Titanic. When 1,500 men, women and children drown in the dark, cold northern Atlantic, there’s just got to be a song…
Butt Sniffing Allowed
How many bad canine puns, allusions and stupid pooch lines can we pack into 400 words? Just watch: The dog days of summer have just gotten a little cooler. The Astro World Series of Dog Shows is offering four days (that’s 28 in dog time) of competitions, thrills and other…
Giving Up the Ghost
Rather than asking if this senseless and expensive new film from wunderkind entertainer Robert Zemeckis is devoid of merit (it is), or “worth seeing” (it isn’t), we should instead take the movie’s title — What Lies Beneath — as a direct question. Indeed, what does lie beneath? Possible answers include…
The European Experience, Via Katy
I have a confession to make: I’m a big-city food snob. So when I was told that there was a great Spanish restaurant in Katy, my initial reaction was, at best, one of skepticism. Its chance for greatness, I harshly estimated, was about equal to finding a terrific kosher deli…
Mystery Men
In Bryan Singer’s last movie, 1998’s Apt Pupil, Ian McKellen portrayed a Nazi war criminal hiding out in the suburbs, passing himself off as an ordinary old man crouching behind drawn blinds. In Singer’s new movie, X-Men, McKellen plays Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the son of Jews who were murdered in…
You Say Potato; I Say Pomme de Terre
The culinary trademark of Ruggles Grill [903 Westheimer, (713)524-3839] and most of its siblings [Bistro Latino, 711 Main, (713)227-9141; Enron Field, 333 Crawford, (713)259-8080; and Grille 5115 in Saks Fifth Avenue at the Galleria, (713)963-8067] is the massive medley of Southwestern-style vegetables that accompanies every entrée. But only one thing…
Arresting Development
The bewildering penchant of recent American movies for glorifying the lovable naÏf, the perpetual adolescent and the village idiot takes a strange new turn in Miguel Arteta’s dark comedy Chuck & Buck. Arteta’s hero, Buck O’Brien (Mike White), is a 27-year-old man-child who eats lollipops all day long, takes refuge…
Shored Up
As Brian Wilson waited to board a plane in Los Angeles one morning in December 1964, he glanced over at his wife, Marilyn Wilson, who appeared to be gazing at fellow Beach Boy and Wilson cousin Mike Love. The sight greatly upset Wilson, who was suffering through the typical newlywed…
Livin’ Large
Weighing in at 350 pounds, Carlos Sosa’s impressive girth reflected his huge appetite for la dolce vita. Before his arrest on a felony theft charge this past spring, Sosa was known for his appreciation of fine wines and expensive cigars, and could often be found at trendy downtown cafes and…
Performance Tarts
If only Tipper Gore had continued her crusade against sex and sleaze in rock and roll, not only would her PMRC rail hopelessly against the psycho-sexy-disco-funk-industrial band My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (an original Parent Watch listing), but it would have recoiled in horror at Houston’s own depraved…
GOP Inc.
Republican delegates packed the George R. Brown Convention Center for their annual June meeting, and now the final premier moment shifted to the host, Gary Michael Polland. As chairman of the GOP in Harris County, Polland took to the podium to deliver a farewell talk to this impressive statewide assemblage…
Easy Does It
What the world needs now is another folk singer / Like I need a hole in my head. — “Teen Angst,” Cracker Todd Snider can’t tell you how happy he is to bury the Tom Petty thing once and for all. He can say this, though: You can’t kill what…
Murals and the Mind Police
William Steen, an artist of some note, spends his days with hands-on work at the Menil Collection. But his heart is squarely within the quadrants and residents of Houston’s rough-hewn East End. For the last ten years, his home has been the venerable landmark of that area, the old Sterling…