Pass or Fail?
Coming soon to a Houston courtroom near you: some of KPRC’s dirty laundry. A former photographer is suing the station for a million bucks over his March 2000 firing. The photographer, Leo Chavarria, says he was canned because he refused reporter Brendan Keefe’s request to use fake media passes Keefe…
It Happens
Matt Stone has little time to talk. It’s Tuesday, July 17, 1 p.m. in Los Angeles, yet Stone and Trey Parker have yet to finish a television show that will debut some 30 hours from now–an episode of South Park titled “Terrance and Garfunkel,” in which the farting, fighting Canadian…
Letters
Floating Off Just the ticket: Citizens of Houston, don’t despair about HPD’s estimated loss of $3.6 million from damage due to Tropical Storm Allison [“A Perp Named Allison,” by Steve McVicker, July 5]. Officers are on the job working hard to get it back. On June 9 my wife’s car…
Conventional Wisdom
Well, it’s one way to put a positive spin on a series of bad situations. Countdown to Downtown offers a public celebration of food, music and fireworks to counter the rather unfortunate history of the infamous convention center hotel project. To give you some idea of the large public-relations weight…
Oil Slick
It’s impossible to overstate our dependence on oil. Not only does it fuel the cars we drive, but its derivatives are used to make everything from plastics to underarm deodorant. How much we’re willing to sacrifice to keep it cheap and plentiful is one of the major issues of the…
Minibill
When Ry Cooder was hipped to Flaco Jimenez back in the mid-’70s, Jimenez probably never foresaw the international fame that was to come. Now look at what the man known in English as “The Nail” or “Skinny One” has done: He’s won five Grammys. He’s inspired Kanji, a Japanese conjunto…
Roll with It
His knife is a blur as Yo, the sushi chef, chops a pile of assorted scraps into a fine mess of fish burger. I am trying to figure out why Sushi Kanok, an upscale Japanese-Thai restaurant in Briargrove Plaza on Westheimer, calls fish paste, cream cheese and jalapeño fried in…
Aping an Icon
There are scenes in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes redo that are so hysterical they drown out minutes’ worth of dialogue that follow, which is hardly a knock. Indeed, the film is so often so comical, so ridiculous in that self-aware wink-wink sort of way, it plays like a…
Double Your Pleasure
Employing the theory that if one dessert is good then two are even better, we humbly offer a recent discovery: the carrot cheesecake ($6.25) at Pappas Seafood House (6945 Gulf Freeway, 713-641-0318; and other locations). While the top and bottom look like the creamiest of cheesecakes, the middle contains swirls…
Vanity Affair
If there’s any justice in moviedom, this summer’s feel-good hit will be an unassuming Dutch comedy, Everybody’s Famous! Defying long odds, writer-director Dominique Deruddere has taken a couple of shopworn subjects — the public’s obsession with celebrity and the ineptitude of amateur criminals — and parlayed them into an original…
Billy Joe’s Blues
When Billy Joe Shaver gives directions to his modest house on the outskirts of Waco, he says to disregard the handwritten sign on his front door. “Please do not disturb. I haven’t slept in two days,” it says. “That’s just so some ol’ drunks don’t come by at five in…
Disorganized Crime
When last we spotted indie icons Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau on screen together, they were knocking back fruit-flavored martinis and chasing L.A. skirt in the inventive Gen-X hit Swingers. The goofy charm of that phenomenon now gives way, sad to report, to a labored fringes-of-the-mob comedy called Made, in…
Nu-metal Meltdown
In 1994, Tommy Stewart spent a year in limbo. Actually, it was in Houston, which for aspiring nouveau-metal drummers, is basically the same thing. At only 29, the Boston-bred musician was burned out. He had split with his band, Lillian Axe, and spent some time in Las Vegas before deciding…
You Gotta Have Heart
The only thing bigger than Hannah’s Texas-sized hair is her sweet, tender heart, which has been broken when we first meet her in Robert Edward Williams’s Heart of a Woman at Stages Repertory Theatre. Her man, Duane (that’s “Dew-wane” in West Texas talk), has died. And her cozy little double-wide…
Racket
Events like the Houston Press Music Awards showcase make Racket want to cast aside all his Brave New World fears and leap onto the stump for human cloning. What better way to cover this event? On Monday, all the Rackets could meet up and cobble together the ultimate story. One…
Mount Coy
To belabor beyond all recognition that old saw about what you should wear to your wedding, this year Houston went in for something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Representing the old were such hardy perennials as the Zydeco Dots, Norma Zenteno, Cactus Music and Video, the Mucky…
Travis
The title The Invisible Band is a jest, rest assured. Travis’s last album, The Man Who, sold more than three million copies, which was enough to inspire Sony to do market research in order to squeeze more out of its latest darling. Research finished, recording done, album on the shelves,…
Tick Tock, Your Time Is Up
Ask Eliza how she came to be an artist, and she simply says, “I was already one,” as if at her conception, genes marked the developing glob of dividing cells as an artist — and she was born one in the same way she was born a girl. Eliza grew…
Don Wilkerson
Don Wilkerson was a Texas Tenor in the tradition of Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb. Though he never quite gained their level of name recognition, Wilkerson was heard unwittingly by millions on great R&B records in the ’50s. The Moreauville, Louisiana, native moved to Houston as a teen and earned…
Pray and Prey
In the town of Sweeny (population 5,000) there probably isn’t all that much to do on a Saturday night. But folks still don’t think that explains the disappearance of a 300-pound statue — a marble megaphone that’s supposed to symbolize opposition to a ruling against school prayer. “Our athletic director…
Playbill
Even though Johnny Rotten was brutally candid about the Sex Pistols’ reunion tour in 1996, they were vilified in many circles for making such a blatant money grab. It was seen as the ultimate sellout, and to top it all, the shows weren’t that great, either. Yet the Cult, another…
The Tithes That Bind?
By late last year, First Colony Church of Christ had a looming crisis brought on by sheer success. The church had outgrown its 15-year-old place of worship in Sugar Land. Attendance had climbed from around 100 to more than 1,200 in a facility built to accommodate half that many. Executive…
Playbill
Christ, it’s taken long enough to get this record out — 17 years to be exact! So long that the five women in America’s quintessential girl group are now in their mid- forties and, until now, had released just as many best-of compilations as studio records. But fans of the…
Tax Rebate Waste?
When it comes to trumpeting limited government spending, U.S. Representative John Culberson has few peers. The first-term Republican from West Houston doesn’t just endorse tax cuts — he wants to abolish the income tax altogether. He ran on a tax-busting platform and vigorously supported the massive cuts pushed through by…
Stirred and Shaken
Aries is Latin for ram. A fine animal, strong and quick and always ready for ewe. To wrestle the ram is to wrestle your own fear. Such thoughts come to me as I sit in Scott Tycer’s fearless new restaurant, Aries (4315 Montrose Boulevard, 713-526-4404), and finish my wife’s Ernest…
Stupid Pet Tricks
Corey Ledwell plops down in the light gray sandy dirt, drawing lines to nowhere with a twig. His German shepherd Hilda is nearby, squeezed into a slice of shade edging this clearing in the middle of a budding recreational development in Livingston. Ledwell’s workers are a half-mile down the trail,…