Letters
Soft-Money Suffering Reading about the Dems’ (and GOP too, I’m sure) fundraising tactics is an enlightening experience [“The Party Boys,” by John Carroll, July 9]. The numbers and gluttony are staggering. And to think I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to pay the A/C repairman. Once again the…
Nasty Girl
You might call Sheryl Underwood an African-American conservative who tours the country presenting her views. But she’s no politician, and it’s doubtful you’ll mistake her for Clarence Thomas or Cornel West as she sounds off on topics like how to charm a woman (“Two drinks might get your dick sucked,…
Night & Day
Thursday July 30 Gravel-throated Dale Watson is a hard-core honky-tonker of the first order, and it’s not too much of a stretch to mention him in the same breath as Johnny Cash, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard — potentially, at least. The Alabama-born, Texas-reared musician paid homage to Haggard (“Help…
The Blacksmith Webmaster
Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. — from “The Village Blacksmith,” by Henry W. Longfellow Walter Boyd the Third (WB3) is a cigar-chomping,…
Hot Plate
There’s no telling what you’re going to find at Chapultepec Mexican Restaurant (813 Richmond, 522-2365). The last time I was there, a Howard Stern look-alike — or then again, it might have been the man himself — sat slumped in a corner; and the time before that, someone was playing…
Math Madness
You’ll want to go easy on the caffeine before seeing II (“Pi”), the debut feature of writer/director Darren Aronofsky. His tale about the attempt of math genius Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) to find the numbers that will explain the pattern behind everything in (and out of) nature plays at a…
Dish
Romance at Renata’s “Do you know how many agreements have been signed on these tables for millions of dollars?” Sam Hannoush, owner/manager of Renata’s (2006 Lexington, 523-2428), asks, sweeping his hand across the elegantly decorated restaurant just before opening for dinner. “There’s a lot of history here, and I respect…
Artful Roger
If Beethoven and Mozart were the pop superstars of their day, and the melodies of Lennon and McCartney are destined to survive for centuries, then it was only a matter of time before classic rock and classical music collided in one loud sonic boom. Across America, as local symphonies look…
Pleasure Palace
Over the years, Aleppo has suffered any number of setbacks. This city in northern Syria was, at various times, controlled by the Hittites, held by the Persians, seized by the Arabs, conquered by the Seljuk Turks, sacked by the Crusaders, captured by Saladin and annexed by the Ottoman Empire. In…
Clubland
Bad news for fans of ludicrous, beer-fueled mayhem: Austin power-punk troika El Flaco is terminating its often tempestuous — though never less than mutually satisfying — several-year relationship with Houston’s Inner Loop club culture. Long a live-music mixer of choice at Rudz! and other Montrose-area watering holes, the band has…
Old Soul
Frankly, it’s a damn shame that there even has to be such a thing as a “neo-soul” movement — that certain younger artists feel that it is their duty to preserve a form that never should’ve been endangered in the first place. But these days, contemporary R&B has formed an…
Rotation
Barenaked Ladies Stunt Reprise Wit is rarely rewarded in pop music. That’s especially true on the American end, where heavy doses of irony haven’t translated well to the airwaves. So naturally, Canada’s premier cerebral-novelty exports, Barenaked Ladies, haven’t always had the best of luck here. Indeed, their coupling of the…
Static
Overdue respect… Thumbing through a May special section on the national blues scene in Rolling Stone, I was distressed to find not a single line of ink devoted to Houston. Where Austin had its own headline and at least a column’s worth of coverage, the city that was home to…
Take Two
Thanks to the hungry maw of cable TV, nearly every movie production is now accompanied by a documentary crew, assigned to get enough footage for at least a half-hour “Making of” short. Such sub-productions are traditionally arranged by the producers of the main feature; and, not surprisingly, it is the…
Sleight of Head
It’s no secret that Tricky is more at home in the studio than on stage. The trip-hop progenitor and Massive Attack alum claims he can’t really play an instrument; he uses samplers and studio musicians to unleash the sounds in his head. Nonetheless, Tricky is an artist by every definition…
Marriage Blahs
The feature directorial debut of writer/director Theresa Connelly is a complete misfire. What is meant to be a somewhat farcical, but also fairytale-like, midsummer-night’s sex comedy, instead ends up a tedious, uninvolving affair, burdened with a slim premise, grating characters and poorly realized humor. Clearly a heartfelt project for Connelly,…
Resident Alien
“I was just at lunch with my uncle,” says Michael Fracasso with a nervous laugh. “He stuck $50 in my shirt pocket as I walked out the door.” It’s the same old story, and, quite frankly, Fracasso knows as much: The black sheep breaks from family tradition — and the…
Frontline Firing
Almost four months pregnant with her third child, Angie Brown hardly looks the picture of a hard-bitten health inspector with more than seven years on the frontlines. With her blue plastic headband, oval glasses and silver braces, it’s difficult to picture Brown as a rabble-rouser. But Brown hasn’t been shy…
Kids’ Night Out
Scapino, the newest offering from Actors Theatre, together with Raven Productions, is “silly, childish and adolescent.” The title character, Scapino (George Brock), says so himself, straight out to the audience. Of course, he also excuses the loopy shenanigans in the play, saying they’re all in good fun. Silly and childish?…
Mission Impossible
When city health department food inspectors leave home so they can reach their first destination at precisely 8 a.m., the tracking devices mounted on their city-issued cars are already beaming signals to the department’s headquarters on Stadium Drive. At each stop during the day, the inspectors will fill out an…
Dada’s Little Dividend
The late Andy Kaufman was the king of discomfiting comedy. Fearless and reckless, he pushed his muse to extremes of near- and actual violence, shaking the classic image of the “funnyman” to its core. Rightly famed for his portrayal of the gentle, helium-voiced mechanic Latka Gravas on TV’s Taxi, Kaufman…
An Open But Shut Case
It was cold that Sunday, the day after Christmas 1993; too cold for the two volunteer firemen to wade into the small pond in a secluded part of Montgomery County and retrieve the body of the white man floating amid the water lilies. Instead, they used a small boat and…
Bugs to Beauty
In William T. Vollman’s epic 1987 novel Ye Bright and Risen Angels, the author posits a clandestine revolution by the world’s population of insects, who wage war in protest of eons of being swatted, squashed and exterminated. In the course of the story, Vollman’s beetles and wasps take on the…
Phantom Tickets
On November 11, 1996, Bernard Silverman met with Lieutenant Steve Jett of the Houston Police Department’s Public Integrity Review Group (PIRG). Silverman, a health department inspector, alleged that division manager Chirag Bhatt was destroying citations given by inspectors to restaurants for code violations. Like traffic tickets, such citations are supposed…
Non-Negotiable
Do we really need to see the great Kevin Spacey fuming and fussing in one of those we-do-things-my-way-or-we-don’t-do-them-at-all roles? In The Negotiator, he’s playing Chris Sabian, an expert hostage negotiator for the Chicago police, whose job it is to talk down Samuel L. Jackson’s Danny Roman, another police expert, who…
Legal Moves
As he prepares to fight for his legal life in the most important trial of his high-profile career, Houston attorney John O’Quinn seems to be disintegrating personally and professionally. Battling a disbarment suit that alleges he supervised an energetic ambulance-chasing operation after a 1994 airplane disaster, O’Quinn has been unable…