Rotation
Butthole Surfers Electriclarryland Capitol There are CDs in the Butthole Surfers’ catalog that are overpowering in their individuality — Locust Abortion Technician and pioughd are good examples. But when future fans set to assigning individual Butthole releases their places in the band’s overall body of work, Electriclarryland will be remembered…
Big Noise
When Magnapop shot out of R.E.M.’s operations base of Athens, Georgia, a few years ago, music critics drooled with near lustful self-satisfaction. In Linda Hopper, they had finally found a post-punk female who vocalized her angst without overcompensating. Clean of overt mannerisms and ear-testing screams, Hopper’s singing is bluntly conversational,…
Road Rules
Beer, trash talk shows, slasher flicks, punk rock, ’70s heavy metal, tasteless humor: the Toadies are gluttons for a lot of things, not the least of which is touring. The Fort Worth foursome have been living out of a suitcase so long, they might as well call themselves the Gypsies…
Absolutely Super
Brad Fraser has undoubtedly lost friends after they’ve seen his plays. The young Canadian playwright has a deserved reputation for cutting dialogue, vicious characters and, not incidentally, an ability to paint a startlingly accurate picture of gay life in the big city. All this, he readily admits, often springs from…
Notes from the Front
As the story goes, Gene Klein quit his day job as a teacher at a Manhattan public school in 1972 and changed his name to Simmons. Fellow New York City resident Paul Eisen went a similar route, renaming himself Paul Stanley. The duo found Peter Crisscoula (later Criss) via Crisscoula’s…
Crossed Cultures
The character of The Simpsons’ convenience store owner Apu Nahasapeemapetalon is as exaggerated as his name is long. But he’s one of the few Asian immigrants seen on TV in recent memory, and his experiences (particularly his attempts to get a green card) have rung true for many Asian-Americans unaccustomed…
Alienating
Quite a summer for flying cars — much-hyped summer movies such as Eraser, Mission Impossible and Twister have sedans flipping like pancakes. But Independence Day has more in-air automobiles than any summer movie so far. And it also has space creatures. Like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this alien-contact…
Hold the Creamed Corn
Greater love hath no mom than the mom who takes off her clothes at the Eager Beaver. From this dubious premise, author Carl Hiaasen fashioned the raucously funny novel Striptease, a laugh-out-loud melodrama about white-trash felons, degenerate politicians and assorted other disreputable denizens of South Florida. Erin Grant, the heroine…
Four Hankies
Just nine months after Hollywood Pictures released Powder, a sentimental science-fiction fable about a sweet-natured outcast with magical mental powers, Touchstone Pictures — which, like Hollywood, is another arm of the Disney empire — gives us Phenomenon, a sentimental science-fiction fable about a sweet-natured outcast with magical mental powers. Neither…
Hardball
Holly Nuber lugs an empty white carton through the gleaming hallways of Pearland High School. She looks every inch like what she used to be: the coach of Texas’ championship softball team. Tall and athletic, she wears Bermuda shorts and a green polo shirt, and with a forceful step, walks…
Dream House
In late April, Texas Commerce Bank CEO Marc Shapiro sent out a letter brimming with good news for fans of musical theater. Acting in his capacity as a part-time fundraiser for the Houston Music Hall Foundation, Shapiro told a potential contributor to a new downtown Music Hall that things looked…
The Insider
Body Count Maybe it does pay to be a Friend of Bill. After asking Attorney General Janet Reno to authorize the Justice Department to be “more forthcoming” to “appropriate city authorities” on the FBI’s City Hall sting, Mayor Bob Lanier reports that the G-men have indeed opened a limited line…
Cameron Frye Has a Big Idea
If Cameron Frye’s arms were legs, he’d walk a hundred miles a day. Windmilling, they work like giant exclamation points in sync with Frye’s voice, which he modulates according to the ever-changing topic at hand: the 43 times he’s seen Phantom of the Opera, his federal indictment for insurance fraud,…
Letters
First Recorded Freudian Slip by a Computer Spell Checker Both may be exaggerations, but rumors of Betti’s internment [The Insider, June 13] are less premature than those of her interment. Barry Mennima Houston …But Not Deserving of Such Cruel Punishment Strike not the mote from poor Betti’s eye until thee…
Press Picks
thursday july 4 George Ranch Historical Park Fourth of July Enjoy Independence Day the way folks did in the 1890s, with watermelon seed spitting, three-legged races, egg and spoon runs, stilt walking and checkers with game pieces made from slices of dried corn. Back then, the womenfolk prepared elaborate picnic…
Hot Stuff
It’s been hard to keep up with all the upscale Italian-themed cafes that have opened in Houston in the last few months. Even more interesting is the fact that these restaurants aren’t really very Italian at all, but pay only passing homage to an Italian inspiration. Behind Tuscany Grill’s Italianate…
Bar Food
I began to wonder if we would ever get to order something to eat. The staff seemed confused — and infected my table with that confusion — over exactly how things are supposed to work at b-bar, the newish watering hole next door to Boulevard Bistrot. First we were told…
Static
Thoughtful racket… It’s easy to be put off by Brainiac’s inspired brand of cacophony. It’s a peculiar process by which gyrating vocals, unnerving screams, jagged guitars, random looping effects and a standard four-four beat combine for a general feeling of malaise that the group likes to call rock and roll…