Ain’t No Sunshine
I never imagined the day would come when I would cringe to see Ralph Fiennes on screen. Not only is he shamelessly good-looking, but, whether playing the brooding, remote figure doomed by love in The English Patient or the bloodless commandant of a Nazi death camp in Schindler’s List, he…
Correct-a-mundo
Getting things right the first time — not to mention the second — is still proving difficult for the Houston Chronicle. June 28 saw the paper’s second correction-correcting correction in as many weeks. The Chron ran an op-ed piece June 26 about the dispute between the federal government and Our…
What a Long, Strange Trip
Director Alison Maclean, from Canada by way of New Zealand, turns her camera on the American landscape — or, more accurately, the underbelly of the American landscape — in Jesus’ Son, an uneven, but often effective, adaptation of Denis Johnson’s autobiographical book. Billy Crudup stars as a thoroughly marginalized character…
Letters 07-06-2000
Another WayAlthough my English is not good, I read your “Deliverance from China” article [by John Suval, June 22] carefully by dictionary because I am interested in that subject. I just came to Houston two months ago from Beijing, so I understand Lijun’s situation in China. It is not easy…
Revolution in Chrome
“It’s a funny little museum, isn’t it?” asks big, white-haired Jim Harithas, surveying his domain. The answer — oh, yes — is too obvious to wait for, so Harithas paces around the Art Car Museum, stopping occasionally to admire the works already in place, mentally rearranging them to accommodate two…
Miami Spice
As originally reported in this very space (see “Salsa en la Ciudad,” January 6), the new, downtown Elvia’s Latin Grill and Bar was scheduled to launch on Valentine’s Day. More than four months after that target date, the chic young offspring of Elvia’s Cantina [2727 Fondren, (713)266-9631] finally opened its…
Renovated Out of Existance
Cleola Williams has greeted almost every day of her 60 years in the same wood-frame cottage, two rooms wide and three rooms long, on Edwards Street in the First Ward. The experience has never failed to humble her. Williams’s great-great-grandfather built the house in the late 1860s, and it has…
Nutty Rita
Forties-era swing music and gleaming dark-wood booths with wine-red leather upholstery greet you at the front door of Truluck’s Steak and Stone Crab [5919 Westheimer, (713)783-7270]. The bartop is made of onyx and is lit from beneath. Bartender Ken Decker prides himself on martinis, and the bar is stocked with…
Testing the Truth
We don’t know for sure when our species developed language, but we can be sure that from that moment on, paternity was his word against hers. This uncertain he-said she-said state of affairs continued until the era of Ozzie & Harriet, when simple blood-type paternity testing was accepted. By the…
Rotation
Old 97’s Early Tracks Bloodshot Records The Old 97’s aren’t exactly ancient. The band started in 1993 when drummer Philip Peeples joined the rest of the crew, Rhett Miller, Ken Bethea and Murry Hammond. After that, the band played a few gigs around Dallas until it got signed by Elektra…
Board and Care(less)
The strange man with the long hair and beard stood outside her home — dirty, disheveled and in hospital scrubs on that Saturday morning in April. He seemed off, out of kilter with the world. Lee Ligon didn’t know him. She was on her way to teach a college class…
Bob Schneider
It’s nearly 3 a.m., and amid the din of workers sweeping up piles of broken bottles after another sold-out show at the Satellite Lounge, Scabs front man Bob Schneider is quietly comparing his craft to that of a fisherman. “Every day I get up, and I write and record stuff,”…
He’s an Out-of-Comptroller!
Back in 1998 Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau comptroller Tony Marquez was asked why the agency’s annual report didn’t include detailed figures on income and expenditures. The 42-year-old Marquez, who had just been hired at $75,000 a year to help clean up a legacy of mismanagement and questionable spending…
Mix Master Mike
Even with no real lyrics or sentimental crooning, Mix Master Mike’s sound digs down deep into your soul. It’s a different kind of groove. Mix Master Mike, a.k.a. Mike Schwartz, lets his turntable do the talking. He went solo two years ago, leaving behind the Invisibl Skratch Piklz and the…
On Poetics and Politics
The most liberating thing about becoming the first openly gay member on City Council is that you don’t have to spend as much time shoveling bullshit. Once you’ve been elected, despite or because of your frankness on a topic that most would consider political suicide, you can pretty much say…
Utopia, Texas
“Buffalo witz cheese, medium rare,” slurred the cute twentysomething girl who took my order. Her pierced tongue was decorated with a bluish metal stud, which made her talk funny. I pulled a bag of Zapp’s “Hotter ‘n Hot” jalapeño potato chips off the rack and threw it on the counter…
Evil Dead Cabaret
When most high schoolers were getting drunk, buddies Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell were making cheap Super 8 movies. After about 50 goofy war spoofs, mysteries and screwball comedies, the duo eventually raised $350,000 to do a little number known as Evil Dead, the cult classic that launched their careers…
Nice Goobers
I truly feel sorry for those who are allergic to peanuts, since they will not get to experience the incredibly rich and sweet peanut butter pie ($3.95) at The Raven Grill [1916 Bissonnet (713)521-2027]. The dessert is so good it takes every ounce of restraint that I have not to…
Behind the Music (City)
As anyone who has ever lived there knows, Nashville is two places. There is the Nashville that the world knows and — well, perhaps “loves” is a bit strong, but is certainly well acquainted with — the Music City, USA, the place of sealed-for-your-protection country and antiseptic tourist traps. Then…
Toe-Tapping Zapping
Thinking that a video game soundtrack is nothing but random bloops and bleeps is so ’80s. Donkey Kong was then. Final Fantasy VIII, with its lush soundscape of symphonic melodies and choirs, is now. And the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences has made it official: Gaming soundtracks are…
Rotation
Miles Davis and John Coltrane The Complete Columbia Records 1955-1961 Columbia/Legacy As we learn on this six-CD collection, Miles Davis and John Coltrane’s many brilliant moments together were not created in a vacuum; they were not instant genius at the depression of a trumpet valve or sax key. These were…
Will the Real Texas Musician Please Stand Up
When folk talk about Texas music, they are almost always referring to the work of artists who play lap steel gee-tars or fiddles or banjos and use words like “whiskey,” “Amarillo,” “jail time” or “I-45” in their songs. “Texas music,” these talkers say, might also refer to the work of…
Sexual Concealing
Dressed in little more than dirty pink knickers and torn black stockings, the bruised and beaten dancers of Cabaret’s Kit Kat Klub personify all that was Weimar Berlin in 1929 — an exotic, tawdry and ultimately tragic mix of social and historical kindling that would eventually burn a passageway to…
Local Rotation
Horseshoe Movinà the Goods Wayward Sound Recordings Music that’s raw, homespun and honest has a way of being good regardless of genre. If you allow yourself to sink into Horseshoe’s latest, Movin’ the Goods, it doesn’t really matter where you might previously have categorized the band: country-rock, jam band, No…
Biggers Is Better
Walk in the door of the University Museum at Texas Southern University, and The Web of Life, a 1957 mural by John Biggers, magnetically draws you into the space. Tree roots extend from the central image, a mother and child in a womblike shape, to create an epic 26-foot mythic…
Red Rhythms
Jesse Helms was right: The unparalleled sounds of Cuba have been infiltrating our borders with regularity of late. Bamboleo and Buena Vista Social Club served as the advance troops; next, Maraca and Otra Vision will launch the full frontal assault. Flutist and composer Orlando “Maraca” Valle leads his megawatt big…
Cry Hard
Why is the film called Disney’s The Kid? Is it really possible that the studio was so concerned that someone might actually mistake the film for an update of the Chaplin classic that the brand name had to be formally incorporated into the title? Or was this an attempt to…
Rap Shoah
In rap, the most down-and-out muthafuckas get the most respect. They’re the most “real” — whatever that means. So somewhere near the bottom of the totem pole of equality, right next to Roman slaves, Russian peasants, indigenous Americans and African-Americans are two Jewish guys from Houston. You wanna talk about…