Cult Survivors
Here’s a quiz: when singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy of the Cult parted company last year, they did so on somewhat less than amicable terms because they: a) had beaten the crap out of each other in a drunken brawl after a concert in Rio de Janeiro; b)…
Rotation
Clandestine The Ale Is Dear Clandestine Houston’s Celtic-music community may be approaching critical mass. Sooner or later, a band playing the traditional music of the British Isles is going to come out of our city and become successful enough to be referred to as “the new Pogues.” As much as…
Prankster Punk
Just as they’re getting their feet wet in this country, Canada’s Chixdiggit appear headed for a collision of some sort with America’s politically correct strata. Their name — pronounced “Chicks Dig It” — is bound to be seen as sexist to some. Ditto for song titles such as “Great Legs,”…
Demon Rum
I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for campy sentimentality. It’s part of the reason I own four pets. It’s also part of the reason I like Barry Manilow. It’s not at all strange, then, that I found Manilow’s music and lyrics for Stages’ musical The Drunkard appealing. Based on W.E…
Man Oh Man
Weekend Gallery director Martin Mercader had in mind an affirmative action of sorts when he put together his latest exhibit, “Atom.” The title is a play on the name “Adam,” and the works in the show represent the male body. Mercader felt that because so much art represents the female…
Junior High Pariahs
Welcome to the Dollhouse is not a wacky “revenge of the nerds” movie. This is a delicate, unhappy story about being 11 years old and not being like other people. Writer/director Todd Solondz tell that story sweetly, and his movie derives its power from the empathy we feel for his…
One-Upping Mom?
As far as I’m concerned, there’s always room for another home-style diner, especially if it serves chicken and dumplings as good as those to be found at West Gray Cafe. I never thought I’d be saying this, but these dumplings rival my mother’s. And the chicken stew, God help me…
Scary Carrey
It’s usually safe to assume that a comic is speaking metaphorically when he talks about “murdering the audience.” With Jim Carrey, however, you never can be completely sure. Something dark and savage lurks just below the surface of his frenetic shenanigans. Whether he’s yodeling through his backside in Ace Ventura,…
Cut & Run
Charlotte found her plastic surgeon the way many women do: by word of mouth. It seems there were plenty of women around who were unwilling to accept the will of their creator and had chosen to improve upon nature’s handiwork. Some did so by having pieces of themselves surgically excised,…
The Insider
Tales of Cupit (Rhymes with Stupid) The squirrelly adventures of Congressman Steve Stockman’s frat-house band of consultants who call themselves Political Won Stop seem to know no limits. The Hill, a Congress-covering weekly in the nation’s capital, first revealed that Stockman’s re-election campaign had paid more than $126,000 to the…
Goal-Oriented
Back in 1986, Robert Rothbard wasn’t much of a basketball fan. Soccer had provided his school-days sport, but his oldest son was suddenly taking to hoops as if he knew, somehow, that ten years later, he’d be a six-foot-two-inch 15-year-old. Rothbard chaperoned the kid to public parks around Houston for…
Letters
What You Can’t See In reading your article “The Derrel Files” [by Randall Patterson, May 30], I found it interesting that there seemed to be a lack of sympathy for people who believe that they have been abducted by aliens. These people are frightened and don’t know what is happening…
Moving Day
By 9:30 a.m., workers from Foster Fence Company had staked the perimeter of Allen Parkway Village with posts, and a few hours later, the front of the project was entirely cordoned off by shiny new chainlink. A crew from A-Rocket Moving — all black men — was idling under a…
Press Picks
thursday june 20 Blaxploitation Movies: Let’s Talk About Them! In conjunction with its series of ’70s blaxploitation films, the MFA hosts a panel discussion. The talking heads will include Houston Chronicle film critic Jeff Millar, Houston Community College professor Brenda Jones, poet Lorenzo Thomas and University of Houston professor Garth…
Ethnic Island
It doesn’t matter how much you may like it, one can still digest only so much Tex-Mex and seafood and hamburgers before harboring an irresistible craving for a serious ethnic food fix. Luckily, in most of Houston, finding that fix isn’t much of a problem. But in the ocean of…
Same Old Waylon
Given his history, it’s not surprising that Waylon Jennings has been a little confusing on the whole outlaw/rebel thing. This is, after all, the man who used to room with a pill-popping Johnny Cash, and popped his share of pills at the same time. (Though he and Cash, he insists,…
Static
More than a quick fix… “I wanted to base our [career] trajectory on the Police,” says Fastball’s Miles Zuniga. “When they got together, they had all been in these other bands; the oldest, Andy Summers, was like 35.” It’s not that Zuniga has any illusions about how his Austin group…