YZ, Special Ed, Bobbie Fine
YZ and Special Ed are staples of the Yo! MTV Raps generation. In the early ’90s both artists could be heard banging out of trunks and beaming from our cable boxes on a daily basis. YZ’s “Thinking of a Master Plan” and Special Ed’s “I’m the Magnificent” are rightly regarded…
Report Card
Steven Spielberg just might turn into a great director if he’d stop sabotaging his movies. For the second time in as many films, he demolishes his product with a third act that renders all that’s come before it void. It’s as though Minority Report, set in a near future where…
Altar Egos
If it’s possible for a film to be simultaneously ambitious and banal, The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is it. There’s little here we haven’t seen repeatedly in some form or another — growing up Catholic is popular fodder for filmmakers, as is growing up in the American South, usually…
Poi Dog Pondering
It’s a nice surprise when a seemingly innocuous cartoon inspires inner critical debate. For fun, let’s let the coldly cynical voice speak first. Somewhere within Disney studios there is a board room, and doubtless there’s some scary honcho in there who clobbers a table full of yes-people with market research…
Duh Press
Shouldn’t have said yes, couldn’t say no. The deal was simple, and those who chose to accept it had made their own private pact with the showbiz-journalism devil. “You will spend an hour with Tom Cruise and an hour with Steven Spielberg,” said the publicist, a lovely woman from 20th…
Facing the Music
Last month, Salvador Menez had the typical kind of trouble for any apartment or condo dweller: His neighbors kept playing loud music late into the night. Menez may have felt like employing the standard tenant’s tool for requesting silence: beating on the wall adjacent to the offending noisemakers. But in…
Paper Route
Tacking a 20-foot sheet of paper to the wall is a hellish experience. This is why pragmatic and market-conscious artists do not make large-scale works on paper. The material creases and tears, humidity buckles it, pinning and repinning eats away the corners — and this is before it even leaves…
Common Cents
Every day, Maverick Chevalier, who seems to be a courtly, gentle man, 41 years of age, fishes his own feces out of the toilet, puts it in a plastic bag and stores it in a pail with a lid on it. When the bucket fills up, he takes it down…
Forget Me Not
The mahogany shelves of Dr. Eliot Pryne’s stately home are jammed with leather-bound books. But the white-haired professor doesn’t bother much with his library these days. Since Alzheimer’s set in, he can’t remember what those squiggly things on the pages are called anymore. “Words,” his weary caretaker reminds him. “Oh,…
Old Ways Die Hard
In its first six months, there were few public complaints about the new system for selecting publicly paid attorneys to represent poor defendants in Harris County criminal courts. But that seems to be rapidly changing as several lawyers claim the system is being manipulated in at least one juvenile court,…
The Grim Rapper
The Grim Rapper White prejudice? I know that you look at Carlos Coy as a bad guy because of what happened [“South Park Monster,” by John Nova Lomax, June 6]. Deep down inside, I believe Carlos is innocent. I met him many times in Dallas, and he was a great…
The Ridley Riddle
The vast majority of Kemp’s ridley, the most endangered species of sea turtle in the world, nests along Rancho Nuevo beach in Mexico. This month, however, the Galveston Daily News reported two of the creatures wandered onto the Galveston shore to lay their eggs within 24 hours of each other…
Hotter than Halal
K.C. Perez, the proprietor and head waiter of the Spicy Foods Halal-Chinese restaurant on Hillcroft, is a stout Pakistani who looks a lot like Cheech Marin. He’s wearing a black ball cap that says “Dawg House,” a tropical rayon shirt and a large yellowish tooth suspended on a gold chain…
Olmos Famous
Before he was Don Johnson’s brooding boss on Miami Vice, before he was Jennifer Lopez’s domineering dad in Selena, and before he became the elder statesman of Latino culture, Edward James Olmos was a bit player looking for his first film role. Robert M. Young gave him a break in…
Classic Veg-Mex
The cheese enchilada plate is a Tex-Mex mainstay, but try getting a vegetarian version that isn’t tarted up with spinach or mushrooms. These slightly more exotic variations have their place, but they aren’t going to win the hearts and minds of those who grew up on the classics before renouncing…
I Will Always Be the World Trade Center
A soul as sensitive as Dan Gellar’s would be expected to shy away from controversy and cave in when the PC brigade comes rallying round. After all, the twee music that Gellar champions — both as co-founder of the influential indie label Kindercore and leader of the electro-pop duo I…
Buyers’ Remorse
With a second baby on the way, Mary and Keith Cohn decided they had outgrown their two-bedroom bungalow near Rice University. They spent six months house-hunting before discovering Casa Builders’ entry into the 2000 Bellaire New Home Showcase. From the leaded-glass front door to the wrought-iron railing leading to the…
Tuam Raiders
Although they hail from Tuam, in the rural west of the country where Gaelic is still spoken, there’s nothing altogether Irish about the Saw Doctors’ music. Erase the vocals from their rock and pop tracks, and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell where the band is from. Once you…
My Funny Valentine
The June 7 column on the front of the Houston Chronicle’s Metropolitan section might easily have been mistaken for yet another snoozefest by the resolutely uninteresting Thom Marshall. It sparked, however, a rather interesting story behind the story. “Cars Put Homeless on a Road to Jobs” was the perky headline…
Carnie Death Explosion
Kimo’s is a dank, humid, smoke-filled San Francisco hole, and far too hot. The booze is cheap, and the between-set music is usually ’80s “satanic” metal and glammy black metal acts. Yet the place continues to pack ’em in each week. One night last summer, most of the crowd had…
Nothing Fancy
It was a scorching late afternoon, and my day had been filled with rejection. I needed a drink, but more important, I needed a cool, dark place where I could enjoy one — preferably off the beaten track so my boss couldn’t find me. Hofbrau Steaks (1803 Shepherd, 713-869-7074) fit…
In Search of Lost Time
By 1995, Robert Conran, better known to Houston clubbers as Reilly, felt like he had outgrown Houston’s music scene. Los Mortales — the self-described “romantic Latin metal” band that he fronted — had broken up, and he wanted to take his big voice and flamenco dance steps to the bright…
Various Artists
Yes, this CD is dominated by the steel guitar, in both its pedal and lap variants, but check your twangy expectations at the door. Unless you’re already a devotee of Arhoolie’s Sacred Steel series or a member of either the House of God, Keith Dominion or the Church of the…
Big Moe
Taken with Big Moe’s debut, City of Syrup, Purple World will have people thinking that all Houston is awash in codeine, that we’re addicted to the poor man’s ecstasy from Clear Lake to Tomball. They would be wrong, of course. While there are plenty of neighborhoods here where people can…