Down for the Count
Jesus Gabriel Sandoval Chavez stands on top of a mountain on the outskirts of Delicias, Mexico, and takes a deep breath of clean air. For once, his eyes aren’t watering. His lungs feel good. Below him are the dust-filled towns of Delicias, Rosales and Saucillo. Within an hour or two,…
ASS Stated
Don’t just focus on the customer’s problem with a car — “Isolate and Upsell.” Mark up parts prices nearly 300 percent over costs, and ditch those pesky words such as price or expensive. Better to use the positive spin of “investment.” A problem is actually an “opportunity.” And the biggest…
Voters’ Vida Loca
Democrats did the Macarena in 1996. But this year Republicans are dancing to an up-and-coming Hispanic fad — a Latino Bush. Brown, suave and speaking Spanish sans gringo accent, George P. Bush appears in bilingual television commercials and a host of campaign stops, all aimed at convincing Latino swing voters…
Surefire Plan
Recent history is replete with wildly over-optimistic statements. There was Saddam Hussein promising “the mother of all battles.” There was Jose Lima saying his pitching would only get better this year. Now there’s a new addition to the pantheon. Straight from the cover of Inside Houston magazine’s June issue. Bannered…
Hanging with Mr. X
Like Gary Graham, Quanell X spoke boldly last Thursday. Then he was gone. Inside the Huntsville prison unit, Graham, the celebrity death row inmate, waited to be killed by the state of Texas. Outside the prison’s high walls of red brick, a relentless sound warned of impending danger. Much of…
Letters 06-29-2000
Call to ArmsI met Phil Arms at a church camp when I was 12 years old (20 years ago), and his in-your-face style of preaching really grabbed me [“In Arms’ Way,” by Lauren Kern, June 15]. (Sometimes fear is the only way to get the attention of potentially wild adolescents!)…
A Yenne for Your Thoughts
Disdain for environmental regulations has helped make Houston the new smog capital of America. Even amid frequent warnings to children and the elderly to restrict outdoor activity, business leaders darkly forecast economic death whenever faced with a new green statute. Ordinary folks bristle at the notion of restrictions on the…
Expect the Wurst
Given the tremendous response that our recent column generated from professional philologists and laypersons alike — recall we trotted out the German noun Schadenfreude and put it through the paces across the sleek steeplechase course of contemporary American idiom (see “Waiting for the Fall?” June 1) — we will commence…
Suddenly This Summer
Alice Valdez waited in vain. The executive director of Multicultural Education and Counseling Through the Arts expected 120 children to show up for the start of summer programs June 19. Those children arrived. But also due to arrive were 54 teenage students to work as counselors, office help and mural…
The Sicilian Freeze-out
There’s a tree branch sticking out of the wall at Birraporetti’s in the River Oaks Shopping Center [1907 West Gray, (713)529-9191]. It’s decorated with Christmas tree lights, the all-white kind. Another wall is painted dark red, and yet another is stone. This place struts its tastefulness. Of course, if you…
Sam Houston’s Retreat?
A few years ago higher education up the I-45 corridor from Houston began shaking off its tired teachers college image. Sam Houston State University in Huntsville was coming alive. The school landed a major federal grant for an environmental studies institute. It reached out with a model program to prepare…
Percy Sledge
Percy Sledge — You gotta have nothing but love for somebody like Percy Sledge. Here is a brotha who tours the country year after year, an old-school R&B icon, dubbed the Golden Voice of Soul, beheld as music royalty in Europe, and what’s the only song drunk-ass yuppie thirtysomethings scream…
Shaka’s Last Supper
If you couldn’t make the media and protester circus at Huntsville, Tony’s Ballroom on Post Oak seemed the next hottest ticket for the Gary Graham/Shaka Sankofa execution last Thursday. Showing the traditional trial attorneys’ flair for the dramatic, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association slated a veritable death penalty jamboree…
A New York Time
A kosher delicatessen without the ambient sound of New York accents is immediately suspicious in my book, kind of like a Mexican restaurant with no Spanish speakers. Only delis stuffed with meats and cheeses and Noo Yawk dialogue put me at ease. But so do menus that prominently tout Reubens,…
The Final Frontier
Had Julian Glover not broken his leg at the beginning of January, it’s quite likely he would be off filming a movie. But, Glover reminds, having a broken leg in the movie business is like being pregnant in the movie business: “It lasts five years,” meaning casting agents don’t phone…
The Harley Party
In the ’90s the NRA and the Christian Coalition showed the kind of clout a small but motivated activist group could garner. Well, look out, folks, because there’s a new gang in town, this time with foundations in the Democratic Party, and it’ll stop at nothing short of complete government…
Show (and Tell) Tunes
Picture this: Four plastic hand puppets from a kid’s meal provide backing vocals to an evangelistic Bible-thumper who whines at the top of her annoyingly squeaky voice that “God hates queers. They stick their willies up each other’s rears.” If you can’t wrap your brain around such an absurdity, then…
Watt Go Surfing Now
The Beach Boys and the Fourth of July go together like summer and… well, the Beach Boys. Until you throw a politician into the mix, that is. Back in 1983, President Ronald Reagan’s controversial Secretary of Interior James Watt banned the ’60s icons from their semi-regular gig at the Washington…
De-meaning Objects
When viewing the work of Ludwig Schwarz, remember that the response to the classic “Hell, I could do that!” comment is “Well, you didn’t.” The quality or validity of an art object is not inversely proportionate to the ability of a proverbial three-year-old to re-create it. This said, Schwarz presents…
The Mother Flavor
“Super Tortas, Taqueria, Huaraches.” These words are painted in bright green letters on the side of La Bamba Meat Market. They catch my eye every time I drive down Washington Avenue. I know that a torta is a sandwich, and I know that a taqueria makes tacos. But huaraches? The…
What So Proudly We Hail
Despite what many believe, it doesn’t come down to explosions, star power or millions of greenbacks thrown at the producers. The true indicator of success for a summer movie is The Moment, that one memorable scene that sticks in your head, the one that Billy Crystal parodies the following spring…
Tortilla Flats
Before those interminably trendy wraps invaded its turf, the biggest taco in town was the breakfast taquito at Luke’s Hamburgers [2626 West Loop South, (713)627-8545; 14710 Hiram Clarke, (713)434-2134]. But size alone is not why this eye-opener is the best around. Chunks of sautéed potatoes are mixed with freshly scrambled…
Storm Warning
The press kit for The Perfect Storm contains the damnedest thing I’ve ever read. Right at the top, there is a “special request to the press” that reads, in full: “Warner Bros. Pictures would appreciate the press’ cooperation in not revealing the ending of this film to their readers, viewers…
Later, Floyd
As the lights dimmed, everyone staring up at the faux starry-night sky on the ceiling of the Burke Baker Planetarium whooped and hollered. A young man seated along the western wall surreptitiously produced a silver flask from his coat pocket, imbibed, then reclined back in his seat, his body language…
Birth of a (Fascist) Nation
For most Americans, the social and political issues underlying José Luis Cuerda’s Butterfly may seem remote at best. The tensions between republicans and fascists in Spain after the fall of that nation’s monarchy in 1931, and dictator Francisco Franco’s victory in the bloody Spanish Civil War, may have stirred strong…
Yee-Haw
Finding Charlie Robison about five or six years ago would’ve been easy. He would have been at Austin’s Continental Club, either smoking a Marlboro, having a beer and hanging with the local gang, or on the club’s stage, playing a progressive yet purist country sound that he and his Texas…
One Nation Under a Groove
It has taken moviemakers and, more crucially, foot-dragging movie investors almost a decade to catch up with rave culture — the heady mix of secret warehouses, electronic music, designer drugs and ecstatic dancing that has come to define the yearning and the restlessness of a generation. But now, the 5…
Da Bombing
Well, wonder what new albums and movies are out this week. Where to find out? Let’s see. Jump in the car, cruise down West Gray, past a dilapidated one-story structure in the 250 block. Here we go: Kid Rock. A bevy of suitcase-size posters for his new one, The History…
Chicken Man
On the way to Galveston, Santa Fe is little more than a clearing in the woods. The few streets bear letters of the alphabet but seem to proceed at random, and Jimbo Bradshaw is pretty sure “the goddamn town was laid out by drunks on a napkin.” Jimbo’s particular pasture…
Wandering Jams
Judging George DeVore and the Roam only by virtue of the outfit’s self-titled debut on Puddin’ Pie Records wouldn’t be fair. There’s much more to the band, particularly when you hear it live — a rather amusing fact considering the CD is, in fact, live. To be succinct, the easy,…