Mama’s Ya-Ya‘s
It’s no surprise that Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into 18 languages, with no fewer than six million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis and mischievous charm into stories that deftly…
Con’s Con
Michael Flemons was like a lot of tough bosses. As president of MDF Enterprises, a Dallas company that provided “trauma” therapy to Medicaid patients there and in Houston, Flemons always kept one eye fixed on the company’s bottom line and the other open for opportunities that could help him reach…
Big Talkers
The “one thing” at the heart of Jill Sprecher’s 13 Conversations About One Thing may not have one name. But as you wend your way through this intricate meditation on urban solitude and the nature of fate, you’ll likely discover for yourself whether it’s called happiness, hope, domestic tranquillity or…
Elephants Versus RINOs
Texas Republicans are poised to convene in Dallas to celebrate a self-proclaimed “Year of Emergence” as the majority party in the state. But proposed rule changes to enforce ideological purity have sent shivers of fear through some GOP delegates. The changes are pushed by Robert X. Johnson, a conservative San…
Worse Company
So this is what it’s come to: another week, another terrorist-with-a- suitcase-nuke movie. Last Friday, it was up to Ben Affleck to save the world from nuclear annihilation, an unsavory proposition. He succeeded, but not before the Super Bowl disappeared in a holocaust flash. This Friday, it’s Chris Rock’s turn…
Sacred Cow Au Jus
The decision by Linda Lay, the wife of Enron’s Kenny Boy, to open a secondhand store called Jus’ Stuff has provided much fodder for media outlets across the country. Not to mention the world. The comic strip Doonesbury skewered the shop for a week, and reporters jumped in when the…
Tit for Tat
It’s one of the great ironies of the modern-day smut biz that it took a boob burglar like Joe Francis to shake Hugh Hefner’s once-mighty empire to its creaky knees. Francis is all of 28, which means he wasn’t born the first time Hef bagged triplets on the merry-go-round bed…
The Big Deal
Fat little piggies — that’s who to blame for all this. The children of America have become a non-marching army of Pillsbury Doughboys after applying equal measures of junk food and no exercise. And they finally caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It seems that the USDA…
Animal Magnetism
Darryl Lauster is a pug owner, God help him. Actually, God help pugs, those tragically inbred animals with faces smashed beyond recognition and a congenital inability to breathe. Admittedly, as the owner of a basset hound, I have no room to talk. With a set of design flaws too numerous…
Not Fade Away
Not Fade Away Worth a thousand words each: This is an amazing collection of photos [“Scenes from a City’s Soul,” by Richard Connelly, May 23]. My mother and father were born in Houston (the Sixth Ward and Third Ward, respectively) in 1925. When I was growing up, my parents spoke…
Poetic Invention
The underworld of death provides no answers, only long, dark nights of heartbreaking memories. Such is Hades as Tom Stoppard sees it in his breathtaking The Invention of Love, about the life and loves of A.E. Housman. Only Stoppard’s fiery wit and blazing intelligence mitigate the sadness pulsing through the…
Under Their Covers
There’s basically one question raised by the film Vice, based on the trial and eventual acquittal of 30 topless dancers busted for indecent exposure at Rick’s Cabaret in 1993: Is it necessary to have officers rack up liquor tabs and tips to see if strippers will expose themselves? And if…
South Park Monster
Man cries if he was blessed with a heart / But I lost mine, in the backstreets of South Park / Once again it’s Mister SPM / And the shit ain’t gonna stop until I’m dead or in the pen. — Carlos Coy, a.k.a. South Park Mexican, “The Latin Throne”…
Return of the Living Dead
In 1993, Joseph Paul Jernigan was sitting on Texas’s death row, contemplating his life and facing execution for murdering a 75-year-old man during a bank robbery nearly 12 years earlier. He decided to donate his remains to science, although his motives are still unclear. The faithful say he was hoping…
Dharma and John
The guy with the not-so-recently shaved head, the little round designer glasses and the blue oxford shirt must have surveyed the patio of Dharma Cafe from his luxury sedan and decided to leave his tie and suit coat in the car. Now, sitting alone at a table on the porch…
Life After Layoffs
When Rodwan Saleh and Yousef Syed were laid off from Compaq Computer Corporation last July, they never dreamed they would find their futures in the Royal Deli & Grill. Saleh was a computer scientist, Syed an electrical engineer. They knew a lot about some complicated subjects, but they didn’t know…
Allium Breath
Onions are simple vegetables, but in the hands of Scott Tycer, the owner-chef of Aries (4315 Montrose, 713-526-4404), they are transformed into a complex dish. In fact, if Tycer’s Three Onion Brioche Bread Pudding ($18) didn’t start with yeasty challah bread soaked in the richest of chicken stocks, I would…
Soul Mates
Most bands abide by a couple of unwritten rules: Never include a drum solo in your set, and never play for free. While the enforcement of these and other edicts differs from band to band, there is one dictum that’s almost always accepted: Never, ever join a band containing a…
Hula Hunt
Four or five years ago, Shepherd Plaza was a thriving nighttime destination. The place was wall-to-wall bars, with crazed valets parking cars everywhere, lines of people spilling down the sidewalks, and weekend drunks mistaking flower beds for urinals. Although restaurants are returning to the plaza, the crowds are nothing like…
It Ain’t Me, Babe
He doesn’t write songs about being Texan, drinkin’ Shiner, pulling into Gruene Hall, selling out for a case of Miller Lite. That’s why he’s not staring out from the cover of the latest issue of Texas Monthly, another blond head with that coy who-me? look spread across his face. Actually,…
Draining the Main Vein
The Nightfly would love to write an article concentrating on the good things about our fair city’s downtown area. We would love to rap about the historic architecture, the visible energy that flows from the passersby on a weekday afternoon, the fine restaurants, the grand feeling of the city at…
Weezer
Back in 1994, during an interview with Denver’s weekly Westword, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo blamed his dislike of promotion on a pre-record-deal gig selling “Cutco high-quality kitchen cutlery. They were really expensive knives — the ‘homemaker’ set, which was ten knives, was a little over $600 — and they were the…
Hamilton Loomis
Bo Diddley once offered some sage advice to his then teenage blues guitar protégé, Hamilton Loomis. Diddley told Loomis, “Innovate, don’t imitate.” Judging by the performance on his new live album, Highlights, recorded at several Gulf Coast clubs, including Houston’s now-defunct Billy Blues, Loomis should have heeded those words a…
Snoop Dogg
It has been exactly ten years since Snoop Doggy Dogg — or “Snoop Diggity Dogg,” as Damon Wayans memorably called him in Major Payne — languidly coasted his way into the public consciousness like a hellacious cloud of blunt smoke. After appearing alongside his mentor Dr. Dre on the tune…
Guided By Voices
Reasons why Guided By Voices’ new Universal Truths and Cycles (due June 18) will be called a “return to form” or some such: Because it’s filled with the kind of let-it-blurt blasts of verse-chorus-next! they turned into pop art on 1994’s Bee Thousand and 1995’s Alien Lanes. (The 36-second “Wire…