Return of the Hunchback
Almost 20 years ago, George Jacobson opened a Montrose neighborhood restaurant he dubbed Quasimodo’s Sanctuary and Tavern, after the famous denizen of Notre Dame’s bell tower. Quasimodo’s started as a beer-and-burger joint and sort of grew on folks; the quirky quasi-Gothic decor seemed to balance the quasi-Continental turn the food…
City Pork Project
When Greg Baxter needed to cut a deal with the city for a road through his proposed City Park development along White Oak Bayou, he of course hired a lawyer. But not just any lawyer: Baxter hired Neil Rackleff, a former assistant city attorney who now works for the downtown…
Simmer Up
Before you make plans to attend the 1999 Bob Marley Festival, please be informed that Bob Marley will not be performing. In fact, he’s not playing anywhere anymore, especially considering he’s dead and has been since 1981. “People ask me all the time when Bob will be playing, and I…
Letters
Grade Charade The TAAS test should be a comprehensive barometer of a student’s scholastic aptitude [“The Fix Is In,” by Shaila Dewan, February 25]. By someone’s changing the answers given, students have no idea how much they are learning. While improved scores may translate to more funding for a particular…
Quiet Riot
Every article written about Sleater-Kinney begins with the four questions its publicist says not to ask: How does it feel to be “women in rock”? What are your influences? Do you consider yourselves a “riot grrrl” band? What do you think of all of the press you’ve gotten? With write-ups…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *In February, Eastern Illinois University officials declined to refund $364 in tuition to April Hixson for the course “Nonwestern Music,” which Hixson said was little music and much pornography, seemingly designed to draw reactions from female students. Said Professor Douglas DiBianco, “You have to understand the extremes of…
Original Style
In the Spike Lee movie Mo’ Better Blues, an after-party conversation between rival jazzmen Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) and Shadow Henderson (Wesley Snipes) turns into a heated debate on the appeal of jazz in black culture: Bleek: “You know, if we had to … if we had to depend upon…
Massa’s: The New Generation
For nearly a hundred years, the Massa family has sold Houstonians seafood. In 1900 Michael Angelo Massa, a Sicilian immigrant, opened an oyster parlor in Galveston; 44 years later, two of his children, Tony and Louis, launched Massa’s Oyster House in downtown Houston, at the intersection of Capitol and Louisiana…
Jazz 101
Dallas-based bassist John Adams is no stranger to the Houston jazz scene. He makes frequent appearances in town and can be heard on Warren Sneed’s new album, Brothers, in which he lays down a killer acoustic groove on the title track. His big tone has a distinctive, almost earthy feel…
Hot Plate
Sugar and spice and salmon is nice: I’m currently crazy for Leopoldo “Polo” Becerra’s chipotle-glazed grilled salmon ($18.95) at the Post Oak Grill [1415 S. Post Oak Lane, (713)993-9966]. Becerra carefully grills a thick plank of rosy salmon; its glaze balances juicy citrus with a pinch of sweetness, while underneath…
Rotation
Mystikal Ghetto Fabulous No Limit/Jive Silkk the Shocker Made Man No Limit/Priority Did you just hear that clicking sound? That was the sound of Master P switching on the reel-to-reel machine again so he can record tracks for yet another No Limit album. Master P churns out albums the same…
Abyss of the Ages
Between 1938 and 1940, 10,000 Jewish children were saved from the horrors of the Third Reich. Sent out of Germany by their parents to the relative safety of unknown sponsor families, these children survived what their parents did not. This exodus — the Kindertransport, as it became known — provides…
Bold Indigo
There are mixed repertories and then there are mixed repertories. The playbill for the Houston Ballet’s performances of Indigo and La Sylphide quotes Artistic Director Ben Stevenson as saying, “When I put a season together, I try to go in as many different directions as possible.” But this particular pairing…
Style and Story
Tracey Moffatt is possibly the hippest artist ever to come out of Australia. She leapt from there to a residency at ArtPace in San Antonio in 1995, and from San Antonio to an international career and a solo show at the Dia Center for the Arts in New York City…
Blowing Away the Competition
You’ve got to hand it to Channel 13, the local ABC affiliate. They have been racking up scoops that have left the city’s other TV stations gasping in the dust. Absolutely no other station came close to breaking the stories that Channel 13 did on Barbara Walters’s interview with Monica…
Harmonists Way
In 1993 Disney released Swing Kids, a dead-earnest portrait of rebellious German jazz fans during the Third Reich. This bizarre hybrid — a blend of Footloose and Schindler’s List, of Dead Poets Society and The Diary of Anne Frank — pitted big bands against armbands; it was a classic case…
Fed-up Feds
Federal prosecutors, armed with the law and an intimidating investigatory arsenal, would hardly seem in need of public sympathy or job protection. However, in recent months, many lawyers assigned to the United States Attorney’s Office in Houston profess to work in fear and loathing of their temporary boss, acting United…
Tarantino’s Guy
The British caper film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels has been such a success back home that Hollywood studios are now competing intensely for the privilege of funding writer/director Guy Ritchie’s next effort. Despite the flaws in the film, you can understand what the studios see in Ritchie. He’s…
Educational Savior Seeks New Sinner
It took Houston school district trustee and educational consultant Don McAdams less than six weeks to decide that he and Texas Southern University were not exactly a match made in heaven. If TSU administrators had just taken a gander at McAdams’s self-serving treatise for the Brookings Institute titled “Lessons from…
Lost and Found
The Deep End of the Ocean starts as a maternal horror movie and ends up as a family therapy session. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the photographer wife of a restaurateur and mother of two sons and an infant daughter. While checking into a jammed hotel for her 15th high school reunion,…
Night & Day
Thursday March 11 Punchface, No Vocab Man, the screaming black box that a little boy called “Daddy”… we’ve loved and laughed at all of Bobbindoctrin Puppet Theatre’s strange, sad, dark, violent and incredibly funny characters. Now the puppet-theater-for-semi-grownups is introducing us to Ivan the Fool, a pacifist tempted by Satan…
Storming the Ramparts
When the Texas Southern University Board of Regents met in the first week of February, the most recent episode of the chronically troubled school’s soap-opera history was into its fourth year. With state bureaucrats and legislators threatening ever more loudly to place the state’s largest minority-based college under the control…
Weekend Warriors
It’s time to save the planet from vengeful aliens, so I take my seat at a card table in the back room of Midnight Comics. Across the table sits my fellow fighter for justice, Al Roth, sporting a faded burgundy sweatshirt and some stubble. He grabs his second can of…
Contributing Factors
In 1997 a trio of consumer groups with an agenda to embarrass legislators set out to prove what everyone around the Capitol had long suspected: Business interests that lobby state legislators are also the chief contributors to their campaigns. The groups deployed teams of college students to sift through stack…
Beautifully Drunk
Week-long keggers at Griff’s are nice, of course. But they just don’t throw St. Patrick’s Day parties like they used to. Fifty years ago, March 17 marked the grand opening of wildcatter-turned-millionaire-oilman Glenn McCarthy’s Shamrock Hotel, an homage to green, the color of money. Movie stars such as Erroll Flynn,…
River Oaks Rip-offs
From their independently operated stalls inside the warehouse-sized Market Place Antiques in West Houston, dealers display wares reflecting down-home tradition and relics of history. Old dining room sets vie for attention with out-of-print books and even collectible John F. Kennedy campaign buttons. From her nearby booth, Rose Knippenberg doesn’t fear…
The Whole (Foods) Story
The slick new shopping hub at the corner of Kirby and West Alabama — it replaced the former River Oaks Lincoln-Mercury dealership — looks almost ready for prime-time occupancy, but the Whole Foods Market won’t be moving in as soon as free-range-chicken fans may have hoped. For more than a…
HISD fires, reprimands and probes
Info: HISD fires, reprimands and probes Following a Houston Independent School District internal investigation and an in-depth two-part series on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test by Houston Press writer Shaila Dewan, HISD has fired one teacher and has reprimanded a principal after evidence showed that cheating occurred on…