Lucky Horseshoe
Somebody up there likes me, so they provide me with little accidents of grace. Horseshoe, 1996. That may be true in concept, but at the moment, Greg Wood, Horseshoe’s burly lead singer, looks less like an accident of grace than a walking disaster. It’s a Sunday morning, and Wood –…
Larry in Limbo
I’m not a very sympathetic character,” admits Larry Duncan, a veteran of the oil patch who’s rarely looked for sympathy. He certainly received none from a federal jury, which 16 months ago convicted him of violating the U.S. trade embargo against Libya. Since then, Duncan’s been relegated to legal purgatory,…
A Whole Lot Country
Over the past several months, I’ve contributed stories every now and then to a bimonthly magazine called No Depression that takes as its subject matter the burgeoning field of “alternative country” music — which is to say, music with recognizably “country” referents that yet exists on the margins of the…
The Song of Jackie O
The most cynical man I ever knew believed in Jackie O. A valet at one of her favorite hotels, he was moved by her silent grace — evident even in the way she slid in and out of the cars that came for her — and stunned by the power…
Myth and Reality
In early February, Alley artistic director Gregory Boyd appeared on Channel 8’s Weeknight Edition with Ernie Manouse touting the Alley’s then-upcoming production of John Burton and Kenneth Cavander’s 1981 epic The Greeks as the theatrical equivalent of George Lucas’s Star Wars. Murder, war and revenge, went his reasoning, all have…
A Gift to Be Simple
Nine months ago, when Yukiko Lunday opened Takara in the Village, she filled it with decorated chopsticks, kimonos and handmade Japanese paper, operating the business as a combination gallery and gift store. But now Lunday has purged her space of the expensive souvenirs, leaving a simple, open, storefront gallery that…
Angst Among Thieves
City of Industry starts out promisingly and then turns into the kind of crime thriller only a pointy-headed postmodernist could love. Since a lot of critics these days have pointy heads, brace yourself for a lot of steaming compost about how “existential” and “noir” this film is. And I’ll be…
Kickin’ It
love jones — writer/director Theodore Witcher’s debut film, which won the Audience Award at January’s Sundance Film Festival — takes a lucid look at love, African-American style. Or to be more exact, contemporary, urban, upscale African-American style. It may have the occasional dollop of raw sexual humor, but on the…
Jack Squat
If we take Bob Rafelson at his word, Blood & Wine completes a trilogy about family relationships that started with the director’s two crowning achievements, 1970’s Five Easy Pieces and 1971’s The King of Marvin Gardens. Those two films are so often pointed to as evidence of the brilliance of…
Basic Ballard
Most weeks Fred Zoch can drop into the Bridge City Rotary Club luncheons at Linders Seafood & Barbecue to relax, dine on the Tex-Mex buffet and swap business news and gossip with his fellow Rotarians. But it was with some trepidation that Zoch, the president of the Bridge City school…
The Insider
Hook-ed on Model-Netics Each Friday morning, a group of HISD principals convenes in a conference room just off Superintendent Rod Paige’s office at district headquarters, where they listen patiently as an instructor puts them through their latest lesson. The principals aren’t being schooled on up-to-date classroom techniques or improved campus…
Letters
The Measure of Les Your expose on Rockets owner Leslie Alexander [“Greed Head,” by Bob Burtman, February 13] was indeed an eye opener to those of us who have been blinded by the team’s on-the-court success. Although I’d heard bits and pieces about Mr. Alexander’s abrasive style of doing business,…
Press Picks
thursday march 13 Androcles For the kiddies, A.D. Players presents a musical in which a runaway slave removes a thorn from the paw of a big, bad lion, thus making a lifelong friend. Presented in the style of commedia dell’arte, and aimed at ages five through 12. Opening, 10:30 a.m…
Out of Africa
Had I not been looking for an Islamic veil, I might never have found the food of Africa. Or, to be more exact, I might never have found what may, one day, become the African equivalent of the stretch of Indo-Pakistani restaurants on Hillcroft. My search had taken me to…
Rotation
Dinosaur Jr. Hand It Over Reprise It’s been almost two years now since Dinosaur Jr. finally hit the pop charts with “Feel the Pain,” and at least two years before that since Dino has managed to sound like anything other than a steadily diluting echo of the punk blast heard…
Descendents Ascendant
Some timing. Just when Green Day’s lesser ilk have drained nearly every liter of urgency from punk’s once-proud legacy, along comes a group of its more durable practitioners to apply defibrillator paddles to its lukewarm carcass. Those potential lifesavers are the Descendents, whose latest CD, Everything Sucks, has all the…
Static
Only a speck of Houston in Austin… If my only job at this week’s South by Southwest Music and Media Conference were to witness every showcase performance by a Houston artist, my efforts would amount to little more than a day’s work. Houston’s representation at the event is a piddling…