Meat the Moose
My advice to anyone thinking of visiting the Moose Cafe is simple: go when you’re feeling carnivorous. And if you decide to try one of the vegetable entrees, don’t say you weren’t warned. While the Moose obviously knows meat, it has some things to learn when it comes to items…
Resolute Eating
Anyone still clinging with white knuckles to a New Year’s resolution to eat healthier can find an ally in Ziggy’s Healthy Grill. Original owner Ziggy Penn — who recently sold the restaurant to Wayne Croft — once owned the now-defunct Mariner Steakhouse and also founded Marble Slab Creameries. Following an…
Static
Greetings from Redneck, New Jersey… For the Swales’ Rob Carr, big city angst’s got nothing on good, old-fashioned small-town misery. “The regular guy just tugs at my heartstrings,” says Carr. “If there’s any condescension to [my songs], then I owe everyone a big apology, because that’s not what I’m trying…
Rotation
Velocity Girl Gilded Stars and Zealous Hearts Sub Pop Female-fronted alt rock bands may be a dime a dozen on MTV these days, but they’ve hardly been a common commodity at Sub Pop, the Seattle-based record label largely responsible for birthing grunge. Back in 1992, Sub Pop was busy nurturing…
Unpolished Gem
JUMP INFORMATION APPENDED FROM FILE C:NEPDAYS314963140108.NVT Just when you thought there wasn’t the smallest sliver of room in rock for yet another in-your-face, acid-tongued gal, along comes Ruby’s Lesley Rankine. Once rumored to have been in the running for lead voice of Garbage, Rankine has hardly been left fending for…
La Mafia, Redux?
On the north side of the city, near where I-45 crosses paths with the 610 Loop, there’s an unassuming one-story brick and aluminum-sided office building sitting just off the feeder road. From the outside, it doesn’t much look like the centerpiece of a budding entertainment empire. But that may be…
Once More, From the Top
It was an impressive place for any aspiring performer to begin — opening for Counting Crows on tours of the United States and Europe well before record companies had even bothered to take any notice of him. Night after night, Peter Stuart would take the stage armed only with his…
Love Story
Last year, when the Houston Ballet was taking a turn through China to impress upon the arts fans of the world’s most populous nation that there’s more to U.S. dance than the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre, one of the works the company performed was Romeo…
Fall Down, Go Thud
Seldom has any movie illustrated the Peter Principle more vividly than If Lucy Fell. This obnoxiously smug little comedy is the second feature to be written and directed by Eric Schaeffer, a newcomer who attracted attention two years ago with a modestly engaging low-budget effort called My Life’s in Turnaround…
Lost in the Heavens
As an apocalyptic urban fantasy, Jose Rivera’s Marisol is too unrealized to be what it obviously wants to be: a theatrical equivalent of the second coming. Rivera focuses his play on what happens to Marisol, a young, professional Hispanic woman living in New York City, when earth’s guardian angels abandon…
Murder, She Said
The career of Joel and Ethan Coen — the writing/producing/directing pair of brothers (both write, Ethan produces, Joel directs, with some spillover everywhere) responsible for Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy — has been littered with discussion of the recursive, postmodern metanature of their…
Pale Justice
Although Texas law requires that state grand juries reflect the racial makeup of the communities they represent, three of the five currently impaneled Harris County grand juries include no African-Americans and only one Hispanic. How did that happen? Well, you’d best ask the first-term Republican judges responsible for appointing the…
The Texas Rose Rustlers
There are plenty of ways to take an interest in old roses. You can zero in on them botanically, or you can fit their stories into the history of your favorite place, or you can simply appreciate the way they act in the landscape. All these approaches have their proponents…
The Insider
The Lapdog Eats His Own If you think your job situation is about as miserable as it can get, cheer up. At least you aren’t among the Houston city controller’s office employees who have been fired, laid off or are still hanging on by their gnawed fingernails under the regime…
Swinish Behavior
In early January 1994, a woman driving along a road near her home outside of College Station noticed something she hadn’t seen before: a quartet of 8 1/2-by-11-inch signs duct-taped to the fence posts of Texas A&M University’s beef cattle research center. The year-old center sat on 580 acres only…
The Avenging Exterminator
A good campaign manager can make or break a politician, so when a retired Texas Ranger named Milton Wright decided to run for sheriff of Fort Bend County in this week’s Republican primary, he settled on an experienced GOP volunteer named Jacqueline Blankenship. A certified paralegal and mediator, Blankenship had…
Deadbeat Collector
The collection of past-due child-support payments has, unfortunately, proven lucrative enough to develop into something of a growth industry in Texas in the past few years. The child-support entrepreneurs say they’re just looking after the interests of children and mothers in need of the assistance they aren’t getting from the…
Letters
Long Drought Over Thank you for finally ending the art review drought at the Press. Shaila Dewan’s unexpected review of the show at Art of This Century [Art, “Graphic Ideas,” February 22] was both intelligent and thoughtful, which made it a welcome surprise. Keep it going. Bill Thomas Houston Ixnay…
Step Up to the Plate. Sucker.
We’re playing catch in the front yard when my son asks me who had “autographed” my glove. It’s a Pete Rose model, I tell him. Who’s Pete Rose? he asks. He’s only six. He was a great ballplayer, I say, who always played hard and got dirty a lot. I…
Press Picks
thursday march 14 How to Talk to Your Angels Tired of TTouching your pets? Not so friendly with your psychic friends? Well, then, let Kim O’Neill help you develop your channeling ability and find empowerment (greater empowerment, even), independence and self-awareness by communicating directly with angels. O’Neill says she’s led…