Mower Heads
As far as mechanized vehicles go, mopeds, scooters, even remote-control cars have a leg up on lawn mowers in the speed department. Racing these tortoises of transportation is akin to asking Keanu Reeves to do Hamlet. We had hoped to find the obsessions of an eccentric landscaper behind this denial…
Better By Design
When the Four Seasons began revamping its restaurant spaces last summer, two standbys of the hotel dining scene closed their doors forever. The popular Terrace Café and the critically acclaimed DeVille were completely gutted and treated to a $3 million reinvention effort. When the dust cleared seven months later, a…
Minimalist Mixology
It was an eerily quiet Monday night at Noche Cocina y Bar (2409 Montrose, 713-529-8559). After a weekend of Bob Marley music, I felt like I had just smoked my hemp bracelet, and now I was thirsty. The bartender didn’t have any suggestions, and the standard bottled sangria circulating among…
Luv Ya Blue
Legend has it that former Houston Oilers coach Bum Phillips was so impressed with this appetizer the first time he tasted it that he proceeded to order two more platters for his main course. I can understand why. The Marineros ($14) at Churrascos (2055 Westheimer, 713-527-8300; 9705 Westheimer, 713-952-1988) are…
Memo Re: Borders
In 1964, when Memo Villarreal opened a tiny record store on the corner of 75th and Canal Street in the East End, Houston had only one Spanish-language radio station. Now the dial is as crowded with them as his shop is with music. “I used to have to carry candles,…
Houston, One Plate at a Time
“Look at that!” Rick Bayless says in amazement. “Geez, I wish I had my camera!” The trilingual sign he’s pointing to, on a breakfast joint at the corner of Wirt and Long Point, reads: “Kolaches, Donuts, Pan Dulce.” Bayless sounds like a kid on his first trip to Epcot Center…
Not on Your Nelly!
Nelly Furtado is on the line, and she’s stoked. She’s on a high from her Grammy win for best female pop performance, decent reviews of her concert tour and the fact that her homeboys on the Canadian Olympic hockey team struck gold in Salt Lake. And there’s still more good…
World Views
Like most of his fellow Texan singer-songwriters, but unlike his hero Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Dale Gilmore rarely proclaims his politics in public, neither from the stage nor in his songs. But his second set March 9 at the Mucky Duck was different. He weighed in with his views on the…
Nine Inch Nails
Just over a year ago, when U2 was in danger of losing its constituency, the group returned to its roots with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and — voilà! — the pop-music world responded with a spate of ring-kissing that still has cash registers chiming. Today the lads have…
Chuck E. Weiss
“Ain’t no hep cats anymore!” shouts L.A. legend Chuck E. Weiss on Old Souls & Wolf Tracks. Not true. As long as ol’ Chuck E.’s around, the hep cat isn’t extinct. Like his crony Tom Waits, who once gave him a shout-out in his “I Wish I Were in New…
Superna
The band known as Zero Gravity seemed to have it made. As human jukeboxes, its members regularly drew riotous crowds to their covers-only shows. They made plenty of money and always had a gig. But cover band status is a gilded cage; cover bands don’t tour, they don’t make albums,…
Norah Jones
Because she covers Hank Williams and songs made famous by Nina Simone and Hoagy Carmichael, because her debut comes courtesy of revered jazz label Blue Note, because Come Away with Me was produced by Arif Mardin (who has worked with Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones, among others),…
Man’s New Best Friend
The German shepherd’s hair bristled. Sniffing the air, his nose twitched and his black body stiffened. From his ears to his tail, the dog froze, silently alerting the platoon to the approaching enemy. Armed with a superhuman sense of smell, the dog sensed strangers 1,000 yards away. Any chance of…
Tom Joyner’s Classic Soul Tour
Surely you must know about Tom Joyner, the hardest-working disc jockey there ever was (and not just because a radio gig once had him flying from Dallas to Chicago and back every freakin’ day; his frequent flyer miles have dwindled since he got syndicated on ABC radio). If you’ve never…
Lethal Legacy
Just the potential of executing Andrea Pia Yates sparked an international media frenzy not seen since the State of Texas offed Karla Faye Tucker in 1998. But in the midst of the heated arguments over capital punishment, one thing is certain: The death penalty for women is not equally administered…
Mike Barfield
It’s official: Mike Barfield has shelved the Hollisters name, along with the band’s boom- chicka-boom sound. Since getting unstuck from our East Texas pines and heading for Austin a couple of years ago, Barfield has moved his music toward the bluesy soul-country of Roy Head and Delbert McClinton. His next…
Salt in the Wounds
After almost 20 years and $1.5 million in legal fees, Mickey Reynolds thought there was victory. The Wharton County commissioner had been among the hundreds of residents fighting a proposal to store hazardous petrochemical waste in the Boling salt dome beneath their land. Houston attorney Michael Shelton and his company,…
Ouch!
One of the fun things about the media is that many people who work in it lie almost constantly, creating a social minefield that keeps everybody hoppin’. For instance, take the big studios (please). Sometimes we call them up and say, “Hiya, we noticed that you have a major motion…
Shady Deal
Lisa Thompson and husband Rodney Collins want to build an environmentally responsible house he designed for their lot at Colquitt and Greenbriar. They plan for it to be a showcase exhibit for their firm of Collins Architects and Contractors, built with recycled materials, a solar roof and rainwater collection system…
Lipstick Traces
Kissing Jessica Stein ends several times, which explains how a film with a 96-minute running time feels as though it lasts much longer. Each conclusion feels real, natural and, best of all, inevitable — that is, except for the actual finale, which so betrays what’s come before it that it…
Nice Guy, Wrong Color
When Houston Congressman Ken Bentsen decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Phil “Enron” Gramm last fall, he immediately raised the hackles of Democratic officials across the state. They were already in the process of designing a color-coordinated state ticket to balance on the party’s tripod…
Shockheaded Peter
The battle for the Ballet has begun. In corner one is homegrown hopeful Trey McIntyre. In corner two, Australian upstart Stanton Welch. It’s a good match-up: Both choreographers have created successful short works for Houston Ballet, and this year each is setting a full-length ballet on the company. In September,…
Vanguard Battles
Vanguard Battles Get out of Jones: As a graduate of Jones High School who grew up in the neighborhood, attends church, volunteers and mentors many of the students in the neighborhood, I am appalled with the reporting of the situation that is going on at Jones [“The Great Divide,” by…
Men in the Moon
Nobody knows his audience better than Christian DeVries, producing director of Bienvenue Theatre. His latest production, Ed Allen’s Saturday Night at Billy’s, is filled with the muscle-bound, pretty-faced twentysomethings that his mostly gay male patrons hoot over. The fact that the entire story of Saturday Night takes place in the…
Rapping with TC
In this publication’s long-standing tradition of informing you of stuff you may not have known, we offer you Tim Conway’s deepest, darkest secret: The veteran funnyman used to roll with famed rapper Ice-T. That’s right, Tim Conway is an old-school, straight-up, hard-core OG from way back in the day, boyee!…
FotoFatigue
FotoFest is the art world’s version of the Bataan Death March. Large-scale art events always offer an overwhelming amount of work to see and engender a commensurate level of exhaustion and image oversaturation. But at least at, say, the Venice Biennale, or Germany’s Documenta, the exhibition is usually concentrated in…