Side Order of Worms?
The two most overrated things in the world, goes a gritty old Texas saying, are home loving and home cooking. Since the time when Julia Child first began appearing on television shows, home cooking has improved considerably in Texas and the rest of the United States. Perhaps home loving has…
Stirred and Shaken
We are the first patrons on a Wednesday night at Ouisie’s Table [3939 San Felipe, (713)528-2264]. Our seats at the shiny stainless-steel bar face a well-lighted oil painting of a nude girl — or is she a midget? This question is debated at length over an excellent happy-hour feast of…
Captive Emotions
Reagan Hamilton, thin as a twig, tough as bark, looked out over the podium at her captive audience. Dressed in prison whites and seated neatly at coated metal tables with attached stools, 25 male inmates at Joe Kegans State Jail listened intently. They had all waited a long time for…
Beef: It’s Still What’s for Dinner
Speaking off the toque: Tony Ruppe, chef and proprietor of Tony Ruppe’s [3939 Montrose Boulevard, (713)852-0852]. Q. With the constant stream of stories coming out of Europe about mad cow and hoof-and-mouth disease, have you seen an effect on the sale of beef dishes at your restaurant? A. I can…
Laesha Powell and Redina Castillo
Although Laesha’s father was absent for most of her childhood, doing time for drug offenses, she didn’t begin hating him until her 13th birthday. To celebrate the start of her teenage years, she had her hair and nails done for the first time. Everyone wished her a happy birthday –…
Show Cased
I have seen the future of music, friends, and I have to tell you I’m a little frightened. In the future, there won’t be many chicks around, and the UK will continue to slowly invade our shores with spookily talented musicians. Washed-up rockers will still make you wait for them…
Dorothy Galloway
When Dorothy was seven, she started washing her own clothes. Never mind that she couldn’t reach the dials; she just climbed on top of the machine. She has two fathers and doesn’t know which is her biological one. One remains in prison, and the other got out but has never…
Montrose’s Boulevard
Let’s get this out the way immediately: Yes, this is a profile on a musician named Montrose. Yes, that’s his real name. Yes, he’s aware he shares the moniker with a culturally rich area of Houston, home to much of the city’s gay community. “I’ve been to Houston a few…
Antonio Bass
For a good number of his 18 years, Antonio caused trouble. He broke into cars, busted out windows, got suspended from school and “caught three cases,” he says of his run-ins with police. His father left when he was two and didn’t return until he was eight. Antonio harbored so…
The Kingfisher
Not long ago, Beaumont-based country singer Tracy Byrd was questioning whether he wanted to continue his career. It was an odd thought coming from a man with so much success. Since signing his first deal with MCA in the mid-’90s, Byrd had scored two No. 1 singles, “Holdin’ Heaven” and…
Tension and Release
Mark Bradford is 35, but he dresses and sounds like a teenage snowboarder. He talks slow, even for someone born in Louisiana, and half of his syrup-thick words seem to be either “cool” or “fun.” Operating a crane is fun, he says. Recycling is cool. And it’s especially fun to…
Meet the New Boss
From a family that has discovered or helped bring to light Leadbelly, Son House, Muddy Waters, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle and Kasey Chambers, along with the songs “Home on the Range,” “The Midnight Special,” “Goodnight Irene” and much of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack,…
The Hitch
June may be the traditional month for weddings. But that’s a luxury that can’t wait for some Houstonians: illegal immigrants eager to take advantage of an obscure law. Their rush to the altar could be linked to continued residency as well as romance. Kathryn Kay, the county clerk’s supervisor of…
Et Tu, Downtown?
Wednesday, March 14. 12:36 a.m.: Ass and titties. Inside the packed downtown dive Incognito (2524 McKinney), visiting Chicago spin man DJ Funk sets his vocal mantra of “ass and titties” to a frumpy bass beat. The bawdiness to come demands no less hype. In a matter of moments, a dozen…
The Enforcers
James Plilar was a steelworker long enough to know he wanted less grueling work to coast into retirement. He was pushing 50 when a friend told him he had a low-cost bar to sell. Plilar and his wife, Brenda, a secretary, pounced on the opportunity to open Sassy’s at 1215…
Playbill
Brazil’s Sepultura has gone through a number of mutations since first arriving on the international scene 12 years ago. Proto-death-metal releases such as Morbid Visions and Beneath the Remains cast the band as one of the few that could hold a candle to early Slayer in terms of primitive brutality…
Withering Heights
A Home Depot exploded all over Charlie Fondow’s backyard. Or at least that’s what it looks like. Countless planks of wood forming various geometric shapes sprout into the sky like skeletons, leading up into a 40-foot-high observation deck. A small circular wooden staircase winds past a pit of workmen’s leftover…
Playbill
After Jean-Luc Ponty and Stephane Grappelli, most casual fans would be hard-pressed to name even a third jazz violinist. So in a field that seems to have only a few active legends, and even fewer upstarts, it’s easy to stand out. A nose-ring-sporting African-American (by the way, whatever happened to…
Hotze’s Blue Angels
From just reading the record, you’d think Houston police had a pretty strong case against Dr. Steven Forrest Hotze, the 50-year-old conservative activist whose weaving auto was stopped in the early-morning hours last October. Officer J.S. Miller, who arrested Hotze for driving while intoxicated, said the doctor’s maroon Ford Expedition…
Call of the Mild
Amid the plethora of films with Freddie Prinze Jr., Mena Suvari, Chris Klein and Jason Biggs, it’s nice — in theory, at least — to see a contemporary romantic comedy like Someone Like You, where the characters, while hardly over the hill, are all over 30. In practice, however, “nice”…
Right-Wing Revolt
If you think Vince Foster was murdered by Hillary’s lesbian lover, if you’re sure Bill Clinton was running drugs out of a rural Arkansas airport while fathering crack babies, if you just know there was something to Filegate, Travelgate and Whitewater even if Ken Starr couldn’t find it, you have…
Nothing About Ado Much
Justice may be blind, but vengeance, it turns out, has a very short memory. So it goes in Memento, the much anticipated “puzzle” movie from Christopher Nolan (Following), which plays out its plot more or less in reverse. Pitting the protagonist (and us) against short-term amnesia and temporal disorientation, the…
He Scores
Ennio Morricone can tell you stories about each of his 400 children–where they were conceived, what they mean to him, why each one remains so singular and special he cannot and will not choose a favorite. He’s proud even of the orphans, the runts, the bastards, the children long ago…
Wild Child
As its title suggests, Spy Kids is an action fantasy aimed primarily at the preteen/early-teen audience. For all its thrills — and it has plenty — it’s strictly a PG film, which is all the more surprising when you consider its source: Robert Rodriguez, master of bloody gunplay and monster…
Letters
Free Benny! Down with the circus: I was so saddened to read your article on Benny, the elephant smuggled across the U.S. border [“Vanishing Act,” by John Suval, March 15]. What a shame such intelligent creatures are humiliated and taken advantage of. I have always wondered why man has felt…
The Rise of Saigon
With the heart-stopping sound of helicopter blades descending from the darkness above, Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Miss Saigon makes its grand operalike entrance onto the humble Arena Theatre stage. And though the popular musical, inspired by Puccini’s gorgeous Madame Butterfly, seems a bit cramped inside the funky suburban venue, the Theatre Under…
Wham, Bam, Thank You, McMahon
In the mid-’80s, Vince McMahon transformed the World Wrestling Federation from a regional northeast promotion into a national force. He did so by raiding talent from other regional promoters, putting his programs on national cable outlets and exploiting the then-nascent medium known as pay-per-view. (Legend has it McMahon was issued…
Wake-up Call
Bellini’s La Sonnambula is about a sleepwalking-prone Swiss maiden who is rejected by her fiancé. Though melodramatic, fatuous and flimsy, the wretched plot is easy to forgive for one simple reason: The opera’s arias are gorgeous — so gorgeous, in fact, that these stunning vocal showcases are difficult to sing…
Upright, Outta Sight
From the dawn of civilization, they have existed to undermine it. Their only enemy is the status quo. Their only friend is chaos. Antoine, Colby, Trotter, Adair — they are the Upright Citizens Brigade, an underground team of malcontents intent on being the most obstructive flies to ever infiltrate the…
Office Max
There is a great scene in Mike Judge’s film Office Space in which a trio of oppressed suburban computer programmers strikes back at an incessantly malfunctioning printer. In true Mafia fashion, they stuff it into the trunk of their car and take it for a ride. After carrying it to…
Hip Parade
Smoke rises in a cloud above the hookah smoker’s head. In front of him, a belly dancer in a blue-fringed bra moves her head from side to side above her folded arms and ample cleavage in an I Dream of Jeannie gesture. The man with the water pipe can’t take…
Can You Say Adobe?
To anyone who has seen Jan Hooks’s hilarious turn as an Alamo tour guide in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, it may be difficult to keep a straight face about the Avocado Adobe ($11.99) at Cafe Adobe [2111 Westheimer, (713)528-1468, and other locations]. But this chicken dish is as serious as a…