Diner’s Notebook
Comings and Goings Is there a strange new virus going around? All of sudden, proprietors of quirky, one-of-a-kind Houston restaurants seem to be going corporate. Item: Billy Landry, whose career in Cajun food has taken him from the original Don’s and Willie G’s to the late Teche and the feisty…
Sound Check
It’s been about a century since W.C. Handy found himself waiting for a train in Tutwiler, Mississippi. Also on the platform was a ragged man who monotonously repeated the line “Goin’ where the Southern cross the Dog” while sliding a knife down the neck of a guitar to produce what…
Chaquico’s New Trip
The passage from heavy rocking Starship guitarist to mellow New Age healer-with-an-instrument hasn’t been easy for Craig Chaquico. “It’s kinda like being Timmy in Lassie,” Chaquico says. “Everybody knows who that guy was, but what’s he doing today?” After almost 20 years with one of the leading bands in rock,…
Mom Muse
In the mid-’80s, both the Pixies and the Throwing Muses emerged from the Boston music scene as forerunners of what would eventually become “alternative rock.” The Pixies broke up before “alternative” became a fully operative buzzword — that is, before those Best Buy commercials on TV with the goofy conservative…
Where the Chutneys Sing
It took about three minutes to realize that the drive to Clear Lake City had been worthwhile. Certainly the surroundings at Mogul, a brand-new Indian restaurant on Bay Area Boulevard just to the east of NASA, were standard subcontinental issue: twin walls full of prismatic mirrors stretched the big, dim,…
High School Lessons
In case you missed it on PBS last fall, High School II — documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s look at a secondary school in Spanish Harlem — will be shown at Rice Media Center Thursday. Actually, everybody who depended on Houston’s public TV outlet missed the latest offering from this pioneer of…
Something to Kill For
In 1991, Stephen Sondheim, the cerebral genius of contemporary American musical theater, took on the mindset of nine people who have tried (or succeeded in) killing the President of the United States. He missed the mark. Unlike a few other Sondheim shows that were poorly received at first but later…
Playing It for Laughs
When George Bernard Shaw wrote Arms and the Man in 1894, he was known as an arts critic and revolutionary rather than as a dramatist. However, in his railing against the hypocrisy of Victorian theater, Shaw saw that if he wanted something better, he’d best write it himself — thus…
A Dog’s Life
Sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang onto. This is what the women in Dolores Claiborne say. Vera Donovan (Judy Parfitt), the high-riding bitch in the mansion, says it first. Her housekeeper Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates) learns fast. After a few crisp words of instruction from…
Killer Elite
You know a work of art is significant when its first public exhibition degenerates into a near-riot. It happened in Kansas City almost 25 years ago, when Warner Bros. previewed Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. As the opening scene unfolded, the audience knew they weren’t watching any ordinary Western. A…
All the Law Enforcement You Can Afford
The streets are smoothly paved and lined by large, one and two-story brick homes. The lawns out front are perfectly tended, and many of the houses have swimming pools in the back. Every few blocks there is a tennis court or two. Street signs encourage motorists to drive with caution…
Dipping in the Money Pool
Across a picnic table loaded with foil vats of marinated beef, money is changing hands. Vietnamese immigrant Da Bui, seated in a metal chair in the corner of a north Houston warehouse, is genially collecting checks and dollar bills in the sum of $210 each from 30 of his closest…
Old Boys at Play
Do you hear that whirring noise?” chortled a man in a beautiful William Morris-patterned vest. “That’s Jesse Jones spinning in his grave.” Nabbing a deviled egg from the buffet, he cast a connoisseur’s eye on the tuxedoed throng that milled through the upper level of the stuffy Houston Club last…
Spare the Mayor, Kill the Story
If a story in the daily newspaper causes an average Houstonian to choke on his or her morning coffee, the only practical avenue of protest available is a letter to the editor, which may or may not run days later. If you happen to be Houston Mayor Bob Lanier, and…
Letters
No Parking No Solution I am a resident of the Upper Kirby District and find it deplorable that banning parking on our side streets is the method with which my fellow citizens and Traffic and Transportation Department choose to quell the congestion caused by the new Richmond and Greenbriar bar…
Press Picks
thursday march 30 Seventh Annual Senior Olympics There’s a lot of talk about how seeing hot babes on MTV and the cover of Cosmo is bad for women’s self-image. Little talk-show time, however, is devoted to discussing how like a genuine wart hog many teens and twentysomethings feel when they…