Eat Your Spinach!
The Chicago columnist Mike Royko once offered a can’t-miss financial tip: never invest in a restaurant unless it’s run by a short Greek. He had a point. With the immigrant determination that’s shaped America, the Hellenic community has for decades loomed large in the food-service industry. Lest I be accused…
Static
La Mafia’s godfather… If there was ever any doubt about Oscar De La Rosa’s status as La Mafia’s leader, it’s erased with the release of Un Millon de Rosas (A Million Roses) the new CD from the Houston Tejano giants. On its cover, you’ll find Oscar, posing rather stiffly and…
Perry Deep
It’s a shame the new El Palacio Cafe and Club didn’t open its doors a few weeks earlier. Oscar Perry’s deep, smooth voice and penchant for singing about love’s ups and downs would have made him an ideal grand-opening headliner for Valentine’s Day. Despite his impeccable blues credentials, the Houston…
Sample Idea
Not long ago, Matt Mahaffey’s world consisted of a college dorm room, a few instruments, a four-track recorder and a mountain of bad grades. An undergraduate at Middle Tennessee State University near Nashville, Mahaffey had enrolled to learn the business side of the recording industry, but it was only a…
Hippie Chic
Life has been nothing short of bohemian for singer/songwriter Jewel Kilcher. Yet, while many are quick to label the 21-year-old artist a neo-hippie, she’d rather think of herself as just a spiritual gal who’s trying to make her life worth living. Much of that spiritualism is a result of her…
Rotation
Van Morrison with Georgie Fame and Friends How Long Has This Been Going On Verve If the “this” of the CD’s title is meant to allude to Van Morrison’s jazz leanings — made explicit here after years of jazzy shadings and tangents — then it’s probably been going on at…
Friends and Family
Whenever I see a play or movie written by Horton Foote, I think I should be sitting on a rustic front porch. Foote grew up an hour’s drive southwest of Houston in the farming town of Wharton and, at age 79, this fifth-generation Texan still spends half the year there,…
From the Beginning
For half a century now, Jasper Johns has kept his public guessing. Each time he exhibits new work, be it abstract, figurative or something in between, the critics are dispatched en masse to decode it like so many Sherlock Holmeses. Over the years, the cryptic artist, himself a fan of…
Family Values
They share a loving, long-term relationship based on shared interests, mutual respect and an immensely satisfying joint career. Of course, they have a squabble now and then. But, really, what marriage doesn’t have its up and downs? The important thing is, they’ve been true to each other, and to themselves,…
Truth or Consequences
Trouble, for a change, had come looking for Jon Lindsay. Usually, it’s the other way around. It was a Monday afternoon in late February, and the former county judge and his oldest son, Steve, were driving across northwest Harris County, intermittently stopping to plant another “Lindsay for Senate” yard sign…
The Insider
Rolando Gathers No Moss The FBI’s reputation for clinch-jawed circumspection has been restored with the transfer of talkative G-Man Rolando Moss from his post as the chief spokesman for the agency’s Houston office to community affairs duties. As detailed in the February 15 Press, Moss was the victim of a…
Net Compensation
Doc Lawson is a hard-working guy. As director of the Houston Metropolitan Area Youth Soccer League, Lawson has been averaging a 40-hour work week since he took the job in November 1994. Not an unreasonable load, considering the complexity of putting together Mayor Bob Lanier’s pet recreation program, which debuted…
Security Risk
After one too many episodes of violence by anti-abortion activists, Planned Parenthood of Houston took the advice of federal marshals last year and hired off-duty deputies from the Harris County Sheriff’s Department to protect employees and patients at its Mid-Town clinic. Two weeks ago, Planned Parenthood was taken by surprise…
Sex and Death on the Restroom Wall
A creative doctor wanted to employ art to educate people about protecting themselves with condoms. A museum wanted to promote the doctor’s vision, and a coffeehouse owner wanted some provocative work on his bathroom walls. A mother wanted to protect her ten-year-old child and others from exposure to unsuitable images,…
Letters
Take a Hot Bath Instead Tim Fleck’s article “Station Break” [February 8] about Channel 8 was right on the mark. Channel 8 does indeed have a problem. It runs a few — a very few — really good programs; some elitist, politically correct programs; and a lot of what Fleck…
Press Picks
thursday march 7 Lunch with the Education President George Bush is the featured speaker at the annual luncheon of the Institute of International Education. Bush and the missus have been supporters of the IIE and the Fulbright Scholarship program, we’re told, since the early ’60s. Speaking at the luncheon to…