Tales of the Father
Picture this: A bunch of Hollywood suits sitting around discussing making a movie from a memoir about the two most important people in the memoirist’s life: his grandfather, who raised him and his children, and his wife, who suffered a tragic death. The suits especially like the grandfather idea. The…
To Hell and Back
There’s a good reason why the new thriller Hideaway is proudly designated as “A Film by Brett Leonard,” a name few casual moviegoers would recognize, let alone regard with high esteem. Leonard, who directed the cyberpunk-revamped movie version of Stephen King’s short story The Lawnmower Man, is a high-tech showman…
Walking Dead Arrives D.O.A.
My father served in the Air Force in the 1950s, and was the lone black man in his unit. His not-so-close-knit group did almost everything together — trained, ran, ate — until nightfall, when my father would go off to sleep in his own special barracks. The memory of that…
Pay TV
What business owner wouldn’t like to be featured in a nice profile on a “news magazine” TV show whose on-air personalities include Jan Glenn, the relentlessly perky former Good Morning Houston anchor; ex-Astro catcher Alan Ashby and roving “reporter”-cum-socialite Carolyn Farb? Unfortunately, on Inside Houston, you may find the price…
Struck Twice
David Proctor, the NASA engineer enticed into committing crimes by an agent of the government for which he worked, is going to prison. Despite his guilty plea that resulted in his sentencing late last month, Proctor still maintains he did nothing wrong, and he claims that the prison time he…
Sam’s Farewell
About the best Sam Templeton could say about his life last April was that he still had a roof over his head. He was jobless, nearly broke and suffering from the effects of full-blown AIDS. Ten months later, life has hardly improved for Templeton, and next week it will take…
Press Picks
thursday march 9 Paragon Brass Ensemble Young Audiences of Houston takes a break from presenting concerts and classes for school children and presents a concert for working stiffs downtown. The selections in this afternoon’s program range from Bach to Dixieland. 12:15-1:15 p.m. Hermann Square Park, City Hall. For details, call…
Letters
Spare the Smoker On first thought I didn’t want to waste a stamp in response to Mr. George Butel’s comments on the tobacco industry [Letters, “Light Up and Die,” January 26], but since I had bought so many of those damned new stamp books when they first came out, and…
Angels and Curanderos
With the federal trial of Teresa Rodriguez getting under way this week in Judge Sim Lake’s court, Houston’s fallen society angel can look forward to some strange twists and turns. One potential witness for the government may testify to the activities of a Mexican “curandero,” or traditional healer, who was…
Pop Moment
Okay, about that Jessie Dayton teaser last week. It was sort of a no-brainer for anyone who’s been paying attention. Dayton is working with Randall Jamail and Justice Records. They’re in an Austin studio now, recording what I’m told will be 15 tracks of a new CD. The name out…
Rotation
Gabrielle Goodman Until We Love JMT/Verve Records As legends Shirley Horn, Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln and the like continue to refine the art of jazz singing, the inevitable question remains: where is the next generation of female jazz vocalists? The resulting discussion shouldn’t continue without evaluating the talents of Gabrielle…
Whole New Posture
So I read in a magazine the other day — I think it may have been U.S. News and World Report — that punk rock, of all things, is back. Yippee, I say to myself. Punk’s not dead. Nope, not dead at all. Instead, I’m told, it’s back. Which could…
The Road from College
You never know when that phone call’s going to come that’ll change your life. Even if the call isn’t to you. That’s what Jack O’Neill and Cary Pierce — the “Jack” and the “Pierce” of Dallas band Jackopierce — discovered about a year and a half ago when they were,…
After a bad trip into the underworld of wreckers, storage lots and repair shops, you might think the accident was the best part of the experience.
Promila Kohli readily admits that the accident was her fault. A little over two years ago, she was driving behind Sharpstown Mall when she tried to make a left turn off Clarewood. Suddenly, an oncoming car she hadn’t seen sideswiped her two-month-old 1993 Mazda 626 Sedan. The date was November…
The Other Mandola’s
Poor me. I drove by Mandola’s Deli for eight years without stopping. And no wonder: the blank brick facade of this windowless East End lunch spot seems hooded. Inscrutable. Grimly closed off. Inside, however, waits a knotty-pine universe bustling with shirtsleeved regulars and bursting with old-school surprise. Food snobs and…
Diner’s Notebook
Comings and Not Goings The Rumor Mill: Forget whatever you’ve heard about the hot new Daily Review Cafe having to find new quarters. Ain’t so, according to proprietor Carl Eaves — despite the nervous-making fact that all the buildings in a two-block area have recently been knocked down, leaving the…
Low Comedy, High Fun
When Stages decided to stage the Marx Brothers’ The Cocoanuts, what were they thinking? Why court disaster by staging a show that’s so obviously and consummately been done already? An actor can’t very well reinterpret Groucho or Harpo; he can only aspire to doing a laudable imitation, at best be…
Taken with Twombly
Is anyone else puzzled by the Cy Twombly phenomenon? So who voted him as our most fashionable abstract painter of the moment — with recorded auction prices of $3 million to match? I’ve always liked his “blackboard” paintings well enough — the white-on-gray rows of calligraphic loops that resemble old-fashioned…