Dimitri’s Last Stand
Merchant seaman Dimitri Manetas left his home in Kalloms Puros, Greece, and worked his way to Galveston in 1970. For the next six years he was a longshoreman who learned the unique talents of entrepreneurs in his new land. To tap into the trade of day-trippers from Houston, Manetas sold…
Through the Past Darkly
Let’s do the time warp again: Imagine continental cuisine served without irony, and waiters who do more than recite the day’s specials and disappear. Imagine a place where a comfortable darkness settles over everything, where your major light source comes from the flaming dishes prepared tableside. Imagine a place where…
Workers Reject a Union
For weeks Lázaro Garcia wondered if the new faces at Quietflex were getting to his fellow workers. They hovered inside the buzzing plant, a few neatly dressed men and one woman, pulling sweaty workers aside to warn them of the ills of unions. The strangers headed daily gatherings in the…
Effie’s Ending
When Eufemia “Effie” Van Rysseghem was placed in hospitals and nursing homes, the man who called himself her common-law husband began using a Catholic church calendar to make cursory notes of her deteriorating condition. George Salazar jotted down if she “ate good” and how she slept. He also noted when…
God’s a Joke
The Sunday-morning hymns have been sung, the body and blood consumed, and the prayers offered for the sick and the shut-ins. Now it’s time for the Reverend Jeffrey Eernisse to harass his flock. He leaves the pulpit and swaggers down the aisle. “Give me your wallet,” he commands a guy…
May Day
It was a typical Sunday-morning service at the Unitarian Universalist church on Wirt Road. Six people stood up and shared their joys and concerns — a little boy celebrated two first places at a karate tournament, and a 35-year-old lit a candle for his late wife. The small sandbox was…
Rotation
Various Artists The Rough Guide to Tex-Mex World Music Network Poor Tejano conjunto. It is a doubly marginalized music. This Tex-Mex sound, driven by accordion and bajo sexto, has been mostly ignored by Anglo media and Anglo audiences, even as they down Tecates at their favorite Mexican eateries. Conjunto has…
Sit.com
You know the type: scraggly-looking guys who collected too many action figures as kids, and started shooting TV “programs” in their backyard with delusions of getting one of their darlings picked up by NBC. So what happens when your show gets rejected by every major TV outlet, and reality hits?…
Local Rotation
Todville Road Carousel Todville Road Choosing a band name that alludes to something obscure is a common phenomenon of these postmodern times. Here’s a local pop-rock outfit following suit, christening itself after a back road most Houston commuters have never had reason to travel. Pity that the reference is more…
Eighth Wonder of the Cajun World
Curved and turreted, the former nightclub that now houses Rodeaux Cajun Palace reminds me of a miniature Astrodome. Okay, maybe a cross between the Dome, squashed flat, and a demented Spanish mission, what with its hemispheric roof, glassy portholes, bell tower and facade executed in neon kitsch colors, a cheerful…
Not Your Average Angst
What sets Greg Graffin, the leader of punk survivors Bad Religion, apart from many of his contemporaries is his impeccable knack for knowing just when to spew. Words, that is. Even though for the past 20 years he and his band have been railing about how human beings are basically…
Hot Plate
Zestfully Plain: The muffins of Spain lean mainly toward the plain. ‘Tis certainly true, but a special ingredient perks up the madalenas at Le Moulin European Bakery [5645 Beechnut, (713)779-1618], the Meyerland-area shop that also specializes in French, Austrian, German, Swedish, Italian and kosher-certified breads. It’s the zest of Valencia…
Crash Landing
What would you do if your plane crashed on a desert island? And you were stuck there for five years with no one but your loudmouthed mother for company? Go stark raving mad, if you’re Bishop Hogan (Travis Ammons), the stuttering, foppish and astonishingly carnivorous boy at the center of…
Wayward Son
You can maybe forgive Shelton Hank Williams III if he’s not quite sure just who he wants to be when he grows up. The boy’s only 27, skinny enough to stand sideways, stick out his tongue and pass for a zipper, and the family tree leans heavily on him. He’s…
Abuzz About Bees
Moviegoers might be familiar with Douglas Carter Beane’s To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. The film is worth mentioning only because Beane’s As Bees in Honey Drown, now playing at the Alley, feels a bit like a trip to the movies. Hugely entertaining, if not terribly deep, the…
Artsy Activist
For Bruce Cockburn, it has become routine for interviewers to ask why this New Testament-packing Canadian folk troubadour has spent years tromping around the world’s political hot spots and then cataloging his experiences in six-minute musical minidocumentaries. So he seems somewhat enthused (in restrained Canadian fashion, of course) when, during…
On Their Toes
When asked to name the most erotic sequence they have ever seen in a film, people tend to pick moments like the love scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now, or that indelible image of Kathleen Turner in Body Heat, standing just inside her house, silently…
In Good Company
Dane Sonnier got the call last winter to add a couple of acoustic licks to a track on an upcoming CD by some local Christian hard rock act. He responded by joining the band. Formerly of the Galactic Cowboys and Sonnier Brothers, Sonnier is doing what many a hard rocker…
Rave On
Given that most film studios have multimillion-dollar marketing budgets with which to target 18- to 25-year-olds, it’s astonishing how little they seem to know about the everyday life of those they’re supposed to be courting. Drew Barrymore has never been kissed? Please. Rachel Leigh Cook undatable until Freddie Prinze Jr…
Road Show
It’s the sort of idea that could occur to you only while inching home in rush hour traffic: “There was this big green space [on the side of the road], and I thought …. ‘What would happen if ten dancers were out there right now?’ ” explains choreographer Leslie Scates,…
Middle-Age Crazy
Thirty years ago a cultural sea change allegedly took place in America. It was dubbed the sexual revolution. To read about it at the time was to learn about hippies, dope, utopian communes and a whole variety of sexual experimentation. The media’s portrait was of godless young commies/ anarchists out…
Dawn of the Dead
This was to be a column extolling the daring and inventiveness of a very groovy Sci Fi Network television show called good vs. evil, in which two dead men, a fro-sporting, cool-spouting brutha and his pale-faced partner, try to save the souls of those who have made Faustian deals with…
Figgis’s Symphony No. 4
Digital video is poised to become a major factor in commercial filmmaking, and Time Code, the new feature from Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas), could be used as a commercial for the process. The movie is not so much an intriguing story as it is a story intriguingly told, which…
What You Missed
Thousands and thousands of Houstonians were forced to live without their Channel 13 Eyewitness News May 1 when Time Warner Cable pulled KTRK off the air as part of its dispute with Disney. Fortunately we have obtained a video of that night’s 10 p.m. news from someone who has a…
A Dying Race
This is not a game. Basketball is a game. Toss the ball through the hoop. Score 30 points, lose, go home happy. Football, that’s the ultimate American game. Violent, powerful, full of bad, bad men, and easily distilled into entertaining highlights. Baseball, now there’s a real nice game. Not too…
Letters
A Lesson to Be Learned Other than various media updates, I would say I’m naive about prison life life. Your article as experienced by Ricardo Lara enlightened me so much [“Ready or Not,” compiled by Randall Patterson, April 27]. As a concerned citizen, I would like to encourage our state…
The Dispossessed
Pedro and Mary Morín’s near-northside home exudes a tranquil balance of warm creature comfort and close attention to domestic detail. In the den and study, throw pillows sit primly on billowy sofas and chairs, which, despite their staid floral patterns, offer the promise of delicious slumber. Imitation Chinese porcelain stands…
Server Up
President Clinton, it was reported earlier this year, visited his home state sometime around the hyper-hyped date of January 1, 2000. As part of a ceremony, the president was introduced to a man who had been born in Arkansas 96 years ago. “My, my,” the president was supposed to have…