Night & Day
Thursday May 21 Actor Leonard Nimoy, his pointy Vulcan ears turning the color of split-pea soup after his character Spock dosed himself with a (seemingly) lethal dose of radiation, once spoke the line, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” Nimoy, a self-termed “serious amateur photographer,”…
Hot Plate
It’s the small things, I find, that keep one going: a decent bagel once in a while; a good grilled-cheese sandwich; and the occasional bowl of zuppa di pasta e fagioli. (For the uninitiated, that is white-bean soup with pasta.) There’ve been times when white-bean soup has saved my life…
Dish
Mudbug Madness It’s an ill wind indeed that blows nobody good. Forget what El Nino has done to leafy lettuce, and give thanks that it’s gusted our Gulf Coast crawfish season clear through May and into June. “This time last year, we weren’t even selling crawfish,” says John Volpe of…
Testosterone Mex
I’m worried about Charlie Watkins, the owner/chef at Sierra Grill. I think he’s having a midlife crisis. I don’t know Watkins personally, but I do eat at his restaurant from time to time, and always leave impressed. Over the years, he has established himself as a master of subtlety, a…
Static
Weird Karma… Anyone looking for a reason why so many out-of-state bands view Texas as a flaky touring market need look no further than Pete Droge’s May 13 show at Instant Karma. Sure, midweek gigs can be a risk in any city, and to compound the problem, Droge’s was a…
Little Girl Lost?
By the first day of spring, Brittany Ann Corcoran, age seven, was pretty much on her own. She had not seen her father, Jim Corcoran, with whom she had been living, since August. That’s when Brittany’s mother, Nikki-Marie Jones, picked her up at Corcoran’s house in Bellaire and never brought…
Clubland
If you believe the word on the street, the Voodoo Lounge is closing its doors this week. But gossip has a way of turning up lame, and as it happens, Dan Robinson has a big summer planned for his Shepherd Plaza nightclub. While he concedes that business has been slow…
Earl of Blues
Sometimes, it almost seems Ronnie Earl is too busy making great music to make a name for himself. And that’s a shame, because the guitarist is one of the most enlightened and entertaining performers in blues today. His sharp-edged, jazz-tinged solos — at once solidly traditional and heavily personalized –…
Fatherhood and Loss
Jon Dee Graham was beaming, his smile so wide it was in danger of obscuring the rest of his face. Sharing the stage at the Austin Music Awards with Trish Murphy, Kacy Crowley and Ana Egge — three of Texas’s most promising female singer/songwriters — he looked weirdly out of…
Girls Will Be Boys
Well, it took its sweet long time to get here. And it changed quite a bit from what TUTS first promised: Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews — he the director, she the star — just like on Broadway. But then he hemmed and hawed over casting. And her lovely voice…
Raggedy Vibe
In its homemade press release, hot off the copiers at the corner Kinko’s, Houston’s ragtag (yes, the name is intentionally lowercase) proudly characterizes itself as a “lyrical quintet” that unites “vocal sounds from three cultures to provide one hip-hop melody which can be enjoyed by all.” As idealistic and nonthreatening…
A Fine Kettle of Fluff
Where was the montage? About halfway through the Brit caper comedy Shooting Fish, lovely young heroine Georgie (Kate Beckinsale) and sensitive young hero Jez (Stuart Townsend) meet outside a club. In the next scene, we see them sitting on the roof of a huge gas tank, talking, as the dawn…
Rotation
Jeff Buckley Sketches (For My Sweetheart the Drunk) Columbia Anyone well-versed in the more senseless aspects of rock and roll tragedy ought to be acquainted with Jeff Buckley’s abrupt demise. The charmed offspring of vocal gymnast Tim Buckley — who died of a heroin overdose when his son was a…
Contact High
Could it have been all the drugs that kept Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas from being made into a movie? Whatever the cause, journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s staggering, semi-fictional account of “a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream” has proven highly difficult to translate to the…
The Voice, The Spark, The Image
Frank Sinatra never gave a better performance as an actor than he did as Frankie Machine in 1955’s The Man with the Golden Arm, in which he plays a hotshot poker dealer and junkie who emerges from prison hoping to kick his bad habits (heroin included) and earn a living…
Post-Commie Depression
Vyacheslav Krishtofovich’s new film, A Friend of the Deceased, is really two studies: one in the violent changes the former Soviet bloc countries have undergone since the Berlin Wall came down, and another in the intricacies of international filmmaking. It’s set and filmed in Krishtofovich’s native Ukraine, but as a…
(Pay)checks and (Im)balances
Under the heading “Who Does HISD Really Value as Employees?” the Houston Federation of Teachers’ April newsletter printed a list of what the Houston Independent School District pays its top administrators. The data read like a chi-chi employment advertisement for HISD, with robust starting salaries, ample upgrades and sky-high raises…
Blowing Smoke at Hotel Six
The haze blanketing the city of Houston this month was thin stuff indeed compared to the smoke the Hotel Six jury has labored to cut through in its first days of deliberation. After nine weeks of testimony, the panel confronted two mirror universes presented by prosecutors and defense attorneys representing…
Letters
Toot, Toot to You, Mr. Murphy I was very interested in Richard Connelly’s “Upping the Ante-Up” [May 7] and the comments of Jim Murphy regarding efforts to create a Westpark toll road “stretching nearly 13 miles from Shepherd and U.S. 59 out to the Sam Houston Tollway.” I was also…
Shades of Gay
Last year, the Houston Gay & Lesbian Film Festival had its coming out — in more than one sense. Not only was the fest’s first year a debutante’s curtsy, it was also a (long-overdue) declaration of presence and pride for Houston’s gay community. “It seems like every other city had…
Aggie Yoke
TV’s highly rated Beverly Hillbillies was axed for attracting hicks. Robert Earl Keen wrestles with his own 500-pound demographic gorilla: rednecks. The singer/songwriter — raised in Houston, he graduated from Texas A&M and now lives in Bandera — is bigger than God and Patton to the future farmers and junior…