Letters
Buster’s Batch Concrete solutions: Congratulations and warm thanks for your exposé of a pollution crime in the making [“Mixing It Up,” by John Suval, May 10]. You wrote a moving and accurate story showing much research and legwork. I am a realtor and Deerfield Village resident. Like hundreds of my…
Olive Pit
There’s nothing drab about the olive bar ($6.99 per pound) at Whole Foods Market (2955 Kirby Drive, 713-520-1937), since these oily little fruits come in a panoply of colors (green, purple and black), not to mention a variety of sizes (small to giant), textures (shriveled to smooth), shapes (round, oval…
Freaks and Geeks
After a decade touring with GWAR, the band that pioneered shooting warm white liquid at audiences from a six-foot “penis,” what exactly do you consider a move up? Falling into league with Satan? A stint as a Sing Sing prison guard with “Jump me” tattooed on your forehead? If you’re…
Dreaming in Digital
The founders of TimeGate Studios are a group of successful businesspeople who made their money in boring ways: biotechnology, real estate, health care, oil and gas. For fun, they played computer-gaming tournaments, but soon found the current titles on the market lacking. Strategy games — their favorites — were often…
The Things We Still Carry
The lunch patrons today at Cuisine de L’Orient (Thien Kim) are all Vietnamese or Vietnamese-Americans, and every occupied table has a family-style soup bowl called a hot pot on it. I take a table by the window and ask the waiter which hot pot he recommends. He suggests I order…
Stirred and Shaken
The days are getting longer; the sun is still bright as happy hour draws to a close at 7 p.m. We’re just in time for a discount cocktail at Solero (910 Prairie, 713-227-2665). The building is one of NoDo’s most beautifully restored spaces. The restaurant, which specializes in tapas, is…
Party On, Dude
Get ready, Houston, ‘cuz here they come — rolling into town in waves all summer long. No, not the Bayou City’s infamous mosquito swarms, but the rock and roll package tours featuring ’70s and ’80s bands. And though these acts may have been off the charts for decades, their shows…
Old Dog, New Tricks
In the beginning, there was King’s X, which put Katy, Texas, on the map as an unlikely springboard for the melodic Beatlesque hard rock band. Though never actively marketed as a Christian act, the trio, and through it 12-string bassist/vocalist Doug Pinnick, has always carried a whiff of purity, which…
Trials and Tribu-lations
“‘It’s coming,’ she finally explained. ‘Something frightful, like a kitchen dragging a village behind it.’ ” Thus said a villager in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. She was describing the arrival of the first-ever train in the village of Macondo. The description could very well describe the…
A KIKK in the Pants
For the fourth year running, Robert Earl Keen brings his Texas Uprising to The Woodlands on Memorial Day weekend. And as always, the bill comprises the handsome young swains on the Texas alt-country/folk scene, including Keen, Charlie Robison, Jack Ingram, Cory Morrow, Slaid Cleaves and Beaver Nelson. But this year…
Catch-22
The case against George Dismukes never had much substance. The state accused him of shooting Richard Tyson, who on the evening of December 24, 1991, was driving in the Montgomery County subdivision where Dismukes lived. Tyson had no apparent business on the street, which ended in a cul-de-sac. According to…
Club Waxx Wanes…
During the week of April 9, the hip-hop/underground dance club known as Club Waxx (1601 Leeland) officially became a state of mind. Well, a state of mind as far as the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority is concerned. According to club owner Mike Jacksis, his landlord told him to vacate the…
Divided Road
Since time immemorial — which in Houston means about ten years — the Art Car Ball has been an annual contender for Best Party of the Year. Thousands of folks, many of them dressed to make artistic statements, would pack a downtown parking garage to celebrate the upcoming Art Car…
Playbill
Country music never goes out of style. While Music Row’s fortunes may wax and wane, the real identity of country music can always be found here in Texas. As Don Meredith used to say: “Texans do have a different kind of hitch in their get-along.” If you want to know…
Sex Offenders 1, State 0
In 1999 a tough-on-crime state legislature could tout itself as getting even tougher on criminals. It passed a new, politically appealing law that would keep sexual predators under supervision even after they’d served their prison sentences. The statute created a process designed to cull the worst of those convicted of…
Playbill
With tribute albums flooding the market, do we really want or need another one? Well, in the case of Texarkana native Roseanna Vitro’s latest disc, Conviction: Thoughts of Bill Evans, the answer is a resounding yes. The standout vocalist got her start belting out blues, rock and jazz with Arnett…
GOP Mayoral Pipe Dreams
There’s something about municipal races in the Houston area that cannot abide the acrid smell of partisanship. The latest example occurred in the affluent southwest bedroom township of West University Place several weeks ago, when a mayoral candidate and council hopeful endorsed by Republican forces crashed and burned. Incumbent West…
Playbill
It was to be called the St. Patrick’s Day Car Show until its founder, Joel Carmona, died in a fire while trying to save his four-year-old son just before the event’s premiere in 1996. Helen, Carmona’s widow, overcame the tragedy and, at the insistence of others who said Joel would…
AVES Clinic DOA
Harris County officials have reclaimed three contracts worth nearly $400,000 from Amigos Volunteers in Education and Service, shutting down the clinic of the financially troubled HIV education and medical care agency. As The Insider first reported (see “Clinic at Death’s Door,” May 10), the AVES clinic that serves a mostly…
Bora! Bora! Bora!
Directed by. With..
How Dare You?
The Washington Post had some really shocking news May 14. Really shocking. It had to do with the recent ticketing of presidential daughter Jenna Bush for drinking in an Austin bar despite the fact she’s only 19. That in itself wasn’t so shocking — it looks like Jenna’s going to…
Bi-Curious?
After your indie movie wins both the Audience Award and the Best Director prize at the Sundance Film Festival, what can you do for an encore? That’s easy: You land the opening-night spot at the 2001 Houston Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Such is the route taken by Hedwig and…
Look Ahead
The publicist asks if I’d like to speak to D.A. Pennebaker to commemorate the 60th birthday of Bob Dylan, which falls on May 24. She asks this because, during the spring of 1965, Pennebaker made a documentary about Dylan’s tour of England, Dont Look Back, which captured a drained, cagey…
Rejected
George Dismukes had no experience managing rhinos, but it didn’t take an expert to see that the rhinos weren’t the problem. Recruited as an animal specialist to work on location in Africa for the film Hatari, Dismukes understood that the script would never work as written. “The type of footage…