Get the Picture!
Lois Gibson is a longtime portrait painter in Houston, but many of her best subjects are hijackers, rapists and other criminals. Lois, you see, makes composite sketches of bad guys on the lam for her bosses at the Houston Police Department. Her art is more often tacked to substation and…
Notting Off
Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face — or, for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all…
Letters
Station in Life I thoroughly enjoyed reading the colorful characterization of Montrose Radio, including the historic one-paragraph resume on Kevin Jackson [“Silence on the Dial,” by Shaila Dewan, May 13]. As one of the most prolific workhorses behind the scenes of Houston’s underground art world, Jackson certainly deserves a little…
Exit Strategy
Deena Counts Nichols turned the air down to 60 degrees, slipped into a floor-length black-and-white striped dress and went into the kitchen. She plopped a scoop of coffee-flavored Haagen-Dazs into a red plastic party cup, mixed in 60 mashed-up phenobarbitol tablets, and blended Kahlua and vodka into her shake. Her…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories *Life Imitates the Movie “Take the Money and Run”: Vincent E. Rudolph, 36, was arrested in York, Pennsylvania, in March and charged with three robberies, in at least one of which he allegedly used a holdup note that read, “Give me the money I got a gum.” *An…
Dish
Cocktail Chatter Ah, summertime! The season for sleeveless dresses and seersucker suits, icy fruited drinks served in tall, sweating glasses and perhaps a light bite or two to tempt the heat-jaded appetite. Slip into something cool and refreshing at these Houston restaurants and bars: Keg-o-Ritas Not content to rest on…
Chitlins vs. Chekhov
Shelly Garrett is not ashamed to admit that he’s a man who gets manicures. In fact, he was getting his nails clipped in a Los Angeles beauty shop 12 years ago when he came upon his idea for the first stage play to successfully storm the “urban circuit.” “I would…
Are You Ready to Rumble?
TNT’s “World Championship Wrestling Monday Nitro Live” is basic cable’s leading weekly prime-time series, watched by 10.4 million viewers in the United States alone. Those of us who spend Monday nights at Melrose Place or with Ally McBeal can’t possibly understand — and neither can the TV ratings experts. But…
Study in Green
It was a certain morbid curiosity that drew us, two artists and me, to the Westin Galleria one afternoon in late March to witness a personal appearance by California painter Thomas Kinkade, variously known as America’s most collected artist, the only artist traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and…
Night & Day
Thursday May 27 “Houston was not a city known for its abstract art until relatively recently,” writes Menil Collection founding curator Walter Hopps in his forward to the “Five Artists: New Work” exhibition at DiverseWorks. Yet in his curatorial debut, art collector Bill Lassiter has managed to find five artists…
Who R. You?
If there is one thing that audiences and listeners of black music can’t tolerate in their artists, it is being enigmatic. Being musically ambiguous can work in the favor of artists in rock, country or even jazz, but in contemporary R&B and hip-hop, the general rule is either we black…
Near New Orleans
Report No. 00002 New Orleans Food Police To: Bourbon St. Bistreaux There are some days when a cop’s job is easier than others. It’s a pleasure to find a “Louisiana-style” restaurant that doesn’t egregiously break the laws of New Orleans cuisine. I’m pleased to state in this report that your…
9,999 Maniacs
Pens with ink in them are always a plus. That’s what Mary Ramsey says. The lead singer of 10,000 Maniacs with an obvious knack for understatement usually goes about her everyday business with a couple of nice felt-tip pens at hand and at least a handful of notebooks working at…
Hot Plate
Must all fish be fried? The weighty brown batters and burbling vats of oil that once dominated the deep-fried seafood scene in Galveston are gradually giving way to a New Age wave of heart-healthier preps, such as the seared tuna appetizer, $6.95 at the Gulf-fronting Fish Tales [2502 Seawall, (409)762-8545]…
Del-Fi Today
Tribute CDs always pose a problem. For a remake of a song to be successful, an artist has to interpret it in his own way and at the same time remain faithful to the flavor of the original. But he can’t be so faithful that the performance is merely derivative…
Lido’s Lessons
I’ve never seen an uglier building than the one that houses Lido Vietnamese restaurant. The glowering red brick facade of the Main Elgin Center towers threateningly two stories over the scabby potholed parking lot, where incoming customers are greeted by great steaming whiffs of wastewater wafting from manhole covers. Bulging…
Hi Del-Fi
Before independent rock record labels today, there was the independent rock record label. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Del-Fi Records represented something more than the eccentric, nonconformist side of the recording industry. Run by maverick Bob Keane, a clarinet player, Del-Fi Records was a player. It knocked out…
Natty Pompadour
One great thing about novelty acts: They surprise. It’s never the gag that gets you or the fact that some of the guys are decent musicians. Rather, it’s the music. Sometimes, when the stars are aligned just right, a band that depends more on its style than on its substance…
Playing the Games
Houston Olympic advocates are fond of the word billion. Several of them, they say, will be spent and respent in the city if we manage to convince the world to converge here in 2012 for the Summer Olympics. Every sector of the economy will benefit, and they brandish studies to…
Rotation
Julian Coryell Bitter to Sweet Mojo There are so many second-generation musicians following in the family business that it gets easy to be cynical about it. But it’s not like their parents own a company that can be handed over when Mom or Dad retires. It’s more like they’re the…
Grabbing for the (Public’s) Gold
If Houston or Dallas vaults ahead of six other U.S. cities bidding to host the 2012 Olympic Summer Games, it has the Texas Legislature to thank — or blame, depending on one’s perspective. The United States Olympic Committee is smiling down on the two cities because Texas is well on…
Rich. Beautiful. And Bored.
Nobel Prize-winning playwright George Bernard Shaw was ahead of his time in most every way. Born in 1856, he was a strict vegetarian, a socialist and a fighter for women’s rights. His vast body of work (it includes such plays as Pygmalion, Major Barbara and Heartbreak House) reveals an enormous…
Let the Games Begin
The flock of downtown boosters seemed politely agreeable, at least judging from the show of hands. “How many of you,” auto dealer George DeMontrond III had asked, “feel it would be extremely important to have the Olympics [in Houston]?” After furtive sideways glances to assess the trend, most paused from…
Canyons and Cowboys
Charles Mary Kubricht begins her paintings of the Grand Canyon with photographs — a vista that she liked during a hike, perhaps. Then she paints those scenes on wood panels — as few as two or as many as 49 — and puts them together like a perceptual puzzle, or…
Good Times, Bad Times
As far as anyone knows, Juan Caraballo was a model prisoner during his brief stay in the Harris County Jail. Not that he got any credit for it. He didn’t get any credit, at least, until he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 90 days in jail for misdemeanor…
Guilt Galore
Six Ways to Sunday is only director Adam Bernstein’s second theatrical film, so it’s a little early to attempt a coherent analysis of his career. On the surface, this young-mobster story couldn’t be more different from his earlier effort, the egregiously unfunny It’s Pat, which foolishly bloated Julia Sweeney’s one-gag…
Heartburn Can Be Murder
In a wildly embellished wedding announcement that got past Houston Chronicle fact checkers three and a half years ago, Susan and Carmine Basso revealed to the world that it would be death until they parted. Carmine departed this world two years ago at age 47, presumably a good bit sooner…
Gay Festfor Films
The Gay and Lesbian Film Festival opens with the British import Get Real, a film that didn’t necessarily sound promising. It’s the story of 16-year-old Steven Carter and his struggles to fit in with his peers at his upper-middle-class British high school. Steven is gay, which is fine with him…
News Hostage
The Wily Hun Someone on the Houston Chronicle’s news desk is pissed at Germany, apparently. The paper on May 20 ran a piece by New York Times reporter Eric Schmitt on German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s announcement that he would block any move to use NATO ground troops in Kosovo. The…
Mellow Mamet
David Mamet, famous for his in-your-face characters, brutal and frequently raunchy dialogue and deliberate, staccato prose, would seem an unlikely choice to write and direct a screen adaptation of British playwright Terence Rattigan’s genteel drama about injustice. But the Pulitzer Prize-winning author (for Glengarry Glen Ross), whose body of work…