Letters
Davy and Mike Boycotting slimeballs: I’ve known Mike McSpadden for more than 20 years, first when he was a prosecutor, then as a district judge [“An Open Mike,” by George Flynn, April 19]. Sometimes I disagree with Judge McSpadden, and that’s part of being a lawyer. But regardless of how…
A Little Fright Music
Modern-day marriage can blister the heart. And nobody in American musical theater has explored this painful and often ruefully funny truth more completely than Stephen Sondheim. In an astonishing body of work that spans four decades, the composer has mapped out a lyrical topography of the loneliness of marriage. In…
Overthrow the Revolution
Ah, the plight of today’s rebels. They’re in a terrible bind. To buck the system, you need an entrenched set of traditions to fight against. But revolution is our modern American value. The days of the opera-going CEO have made way for the goatee-wearing, ponytailed slacker heading his own little…
Cubism Crow
Every flatterer lives at the expense of those who listen to him,” says French farceur Eugene Labiche in his oddly appealing Eating Crow. The 19th-century script is misogynistic, ridiculously silly and full of antiquated burlesque humor, but somehow, under the direction of Jef Johnson (one of the city’s most appealing…
Roll Reversal
Marijuana decriminalization proponents have been busy trying to get beyond the image of a red-eyed, VW bus-driving, couch-surfing hippie on a constant hunt for a dime bag and slacker zion. A recent surprise legislative victory has not only given advocates a newfound credibility but has turned a preplanned concert at…
Full Steam Ahead
The unusual blend of reality and fantasy found in the novels of Gabriel García Márquez can be transferred to Hollywood’s big screen with palpable realism. But translating the literary style known as magical realism into the language of the stage isn’t so easy. Like Greek tragedy, grand opera prefers the…
Stirred and Shaken
The high ceilings and mythological bas-relief scene give Anthony’s [4007 Westheimer, (713)961-0552] the look of an ancient Roman temple. On one side of the hall there is a nave devoted to wine racks, and directly across from it is another nook housing the bar. I guess the glassed-in kitchen is…
Beyond the Black Experience
Choosing art as a career comes with certain risks. The financial and psychological ones have been well documented, romanticized and even demonized by Hollywood — creating art, these would-be celluloid heroes say, comes only at the expense of your mental health and your bank account. These pop-culture myths, of course,…
Treasure Hunter
Musical heritage ranks high among the many things Texans like to brag about. They tout the notion that there’s something exceptional about their traditional and ethnic music. And to many within — as well as outside — the state, there is. Yet the fact remains that what is probably the…
Bulldozers at the Gate
Twenty years have passed since Mrs. Castillo died, but Al Morin is more certain than ever that change killed her. She lived in the Heights, on Columbia Street, and like most of her neighbors, she was poor and elderly. Morin met her — “a beautiful woman,” he recalls — when…
Diarrhea of a Madman
Dave Brockie, a onetime art student from Richmond, Virginia, has hacked quite a swath for himself through the more extreme end of pop culture. Better known as Oderus Urungus, leader of the intergalactic warrior tribe known to our planet as GWAR, Urungus and his depraved ilk were sent here more…
Flashing Lights
Officers shall maintain a professional demeanor and shall perform their duties in a calm and firm manner acting together to assist and protect each other in maintaining law and order. — HISD police handbook Red lights flashed in her rearview mirror as Brandi Leigh Hyde drove down South Shepherd. When…
Bright Lights, Bridge City
The Golden Triangle has yielded some very fine music. From the bottomless blues of Blind Willie Johnson to the heart-rending honky-tonk of George Jones to the Gulf Coast fusion of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, the fresh musical aroma of the greater Beaumont/Port Arthur/Orange area fragrantly contradicts those who call it the…
Green Port?
When the Port of Houston Authority won approval for its $387 million bond election in 1999 to build a Bayport container terminal, it made no mention of the facility on the ballot. Instead, voters were asked to sign off on oblique concepts like “port improvements” and “environmental enhancements.” Opponents of…
Smoke on the Water
Long, long, looooooong before college kids convened in dorm rooms to toke on a bong made out of an empty paper-towel roll, duct tape and a straw, there was the hookah. The hookah (also known as a narghile, a water pipe, a hubbly bubbly or just an old-ass bong) is…
Racist Radio?
As he usually does on his commute to work, Jordan tuned in to 93Q Country radio station on April 12. At about 6:45 a.m. Jordan heard the three KKBQ morning hosts discussing the spy plane incident and how the release of the 24 U.S. Navy crew members came down to…
Playbill
Undeniable Truth of Life No. 427: Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” was the best pop song of the ’90s. Marvelously crafted with an uncanny sense of buildup and a hook that never tires, the song spent some 55 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, proving that sometimes the general public…
Nut Su Oh Redux
Mayor Lee P. Brown’s vision of Houston is… bass-ackwards, if this entry into an Internet contest is any indication. Brown was one of 31 mayors who submitted a photograph “that best captures the essence of his or her town” to something called the PhotoImaging Information Council. The “Portrait of America”…
Playbill
The jam-band concept has just about run its course. With Phish on hiatus and the mediocre Widespread Panic picking up the slack in arenas, few improv acts are worth catching anymore. Medeski, Martin and Wood, however, provide a rare exception. Perhaps it’s because the trio doesn’t adhere to a phony…
Child’s Play
“Now,” announces Carolyn Franklin, “everyone is going to be silent.” She says this with complete authority, and no wonder. She is a director talking to her actors, a grown-up commanding children, a woman whose favorite shirt identifies her as the “SUPREME RULER” of HITS Unicorn Theatre. The roar of kids’…
Tom Russell
Most of the outstanding Texas songwriters are regional poets. Although they don’t write poems per se, they use a poetic style that accommodates the average person. Their songs illuminate the details of everyday life. Few, if any, Texas songwriters have magnified the complexities of El Paso with the sensitivity that…
A Passion for Wolves
The wolf pup is chewing, no, devouring the purse strap of a visiting guest, and he won’t stop for anyone except Rae Evening Earth Ott. Rae approaches the furry baby wolf and in one swift motion pries open his steel jaws with her bare hands. “They’re 30 days old, but…
Mood Indigo
The husband-and-wife vocal duo of Susan Elliott and Joe Romano, better known as Mood Indigo, has been singing jazz in an intimate and relaxed style for 17 years. The more experienced of the two, Romano also plays guitar and harmonica. His credits include serving as music director for the Texas…
In Through the Out Door
Mayor Lee P. Brown’s chief of staff resigned last month after negotiating an agreement for the city to tap into a statewide on-line data system built by technology and accounting giant KPMG. The company eventually will recoup part of its investment in the project from fees charged to users of…
French Twists
Just when we culturally deprived, mystery-starved Americans were convinced that the most delicious of movie genres, the French thriller, was dead and buried, a literate and exciting new filmmaker named Dominik Moll has emerged to revive it — and set our nerves exquisitely on edge. It’s a minor miracle that…
Stale Mail at the Fed
Judges, prosecutors and other employees at the main federal building routinely deposit both personal and business mail in a metal box on the first floor near the judges’ private rear elevator. Over the past month, Justice Department investigators dropped in sealed urine samples bound for lab testing. Conscientious clerks deposited…
Lust Life
Presently sitting in a peaceful meditational facility. First time here. The location (which shall remain unnamed) was selected specifically for the loving creation of this review, as it provides an almost perfect contrast to The Center of the World, the new motion picture from acclaimed director Wayne Wang (The Joy…
Holier Than Thou
Channel 13’s intrepid Wayne Dolcefino is having a fine time these days exposing the city’s hapless pothole-filling program, where public works department crews have been claiming to fill thousands more of the holes than they actually have. But all is not sunshine at KTRK. Dolcefino and his boss are mightily…
Blockbuster Fare
A large martini glass is filled with a seafood slaw made with shredded napa cabbage, jumbo lump crab, lobster meat, chopped shrimp, avocado and hearts of palm tossed in a tart kimchee dressing and topped with two enormous and succulent shrimp. Red, my dining companion, loves the dish, which is…
Shoot Straight
Last thing first. At this very moment, Chris Carter sits behind his desk in the Ten Thirteen Production offices, on the 20th Century Fox lot in Studio City, California, finishing the final X-Files episode of this season. The show’s creator has just one scene left to write–the very last–and that…
Nuts to You
Too often the exterior of an encrusted entrée gets a tad scorched in the pan, lending a burned taste to an otherwise fine piece of fish or fowl. Not so with the pistachio-crusted chicken ($12.50 at lunch; $13.50 at dinner) at benjy’s [2424 Dunstan, (713)522-7602]. A generously sized chicken breast…