Heavy Stuff
The air of danger that surrounds Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl (À Ma Soeur) never lets up, which is unusual for a film that doesn’t mean to be a thriller. Rather, it’s a merciless look at adolescent insecurity, the mixed signals of emerging desire and the ruthlessness of carnal gamesmanship that,…
The Cactus Kid
The weather was drop-dead gorgeous on this breezy late Saturday afternoon, and the patio at the Raven Grill (1916 Bissonnet, 713-521-2027) was the perfect place to enjoy it — at least until a woman who clearly liked to hear herself talk sat down at a nearby table. First it was…
The Art of Anxiety
To me, “Trembling,” Francisco Ruiz de Infante’s installation at the Blaffer Gallery, feels like home — but half my living room ceiling is gone and there’s a pile of two-by-fours in the dining room. If you don’t spend your days in a construction/destruction obstacle course of fractured Sheetrock, crumbling plaster…
Beyond the Womb
Mayor Lee P. Brown and other dignitaries attended a festive ceremony near City Hall last July 21, six weeks after Tropical Storm Allison battered Houston. Thousands of families had lost cars in the devastating flood, so Brown was happy to provide a ray of sunshine through the Valentine Foundation, which…
Dr. Strange
When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids’ stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents’ basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form…
Okra Worship
The fried plantain slices at Fusion Café are laid out like the spokes of a wheel, with a colorful tropical salsa at the hub. The crisp flavors of the chopped pineapple, red onion and red and green peppers offer a wild counterpoint to the dense and creamy caramelized banana. I…
A Higher Calling
It was a clear October evening in 1998, just two days before Halloween, when Mary Jo May decided to pull off her next big idea. After months of unsuccessfully appealing for action from local police and politicians, the former Catholic nun and longtime Second Ward activist decided media attention was…
HPD Blue
Last August, Houston police Captain Mark Aguirre was angry. He’d become commander of the city’s South Central Station operations and led a major effort that had gained citywide attention for reducing crime. But the momentum was beginning to stall, and Aguirre felt mounting resistance from his own front-line supervisors on…
Bloody Monday
The staff of Houston Grand Opera began arriving at their Wortham Theater Center offices on May 20 for another week of trying to reverse a long financial slide for the organization. They had carried over about $100,000 in deficits from the previous years, and the current year had only been…
A Fixer-Upper
When HISD Superintendent Kaye Stripling sent a task force of educators into Jesse Jones High in January to sort through what had become one of her more dysfunctional schools, there were fears that members of the group were too close to beleaguered principal Lawrence Allen. Allen had been removed from…
Image Scrimmage
Former Houston first lady Elyse Lanier’s abrupt resignation as chair of the Houston Image Group earlier this month was in keeping with its defunct slogan: “Houston, Expect the Unexpected.” She publicly stated dissatisfaction with the direction the booster agency, founded by her in 1996, had taken in publicizing the wonders…
Bow-Tied Wonder
Bow-Tied Wonder Cohen’s great: I have no issue with Richard Connelly’s reporting [News Hostage, May 9]. I have serious issue with the criticism leveled against Jeff Cohen, the Houston Chronicle’s new editor. I worked for Cohen at the San Antonio Light (1989-93) and the Albany Times Union (1995-97). What’s the…
School’s Out for Summer
Once again, school has come to its summer end. The time for cramming for tests, standing in long financial-aid lines, and getting blitzed off Captain Morgan Rum and Juicy Juice before having experimental sex with someone of the same gender has been laid away until next fall, when many collegians…
Emphasis on the American
In these anti-politically correct times, many people shy away from ethnocentric shows, fearing yet another excuse for a social whine session. But that’s not the case with the film festival and visual arts show called “Slant: Bold Asian American Images.” “A lot of people expect them to be relentlessly didactic…
The Hives
The difficulty with keeping it real in punk lies in the danger of repetitiveness. That’s where bands like Sweden’s Hives come in. Singer Howlin’ Pelle Alqvist has got the squealing, hell-bound, late-adolescent shriek of Johnny Rotten before he went MTV, and the band grinds out a dozen or so songs…
Queen of Queens
When you’re born in Kansas and raised in Colorado Springs, there are only two ways you can go: Either assimilate into the Borg Collective or flee to Las Vegas and become a showgirl. Cassandra Peterson chose the latter, and that flight to the city of sin at the wee age…
Townes Van Zandt
On a recent afternoon, I was plowing through a box of 45s at a used-record store when I stumbled upon “No Place to Fall,” a seven-inch by Townes Van Zandt. This discovery struck me as both exciting, because I didn’t know a Van Zandt single had ever been issued, and…
Surprise Ending
The traditional Chilean dish pastel de choclo ($6.50) is as unexpected as the restaurant that serves it. Viva Chile (4010 Highway 6, 281-531-7673) may be just a tiny storefront eatery visible only from the feeder road, but inside, its mismatched tablecloths, eclectic Latino art and savory kitchen aromas are almost…
Poison
There comes a time in a woman’s life, or at least there did in mine, when you look back and think, Hey! Why didn’t I ever let a rock and roll bad boy lead me onto his tour bus so he could slurp Jack Daniel’s from my navel? Former groupies,…
The Reddest Neck in Town
It was 1974, and Abe, a recent high school graduate, was riding in a Chevy van en route to California to live among “other longhairs and freaky people.” He and his friends were approaching Nashville when he turned on the radio and heard David Allan Coe’s “Longhaired Redneck.” Abe has…
Peter Murphy
Who could forget Peter Murphy writhing and undulating like a snake in The Hunger, David Bowie’s cult film from the early 1980s? As the “king of goth,” the former Bauhaus front man was a gloomy, postpunk messiah who captivated the dark-lipsticked masses with songs like “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Yet the…
Sons of Sahm
Until late last year, things were really sucking for the Bottle Rockets. Their last release, 1999’s Brand New Year (Doolittle/Universal), had sporadic moments of brilliance, but its shiny hard-rock licks and greasy power-boogie jams couldn’t hide the uneven songwriting and production. The band was warring with Doolittle (its third label…
Nuclear Waste
There has always been something infuriating, if not appalling, about killing thousands of people in the name of blockbuster entertainment. Before September 11, no one thought much about it. Audiences accepted wholesale slaughter on the big screen because they knew there would be some sort of payoff — revenge, redemption,…
Pamland Central
“I just bought a new bar today,” says Pam Robinson offhandedly. “I just bought Mary Jane’s.” Snapping up bars is getting to be a habit for Robinson, who spoke to Racket from her office in Walter’s On Washington, the very nerve center of her three-club cluster (Silky’s is the other)…
Seek and Ye Shall Find
The first generation to be labeled with a letter suffered through some serious metaphysical shit in the ’90s (if you doubt this, try listening to the period-specific music — emphasis on try), but now this societal clusterfuck is searching for antidotes to its own pop-culture poison. Evidence of a renewed…
Luby’s Has a Chef?
Tony Ruppe, former chef and owner of the sleek Montrose restaurant that bore his name, has switched from the high end to the low end of the food chain. He’s now the corporate chef of Luby’s cafeterias. “It is kind of funny,” he says, chuckling. “We were targeting the top…