Waving the White Tablecloth
Farewell the tablecloth, farewell the snowy linen and the crisply folded napkin. The old fellows are undone at last. For the last six months or so, the buzz among industry watchers in Houston has been that the style of upmarket operation known in the trade as a white-top restaurant is…
Blue Mood
No one’s home, but the door’s wide open. You walk into a tiny living room furnished with two worn chairs. A stack of magazines spills from under an end table. There are dishes in the sink of the cramped kitchen. A couple of stray items of clothing litter the bedroom…
Food with Thought
Pat Brown and I are standing in front of an empty seafood case. Brown is the general manager of Central Market, which opens to the public on Wednesday, May 30, at the corner of Westheimer and Weslayan. I pace off the length of the gleaming stainless-steel counter — 23 strides…
Très Simple
The most basic — and inexpensive — dish at Café Descours (1330 D Wirt Road, 713-681-8894) also happens to be the best dish at this bistro sibling of Pâtisserie Descours. The chicken française ($9.50) is comfort food with a French accent; a meaty chicken breast is pounded out, then lightly…
Learning How to Survive (at) CEP
At 5:53 p.m. the phone rings. Joseph Flores picks it up and puts it right back down. A recorded message says Joseph wasn’t at school today. This is something his parents already know. “He flat refused to go,” says his mother, Maria Purdy. Playing with his miniature Doberman, Joseph looks…
Stirred and Shaken
Many thanks to all the Houston bartenders who served me imaginative libations over the past year. Stirring and shaking will henceforth be administered by that talented mixologist George Alexander. But as a farewell gift, I’d like to pass along the recipe for a spectacular cocktail I had out of town…
Moving Out of State
Last year Randle Richardson, the head of CEP, told the Press that within five years he hoped to have a dozen schools nationwide. To date he has four: three in Texas and one in Philadelphia, but CEP is working hard to change that. A check of state records shows that…
Dark’s Shadows
The jolly neon at Sliders is an antithesis to the people within — at least on Monday nights. That’s when a carnival of black is on bittersweet parade. A clutch of men and women with pale and drawn complexions, their ebony hair cascading in ponyfalls or romantically unkempt, gathers around…
Maystead Christopher Allen
Chris Allen’s mother was shot to death by her boyfriend. Chris has been in therapy since second grade; diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, major depression, anger-management and impulse-control issues, he qualified for special ed in the Fort Bend Independent School District. He was being re-evaluated when he transferred to…
Old-School Rules
It’s Sunday night at Mr. A’s. The Fifth Ward nightclub is pretty empty, but zydeco man Wilfred Chevis is unconcerned about the sparse attendance. It’s still early, after all. “Oh, they’ll come, man,” he says. “On Sunday nights, you can’t even walk in here sometimes.” The spacious lounge is darkly…
Emily Conner
Munching on a bag of jalapeño potato chips, 16-year-old Emily Conner is cooking vegan food for the homeless and talking about how much she hates her high school. Emily was a theater tech student at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts until her mom got sick and…
Hammond of the Gods
Next to the pedals of a vintage Hammond Porta-B organ sits a tan size-ten Stacy Adams dress shoe, which belongs on Eugene Hawthorne’s left foot. The shoe is so well broken in that it normally glides over Hawthorne’s thick black cotton socks without a shoehorn, caressing the heel and the…
Drew Zerbe
Drew’s curly hair is dyed bright orange to match his CEP honors polo. He wears a camouflage tank top underneath his standard-issue shirt and says he was kicked out of Lamar for hugging another guy. “He found out that I was bisexual and he said that I was sexually harassing…
Bad Day for the Blues
As the long tables filled in C. Davis Bar-B-Q’s always cramped back room, it was plain that this was not going to be just another of I.J. Gosey’s Sunday matinees. There was a little extra Seagram’s sloshed in the to-go cups with the ice and 7Up. To paraphrase the old…
Joyce Deion’s Son
Instead of school Monday, Joyce Deion took her son to the doctor because his head hurts and he’s dizzy all the time. The doctor says it’s because of stress, stress Joyce blames on CEP. “The doctor said he needed to chill,” Joyce says of her 15-year-old son. She looks at…
Dutch Treat
Clocking in with a $1.3 million price tag, the new bar/club amalgam Grasshopper/Red Lights (506 Main Street) has got to be the Bellagio of downtown nightspots. So that must mean owner Michael Caplan is the NoDo Steve Wynn. In one of many upstairs sitting rooms, the 36-year-old Caplan leans back…
Dead Man Talking
Ben Guillory is a nervous wreck. Sitting in a purple chair around the blond wood conference table at the Houston Press offices, Guillory fears for his life. He is a desperate man who sees the paper as his last hope. It’s early February, and Guillory has just come from the…
Skrape
Just when it seemed that this Korn-inspired nu-metal malarkey had run dry, when no more fresh juice could possibly be squeezed out of the genre, along comes somebody with a tasty new blend. Most recently the band with the freshest squeeze is Florida’s Skrape. What makes Skrape’s debut work is…
It’s Ale Over
After nearly 100 years in a three-story white house on West Alabama, Maggie’s being evicted. One of three ghosts that has haunted The Ale House since it was a turn-of-the-century farm was to be told to move on at a closed-door séance Tuesday night because the old English pub is…
Mansion
Mansion lives where atmospheric meets guttural, a place where only lo-fi can adequately express the music of its inhabitants. The band makes what has always been, and will always be known as, college music: drony, jangly, purposeful yet haphazard, drifting from loud to quiet without much fanfare in either direction…
Ave Maria
Last Saturday night, KPFT/90.1 FM DJ Jimmy Carper gathered his crew around him. It was time, he said, to remember someone he never dreamed they would lose so soon. Carper, host of the gay issues show After Hours, paid tribute to Houston gay and lesbian activist Maria Minicucci, who died…
Playbill
“It’s like punk rock never happened…,” or so says the voice on “Spiteful Punk Rock Song #2.” That’s because the once UK-based Boyracer was never just another punk band, especially with the support of labels like the sickeningly twee Sarah Records. Never mind that NME once declared that the singer…
Called on the Carpet
Gloria Flores says her classroom’s carpet was covered in standing water at Pasadena’s Southmore Intermediate. She says her students splashed each other and left her Texas history class with their pants legs soaked. “Not only was this unsanitary, but it was illegal,” says her attorney, Todd Mensing. Flores claims she…
Playbill
Sister Beatrice Ward sings traditional gospel every Sunday morning — but not in a church. She praises the Lord at the Red Cat Jazz Café’s gospel brunch. “Jesus went everywhere,” Ward responds when asked what it’s like playing in front of a late-rising crowd instead of her congregation at Sugar…
The Triple Crown
The rumor popped up last week like a Gulf Coast summer thunderstorm that boils up out of the blue, drenches everybody, and just as quickly disappears. The tale could have been inspired by one of those mournful Jane Ely columns in the Houston Chronicle, pleading for divine civic intervention by…
Yes, It Can-Can
Remember glee? Perhaps not, given our penchant in recent times to chuck giddy hearts aside in favor of being stupid, obnoxious and mean. But hey, it’s all right, because the fizzy, caffeinated beverage known as Baz Luhrmann seeks to re-create this elusive emotion for all of us, in the form…
Votes ‘n’ Bail
Given the rash of Houston political types getting popped for driving while intoxicated over the past year, GOP political consultant Allen Blakemore’s latest career move makes perfect sense: He’s applying for a bail bonding license! Blakemore represents Dr. Steven Hotze, arrested by Houston police last October in Memorial Park and…
Letters
Rockin’ On Fine Cutrufello: Thanks for your great article on Mary [“The Art of Getting Broken,” by Brad Tyer, May 17]. I wondered where she went. I’m glad she survived, and I hope she moves forward. She had a good run with Mercury, but these days talent is a small…
Crocodile Tears
Ever since Quentin Tarantino came along, it’s been hard to predict what you’ll find playing at the art-house theater. Why, many of these so-called highbrow cinemas have the nerve to show films that aren’t always of high quality! And some of these flicks don’t even feature foreign accents or frilly…
KPRC Tops Itself
If you like your sleaziness to be brazen and bold — if you have nothing but contempt for hypocrites who cloak their seedy grubbiness behind a sheen of self-righteousness — you gotta love everyone’s local Favorite Sweeps Month Station, Channel 2. At KPRC, they make no pretense of hiding their…
Calendar Editor Shoots Up
It began 30 years ago when somebody got the bright idea to shoot a friend with a Net-Spot 007, a tool used for marking trees and cattle. Thus, the sport of paintball was born. The weaponry has evolved a bit since those ten-round branding sticks. Players now splatter each other…
Devil’s Advocate
In 1909 Nobel Prize-winning dramatist George Bernard Shaw wrote a tidy little screed that slammed what he called the “mechanical” tendencies of turn-of-the-century theater. “How to Write a Popular Play” is full of acerbic advice: “First you have an idea for a dramatic situation. If it strikes you as a…
Skip It
Tamra Davis is bound by contract not to discuss the film that, at this very moment, she’s editing for release next year. “I’m officially not supposed to do any press for it,” the director says sheepishly, so she offers a few off-the-record comments about the movie, a road-trip comedy-drama starring…
Hello, Possums!
Though she’ll deny it, Dame Edna Everage is the cross-dressing creation of Australian actor Barry Humphries. (She finds such rumors to be scurrilous and actionable.) What she will tell you is — well, what won’t she tell you? Edna is a self-described international megastar, a housewife, social anthropologist, swami, children’s…
Second to None
There’s a moment in ballet when dancers seem to hang in the air, their muscles sprung like coils, their pointed feet reaching toward the earth, their faces alive with the sheer excitement of defying gravity. It is a fleeting rush of energy, and the best dancers can make you feel…
A Sweet White Season
Speaking off the toque: John Schuster, executive chef at Charivari (2521 Bagby, 713-521-7231). Q. You’re featuring an all-white asparagus menu to mark the beginning of the season in Germany, where many of the best restaurants stage a similar celebration of the vegetable’s reappearance. Looks aside, is there a difference between…