Letters
He Gets All the Credit So Lloyd Kelley is whining that the media caused his defeat with all the negative reporting. Don’t you just hope so? Jim Pass via Internet We Thought We Were the Liberal Mouthpiece While waiting for a to-go order at my favorite local hamburger haven, I…
Press Picks
thursday november 20 Cirque du Soleil presents Quidam Forget everything you know about the circus. Cirque du Soleil is more than a glitzy flash of high-wire acts and mistreated tigers. This French-Canadian circus has soul, and it actually tells a story. Quidam is the tale of a young girl who…
Rotation
L.L. Cool J Phenomenon Def Jam If you haven’t heard, James Todd Smith — better known to the world as L.L. Cool J — is a changed man now. This is the same guy who, ten years ago, would rip open his jogging jacket in a heartbeat to reveal his…
Static
Unfinished spectacle… Damned if the people pulling the strings at Pace Concerts were going to let a little dust, debris and other heavy-construction fallout put a damper on last weekend’s unveiling of Aerial Theater at Bayou Place. While they were at it, damned if they’d allow some young and hungry…
Widespread Tactics
Early in their career, Widespread Panic were tagged as a poor-man’s Allman Brothers Band, dismissed as a group with an obvious talent for jamming but one lacking the memorable songs needed to make a lasting impact. But recent events have conspired to encourage a reevaluation of this Athens, Georgia, sextet…
Young and Hungry
It’s dusk on a Wednesday night, and Lil’ KeKe and his entourage have sequestered themselves in the Jam Down Entertainment studios on Telephone Road with a bounty of fast food from a local joint known as Spanky’s. Primary on the Houston rapper’s mind is a piping hot order of chili…
The Wizard of Weird
Though it may be true that all the world is a stage, Dale Barton doesn’t particularly come across as someone whose universe revolves around performing on it. Or at least that appears to be the case on this muggy late-October morning, as the T-shirt- and sweats-clad Barton lowers himself gingerly…
DiVine
When I travel, I never eat in the hotel: It’s an unfortunately reliable rule of thumb that memorable meals are rarely found at a place with a captive audience. DeVille, at Houston’s Four Seasons Hotel, is the exception that proves the rule. Marooned in a patch of downtown near little…
French Originals
Fans of French film haven’t had it very good over the last decade or so. Where once U.S. distributors were happy to screen the latest in Gallic cinema, more recently they’ve seen overseas movies as more of a source of ideas for American productions than as something American audiences need…
Down by Law
John Grisham’s The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a bestseller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis Ford Coppola movie! Rather than heighten your awareness the way The Conversation or The Godfather did, The Rainmaker makes you feel lazy and…
History in the Faking
Disney Studios has had a near-monopoly on feature animation for almost 60 years now, and near-monopolies are nearly as destructive as full-on monopolies. Twentieth Century Fox is to be applauded for going up against the giant mouse; one only wishes that its first effort were more to crow about. Over…
Sports Afield
A new government body composed of political insiders and window-dressing appointees is given the job of spending $180 million from taxpayers on a $250-million baseball stadium with a gimmicky retractable roof. There won’t be any bidding process: The architects and the companies constructing the facility were handpicked by the tenant…
“I Didn’t Create This Mess …”
When the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority formally meets in all its august splendor, Jack Rains is easy to spot. He’s the big, florid-faced bullfrog in the middle, hunched forward, scanning the crowd over half-moon glasses, tossing out bon mots and acerbic asides in a guttural croak easily imitated by everyone…
Pat Greene Has a Marvelous Scheme to Conquer the World!
To make a long story short, PinkMonkey.com burst spontaneously to life last spring. It was not the first company to make long stories short, but just the first to deliver them instantly. It happened one night in the town of Liberty, where a minor character known as Little Monkey realized…
The Insider
Desperately Seeking Scandal Rob Mosbacher landed in his runoff with Lee Brown at a distinct disadvantage: Not only did Brown finish more than 13 points ahead of Mosbacher in the first-round of mayoral balloting on November 4, he also had a double-digit lead over Mosbacher in “voter approval” as measured…