News of the Weird
Lead Stories *According to an October Wall Street Journal profile, Randall C. Hutchens is one jailbird making a comfortable living behind bars as he serves out a two-year sentence for tax evasion. He files $5,000 stockholder-fraud lawsuits in California small-claims courts and so far has received settlement checks in various…
Island Italian
Over a year ago, my husband told me he’d discovered a great new Italian restaurant in Galveston, right on the Strand. It sounded unlikely to me. I admit, what first flashed through my mind was an image of a struggling, mom-and-pop spaghetti joint, complete with red checked tablecloths, rickety chairs…
Letters
Third World Ways I read the article “Under Siege” by Shaila Dewan [November 12] with horror and outrage over the insanity of what passes for politics in the city of South Houston! Mayor Romero should be applauded and commended for all he’s done and is trying to do for the…
Roll of a Lifetime
In the headquarters of culture, New York, New York, the idea was born. A television producer on the make was flipping through the New York Times when, turning the page, he encountered the obituary of a Roller Derby Queen. Like a can of V-8 to the head, “It hit him,”…
Betti’s Last Stand
After the umpteenth playing in court of a videotape in which she tells an FBI undercover informant in early 1996 that they are involved in a conspiracy, Betti Maldonado tries to explain her shriek of laughter that preceded her definition of the word conspiracy. According to Maldonado, it meant “I…
Night & Day
Thursday November 26 Houstonians love parades. We stand street-side for everybody from Cynthia Cooper to John Glenn to, yes, a 37-foot-high turkey. This year’s Bank United Thanksgiving Day Parade will feature said feathered friend along with a “flying” Santa and five other Viareggio Carnavale-style floats created by father-and-son float-building team…
Divine Drinking
Throughout the years, Catholic saints have handed down plenty of advice on how to live: Behave piously, don’t be greedy and so on. But let’s face it, there’s not one of them you’d invite to your next party — that is, save one bearded fellow who could probably drink you…
A Little Lunch Music
I admit: Not everyone was cut out to be Al DiMeola or Leo Kottke. But deep inside even the most buttoned-down of us, there’s some kind of guitar hero itching to get out. Enter the folks at the Downtown Music Studio. They can help (at least with the music and…
Holiday Decor Contest
Www.houstonpress.com and Hypercon, Inc. present “Christmas (Holiday) Cards From the Edge” Gallery & Showcase. Enter your own Card! Win a Polaroid camera and some film! With more prizes to come. Ah, the crisp chill in the air, the green and red buildings downtown, the twinkling lights on all the houses,…
Inheritors with a Will
In rural Austria in the early thirties, a tyrannical farmer dies without offspring and, to the shock of his fellow landowners, leaves his entire estate to the ten peasants who work for him. Thus begins an engaging film, The Inheritors. Rather than take the obvious path and sell the property…
Uncertain Angels
The warm fuzzies of the holiday season have arrived a week early with Main Street Theater’s newest production, My Three Angels, by Sam and Bella Spewak. Back in the feel-good fifties, when the play was first produced under the direction of Jose Ferrer, it became quite popular. (Humphrey Bogart starred…
Hot Plate
Heavenly hors d’oeuvre for the holidays: Chef Deanna Rund makes a luscious goat cheese and pesto terrine ($5.25) at the Cosmos Cafe (69 Heights Boulevard, 802-2144). Between three generous slabs of silky-smooth chevre, she slathers layers of hollyberry-red sundried tomatoes and forest-green basil pesto. Fat cloves of roasted garlic tumble…
Unbearable Lightness of Bee-ing
Anyone familiar with Nicole Eisenman’s raucous murals, paintings and drawings will probably expect her show at the Rice University Art Gallery to depict something along the lines of brawny female warriors castrating defenseless men. In the past, her madcap displays were often kindled by rage at sexual oppression and social…
Dish
So That’s How Rumors Get Started Houston’s food underground was recently abuzz with fear: Rumor had it that the legendary Cafe Annie (1728 Post Oak Boulevard, 840-1111) had closed. About a month ago, the trademark blue awning mysteriously disappeared from the front of the Galleria-area restaurant, the much-praised domain of…
Fantastic Antics
Surprise and pleasure come wrapped together in A Bug’s Life. This big adventure about tiny critters is the latest piece of robust whimsy from Pixar, the computer animation studio that broke into features with the 1995 smash Toy Story. It should prove irresistible to children. Toy Story opened up the…
Once More With Feeling
Lyle Lovett — He’s the favorite country musician for people who don’t like country music and a Nashville iconoclast who consistently makes intriguing records boldly mixing gospel, jazz and blues with his steel-guitar twang. And he is assuredly the most famous graduate of Klein High School. But the latest role…
Very Bad It Is
In the rancid nightmare farce called Very Bad Things, Peter Berg, in his movie writing-directing debut, creates characters that you immediately want to see killed off. From the title to the ads to the web site (which features a Vegas stripper who will dance for you), Very Bad Things has…
Rotation
Grooverider Mysteries of Funk Higher Ground/Columbia It has been said that if there is one person we can thank (or, for some, punch in the eye) for that electronica phenomenon known to the kiddies as drum ‘n’ bass, the popular vote leans toward UK DJ Grooverider. Sure, his name doesn’t…
Need or Greed
It’s not clear when the uncertainty began to gnaw at Wayne Melson, but he knew when the federal government showed up that any assurances were null and void. Melson was in London that first week of August 1997, when a van-load of feds from the U.S. Marshals Service came to…
Jazzed Up
To see how much power media Goliaths wield in the entertainment arena., you need to look no further than the recording industry. The $12 billion dollar record industry is dominated by a mere six players — Time-Warner, Sony, BMG/RCA, EMI/Capitol, Polygram and Universal/MCA — who control just under 85 percent…
Risky Business
Father and son Bob and Clint Norris are not big businessmen. For the past two and a half years, they’ve arrived around nine in the morning, six days a week, at the corner of San Felipe and Bancroft, set up their small tent in a street easement, hung advertising banners,…
32 Jazz: Where To Start
There are too many albums in the 32 Jazz catalog to pick out a complete “best of” list, but these dozen records are good starting points. Eddie Harris: Greater Than The Sum Of His Parts — Double CD consisting of four Altantic albums released in the sixties. “If you want…
New Boss
New Times Inc. is pleased to announce that Stuart Folb has been named the new publisher of the Houston Press, effective December 7. Folb, who has been advertising director for the Press since July 1997, replaces Publisher Terry Coe, who has served in that position since January 1994. This year,…
And Then There Were Two
Let’s say a music correspondent is doing an article on the Houston rap icons, the Geto Boys, to coincide with the release of their eighth album, Da Good, Da Bad, Da Ugly. This correspondent interviews two members of said group, William “Willie D” Dennis, 32, and Brad “Scarface” Jordan, 28,…