Cause Célèbre
Now in its third year, Project Row Houses has been putting on the Southwestern Bell African-American Arts Festival in an attempt to show there is more to African-American culture than what you hear on black radio and what you see on UPN. “There’s so much richness in African-American culture that…
Back to the Beat
The hipster wisdom about America in the 1950s holds that the entire war-weary nation was at political and spiritual rest, straitjacketed by conformity and loath to utter a peep of protest, not even when Joe McCarthy went hunting for communists from the bowels of Hollywood to the feed stores of…
The Perils of Glitz
All the air-kissing should have been a tip-off. Actually, the noise level was the first clue. Masraff’s on South Post Oak Lane is a big, glitzy, almost garish new restaurant with lots and lots of faux marble surfaces, seemingly designed for noise to bounce off. What with the constant din…
Getting Out the Vote
In August, state District Judge Jim Wallace was still smarting from his lousy rating a month earlier in the Houston Bar Association judicial poll. Wallace, a candidate for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, wrote the Houston Chronicle to rip its editorial endorsing the HBA survey. “Obviously, I would like…
Dish
On a recent Sunday afternoon, a friend and his fiancée decided to stop by Toopees Coffee Company & Catering [1830 West Alabama, (713)522-7662] for a leisurely brunch. Toopees is normally a relax-and-kick-back place, a gathering spot for the Montrose lesbian community, but just as friendly to straights. But that afternoon,…
Joined at the Pocketbook
It has always been hard to figure out where Carrie Schindewolf’s presence at City Hall stopped and her husband Jimmie’s began. Now that she’s running for the At-large Position 2 seat on City Council, the task gets no easier. When Jimmie was the powerful public works director and co-chief of…
Hot Plate
Yes, This Is Houston: Superb fried chicken at a Vietnamese steak house? Oh, why the heck not? The succulent Cajun-fried Cornish hen at Super Steak & More [2826 Kirby, (713)523-3200] will suspend your disbelief. The trick, says owner Joe Ng, is deep-frying the plump little hens in a flash of…
News Hostage
In the never-ending search for the exclusive interview, reporters have flattered a lot of people they’d probably rather not have flattered. They’ve written fawning letters they’d just as soon not see the light of day. Channel 13’s Cynthia Hunt is one. She has been among the local TV types who…
Bright Melodies
Jordon Zadorozny, the mastermind behind Blinker The Star, has this theory on the success of grunge. He says that if Kurt Cobain had written “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in E, a key common to lots of heavy metal and hard rock of the day, the movement that occupied American pop…
Tray Magnifique
Sending me to review a cafeteria is a bit like sending Bill Clinton to judge the Miss America pageant. In theory, it’s not such a bad idea. In practice, there’s potential for disaster. Cafeterias bring out the worst in me. Choosing my selections from a menu is difficult enough; when…
Zydeco Rap?
These days, Houston’s Step Rideau is cooking up zydeco that is staunchly traditional and turn-of-the-millennium progressive at the same time. But then again, zydeco music itself, like the black Creole people who created it, has always been a celebration of apparent opposites attracting. On Rideau’s fourth CD, the just-released I’m…
Righteous Babe
Ani DiFranco hates interviews. Instead of being fun and chatty like she is on stage, she sounds caged, caught and cornered. She’d rather reporters shut up and just come hear her music. “If I had my druthers, I’d just kinda play the music instead of talk about it and try…
Oxford Punks
It must be something in the water. Oxford, Mississippi, is where intellectualism, art and life’s more banal pursuits (e.g., sex, drugs, sex) mix. It’s where William Faulkner was born, wrote, drank himself silly and died. And where pulp novelist John Grisham edits The Oxford American, the Great South’s answer to…
Rotation
Mark Lanegan I’ll Take Care of You Sub Pop There are some kinds of music that really work only at certain times of day or during specific activities. You’ve got good driving music, good drinking music, good dishwashing music. Mark Lanegan’s records are of the late-night, half tanked, down-and-miserable, stare-out-the-trailer-at-the-stars…
Fade to Black
It was September 1983, and independent Texas filmmaker Eagle Pennell had it going on. From the balcony of Lincoln Center, the lanky, slow-drawling, self-taught director waved to the applauding New York Film Festival audience that had just screened his latest movie, Last Night at the Alamo. In addition to the…
Local Rotation
John Adams Fly By Night Congruent Music As Dave Oliphant points out in his 1996 book Texan Jazz, the Lone Star State’s jazz legacy is rich but often overlooked, perhaps because it has never been concentrated in a single city. However, as one might expect, many of its finest players…
The Yenta
Having her only daughter married to a nice Jewish boy (preferably a doctor) is very important to my mother. She gives my number to people she meets at funerals or airports. That hasn’t been working too well. Last year I got an e-mail from a 38-year-old Orthodox guy who’s divorced,…
Amplified
Steiny was his name. He was a black six-string Steinberger guitar, and he belonged to Joey Salinas, who played in Sprawl, Rugrash and Joint Chiefs, among other Houston bands. Salinas bought Steiny in 1988, a year before studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Salinas loved Steiny, not only…
Pet Net
One night about two and a half years ago, Max Sutter was a drunk, depressed University of Texas student thinking of a way to get his ex-girlfriend Ofelia back. Her mixed-breed pooch, Baby, was getting up there in years. Sitting in his house, the inebriated Max, ever the entrepreneur, was…
Playbill
Low Riders There are people out there who don’t grasp the concept of a good ole car show. What’s the point? they say. It’s just cars we’ll never buy because we can’t afford them. To be quite honest, though, it’s not about the cars. Sure, all those souped-up luxury vehicles…
Insider
The offices and printing plant of the Houston Chronicle at 801 Texas lie smack in the middle of the booming west side of downtown, across the street from the reborn, glittering Rice Lofts and its stylish bars and eateries. Homeowners in similarly upgrading inner-city areas have learned the hard way…
Dismal Dig
Even though not much happens in Doug Grissom’s Deep Down, the play is rich with dramatic potential. Unfortunately that potential is buried too deep in Main Street Theater’s lethargic production of this story about race, history and the power of self-discovery. The play unfolds in the volatile year of 1963,…
News of the Weird
Lead StoriesIn September Italy’s highest appeals court ruled that a spouse’s obsession with another person was grounds for divorce even though she never had a relationship, sexual or otherwise, with the other man. A lower court had ruled that the wife, identified publicly only as Anna, was not at fault…
Irreconcilable As Ever
According to The Story of Us, men and women have different responses to life, love and sex, and this can sometimes result in conflicts and tension in a marriage. And you thought American Beauty was daring? The “us” of the title are Ben (Bruce Willis) and Katie (Michelle Pfeiffer). He’s…
The Compassionate Consumer
Ingrid Newkirk, president and co-founder of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, used to talk — unkindly and with much exasperation — about our beef-eating, fur-wearing, guts-as-big-as-pickups, pioneer-style state. “In Texas,” she’d say, “if you can’t eat it, you wear it.” But she doesn’t seem to mind us…
Beyond Despair
David Fincher needs a hug, the poor bastard. Or possibly a diaper change. Ever since 1992, when he ruined the Alien series with the excrescence of his pointless, senseless third installment, he has been making the same bratty, obnoxious movie over and over again: gloom, doom, indestructible protagonist, bureaucratic evil,…
Duke of Dissonance
In the year of Duke Ellington’s centennial, tributes to the master composer are more common than shaved bodies at an Olympic swim meet. But “10 Dukes & 6 Beats,” by controversial and influential avant-garde saxophonist Steve Lacy, will be different. Called free jazz by some and noise by others, Lacy’s…
Stamp of Approval
Despite the fact that it’s set in the here and now, or at least in the L.A. and now, there’s a strong dose of ’60s nostalgia in director Steven Soderbergh’s The Limey. Terence Stamp, looking very fresh for all his 60 years, plays Wilson, a jaunty British criminal, one who…