The Victim’s Victims
One day in the summer of 1994, Robert Carreiro was sitting in a Harris County courtroom listening to pretrial motions in the capital murder case of Rex Mays. It was a time that Carreiro had long awaited in conspicuous fashion. Approximately two years earlier — on July 20, 1992 –…
Enviro Cop
Stephen Dicker parks his blue-and-white on the side of a deserted street in northwest Houston, climbs out from behind the wheel and steps into the afternoon heat. With his black HPD “raid” jacket and a pistol on his right hip, the veteran cop looks as if he is ready for…
The Insider
Driscoll in China Mike Driscoll has two and a half months left on his final term as Harris County attorney, but don’t expect to see much of him before he yields his office to Democrat Sylvia Garcia or Republican Mike Fleming in January. Driscoll, who’s been gradually debilitated by Parkinson’s…
Burge Watch
“Metro board chairman Billy Burge is expected to break a logjam on Harris County Commissioners Court by stepping down within the next several weeks.” — The Chronicle, September 11 “Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman Billy Burge, nine months past his eight-year term limit, likely will be replaced in March, said County…
Hard Sell
The ironic thing about political consultants is that while they’re hired to find out what turns voters on or off about a particular person or idea, they themselves don’t get out much. Take Dan McClung, who’s currently tasked with delivering the “yes” vote for Harris County Citizens for Proposition One,…
Get It in Writing
If there’s one lesson to be learned about lending money, it’s “get it in writing.” But people lend money without written contracts all the time. Parents lend to their children. Friends lend to friends. And some people even lend money to politicians who are friends of friends, thinking it will…
Letters
It’s Never Too Late to Grow Up… Caps off to Bob Burtman (“Bonus Babies,” Stadia Watch, October 3) as a lone media voice with the courage to define corporate philanthropy in the downtown stadium deal by his “radical coverage” of 1) who profits and 2) who pays. Our mainstream news…
Press Picks
thursday october 17 Strictly Business Computer Expo ’96 Get on the bus — the Silicon Graphics Magic Bus, that is — at this huge event devoted to the latest and greatest in hardware and software. See it all now — after all, it’ll be obsolete in 18 months. 10 a.m.6…
Static
A tale of two Buddies… If it’s fresh dirt on one of the premium properties in rock and roll you’re looking for, you won’t find so much as a sordid grain of it in the pages of Rave On, the latest book competing for recognition as the definitive chronicle of…
Rotation
Lemonheads Car Button Cloth Tag/Atlantic No matter how hard he tries to convince us otherwise, head Lemonhead Evan Dando rarely sounds as if he’s lifting a finger. Through two phases of development (from yesterday’s sloppy junk-punk to today’s sloppy junk-pop) as distinct as they are alike, Dando has blazed a…
Memories of the Blues
Asking Clifford Antone to pick the best performance he ever heard at his club is like asking Troy Aikman to select his favorite touchdown pass; there’s been so many of them over the years that they blend together after a while. You’d figure the Austin blues impresario would rattle off…
Jerk Rock
It’s gotten to where Peter Steele is running out of people to piss off. The singer/bassist for Gothic sludgemongers Type O Negative has had numerous run-ins with record company executives, he’s scorched critics who’ve asked what he considers unimportant questions and he won’t stand for even a hint of heckling…
Unpromised Land
Reality can hit hard, and Jolene has had the misfortune of fielding some very real blows in the last ten months. The North Carolina quintet has seen its brilliant national debut, Hell’s Half Acre, sell a meager 10,000 copies since its release late last year, even with scads of positive…
Something Different
When the time comes for arts organizations to shake down the coffers, the risky stuff almost always goes first. Such was the case in 1994, when the Houston Ballet, facing a less-than-healthy financial future, canceled the Cullen Contemporary Series, their fledgling biannual concerts of contemporary ballet. During the two years…
Let’s Make a Deal
David Mamet loves offices. After an evening spent with one of his plays, there’s no mystery why: Mamet’s language of wheeling and dealing plays like second nature poetry in that environment, in which secretaries who pour coffee are as commonplace as shirts and ties. The playwright’s Speed-the-Plow falls easily into…
Blasts from the Past
Screenwriter Shane Black may have received the record sum of $4 million for writing The Long Kiss Goodnight, but the movie itself is a fairly silly piece of work. This is the sort of fantastical farrago that relies on contrivance and coincidence the way most of us rely on oxygen…
Back to Wok
When Daniel Wong’s innovative, multiregional Chinese kitchen on Richmond and the Lu family’s funky Vietnam restaurant near the corner of Main and Elgin each closed several years back, their considerable followings were left disconsolate. Those who favored these two very different Asian establishments were convinced they’d never see the like…
Mad for Art
German film director Werner Herzog has a couple of reputations. He is an important artist, and he is also a prankster in the style of Dennis Rodman — or, one might say, Rodman is a prankster in the style of Herzog, since the director prefigured the sports star by a…