Brothers on the Bus
Spike Lee bounces back from the aimless doodling of Girl 6 with Get on the Bus, a labor of love that has the vigor and urgency of something made in a single burst of creative energy. The movie was filmed in three weeks on a minuscule budget of $2.4 million,…
Recuerda (And Celebrate Life) Muerte
Smoothly, gently, with the air of a gesture carried out thousands of times, Macario Ramirez strikes a match and lifts it to the wick of the candle. As the flame catches, it flares and reflects in Ramirez’s wire-rimmed glasses, followed by the flicker of another and another. Gently, he cups…
Mr. S.O.B.
The ramshackle white building with a blue door sat in the shadows of the Galleria, at the business end of a mostly residential neighborhood. Across a field was the planned site of the Men’s Club, a topless bar that would cater to suit-wearing men with credit cards. Thanks to an…
Man Overboard
Sylvester Turner seated himself in the witness box at 11:12 a.m. on September 6, adjusted the microphone, and smiled. “It’s been a long road, hasn’t it?” asked his attorney, Ron Franklin. “Been a while,” replied Turner. And then, just as he often had when he ran for mayor five years…
The Insider
Turning to Gold If you’ve been up nights worrying about the financial security of Larry Mathis, the departing president and CEO of the nonprofit Methodist Health Care System, rest easy. Rampant speculation in Medical Center circles has the 53-year-old Mathis wafting away on a multimillion-dollar golden parachute next year. While…
The Usual Suspect(s)
If you haven’t seen Mayor Bob Lanier or Alvin resident Nolan Ryan proclaiming their support for a new ballpark for the Astros, or heard the 30-second vote-yes radio spots, or read one of the recurring full-page Chronicle ads recruiting pro-stadium volunteers, or seen the Proposition One Mobile Headquarters tooling about…
Letters
Tolerating the Intolerant H.L. Mencken used to make fun of the Shakers, a sect whose members would literally shake in religious fervor. Today, he would roar laughing at those who go into spastic convulsions at the mere thought of Christians exercising their political rights. Bishop Sheen charitably said that no…
Press Picks
thursday october 24 Cokie Roberts America’s the kind of country in which a good-looking (sometimes) blond with well-connected relatives can become somebody, even if she has a cutesy nickname. Roberts, who currently makes a more-than-comfortable living covering politics for ABC and accepting honoraria for speaking engagements, is the guest at…
Home Cooking
In this era of hard-sell marketing, in which many restaurateurs would gladly offer their first-born child into servitude to get your business, it’s particularly charming to find a place that, while welcoming your patronage, isn’t so interested in having you drop by that they don’t expect you to call first…
In Gourds’ Country
Lately, music fans in Austin have been hungering for another band to bolster the town’s representation in the roots-alternative world — a band with perhaps a touch of that oddball, broom-closet eclecticism that defines Texas and its massive crock pot of simmering contradictions. The Gourds could well be that group…
Rotation
Counting Crows Recovering the Satellites DGC Back in 1994, when Counting Crows’ “Mr. Jones” was suffocating the airwaves and frontman Adam Duritz was every alternative music publication’s sad-eyed punching bag, it was easy enough to despise Duritz’s self-important, faux-beatnik persona. His dreadlocks were phony (at the time, he admitted to…
Static
A little vindication… On a personal level, I can identify with the plight of this city’s much-maligned (and slightly paranoid) local music scene. As a plump kid who hungered for respect, I took a lot of abuse during my impressionable grade-school years, living for those rare moments when the weaknesses…
Top Harp
The phrase “musician’s musician” has been used to the brink of clichedom. Still, there’s no denying that a Houston appearance by harmonica player/singer James Harman usually provides an opportunity to run into everyone who doesn’t have a gig that night. During his three decades of touring, Harman’s frequent visits to…
Sounds Good, Looks Better
Houston Grand Opera’s dazzling new production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, which opened last Friday, is as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the ears. Though HGO has assembled a first-rate cast for this new rendition of Puccini’s deeply dramatic and profoundly tragic opera — at the…
Go Her Own Way
At a time when most music-industry powers view artistic ambition with suspicion, Me’Shell Ndegeocello is among the most mistrusted performers in show business. Her new CD, Peace Beyond Passion, is a musically persuasive, lyrically devastating look at love, religion and prejudice that’s guaranteed to offend as many people as it…
Clever Girl
Modern (and occasionally cynical) audiences should celebrate the living-room plays of Jean Kerr, if for no other reason than to honor the craft of a well-educated and socially graceful New Yorker, the kind of writer who reigned over the Broadway of the 1960s, and the kind of writer who’s increasingly…
Revenge Is… Adequate
Writer Lorenzo Carcaterra claims that it’s all true, that he only changed a few names — and altered a few identifying details — to protect the innocent. And the guilty. The way Carcaterra tells it in Sleepers, his controversial bestseller, he and three other boys from New York’s rough-and-tumble Hell’s…