Dish
Heaven with a Hole One of my fondest collegiate memories is of midnight runs for Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We’d pile into my sorority sister’s old T-bird and rumble through the streets of Lexington, Kentucky, homing in on the glow of the red neon sign flashing “Hot Doughnuts Now.” For the…
Dark Summer Day
Edward Yang’s films heralded the beginning of the Taiwanese new wave, in which characters face conflicting influences of history, culture and capitalism. A Brighter Summer Day is based on Yang’s memories of his own adolescence. Inspired by a 1961 tragedy in which a 14-year-old boy murdered his girlfriend, the film…
Bach to the Sax
Free-associate with me for a moment. If I say “Bach,” what musical instrument comes to mind? Harpsichord? Violin, perhaps? If I say “John Philip Sousa,” you think of pomp and trumpets, cymbals crashing, and things red, white and blue. But if I say “saxophone,” what comes to mind? Stan Getz…
The One Who Stayed Behind
Eric Taylor doesn’t see himself as a victim of circumstance so much as a survivor by choice. Far from being a powerless bystander in the literate folk implosion that shook Houston in the ’70s, the 48-year-old singer/songwriter is nonetheless a lesser-known name on a list of more prominent Texas contemporaries…
Clubland
From the looks of things upstairs, 804 would have little more to offer than cheap drinks, odd stares and rambling conversation from a handful of career drunks. But hang around looking stupid long enough, and the perky blond bartender is liable to direct you through the saloon-style swinging doors and…
Human Machine
Lately, it seems like no one wants anything to do with trip-hop’s baggage — not the godfathers of the genre, Massive Attack, and certainly not its bad-seed cover boy, Tricky. The loose definition of the style — slow, slinky hip-hop beats peppered by languid, often spare instrumentation and somewhat paranoid…
Sad-Eyed Sibs
When Seattle’s vaunted Sub Pop label stopped signing grunge bands and branched out a little, one of its first acquisitions was the Massachusetts-based Scud Mountain Boys, a hungry little Americana band that frequently sounded like the Eagles gone C&W. Nonetheless, in the alt-country world, the Scud gents were well loved,…
Static
Out to the Abyss… Yes, kiddies, the worst is true: The Abyss, an unholy Washington Avenue institution for almost five years, has been up and abandoned. A haven for Houston’s death-metal minions since its days as the Vatican, and one of the few clubs that gladly catered to an all-ages…
Rotation
Richard Buckner Since MCA It’s just like Richard Buckner to attach a drab, monosyllabic title like Since to a work of such complicated beauty. He’s the critics’ pet, after all — the kind of sinfully gifted storyteller who makes us music scribes feel we’re needed, if only to figure out…
Dousing the Flames
Who would have guessed that a movie called Firelight could give off so little glow? William Nicholson, the screenwriter of Shadowlands, making his directorial debut, isn’t attempting to be ironic here. He wants to make a love story where the ardor pours through the confines of upper-class decorum in mid-1800s…
DNA Delivers the Verdict
On the night of June 1, 1991, a Hispanic man forced his way into the home of a pregnant Austin woman, sat her down in a lighted room, looked into her eyes, and, after a few minutes of strained conversation, raped her. The assailant later tried to convince the woman…
The Insider
MTA Going to Potts? Brown backers attempt to jump on the political HOV lane For the past two Houston mayors, driving the Metropolitan Transit Authority has proven a test of political agility and administrative foresight upon which their careers have floundered or flourished. Lee Brown has been in office less…
Do Not Go Gentle
Bill Hobby should be relaxing. He’s 66. He’s rich. Big Rich. He’s spent his entire adult life working in politics and business, including an 18-year stint as lieutenant governor and 18 years as the president and executive editor of The Houston Post. If anyone has earned a good long rest,…
Hard Time
Even in his freshly laundered prison whites, Roy Criner has a darkness about him that casts a long shadow in the visitor’s room at the Darrington Unit. A hulking man whose brow seems eternally furrowed in an expression of confusion, Criner certainly looks capable of committing the rape he was…
On Borrowed Time
When last we visited the mother of all neighborhood-to-standards projects back in February, the redevelopment plan for Fourth Ward/Freedmen’s Town was little more than an excuse to evict a bunch of poor people from some prime real estate. The slow but steady demolition of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhood was…
Night & Day
Thursday September 10 “Nannygate” — the scandal that erupted after Zoe Baird, Clinton’s nominee for attorney general, was discovered to have hired an illegal alien — inspired Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein to write An American Daughter. The play, set in D.C., concerns the nomination of a highly qualified woman…
One Dick’s Opinion of Another
How many Houstonians are gullible enough to plunk down $20 for an analysis of Bill Clinton’s morality from a man who advised his presidential client to lie on the basis of a poll and was caught sucking a prostitute’s toes? Judging by the turnout last Thursday for the inaugural International…
Cloaked in Ambition
Perhaps the most overlooked hiding place for the burgeoning essence of rock and roll is the rehearsal space. Here, a band’s spirit is more easily discernible than on stage or on CD, and the reason is obvious: It’s where a group feels most at home. The Drapes’ practice den resembles…
Letters
Short-Sighted Brian Wallstin’s article “Biological Disaster” [August 20] was one of the best I have read. It always amazes me that some people are so short-sighted that they will trade future advances that will benefit everyone to make a few dollars for themselves now. I hope your article will enlighten…
Little Big Man
The opening credits of Simon Birch assert that it was “suggested” by John Irving’s popular 1989 novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. Actually, it’s a thin but relatively faithful adaptation of the first few chapters of Irving’s comic ramble through the nature of religious faith, predestination and heroism. Screenwriter Mark…
News of the Weird
Lead Story *In separate incidents over a three-day period in July, three cousins in Shasta County in northern California lay down on or dove onto Highway 89 directly in front of approaching cars, apparently on purpose, resulting in the death of one and serious injuries to the other two. There…
Hot Plate
Seeking bliss? There are several options available to you. There’s a nice Cistercian monastery I can recommend, and I know of a really good ashram. Or, then again, if neither is your cup of tea, there’s always meditation. But if you’re in a hurry — if, in other words, you…
Feel the Power
The statistics are overwhelming: 12 1/2 tons of explosives, 70 technicians working weeks in advance, 11 launch sites, 14 high-power laser units, 22,000 amps of electricity and over 2 million watts of lighting. No, it’s not the next invasion of Iraq nor the opening sequence of the next Star Wars…
Sweet Surprise
Only once can I remember my mother giving me advice. On the morning of my tenth birthday, she drew me to her heaving bosom — well, I picture it heaving — and said, “Son” — she always called me son; I’ve no idea why — “if you want to succeed…
Indelible Image
The picture is one of the most searing and memorable images of the 1960s: A stern-faced black man, dressed in leather, holds a rifle while sitting in a wide-backed rattan chair. The photo was reproduced and plastered on thousands of dorm-room walls and inside tenement slums. The man is Huey…