History with Honor
It is the wry humor and amazing equanimity of the men profiled in the documentary Return with Honor that proves most astonishing. They were among the 462 American fighter pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam and became prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Some were held in…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories For an August feature on Rhonda Lenair, a Newbury, Massachusetts, “medical intuitive,” a Boston Globe editor confirmed that Lenair had discerned the editor’s various body problems with “75 to 80 percent” accuracy on the basis of a mere telephone call. Lenair (fee: $275) said she is like an…
Nice Girls With Guns
Every inch of Kingwood — the bedroom community that used to be 25 miles north of Houston before Houston reached up and swallowed it whole — has been as carefully planned as if it were a city on the moon. Its 15,000 wooded acres have been carved into cunning little…
Rotation
Richard Thompson Mock Tudor Capitol Richard Thompson is in a position of almost unlimited creative freedom, and he may not even realize it. Since he sells respectably, enough to generate some revenue, there’s not too much pressure on him to do anything blatantly commercial. There is no folk-rock songwriter/guitarist held…
A Call to Arms
Most people inherently realize — as if the knowledge were imprinted on their DNA — that arm wrestling is not so much a sport as it is one of those vaguely embarrassing activities usually spawned by too much beer, like group-singing the Brady Bunch theme or projectile parking-lot vomiting. Houstonian…
Local Rotation
5th Ward Boyz P.W.A. The Album — Keep It Poppin’ Rap-A-Lot The members of the Houston rap trio 5th Ward Boyz aren’t stupid enough to let a sure thing slip by them. But they also aren’t savvy enough to keep it from crashing horribly, either. On their last album, 1997’s…
Insider
Anchor Marlene McClinton’s on-air resignation and denunciation of her KHOU-Channel 11 bosses last week stunned station viewers and made her an instant folk hero in some newsrooms around town, where M&Ms were passed out in her honor. But it should hardly have surprised her station’s management. After all, another veteran…
Amplified
Don’t Be Cruel Of all the artists to pick for an antiviolence fund-raiser theme, Elvis Presley should be on the short list of “don’t”s. But the folks at TLC Counseling and Training Center may have had one too many fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches when it came time to choose a face…
Honor Thy Elders
In the film classic Network, the most watchable character is a formerly staid newsman who becomes deranged and hysterically spouts real news and societal truths on the air. Rather than take the psychotic off, the executives give him even more airtime — because he brings in ratings, which brings in…
Let’s Talk About Sex
Ladies, you may now remove the yellowed copy of AnaÏs Nin from under your bed and put it on your bookshelf. In fact, you could clear space for an entire women’s erotica section. It seems the word is out: Girls have dirty fantasies, too. We’re sure Maggie Estep proudly displays…
Hot Plate
Lust for Loaves: The gorgeous oval bread dreamed up by chef Greg Gordon at La Vista [1936 Fountainview, (713)787-9899] is plumply stuffed with goodies — chewy, white mozzarella cheese, soft, caramelized onions and sweet dried figs — then festooned with pungent sprigs of rosemary and liberally sprinkled with Parmesan and…
East Meets Best
The tale of chef Scott Chen’s two restaurants is an interesting lesson in Houston’s restaurant geopolitics. Even though Chen’s first restaurant has garnered recognition from all over the United States, it remains relatively unknown in its hometown. Granted, the Empress of China was completely unknown when Chen purchased it in…
Dish
A couple of months ago I was surprised to notice two — count ’em, two — new tenants bravely launched at the long-shuttered corner of Richmond and Greenbriar. (I guess I thought the Gulf Freeway would be finished before these properties were occupied again.) The Gumbo Shop [2207 Richmond, (713)522-1311]…
Grand Pops
On one hand, you’ve got the wheezing, craggy troubadour mired in his own legend. On the other, a genre-raiding predator fresh off creating one of Broadway’s worst flops. But with enough hits between them to fill plenty of CDs and, more important, lots of historical gravitas, this show should be…
Phonics of Phoenix
Believe it or not, Keanu Reeves actually helped jump-start the career of four Houston musicians. Who would have thought he could do anything other than look good? But he did, and true to form, he never even knew it. About three and a half years ago a couple of guys…
French Connection
Stereolab is an important band. “Important” usually means pretentious or unjustly praised. In this case, it means “influential,” a word that can also be translated as “not popular” or “not a big seller.” Not having hit records can sentence otherwise great bands to blunderdom. Some strive to be more commercial…
Playbill
Hawk & Dove Richard Buckner and P.W. Long are two entirely dissimilar artists who nonetheless have formed a mutual admiration society and decided to tour together. When Spin named Richard Buckner’s debut, Bloomed, one of the Top 20 records of 1995, it probably took even the artist by surprise. Singer/songwriter…
Great Stride
As America’s High Priestess of fashion, Diana Vreeland enthralled the nation. From 1936 to 1971, the great tastemaker of the 20th century ruled the pages of Harper’s Bazaar and then Vogue. Exotic, charismatic and brilliant, the handsome, hook-nosed woman knew how to dress up almost anything. She also made some…
Solid Delivery
“You and me?” asks catcher Gus Sinski (John C. Reilly) of his old friend, veteran pitcher Billy Chapel (Kevin Costner). “One more time?” It’s a poignant moment, the top of what may be the last game of Chapel’s career before he’s either traded or quits the game he has loved…
Slaughterhouse Five
Full-throttle politics can squeeze the life out of a play. Too much soapboxing is hard to take on a Friday night out. But The Gut Girls, Sarah Daniels’s story about the rise of women’s rights in turn-of-the-century England, pulls a dark and provocative tale out of a painful and deeply…
Minus a Plus
There’s a long tradition of stories about mysterious drifters who arrive in a small town and either create trouble or catalyze an explosion of long-simmering problems. Mark Twain used that hook, as have Dashiell Hammett (Red Harvest), Akira Kurosawa (Yojimbo) and Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars). Now Hampton Fancher…
Class Act
With a deafening crash the stark white lights are switched on over the Houston Ballet’s fall mixed repertory to reveal dancers in rehearsal clothes, casually stretching and slouchily milling about the stage. There’s an energy to their easiness, like something’s about to happen. When they slide, by ones, twos and…
Crimefighter in Spite of Himself
Since his TV show ended, Martin Lawrence has gotten more ink for his off-camera life than for his movie career. There’s nothing about Blue Streak that is likely to change that. It’s a shame, because the basic plot, which sounds like something from one of Donald E. Westlake’s Dortmunder novels,…
News Hostage
The fall TV season is here, which means it is time once again for Chronicle television critic Ann Hodges to get the vapors over the decline of Western civilization. For Lord knows how many years, Houstonians have been treated to lectures from Hodges on just how potty-mouthed television has become,…