Follow the Bouncing Checks!
The invitations last spring for the third annual Hispanic Scholarship of Greater Houston reception at Minute Maid Park looked impressive. They listed virtually every local Latino politician as an honoree and claimed solid corporate sponsors like the Houston Astros and Aramark food services. As one star-struck student applicant who attended…
Holding On
Carol put an alarm on her daughter’s door, terrified that one night Stephanie will slip out of her room and kill her while she sleeps. Stephanie’s older brother and sister both lock Stephanie out of their bedrooms. Stephanie steals her sister’s jewelry and ruined 30 of her CDs. Stephanie nearly…
Wrong Number
The build-up to the September 11 anniversary is mercifully over. Houston media (including the Press) all localized the tragedy, getting reactions and stories from locals whose lives were touched by the day’s events. Houston, ever looking to be a player in the international scene, took additional steps to ensure it…
Miami Vice
For lovers of smoky, windowless, hole-in-the-wall dives, the Spot (1732 West 18th, 713-864-4485) rules. A crowd of regulars was hanging out along the horseshoe bar in the nondescript strip mall; many of them said they had been coming here (or perhaps never left) for the last ten years. It’s easy…
Reality Check
Reality Check So sorry now: I would like to thank Jennifer Mathieu for her article [“Reality TV Bites,” September 5] and apologize to the Walters and others for ever having watched this kind of show. I was shocked to learn that the Walters did not have an opportunity to decline…
Give Peace a Chance
Sehba Sarwar was writing about problems in Pakistan back in 1999, but few people were paying much attention. So after gathering stacks of rejection slips from agents and publishers, she formed Voices Breaking Boundaries to provide a forum for anyone who felt they had something they needed to say. Soon,…
Witch Way Is Up
Like the faithful of any belief, Cathy McNulty wants people to understand her religion. But unlike most, she has to deal with the popular — though misguided — perception that her religion includes devil worship, animal sacrifice and wild orgies in the woods. Though for many, that last one might…
Mud-Linging
Little did those at Texas Monthly’s A-list party at Ling & Javier last month know the soiree would be a swan song for the overly trendy spot inside Hotel Derek. The partygoers came to see and be seen, not to eat, and that was the attitude that ultimately killed the…
Savvy Salmon
For culinary engineering at its best, consider the salmon tikka lunch special ($9) at chic Restaurant Indika (12665 Memorial, 713-984-1725). In a complex and healthful interplay of textures and temperatures, glazed salmon fillet wedges are spiced with whole pink peppercorns and served warm, nuzzled up against a cool, crisp green…
Family Affair
We usually drink a lot.” So says Sad Like Crazy’s Trey Pool of the band’s gig preparations. “For the jitters thing, thinking it would make us play better. It doesn’t.” For Pool and his bandmates, playing live can be stressful, especially since they write and record songs so quickly and…
Insidious Kinky
Richard Kinky “Big Dick” Friedman is many things to many different people: country music satirist, mystery novelist, friend of U.S. presidents, Texas Monthly columnist, savior to a multitude of stray mutts and on and on. Those are some of the ways the world sees Kinky. How he sees himself is…
Catcher in the Wry
Among the more preposterous rumors spread by Harry Knowles, whose Ain’t It Cool News movie-biz-gossip Web site garners undue attention from studios too craven to do their own thinking, was one from early this year: Terrence Malick, Knowles “reported,” was working on an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye…
Montrose Revolution
This time last year, we were bemoaning the death of Emo’s, yet another Montrose institution to bite the dust. “Progress” of the destroy-everything-cool-so-rich-yuppies-can-live-near-the-artists variety claimed that venerable bar last Labor Day weekend. But something’s changed since then, and Racket’s damned if he knows what it is. But he has an…
Disastrous Storms
On September 8, 1900, the greatest natural disaster in American history hit Galveston in the form of a Category IV hurricane. The 130-mile-an-hour winder and the 15-foot waves killed more than 8,000 people and all but wiped the vacation paradise off the map. In the wake of the tragedy, Merline…
Fear and Loathing in the Warehouse District
he Nightfly has always had a special bond with Hyperia (2001 Commerce). After all, the first piece ever written in this space was about the Warehouse District nightspot (“Taking Clubbing Too Far,” July 13, 2000). I praised the club for its wide-open spaces (“The dance floor is even big enough…
Artist in Wonderland
Elevatious Transcendsualistic, the title of the Paul Henry Ramirez installation that kicks off the visual arts season at DiverseWorks, suggests a project conceived by Mary Poppins and Carl Jung after they’d been introduced to each other by Lewis Carroll. And stepping around the pink-lit wall where the title spirals like…
The Immortal Lee County Killers II
Contrary to what the mass media would have you believe, there is more to the resurgence of rock than the Hives, the Strokes and the White Stripes. The Killers are one of the bands outside the media glare that are well worth checking out. Named after Jerry Lee Lewis and…
Orphan Souls
Two or three nights a week, “Ruth” woke up with her six year old daughter, “Lisa,” standing over her holding a steak knife in each hand. Lisa broke her bedroom window a dozen times and punched holes in the wall. She stole the glass plates from picture frames, broke them…
Black Lipstick
Lou Reed, the spiritual father of Austin’s Black Lipstick, once said, “You better walk it and talk it ‘less you lose that beat.” Black Lipstick has put the rebellious strut back into rock and roll. The band’s 2001 debut EP, The Four Kingdoms of Black Lipstick, is loaded with swanky,…
Name Blame
Only a year ago, Karim El-Raheb was relishing his achievements. He felt he had made a successful transition from the hotel industry to the riskier business of restaurants, as general manager of the upscale Pesce eatery. El-Raheb had overhauled his restaurant staff and instituted changes to boost revenues. Those had…
Babes with Beats
Men? Bands? Who needs ’em? Not urban folk/pop priestesses Pi and Emily Zuzik. Pi (née Erin Lumsley) has the sweeter pop voice, adding light hip-hop beats and funky phrasing to her material. Zuzik, with a harder-edged rock vox, sticks more to the singer-songwriter vein. Both honed their chops in everything…
Almost? Not Even.
In The Banger Sisters Goldie Hawn plays Suzette, an aging groupie too stuck in a gloriously seedy past to move into the future. It’s 2002, yet she acts as though it were 1969 and nothing’s changed — not the Sunset Strip’s Whisky A Go-Go, where she still tends bar behind…
Building to Suit
Early last month Esmeralda Valague started getting phone calls from her former neighbors in San Antonio. They had a strange story to report. Even though Valague, 23, and her disabled mother had moved to Houston a year before and had left their house vacant, a family of four was coming…
Just Like in Mexico City
My steak is covered with cactus. The oval prickly-pear pad has been grilled and cut partway through with long slits to make it easier to eat. It has a lemon and green-bean flavor and a dense crunchy flesh — a fascinating contrast to the tough but tasty flank steak. With…