Best of Houston
Photographer George Hixson is no wuss. He has been known to brave prison cells, bomb the bayou and set cars on fire — anything in pursuit of the perfect picture. But his portrait session with our cover model, Tasha, made him a little nervous. “The jaguar is the only big…
Photographic Memory
At first glance, “Politics and Elliptical Visions” seems schizophrenic. The exhibit, curated by photography graduate student Anderson Wrangle, combines documentary photographs from the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when Czechoslovakia became a democracy in a short six weeks, with Czech art and documentary photographs taken before and after the fall of…
News of the Weird
Lead Stories An August Knoxville News-Sentinel story profiled the self-described “prophet [that] God spoke of,” Richard Settle, 44, who began spreading the gospel three years ago by vandalizing buildings in several states. Sometimes he warns people of the impending New World Order merely by painting religious symbols on the buildings;…
TV Trite
TV writer Gary Goldstein’s Parental Discretion is a peppery little comedy about an angst-ridden gay couple who can’t decide whether to have a child. Optioned by Warner Bros. for TV, this bit of sitcom glitter opens the season for Little Room Downstairs with what could be called television-theater. Lights come…
Dish
One of the thousand-plus new laws passed by the last Texas legislative session reduced the legal level of intoxication from a blood-alcohol content of .10 percent to .08 percent, effective September 1. Organizations such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving hope the new law will knock Texas out of the national…
Bold Beauty
Grown-ups, take heart. Even if you misspent your summer at the movies pigging out on reheated space adventure, slob humor and stubborn, old ballplayers who won’t hang up their spikes, all is not lost. A powerful and intelligent film called American Beauty has volumes to say about the way people…
Rotation
Air Premiers Symptomes Astralwerks Sukpatch Tie Down That Shiny Wave Grand Royal Lilys Zero Population Growth Darla The EP is the most underused format in music. Chief among the many evils brought about by the compact disc format is that albums have gotten too long. (Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On…
So Far So Good
Ten-year-old Fraser Pettigrew leads an idyllic existence. He lives on a bucolic estate in Scotland with five siblings, four dogs, his gentle mother, Moira (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), eccentric inventor father, Edward (Colin Firth), and indomitable grandmother, Gamma Macintosh (Rosemary Harris). For Fraser (Robert Norman, making his professional acting debut), life…
The Buzz
Close your eyes and picture a chic yet comfortable urban cafe. Sunday-morning sunlight pours through tall windows, fashionably softened by bleached canvas shades. Chalkboard menus hang over counters of warm-toned polished oak; ceiling fans twirl lazily overhead. You help yourself to fresh-roasted espresso from a design-schooled thermos, pick a thick…
Psyched Out
Have you heard? The only tools a nice fellow needs to repair the damaged psyches of an entire town are a guilty conscience and a dash of insight. That, at least, is the premise of Lawrence Kasdan’s silly new social parable, Mumford, in which the eponymous hero poses as a…
Driving Ambition
Speed thrills. Imagine the exhilaration as your body is propelled forward in space. You’re barely conscious of the elements or the senses. And you keep moving fasterŠ fasterŠno longer aware of your breath, eyes focused on a point somewhere in front of you, landscape rushing past in a blur. The…
Mars and Venus in a Workshop
These days, relationships are big business. Books, videos, tapes, seminars, brochures, hot lines, discussion groups, therapies and shrinks provide endless advice on matters of the heart. More than a few millionaires have made their money offering an easy way to love and great sex. And many more, hoping to get…
Pasta à la Goth
Many people’s image of an Italian trattoria comes directly from the Cher film Moonstruck: a small, family-run place with checkered tablecloths, Dean Martin crooning softly and a genial host who knows exactly what pasta you need to suit your mood. But Youssef Nafaa, the owner of Mia Bella, seems to…
Hot Plate
Sharp Shooters: The fat and snappy pickled cherry peppers on offer from the Euro-market at Urban Foods [909-A Texas, (713)225-FOOD] are plumply stuffed with a hundred folds of salty prosciutto di Parma and firm ivory wedges of provolone cheese, then packed in olive oil. “They’re not so much fiery hot…
Jamming for Dollars
Major record labels are still pissed off about digital distribution. The concern that free, nearly perfect copies of songs and albums would be scattered all over the world led to a concerted effort a couple months ago by the Big Five record companies, audio companies and electronics firms to make…
Native Talent
Just 24, Mato Nanji of the blues-rock band Indigenous has quickly gotten the attention of guitar fans, earning comparisons to the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana. But that’s not all the bad news. “It’s not comfortable for me, because I’ve never put myself in one…
…Newman!
One day while young David Newman was playing in band practice at Lincoln High School in Dallas, his instructor noticed the music sheet on Newman’s stand was upside down. Newman, it seems, had a bad habit of memorizing music. “He knew I could barely read music upright, let alone upside…
Local Rotation
Road Kings Road Kings Surfdog Records Touted over the last five years as the smart young Texan most likely to evolve into a major alternative-country sensation, Jesse Dayton must have tired of waiting for the big time to happen. So screw it. He has returned to his primate roots by…
Amplified
First of all, the “band” Hamell On Trial is one guy, Ed Hamell, his guitar (a 1937 small-body Gibson acoustic) and lots of attitude. His show at Rudyard’s this weekend isn’t important because of Hamell’s Houston connection(s). Nor because Hamell pays tribute to legendary comedian and native Houstonian Bill Hicks…
Playbill
There are those who would say that Secret Sunday lost much of whatever rock edge it had when guitarist Paul Lapuyade departed and was replaced by Robb Moore. But one man’s half-empty is another’s half-full. And no matter what your personal take on S.S.’s move from guitar pop to atmospheric…