Malpractice
The Thursday after Labor Day, state Attorney General Dan Morales flew into Hobby Airport to personally announce a health care fraud case so seemingly flagrant and outlandish that CBS Evening News dispatched its Dallas correspondent for a network exclusive. In a press release accompanying the announcement, Morales said his office…
Letters
Unwanted Advice “So you’ve been stopped for speeding, and the cop notices your inspection sticker expired months ago and your left headlight is out. What now?” Thus begins your sidebar on traffic court tips [“Traffic Court Confidential,” by Mary Flood, August 29]. What follows is nearly a page of advice,…
Press Picks
thursday september 26 Breakfast with mummy The MFA Corporate Partners breakfast for September features a talk by senior docent Merrianne Timko; she’ll talk about “Preparation for the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt,” then lead a special tour of “Splendors of Ancient Egypt.” During the tour, Timko, who has long studied ancient…
Gyro-centric
There are multiple countries in which a meal made of strips of roast lamb and beef anointed with yogurt and cucumber tzatziki sauce and wrapped with soft, unleavened pita bread is a staple on the order of the hamburger in America. It doesn’t take more than a taste of the…
Grunge Schmunge
It may be difficult to remember now, but back in the days before the ascension of MTV, before grunge, before Kurt Cobain nailed himself to the cross in the name of his art, the rock underground lived and breathed a contrarian spirit. You didn’t have to actually understand your instrument…
No More Same Old, Same Old
You won’t find too many guitar heroes on the phone at 9 a.m. At that time of day, a lot of them are just calling it a night. Yet on this particular morning, the guitar hero who answers the phone at his suburban Chicago home is hardly comatose. An extremely…
Good Girl, Bad Girl
Back in 1980, lead Pretender Chrissie Hynde ruffled rock’s moral double standard with songs of hard living and wild exploits — S&M misadventures, gangbangs, tattooed love boys, brutal hangovers and such. Sixteen years later, you have to think that even Hynde couldn’t have predicted the latest outpouring of wanton attitude…
Sound Check
History says that it’s been only five years since R.E.M. mined quadruple-platinum with Out of Time. Looking back, though, that mammoth stage in the group’s evolution hasn’t aged particularly well, especially in the considerably more ambitious shadow of their latest, New Adventures in Hi-Fi. On Monster, Hi-Fi’s immediate predecessor, R.E.M…
Static
Tapestry of hope… As is often the case, no one realized just how many friends and admirers cellist Mike Dudley had until he was gone. “There were more people [at his August 6 memorial service] than I would ever have imagined,” says Robert Yale, Dudley’s companion of ten years. “Michael…
Tangled Jungle
Fog and steamy rain made downtown Houston look something like Gotham City late last week, an effect that was strangely appropriate for the Alley’s season opener, In the Jungle of Cities. One of three plays that Bertolt Brecht set in Chicago, Jungle is a mythical representation of the town, where…
Bullet Proof
Keith McCloud was bleeding from four gunshot wounds when he was unceremoniously dumped in front of St. Joseph Hospital’s emergency room around 2:30 a.m. on July 16. The two men who brought him there fled before they could introduce themselves to police. McCloud had an explanation for investigators, though it…
Magic Act
These days, Houston Ballet principal dancer Barbara Bears is no doubt feeling pain far worse than that caused by the stress fracture she suffered below her left knee during rehearsals for the recently completed Balanchine Celebration. Her injury prevented Bears from dancing in the Balanchine program, but perhaps even more…
Intensive Care
During the opening minutes of Extreme Measures, we find Hugh Grant cast as Dr. Guy Luthan, a British-born doctor hard at work in the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital. And though the movie has been advertised as a medical thriller, it’s hard to shake the suspicion — for a…
Delizioso
If you are dieting, you might do well to avoid Big Night, a rhapsodic ode in the delicious tradition of Babette’s Feast and Eat Drink Man Woman. Each time the main characters emerge from the kitchen of their struggling restaurant, carrying another mouth-watering delight to a table of ecstatic diners,…
Mr. Stevens’ Neighborhood
The beach seemed a peculiar place to find Michael Stevens on the morning of September 4. As Mayor Bob Lanier’s $1-a-year “special assistant for housing and inner-city revitalization,” Stevens had spent many months negotiating the purchase of the historic Rice Hotel, whose renovation is thought to be critical to the…
Naturalist Born Thrillers
In the rooftop greenhouse of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, John Watts is a happy man. The 36-year-old entomologist picks up the caterpillar of a zebra butterfly, so named for the distinctive yellow stripes that mark its black wings, turns it over and gently squeezes its rear end. A…
Drayton Steals Home
Back in ancient times (August, actually), County Judge Robert Eckels made an offer to Astros owner Drayton McLane: the county would build McLane a $250 million ballpark, as long as McLane contributed $100 million of the total. The proposal, Eckels said at the time, was fiscally responsible and reflected a…