Do You Believe in Magic?
In the crowded back room of Empire Comics on Shepherd, a fierce battle is being waged for Dominia, a fantasy land in which strategy and magic rule, and hipness is the exception. Seated across from each other at long tables are today’s socially disaffected — young male twentysomethings who wear…
The Insider
“Look, Daddy, Here’s a Present” Ben Reyes gestured to an assistant standing beside an erasable display board that had been set up in the small Galleria-area office of a man Reyes knew as Carlos Montero. A paid FBI informant playing the role of a Latin-American businessman for the non-existent Cayman…
Letters
Come On, Get Nekkid Jump back! The Houston Press offers a critical view of an alternative lifestyle! Randall Patterson’s assessment of the American Association of Nude Recreation at Live Oak Resort [“Skin Deep,” August 21] was at least partly accurate, but nowhere near complete. I’ve seen better and more evenhanded…
Press Picks
thursday September 4 Torch Song Trilogy Harvey Fierstein’s compilation of one-acts, all concerning a gay man who must learn to accept and love himself as he learns to accept and love those around him even with all their collective limitations and fears, won a Tony Award in 1983. And though…
Rotation
Oasis Be Here Now Epic It’s tempting to write off Oasis’s third CD as a vague facsimile of the two that preceded it; Definitely Maybe and (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? still echo loudly in the pop consciousness, their hit singles as familiar as your own heartbeat. Even now, it…
Out of the Swamp
Blue Moon Swamp may be John Fogerty’s first CD in ten years, but you only have to go to a baseball game to know that he’s never really been out of our consciousness. It was between innings at a recent Astros game that the familiar strains of Fogerty’s “Centerfield” came…
Honky-Tonk History
They’re raiments an Aztec priest would envy, a bit faded with age, perhaps, but still arresting in their brilliance. One suit is blood red, with black patterns that race up and down its sleeves. It almost seems to breathe as country music legend Hank Thompson drapes it across the barstool…
Site, or Sight?
A little background for those of you who haven’t been paying attention: In 1993, Houston artist Rick Lowe and arts administrator Deborah Grotfeldt purchased 22 abandoned row houses in Houston’s Third Ward. They transformed seven of the houses into sites where artists could do installations, and five others into housing…
Reel to Real
Somewhere in the meatpacking district in downtown Manhattan, behind a nondescript door in an unremarkable building, about 100,000 reels of film sit in stacks on 12-foot-high metal shelves, and in less orderly piles on the concrete floor. The titles taped to the sides of each canister — The Honey Industry,…
Sold American
Sometimes a reputation, even a good one, can be as much bane as boon. According to at least one close associate, that was on chef Mark Cox’s mind when he set about opening his new Mark’s American Cuisine, which two months ago moved into the onetime church that had previously…
Back to School
Over the last few months, 30 years after its mixture of cheekiness and sappiness created a nationwide box-office sensation, The Graduate has been rematriculating in movie theaters (and will show this weekend as part of the Museum of Fine Arts’s “CinemaScope Sixties” series). Produced by Joseph E. Levine’s faltering Embassy…
Sweet Deal
August 5 was just another day at Harris County Commissioners Court. After awarding millions of dollars in contracts and quickly dispatching other routine business without a second look, the commissioners moved on to the part of each week’s agenda devoted to matters affecting each of the county’s four precincts. Checking…
The Profits of Magic
When Tim Weissman first encountered Magic: The Gathering at a gaming convention in 1993, he had no idea that the game would one day become his livelihood. “I saw all these people with stacks and stacks of decks,” he remembers. “I said, ‘Gosh, I don’t believe these people. What losers…