Come On, Get Happy!
If Pam Johnson was disappointed, she didn’t show it. She’d expected her book-signing to look like a party, with balloons and kids’ games at the store’s main entrance, where she could ensnare Saturday-afternoon passersby, sell a few books and bask in laughter. Instead, Bookstop placed her on its upstairs balcony;…
Force of One
Sir Alec Guinness played characters older than himself for so long that when he died on August 5, the age listed in his obituaries came as a jolt to many fans. Only 86? No way. Surely he was in his early fifties, at the very least, back in 1949, when…
2001: A Bell Mayoral Odyssey?
As a summer of broken water mains, seemingly endless street repairs and budget miscues provokes simmering discontent, there are the first stirrings of a serious electoral challenge to two-term incumbent Lee P. Brown. While the former HPD chief and federal drug czar plans to spend part of early fall campaigning…
State of the Union
It sounds crazy to say this of a Neil LaBute movie, considering the dubious auteur’s semipathetic thumping of his own hollow chest, but Nurse Betty moves like a classic. Unlike In the Company of Men (which touched a few nerves), and even less like Your Friends and Neighbors (which anaesthetized…
School’s Out
Robert WilonskyA month ago, R.J. Cutler thought he found a home for his child, one that would coddle and nurture his baby until it was ready to stand on its own two legs without wobbling or falling. A month ago, it all seemed so simple to the Oscar-nominated producer-director, who…
The Unusual Suspects
This is the beginning of The Way of the Gun you will not see, because it was written but never filmed: Two men, Parker and Longbaugh, urinate in an open grave in front of mourners, beat up a priest, steal organs meant for transplant and shoot a dog. The introduction…
Letters 09-07-2000
Burned by City Hall Firefighters’ dilemma: As a former Austin firefighter and emergency medical technician, I read the article about Chief Tyra and the Houston Fire Department with some interest [“In the Hot Seat,” by Steve McVicker, August 17]. The emphasis on HFD policy and personnel, in terms of neighborhood…
Choking on the Pit?
When a symphony orchestra seeks a principal conductor, the process takes on all the bluster and maneuverings of a steamy courtship ritual. A successful pairing of a conductor and an orchestra requires mutual attraction and a special chemistry. If the attraction is one-sided, the marriage is doomed. The Houston Symphony’s…
Beyond the Missionary Position
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High on Fat
On a recent broiling afternoon, a gentleman of middle years and middle height stood by the checkout counter at the Rice Epicurean in the Rice Village. He was audibly searching for lard. A store manager screwed up his features in a pained way in response to the query, replying, “We…
The Fact of Fiction
Many fear that the postmodern trend of mixing fiction and autobiography sacrifices truth for the sake of entertainment and authorial agendas. Countering that argument is the California-born Maxine Hong Kingston, who wove the stories and myths of her Chinese immigrant family into her debut novel, The Woman Warrior (1975), before…
A Deadly Passion
She had shoulder-length dark brown hair, looked to be in her late twenties and was wearing only a camisole. It looked like a suicide. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Gonzalez glanced at the corpse, then stepped back and peered overhead, his eyes scanning the side of the hotel. The…
Trend-scendent
The gazpacho tastes fizzy. I think it has started to ferment. This is a common problem with uncooked soups that have been stored in the refrigerator for a while. “How’s the gazpacho?” Melissa Noble asks me. I’m not sure how to handle this. I have asked Melissa to take me…
All the Comforts of Home
Benjy Levit, co-owner of benjy’s, 2424 Dunstan, (713)522-7602; and Dish, 2300 Westheimer, (713)528-2050, the latter of which features a popular style of cooking known as comfort food. Q. Why has going out for food that mimics simple home cooking or childhood tastes become so popular with, presumably, sophisticated diners? A…
The Imposters
Seeing a classic pop band in concert can be, among other things, perplexing. Diana Ross performed at Compaq Center in June in what was billed as a Supremes “Reunion Tour,” but Ross never performed with the other two women supposedly sharing the bill. Real Supremes Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong…
Smothered with Affection
Texans have had such a long love affair with chicken-fried steak that it’s practically our official state meat. Just one bite of the smothered steak at Alfreda’s Cafeteria [5101 Almeda, (713)523-6462], though, would convince any right-minded Texan that this round steak also-ran deserves the title. Unlike the other soul-food plates…
The Riff Factory
While some rock musicians would never release an album unless it was a genuine reflection of how much they had developed since their previous CD, some musicians aren’t AC/DC. “It’s great if you can tap your foot to it,” says AC/DC rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young. And he’s serious. Dead serious…
Booze in a Blender
Beneath the fluttering fronds of the palapa, bartender Jorge Flores is emptying bottle after bottle of tequila into a plastic container. The frozen margaritas are made in 60-gallon batches, he tells me. If you’ve ever had a margarita at Pico’s [5941 Bellaire Boulevard, (713)662-8383], you know why they need so…
Pepper Shakers
New Orleans native Jelly Roll Morton, the self-described inventor of jazz, once said, “[If] you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.” Early devotees of the improvisational form, including a roll call of jazz greats…
Home of the Rave
Not too long ago, the glossy rave magazine Urb called DJ Dan “America’s most beloved DJ,” perhaps marking the first time a superlative regularly used to describe grandmothers had been attached to a turntablist. The explanation is simple: Since 1991, when DJ Dan first moved to Los Angeles, the spin…
Tom Lehrer
When NYPD Blue supercop actor Dennis Franz appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and “performed” a song called “The Vatican Rag,” with dancers in Catholic clergy garb, the show was able to pass off the number as something new. Never mind that the tune was penned 35 years…
The Drew Sparx Project
Debate on whether there is such a thing as “Houston hip-hop” has been going on so damn long nobody knows where or how it began. Truth is, there isn’t any hip-hop scene — just one giant radio station and a couple of clubs that play hip-hop. No performers. No performance…
Can the Band Play On?
In August, the Houston Symphony returned to the cradle of classical music for a weeklong series of concerts in four different European cities and three separate music festivals. For the quick jaunt, the orchestra was joined by its former music director and current conductor laureate, Christoph Eschenbach, in what appeared…
Workshop City
Framed by the window at Diedrich Coffee, Mark Zeus looks like a regular customer, another quiet head and shoulders sitting there at eye level with the other patrons. You don’t realize Zeus is cradling an acoustic guitar and performing until you enter. Only then do you realize that you’ve unwittingly…
Home Sweet Cell
Andrew and Lucy Young’s dream home remains nothing but an overgrown five-acre plot in Montgomery County, littered with rotting lumber and a concrete slab of questionable worth, the detritus of a deal with contractor David Allen Zovath gone bad. But if the Youngs are no closer to corralling the slippery…
Mysteriously Musical
He’s the author of several tongue-in-cheek mystery novels. He’s Texas’s most self-aggrandizing son, handing out his personalized guitar picks to anything with a pulse. He’s buddies with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. And his name is, umm, kinky. Kinky Friedman, the acerbic Jewish writer-cum-novelty music act, is still up to…
To Sleep with the Fishes
Sandwiched between an office building parking garage and a new apartment complex, the tiny Aquarium Lounge squats almost out of view. But on this recent day, the faithful still find their way to the eclectic hideaway. The door opens, briefly flooding the Aquarium with light. A bartender pauses from serving…
Three Day Stubble
At a time when most bands were writing bubblegum pop and garage punk, the members of Three Day Stubble were assembling a brand of Beefheartian art, spaz they labeled simply as “nerd rock.” A rare survivor of Houston’s early-’80s music scene, Stubble is back in town to prove that its…