Letters
Huey? Hooray! I read with interest the article Brian Wallstin wrote regarding Helen Huey [“Hammerin’ Helen,” August 25]. That article proves the old adage that a little knowledge is, if not dangerous, at least misleading. The primary problem with the article is that Mr. Wallstin has no idea of the…
Press Picks
thursday september 8 The Great Storm On this date in 1900, the greatest natural disaster in our nation’s history occurred in Galveston. Turn-of-the-century Galveston was all set to become a thriving port city in the style of Manhattan. Then, a tremendous hurricane struck. The powerful storm destroyed most of the…
Crab cri de coeur
Blue-crab seasons come and blue-crab seasons go, yet the One True Boiled Crab Joint I keep longing for — and that Texas’ upper Gulf Coast so richly deserves — remains elusive. A region that boasts some of the finest crabs on the planet (as long as you don’t mind a…
Simple Wonders
Shug’s qualifies as a find on several counts. So awkward is its location, crouched beneath Loop 610 West just south of the I-10 intersection, that you literally must ferret out a way to get there. So unlovely is its monosyllabic name, so deceptive its prefab ranch house exterior and so…
The Basics Aim to Cross the Border
The two guys who started the band are Hispanic and some of the songs they do are in Spanish. So that makes the Basics a Tejano band, right? That’s the sort of facile observation that could drive singer and frontman Lupe Olivarez to pounding his head against a wall in…
Going One-On-One With God
The best thing going in Theater LaB Houston’s premiere of Some Things You Need to Know Before the World Ends (A Final Evening with the Illuminati) is Dean Turner, the comic half of this two-actor putdown of organized religion. The play, by Atlanta writers Levi Lee and Larry Larson, requires…
Pushing the Artistic Borders
In their “Poison Amor” collaboration now showing at Blaffer Gallery, Lubbock-raised Terry Allen and James Drake use junkyard refuse to make assemblages strongly rooted in the contemporary life of “La Frontera,” the northern border region of Mexico. Drake, based in El Paso, is known for his huge drawings with steel…
Damn Good Southern Jangle-pop
There was a time not so many years ago when you couldn’t drive past a frat party in Raleigh, North Carolina, without hearing the Connells. Not on record, but in person, from the backyards on those shitty plywood frat-house stages where they were cementing their reputation as a sweet Southern…
Rotation
The Beat Farmers Viking Lullabys Pushmonkey Maize Splatter From Hell To Eternity Sector 2 What’s the next best thing to a local band? A local label, of course. Especially one that refuses to pigeonhole itself when it comes to genre or region. Such is Sector 2. And these three releases…
End Games
This has been a strong year for first-time independent filmmakers. David O. Russell’s Spanking the Monkey was one of 1994’s pleasant surprises; ditto Kevin Smith’s soon-to-be-released Clerks and Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Toro’s Cronos. But without question, rookie-of-the-year awards go to Boaz Yakin, writer and director of Fresh, which may be…
Wagons Ho Hum
John Candy galloping on horseback is not a pretty picture. Of course, it’s not intended to be. But it’s not an especially amusing picture, either. The makers of the woefully unfunny Wagons East! hoped the incongruity of duding him up as an Old West cowboy would sell tickets. It won’t…
A Sad Fate
It would be hard to overstate the ineptitude of Steve Martin’s new film, A Simple Twist of Fate, so I won’t try. The poor, misshapen thing speaks for itself. Get this: Martin had the unlikely idea of remaking Silas Marner. He wrote the screenplay and was executive producer on the…
Changing Channels
April may be the cruelest month by most accounts, but this year, for KTRK/ Channel 13, February topped the list for pain. It was then that a ratings book was released showing that, for virtually the first time in 20 years, Channel 13 was not number one in the news…
Time and Money
With whatever time he’s got left, Mike Ecker is living both the traditional American dream and the modern American nightmare. Flush with a big settlement from a job-discrimination lawsuit that has bought him a brand-new $40,000 leather-upholstered Mercedes C Class 280 sedan, the former Texas Commerce Bank vice president also…
Zydeco Blues
It’s 10 p.m. on an August Saturday night at the Continental Zydeco Lounge and the band, Jabo and the Southside Playboys, has just finished setting up. By all rights and traditions, some serious action should be about to begin. The old Continental feels comfortable and festive, just as in years…
Letting it all Hang Out
The Houston Chronicle has been threatened in the past with hundreds of lawsuits over the paper’s contents, but a recent missive to managing editor Tony Pederson from attorney Xavier Lemond may have been a first. On behalf of male model Robert “Bo” Valentine, Lemond alleged the paper invaded Valentine’s privacy…