As the harsh smell of raw crude oil grows overpowering, Joe Nelson peers over the bow of his aluminum skiff. "There it is," he says, pointing to a 20-foot-wide ribbon of black...
The Battle of Los Angeles is Rage Against the Machine's first album in three years. That the stridently political act released its most pointed statement to date on Election...
I believe restaurateur Michael Valentine has an eye for architectural white elephants. Before he and wife Hanh settled on Evelyn Wilson's grand three-story building at 3704...
Have you ever endured a relationship in which your partner beat you up mercilessly, just so he or she could "heal" you and play the redeemer later on? Granted, that's a weird...
Houston is a lot of things, but a fashion mecca isn't one of them. Sure, the socialites spend thousands on ball gowns and such, but they stick to the same established designers...
In their efforts to capitalize on the holidays -- think family-size ticket sales -- artistic theater directors across the city dig through their dusty shelves looking for...
Margaret Lindsey is not by nature an angry person. Most of the time she's as good-natured as she is now, standing over the kitchen sink of Blondie's. In her short cutoff jeans...
The show was spectacular, in every way. The 13-member ensemble came out wearing robes, gold lamé shirts, sequined vests and all manner of homemade space hats, antennae...
At one time or another, we've all been there. We've all sat forlornly at some wedding reception where the only people we knew were the ones who had dragged us to the "blessed...
Nobody is innocent in America, but there is one segment of the population that seems doggedly determined to deny its own ignorance, ugliness and violence. So hands up now, who...
What makes the abstract minimalist music-drama of Philip Glass look like an old-fashioned Puccini opera? AlienNation Company's latest experiment, MIRAK. Instead of arias,...
For the past ten years the Alley Theatre produced an almost quintessential version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol. The show was full of humor, bright color, Victorian ambience...
Every day and every night, Cheryl Ann Young's vast ceiling fills with the sounds of faint thunder. Over her head is the constant 60-mph rumble of semis and sedans atop the...
Say you're an impressionable kid growing up in Houston surrounded by a family of larger-than-life characters with wild senses of humor. They're poor, hard-drinkin' people who...
Dinner and a movie is a concept so firmly ingrained in our collective psyche that it has become the classic American date. The notion of sharing a dinner at one dimly lit...
The heroines of Gavin O'Connor's offbeat road movie Tumbleweeds are a struggling single mother named Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) and her feisty 12-year-old daughter, Ava...
Just a month or so ago, I was seated, much against my better judgment, on an inordinately large panel convened to discuss artists in the community, or the art community, or...
Edd Hendee, owner the Taste of Texas steak house with his wife, Nina, is a veteran of road construction, a survivor of the Sam Houston Tollway tidal wave that crushed many...
Melanie C Northern Star Virgin Contemporary pop music blows. The current revival of bubblegum, which we all thought died in the early '90s but which has somehow found its...
Casting a Wide Net: The house specialty fettuccine del mare ($15.95) at Prima Pasta has all the ingredients tradition dictates, such as jumbo shrimp, tender scallops and...
