Last August, shortly after returning as chief executive officer of Enron Corp., Ken Lay sent an e-mail to employees asking them to "Lay It On The Line" and answer a few...
Somewhere along the line, loud, fast rock and roll slammed on its brakes and sobered up. Hard rock and metal (KISS, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe) brought a sense of humor...
Bangkok hot beef salad is a nest of lettuce topped with sizzling beef in a hot and tangy lemongrass sauce, says the menu at Blue Orchid. This place calls itself a Viet-Thai...
With Panic Room, about the night Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her teenage daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are home-invaded by a trio of burglars seeking hidden treasure,...
After a decade of whetting appetites, Dance Salad has grown into a full-course meal. This year the highly regarded sampling of cutting-edge international dance is like a...
No clown in Houston is more limber, rubber-faced and flat-out hysterical than funnyman Jef Johnson. These days he's cavorting across the stage at Main Street Theater in...
ALPINE -- Out in the heart of the sand-blown Trans-Pecos region of Texas, where, as an ancient cowboy poet once wrote, "the rainbows wait for rain," things literary generally...
It's a drab spring afternoon, the Monday after South By Southwest, and Johnny Goudie has just enough time to fit in a caffeine- and nicotine-drenched interview before he starts...
With all due respect to Pet Clark, downtown is not really where it's happening these days. Between the crumbling infrastructure the city is always repairing, the beautifying...
It's readily apparent that Danny DeVito's Death to Smoochy deals with a thoroughly debauched children's television host (Robin Williams) who plots, amid much dark zaniness, to...
The scene isn't all that unusual: some disturbingly gorgeous exotic dancers sitting around a table at the back of the Ritz Cabaret with a few lucky local musicians. It's the...
One of the greatest challenges in opera is to sing and act with equal agility. Mastering one of these art forms is difficult enough; since opera's early days, multitalented...
Last month, Clayton Jones of Houston got his hands on a newsletter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). The 54-year-old paraplegic and double...
It's Friday afternoon on Austin's über-hip South Congress strip, and the Allen Oldies Band has set up in front of an antique shop. All its members are in evening wear even...
If Fast Food Nation has a main street, it's 61st Street in Galveston. The busy thoroughfare is a visual roll call of Jack in the Arch McWendy Kings. Hungry beachgoers are left...
An American flag hangs high in John Cleary Gallery. Beneath it, press-on type proclaims, in appropriate post-September 11 patriotism, "God Bless America." On the gallery walls...
It was apparently an irresistible story, and few resisted. A group of Houston sixth-graders from Lanier Middle School was scheduled to take a tour of the White House on March...
Ultimate Fakebook singer/guitarist Bill McShane wears big black spectacles, and not just to advertise his myopia. He's aligning himself with other -- for lack of a better term...
With my ears ringing and my nose full of dust, I took refuge from the Main Street construction at Osteria d'Aldo (301 Main, 713-224-2536). With its high Victorian eaves and...
Before he died of congestive heart failure in March 1992, Richard Brooks, director of The Blackboard Jungle and In Cold Blood, used to tell this story. It takes place sometime...
