By Alex Wukman

Hacker collective Anonymous recently made a huge cache of sensitive law enforcement documents available to anyone. According to the Anonymous release around three gigabytes of “law enforcement sensitive” and “for official use only” files were released including police records, internal affairs investigations, meeting notes, training materials, officer rosters, security audits, and live password information to government systems. Among the files released were the personal email addresses and passwords of nearly 30 active and retired Texas police chiefs and other high ranking law enforcement officers. Anonymous was able to release the personal information, or docs as they like to say, of several high ranking Houston area law enforcement officers including an HPD lieutenant, the chiefs of the Friendswood and Spring Valley police department as well as the assistant chief of the University of Texas at Houston Police Department.

Friendswood PD Chief Robert Wieners e-mails allegedly included the usual amount of police business such as Houston Regional Intelligence Center counter-terrorism documents, FBI Situational Information Report and Counterterrorism Intelligence Group reports and internal police meeting notes, search warrants and arrest reports. However, also included was an alleged March 2024 e-mail in which Wieners refers to a female suspect who started a car chase near the intersection of Yale and 610 as a “stupid bitch” who “got what she deserved.” Wieners then goes on to state “I’ll bet she was fat and black too.”

Wieners account also allegedly contains a chain e-mail entitled “1,400 years of inbreeding amongst Muslims.” The alleged e-mail is based on an article by Bryan Fischer a right wing blogger and radio host who serves as the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, one of the key sponsor groups behind The Response prayer event held last month at Reliant Stadium. In the article Fischer, fraudulently, states among other things that “the massive inbreeding in Muslim culture may well have done virtually irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including extensive damage to its intelligence, sanity, and health.”

In the documents released from HPD Lieutenant Robert Mock’s personal Hotmail account. Mock, a 25 year veteran with almost 10 years supervisory experience, allegedly used this account for perosnal business relating to the purchase of a new home and forwarding racist and sexist joke e-mails. Mock’s alleged e-mail address is filled with forwards that perpetuate the stereotypes of ignorant Muslim extremists, drug smuggling Mexicans and submissive shopaholic women. One e-mail Mock allegedly received states, “I pray for a deaf-mute, gymnast, nymphomaniac with big hooters who owns a bar on a golf course, and loves to send me hunting, fishing and drinking. This doesn’t rhyme and I don’t give a shit.”

On at leas three separate occasions mock received an e-mail incorrectly citing famous comic Jeff Foxworthy as the author of a series of ‘jokes’ entitled “You May be a Muslim.”  The e-mail was filled with such zingers as ” if you have more wives than teeth; you may be a Muslim,” and “if you wipe your butt with your bare hand, but consider bacon unclean.; you may be a Muslim.” Within the alleged e-mail exchanges released by Anonymous there is no record of Mock or Wieners objecting to the type of racist and sexist humor they allegedly received.

Update:

In the two days since this post went live the story has gone around the world and back. Eric Doyle at Eweek Europe identified the faction of Anonymous responsible for the hack as Chinga La Migra, a group who first garnered attention after hacking Arizona law enforcement in June. The City of Friendswood has repeatedly denied to Houston media that Wiener is the author of the racist e-mails. Mock, now an assistant chief with HISD, has been more concerned with the invasion of privacy that came from getting hacked than the fact that he received racist and sexist e-mails.

By Alex Wukman

An undated photo of Evero at work on a name mural

Dallas area street/graffiti artist Evero was recently sentenced to six months in jail and given a job offer from Dallas’ “graffiti czar,”attorney John Barr. Barr is known throughout the DFW area as something of an anti-graffiti crusader. In an era when walls painted by celebrity London street artist Banksy can sell for  around $400,000 and cities across the globe are working to protect street art by creating legal graffiti spaces, sentencing a street artist to jail seemed a little old fashioned. It also seems strange that, in a time of severe budget shortages, cities keep spending money on graffiti abatement. So we decided to talk with Houston’s own “graffiti czar,” City Council Member Sue Lovell. Like anyone in public office Lovell, who currently holds the Council’s At Large Position 2, has faced criticism over the years.However, despite her involvement in increasing the amount of money spent on anti-graffiti initiatives Lovell has, in the past, enjoyed a good working relationship with many members of Houston’s street art community. She has even been overheard saying that she owns artwork by some of Houston’s practitioners of wheat paste and that she enjoys “the painted animals peeking around corners.”

When asked about the amount of money the City spends on graffiti abatement Lovell stated that since the City signed a contract in January with the Greater East End District she is unsure about the specific amount of money spent on graffiti abatement. She did say that it was “at least $1 million” per year. However, the amount the city spends on graffiti abatement could be considerably more than $1 million; as Lovell herself said at the April premiere of Stick ‘Em UP, filmmaker Alex Luster’s documentary on Houston’s wheat paste scene, when she told the audience that graffiti removal “costs $2 million a year.” The city’s decision to continually rely solely on the tactic of abatement has drawn criticism from members of the graffiti community.

Councilwoman Sue Lovell

In January Carolyn Casey, Aerosol Warfare’s education program director, said that members of the Houston art scene were invited to attend a City Council meeting to discuss graffiti. Casey stated that she had previously approached the city about a “re-direction urban art program.” “We thought they were being open to an idea of ours, but they really just called us all there to tell us to tell our friends to stop doing it. They weren’t open to new ideas, and said that as long as they’re spending money on abatement, they’re not going to spend any money on programs,” said Casey.

Even though Casey was allegedly told by the city to drop her plans for an educational urban program her ideas may not have completely fallen on deaf ears. In an interview Lovell said that the City of Houston is “still moving forward” in it’s approach to graffiti and that “if we weren’t spending money on removal” the city might have been able to bring to reality a proposal for legal graffiti walls Lovell first discussed in 2024.

Lovell went on to say that the city “hasn’t given up on graffiti walls,” but in the current budget climate they are “a low priority.”  ”When people are losing their jobs and we are shutting libraries and public pools legal graffiti walls are at the bottom of the list,” said Lovell.”Even if we could figure out how to do it, there isn’t any money for it.” When asked about preserving unsanctioned pieces that are already on public buildings Lovell responded  by asking “how would you decide what to keep?” “I don’t think anyone in the city is qualified to determine what to keep and what to paint over.” Lovell did propose another strategy for creating a publicly sanctioned space for street art in Houston.

“Signature intersections,” said Lovell. She explained that there was a possibility of using grant money to decorate specific, notable intersections, such as Montrose and Westheimer, with urban art. Lovell went on to state that she was “going to run the idea up the flagpole.” For some Houston’s well-known street artists having a legal space, whether a wall or a crosswalk, is unnecessary and in some cases takes something away from the act. Coolidge, the city wide king of cute animals, said that “every graffiti artist has to understand that there are consequences that go along with this activity. If it wasnt illegal, it would lose a lot of its flavor.” He went on say that, in his mind, graffiti artists who get arrested, like Evero or prolific Southwest Side tagger Shadow, “can’t fault the cops and the D.A. for doing their jobs…it’s part of the game.”

Coolidge continued by saying that the art world hype surrounding the rediscovery of street art, something that seems to happen every 10 years, won’t change the nature of graffiti.”Graffiti will remain illegal, and that won’t change because the big money world of art collecting decided that a Banksy piece is worth $500,000. It’s a symbiotic relationship,” stated Coolidge. For seminal Houston wheat paste artist Dual the illegal nature of graffiti is a large part of the draw. “If graffiti wasn’t illegal, then I probably wouldn’t care too much to take the risk and put up my art for the masses,” stated Dual. Dual also stated that graffiti abatement measures may not create the desired effect in graffiti artists. “To some artist like myself, seeing a work of mine torn down or defaced, just amps me up to go bigger and better.”

One of Coolidge's pieces

The impact graffiti has on a community,whether positive or negative, can be debated; Gonzo247 restated the old axiom that “Graffiti creates jobs and you should thank me” when asked about the impact it has on a community. Dual, on the other hand, sees graffiti as a necessary part of a city’s cultural ecosystem. “A city with no grafitti is a city with no sub-culture. And I don’t wanna find myself living in a place like that,” stated Dual. Part of the problem with graffiti abatement comes from the way it’s applied. In June Cody Ledvina of The Joana gallery stated that Greater East End District workers “have a quota” and that “they take a picture of something and paint over it.” Ledvina stated that, in his experience, the graffiti abatement teams have, in the past, painted over authorized pieces on private property; the most famous of which was “Mr. Balls,” the cat from the famous Mary’s mural.

The famous mural outside Mary's seen in better days

By Alex Wukman

After almost two years of waiting, and a week of work, it was time to pop the champagne.  Moments after the final brushstroke had been added Cody Ledvina, one of the founders of The Joana gallery, hopped up on a parking divider in front of the mural holding a bottle of champagne. Sweat beads from his mop of curly hair as Ledvina thanks the dozens of volunteers and community members who, over the course of four days, came out to help recreate the famous mural that adorned the wall of Mary’s…Naturally, Houston’s iconic gay bar. Ledvina calls the original painting a masterpiece and tells the 15 to 20 friends of The Joana that helped out that a simple sign will be placed next to the mural for the upcoming pride parade to let everyone know who worked on it.

Mary’s, as it was commonly known, wasn’t the first gay bar in Houston but by the time it closed it’s doors for the last time in 2024 it had become the most famous. Part of that fame came from the fact that Mary’s opened as a gay bar in 1972 and stayed as one for nearly 40 years. Another part of Mary’s fame came from the synchronicity of it’s opening. From the time Montrose was first platted as a streetcar suburb in 1911 through both World Wars, the Eisenhower years and the Kennedy Administration Montrose was known more for its ease of access to downtown, master planned streets and proximity to Buffs field, later Colt Stadium and the Astrodome, than it was for rainbows and pink triangles.

Depending on what you read or who you talk to Montrose’s history as a gay community either started in the 1970s or has been here since the area was founded. Ray Hill told the Houston Press earlier this year that even during the mid-to-late 1960s most of Houston’s gay bars were found in Downtown, and what is now called Midtown. However, a 1973 article from Texas Monthly estimated that two-thirds of Houston’s 30 or 40 gay bars were located in the Montrose and at least one of those had been open since 1967.

Hill went on to say that, in his experience, the gay community found out about Montrose by going to a 24 hour restaurant called Art Wren after the gay clubs closed. According to a post on a Waltrip High School class of 1965 forum by a user with the name Lindy Clarke Hall, Art Wren was, essentially, the House of Pie’s of the mid-1960s. “Art Wren’s was a melting pot of the Montrose and Heights folks…we had the gays, the bikers, the artists and ordinary semi-hippie people, like me, that just happened to be night-owls.” Hall goes on to describe how the dsiparate crowds were respectful of each other and that “it was kinda sweet seeing the bikers being friendly with gays and everyone.”

Trying to determine exactly when Montrose became gay is a classic chicken and the egg problem; what can be determined is the economic impact homosexuality had on the area. Hill described homosexuals as shock troops of gentrification saying that when they moved in and began rehabbing the area it started attracting others. In the same 1973 Texas Monthly article Joe Anthony, the original owner of Mary’s, described the financial impact Houston’s gay community was having on Montrose by stating that “the area is going to grow around the gay community and businessmen have to accept us because if they [don’t], [they’ll] be out of business.” Despite Anthony’s forward thinking comments, he wouldn’t remain in the gay club business for much longer. In 1974 Mary’s was purchased by Jim “Fanny” Farmer, a man who’s name would become synonymous with the bar, even decades later. Farmer’s purchase of Mary’s was one of those right-man-at-the-right-time moments that are the stuff of legend. He gave Mary’s what other gay bars in the area lacked, an identity.

The stories that survive from the surviving patrons depict the place, in it’s heyday, as a home for the type of anonymous public sex that can be only found in the fantasy world of pornography today. It was common for patrons to pile into darkened bathrooms, be groped trying to cross the bar or get intimate in one of the many secluded areas in Mary’s back patio, affectionately known as The Outback. As Cathy Matusow wrote in the 2024 article Zipping Up Mary’s the bar was known for having it’s own set of rules, one of which made it “illegal” to wear underwear. And newcomers who violated the rule would have their underwear stripped from them and thrown to the rafters, past the trapeze that was normally manned by a naked bartender or patron.

Mary’s notoriety spread nationwide throughout the gay community. As San Francisco resident Jamie Rein posted on the Mary’s Naturally Closed Facebook page in July 2024, “Mary’s is not just Houston LGBT history, it is American LGBT history. I have good memories of dropping into Mary’s on my coast-to-coast hitchhiking trips back in the early ‘70s and ‘80s. It was known from Boston to San Francisco.”

With that notoriety came increased attention and as much fun as the party was, it was the business side of things that was in trouble. By 1978 TABC had revoked Mary’s liquor license for, among other things, serving to minors. It’s worth mentioning that five years before Mary’s had their license pulled Texas had lowered the drinking age to 18, but underage drinking has never been a problem unique to gay bars. Neither has a problem with back taxes, which Mary’s also faced.

To secure a second liquor license Farmer had to transfer ownership of the bar, at least on paper, to someone else. He chose Cliff Owens, a man who would go on to steer the bar for much of the next 30 years. As the public health crisis began to sweep through the gay community the role of Mary’s began to change, it became a focal point for gay organizing. Hill told the Houston Press that initial organizing for the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Foundation, a forerunner to the AIDS Foundation, took place at Mary’s in 1980.

As Outhistory.com points out on their History in Houston, 40 years after Stonewall page, “On a Friday night [at Mary’s] you could experience your favorite fetish out back, and on Monday you could attend a rally to support AIDS funding.” It was the AIDS crisis perhaps more than anything else that made Mary’s more somber. Members of the gay community recall that there was a time when Mary’s regulars were dieing at a rate of three a month, and that it wasn’t unusual for the bar to host a Celebration of Life once a week.

So many patrons were lost, interned or had their ashes scattered in The Outback that the numbers can never be known. However, the Gulf Coast Archive and Museum of GLBT History estimates that as many as 300 people may have been laid to rest at the bar. Among those who chose Mary’s as their final resting place was Farmer who was interned at the bar in 1991, along with his beloved German Shepherd.

After Farmer’s death he signed over his ownership of the bar to bartenders Gaye Yancey and Terry Smith. Yancey and Owens would go on to the own bar for over a decade after Farmer’s passing. After seeing the bar through the bleak days of  the early 1990s and the relative calm of the Clinton Administration, Yancey and Owens were hit with the one-two punch of the post 9/11 economic downturn and the Enron collapse. Around this time Mary’s ran into problems with the TABC again, this time for bouncing checks to their distributors, and were forced to close the bar.

However, in early 2024 it looked like a savior had stepped in. Michael Gates the owner of Michael’s Outpost, a casual piano bar in a Richmond Ave. strip center that opened in 1993, stepped in to buy the business. Gates’ purchase was not seen by everyone as a good thing for the bar.

On the Mary’s Naturally Facebook page Cherre Marano wrote that under Gates’ management the bar attracted more “street hustlers than “real” clients.” Marano’s claims about Mary’s attracting hustlers are not just the complaints of an old patron dismissing the new clientele. According to a train-hopping street kid who goes by the name Dead Cat, from 2024 to about 2024 it was a fairly common tactic for self-proclaimed-artists, down-on-their-luck bohemians and other hustlers to head to Mary’s to try and “score free drinks from the old queens.” Dead Cat explained that it also wasn’t unusual for male street kids to offer to “go gay-for-pay” with some of Mary’s patrons.

It wasn’t just street kids and hustlers that developed an affinity for Mary’s in the early 2024s. It also came to be known as a way to keep an all-night bender going. Former Houstonian, and noise musician, Eric “Leif” Moore recounted how, in 2024 and 2024, he and the other members of the now-defunct band Locust Ghost would close down a music venue on Friday night, hit an after hours club until dawn and then head to Mary’s “for a breakfast beer.”

Despite finding new ‘patrons’ Mary’s was still suffering from crippling financial problems, part of which stemmed from the fact that when Gates purchased Mary’s he didn’t buy the building or the land. When Mary’s finally closed its doors in 2024 the Harris County Appraisal District listed the club’s value at approximately $2.4 million for the land and $44,000 for the building. And former Mary’s employee Janet Mayeaux stated that Gates was paying $5,000 a month in rent on the property. She went on to state that she “typed [the rent checks] until ordered not to.”

Despite faltering revenues Mary’s soldiered on throughout the boom and bust economy of the 2024s and at least everything remain unchanged on the outside. Until May 2024 when the iconic mural on the wall was painted over. At the time it was painted over conflicting reasons for the removal of the famed bar scene were given; from the City’s adoption of a strict new anti-graffiti ordinance to a complaint that the clearly visible erections on two of the bar patrons depicted was considered obscene or vulgar.

Former patrons and employees describe how over the next three years Gates began to withdraw more and more from the bar; a move that patron Scott D. Craig characterized as “irresponsible” and described as “the final stake in the heart of a Houston gay institution.” As Gates’ alleged withdrawal continued the man-on-man action that went on in the club, and that original artist Scott Swoveland used to decorate the east wall of the bar, was gone. Inside it had been replaced with aging patrons buying drinks for street kids, something that occasional patron Justin Frazier described as “depressing,” and outside it had been replaced with innocuous fluffy white clouds.\
Frazier, who stated that he could “count on the fingers of one hand” the amount of times he went Mary’s, explained that for many younger gay people the club had ceased to be the epicenter of gay culture it once was. “The only time I ever went there was for [Let Us Entertain You] because it was one of the stops and you could smell the desperation in there,” said Frazier. He went on to say that the Mary’s of later years had not kept pace with the changing demands of the market. “When I used to go out, before I quit drinking, I’d go to South beach for dancing,” said Frazier.

Gay mega clubs like South Beach changed gay entertainment

Kevin Floyd, who along with Bobby Huegel and various other partners purchased Mary’s in early June of this year, seconded Frazier’s take on the later years of Mary’s. “We’re walking that line between preservation and practical application. There are people who want us to open Mary’s as what it was, but Mary’s didn’t have the clientele to support it,” said Floyd. He went on to say that, in his opinion, another reason against reopening Mary’s is that “the need for that type of bar is gone.”

Floyd, is quick to say that he and his partners feel that Mary’s, and the mural, played an important role in the history of Montrose and that they have no plans to destroy the building. Ledvina on the other hand is just as quick to point out that the project to recreate the mural is about more than Montrose’s gay past. “This mural is a public art masterpiece,” says Ledvina. “It’s a period piece and it’s a little bit ridiculous, but it’s by no means vulgar.” Ledvina, who received his MFA from UH in 2024, goes on to describe how the mural represents is both a representation of a unique period of Hoston gay culture history and a reflection of values shared by much of the community. “This was a giant fuck you to conservatism,” he says.
Ledvina, who went to Mayede High School in Katy ISD, says that the mural was as much as beacon to alienated suburban teenagers as it was to the gay community. “This was the first thing that most of us who moved here from the suburbs saw that let us know we were somewhere different, somewhere special,” said Ledvina. Mike Smith, one of Ledvina’s collaborators and a fellow refugee from the suburbs, explained that when he was in high school and venturing into Montrose from the suburbs that as “campy” as the mural was, for him at least, it served a different function.

“When you’re coming in to the city from the suburbs for the first time it’s hard to navigate and the mural was like a landmark. ‘Ok I’m two streets past the mural I turn here,’” says Smith. Floyd explains that while the history of the mural is revered by everyone there, the future of the painting is in jeopardy. It, like so much of Montrose, could fall victim to changing tastes. Floyd explains that the building’s new owners plan on painting over the mural in a month and using the wall as space for a rotating gallery of street art.

However, the street artists haven’t been waiting to receive their invitations. Beneath the mural’s bottom edge is a stenciled tyranosaurous rex by Houston’s hottest street artist Coolidge. Ledvina explains that the dinosaur had been painted before The Joana showed up and that they made a small thematic addition to the piece. “We painted the leather daddy hat on Coolidge’s T-Rex I don’t think he’ll mind,” said Ledvina.

While the addition to Coolidge’s animal hasn’t drawn much attention the destruction of an approximatley 10 foot tall wheat-paste by noted Houston artist Dual has. Ledvina explains that none of those working on the mural were responsible for ripping the art or defacing it with, what appears to be, purple house paint. “One of the girls here is friends with Dual and he told her that another one of his pieces in midtown had been damaged in the same way. Looks like there could be some kind of street art turf war brewing,” says Ledvina.

As the sun slips behind the marquee of the few-months-old El Real restaurant, formerly Hollywood Video and even more formerly the Tower Theater, the talk turns to gay bars and the need for them. Ledvina, who is heterosexual, cites a recent Daily Show sketch about how the number one gay city is Minneapolis. “It’s kind of like that, the new gay is just two guys or two girls. The ‘in-you-face’ attitude that Mary’s had isn’t necessary anymore,” says Ledvina. He goes on to say that “the acceptance of gay that Mary’s fostered has spread” and that, in his opinion, gay people can go to any club in Montrose and feel welcome. In 2024 Ray Hill commented on the death of Mary’s by telling Cathy Matusow that at the time he didn’t know many people in the closet anymore but “when we started organizing at Mary’s in the early ’70s, I didn’t know any people who weren’t in the closet…Mary’s is no longer a vehicle for political organization.”

Frazier agrees to a point. In a post Annise Parker, post Don’t Ask Don’t Tell world, and the night before the New York State Legislature voted to legalize gay marriage, Frazier admits that the political activism gay clubs helped create may not be necessary, but they serve another purpose. “Gay clubs are still necessary because that’s where gay culture happens,” says Frazier. Frazier went on to say that while Montrose is still considered to be the heart of the gay community, it’s not where much of the gay community lives.

“A lot of us have been priced out by gentrification and moved to the heights or even outside the loop,” says Frazier. “Montrose has become gentrified and bougie.” Frazier’s comments echo a sentiment expressed almost 40 years earlier by GOP State Senator, and gubernatorial candidate, Henry “Hank” Grover who in 1973 said  that “the hippie image of the Montrose is changing because the land values are going up, and the low rent areas are disappearing.”

On the afternoon of June 25, with the question of community identity, still fresh in my mind I wandered over to the Pride Parade to see the community response to the recently completed mural. After meandering down Westheimer, past people of all shapes and sizes, I came upon the mural. I expected something between a raging party celebrating the return of this beloved community icon and groups of men and women posing in front of it like theme park tourists. Instead the painting was completely obscured by the pick-up trucks of tailgating families selling bottled water and sodas.

KTRH's new news team

By Alex Wukman

I’ll admit it, I’m a news junkie. I’m so much of a news junkie that I watch the BBC while reading the AP on my phone. My love of news has put me at odds with people in the past, I was one of the few people who supported UH buying KTRU because I’m selfish and wanted more NPR. And I especially love news radio, both the format and the brilliant sitcom. Listening to KTRH’s headline recap while riding around with my father during hot Houston summers is one of the few good memories I have of him from my childhood. So it saddened me to read today that a station I grew up listening to and relying on, a station that once promised “give us 30 minutes and we’ll give you the world,” has completed it’s transformation into a right wing mouthpiece. This morning Clear Channel announced that J.P. Pritchard and Lana Hughes, who have anchored KTRH’s drive time newscast for 27 years, have been terminated.

Pritchard and Hughes who kept readers informed of local and national matters in an even handed non sensational manner during the hellish morning commutes will be replaced by former Ohio talk jock and Tea Party darling Matt Patrick. Patrick, who has been in radio since 1979, came to national attention last fall after he claimed that Michigan State head football Mark Dantonio suffered a divinity induced heart attack after using a fake field goal to beat Notre Dame in overtime last fall. Patrick is not shy about his conservative leanings, even stating in his resume that it’s his job to “engage, entertain and discuss local and national events from a conservative viewpoint.”

To their credit Hughes and Pritchard recognize that their termination is not personal and that they are just the latest casualty as old media tries to adapt. Sadly, the case can’t be said for KTRH’s AM operations manager Bryan Erickson who told Fox 26, KRIV, that his station has “serve our listeners by being informative and entertaining.” And to accomplish the task of creating drive time infotainment KTRH’s parent company Clear Channel has decided to embrace the always insightful and informative model of Fox Friends.

According Michael Harrison publisher of Talkers magazine, who was quoted in the Chronicle, this new Steve Doocey-esque morning show will be “a more philosophical, conservative approach to morning conversation.” There are a lot of words I’d use to describe Fox and Friends but “philsophical” isn’t one of them. While it is true that Gretchen Carlson did graduate Stanford with honors, attend Oxford and could be considered a violin virtuoso she sure seems to enjoy playing the role of someone who is recovering from a frontal lobotomy.

This would be too easy to make fun of

The one saving grace out of this asinine decision to take a once good news organization and turn it into a wall-to-wall bastion of right wing talk that’s only interrupted by Astros games is that, for once, we can’t blame Michael Berry for fucking up Houston radio news. Although I’m sure we could if we try hard enough.

Sandy Ewen is hardly your typical guitarist.  Whereas many players focus on notes and melody, Ewen treats the instrument in a manner more akin to how a painter approaches colors and a canvas. She famously employs bows, chalk, screws, and all manner of implements to coax textural and abstract expressions of sound that are something unique to Ewen.  Despite the serious manner in which this University of Texas Architecture gradate approaches her work, her manner is anything but dour or pretentious.  Her love of Houston’s Experimental scene seems to gush out in waves of good cheer and admiration.  One minute she is praising Lucas Gorham and his band Grandfather Child and the next she is praising Nameless Sound.  It’s the voice of someone who is a part of something important and meaningful – something she came across simply by making a record purchase.

“I had this idea,” recalls Ewen, “that you should get a record player, Captain Beefheart, Sun-Ra, and The Minutemen – like that was something you were just supposed to do.   So, when I moved to Texas as a junior in high school, I got my record player at Sound Exchange and I was buying Sun Ra and Captain Beefheart when Dave Dove (Nameless Sound) saw me there and he thought ‘Ah, here is someone who needs to be aware of what I am doing in this city.’”  So, Ewen went to see The Sam Rivers Trio a few days later and hasn’t looked back since.

“Dave’s whole group is about finding young people and exposing them to free jazz and Experimental music,” she continues, “I didn’t know at the time what I was looking for but that was it.   So, through Nameless Sound, I had this musical grounding and, when I moved to Austin, I started playing with Tom Carter (Charalambides).  That very first day I moved to Austin, I unloaded all my stuff into my dorm room and then went off to play a gig with Maria Chavez and Holland Hopson.  Tom Carter saw me there and we started playing weekly.  We have tons of recordings and ended up with a release on Jyrk records and another on Music Fellowship.  Tom had been talking to Aaron [Russell] from Weird Weeds about how he thought it was funny that here I was 18 and playing Experimental guitar and so Weird Weeds asked me to play with them and I ended up joining the band.”

“I consider myself an improviser,” she continues, “but everything I do in Weird Weeds is within a context that is really scripted and tight – everything is completely composed and where it is supposed to be.  But whereas the rest of the band is precise to a note, I have some flexibility.  I know our pieces, what implements I intend to use and how.   My playing can be textural, melodic, and percussive but it is always rehearsed and specific.”

That purposeful playing is also apparent in her other endeavors such as her work with dancer YET Torres and the band unofficially called Girl Band.   “My work with YET is collaborative.  We have a lot of pieces we’ve written where we have a description of where the sound is supposed to go – these can be spatial ideas, specific sounds, or methods of interaction.”

“Last year at SXSW,” she laughs,”we learned that if you make harsh noise, you will get unplugged.  We were playing at a hot dog stand (I don’t know what they were expecting) but I just jumped into this noisy loud crunchy sound and they just weren’t into it and we got unplugged immediately.  I was kind of taken aback but YET was in good spirits so we went down to the next place and did something there and it was fun.”

Girl Band is a much looser collective of people but no less inspired. “The name of the band changes all the time and we have about 8 people right now; the exact roster is hard to pin down.  We’ve been doing pieces that are more performance art and we think about how to perform these pieces in ways that are engaging and creative. So, for example, when we performed a graphic score made of shapes at the Salvage Vanguard Theatre in Austin, we were dispersed in the audience and the score was on the stage.  The score was printed very large and we used flashlights and laser pointers to communicate to each other and the audience what part of the score we were interpreting – that was very effective.

“We’re doing this performance on Sunday April, 3 at the Menil [3PM sharp at the North entrance].  Damon Smith wrote us a piece that relates to Max Neuhaus’ sound installation at the Menil.  I’ve adapted one of our previous pieces for Michael Heizer‘s earth sculptures where we lie on the grass face-down and are cued to sing by a bandmate who will roll us onto our back one by one.  Then, we have another one for Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk.”

The enthusiasm you her in Ewen’s voice when she discusses her work in the Improv community (which Ewen explains is just one small part of Houston’s Experimental scene) is not shared by all.  One objection you hear from detractors is the same one you hear when some people first experience Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings or Mark Rothko’s multiforms – the dreaded cry of “I could do that.”  To those people, the whole exercise appears easy, undisciplined, and self-indulgent.

Ewen finds this critique uninformed, “I play and practice this music several times a week and so it’s really refined.  I practice weekly with Damon Smith, YET Torres, and Under the Covers (which plays Jazz standards) and it’s there that I try new things.  I know what the different screws sound like – I know the variation between a small and large toothed screw.  I’ve played with steel wool, chalk, and pieces of metal and the nuances of these materials have become second nature.  As much as some people might see it as unrefined, they actually couldn’t sit down and do what I do because I’m actually technically proficient at it.  To hear the subtle tone qualities is something I’ve worked on and I know how to adjust what I’m doing in relation to my guitar pick-ups, tone controls, and all the other variations. It seems like it’s easy – and that’s good – but for someone to say that they can do what I do…you have to work on it to do what I do.”

Another objection made by some is that Improv and Experimental music is unimportant because sales and attendance are so miniscule especially in comparison to pop acts like Beyonce or Justin Beiber.    Ewen sees that as a foolish way to gauge success, “In terms of numbers…I really don’t care to look at that. Experimental music has a transformative quality that has the power to change how you see things. Seeing a really good Experimental performance can really change your concept of how people can interact and what the reality is of the human experience. Pop music may be fun to dance to but it doesn’t change my worldview. It doesn’t challenge you in different ways and that challenge is important.

“It’s like any other style of music where the more you listen to it the more you can distinguish.  There are lots of people who don’t like Gamelan because they’ve never heard it before and so it makes no sense to them.  Some people think that way about Rap music too.  There has always a barrier to entry [in music] and that barrier is simply taking part, listening, and figuring it out.  If you put a lot into it, you can get a lot out of it and if people don’t want to put the time in, it will seem like a bunch of garbage but that’s their loss.

“The fact is the Experimental scene here is world class – there is an impressive pool of talent, a supportive audience, and receptive venues.  There’s a lot of freedom and everyone can do what they want.  In other cities, it can be hard to find gigs or you have some established people who hold the gates open or close them for whoever they want.  Here, we have a lot of series that include whoever wants to play and that is really healthy.  There are enough venues where people can set things up really easily and there are so many performers and players that anyone can do it and a lot of people do and a lot of people put in enough time and energy to make it good.  I wouldn’t move to another city to pursue Experimental music.”

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:

By Alex Wukman

Let’s go back to February 13, 2024. America was listening to Beyonce’s number one hit “Irreplacable” while waiting for Nicolas Cage to make a fool of himself in Ghost Rider. Just days erlier newly announced Presidential candidate Barrack Obama had made  his first gaffe and Asia watchers were excited by the announcement that the US and North Korea had reached a tenative agreement on the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear disarmament. And on the local scene, progressives throughout Houston were pleased when the City announced that Earthlink had been selected as the provider for the soon to be built municipal wi-fi network, which was supposed to be operational by the spring of 2024.

Let’s skip ahead six months to August 30, 2024. Rhianna’s debut single “Umbrella” and the Plain White T’s “Hey Delilah” were burning up the charts; America had come to know and love “McLovin” as a small film called Superbad worked its way into becomeing a pop culture phenomenon. Progressives throughout the country celebrated a ruling by an Iowa district court that legalized gay marriage in that state and Houston tech culture sighed at the announcement that, in order to stay competitive, Earthlink was getting out of the municipal wi-fi business and planned on paying the City of Houston a $5 million penalty.

In the fall of 2024 it seemed like municipal wi-fi was yet another promise that the city had made that was ultimately never going to be fulfilled. Until today that is. The City of Houston announced on Tuesday, March 29, that it had selected Israeli firm Alvarion to provide service for a municipal 4G wireless network. The network, which has been online in a test capacity for a year, allows the city to remotely control 2,500 traffic light intersections, 1,500 school zone flashers and monitor 30,000 water meters.

However, the thing that is sure to catch the attention of the tech community, progressives and community activists is the fact that the City will now be able to provide internet access to residents. The free wi-fi portion of the network is going to be administered through the Houston Public Library’s WeCAN program and will initially offer services to 10 neighborhoods. 

Much of the  press on the project has stated that the wi-fi network will provide internet access to 300,000 residents in underserved neighborhoods, but that’s debatable. The city has identified 10 starter neighorhoods for the network and while most of the areas are places like Gulfton and Fifth Ward, places where “underserved” is a polite way of saying bordering on third world status, there are two that are head scratchers.

It is written deep in Houston's charter that no mention of Fifth Ward is complete without one photo of Bushwick Bill

The city’s WeCAN website shows that the city will also be providing free wi-fi in downtown and midtown. While there are plenty of underserved people in midtown, quite a lot of them near the intersection of W. Alabama and Main in fact, the wi-fi network isn’t going anywhere near them. It’s going to be active in the area along W. Gray between Louisiana and Cushing St. In other words, right in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate inside the loop.

Pictured: The City of Houston's definition of an underserved neighborhood

  To make matters worse, 24 hours after the municipal wi-fi network went live it experienced its first outages in Fifth Ward and Third Ward, two of the more undeserved communities. So after four years of development and questionable decisions about what areas will be served a day after Houston’s much anticipated municipal broadband network goes online its already down? Fantastic.

This man seems to have completely missed the point

By Alex Wukman

It seems that the old adage that when it rains it pours is true, for HPD at least. For the last month or so local news has been filled with stories that keep getting more and more depressing and raise serious questions about what is going on at the city’s largest law enforcement agency.

From the loss of a high profile suspect to a spate of questionable shootings the culture of the Houston Police Department has come under increasing scrutiny since the start of the year. The avalanche of bad press has led some in the community to lose faith with the department.  The ongoing suspicion the community has of HPD officers isn’t helped by a perceived lack of accountability within the department.

As to Chronicle reported “examiners for the city have overturned or reduced nearly 70 percent of punishments given to Houston police officers by HPD management over the last 17 years.” It’s not just the city’s 10 examiners who fail to punish HPD officers, even those who were videotaped beating Chad Holley. Harris County Grand Juries are notorious for “no-billing” cops.

In the last month two separate Grand Juries declined to indict HPD officers for the roles in shooting deaths of community members.  Sadly none of this is new to many Free Press readers, it does seem to be new to local media though. A review of 10 years worth of excessive force complaints Channel 13 undertook in February showed that out of 2,135 complaints filed with HPD’s Internal Affairs department since 2024, only 33 were sustained.

In a recent meeting with journalists HPD Chief Charles McClelland didn’t mention how concerned he was with the lack of discipline in his department or even the fact that it seems to many members of the community that a cop can beat the shit out of somone and get away with it. McClelland told reporters that he was worried about citizens videotaping officers.

I wish to God I was making this up, but McClelland actually said “Officers are telling me that they’re being provoked. Even when they try to write a simple traffic ticket, people are jumping out with cell phone cameras scanning their badge numbers and their nametags.”

Now of course McClelland went on to say that HPD does a damn fine job of policing itself, he even cited the fact that 70 percent of complaints filed with IA against officers come from other officers. He conveniently didn’t mention how many of those complaints are actually sustained or how many officers are actually punished because of those complaints.

Pastor D.Z. Coffield, the head of the Houston chapter of the NAACP, pointed out that “The deck is stacked against citizens. We don’t have anything to fight with except our cell phones and our cameras, because the truth of the matter is, whatever is said is not going to be substantiated.”

Here’s an idea, maybe it’s time for some civic minded activists to revive the Houston chapter of Cop Watch?

Gather around you fellow haters, cynics, and video game store clerks and bask in the hate that is our annual ‘Worst of Houston 2024’; a collection of the worst antics of 2024 in Houston and even beyond! Be forewarned, we pull no punches here and call em’ like we see them.  So if you are included on this list, take it not as a stab but rather a nudge to change your actions and work towards a better tomorrow. We know we will. McCoin, you are fired!

- Illustrations by Michael C. Rodriguez

Worst Invasion of Privacy: Red light cameras vs.  DHS cameras

While Houston voters went to the polls and rejected red light cameras November 2nd, the city of Houston was quietly continuing with the installation of some 250-300 outdoor video surveillance cameras throughout the downtown area.  This money for this project, costing upwards of 14 million dollars, came from The Urban Area Security Initiative funds doled out annually by Homeland Security.  Is there really that much going on downtown that we need 300 cameras to watch it?  Are there even 300 intersections downtown?  Responding to public concerns that these cameras constitute an invasion of privacy, Dennis Storemski, the city’s director of the Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security said all the cameras are in public spaces where people should be aware that their actions are not private.  ”We live in an age right now where there’s really no expectation that there
would be no video in a public space.”   Thanks Dennis Storemski for letting me know privacy is dead, I almost missed the memo!  It’s a good thing for the City of Houston that Homeland Security expenditures aren’t up for public vote; I think we know how Houstonians would side on this issue.

- Tish Stringer

Worst Cocktail:  Anvil

Some basil-y, gin and fruit crap one of the guys from Anvil made me drink.

-Brandon Young

Worst Display of Selfishness: Getting married on a holiday weekend

Who do you think you are? If everyone was as selfish as you holidays wouldn’t even exist. Or in the fall during football season. Nothing says romantic wedding like forcing your friends and loved ones to feign interest in something they’ve seen a hundred times and then to spend their time at the reception watching the game with the waiters on the ballroom kitchen TV.

Also, black tie weddings. What are we, in the Great Gatsby? Your butler called. He thinks you’re a douche.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst City Council Member: Mike Sullivan

Mike Sullivan, the City Council Member for District E, is the kind of guy that waits until the last minute to call his Mayor informing her that he is switching his vote on the matter of an unpaid seat on the seven-member Port of Houston Authority.  He’s the kind of guy that thinks preserving historic buildings violates property owner’s rights. He’s the kind of guy that looks out for taxicab companies because the Green Initiative reminds him of a sinus infection from his childhood.  He’s the kind of guy that doesn’t really know what he’s doing; but he knows if he votes against HPD budget cuts then people will like him… but he doesn’t know that those are the stupid people.  Mike Sullivan has a unique condition called Spineless Cowardism and basically his mouth is a butthole.

- Mills-McCoin

Worst Political Screw-up: Red Light Camera vote

The reason why this is a screw-up isn’t about whether or not red light cameras do anything but raise money for HPD, nor is it about who bankrolled which campaign. It’s about the fact that the vote was completely unnecessary. The contract with American Traffic Solutions was going to expire in 2024 and all Houston City Council had to do was not renew it and the cameras would have come down. Instead a proposition was placed on the ballot and now the city is involved in a lawsuit to determine whether a contract supersedes the will of the people and whether the city will have to pay money it doesn’t have to get out of a contract the citizens didn’t think it should have entered into in the first place.

-Alex Wukman

Worst Place to Buy Produce: Any grocer but Fiesta

I love my little Fiesta. I get 2 or 3 bunches of cilantro for a buck, beautiful Persian cucumbers for $1.89 a pound, gorgeous juicy pears at three for a dollar. The last time I went to Kroger limes were 4 for a dollar, lemons nearly a buck a pound, and they didn’t even have cilantro. H-E-B laughably asks nearly double the cost for all of their produce and Central Market is for people who seek status elevation for paying more for less.

-Andrea Afra

Worst Case of Too Little, Too Late: DeLay’s delayed conviction

Even though the photo in the Chron of Tom DeLay–snapped moments after being found guilty– was almost worth putting up with the man for 30 years (oh, that stricken, pissed-off look…visions of prison showers, like sugar plums, a-dance in his head), it was no where near enough, and no where soon enough.  Even discounting the possibility of a pardon from Governor for Life, Secessionist, and hair model  Rick Perry, the odds of “The Hammer” getting hammered up his jammer in the slammer are pretty remote–he’ll likely get the minimum sentence, do token time in the Oil Executive wing of one of Texas’s many fine prisons, and then begin a new career as either a televangelist or a ballroom dance instructor.  And in any case, with the Citizens United Decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has made DeLay’s little money laundering scheme irrelevant and unnecessary anyway.

- M.Martin

Worst  Interviewee:  Roy Mata

C’mon Holmes, I sent you questions like 4 months ago and you promised to send over the answers. I thought we were friends?

- Omar Afra

Worst Southern Hospitality: Chevron
As a multinational company with operations in more than 180 countries, Chevron hosted their shareholders meeting here in Houston this year. People from Ecuador, Nigeria, Colombia, Indonesia, Angola, Burma, Australia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Canada, Texas, California, Alaska, Wyoming came to talk about the impacts that Chevron has had on their communities. Impacts like probing up dictatorships, contaminating water and air, displacing people to build pipelines and causing terrible impacts on human health. Chevron showed their hospitality by not letting any of these people in. They barred more than 30 people, many who came from other continents, from attending this shareholders meetings, where they had stock, and came from communities who are impacted by Chevron’s operations. If you look at the Chevron website you might believe their public relations about how “Oil companies should support communities they are part of.” But judging them by their actions makes it clear that they would be happy to grind up the bones of children if they could sell it to you to power your car.

-Rob Block

Worst Question Asked Annually: When is it going to be winter?

Every year of my life I’ve heard the same questions this time of year: When is going to get cold? What is up with this weather? Clip this out and give it to a newcomer to our town, or save it before you ask yet again next year: Houston weather is fucked up because it revolves around our wardrobes. As soon as you dig out your jacket and scarves, it gets hot again. And just when you think it’s safe to wear that mini-skirt on a balmy November eve, BAM! Icy cold fingers of air be stroking your thighs. Verdict: Thread smartly and carry a light cardigan.

-Andrea Afra

Worst Houston Use of Facebook Invites: Musicians Inviting Me to Vote for Their Band

I’m pretty sure it’s still illegal to be a WHORE in Houston, which is why I was stunned this year to find my Invite Box on Facebook brimming with pathetic invitations from musicians beseeching me to vote for them in the wildly prestigious Houston Press Music Awards.  How falsely pretentious can you be, “inviting me” to vote for you?  For shame.  But as much as this is intended to be a complaint, it’s really a “thank you” to all of the artists and bands that carried out this atrocious act.  Thank you for making it the easiest decision in the world NOT TO VOTE FOR YOU.  Stop social networking your music and spend time crafting it, please.  Don’t choose to achieve cheap success in art.  That ruins the point.

- Mills-McCoin

Worst Attack on a Vital Houston Resource: Rice University

Most high thanks and praise be to President David Leebron of Rice University, the Board of Governors, VP for Public Affairs Linda Thrane, and all the unknown little people for all their efforts to destroy the vital cultural asset that is KTRU 91.7 FM.  Kudos on using secrecy and deception to educate your students on Rice’”unconventional” values. Houston has really gotten way too “interesting”, what with all that non-commercial student-run locally produced eclectic radio programming available.  KTRU dangerously gives a voice to local artists & bands, music venues & art spaces, helping “the scene”, and playing the music of Houston’s shifty ethnic minorities.  I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a place where the music and information I heard on the radio wasn’t pre-approved by someone in Los Angeles or Washington, D.C.  And heck, Rice students don’t need all that responsibility and all those leadership opportunities anyway!  Isn’t it just as good if they tweet their mixtapes to all their Facebook friends?

Also, big thanks to the University of Houston for valuing “Tier One” status so much higher than its regard by the Houston community, even though having two FM radio stations has nothing to do with attaining that status.  Also, good job on reducing broadcast coverage for all those rich classical music loving donors from 100,000 watts to a mere 50,000.  That should make getting $10 million of additional donations to pay off that taxpayer-backed bond easy as pie, even though apparently KUHF has had enough trouble meeting its existing targets lately.  Great team effort, Rice & UH; bring on the blandness!

- The Machine
savektru.org

Worst Use of a Publication as a Facilitator of Human Trafficking  and Prostitution: Houston Press

Look, I am no puritan.  Also, I have some close friends at Houston Press and respect what they do. Yet, the last portion of the paper that features the ‘Massage and Spa ads’ is rife with young Asian girls who are here against their will and working often to pay their way. But their work ultimately involves getting raped several times a day. No one knows more than me how hard it is for print publications to make revenue these days in this digital age but there must be some code of ethics here, guys. And ignorance is no excuse.  It is no secret what happens at these places and what the conditions are. HPD simply does not have all the resources to bust the endless amount of ‘Massage Parlors’ and the laws are not adequately set up to prosecute the pimps as opposed to the prostitutes. Two years ago, three ad reps at the Orlando Weekly were arrested and charged with Racketeering  for knowingly profiting from prostitution. They have since cut such ads from the paper. Not a bad idea.

- Omar Afra

Worst Greenwashing of Dirty Food: Ruggles Green

Grass Fed Beef and “Natural” Turkey, Buffalo, Chicken and Pork may sound natural and healthy, but unfortunately for anyone who really wants to help the environment and avoid toxins, commercially produced meat and dairy can’t go very far.  As for the “Gulf Coast Crab,” and
the “Wild-Caught Shrimp,” for me, the only green image that comes to mind is BP’s logo.  It’s good that they use sustainable furnishings, but the problems caused by the meat on their menu far outweigh any benefits.  Meat production, even so-called “natural” meat production,
is contributing about 70% of climate destroying gases according to the latest study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If you want a green lunch, there are some veggie options at Ruggles Green, but as for the meat options on the menu, Ruggles is greenwashing dirty food.

- Nick Cooper

Worst New Piece of Public Art: The James A. Baker III monument

I always take visitors to Houston to see our worst piece of public art (The George Bush monument) directly across from our best piece of public art (Big Bubble by Dean Ruck) on opposite sides of the Preston Avenue bridge downtown.  “The Commons” in Sesquicentennial Park also
became the site of a new 1.2 million dollar piece of public art unveiled just before Halloween this year, The James A. Baker III monument.  (Incidentally, North Carolina sculptor Chas Fagan created both the Bush statue and the new Baker addition. Buy local anyone?) Placed directly across Buffalo Bayou from George, the two larger than life bronze statues gaze longingly at each other across the slow moving waters.

Welcome to Houston’s art scene, James “The government shouldn’t overreact to corporate scandals” Baker.  You who watched the September 11 attacks at the Ritz-Carlton with the Bin Laden family.  You who is defending the Saudi’s against a trillion-dollar lawsuit brought forth by the September 11 families.  You who led the campaigns of the last four Republican presidents, Bush’s personal envoy in charge of restructuring Iraq’s $132 billion in debt, senior counsel for the Carlyle Group, violator of the Geneva Convention by destroying the civilian infrastructure of Iraq in Gulf War I, spokesperson for the Bush administration in its successful attempt to halt the vote recount in Florida, who as Counsel for Intelligence Policy prepared all applications for electronic surveillance and physical search under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and advised the CIA, the FBI,
and the Defense and State Departments.

What is the message of these works, that our children should aspire to grow up to oversee wars waged across the world against people poorer, browner and less consumer driven then ourselves?  That they should grow up to fight injustice perpetrated against giant corporations by
the lowly workers?  Given its proximity to Allen’s landing, I propose a statue in honor of José Campos Torres be erected in “The Commons”. Or any number of other worthy Houstonians such as: Mickey Leland, Barbara Jordan, Carl Hampton, Lightening Hopkins, Ray Hill, The Camp
Logan Rioters, or what about Beyoncé?

-Tish Stringer

Worst Sports Team: Everyone Sucks

Pick one- Texans, ‘Stros, Rockets, Dynamos, the fucking Aeros, Longhorns, Cougars, the Sharts (my softball team), etc. The list goes on and on. This has probably been the worst year of sports in Greater Houston’s much maligned history. It’s like God is paying us back for Enron and Tom Delay. At this point our emotions are more fragile than… Yao Mings foot? Drayton McLane’s ego? Our nonexistent defensive secondary? Really, the fact there are so many ways to rip on our city’s athletic organizations pretty much sums it up.
Side note- are the Dynamo even bad? I just assumed they were because they’re a Houston team in 2024 but as of press time I couldn’t give two shits to look them up.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst Venue: House of Blues

Fuck you. You still suck. I mean, have you still not gotten the point yet?

‘Worst Drink Prices 2024’, ‘Worst Sound Guy 2024’

-Marini van Smirren

Worst Inconvenience: Lack of Downtown Walmart

I don’t know about you guys, but nothing pisses me off more than there not being a Walmart downtown. Seriously, come on. At 4:30 in the morning, when I need avocados, condoms and a hammer, I don’t want to have to drive 30 minutes to the nearest Walmart to acquire my consumer needs. Yeah, they’re opening one in the Heights, but why don’t they just seal the deal and slap one downtown? Summer Fest would look mighty fine with the Walmart logo right there in skyline.

-Anonymous

Worst Arts Coverage: Free Press Houston

Recently, Jason Nodler of Catastrophic Theater helped me realize something critical. Our arts coverage is sorely lacking. For God’s sake, we only have one page to work with in a 36 page paper!  With all the great art and performance happening in this city there is now way we could fit it all on one page. That is why come our February issue we will be expanding the arts section to 2 ENTIRE PAGES! Put that in your pipe and smoke it Nodler!  But seriously, thanks Jason.

- Omar Afra

Worst Houston Sports Bar: 360 Sports Lounge on Washington Ave.

If by some horrible misstep you find yourself on a date with a Kardashian and she wants to go to a sports bar then head directly to 360 Sports Lounge.  While there are many giant TV’s to watch the game on, the Kardashian can also enjoy one of the TV’s screening the season finale of “Project Runway” or some such other travesty not pertaining to sports at all.  If being a douchebag is a competition then 360 Sports Lounge is waving the championship trophy over its head like an idiot.  A proper sports bar consists of gritty fans, greasy food and ungodly amounts of alcohol.  Oddly colored drinks served in triangle glasses instead of a tumbler have no business in a sports bar; and neither do people afflicted with Ed Hardy.

- Mills-McCoin

Worst Bureaucracy: Texas Worforkforce Commission

I understand that there are millions of people out of work, but for it to take a month to process an unemployment claim and six weeks to receive the first payment is ridiculous. People can lose their homes and in the amount of time it takes a faceless clerk to “investigate” whether or not they lost their job for a legitimate reason. The appeal process is even worse, no documents are allowed to be presented its all done over a conference call which makes it difficult to tell if your former employer is being honest with the Commission’s chosen representative. However, the worst part of the TWC isn’t how they handle people who have applied for assistance but how they spin actual unemployment statistics. As the financial crisis has continued the TWC has kept putting out cheery upbeat news releases touting how many jobs were created in sectors like leisure and hospitality without stating whether those jobs pay a salary that will allow people to be able to afford to purchase anything more than the bare necessities.

-Alex Wukman

Worst product to be sold in Montrose: Boats

I don’t think I really need to elaborate on this. To start, the nearest navigable body of water is at least 30 miles away and… Wait, that’s it. I’m not entirely sure who exactly their target market is… Does anyone else think it’s a drug cover up? Bad ‘sales’ ahoy.

-Marini van Smirren

Worst Reason To Get Butthurt: A Reader Left A Nasty Comment On Your Blog

If this applies to you then you should be aware of the easiest solution in the world: don’t allow readers to comment on your blog, you ridiculous pansy.  I’ve never understood why there is always some shock and surprise when a reader vehemently disagrees with an article or blog post.  Were you planning on everyone agreeing with you?  Did you think having an opinion was the same as a bubblebath?  You cannot possibly expect to delve into the ancient and vulnerable art of writing without encountering some friction.  And you should be ashamed of yourself if you take this drama to Twitter or Facebook in an underhanded attempt to create factions.  Or actually, go right ahead and do that… eat yourselves alive.

- Mills-McCoin

Worst Summer Ever (until the next one): 2010

One of life’s little ironies is that Global Climate change is pretty much an accepted scientific fact in places like San Francisco or Seattle–where the evidence of change is frequently obscured by clouds, fog, and cold drizzles of rain– but widely debated or dismissed as “liberal conspiracy” in places like Houston… where the facts of the matter are as evident as last month’s exorbitant and air-conditioning fuel ransom note from CenterPoint Energy (once better known to long-time residents as “Houston Looting & Plunder”).  Although the record temperature of 108 degrees (set in September of 2024) was never broken, the number of days described by the National Weather Service as “feeling like” over one hundred degrees exceeded any sane person’s desire to count… and August 2024 is now officially on record as the hottest month ever.

- M.Martin

Worst Bartender:  Olivia at Super Happy Fun Land

Olivia is such a bad bartender people have started to refer to her as ‘Oblivia’.  She is a self-proclaimed ‘ borderline autistic bartender’ who lacks the social skills, cocktail knowledge, speed, or any desire whatsoever to perform to at least a sub-par level of bartending. But, this is the charm that makes Super Happy Fun Land the place that it is. We would have it not have it any other way.

- Omar Afra

Worst Corporate Shakedown passed off as Community Involvement: H.E.B’s ‘Town Hall Meeting’

Company executives listened politely as their prospective future customers explained how much they had wanted H.E.B’s proposed new “Montrose Location” to be turned into a park (or perhaps had been perfectly happy when the property was Wilshire Village), but were willing to settle for having part of the property turned into green space.  H.E.B. had earlier leaked several possible designs for the new store, including one that featured a park, a farmer’s market, an outdoor concert space…and two million dollars that local residents needed to raise if they wanted it.  Pure corporate bait and switch at it’s finest.  Even in these troubled times, two million dollars is relative chump change for a corporation as large as H.E.B.  Had the city raised concerns that raised construction costs, the money would’ve been found.  The Montrose Land Defense Coalition did, in fact find comments for as much as 1.2 $M.  Not surprisingly, it was not enough–certainly not in Houston, where the principle use for trees is to send them to a paper mill that makes dollars.

- M.Martin

Worst DJ Selections: Michael Jackson

Someone explain to me why every bar and club in Houston (and every city in the world for that matter) continues to play Michael Jackson songs? Yo DJ, kick that mad pedophile’s music, son! What kind of world do we live in where the Dixie Chicks say one negative comment about our President and still can’t get played in this city nearly a decade later, yet Michael Jackson can molest kids and get celebrated anytime a DJ wants bodies on the dance floor? Before anyone comes to the defense of this “white woman pork face,” as Katt Williams so eloquently put it, and tells me he was never found guilty of molesting a child, explain to me how in one case he settled out of court with a child for $20 million? I don’t know about you, but if I was not guilty of something I would fight to the death to defend and protect my innocence. However, if I was guilty as sin and had the financial ends to buy my innocence….well $20 million sounds about right.

I understand that we sacrifice a lot sometimes to take the path of least resistance, and in this case playing Beat It is that path to get bodies moving. I just urge all bar owners to consider what is celebrated by playing this Freakshow’s songs. He prayed on innocent children. He built an amusement park to woo them like love interests. He had a freaking “adult alarm” in his bedroom. If you really love children, you build hospitals. You pay all the medical bills for 1,000 kids with cancer. You build schools.

Let 2024 be the year we finally boycott all music recorded by pedophiles. Is that so much to ask? I would rather Macarena a thousand times over than be forced to listen to one more song by a person who took advantage of children incapable of protecting themselves.

-Anonymous

Worst Local Band Names: We love many of these bands but hate the names!

Tax the Wolf

Outer Heaven

Skeptycynic

The Manichean

DJ Ipod Ammo

Chase Hamblin

Thelastplaceyoulook

Caddywhompus

Juz Coz

The Ton Tons

-FPH staff

Worst Local Food Trend:  Fusion Fast Food

Have I bitched about this before? Well let me ride again. Nothing makes me more angry than when some American thinks he can trump a millennia worth of trial and error, slow perfection, and tradition by merging 2 disparate cultures in his/her own ‘unique’ creation. We are talking Thai Tacos, Curried Buffalo Wings, Asian Chicken Salad,  Bratwurst and Queso, Falafel Burger, you name it. Just quit trying to be original and just be good.

- Omar Afra

Worst Political Development of the Year: The normalization of what once were extreme right wing viewpoints

It’s sickening for a candidate of any political party to suggest we need to prohibit people from voting, but this year saw Tea Party backed candidates and Tea Party organizers espouse ideas that were straight from the darkest days of Jim Crow. In February Tom Tancredo the Constitution Party candidate for the Governor of Colorado, who came in second, told audiences that he believed that people need to “pass a civics test before voting.” Judson Phillips the founder of Tea Party Nation went even further when he said on his organization’s radio show that “it makes a lot of sense” to limit voting only to property owners.

For those who are not familiar with the history of voting rights in this country, here’s a selection from the Department of Justice’s website: “In the 1890s, [the former confederate states] began to amend their constitutions and to enact a series of laws intended to re-establish and entrench white political supremacy. Such disfranchising laws included poll taxes, literacy tests, vouchers of “good character,” and disqualification for “crimes of moral turpitude.” These laws were “color-blind” on their face, but were designed to exclude black citizens disproportionately by allowing white election officials to apply the procedures selectively.”

Even in the darkest days of WWII the white political elite’s desire to keep everyone else down could not be stopped and led to a Supreme Court case, Smith v. Allwright, where Texas tried to defend the practice of a “white primary” which allowed ostensibly “private” political parties, like the Democrats and the Republicans, to conduct elections and establish qualifications for their members. The painful history of voter disenfranchisement in Texas aside, the reason why suggesting putting limits on voting rights is so heinous is that it means that the people who suffered for equality, the men, women and children who marched, were beaten and died, did so for nothing.

The right for every man and woman to vote is not a right that was enshrined in the Constitution by the founding fathers, it was a right that was won in the street and in the court room. The fear that all men would be equal led reactionaries to blow up churches, kill children and execute young men. To suggest that some people aren’t fit to vote because they don’t own their own home or because, as one commentator on GOPUSA.com suggested, they don’t know how many constitutional conventions the United States has had is disgusting.

-Alex Wukman

Worst Driving Across Town in Traffic to use a Coupon for Something You Didn’t Need Moment: METRO/Spain rail car deal

Everybody’s got that friend.  You know who I’m talking about.  That “frugal,” “thrifty,” “penny pincher” who will burn half a day and a tank of gas to save fifty cents on toilet paper because it was advertised in a Sunday sale circular.

The City of Houston (METRO) received $900 million in grants this year from the Federal Transit Administration to help build the much needed light rail.  So METRO shopped around for a good deal and signed a contract with a Spanish company to build the rail cars. Problem was, the grants from the FTA required METRO to buy American…so it looked like we were going to lose that federal money–and we’re talking close to a billion dollars.

Just this week METRO announced that they reached a settlement with the Spanish company.  They’re going to let us out of the contract, and they’re only going to keep $26 million of the $40 million we already paid them.  That’s right, the double-coupon waving geniuses at METRO are telling us we should be happy that we got $14 million back.  METRO, it’s going places.

- Harbeer Sandhu

Worst Restaurant and Coffee Shop: Brasil

You are like that friend everyone hates, but can’t get rid of. You suck at life. See you tomorrow.

-Brandon Young

Worst Race: White People

For the 27th straight year of my life, white people. Haha, but not really. Just a little. Did you know that Czechs don’t consider themselves white? Weird, huh?

Mostly I hate the dudes I see around town at bars with Kennedy hair, usually off Washington Avenue when I am doing bar reviews, and now more than ever at Grand Prize Bar and out and about most weekends in the Montrose. John Hughes Movie Rich Kid Hair. I’m bald, so maybe it’s partially jealousy. They took away the darts and the beanbag toss, so maybe they will go back to their home planet.

Also, guys that stare at my gym shorts at the Downtown YMCA get my goat. I’m flattered, but can you please get out of my shower stall?

-Craig Hlavaty

Worst Act of God: Rain on Summer Fest 2 years in a row

Okay Creator, Allah, Yahweh, whatever you’re tagging on dumpsters these days…all we’re trying to do is give the people of Houston TWO DAYS to separate from the monotony of their 9-5 jobs and the tide of economic desperation. TWO DAYS. Out of 365. I know we here at Free Press probably don’t give you a shout out as often as some people who might ask for less but shit, you’re practically handing out good weather to the White House. Sure, Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips LOVED the rain and volunteered with most of us in the mud to help make our job smoother last year at The Summer Fest but that was only one year, and if I remember correctly, you didn’t encourage the Of Montreal folks whatsoever to even come close to the mud, much less us. I know Of Montreal wrote “Satanic Panic in the Attack” and they might lose points with you for that one, but at Summer Fest 08, they fucking covered Bowie’s “Moonage Daydream” uniting a crowd of 20,000 vapid humans into a mass of positive vibrations.

I know you saw that. I guess I understand if Houston is “awash with sin” or whatever and you’ve still got a lot of work to do here before we get any kind of celestial kick-backs but, seriously, we have some AWESOME SHIT lined up for Summer Fest 2024 and I’m gonna go ahead and ask for your blessings early on behalf of all the future Staffers and Volunteers of the festival. Shukran Allah!

- Shelby Hohl

Worst Waiting in Line: The Drive Thru at El Rey @ Washington Avenue

Waking up Saturday morning at 2 pm, there is but one thing on my mind: tacos. After looking for my shoes from the night before and finding I slept in them, I putter on down to El Rey in the hopes that the cure to what ails me lies in the greasy, simple embrace of their fare. Even from a hundred yards away it’s evident my hangover remedy won’t be available any time soon.

The drive thru at El Rey depresses me more than Tyler Perry’s career success. Expect at least seven cars to be clogging the order lane in front of you and expect all seven cars to be filled with people ordering more than Kirstie Alley with a raging case of late night munchies. Their drive thru needs a drive thru. It takes forever to move forward and by the time you realize you could have just walked inside and picked up, you’re already committed. Once you’re back home with your bag of goodness you’ll wonder if it was really all worth it and why it’s now dark outside.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst Loss of Operating Hours: Montrose Library, now closed on Saturdays

Of all the days to close the library, Saturday makes the least sense. Due to budget shortfalls, weekly operation times were decreased by 20 hours, leaving most libraries to close 2 hours earlier each day at 6pm and all but the McGovern location to close on the weekends. This leaves working folks with little or no time to go to the library which will ultimately decrease the budget further for next year, and the next and the next, until one day when we’ll be told that we no longer can afford a public library, yet look at all the pretty stadiums!

-Andrea Afra

Worst New Academic Initiative: Random Drug Testing in High School

This month I received an email from a buddy that our old high school was going to be in the newspaper for a fairly controversial new initiative they’re going to enforce on their students. I’m not going to tell you the name of the school as I am a loyal alumnae, but suffice it to say it’s in Bellaire and rhymes with Shmisshmiscopal. As of next month, all students enrolled at my old high school will be given random drug tests throughout the year. That’s right, a high school is drug screening its students. The person behind this initiative must either be the most naïve nerd in America or a descendant of some high ranking member of the Gestapo. Have they never seen Fast Times at Ridgemont High? The stoner crowd is a bedrock clique in any high school! Who else is going to make fun of the jocks while greenhousing the 3^rd floor supply closet? Who else is going to stare vacantly out the window during calculus and attend pep rallies only to be ironic? And this initiative affects not only the wannabe hippies with Widespread Panic stickers in their BMWs, but also those who are just trying out new things. Whether you like it or not, high school is a time of experimentation. And that’s not a bad thing, it’s kinda necessary- it’s much better to discover how awesome beer makes you feel while you’re still at home under the protection of your parents than off at college where you can fail out and get VD. Kids mess around and screw up, it’s part of life. Also, if my high school is still anything like it was 10 years ago, roughly half the students will be expelled before lunch. All this Patriot Act paranoia doesn’t solve anything- let the parents test their kids if they stumble upon a connection between little Johnny’s newfound love of Mom’s lasagna and the Bob Marley poster recently tacked up in his wall. John Lithgow from Footloose called. He wants his bullshit back.

And are they testing the teachers? Because we had this one guy, Mr. Wilson, who taught French History, and I’m relatively certain he ripped the bong before class. To this day I can’t tell you one fact about the French but I can tell you some awesome stories of growing up in Montana in the 70s. And I’ll never forget the one and only time I ever went to a rave and ran smack into my Physics teacher, Mr. Casares, only he had a tongue ring and was covered in glow paint. What followed was perhaps one of the most awkward encounters of my life, with him refusing to acknowledge me despite my repeated requests for an extension on a project due date. I think I asked more to freak him out, but then again I was kind of a dick in high school. Thank god they didn’t test for that.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst Smell:  Free Press Office Circa 2 months ago

There was a bad cat. He made a bad smell. Bad,,bad cat.

- Omar Afra

Worst Graffiti: Writing

Quantity over quality is the culprit here and it’s about high time some of our local “graffiti” artists took themselves more seriously. The “writing” craze is not new by any means but, it seems lately every one is considering themselves to be valid graffiti artists based on the fact that they scribble the equivalent to a cave drawing on the side of dumpsters and business establishments around town. The sad part about all of this is the fact that most of these kids can actually create some of the most visually stunning artwork we’ve never seen. It reminds me of The Simpsons episode where Bart gets the label maker and puts his name on everything in the house, even Homer’s beer, thwarting Homer from not taking the last beer because “it’s Bart’s”. I believe that if these talented artists actually wanted to be considered for opportunities that would make them large sums of money, ushering most of them out of what could probably compared to squalor, they would focus their efforts more into the quality of their work rather than the quantity. I will probably never find myself looking for someone to commission for my next project on the wall in the bathroom at Rudz. If the artists actually began focusing their efforts into the massive colorful beautifications they are perfectly capable of, the city might actually start putting funds into the art community providing these very artists with paying gigs, doing THEIR VERY OWN thing, to objectively make the city a more interesting and inspiring place to live in. There are some amazing artists however that are already “on this tip”, and I would like to give them a shout out here for doing it right: Ack!, WEAH, DUAL, and Give Up (even though they write, it’s actually balanced with an equal amount of content heavy related artwork that is creating a unique identity for themselves as artists).

-Anonymous

Worst Political Letdown: Sheila Jackson Lee

How come Delaware gets all the good witch candidates? What’s that? Sheila Jackson Lee won again? Never mind.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst Example of a Pretentious One-Word Business Name: FLOSS

What’s with this trend of naming business establishments with cheesy one-word names (usually a meaningful noun reproduced in some minimalist font)?  I’m talking about overpriced diners with down-home names like “Chow.”  I’m talking about men’s boutiques that try to obscure the fact that they’re a frou-frou men’s BOUTIQUE with a rough-sounding noun like “Mortar.”  I’m talking about goofy clubs with names like “Status” where bro’s go to max out their credit cards and sniff each other’s cologne.  The one that takes the cake is the Midtown dentists’ office called FLOSS, and I’m not just saying that because they annoy me with their DAILY, glossy, half-page cardstock mailers.  (What a waste of resources…and don’t they know that such desperation does not inspire confidence in their dental skills?)

When I am shopping for a dentist, I want her to have a generic, boring name with the suffix DDS, something like “Rachel Wilfred, DDS,” or if she’s feeling inspired, feeling poetic, I’m willing to settle for “Wilfred Dental Associates.” Actually, since I am Sikh, I would probably look for a “Singh” in the name, like “Upinder Singh Chandi, DDS.”  Yeah, that’s a plug for my brother-in-law, but he lives in Maryland.  Sue me. And when you sue me, know that I will not be hiring a lawyer with a practice called “Gavel” or “Deposition” or “Brief,” even if she’s the best in town.  I will go with somebody who works at a firm whose name is a string of WASPy blue-blood names, preferably with a “Singh” thrown in for good measure.

I don’t need my dentist to be trendy; I need my dentist to be a competent professional.  Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but for some reason, I don’t imagine that a dentist can be both.

- Harbeer Sandhu

Worst Local Transportation System: Sidewalks

I was driving from my office to Rudyard’s for the monthly My Houston 2024 meeting where we were going to listen to Zakcq Lockrem talk about how complete streets can make Houston safer and healthier in 2024 and Houston City Council Member Stephen Costello talk about what is going to happen next with Prop 1: Renew Houston.  I’m in the right lane on Waugh, a one way street with a bike lane on the right side and realized that a man on crutches was traveling half in my lane and half in the bike lane, with cars driving 35 miles an hour past him.  I slowed down to a stop to let cars pass on the left, so I could get over to the next lane hoping that the four cars behind me also saw this man, so I had a little time to think about this situation.  This man had chosen to travel there because the sidewalks along Waugh are not wide enough to accommodate his manner of walking on crutches and are inconsistent, broken, and occasionally marred with a utility pole.

How ironic to encounter this man on my way to a meeting to discuss a new funding mechanism for improvements to the public realm and a discussion of the failure of City of Houston code and funding priorities to account for the safety of all road users. After Zakcq’s presentation, CM Costello began his discussion of how Prop 1 might be applied differently depending on the needs of the diverse neighborhoods of Houston, noting that he did not believe that the City of Houston Public Works Department had the “tools” (wide sidewalk standards) in its “toolbox” (City codes) – to begin to address these concerns.  For too long the predominant question that our engineers in Houston have been asked to solve is how to move a box truck as fast as possible over a long distance.  The City needs to begin asking its engineers to answer a greater diversity of questions to fairly and efficiently meets the many needs of a diverse and growing population:

-How can we connect as many people and jobs as possible through safe and efficient transportation?

-If we redesign our streets to be safe and comfortable for the most vulnerable – those with physical disabilities as well as young children and the elderly – won’t we be making them safer and more comfortable for all to choose walking in the process?

-In what areas of town could we most quickly and efficiently invest in wide sidewalks and ADA compliant intersections to greatly increase the walkable parts of our City?

-Where is it appropriate to take measures to slow down automobile traffic to provide priority for safe bike and pedestrian streets, like the City of Portland’s hugely successful and cheap Neighborhood Greenways program?

-How many wide sidewalks and safe bikeways can we build for the price of 1 mile of new freeway?

- Jay Crossley

Worst Demographic: The Patrons at Hooters on any UFC Fight Night

I haven’t seen people like that since I found that guy living under my car. If a bus ever crashed into one of their “restaurants” when an MMA bout was on primetime, Houston’s median IQ level would increase 32 points.

If said bus was filled with dudes thinking their Affliction shirts make them look hard, make that 38.

–Stephen Thompson

Worst (Ab)Use of Public Airwaves: KPRC, KHOU, KTRK, KRIV

You may not know this, but you own the broadcast spectrum.  You know, those frequencies that TV, radio, and cell phone signals are transmitted through.  Companies like TV stations and cell phone providers lease them from you and me (i.e. the government) for a fee.  In addition to the money they pay us, there is always language in the contracts that specifies that they are required to do stuff in the “public interest.”  This is why you get those Emergency Broadcast System alerts and those oh-so-helpful and hilarious anti-drug public service announcements that always remind you to pack a bowl before the Simpsons comes on.

Recently, a group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) produced a well-made, stylish ad that links heart disease to fast food (specifically McDonald’s) and promotes occasional vegetarianism.  It shows a dead man on a gurney, still clutching a McCrap burger.  (You know that stuff won’t ever even rot, don’t you?  That’s right, even mold and bacteria are smarter than McDonald’s customers.)  PCRM is based in Washington, but they pitched their ad to four Houston TV station–NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox–because Houston is a well-known market for fat asses.  All four stations turned it down.  Their reasoning?  They say it doesn’t meet their “standards and practices” guidelines–whatever that means.  We all know the real reason you can’t even BUY free speech is because they love that Mickey D’s cheese.

Incidentally, the Vancouver-based media critic non-profit ADBUSTERS produces some great ads for their annual “TV Turn Off Week” and “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns, which are, surprise!, turned down by all the major networks year after year.  They produce stylish commercials and offer the going rates, but our “free press” know who their real masters are–and it ain’t us or “freedom.”

Lenin (Vladimir, not John) said “the capitalists will sell us the rope we’ll use to hang them.”  Lenin was wrong.

Look for the PCRM ad online.  It’s called “Consequences.”

- Harbeer Sandhu

Worst Betrayal of Public Trust by the Media: Houston Chronicle

When the administrators of Rice University and the University of Houston were plotting the conversion of a Houston institution, KTRU, into the classical music arm of Houston’s NPR empire, they had a problem.  They were worried that the public (and particularly the KTRU listening audience) might get wind of their plan and convince the UH Board of Trustees that closing down KTRU was a dodgy move from both a public relations or a financial management perspective.  Luckily for them, they had a friend in Jeannie Kever at the Houston Chronicle.  Kever agreed to “embargo” the story of KTRU’s sale until the day of the Board of Regents meeting, thereby preventing the public at large (and KTRU supporters in particular) from organizing to oppose the sale before the UH Trustees granted their approval.  For Rice and UH, the embargo strategy was a success.  KTRU supporters were kept in the dark until the last minute, and the UH Trustees narrowly approved the purchase.  Since the announcement of the sale, opposition to the demise of KTRU has been fierce and organized.  But because Rice and UH were able to delay public disclosure of the deal, the two universities were able to gain an early advantage over opponents among Rice students, alumni, and the Houston community at large.  So much the better for Rice and UH; so much the worse for Houston and the Chronicle’s reputation.

-Eric Davis

Worst thing that will happen in the 2024 State Legislature: Christian Republic of Texas Agenda

Traditionally this list looks back on the last 12 months, but with the Republicans securing a supermajority in the Texas Legislature it seems time to discuss what that means for the future of the Christian Republic of Texas. The phrase “Christian Republic of Texas” is not a joke, Texas is moving closer and closer to a theocracy each year. There is already a campaign underway by some State Republican activists to remove the current Speaker of the House, John Strauss, because he’s Jewish. Texas State Republican Executive Committee member John Cook wrote in a November 30 e-mail that, “We elected a house with Christian, conservative values. We now want a true Christian, conservative running it. This is not about Straus, this is about getting what the people want.” Cook’s letter came out before Representatives Aaron Pena and Allan Ritter jumped ships to the GOP to give Republicans 101 votes to the Democrats 49. With over 100 votes in the Texas House, and a newly appointed Christian conservative speaker, we can expect Texas to be come very hostile to viewpoints that aren’t those of rich white people.

Don’t be surprised when the new state legislature begins mining the same vein of right wing, race baiting rhetoric that swept the GOP into power. One of the key pieces of legislation that will help solidify the nativist agenda will be the voter ID bill. This legislation was introduced in 2024 and 2024 and neither time did it have the votes to make it to the Governor’s desk. However, this time it’s expected to sail through committee and the House. There might be something of a fight in the State Senate, but it won’t really matter.

Another piece of legislation that will most likely pass will be some variation of Arizona’s “show me your papers” law. Three versions of the bill have already been filed and the Republican leadership has said that they will give state and local law enforcement the tools to “combat the invasion” coming from Mexico. A third proposed bill would make English the official language of Texas. And that doesn’t even deal with the proposed bills requiring drug testing for people who receive unemployment or any other financial assistance as well as the bill that would allow the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

-Alex Wukman

Worst Display of Human Nature: Chron.com comments sections

I know I am probably wasting my time there, but after reading the news online I can’t help but delve into the sordid depths of the comments left by other Houstonians in an effort to get to know my neighbors better. I find for the most part that they are racist, bloodthirsty savages with a penchance for spouting vitriol and violence. They despise Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, Obama, gays, and welfare, yet harbor great adulation for nukes, the death penalty, ICE, Walmart, the WOT, and vigilante grannies who shoot illegals in Walmart parking lots.

-Andrea Afra

Worst Time Waster: Tie- Angry Birds and Words With Friends

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who purchased an iPhone in the last year, you’re aware that the device’s reputation as a time squanderer is fully warranted. Case in point- many of you are probably reading these words on one right now. But it’s not incredibly witty and intellectual social commentary that wastes most of your day. Applications, or “Apps” as Webster’s will soon be forced to introduce into the English lexicon, have transplanted both hangovers and supply closet masturbation as the biggest detriment to work place production. Two apps in particular, Angry Birds and Words with Friends, are the biggest culprits.

Angry Birds is a mindless game where you shoot birds out of a slingshot to kill monsters hiding in the dumb little buildings. It was rumored there once was a man who understood the plot of the game but he was killed right before he could pass his wisdom on. It’s ability to drain time out of your life is legendary and a lot of that’s probably due to the fact you can play it anywhere. Here’s a haiku I composed about it:

Angry Birds Take Flight

Ramming Buildings Whilst I Poo

My Legs Are Asleep

Words With Friends, or Scrabble for Retards, at least requires some modicum of intelligence. Unfortunately, it’s also as addictive as its avian counterpart. In the last few weeks I’ve played so many games of Words With Friends I’m starting to score the very words people use in conversations with me throughout the day. For example, iPhonedouche is worth at least 40 points, depending on tile placement.

–Stephen Thompson

Let’s figure out if God exists. Do you believe in God?

With all the holiday reveling, it is important to re-explore this question and bring some grander issues the surface. However, this question is bigger than our own beliefs as to whether or not God exists. No, this questions cuts at the baggage we attach to language, the way our idea of God can change (if we have one at all), and puts us in the peculiar position of articulating our world-view.  So here goes mine:

Omar Afra

Occupation (Mis)-Managing Editor, Free Press Houston

After-life status: 72 Virgins

The word God is loaded with so much baggage.  The very explanations of what constitutes God were much more sophisticated one thousand years ago.  This is really a question on whether we believe in ANYTHING immaterial or not. I gotta say YES. Love is definitely immaterial. There are just too many stupid things we do that do not jive in an simply evolutionary context. See, I have this ugly dog. This ugly dog offers me no companionship, does not fetch slippers, shits where he pleases, hates me, and is a general burden on my life and resources. There is no Darwinian explanation on why I love this dog and continue to allow him to drain me of treasure and life force.  Some people would argue that love is merely a collection of chemicals in the brain which force you to make dumb decisions. No, I think those chemicals a only symptomatic of something immaterial going down.  But this is very well one of those instances where human language fails us. Art and music are more adept at exploring such questions.  Either way, boobies.  That’s right, boobies.

Paul Smollen

Occupation: Scientist

After-life status: Eternal Bliss

I’m a deist. I don’t belong to or believe in most of any of the major organized religions. I simply believe there is a higher being that created our spirits and who probably created, at some point, the universe. Because, there is no other way to explain the unique spirit and consciousness each of us has. It is clear to me consciousness can’t just be explained as appearing when matter is rearranged in a specific way, to make cells and to make a brain. Consciousness is more than just matter, it is different than substance. Thus it must have been created by a higher being. That being is probably also guiding the future of the universe in a very subtle way that does not contradict scientific laws. Beyond this, I don’t know much about this God, and I don’t see how one can learn enough to claim one or another of the major religions is right.

Kwame Anderson

Occupation: Teacher

After-life status: Joy on tap

The question was asked whether or not I believed in God. The difficulty in answering this question lies in the thought of God Is vs. God As. Anytime that a new land is colonized, de-colonized, or re-colonized, first comes the army, next comes the doctors and the priests. The idea of God “as” connected to the religion controlled by some dominating entity in order to make oppression more palpable is a reoccurring phenomenon throughout history. The reverence of the lord has led many to just change the lord while maintaining the reverence amidst the subtraction of rights and liberties. The idea of the will of the “chosen,” the divine birthright and such are all factors which contribute more to God as thing, as idea, as the unchallengeable authority used to control and/or maintain/create willful submission. Also, there is Claus-ian idea of the “man in the sky” who purports goodness, while allowing evil, the idea of the deserved suffering of man, the tolerance of hell on Earth in order to live in the eternal happiness only achieved in death, well that too is a point of contention. However, if one (such as I) believes that God lives in and around us, and that man’s many interpretations do not overcome the force and power of God, that faith in God does not have to be justified or proven to man. They say to only pray if you believe, I’ve prayed and believed, and I believe those prayers have been answered. God is, regardless of what he/she has been used as.

Lina Dib

Occupation: Artist (un-employed)

After-life status: Fire and brimstone

The question isn’t about God. Who is that anyway? We like to name things. I mean that’s what we do right? We point and name because otherwise we’d be back to the beginning – to noise. Noise is God. Gods are noise and we enjoy defining. Or maybe its closer to the french root of the word devine, which means to guess. Indeed it is an extreme delight to feel as though we can get closer to that which is unnamable, to abandon oneself to the divine pleasure of dancing to the noise.

Nick Cooper

Occupation: Drummer ( not really a ‘job’)

After-life status: Stuck in limbo between planes of existence

To the extent that I can imagine a spiritual power, it is connected to systems of life on Earth, not to heaven, the afterlife, nor any narrative.  It has always seemed strange to me when others think they know the truth about the spiritual or supernatural.  I can’t take it seriously when people try to convince others about their beliefs and put on a whole show about it.  When someone walks up to me and says that Jesus loves me and wants to save me from eternal torture but
cannot unless I transform, it is no more convincing than being told that Zeus demands I hand over my wallet.

Tyler Barber

Occupation: Art Director, Free Press Houston

After-life status: Eternal Torment!

Cramming Thousands of Years’ of Debate, into 300 Words

I do not believe god exists. That may sound like a very resolute statement, and no doubt it will be misinterpreted. It is important to make a distinction between what type of belief we’re talking about. There are three ways in which one can believe in god: 1) monotheism, 2) polytheism and 3) deism. As for agnosticism, it exists in the overlap between where deism ends and atheism begins (so for the sake of brevity and focus, we’ll leave agnosticism aside for now).

As with mono- and polytheism, belief in either of these systems has to allow for miracles and supernatural intervention into our personal lives. With monotheism in particular, one has to take the position, for example, that god hears your prayers and takes sides in wars — assertions that seem absurd and childish in my view. No matter how progressive the individual, the belief in one, personal god, at some point, must yield to supernatural explanations of the natural world.

Deism, on the other hand, is the belief more-or-less in what Aristotle (and later St. Thomas Aquinas) described as the “unmoved-mover.” Or, that which started the universe. Whenever you hear a religious person attach belief in god to a famous scientist (namely, Einstein) they’re trying to wedge a monotheistic, personal god onto what’s clearly a deistic outlook (and one that is fundamentally different). Still, to me, deism is a weak assertion, and its claims are sitting ducks. Every few weeks the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland is unboxing the remaining puzzle-pieces of what Aristotle’s “unmoved-mover” is.

I believe in an evidence-based world. Philosophical Naturalism is the best doctrine that describes my “belief.” I do not believe in miracles or any supernatural intervention in the universe. Nor do I believe in a supernatural beginning to our universe. To me, all we have is this amazing, intricate, ever-fascinating reality to explore. And I’m not wasting any of my time here dreaming of some place “better,” where the grass is greener after death. Rather, I am not content, but elated, to think, wonder and discover our real world.