August’s Perfect Party

This month, we’re thinking about backs, those worth patting and otherwise. As for the patting crowd, there’s Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the majority opinion for the Supreme Court upholding Texas’s decision to disallow license plates bearing Confederate flags; All Nippon Airways CEO Osamu Shinobe, whose airline launched a direct flight between Bush and Tokyo Narita in June; and Marilyn Brown, president of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston, the group that coordinates the city’s aggressive fight against homelessness, which has dropped a whopping 46 percent locally. But don’t worry, this isn’t just one big patty party. We’re also inviting Beth Sanders Moore, who’s now facing questions from former friends and donors about how exactly she used funds for her charity, CancerForward; Andre Johnson, former Texan and current Colt, who can’t seem to stop complaining about his former organization; John Franke, owner of Dallas-based Velvet Taco, which recently opened a Houston location; and Ellen Urbani, whose new book, Landfall, takes place during and after Katrina and is being released on the storm’s tenth anniversary (she reads at Brazos Aug. 26). Why aren’t we patting Franke’s and Urbani’s backs, you ask? Well, we aren’t not patting them—fact is, we haven’t yet eaten his food or read her book. But we can’t help but wonder: why in the world do we need a Dallas taco chain here, much less a Katrina novel written by someone who lives in Portland? Still, we’re keeping an open mind. And now, an enormous fangirl back pat goes to someone who, sadly, passed away almost nine years ago, Ann Richards, whose face we’d love to see on the new $10 bill. (As noted before in this space, it’s our party and we’ll invite who we want to.) 

Published in the The Barbecue Issue issue of Houstonia Mag.