Lost and Found

Gems of kindness surface amid mom's search for Ruby Jane's stolen violin afterHouston carjacking

Photo by Matt Lankes
Photo by Evans Caglage
Photo by JoBelle Smith
Celeste Photography

“It was by the grace of God that that boy didn’t shoot us. We were really, really lucky.” A still shaken but determined JoBelle Smith spent part of her Monday in some of the roughest neighborhoods in Houston, trying to find the one thing her daughter Ruby Jane holds most dear.

“This is a true great love between a musician and her instrument,” JoBelle says of the violin custom made for Ruby Jane.

It is one of several instruments stolen Thursday night when the two were carjacked at gunpoint. It happened after a gig at Dosey Doe, as JoBelle tried to enter a gate code outside a friend’s Houston condominium complex near the Galleria.

With help from a friend and one of Ruby Jane’s band mates, JoBelle searched dumpsters and pawnshops for that priceless violin on Monday. She didn’t have any luck but says she’s certain it will be found.

She says she’s been through enough in her life that she is very good at compartmentalizing things and, “What is important right now is taking care of my child and getting her fiddle back,” calling its loss a blow to Ruby Jane’s heart — Ruby Jane Smith is a 17-year-old Austin-based musician, singer and songwriter best known for her mastery of the fiddle.

What happened Thursday night has turned the Smith’s worlds upside down. The man who held a gun to JoBelle’s head and carjacked them took everything inside their Chevy Trailblazer, but he didn’t take the two women’s spirits. JoBelle says they are both traumatized and probably have not even begun to process the events that left them on the side of the road with no money and no way to contact anyone for help.

She says as the carjacker started to pull away, she instinctively opened the back door and reached into the backseat for her purse. “I’ve gotta get something to get us home,” she thought to herself. She said it was a gut reaction, but she put the purse back the moment she saw the man look at Ruby Jane and say, “You.” JoBelle says it was then she feared he might try to take her daughter.

“I started screaming,” she says, “I freaked out.” Fortunately, he left only with their tangible things and the Smiths weren’t physically harmed. JoBelle says Ruby Jane is staying with friends in Austin, battling the flu. “She is really traumatized and I need her to heal,” JoBelle says. “It’s a lot for a young girl to handle.”

While Ruby Jane gets over her illness and what was without a doubt a hugely traumatic event, her mom says she thinks what happened to them was gang related, and the police told her she and Ruby Jane were, in fact, very lucky.

She says besides Ruby Jane's 12-string guitar, which was recovered behind a pawnshop this past weekend, none of the other stolen gear, instruments or valuables, including the violin, have turned up.

One pawnshop owner she spoke with Monday was approached Friday by a group of men who wanted to sell him some items. He believes, after speaking with JoBelle, that everything they showed him belonged to the Smiths. Because he figured it was stolen, he didn’t buy any of it. Monday JoBelle picked up Ruby Jane’s recovered guitar and a merchandise cart that was also stolen, calling it a step in the right direction.

Little gems of kindness

JoBelle says the whole experience made her feel violated but the heinous act perpetrated by one man has also reminded her of the good in people. She says the experience has presented her with little gems of kindness along the way: from the desk clerk at the hotel they went to after the crime, offering them a ride to the DMV to get new drivers licenses so they’d be able to rent a car to get home, to the man standing in line at the DMV giving them some money to help them get back to Austin, to the friend from Austin who drove all the way to Houston and back to bring them home.

She said when she thanked the hotel clerk for his kindness, he said, “I would hope if I was in your situation, someone would do the same for me.”

I asked JoBelle how she feels about the outpouring of support that’s overwhelming her Facebook page. “I mean I’m speechless. Something like this really shows wonderful love around us…because sometimes we do feel lonely being just a mother and daughter. Sometimes it’s hard.”

She’s seen an outpouring of love online and a flurry of calls from people just wanting to know what they can do to help. She says she doesn’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason but, “There is meaning in everything if you look for the good in it. These things happen. My job is to find joy and goodness in it, and I’ve found support I didn’t even know was there…I feel very loved, and I don’t know what to say.”

She says the best Christmas present she could ask for is a chance to process that love she and her daughter have received, after an event that left her with what she calls “the most lost feeling I’ve ever had in my life.”

While she continues to believe the possession Ruby Jane holds most dear will be found, she says her main priority is taking care of the person she holds most dear — her daughter.

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JoBelle and Ruby Jane will be at a benefit being held for them Saturday from 7 - 10 p.m. at Victory Grill in Austin. It will feature WhoDo; Ruby Jane will perform.

You can also help by donating to Ruby Jane’s Kickstarter campaign. Funds raised will help pay for her new CD. Click here for details.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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