Amarillo

Newspaper Fights City Hall

Demi Mishel Muniz: Immigrant Smuggler Left Diabetic to Die in Ditch

The U.S. Attorney's Office has charged two people with conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens, but their case is more serious than that. Prosecutors say Demi Mishel Muniz, 33, and Luis Aceituno, 26, were tranporting illegal immigrants in a van from Houston to Los Angeles when one of the ... More >>

Who Are You? Songs Commonly Attributed To The Wrong Artists

​Last week, after the tragic, alcohol-fueled passing of Jackass hero Ryan Dunn, Rocks Off at Taco Cabana wearing a promotional shirt for The Hangover II that we stole borrowed from the office here at the Press. As we were loading our hands with condiment containers, a guy came up to us and sai ... More >>

Underground Footage From a Texas Dairy Farm (Not for the Weak of Stomach)

Undercover footage from a dairy farm southwest of Amarillo shows workers crushing sick and injured calves' skulls with pickaxes and hammers, and tossing dying calves on a pile of dead ones in the back of a truck -- acts that one animal welfare group says violates state cruelty laws. Gathered by ... More >>

Timothy Rosales: DPS Ups the Ante on Finding Escaped Sex Offender

DPSTimothy Rosales: Your chance to cash in​The Department of Public Safety is upping by 50 percent the reward for helping to find the sex offender who escaped from a Houston halfway house. Information on Timothy Rosales will now be worth $7,500. DPS spokeswoman Tela Mange says investigators a ... More >>

George Strait: No Unflattering Photos, Please

Marc BrubakerEvidently shooting George Strait from this angle and distance is OK.​Rocks Off does our best to shield our readers from all the red tape we have to go through in order to bring you a steady stream of concert reviews. For one thing, it's pretty boring - a bunch of emails and relea ... More >>

Fool Hearted Memory: Music That Chooses You, Not the Other Way Around

​ Someone once observed wryly that the only member of your family you'll ever actually choose is your spouse, and perhaps a whole lot of that observation is equally applicable to the music of our lives. A couple of years back we were sitting at Prince's Hamburgers off the Southwest Freeway in the ... More >>

Noncombat Deaths: Another Casualty of War

The mass shooting at Fort Hood was just one of a growing number of troubling military deaths, murders and suicides.

Texas Traveler: Plano Balloon Festival

Photos by eppytx​Every fall for the past 29 years, the skies over Plano come aglow with colorful aircrafts and odd hissing sounds that signal take-off for flight The Plano Balloon Festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary Sept. 18-20. It's an event that has raised more than 2 million dolla ... More >>

The Burmese Come to Houston

Get in, get out. Refugees have a shrinking window of support until it's time to fend for themselves.

A Musical Guide to Post-Secession Texas, Part 2: "Trinity"

[Note: This week Rocks Off is looking at the musical heritage, highs and lows, for each of the five possible states that might result should Texas secede from the U.S. like Gov. Rick Perry wants it to. Yesterday we began with the Panhandle/West Texas "Palo Duro" territory; today it's northeastern qu ... More >>

George Strait Week, Part 5: Texas George

Like the man himself said, easy come, easy go. Happy as we are that it's Friday, and almost quitting time to boot, Rocks Off a little sad too, because that means George Strait Week is almost over. But not quite. We're putting it to bed the only way we know how - with the King's five best Texas song ... More >>

Texas Traveler: Angleton's Mysterious House of the Century

It all started with an obsession. And a blog post. The House of the Century was built in 1972 by the Ant Farm Art Collective, a group that included architects Richard Jost, a then-recent graduate of the University of Houston, and Doug Michels, founder of the collective and professor at UofH. (Ant ... More >>

ID Theft

Someone gets your social, ruins your credit, upends your life. And gets away free and clear.

Fight for Your Right

Does the U.S. belong with the Axis of Evil?

What We Lose, And What We Gain, If Texas Secedes

Rick Perry, our governor, has taken a steep dive off the sanity cliff with his preachin'-to-the-Rush-choir talk of seceding from the United States.This may be hard to imagine, but we think Perry might not have thought the whole thing through so well. And not just because he's presented the image of ... More >>

R.I.P. Texas, Says Best-Selling Author (A Non-Texan)

Texas, your day is done.That's according to Bryan Burrough, the Vanity Fair contributor and author of The Big Rich, a best-selling look at the oilmen who ruled the state and beyond for much of the 20th century.Burrough writes in an op-ed column in the Washington Post that, with the farewell of Georg ... More >>

Aftermath: Robert Earl Keen at House of Blues; Dash Rip Rock at the Continental Club; Hayes Carll at Warehouse Live

Photos: Hayes Carll/ Craig Hlavaty; Dash Rip Rock, Robert Earl Keen/ Chris Gray On their 1996 self-titled debut LP, Hee Haw-loving Nashville ironists BR5-49 cut a song called "Little Ramona (Gone Hillbilly Nuts)." Anyone who has read either the paper or this site in the past few weeks wi ... More >>

Soul Men Pays Fitting Tribute to the Late Bernie Mac

Blues Brothers

Up in Smoke

The ban's arrival, from a Catbird's seat

Cold Case

Woman found dead 17 years ago in Manvel remains unidentified

Doug Supernaw

Former country superstar. Now starring in a courtroom near you.

Unknown Legend

Roots renegade Joe Ely never achieved pop stardom, but that's all right by him...sorta

Horse Flesh

Texas struggles with what to do with its overabundance of Equus caballus, while Europeans wait with open mouths

Texas Burger Binge

Our food critic reports on the state of the Texas burger -- and recommends 18 you need to try immediately

Ultra Man

Champa is the champ of our DJ competition at South Beach

Owed to Billy Joe

Today all the best poets are singers. That's why a singer should be Texas's next poet laureate.

Playbill

Today all the best poets are singers. That's why a singer should be Texas's next poet laureate.

MOFRO

Today all the best poets are singers. That's why a singer should be Texas's next poet laureate.

Medley Fool

DJ Jester mixes and mashes up Willie Nelson, Ice-T, the Carpenters and LL Cool J

Down-Home Brew

Learning to speak wino, and other lessons from the road, with Eleven Hundred Springs

Ruffled Feathers

The Dixie Chicks and other musicians are fighting for their rights -- and a bigger check

Hanging Up

TDCJ finally halts monitoring of attorney-client phone calls -- sort of

Talk's Back

Storytellers practice their craft in a concert for all ages

Wild Bills

Heed the great wisdom of our legislators. Don't deal bats or bait police dogs.

Letters

Davy and Mike, ExCEPtion to the Rule, Heat's On

Texas Thunder

Stay true to Pantera. They're true to you.

2001: A Bell Mayoral Odyssey?

Councilman Chris tests the waters against Brown

Will the Real Texas Musician Please Stand Up

The land of gee-tars and fiddles

Back to the Futurist

The guy who designed Cadillac Ranch wants to build a dolphin space station. Is it any wonder UH is divided over the return of Doug Michels?

Working the Rails, Part Two

The guy who designed Cadillac Ranch wants to build a dolphin space station. Is it any wonder UH is divided over the return of Doug Michels?

The Strait Dope

Gettin' jiggy with George Strait at his country music festival

What Really Happened To Rodeny Hulin?

Since his death, teenage inmate Rodney Hulin has become a national symbol of why it's wrong to send juveniles to adult prisons. His true story, though, paints a different kind of troubling picture.

South of the Sabine

The Sunset Tea Room gives way to some new ideas about old-fashioned food

Don't cry for me, Amarillo

How once-fearsome corporate raider T. Boone Pickens was beaten at his own game -- by a one-time protege

Static

How once-fearsome corporate raider T. Boone Pickens was beaten at his own game -- by a one-time protege

Press Picks

How once-fearsome corporate raider T. Boone Pickens was beaten at his own game -- by a one-time protege

Pop Moment

How once-fearsome corporate raider T. Boone Pickens was beaten at his own game -- by a one-time protege

The Year of Living Anxiously

Are We Having Fun Yet? Or is it just the jangly buzz of advanced urban stress syndrome?

Diamond in the Rough

Need a baseball fix? Hop over to Beaumont for Kerfeld's Frogs