Amarillo

Last Night: Jason Aldean at Reliant Stadium

Jason Aldean Reliant Stadium March 11, 2013 Somewhere along the way Jason Aldean rubbed me the wrong way, and whenever I did have a stray thought about him, the words "massive tool" weren't far behind. I spent most of his RodeoHouston concert Monday night at (a packed) Reliant Stadium trying to fig ... More >>

The Incredible, Hilarious Memo On How To Make Texas Tech & Its Coach "Cool": A Quiz

The guys at Deadspin have gotten their hands on a piece of comedy gold -- a memo on how the school can make itself and its football coach, former Red Raider QB Kliff Kingsbury, into ultra-hip, highly cool icons that the kidz of today will flock to just so they can be hip and cool too. A tall order ... More >>

New Map Splits Texas Into Five States, Again

Neil Freeman is a civic planner and artist who puts out the engaging website Fake Is The New Real. You'll never really what you'll find on the site, but one of his recent efforts has started buzzing around the net, especially among political-types frustrated with the electoral-college system. Thos ... More >>

30 Essential Texas Restaurants

Eat here before you die.

Chef Chat, Part 1: Brandi Key of Coppa Ristorante Italiano, On Working Up the Pappas Food Chain and Learning to Cook with Food Allergies

Brandi Key Coppa Ristorante Italiano 5555 Washington Tel: 713-426-4260 This is Part 1 of a three-part Chef Chat series. Check back with us for Parts 2 and 3, which will run in this same space Thursday and Friday. When Brandi Key was named executive chef at Coppa Ristorante Italiano, all eyes were ... More >>

The First Alt-Country Record? Flatlanders Rediscover The Odessa Tapes

A lot of stellar music came out of that flat land known as West Texas. Bob Wills, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings, Terry Allen, Guy Clark, and the Sparkles are just a few artists who found something in the wind, the dust, the heat, the cactus, the mesquite, the sandstorms, the blizzards, t ... More >>

Does Dallas-Fort Worth Have the Worst Tippers in the State?

Last week, Eater alerted the great foodie masses to a website called Lousy Tippers that contains a pretty scary database of the nation's worst tippers. "There is a consequence," the site preaches ominously from its header. Call it the ultimate form of societal pressure to make sure you leave a grat ... More >>

Glendon Bruening: Farm Worker Shoots Wad at Man Who Sexted His Wife

Who knew the wheat fields of the Panhandle were so rife with lust and passion? Call this story 50 Sheaves of Wheat. Per Connectamarillo.com, Ochiltree County sheriff Terry Bouchard said that 61-year-old Glendon Bruening was enraged when he found out that a fellow reaper had been texting lewd image ... More >>

Capsule Stage Reviews: The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Extremities, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Romeo and Juliet

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 >>

Jacob Isom: Skateboarder Stop Koran-Burning, But What About The Houston Boycott?

This video, of an Amarillo skateboarder stopping a local wingnut pastor from burning the Koran, has gone viral.But in the course of its viral-ness we've learned the bookburning Man of Faith is none other than the guy who called for a boycott of Houston after it elected Annise Parker -- who is a les ... More >>

Windpower Woodstock: George W. Bush, Limitless Swag & A Burgeoning Success Story

Windmills in Texas -- as romantic-looking as in Holland​We used to love when oxymoronic news broke because a former editor would always exclaim, "Dogs are sleeping with cats! Film at 11!" Canines definitely hooked up with felines at Windpower 2010 this week in Dallas, where former President George ... 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 >>

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 >>

Road Trip!

Break the summer monotony at one of these out-of-the-way destinations.

Tennessee Pushers

Old Crow Medicine Show's new CD of original material as rough-edged as their traditional covers

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

Unknown Legend

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

Joe Ely and Double Trouble

Joe Ely performs on Thursday, December 28, at Fitzgerald's, 2706 White Oak, 713-862-3838.

Playbill

MOFRO

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.

Texas Thunder

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

Turning the Camera on Mark Seliger

Mark Seliger

Will the Real Texas Musician Please Stand Up

The land of gee-tars and fiddles

Working the Rails, Part Two

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

Press Picks

Pop Moment

The Year of Living Anxiously

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