Six teams. Three days. Nine games. Seventy-one innings, give or take a couple here and there. So was The Astros Foundation 2013 College Classic. And after sitting through all nine games and three days, it's safe to say that this weekend was anything but a classic of college baseball. Most of the ga ... More >>
Rocks Off spoke to Kris Kristofferson by phone from his home in Hawaii where he describes living a life as spare and literal as the records he makes with producer Don Was. Twice he told us that he's old, once he told us that he's brain-damaged and then he told us that his favorite place on Earth is ... More >>
Saturday night, given the choice between staying at home with me to watch the annual Denard Robinson Tear-Notre-Dame's-Heart-Out-And-Show-It-To-Them-Apalooza (and experiencing the corresponding remote control throwing that goes with it) and going out to dinner with her girlfriends to a nice restaura ... More >>
The name seems almost inescapable this year: Hay Merchant. The eight-month-old bar, seated on the curve of Westheimer just West of Montrose, has been described as everything from a new trend in bars to Houston's Mecca for beer to snobbish and inaccessible. It's strange that a place specializing in ... More >>
John Sikhattana Executive Chef Straits Asian Bistro 800 West Sam Houston Parkway North 713-365-9922 www.straitsrestaurants.com This is the second part of a three-part chef chat series. Read Part 1 here and Part 3 in this space on Friday. EOW: You spent a lot of time with the Roy's organization. ... More >>
John Sikhattana Executive Chef Straits Asian Bistro 800 West Sam Houston Parkway North 713-365-9922 www.straitsrestaurants.com This is the first part of a three-part chef chat series. Look for Part 2 and Part 3 in this space Thursday and Friday. Houston may be a melting pot, but it's still pretty ... More >>
This week marks the 198th anniversary of Napoleon being exiled to Elba, a move celebrated by palindrome fans everywhere. (Able was I ere I saw Elba," you know. Exiles have been around forever, people forced to leave their country of choice for one reason or another. Sometimes it's worked out well, ... More >>
Driving home from work the other day, I found myself making a mental list. I wondered: Who would I have lunch with if time, money and social standing got thrown out the window? Would I pick an actor, singer, artist, politician? I established a few rules: 1- It can be anyone in history (no fictio ... More >>
Just as good as a Hawaiian vacation. Right?My sisters in law are in Maui this week. They're vegetarians. And teetotalers. And afraid of foods with weird names. I have no doubt they're doing it wrong. They wanted us to go with them, but I didn't have $10,000 to spend on a tropical vacation. ... More >>
Monica FuentesFull-size image belowRocks Off's sister blog Hair Balls did it with murderers and serial killers. Food blog Eating Our Words, riled the beer snobs with one about the best beers from each state in the union, and a teetotaling follow-up chronicling the best soda pops. For the pas ... More >>
brennerssteakhouse.comA college roommate once theorized that the best times are often had near bodies of water. It's not surprising that she went on to live for many years in Hawaii. I, on the other hand, moved to Houston. In the land of freeways, strip malls and suburban sprawl, it's easy ... More >>
Yeah, Hawaii -- that's where I need to goSo I just happened to be working from home yesterday afternoon when, a little before 3 p.m., there was a loud knock at the door followed by an insistent ring. I got up to answer, and the caller seemed to be shocked to see me, and not a woman, answerin ... More >>
ironammonite
Despite a history of abuse and bad conditions, private prison corporation GEO keeps getting contracts from the state.
Ken Palmer, Master Roaster, probably knows more about coffee than almost anyone else in this city. He stumbled into the industry several decades ago while out in Hawaii. Palmer had a natural intuition about coffee and was educated by Alfred Peet, who had taught his style of roasting beans ... More >>
We see....FAIL in Ron Artest's futureDrayton McLane apparently has plans to sell the Astros. This comes as no surprise, those rumors have been swirling for some time. Now I don't know if he'll get his $800 million asking price, but I did call Drayton and make an offer and we now know that $9 ... More >>
Hair Balls was excited to learn that one of its favorite old TV shows, Hawaii 5-0, is returning to the air this fall. That show's success was attributable not just to the swaggering awesomeness of Jack Lord and his haircut, but because the show included a certain timeless element that appeals to peo ... More >>
What is it? With the World Cup finally coming to a close, there's been a lot of chatter about a certain cephalopod named Paul that resides in Germany. With all due respect to the "octopus oracle," we present today's random ingredient. Octopi are actually in the mollusk family. They're eaten ... More >>
This past weekend, Craig's Hlist spent a good solid two days at the beach playing in the surf down off Mustang Island just south of Corpus Christi. It was one of those mental-health weekends that if we hadn't have taken, we would have ended up throwing beer bottles against the wall at an old folks' ... More >>
The celebrity world was rocked yesterday by news that country singer Mindy McCready's sex tape was about to hit the streets. Okay, maybe "rocked" is the wrong word. How about "briefly distracted from Kate Gosselin's behavior on Dancing with the Stars?" Time was, a sex-tape scandal was cause for ... More >>
I am worried about whether or not Barack Obama will be eating black-eyed peas and cabbage on New Year's. As everybody knows, you have to eat black-eyed peas for good luck and cabbage for prosperity on January first. I am not sure they have black-eyed peas in Hawaii (if that's where the Obamas ... More >>
Maybe I'm biased because I use it all the time, but I'm going to make the bold statement that Twitter has surpassed "fad" status and that it's here to stay. Even at this point, people who don't use Twitter recognize kinda sorta how it works, and even recognize a Tweet when they see it -- "it's go ... More >>
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Photos by Robb WalshYellow Dragonfruit Going to the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning is one of those habits that's fun to engage in while you're on the road. And since I am staying in a condo with a kitchen this week in Kailua-Kona, it was great to buy some fresh local produce. The vegetables lo ... More >>
Robb Walsh has been vacationing in Hawaii. He had beer for breakfast and Spam musubi that actually looked really tasty. We hate him. A lot of restaurants are closing. A lot of GOOD restaurants. It sucks. Rodeo food: Give us fried or on a stick. Both would be best. That'll shut that ulcer up.
This Spam musubi cost me $1.68 at a grocery store on the North Kona coast. It wasn't the best Spam musubi I've ever had--the Spam was cut too thin, I think there was a little teriyaki sauce between the meat and the rice.The guy behind the counter told me I would have to get there a lot earlier in ... More >>
It's Black History Month, when America commemorates Africa-American culture with Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reruns on TBS and wholly unpredictable jokes about Februrary being the shortest month of the year. Here at Hair Balls, we know that the 1970s marked the first point when the black community made ... More >>
The college football bowl season is here, and it's become such a confusing mess of odd-sounding games played in smallish towns with mediocre teams that you need an expert to figure it out. And nothing says "expert" more than a teen-aged kid, whether the subject is football, driving, or how inutterab ... More >>
The college football bowl season is here, and it's become such a confusing mess of odd-sounding games played in smallish towns with mediocre teams that you need an expert to figure it out. And nothing says "expert" more than a teen-aged kid, whether the subject is football, driving, or how inutterab ... More >>
Parenting off the grid — and eventually off the reservation — in this alt-family portrait
The Chicago band visits the Continental Club
Keo Woolford dances his way out of Hawaiian myths
Riding Giants gushes over the legends of "big wave" surfing
Morgan Faulkner may be the best surfer Texas ever kicked out
Pearl Harbor's sound and fury signify nothing
East meets West
One Texas hula school proves to skeptical islanders that dancers do sometimes wear socks
A tale of love, life and longboarding
Bruce Brown goes back to the beach to hang ten, again
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