Jacksonville

R.I.P. Tim Tebow, The NFL Quarterback (April 22, 2010 - April 29, 2013)

Judging by the tsunami level downpour of rain and hail along with the two-hour strobe light of lightning, it was around 3:30 p.m. Houston time on Saturday when the Jets officially decided to release football's former "chosen one," quarterback Tim Tebow. They just chose to announce it publicly on M ... More >>

Texans 24, Titans 10: Defense Returns To Form In Playoff-Clinching Win

After back-to-back games of exhilarating drama, the Texans seem back to their usual selves. That's just fine for soon-to-be Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt. Led by Watt and a defense that suffocated Tennessee and second-year QB Jake Locker, the Texans cruised to 11-1 and clinched the second ... More >>

Texans-Packers: ALL NEW BATTLE-DRINK Bingo Drinking Card

The Texans come back this Sunday night to play the Green Bay Packers on the dreaded "short work week," having just played the New York Jets on Monday night. Much like the players having to summon all of their recuperative powers to be near the top of their game on Sunday, so too must you, the weeken ... More >>

Texans Hang On For Win Over Broncos: You Thought This Would Be Easy?

Just in case Houston Texan fans were getting accustomed to easy blowouts, the locals made sure to remind everyone that getting to an AFC Championship, much less a Super Bowl, isn't exactly a walk in the park. With about 10 minutes left in this game at Denver, though, it sure looked like that -- the ... More >>

Arian Foster Dominates; Texans 27, Jags 7: They Pay For This Crap In Florida?

Consider the plight of being an NFL fan in Jacksonville. Your team gets beat up regularly, you live in a crappy city, there's a good chance the franchise will be moving. Still, you show up. And still, you watch as your team gets decimated. Today it was the Texans, doing what they needed to do to c ... More >>

Football! My Texans Prediction and Other Weekend Best Bets

Baby needs new gear...​Every year at about this time, I wind up investing several hundred dollars in various pieces of Texans gear for my two sons (ages 13 and 12, and I'm fairly certain the only two Texan fans in their Chicago-area junior high school), and while the attitude in this, the most ... More >>

Texans/Falcons -- 5 Things to Watch

The NFL playoffs, hopefully brought to you by T.J. Yates.​Over the last two seasons, Texan fans have been conditioned to spend the first half of the season basking in a decent start (5-3 and 4-2 the last two years, respectively) and then spend the remainder of the season waiting for a safe to ... More >>

Texans 37, Buccaneers 9: Five Things We Learned

Photo by Marco TorresIn the immortal words of Ian Dury: Reasons to be cheerful, part three​Were it not for the heartbreak of the past 10 years, week after week of uncompetitive football might get boring. As it is, the Texans and their legion of fans will take the wins however they come. The T ... More >>

Texans/Bucs -- 4 Winners, 4 Losers (The "Goddammit, NOT Schaub!" Edition)

Born under a bad sign.​So, I was thisclose to hitting "SEND" on a post that would have openly discussed the Texans going 13-3 and getting home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. And then this: Houston Texans quarterback Matt Schaub has a significant foot injury that will force him to mi ... More >>

Football! This Weekend's Best Bets: Stanford, Wisconsin & Other Bullies

Not seen at Camp Randall.​Nobody likes a bully. Unless, of course, that bully can win you some money! Through the first ten weeks of the college football season, in my mind, four BCS conference college football teams have set themselves apart as "bullies" of the college football world, meanin ... More >>

Texans/Browns -- 4 Winners, 4 Losers

Photo by Marco TorresTough day for Colt McCoy​The Texans beat the Browns soundly yesterday by a score of 30-12, and for the first time in the history of the franchise, your hometown team is three games over .500. The Texans have never tasted this rarefied air before, so I don't really know w ... More >>

Seven-Woman Catfight As Epic As It Sounds

Faces will be gotten up into in Jacksonville.​The current lead item on the Cherokee County Sheriff's Web site is the impending auction of a stray heifer, but that doesn't mean things have been quiet lately. Unless you consider an epic catfight between seven women, in full view of the cops, to ... More >>

Tales of the Deplorable -- ESPN's Instant Analysis of Depth Chart Ramifications of Alabama Offensiv LIneman's Death

In The Empire Strikes Back, you may remember a scene where Darth Vader, tired of the incompetence of the bumbling Admiral Veers, decides to go ahead and terminate him, permanently, via force choke, and immediately promote Veers' subordinate Captain Piett before they could even move Veers' body out o ... More >>

2011 NFL Draft -- Live Blog

I am not an NFL Draft expert. How's that for unbridled confidence? Right out of the shoot, in a live blog for the NFL Draft, a host of a sports talk show is admitting that he's not an expert at something sports related, let alone the thing at which he's about to live blog. If you're looking for l ... More >>

Five Essential Boogie-Rock Albums

​Boogie-rock has probably been derided by critics more times than people have torched a doob while listening to BTO. Intellectual types tend to write it off as guys with feathered bangs, mustaches and shirts open to their navel playing songs about cars, girls and partying (and partying in cars ... More >>

25 Famous Bands' Less Famous Previous Names

​As promised, here are the answers to Rocks Off's "Original Band Name" quiz from Tuesday. John St. Lee, if you'd care to email us, we'll see what we can do about getting you a prize. Do you like Devo? 1. Chicago: At about 25 or 6 to 4, the Windy City jazz-rockers realized The Big Thing sucked ... More >>

Texans 34, Jaguars 17: Will Strong Finish Outweigh Weeks of Futility?

Texans fans hold their breath​For the first nine seasons of the Houston Texans franchise, the biggest problem for owner Bob McNair has been his inability to properly handle or frame success. The beast could be about to rear its ugly head yet again. A week ago, the thought was that eight lo ... More >>

Why a Fire Gary Kubiak Rally is a Bad Idea

Image courtesy of John RonaldSome rallies just have a way of coming together.​Seems like a lot of folks are down right pissed at Gary Kubiak these days. Texans owner Bob McNair doesn't appear to be among them, but our latest Death Watch has the poor guy on his last legs here and fans on sports ... More >>

Broncos & Tim Tebow 24, Texans 23: If You're Disappointed, You're Not Thinking Big Picture

​In and of itself, Sunday's collapse against Denver is virtually the same story that has played out countless other times over the past two seasons for the Texans. Yet the franchise has never been this close to finally breaking through. In seven days, the nightmare that is 2010 comes to an ... More >>

Good Lord: Are The Texans About To Make A Playoff Run?

Beat the Ravens, and things get interesting quickly​Nothing hurts our head more than calculating NFL playoff scenarios, with the possible exception of getting hit directly on the skull by a 50-pound block of ice. So we will leave those calculations to more-obsessed people, but we do know this ... More >>

Load Up On The Four Loko For This Texans Drinking Game (You Won't Need It)

The Texans head into New York this weekend to take on the Jets, and fans are cringing. Last week's disaster against Jacksonville lingers on, and the Jets, while not quite world-beaters, do have a 7-2 record. How to get through the upcoming carnage? Drink heavily. We're here to help. ​

College Football and NFL: This Weekend's Best Bets (And a Promise From Me)

You can't lose, except when you lose​I'm coming up on almost one year now writing a daily post on Hair Balls for HoustonPress.com. In that time, I've written tens of thousands of words about topics like the Summer of LeBron, the Brian Cushing saga, the Houston Texans, and the death of Jose Lima. ... More >>

Texans Schedule Out, And More Rides On Kubiak Than Ever Before

​The season remains nearly five months away, but with Tuesday night's much-celebrated release of the 2010 NFL schedule, the gameplanning for Peyton Manning among the Texans' brain trust can and should officially begin. Sure, this week's draft is the more pressing matter. Yes, there are still ... More >>

Houston Wins March Madness Tournament!!! (Not The One You're Thinking Of)

​In an incredible upset, Houston has swept through the brackets of March Madness and taken the title.It's not the Coogs, and it's not the basketball championship.But if you're wondering who would win the tournament of having the worst traffic of all the cities hosting March Madness games this year ... More >>

Guitar Zero: Who's Never Heard "Copperhead Road"?

​One of the joys of attempting to learn a new skill at an advanced age is that little nagging concern in the back of your head that makes you wonder how much of a dipshit your instructor thinks you are. My particular sensei - this guy, in case you'd forgotten - has, like every other person who wor ... More >>

Texans 27, Dolphins 20: So Close, Yet So Far

​One game. One of two missed Kris Brown field goals. One of two Chris Brown rushing attempts from a yard out. A ridiculous Chris Brown pass on first and goal in Jacksonville. Take away any of those -- just one -- and the Texans are most likely 9-6 and controlling their own playoff destiny hea ... More >>

Game Time: Defend Gary Kubiak? I'll Take A Stab At It

​Much has been made about Gary Kubiak's alleged hell, fire and brimstone speech he gave to the Texans in Saturday's team meeting before Sunday's workmanlike 34-7 win against the Seattle Seahawks. Actually, I didn't see the speech, so to portray it as "win one for the Gipper 2009" may not be entire ... More >>

Houston One Of Safest Cities In The Country, If You Look At It A Certain (Wrong, Houston Proud) Way

Photo courtesy GHCVB​Houston may be fat, polluted, sprawling and ugly, but it's got one thing going for it, according to Forbes magazine -- it's one of the safest cities in the country.Say what? Don't they read our Bayou Body Count? What, you go ten days without a murder and all of a sudden you're ... More >>

Midweek Match-Up: U2 Vs. Wrestlemania In The Battle Of The Spectacles

As you well know if you've been reading our sister blog Rocks Off (and Lord knows you should be), U2 is in town tonight.The new tour requires something like 90 huge trucks to cart around the massive stage they use so as not to detract from the quiet beauty of their ballads. Or to keep the people in ... More >>

Texans Refuse To Lose Easily, Instead Opting To Rip Your Heart Out

​Now these are the Houston Texans we've grown to know and not love.A week after uncharacteristically taking care of business in a game they were supposed to do so against Oakland, the Texans laid an egg in the desert on Sunday, losing 28-21 to Arizona. But of course, that only tells part of the st ... More >>

The Daily Beast: Houston -- You Are "Mildly Retarded"

​The Daily Beast has ranked the IQ of each of America's 55 metro areas with populations over a million. Here is how they arrived at the concept of a municipal IQ.They measured how many residents had bachelor's and graduate degrees, nonfiction book sales, the ration of institutions of higher educ ... More >>

Bayou Beat: A 15-Foot Sculpture of George Jones' Head, $10 House of Blues Tickets, Free Tontons Show, etc.

​Heavy metal comedy troupe Steel Panther has cancelled tonight's Warehouse Live show. What's on VH-1 Classic? Tennessee-born artist Wayne White is crafting a 15-foot puppet head in the likeness of Saratoga-born honky-tonk legend George Jones. Entitled "Big Lectric Fan to Keep Me Cool While I Sleep ... More >>

Seven Skynyrd Songs Better than "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Free Bird"

Allow Rocks Off to let the cat out of the bag for a second: this evening at the Woodlands, Lynyrd Skynyrd will close with "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Free Bird." Taking nothing away from either song - they are, after all, a serious rebuke to Dixie-haters and Southern racists alike disguised as a pools ... More >>

Janet Jackson's Houston Nipple Flash Refuses To Die

What, you thought you were getting nip?The single greatest news event to occur in Houston since the turn of the century -- one that's clearly gotten more ink than Ike -- is Janet Jackson's Super Bowl-icious nipple. (Katrina we're counting as a N'Awlins event.)The Awesome Areola is back in the ... More >>

First Thursdays at Dean’s: Dramatic Shorts

A monthly film series hosts screenings of dramatic shorts

Weekend Music: Tony Joe White, Candlebox, John Mayer, Bobby Blue Bland, Flowers to Hide and More

Weekend Music: Blackfoot, Dollyrockers, Terror, Brooke Waggoner and More

No Show: EMC Expos

A long line of people say they've been stiffed by Rolando Dumagan and company.

Long Snaps with Bryan Pittman: Talking Titans and Missing the Peach Pit

Halloween Comes Early for Texans Fans

Jason Friedman’s NFL Picks, Week Six: Forget Dog Fighting. Parity Is the League’s Biggest Problem.

The Melvins

Against Me!

New Wave

Re: The BBC's Spanish Proposition

Sir Lancelot Waves Goodbye, and His Private Parts

Ryan Adams

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On Second Thought

HISD isn't laughing now about a breakfast program

News of the Weird

Adams Family Values

Why do we hate Bud so? Maybe we never understood him, or those... Adams Family Values

Wanna Buy a RoboDome?

The city's sports tycoons maneuver for inside position, and the questions mount: Who needs it? Why? At what cost?