Lexus Motor Company

TV One's Soulful "Verses & Flow" Brings Tank to the Heights

It started with tapping: a snare drum repeating itself, over and over again. An electric guitar followed, fighting to be heard over the incessant gnashing of drumstick against bass drum. A cymbal clashed with a piano's keys. The caterers, setting up in another room, clinked glasses together, while ... More >>

Texas Joins In $29 Million Settlement With Toyota Over Sudden Acceleration, AG Announces

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today that Texans will be part of a $29 settlement with Toyota over its actions after claims that various models had sudden, unexplained accelerations that endangered drivers. Texas and 27 other states "investigated whether Toyota adequately and promptly ... More >>

Top 10 Sexiest Cars of the Houston Auto Show (with Photos)

Concept cars are what auto shows are all about. With their nuclear hybrid propulsion systems, bamboo radio control knobs, and intergalactic navigation displays, concept cars give us a chance to look into the unlikely future of the automobile. Weren't we supposed to have flying cars by now? This yea ... More >>

Why Do Mexican Men Like Classic Cars?

And why do Mexicans still bother with the United States?

Ripley's Download the Weird: Houston Strange Well Represented

The newest edition of Download the Weird, the new book from Ripley's Believe It or Not! does not overlook Houston. Of course. Included in this "annual collection of bizarre, fun and totally true stories from around the world," is the subject of our own cover story Natalie Irish, the artist who ... More >>

Hot, Hot Christmas: Nine Erotic Novels About The Holiday Season (Semi-NSFW)

When the yuletide whip comes down​Porn never sleeps. You'd think the holy season of baby Jesus and Santa would not be fodder for writers of erotica, both soft-core and not-so-soft-core, but you'd be wrong. Geez, there's probably a sub-genre out there of Veteran's Day "romance' novels. To be ... More >>

Sex Cures Teen Crime

UT study touts teen relationships

Comment of the Day: What That Wet-Cement Lexus Is Missing

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

Lexus, Meet Wet Concrete: How Not to Park Your Car

​This photo and other, fuzzier ones have gone up on Reddit of a Lexus whose driver made an operator error today on Norfolk near Kirby. The orange cones are there for a reason, people.

Derrick Anthony Lopez: Gets Into a Restuarant Fight, Shoots 8-Year-Old Girl

HPDDerrick Lopez: Drive-by shooting hits eight-year-old girl​A fight in a restaurant led to a drive-by shooting that left an eight-year-old girl critically injured, Houston police say. Derrick Anthony Lopez, 26, has been arrested and charged with aggravated assault with serious bodily injury ... More >>

Toyota's Unintended Acceleration Problems Not Caused by Electronics, Feds Say

​The problem some Toyota drivers have had with unintended acceleration of their vehicles -- a problem we first wrote about last April -- is not caused by any electronic flaws in the cars, a lengthy federal study has determined. The lengthy federal study could not determine, however, just what ... More >>

"Come On Buick, Light My Fire."

Not official Nike footwear.​Like most of Western society, I'd figured I was pretty much numb to the use of popular songs in commercials. I don't know how far back the practice dates, exactly, but I remember the anecdote from No One Here Gets Out Alive about Jim Morrison shooting down the sugge ... More >>

Island Of Misfit Christmas Albums: Teen Pop Meltdown

​It happens like this: You are in charge of a major teen-pop act who can sell anything with their face or voice on it, be it training bras, shaving cream, or caskets. You have a week off in the summer from touring. Do you let the talent go home and sleep in their own beds or do you shove the ... More >>

The Five Most Annoying Christmas Ads

Anyone who's watched football (or What Not to Wear, we guess) recently knows that the onslaught has begun: The horror of Christmas commercials. These heinous 30-second bits of torture can abuse viewers in several ways. Here are five of the worst. 5. Jewelry for the Meek, Submissive Weaker Sex Whet ... More >>

Unidentified Male, 30, Bayou Body Count No. 261

Shot down in a gold Lexus​A man was shot while driving in his Lexus on the south side shortly after midnight today, police say.The victim, 30, whose name was not released pending notification of family members, was driving what HPD says was "a gold, four-door Lexus" southbound in the 7800 block of ... More >>

Joan Ogunleye, 41, Bayou Body Count No. 219

Death in a Walmart parking lot​A woman was found shot to death in her car in a Walmart parking lot on the southwest side of town around midnight this morning, police say.No robbery was involved, and HPD told KTRK it did not appear to be "a random crime."The body of the victim, whose name has not b ... More >>

Palma Garcia Marlen-Beatrice, 30, Bayou Body Count No. 181

Photo courtesy HCSOWeird, but surprisingly successful, way to kill your wife​Back on May 13, 48-year-old Pedro Cueva-Ferman thought he had come up with the perfect way to get rid of his wife and get clean away with the crime, according to allegations in a probable cause warrant on file at the Harr ... More >>

More Fallout for Toyota

Plus: Why are Mormons annoyed with Houston?

Toyota And Unintended Acceleration: A Lawsuit And A Car Show

​Toyota has announced during the last several months a series of recalls to fix the problem of its cars accelerating out of control. Last week, in perhaps the most dramatic move, the company said it would stop selling eight models of cars and trucks. Each of those fixes involved floor mats or gas ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Your George Bailey-Free Christmas Viewing List

Christmas, Christmas time is here. Time for ulcers to bleed freely and the roughly 22 percent of the U.S. population who identify themselves as "other than Christian" to smile through clenched jaws and wait for the adult contemporary stations to stop playing Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Comin ... More >>

Yet Another Explanation From Toyota On Unintended Acceleration

​Toyota made big news today, with a press release titled "Toyota Announces Details of Remedy to Address Potential Accelerator Pedal Entrapment," by announcing the details of a recall that will apparently stop all those problems of Toyota's accelerating wildly out of control, as detailed in a Houst ... More >>

Feds Not So Sure About Toyota's Claims That Floor Mats Are The Problem With Priuses

​The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a statement yesterday indicating that problems of unintended acceleration in Toyotas might be caused by something more than faulty floor mats. The statement from the federal agency was a response to Toyota's claims, released on Tuesday, ... More >>

Bayou Body Count: Terrible Tragedy, In A Lexus

Just before 4 pm Tuesday, according to Houston police, Pedro Enrique-Garcia Rosabal, 34, called his wife to say he'd just picked their two kids up from summer school and was going to kill them. Turns out Rosabal made good on his threat, shooting his 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son with a .380 ... More >>

Victory Over The River Oaks Shopping Center! Kinda

That proposed restaurant in the River Oaks Shopping Center that had everyone up in Armani-clad arms?It's not going to happen.It wasn't the Lexus Revolution that killed it, though -- the city gave Weingarten Realty pretty much everything it asked for in the way of variances.No, it was the economy ... More >>

Five Very Bad Christmas Ads

The Christmas shopping season is in full swing, such as it is this year. The airwaves are full of idiotic giggling women who have been waiting patiently and desperately to see if they'll get a ring from their boyfriend, because Lord knows no woman would ever bring up the subject of marriage herself. ... More >>

Don't Miss Wayne DeHart in Radio Golf

Hole in One

They're Letting Anyone On The Tollroads These Days

Anchor Babies and Mexican Garages

Flash Mob: Walking Backwards in the Galleria

Dog Day Afternoon. Evening and Morning, Too.

Boyz N the Studio

Hustle & Flow is short on action, long on scenes of recording

Slipping into Darkness

A lobbyist's last tango: politics, sex, drugs, death

Hounded by the Pound

Plus: Tribute to Oliver, Wrapping It Up, Bigotry 101

Duh Press

Fear and self-loathing at the Minority Report junket

Report Card

Spielberg's Minority Report gets good grades until the end

Birth of a Texas Bar Band

Named after a beer, Honeybrowne strives to be more

The Art of Getting Broken

Mary Cutrufello wanted to be a rock star. For a moment she was.

Turning Japanese

Forest Whitaker brings an adopted honor code to the streets in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog

Trying Hard to Be Good

Episode I: What Did You Expect?

It's Star Wars, all right

Rolling on the River

H-town ain't no Tinseltown for the native Houstonians of River Fenix

Average John

A Cocktail of Two Cities

Big Talker

From the Geto Boys to his new nationally syndicated radio show, Willie D has kept his mouth moving. But where his rap was once down and dirty, not it's--gasp!--respectable. Has the gangsta of love sold out, or just grown up?

Alison Cook looks back at 1996: Year of the Rat

Scenes from a Marriage

English Renaissance

Houston jazz keyboardist Paul English releases Beauty