Louisville (Kentucky)

Astros Opening Day 2013: Fans Weigh In With Hopes & Opinions On AL Baseball

For as long as I remember, I've been a baseball fan. Which is kinda strange considering I never played Little League, didn't learn how to hold a bat or catch a ball until my best friend taught me in high school, and my father's favorite sports team are fútbol-playing goats (Las Chivas Rayadas de Gu ... More >>

Upcoming Events: What Do Duck Dynasty and Robert Earl Keen Have in Common?

Any and all crawfish-eating you've been doing so far this season has just been practice for the main event: the annual Texas Crawfish Festival in Old Town Spring, which is coming up on April 19 through 21 and April 26 through 28. The festival has to be two weekends to pack in all the food and entert ... More >>

This Houston Team -- Unlike the Texans, Rockets, Etc. -- Is Number One

For the past few years, a Houston-based team has quietly produced college-basketball talent for prestigious school like the universities of Arizona, Alabama and Oklahoma. The elite squad has traveled all over the country, owning the competition in tournaments in places like Philadelphia. And this ... More >>

The Rocks Off 100: Miss Leslie, Queen of the Honky-Tonks

Who? Miss Leslie if you're country, Leslie Anne Sloane has played fiddle/violin in both the classical and country/bluegrass styles since age 5. In 2004, she started Miss Leslie and Her Juke-Jointers, which can usually be found once or twice a month at finer roadhouses and honky-tonks in the greater ... More >>

SXSW Releases First Batch of 2013 Performers

Here go hell come, SXSW has just released the first batch of names for the 2013 festival. I know, only a week after Fun Fun Fun Fest and a month since ACL. Did you see the FPSF blog from earlier today? Yeah, time is moving too fast. The big names on the list so far include the Zombies, Alt-J, Akro ... More >>

Local Musicians Come Together For Charalambides' Tom Carter

Rewind: Charalambides Guitarist Tom Carter On the Mend Some local musicians are rallying to help out one of their own this weekend, and it appears that some good, weird tunes will be a happy side effect for the rest of us. Tom Carter, guitarist for long-running H-town expatriate avant-gardists Cha ... More >>

NRBQ's Al Anderson Now a World Famous Headliner

Above: Al Anderson (l) and World Famous Headliners in the studio. There are people in Nashville, highly successful people, the average fan or casual music listener has little if any clue about. Chris Stapleton comes to mind. Mike Henderson is another. Everyone in Nashville knows and admires them, f ... More >>

Know Your Local Media: The Chron's Eric Berger on Hurricanes, Climate Change and Evacuating Katy

Full disclosure: In 2000, I was working on a grassroots campaign supporting the arena referendum that passed and resulted in the building of Toyota Center. At the time, the Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger was covering the campaign, a less contentious follow-up to the loss suffered a year earlier tha ... More >>

Drops In the Bucket List: 5 Venues To See a Show In Before You Die

I'm not much of a traveler. Outside of a few trips to Vegas, I've never been on a real grownup-type vacation. Every year it's a struggle to think of something to do with my vacation days, one that eventually leads to a few four-day weeks and a couple of midweek shows. Now that I'm getting older, I' ... More >>

March Madness -- 4 Prop Bets For NCAA Title Game (And My Game Prediction)

In Friday's post, it turns out I went a painful 0-2 on my Final Four semifinal selections with Kentucky missing by half a point against Louisville (in a game where in ultra-shady fashion, Louisville folded up their tents down eight with 30 seconds to go), and Ohio State choking away a double-digit l ... More >>

Weekend's Best Bets -- Final Four and Wrestlemania 28

When I was a kid, there were only a small handful of sporting events to which you set your calendar/watch, events that owned certain weekends or weeks of the calendar year. They were the biggies: Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals. But with the advent of a million different television channels, a ... More >>

Top Chef: Texas Is Now Set in Canada, Because Why Not

​This week's episode of Top Chef: Texas has left Texas entirely, never to return (at least for this season). It has, instead, gone to almost literally the polar opposite of Texas: British Columbia, Canada. On Top Chef: Texas. Which was funded with $400,000 of our tax dollars (much more if you coun ... More >>

Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie and File' Gumbo: The Bounty of Lafayette

Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and file' gumbo / 'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio / Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-o / Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou -- Hank Williams, "Jambalaya" In late December, Southern Living announced a contest in which 10 "Southern" cities wo ... More >>

The 2011 Houston Press Crimes of the Year

From a fake vampire to a getaway guy in a wheelchair, a defendant peeing in court to a cop-car backseat blow job, it's been a wild year.

The 2011 Houston Press Crimes of the Year

From a fake vampire to a getaway guy in a wheelchair, a defendant peeing in court to a cop-car backseat blow job, it's been a wild year.

My Morning Jacket

Five Oddly Timed or Just Plain Odd Texas License Plate Offerings from MyPlates.com

​The folks over at MyPlates.com, who bring us just about every custom license plate our Texas hearts could desire, just released a batch of new offerings we didn't even know we needed. The mostly-sports-themed releases provide citizens of our great state the opportunity to show pride in their ... More >>

September Knows How To Party: Bourbon!

Anamaris Cousins PriceBourbon - before and after​I don't know how this all got started, these National (fill in the blank) month/day, but if September is celebrating the joys of bourbon, who am I to stand in the way? Well, officially, it is National Bourbon Heritage Month, a time to celebrate ... More >>

Hayes Carll's KMAG Catches On With Jazzercise Set

Jim BrickerHayes Carll at Free Press Summer Fest 2011​Woodlands native and Lost Highway recording artist Hayes Carll, whose latest album KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories) will certainly make many year-end best-of lists, may just have another career alternative if he ever gets tired of the r ... More >>

Comedy of Manners

The A.D. Players tackle Jane Austen's classic tale of love in the English countryside.

RIP Lorenzo Charles, The Man Who Broke Phi Slama Jama's Heart

Lorenzo Charles, who will be forever remembered in Houston as the man who astonishingly ended UH's Phi Slama Jama's title hopes, has died at the age of 47 in a bus crash. Charles was driving an empty bus back to his company's depot when he crashed on an interstate in North Carolina. No one else was ... More >>

2011 NBA Draft -- The Live Blog

Keep coming back for the latest​The overwhelming consensus on the 2011 NBA Draft is that it's, by and large, a pretty underwhelming group of players, and it may quite possibly be completely devoid of future All-Stars. So why am I so excited about tonight's festivities? Because of all the thin ... More >>

Fifteen Of Our Favorite Cheating Songs

zazzle.com​Songwriters find inspiration many of life's varied realms: Joy, grief, sex, drugs, anger and, evidently, two-timing. Some are sad, some cheeky, some violent and revengeful, but we've collected a sad-sack grab-bag of cheating-related songs. Here is our Top 15, along with their lyric ... More >>

Top 10 Musician WTF Hobbies

Zazzle.com​Musicians are weird. Well, the good ones, at least. It's a little-known, beloved factoid. While artists' news, drama, and private lives are sometimes aired to the point of over-saturation, it becomes more interesting when we learn relatively kept insight into their rockers' offstage ... More >>

Bedbugs in Houston: Hey, We Ain't Too Bad

Probably from Dallas.​Anytime there's a list involving annoying bugs or pests, you expect Houston to be making a bold bid for the title. But exterminator giant Terminix has just released its list of the worst bedbug-infested cities in America, and Houston isn't on it. We don't make the top 1 ... More >>

Houston Dogs Worst In Country For Attacking Mail Carriers

Probably lives in Houston​It's hard out there for a Houston mail carrier -- if the heat doesn't get you, the dogs probably will. The United States Postal Service has put out its list of the 10 most dangerous cities for dog attacks, and coming in at the top is....us. USPS says 62 Houston lett ... More >>

Last Night: The Damnwells at Fitzgerald's

Photos by Jeff Balke​The Damnwells Fitzgerald's April 5, 2011 Before playing a single note, Alex Dezen, singer for Brooklyn-based rock band The Damnwells, let the audience know what it was in store. He said the band's new release Nobody Listens to the Band Anymore was full of mid-tempo rock s ... More >>

Made in Texas

Think all bourbon comes from Kentucky? Think again.

Top 5: Fast Food Chicken Dishes Done Right

You can't beat the Whatachicken.​When I indulge in fast food, you can generally count on me ordering something chicken. Here are my top five. 5. Hartz's Fried Chicken First off, I hate fast food fried chicken (think KFC buckets), but given the title of the piece, felt obligated to include at ... More >>

How Is Houston Doing ACL-Wise?

Marco TorresThe Eagles have flown, at least as far as Houston is concerned.​If you have even bothered to venture out of doors during these days of 105-degree heat indices and "Unhealthy" air-quality advisories, you may have noticed that things have been a little light on the roadshow front lat ... More >>

Top Ten Sports Moments: Four Personal Stories

Different kinds of heartbreak​We've identified the absolute, unarguable Top 10 Sports Moments (and five worst) in Houston history. Everyone has at least some personal stories connected to events on the list. I have four.1. UH-LouisvilleI was the quintessential cub reporter, having lucked into a j ... More >>

Houston's 10 Best Sports Moments*

*And the 5 most heartbreaking...

Houston Zoo Cute-Off: A Competition For The Ages

The Houston Zoo is filled with animals so astoundingly cute that they're almost a danger to the public.But only one can be The Cutest of All.It has come time to determine who exactly should wear that noble title: Harr, the White-Faced Saki Monkey? Zuri, the African Pygmy Falcon? Some other contender ... More >>

Lindsay Lohan: Five Celebrity Courtroom Meltdowns Better Than Hers

​Turns out the Mean Girl wasn't so mean after all. Former child star and current cautionary tale Lindsay Lohan broke down in court after receiving a 90-day jail sentence for probation violation: "Are you serious?" she sobbed to her attorney as she furiously plucked Kleenex out of a tissue bo ... More >>

Game Time: Tennessee Whiskey -- Jack Daniel vs Willie Wonka

caption goes here​Having just returned from vacation literally about eight minutes ago, today's pearls of wisdom will not be sports-related (sports resumes in this space tomorrow). In my best efforts to derive some sort of synergy out of the 18-hour odyssey I just endured (Elkhart, IN to Houst ... More >>

Game Time: Kentucky Derby -- Ten "Two Minute Events" More Exciting Than Horses Galloping

Between-race entertainment at the Derby​I love horse racing. Actually, to be clear, I love the act of going to the racetrack -- any racetrack -- and sitting in the bleachers (do they call them "bleachers" at a racetrack?) with three or four of my buddies, drinking about twelve beers, eating roughl ... More >>

Aftermath: Fun Fun Fun Fest In Austin Day 1 - Death, Young Widows, Melt Banana, The Sword, Jesus Lizard

Photos by Marc Brubaker/ Click here for a slideshowDeath, reborn​This year's Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin was the exact thing Aftermath needed in the midst of his fall concert schedule, even though the last day was marred by mud and constant rain. But after last month's dillo-dirtied Austin City Lim ... More >>

UH Hoops, Battling The Second-Rate Reputation Of Conference USA

​Tom Penders has been tasked with returning the Houston Cougar basketball program to relevance. And that's a task at which he feels he's been successful. But he's yet to succeed with the ultimate goal of basketball relevance, and that's getting into the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.Now, the ... More >>