Pearl Harbor

The Complete SXSW Overflow Festival 2013 Guide: Week 2, Part 2

We've rounded the bend to the last few days of Super Happy Fun Land's SXSW Overflow Festival 2013. There are only a few acts left, so get down there! THURSDAY, MARCH 21 Stanley and the Search: "I would describe our sound as half punk and half indie with a sprinkle of Melody," says bass player Oma ... More >>

Ten Years Later, and How Iraq Can Change a Generation's Trajectory

Every day after baseball practice, my Dad picked me up. Still clad in my dirt-stained pants, still too young to have a full appreciation for deodorant, I would toss my bookbags and gear in the back of our Volvo and jump in the front seat with him. He'd ask how practice was, and I'd tell him about th ... More >>

War/Photography

Images of battles won and lost paint us all with the brush of brutality at a searing, resonating MFAH exhibit.

Capsule Stage Reviews: Panto Mother Goose, Sanders Family Christmas, The Santaland Diaries, The White Christmas Album: A Beatles Holiday

The Top 25 Music Videos of 2012, Nos. 5-1

Never before have I agonized so hard over the picks for best music video of the year because never before have I had the kind of selection that 2012 offered. The art form is alive and well like never before, and we are entering a new renaissance of cinemaudio. Today we reach the videos you simply ca ... More >>

The Rocks Off 100: Alexis Hollada, Doomistress of Project Armageddon

Who? Better known as Doomistress Alexis, Hollada plays bass and sings in the excellent doom-metal act Project Armageddon. Tides of Doom was a stripped-down, droning masterpiece that was capable of scorched-Earthing the soul of a listener into a personal wasteland. Though her voice is unforgettable, ... More >>

Infuriating and Horrifying 9/11 Tweets from American Teens (UPDATED)

Everyone in the United States remembers where they were on September 11, 2001. Those of us who were of age to understand the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. sat horrified in front of radios and television screens, wondering what would happen next. Was this a part of a bigger effort? Wo ... More >>

10 Best Modern Political Speeches

We'll be hearing a lot of great speeches this election season, but lets take a second to remember the true giants of political rhetoric. 10. Martin Luther King: I've Been to the Mountaintop King delivered this speech in Memphis, Tennessee the day before he was assassinated. After talking for a whi ... More >>

Battleship

Because every generation needs an Armageddon.

Asian Film Festival

Aeros Bombing at the Wrong Time

A very wise man named John Blutarsky once said, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no." But after this weekend, even though the Germans didn't bomb the Houston Aeros, it might be getting to that point where it can be said that the season's over. The Aeros played three games thi ... More >>

Comment of the Day: An All-Caps Missive on UFOs

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 involving wit ... More >>

The "Battle of LA," 70 Years Ago Today: 5 Irrefutable Arguments Why It Was Actually a UFO Attack

Seventy years ago today, the Battle of Los Angeles occurred, a vicious fight that resulted in three civilian deaths. Haven't heard of it? We're not surprised. The U.S. government said what happened was nighttime antiaircraft crews protecting Los Angeles got nervous -- it was just two months after ... More >>

Classic Christmas: Bing Crosby's White Christmas

Over the holidays, we're looking back at some classic Christmas albums taking some track by track and just digging on others. ​Bing Crobsy was the first crossover pop star. He made movies, music, appeared in both radio and television programs and did all of it successfully and, more important ... More >>

Pearl Harbor Day: The Nitpickiest IMDb Nitpicks for Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor

That sub is OBVIOUSLY an October sun.​Today is the 70the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Greatest Generation's 9/11. Since then the Day of Infamy has shown up in many movies, most notably 1970's Tora! Tora! Tora! and 2001's Pearl Harbor. Any such movie subjects itself to the ea ... More >>

Health Department Roundup

This week people across the country will remember just how much cooking can suck. Imagine being a chef or restaurateur, trying to cook for many more diners than the average Thanksgiving party. And keeping things clean for the Health Department while you do it. And not making a whole lot of money, wi ... More >>

The Eight Toughest Soldiers Texas Ever Produced (Featuring Heroism, Betrayal & Many Dead Bodies)

Audie Murphy, starring in the story of his own life​Our war heroes are presented to us in different varieties. There are those we create for ourselves, in the mold of what we think a hero should be: David Crockett (nobody but Walt Disney called him Davey), astride the ramparts at the Alamo goi ... More >>

Tropical Storm Allison, 10 Years Later: Where Were You?

​Ten years ago today it began. A Friday that didn't seem to hold any particular weather interest, maybe some rain, and then -- if you were in the wrong spot -- a rain to end all rains, it seems. Portions of Houston flooded like never before; other parts of the area didn't get hit much harder ... More >>

For The Fourth: Five Strange Uncle Sam Appearances On Screen

I want you....to stop abusing me onscreen​For some people, today is the Fourth of July holiday. For others, it's Monday.Whatever one works for you, it's time to get in a patriotic, Uncle Sam mood!! And what better way than to see ol' Sam in five strange screen appearances?Whether it's Sam in a sof ... More >>

Connie Willis: Blackout

Going back to the future might not be an option in this sci-fi adventure story

Santa Claus Is Coming to To Sink the USS Arizona...

Last night was a first in the history of what founder/director Bryan Taylor believes is the ten-year history of the Santa Claus Reenactment of the Battle of Pearl Harbor. Thanks to the mucky mire that was Market Square last night, the mock aerial/naval combat took place inside of Warren's. Watch th ... More >>

For Memorial Day, Part 2: One Vet's Journey Back To Pearl Harbor

The Japanese were bombing Pearl Harbor, and Nicolas Maershbecker's ship was stuck. Maershbecker was an engineer on the USS Perry, a high-speed minesweeper, and responsible for starting the boilers in the engine room. He couldn't, though, because the ship's smokestacks were still blocked by ... More >>

Don't Start The Long Weekend Too Early

Yeah, we know tomorrow is the Friday before a three-day weekend. You'll hardly have finished your granola bar and first coffee before you begin making plans on an early cubicle exit. If you make it until noon without coming up with some decent excuse for "needing to work outside the office," yo ... More >>

The Nickel: A Musical History of the Fifth Ward, Part 1

Back in its heyday, the corner of Jensen Drive and Lyons Avenue was known as "Pearl Harbor, the Times Square of the Bloody Fifth." You wouldn't know it today - the entire area is a vast wasteland of tired and abandoned lots and boarded-up shacks, but for much of the 20th Century this area was th ... More >>

Twinkies, Racial Profiling and EaDo

It was a long time ago

Say Hello to EaDo

We once described the area immediately to the east of the George R. Brown Convention Center as a "silent, godforsaken stretch of no-man's-land" that is neither the Warehouse District, nor the Third Ward, nor the East End. We employed that bulky definition because by 2000, its 1980s and '90s name - ... More >>

War Is Hell

But it's funny, too, in Barrymore

Origin of Innocence

The New World boldly reclaims the Pocahontas tale from Disney

Send In the Clones

Michael Bay's up to his old tricks -- now older than ever

Cage Death Match

National Treasure makes one long for good Nic Cage movies -- like Con Air

USA-holes

Team America takes no prisoners and spares no swear words

Cold Play

Catch some future Stars at the Houston Aeros game

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Brothers in Arms

Two Koreans go to war in the masterful epic Tae Guk Gi

Big Fat Greek Bloodletting

Brad's ripped and The Iliad's shredded in the scintillating spectacle Troy

Crash Course

A stuntman is mightily impressed by Houston's rail crashes

You Better Watch Out

These Saint Nicks can be real pricks

Best Weekend Getaway

Hangar Hotel

This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

War on War Songs

Iraq and roll don't go together well when rockers protest

Best Movie Shot on Location

Going Independent

Solid Soldiers

Vietnam's first battle delivers a real dread of war so lacking in Black Hawk Down

Hell and Back

Scott's Black Hawk Down pays grim, gritty homage to real-life warriors

Devil's Advocate

Audiences love Jerry Bruckheimer. Critics don't. Like he cares.

Arabian Knight

Jack Shaheen crusades against cinema's depiction of Reel Bad Arabs

Law & Disorder

As one of TV's best and best-loved series launches a new spin-off, its creator grapples with the aftershocks of terror

Way Out There

A new TV news operation is coming to Houston. More or less.

Letters

Art Car Bawl, A Vanishing Past, Oinked Out

Bora! Bora! Bora!

Pearl Harbor's sound and fury signify nothing

Hankies Aweigh

The Land Girls takes off as a decent tearjerker, then runs dry