Skype Ltd.

Sean Walsh: Feds Send Him Child-Porn Catalog, He Orders, Is Busted

Modern marketing involves aggressively targeting a potential customer and then quickly and efficiently fulfilling his needs. And when you think of the words "efficiently" and "fulfilling his needs" you think of nothing else but the federal government right? Right? Okay, okay -- maybe the feds don' ... More >>

Back In the U.S.S.R.: The Obsolete Beatles

The next time someone who's too "cool" to "get" the Beatles asks what makes them so important, ask that person what's so great about his or her nose. First, if you're lucky, you'll be treated to an entertaining look of befuddlement. Then, when you're done being amused by that, avoid launching into a ... More >>

You Won't Catch Slightly Stoopid With Cottonmouth Anytime Soon

Hey, so you can cancel those drum lessons with the guy who teaches out of his parents' basement. Ryan Moran, Slightly Stoopid's resident drummer animal, is ready to take over those teaching duties. No, I'm not fucking with you. Those lessons exist, and are yours for the taking. Slightly Stoopid, wi ... More >>

Chef Chat, Part 2: Joe Macri of Up Restaurant, On Why He Still Likes to Cook on the Line and Serving Sustainable Food with Minimal Allergens

This is Part 2 of a three part Chef Chat series. You can read Part 1 here and Part three in this same space Friday. EOW: What brought you to Up Restaurant? JM: I wasn't used to a very strict type of cuisine. My creativity just wasn't being fed. The Mandolas were very nice; it was a very nice pla ... More >>

Cliffs Notes For Manti Te'o's Untelevised Marathon Conversation With ESPN's Jeremy Schaap

When a public figure does something wrong, whether it's a case of willful misconduct or extreme naiveté, in my eyes that person is defined more by how they react and atone for their misstep than by the misstep itself. I realize in today's social media fueled, 24-hour news cycle, where stories get ... More >>

Rage Against the Machinima

As YouTube becomes increasingly wealthy, its stars and the networks who contract with them battle for money and creative control.

Team Kerouac

Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund chat about the film version of On the Road.

Auteur Goes Amateur

Barry Levinson's The Bay aspires to YouTube.

Gordon Oehmig: Former St. Thomas High Wrestling Coach of the Year Nabbed For Child Porn

A former Prep Coach of the Year from St. Thomas High has been arrested after authorities found 1,500 digital images and 500 videos of child porn on his computers, court documents show. Gordon Daniel Oehmig, 29, is no longer at the school, but coached there from from 2009-12, when he won the coach o ... More >>

Jack Logan, Registered Sex Offender, Violates Protective Order AND Leaves Kiddy Porn-Filled Laptop At Estranged Wife's Home

After he'd been convicted of assaulting his wife twice, Jack Edward Logan thought it would be a good idea to just go ahead and violate the protective order she'd taken out against him. That was bad idea number one, and it netted him a felony charge. Bad ideas numbers two and three: he took his lap ... More >>

Michael "Propostris" Veytovich: World of Warcraft and Hip-Hop Parodist Accused of Vile Sex Crimes

The front Michael "Propostris" Veytovich presented to the world was a jolly and humorous one, if deeply immature for someone in his mid-30s. A struggling voice actor and part-time rapper who apparently relied heavily on his wife's income, Veytovich looks to have whiled away his days in marathon Worl ... More >>

Woman Uses Three-Year-Old For Porn

Stormy Christopher Smith: Splendora Dandy Is a Skyperv, Police Say

In June, after the 15-year-old Humble girl at the center of these alleged crimes ran away from home to be with her secret boyfriend, 23-year-old Stormy Christopher Smith of Splendora, the girl's father confiscated all her electronic devices. He thought that would bring the age-inappropriate relation ... More >>

Chaise Green: EMT Getting Served Child-Porn Warrant Found In Bed With Underage Boy

It's bad enough when cops come knocking on your door to serve you with a warrant for having child porn. Things get much worse when those cops find you in bed with a young boy as they're doing their job. Chaise Green, 28, a firefighter and EMT from Louisiana and Humble, found himself in that situati ... More >>

Misty Reneedawn Wofford: Forced Three-Year-Old To Perform For British Skype Perv, Police Say

Working together, Interpol, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Webster police have busted a 24-year-old Hitchcock woman allegedly responsible for creating live child porn and transmitting it to a British man via Skype. According to court documents, after a raid on the home of a man named Paul ... More >>

ESPNU To Launch New Talk Show, So Let's Zapruder Some 1993 Sportsnight Footage From ESPN2

Every now and then, because it's the "worldwide leader in sports" and can get away with random programming heat checks whenever it wants, ESPN will try and force-feed the viewing public some ill-fated attempt to blend sports and pop culture. Examples include: - Who's Now?, an ongoing feature a fe ... More >>

Baby Chino, World's Youngest DJ: "I Have Haters"

Austin-born Ri-yan Dolan is only eight years old -- he turns a ripe nine on August 25 -- and holds the title of the world's youngest DJ, spinning under the name DJ Baby Chino. At a time when kids half his age can operate iPads and iPhones with ease, it should be no surprise that Dolan was only five ... More >>

Rob Gronkowski Gal Pal Bibi Jones Bids Farewell To Porn

Earlier this week, the New England Patriots reportedly let their Pro Bowl tight end Rob Gronkowski know that it was time to dial back the body shots off of hookers, slow down on the shirtless club dancing, and say "NO" to random minor league home run derbies. Work starts again in ten days. The "Summ ... More >>

Houston Officially Great For Businesses & Careers, If You Believe Forbes (And Who Shouldn't?)

The Forbes magazine item touting Houston as one of the 20 best U.S. cities for businesses and careers has finally gone online, available for maximum touting by the folks who tout such things. Tout away, Mayor Annise Parker: It's great for our city to have national recognition for something Houston ... More >>

Skype Is Coming To Your TVs, Houston, But Why?

Last month, Xnfinity partnered with Comcast to launch a TV version of Skype in about a dozen cities across the U.S. Now they're bringing it to Houston. For the modest price of $9.95 a month (on top of the standard monthly rates for Xfinity/Comcast internet/TV), you get a Skype Adapter Box, an HD we ... More >>

The Night Watchman

Our Image Film & Arts Festival

20th Annual Iranian Film Festival

Cthulhu: A Puppet Play

Some Modest Suggestions for Bud Selig, MLB Commissioner For Life

Yep, we're still stuck with this bozo​In case you missed the news last week, Bud Selig's contract to be the commissioner of Major League Baseball has been extended another two years -- this coming after Selig had announced several years ago that he was retiring at the end of his current contra ... More >>

Need A Band Name? Let A Random Gawker Headline Help You!

Gawker is one of the most fun and informative sites on the innerwebs. Where else can you hear about the awful and sexy things that humans do to each other? Each day brings a new bounty of curiousness, like the one about the midget porn star Gordon Ramsay-lookalike that ended up being a hoax. It wasn ... More >>

Marcus Manchild: NYC Flips For UGK

Houston rapper Marcus Manchild and his label partners at AMG (Authentik Music Group), George, Chad and Nate, are currently traveling the country as part of the Smoker's Club Tour, headlined by Method Man, Curren$y and Big K.R.I.T. The Smoker's Club tour comes to Warehouse Live November 11, and Marcu ... More >>

The Secondary Colors

Oprah of the Piney Woods

Kathy Patrick wields some hefty clout out of her beauty shop/book store

Richard Julian: Norah Jones Mate Makes Midtown Stopover

Juan Patino/Richard Julian on Facebook​Richard Julian, Norah Jones sideman and leader of Jones' side project The Little Willies, plays Midtown's Leon's Lounge this evening. Julian's 2010 Compass Records release Girls Need Attention made Lonesome, Onry and Mean's list of last year's best alb ... More >>

Invasion of Piracy

Illegal downloading costs the film industry billions of dollars per year. But does the legal strategy designed to recoup this lost bounty amount to extortion?

Publicists Reject New Claim That Best PR Is None At All

theatlantic.comThe Weeknd: Don't call him, he won't call you.​A recent headline in The Atlantic - "For Indie Bands, the New Publicity Is No Publicity" - seemed to scream "music blog." Since we Rocks Offers spend a goodly portion of our day weeding through emails and phone calls from publicist ... More >>

Best Apps For Cheating On Your Spouse, Or Finding A Cheater: Apps of the Week

It was easier to keep secrets in the 1800s.​As long as there have been relationships, there has been infidelity. There are even times in our collective history when taking a mistress was commonplace. In the last 100 years, however, the notion of love and marriage and its role in the long terms ... More >>

Skype Testimony From Iraq Helps Convict Conroe Murderer

Skype: Putting murderers behind bars​A man was convicted or murder in Conroe based partly on testimony delivered via Skype from an Army base in Iraq. A Conroe police officer who had been involved in the investigation into the December 2008 murder is serving now in the Texas National Guard in ... More >>

Openings & Closings

​Another quiet week around the city, as even B4-U-Eat had only two restaurant closures to report and not a single, solitary opening aside from the long-awaited grand re-opening of Mai's on April 9. Have you been back yet? The two closures reported by B4-U-Eat were Pete & Shorty's Kitchen & Ta ... More >>

My Advice for NFL Players

Don't take these magic moments away, Players Union​In the battle for NFL labor supremacy, I'm rooting for football. I'm rooting for order in my world, and my entertainment to remain untouched. However, forced to choose a side, I am rooting for the players. I don't know if I represent Joe NFL ... More >>

Coming Back for More

For Five Bucks I'd...

What Texans would do for a Lincoln

Five Ways Rock Stardom Is Like Your Boring Office Job

All photos from work.failblog.org​The Beach Boys are mired in a controversy resulting from accusations that they lip-synced at an Australian concert last Saturday. That just goes to prove something we've known all along. Namely, that being a rock star isn't all that different from being one of ... More >>

Fiverr.com: What Texans Will Do For Five Bucks

For sale, cheap: Critiques of your dating profile​Hair Balls has five bucks burning a hole in our pocket, and we're thinking about spending it on a postcard from a Houston-based model no one's ever heard of. Or possibly a Texas State Fair award-winning pecan pie recipe.The problem is, there are ju ... More >>

Ten Rejected Glee Episodes

Fox​It seems like Glee can make any song, no matter how trite, terrible, or just inappropriate for singing by high-school-age children into a runaway smash pop hit. However, Rocks Off would like to hypothesize that there are artists that are beyond even Fox's ability to mold into mainstream. ... More >>

Four Ways to Let the Internet Fuel Your Long-Distance Love

​Your fantastic plastic Christmas tree has been lovingly packed away and stored in its original cardboard box from 1972. The holiday cheer has turned into New Year's rue in the face of long lines to exchange that UFC: Best of UFC 2009 DVD and re-gift a copy of Julie & Julia to your mother. C ... More >>

The Smoking Gun Targets Two Houston-Area Internet "Pranksters"

​The Smoking Gun website has an extensive, entertaining investigative expose on a group of webheads who pull off expensive pranks nationwide.Posing as authority figures, they have phoned hotel rooms and fast-food restaurants and talked innocent people into doing such things as breaking windows (be ... More >>

Kidnapped

Texan Larry Plake went out to one offshore oil job too many and ended up held for ransom in the Nigerian jungle.