Star Trek

R.I.P. Hotmail: Five Classic E-Mail Addresses to Honor a Fallen Comrade

As of last week, Microsoft migrated all Hotmail accounts to their new Outlook.com platform ending a run that has lasted nearly 16 years. It was a classic. Yes, it was abandoned by most years ago. Sure, when the box wasn't filled with spam, it was filled with semi-lurid requests from porn sites and p ... More >>

Space City Con

Comicpalooza

Three to See

Robert Pruitt, Gabriel Dawe and Tierney Malone are killing it in their respective local shows.

Comment of the Day: Establishing Your Trekkie Geekness Hard

​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 >>

Pop Rocks: Season of the Witches -- 10 Shows That Keeping Up with the Kardashians Outlasted

Over half a decade of quality programming.​In the course of writing Pop Rocks, I'm often exposed to information so horrific, so atrocious, so...repugnant it defies human comprehension. I first stumbled upon this particular tidbit several months ago, but only now has my sanity recovered from t ... 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 >>

Pop Rocks: Twilight vs. Harry Potter And 9 Other Geek Throwdowns

Still the only crossover I'd pay to see.​Anyone watch the MTV Movie Awards? Anyone? I didn't think so, mostly because I suspect the majority of Hair Balls/Art Attack readers are over the age of 12. And while I have no intention of revisiting the whole "'Music?"Television line of jokes, I did ... More >>

Photos: Anvil's First Annual Enthusiast Cocktail Competition

Photo by GroovehouseChuck Cook made a Star Trek-inspired Mon Capitan cocktail.​Customers from all walks of life -- from IT professionals to aerospace engineers -- competed last night in an unusual twist on a cocktail competition at Anvil Bar & Refuge. Although they were all cocktail enthusiast ... More >>

Astronaut Plays Jethro Tull Flute In Space

Rocks Off has been trying to come up with a "space rock" joke all day, but we can't, so we'll just say this is pretty cool. Today we got an email from Austin nonprofit Dart Music International with a link to the above video, which premiered during SXSW. It's astronaut (and musician) Cady Coleman ... More >>

William Shatner's Greatest Hits: The Man Transformed

​Rocks Off would like to wish a very happy 80th birthday to the one and only Mr. William Shatner. He may not be the best actor out there, or the best singer, but he is without a doubt the best William Shatner there ever was or ever will be. The way he has totally erased the line between sincer ... More >>

Space Cowboys: Big Head Todd Serenades Shuttle Crew

​If someone woke Rocks Off up at 2:30 in the morning with a Big Head Todd & the Monsters song, even the band themselves, we might have a few choice words for them. But we suppose it's a little different when you're 220 miles above the Earth. That's what happened earlier today (way earlier tod ... More >>

Discovery 's Last Take-Off: Some Wild Views

NASA has put together an impressive montage of the last take-off of the space shuttle Discovery, using a wide range of cameras on the launch pad and the vehicle. There's about five minutes or so of preflight stuff here, so fast-forward if you prefer.

Big Stars of Comedy

"I'm On A Boat" Gets Steampunk Makeover, Boba Fett

​Rocks Off is quite keen on steampunk, which is basically when you take a bunch of clockwork technology and shoehorn it into Victorian times. It's a small subset of geekdom, but growing quite a bit in popular literature. So as long as we're transporting modern improvements into the past, why ... More >>

Accessories Houston Rappers Don't Leave Home Without

fashionbombdaily.comSlick Rick: The ruler's back at Reliant Arena, November 6​Rappers have always been obsessed with accessories. It's mandated in rap contracts, right next to girl songs and Bun B collaborations. The tradition dates back to hip-hop's early days. Before Kanye popularized shutte ... More >>

4 Summer-Movie Soundtracks We Already Hate

​Last week, we told you of some upcoming summer-movie soundtracks that look like they're going to be fantastic. If positivity is your thing, go read that article. This one is going to be all about the upcoming soundtracks that make us wince so hard it feels like someone's chopping our balls with a ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Win A Couples Retreat DVD, And Discover The Five Best Paradise-Gone-Bad Movies

​A tropical retreat sounds pretty good right about now, as Houston begins yet another in a seemingly unending series of cold (well, relatively), rainy weeks. Unfortunately, in this economy the odds are slim that any of you can afford to just drop everything and jet off to Antigua for a weekend.As ... More >>

All I Want For Christmas Is No More 'Twas The Night Before Christmas Parodies

​It's the night before Christmas!! If only there was some kind of poem about it.Not only is there a poem about it, it's one that someone, somewhere, feels the need to parody every year. It could be a sportswriter hard up for a column, it could be someone wanting to share inside jokes about their p ... More >>

Win A Free Public Enemies DVD; Check Out Five Other "Enemy" Movies

Johnny Depp is the "sexiest man alive." I know this because it's what I've been told by People magazine, my wife, all my wife's friends, my sister, and that girl I dated in college who used to make me watch 21 Jump Street before she'd allow me to get her clothes off.He's also the star of Public Ene ... More >>

Pop Rocks: V For Valiant

Photo courtesy ABC​I've been watching V: The Series, more out of nostalgic fondness for the original than any hope the remake would be worth a damn (and I prefer a long-haired Morena Baccarin anyway). Despite solid efforts by Elizabeth Mitchell (Agent Evans) and Alan Tudyk (whose recent stri ... More >>

Crypticon Countdown: Michael Berryman On Star Trek, Motley Crue And Brandon Lee

Photo courtesy Crypticon​There's no mistaking horror-movie stalwart Michael Berryman. The actor suffers from a rare condition called hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, which is characterized by few or no sweat glands and lack of hair or fingernails. However, Berryman's distinctive appearance has ... More >>

Friday Night Noise: Murex and Noveller

​Murex "Eventual Railways": Houston's Murex has some sorta connection to the larger In The Land of Archers axis. If we can take "Eventual Railways" as a guide, though, Murex - man, woman, vegetable, some combination, we dunno - prefers a waaaay less ninth-circle-of-Hades approach. Have you ever se ... More >>

Not So Final Frontier

Aurora Picture Show hosts some enterprising fan fiction

Music of Star Trek™ & More Sci-Fi

The Houston Symphony beams some Deep Space sounds

Hit Hermann

In time for summer, the park's had a facelift.

Regrettable Star Trek Moments (Original Cast Only)

In case you've spent the last six months in the Vault of Tomorrow with a crate of Romulan ale, there's a new Star Trek movie coming out. And after 20-odd years of dealing with the Enterprise-D and dry Next Generation-style shenanigans, it's nice to see the old crew, even if it is in name only. This ... More >>

Warp Factor 10

J.J. Abrams's Star Trek: proof that a franchise can live long and prosper.

Five Reasons Not To Be Geeked About The Upcoming Star Trek Movie

Anyone who's been to the movies in the last month or so has seen the trailer for the upcoming Star Trek movie, which apparently involves people driving motorcycles over cliffs in order to avoid speeding tickets.If you happen to be attending the kind of movie that attracts the wrong kind of fans ... More >>

Star Trek for the Ages

From West U to deep space

The Phenomenauts, with the A.K.A.'s and Maldroid

Off Trek

Bad News With Al

When the Stars Came Out

Our top DVD picks for the week of August 1.

The Force Runs Its Course

Our top DVD picks for the week of October 4

Our top DVD picks for the week of September 27

Color Bland

South Korea's first anime feature is beautiful, but not much more

Best Video Store

Silly Humans, The Matrix Is for Kids!

Revolutions runs a playful joyride through a nifty vision of hell

Aping an Icon

Tim Burton monkeys around with the original Planet of the Apes, but is it evolution?

Back to the Future

Robert Wise finishes Star Trek: The Motion Picture--22 years later

The Final Frontier

Sci-fi conventions are where movie stars go to burn brightly one more time

Warp Factor Ten

Galaxy Quest is an exhilarating and affectionate parody of all things Roddenberry

News of the Weird

Do the Time Warp

Lost in Space is dumb -- but it's a good dumb

Boldly Going

The latest voyage of the Enterprise is a trip worth taking

For Generations To Come

Picks