The History Channel

The Art Car Parade: Enjoying the Ride

Art Car stalwarts employ time, energy and creativity to bring their new creations to life. Oh, and scrap metal comes in handy too.

Come Celebrate The REAL Kind of Undocumented Aliens in Edinburg's UFO Conference This Weekend

If you're into aliens, and you're not too busy being rectally probed by some little gray dude with huge eyes, you might want to check out the Out of This World! UFO Conference and Festival in Edinburg this weekend. The extraterrestrial extravaganza will feature bigwigs like Stanton Friedman, who, ... More >>

Say No To Dry Turkey: Top 5 Thanksgiving Alternatives

Thanksgiving: a day full of love, laughter, and some truly great food. It's one of the best days of the year...as long as you're not the one making the turkey. Because let's face it: cooking the turkey is a bitch (okay, so I never had to make it myself but even watching other people make it is a bit ... More >>

Bronco Bama For The Win: Your Election Night 2012 Live Blog & Comment Feed

"There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth or something I guess..." -- Luke 13:28, A Copy Of The Bible I Swiped From A Hotel Room Hello and welcome to Hair Balls' election night live blog and comment, where tonight I will be chronicling the mania of the 2012 presidential ... More >>

Top 5 Nearby Fall Festivals & County Fairs

As the recent weather has proved, there's no better time to be outdoors in Texas than fall. In springtime, there's always that lingering knowledge that summer is right around the corner, so this time of year there's nothing else to look forward to but Santa Claus. It's also harvest time, and the tho ... More >>

Tony Jay: Playlist for the Ultimate Voice-Over Villain

I tend to talk up voice actors here in the Houston Press blogs. Part of it is because I'm trying to justify entering my fourth decade on Earth and still being mesmerized by cartoons, but a lot of it is because I think that the discipline represents one of the most underrated acting skills of all tim ... More >>

The World Needs Ten Gotye Remixes? Really? Aight.

Mitt Romney, bath salts, bacon sundaes, and celebrities from the '80s dropping like flies. If you haven't noticed by now, shit is rough in 2012. It could even be our very last year on this dirtball, if you listen to shoddy Mayan lore, late-night AM radio, and that one dude on the History Channel who ... More >>

Comment of the Day: A New Job For That Apocalypse-Ranting Teacher

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 >>

Gilberto Montezano: Valley Cop Avoids Jail After Shaking Down Motorist For Beer

For the third time since August, a cop in the Rio Grande Valley town of Edinburg has been terminated and faced criminal charges for varied forms of corruption. In the most recent case, in April of last year, 30-year-old Gilberto Montezano pulled over a truck driven by Miguel Guzman and evidently to ... More >>

Reality Bites: Full Metal Jousting

There are a million reality shows on the naked television. We're going to watch them all, one at a time. The premise is familiar: take 16 people, divide them into two teams and pit them against each other in a series of contests leading to a lone winner. It could be a variant of Survivor or Road Ru ... More >>

The Bloody, Sexy Beginnings of Valentine's Day

When you're giving your significant other overpriced flowers and candies tomorrow, remember this: You're celebrating the brutal beheading of a dude who just wanted to help horny youngsters. There are many myths and theories about the beginnings of Valentine's Day, but we turn to the History Channel ... More >>

Reality Bites: MonsterQuest

There are a million reality shows on the naked television. We're going to watch them all, one at a time. Admittedly, the concept of MonsterQuest initially struck me as woefully similar to that of...certain other reality shows, in that I was sure we'd be following around a bunch of yahoos using dubi ... More >>

Oscar Categories That We Wish Existed

By now you have all seen this year's Oscar nominations, released yesterday, in Beverly Hills, California. Nine films were nominated for Best Picture, including Hugo, Moneyball, War Horse, The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life. Fun stuff, espe ... More >>

''Discovering the Civil War''

Upcoming Events: Hairy Bikers Heat Up Houston

Hairy Bikers hosts Bill Allen and Paul Patranella will be in town tonight at District Lounge.​The History Channel came to Houston recently, and the bloggers behind spicy food blog Eat More Heat were tapped to help the show Hairy Bikers with the Ultra-Hot Chile Burger Challenge that will be fea ... More >>

Lemmy & HeadCat Mates Walk The Rockabilly Walk

​You could say that the members of roots-rock trio HeadCat got together to pay tribute to the King. But instead of the baby Jesus of Bethlehem, these three wise men -bassist/singer Lemmy Kilmister (Motörhead), drummer Slim Jim Phantom (ex-Stray Cats), and guitarist/pianist Danny B. Harvey (ex ... More >>

Loch Ness Radio: The Wind Cries Nessie

It's a well-known fact that band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying to find meaning in the oddest monikers. ​Well friends and enemies, your faithful name-gamer is back after spending some time locked in a windowless room being questioned by three guys with ... More >>

Five Very Bad Father's Day Gifts

Father's Day: What are you gonna do? You are forced by the powers that be to get something, unless your Dad has passed on to his reward. And if you're a Dad yourself, then you have to resign yourself to books from that one author someone saw on your shelf (never mind that you hated that book), tool ... More >>

Joel Gregoire: One-Man Metal Extravaganza

​If there is anything that Rocks Off loves about the modern music era it's that the ability of individual people to put out their own elaborate albums has never been easier. Meet Joel Gregoire, an instrumental metal maestro by trade and former member of Stride. He's releasing his new album Der ... More >>

Bin Laden's Favorite Performers -- Whitney Houston, MacGyver Dude, Etc. -- Offer Twitter Silence On His Death

Losing a big fan is apparently hard on Richard Dean Anderson​When you're no longer in the absolute prime of your career, it can be disheartening to lose a hardcore fan. That's the only reason we can think of that several specific stars haven't tweeted their thoughts on the death of Osama Bin ... More >>

Hide and Seek

Fourteen-year-old Andrew Mosier was abducted last August. It wasn't by aliens.

Capsule Art Reviews: "Donald Baechler: Sculptures and Paintings" "Larassa Kabel: and all of this so far from Heaven" "Mark Bradford: A 20 Year Survey" "Regine Schumann: Chameleon" "Kate Breakey 2011: Painted Light"

Lincoln Memorial

Redford helms another dull history lesson.

The Five Horniest Presidents America Has Produced

Warren G. Harding, sex machine​The Reelz channel finished up its Kennedys mini-series last night, the production that was chased from the History Channel because JFK fans hollered about inaccuracies or too many dramatic liberties. The series itself seemed rather rote, although Greg Kinnear wa ... More >>

Capsule Art Reviews: "First Take: Okay Mountain" "Heimir Bjorgulfsson: The Classical" "Larassa Kabel: and all of this so far from Heaven" "Mark Bradford: A 20 Year Survey"

Robert Alvarez: TV-Star Gang Cop Accused of Inmate Sex, Abuse of Power, Theft

If the producers of the History Channel's documentary series Gangland are to be trusted, Edinburg police investigator Robert Alvarez was one of the top cops in the Rio Grande Valley. The 47-year-old was tapped as a starring talking head in Gangland's episode on the Tri-City Bombers, the Valley's mos ... More >>

Wilber Adalid Rodriguez: Homeless Man Murders Another Over National "Honor"

Some things are better left unargued​You'd hope that San Antonio residents Wilber Adalid Rodriguez and Jose Antonio Rodriguez would find a way to get along. As the old blues song goes, they were both poor boys a long ways from home: the 24-year-old Wilber hails from El Salvador, while Jose, 28 ... More >>

Tea Party: At The Race Track With George Washington

Photos by Craig HlavatyNo treading allowed​On Saturday afternoon I visited the North Houston Tea Party's "I Will Vote" rally, held at the Sam Houston Race Park. This was my second Tea Party rally in six months, following on the heels of the one in April at Discovery Green where my photographer was ... More >>

Five Disturbing Films, Plus Five More For Good Measure

​I'm going to the unrated remake of I Spit On Your Grave next week. The original, I should point out, was rated "R", though I still doubt the new one will pack the same punch the first one did back in 1978 (Roger Ebert described sitting through it as "one of the most depressing experiences of ... More >>

Pamela And Jack Wright: Houston's Pawn Stars

Photo by schemacomaWhere dreams are made....​We know we're a little late to the game, but Hair Balls recently became a fan of Pawn Stars, the History Channel's beer-gutted, blue-collar answer to PBS's effete, pinky-sipping Antiques Roadshow. (Which we also love.)Thanks to its Las Vegas setting, an ... More >>

Sampler Plate: This Week In Food Blogs

Each week, we put together a sampler plate of the most interesting links from both local and national food blogs. Know a blog we should be paying particular attention to? Leave the address in the comments section below. Houston Wok: Yes, there's a recipe for Korean stuffed peppers (which look like ... More >>

The Week In TV: Time Runs Out for 24

Cancellation: The light at the end of our tunnel.​I miss Spring Break, I'm awash in cancellations, and I don't get your reference to the Cookie Crisp Wizard. This was the week in TV Land: • As I wrote last week in my post about The Office, it's possible for a show to overstay its welcome a ... More >>

The Week In TV: Jay Leno's Flagpin And, For Some Ungodly Reason, An Animated Joe Dirt

​Winter's back, the sun is gone, and Fox just put another Joss Whedon show out to pasture. This was the week in TV Land:• So, Jay Leno went on Oprah's show last week to talk about his side of the whole late-night debacle. (Out of every weird thing about the interview, tops was the American flag ... More >>

How to Digitally Dump Your Beau or Babe

​She's no good, he's no good, you're no good, baby, you and your fizzled-out flame ain't no good. Face the music, friend. He tells you he wants you, yet he actually repositioned his nether regions away from your eager mouth when you tried to go bobbing for apples last evening. She says you' ... More >>

Warfare in Early China and the Pottery Army of the Qin

Web exclusive

Credit Crisis

The fight over who pioneered the TV plays out in The Farnsworth Invention

They're Making A Documentary About The Dome, And They Want Your Family Keepsakes

Via the always-entertaining Bayou City History blog at the Chron we learned of a budding documentary about that quaint old abandoned building that used to be the Eighth Wonder of the World.Chip Rives, one of the producers/directors/writers of The Dome, tells Hair Balls he and his partner have do ... More >>

“Houston’s History Is Well Marked and All Around You, Explore and Enjoy”

The Heritage Society hosts a talk about Houston’s many noteworthy sites

Sandra Worth

A historical novelist with an expertise in feudal England comes to Borders

Waiting for Friedman

Knocking back a few with the Kinky crowd

Hollywood Halo

Texas teens turn video games into movies and get millions of hits

Crash and Yearn

Howard Hughes gets what he wants, in this case a fun and loving biopic

The Passion of Brian

Move over, Mel, it's the second coming of Monty Python

Drag King

Actor-comic Eddie Izzard just wants to be loved

News Hostage

The Insider