The Valet Problem
Last Friday night, a friend and I were making our way down Montrose in search of some Mexican food. “I haven’t been to El Tiempo in a while,” he said, and so we headed off. Pulling up to the familiar stucco building, I was astonished to see my arch-nemesis positioned…
Album of the Week: Jane’s Addiction’s A Cabinet of Curiosities
Jane’s Addiction A Cabinet of Curiosities www.janesaddiction.com Jane’s Addiction is one of those bands that, although its members don’t especially like each other anymore, its influence and demand are simply too great to stay broken up. The game-changing L.A. quartet that treated alternative rock like heavy metal (and vice versa)…
Smoove B Robs A Bellaire Bank
Photo courtesy FBIThere’s been so many bank robberies in Houston that the FBI seems to be getting bored with them.They’ve come up with names like the “Reckless Robber” and they’ve criticized perps for looking unclean. But in the face of a smooth-talking playah, they are in awe.Notifying media of the…
Janitors’ Nightmare: Study Says Chewing Gum Increases TAKS Scores
Let there be jubilation in the halls of junior high schools across the land! A crack Baylor College of Medicine research team has found that chewing gum in class improves TAKS math scores.The study centered on 108 math students, aged 13-16, at a low-income, predominantly Hispanic Houston charter school. After…
Texas AG Cruelly Informs Us Water Can’t Be Turned Into Gas
We don’t know which shattered dream is more heartbreaking — the fact that water cannot apparently be turned into gas, or that the guy who said it could was named Eyal Siman-Tov and not, as he said in his ads, “Ozzie Freedom.”Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced today both of…
Lonesome Onry and Mean: The Houston Origins of “Lost Highway”
Lonesome, Onry and Mean has been thinking about Hank Williams a lot lately since being presented with a copy of Waylon Sings Hank. One of LOM’s favorite Hank tunes has always been the mournful “Lost Highway,” which much later lent its name to Universal’s alt-country boutique label. A lot of…
Questions You Never Thought You’d Hear: Is America’s Favorite City Houston Or Detroit?
Come on, people — Houston needs you!! Or at least the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau does.Houston, beauteous city by the Ship Channel, has somehow not made the list of America’s Favorite Cities put together by Travel & Leisure magazine in recent years.”We were included on the list several…
Tonight: Iris Dement at McGonigel’s Mucky Duck
[Ed. Note: this was written by Michael Roberts.] By the standards of most contemporary performers, Iris DeMent works largely off the grid. She doesn’t have a MySpace page, and her official website (www.irisdement.com) is apparently dead. Not that modern technology has ever been her raison d’être. Dement’s first album, 1992’s…
Stingaree Rising
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike’s steamroll across the Bolivar Peninsula, before-and-after aerial photos of beach communities like Caplen and Gilchrist became iconic images of the hurricane’s devastating power. The before pictures show verdant blocks of raised-on-posts beach houses; the after pictures reveal a muddy wasteland of concrete slabs and…
Go Have Your Advice About A New HISD Superintendent Ignored
The Houston school district has released its scheduled of community meetings where you can go and have your advice ignored about who should replace Abe Saavedra.No, no, no — of course your input will not be ignored. It will be included in a lengthy report put together by the search…
Jesus Christ Celebrates His Birthday Yesterday On Bissonnet
With a smile on his face, the Anti-Christ leaned over and blew out the candles on a birthday cake decorated with a big black “666.” The fifty or so of his followers crammed into the small storefront church on Bissonnet, across the street from a used car lot, went nuts,…
This Week In Beyonce: Howard Stern Hoax, Obsessed Opens, Toyota Center Date and More
Following the exploits of the world’s most famous Houstonian is a full-time job – to say the least; that must be why her publicist never seems to return our emails – but here at Rocks Off we do our best. Because Ms. B is never very far from the headlines, we decided…
Fort Bend CVS Wrongly Upped The Dosage On A Drug; Suicide Followed, Suit Claims
Before you take your medication, better check to make sure it’s what the doctor ordered. It could cost you your life.That’s the lesson a Fort Bend County family claims they learned the hard way after a pharmacist at CVS allegedly upped the prescribed dosage of an anti-depressant and sleep-aid on…
$13 at Picazo
Where: Picazo, 1421 Preston St., 713-236-1300 What $13 gets you: The first page of the menu. You will be able to take your pick from a pretty wide selection of appetizers, pizzas and soups or salads. Picazo has a little something for everyone, including the over $13 crowd if you…
Some Questions That Fox Didn’t Ask Roger Clemens Last Night
In between the first and second period of the Houston Aeros/Peoria Rivermen playoff game last night, I was walking around the Toyota Center concourse. I came up on a monitor that was showing the Astros/Dodgers game. And who do I see but Roger Clemens being interviewed by Fox Sports Houston’s…
Idol Beat: The Top Seven Results
And then there were five. Not the quite the five we expected, either: both Lil Rounds’ reign of ineptness and Anoop “Ralph Lauren” Desai’s bob-weave hit-or-miss streak have come to an end, cut short by American Idol voters. Justin Timberlake clone Matt Giraud apparently has the kind of luck usually…
The Island Of Misfit Cars: A Slideshow
The Prius, which is the subject of our cover story this week, is not the first compact car to cause a stir. Lots of unlikely automobiles have come and gone, leaving fans wishing for a return and non-fans wondering how anyone ever drove the things. Click here for a slideshow…
Frugality is The New Black
Okay, so did you realize being thrifty is so very chic right now, dahling?Blech.Everyone from Time to The New York Times is running articles about this new, fabulous feeling of thrift that is sweeping the country like it’s a runway fashion or something. The Times article highlighted a man who…
Breaking: Rick Perry Hates The Texas Flag
What does Rick Perry have against the Texas flag? Why does he hate it so?We can only assume that he is utterly embarrassed by the Lone Star flag, which features the red coloring that honors the blood shed by our ancestors for Texas, because the DPS is taking it off…
