The Astros will always be our boys of summer, but this is football country and our eyes are beginning to look towards Reliant Stadium. With training camp beginning this week, some questions still hold heavy over our Houston Texans’ season. How will the defensive backfield perform? Dunta Robinson, the anchor of the defensive backfield, is likely out for most of the season. Showing a good deal of promise in his rookie season, will Fred......

We’ve got a busy week on the concert front. Our favorite duo from New York arrives at The Meridian tomorrow night. They Might Be Giants have been making quirky alt/pop songs for grown-ups over 20 years now, and a few albums for the kids that us grown-ups enjoy, too. Wilco’s Friday night show at Verizon Wireless Theater is sold out, but if you’re willing to pay a little, you can still get your hands......

::World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest:: Or something like that. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo's barbeque contest is happening this weekend and Houstonist thinks your tastebuds are as qualified as anyone's to make a judgement. Find yoiur favorite team or choose by the most appealing name on this listing and map of the area. Besides lots and lots of stuff from the grill, expect to find mucho live music to give you a smile for......

If you prefer 90’s music over today’s, there are a few shows this week that’ll be right up your alley. Tomorrow night, Matchbook Twenty and Alanis Morisette play a sold out show at Toyota Center (MuteMath opens). For rap fans, check out Too $hort at the Meridian Friday night and Snoop Dogg returns with new material at Warehouse Live Saturday night. Finally, Marilyn Manson gives you an alternative to Sunday night church this weekend.......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A bicyclist was killed early Friday evening after being struck by a van on Old Katy Road. • A new three million dollar ad campaign to enhance the city's image is set to launch in February. The ad campaign will feature celebrities such as Beyonce and heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley. Expect to see these ads in The Wall Street Journal, USA......

Tonight’s Texas Bowl is going to be a throwback to the days of the Southwest Conference with an exciting match-up between the University of Houston and Texas Christian University. From a football point of view, it’s a classic match-up of high powered offense (Houston) against a formidable defensive squad (TCU). It will be interesting to see how the Coogs respond in tonight’s game, their first without Art Briles who ran off to Waco to become......

As the Texans 2007 campaign draws to a close on Sunday against the Jaguars, putting a bow on top of the most improved season in franchise history, we can look back at the highlights and lowlights. Pros: Mario Williams, the rock solid consistency of healthy Andre Johnson, Mario Williams, rookies Fred Bennet and Abomi Okoye, Mario Williams, possible tradebait Sage Rosenfels, Mario Williams, the revived Ron Dayne, Mario Williams, DeMeco Ryans' appearance on the national......

Football on a Thursday? Does this mean we have to skip 30 Rock? Damn, this is a hard decision. Gary Kubiak vs. Jack Donaghy. Sage Rosenfels vs. Judah Freidlander. Texans Cheerleaders vs. our completely defensible crush on Tina Fey. Tracy Jordan vs. Travis Henry's illegitmate children. Mike Shannahan's hair vs. the Sheinhart Wig Company. Who are we kidding? You can watch 30 Rock any time on NBC's website. It's like Tivo for poor people! The......

"We gon' rock it till the wheels fall off," the poet Nate Dogg once said. If he was referring to the Houston Texans' 2007 season (and we have no reason to believe that he wasn't), then the rocking will soon cease, as the wheels are at very least wobbling their way out of place as a prelude to actually falling off. The annual optimism has given way to the annual draft speculation, as the never-ending......

Apparently competing to find the most thankless college football head coaching position in the state of Texas, University of Houston head coach Art Briles today accepted the Baylor job that was made vacant by the firing of Guy Morriss last week. Briles' contract with Baylor will extend through seven losing seasons at $1.8 million dollars per losing season. Cougar athletic director and all around quote machine Dave Maggard has said that Briles will leave immediately,......

When a bye week is one of the highlights of your team's football season simply because no one got hurt, you know that the rest of the season won't be much to write home about. Given that this is exactly the position that Texans fans find themselves in, it's at least comforting that they're coming out of the bye week to face a team almost as disappointing as the Texans. After an inspiring 2006......

The big question heading into the Texans matchup against the San Diego Chargers has nothing to do with Matt Schaub's hip, Andre Johnson's knee, or Gary Kubiak's recent coaching decisions, but when and where the game will be played. As you're no doubt aware, George Bush started a series of fires in Southern California to distract attention away from the Iraq war, and a lot of people around the San Diego area were forced......

Somewhere, Marvin Zindler is rolling over in what is no doubt a very lavish coffin. While this article in the Chron todaylooks into the health inspections at sports venues makes no particular mention of slime or its proximity relative to the ice machine, you can be sure that Marvin would've known and would've shouted it from the rooftops. Or at least from somewhere near Dave Ward's elbow. The stadiums reviewed under the auspices of the......

In case you weren't familiar, there's a large university in Austin, with orange and white for their colors, and a big, drugged cow for a mascot. You may have also heard that their football team is usually pretty good, and that a couple years ago, they actually won a national championship in football. Their quarterback that year kinda flew under the radar, so you may not have heard about him, either: regardless, he was......

Kickers are lame. When kids play pickup football games, no one gets chosen first because they can split the uprights with a perfect field goal. Plus, they're only on the field about ten plays a game, if that. But tonight, Kris Brown is the toast of the town after leading the Texans to a nail-biter win over the Miami Dolphins at Reliant Stadium today. After suffering a heel injury on his non-kicking foot on the......

It's been called many things. The Danger Train. The Death Train. A Streetcar Named Disaster. But it is our only rail line and it does get us from downtown to beyond Reliant Stadium. So, in this video, we give you it's greatest hits. Just smashing! Thanks to Mike McGuff and brentabousko for turning us on to this video.......

Like a scene from the movie 300, the Houston Texans players have been dropping like flies. Injuries are starting to take a toll on the Texans who couldn’t make it three in a row to start the season and no longer share first place in the division after losing 30 to 24 to the Indianapolis Colts Sunday. Jerome Mathis returned the opening kickoff 84 yards to start the game with the lead, but the Texans......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor The Fuzzball. We love the vanishing point on this image taken downtown of the rail line. It looks like it goes on forever, but it doesn't. It stops somewhere past Reliant Stadium. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 400 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for......

Well, that was pleasant. The Texans started off the 2007 season with a bang, whipping the Chiefs 20-3 at Reliant Stadium yesterday. The defense in particular was the difference maker, forcing four turnovers, whileholding the strong Chiefs running game to just 72 yards in the game. (Which surely does not bode well if you have Larry Johnson on your fantasy football team) Mario Williams emerged, nay, exploded into the new season as the ferocious face......

Mayor White held a press conference about the city's new skatepark, scheduled to open next summer, yesterday. Apparently, some people at KHOU were very excited about it. In their coverage, they said that the new skatepark will cover 30,00 acres. As one blogger pointed out, this is larger than the entire Reliant Stadium complex. The world's largest skatepark is the size of three football fields - roughly 3 acres, not 30,000. We did a little......

If antique trucks get your heart pumping, you'll likely be pumped the pump up for tomorrow's 4th annual Classy Chassis Vintage Auto Show at Reliant Stadium. The event will feature over 100 world-class automobiles, including "vintage American and European icons, rare and exotic hand-built sports cars, hot rods and full-out racing machines." So that should make for good eye candy as you stroll about Reliant with a plastic cup of beer. But you know......

Folk Legend Bert Jansch, who has influenced artists from many genres, including Neil Young (who refers to him as the acoustical version of Jimi Hendrix), Devendra Banhart, Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Johnny Marr (The Smiths), Nick Drake, Beth Orton, Noel Gallagher (Oasis) and Mike Oldfield, will make a rare live appearance at the Orange Show. Infused with American folk, blues and Traditional British Isles music, his style is singularly unique and his song-writing very affecting.......

Today’s Photos of the Day comes from flickr users and Houstonist photo contributors Philosopher Queen, erci, cybertoad, mrp1001, presson_on, Jeff Balke, mx5tx and Graustark. These are all shots of local stadiums, ballparks and playing fields, all worthy of inclusion in todays collected Photo of the Day. Keep the sports related photos coming readers and contributors. Our Photo of the Day theme this week is sports. Submit your sports and Houston related images to our......

Out of curiosity, have you tried to book a hotel anywhere in Houston this week? Checked out the prices? Wondered why all rooms have gone up by a hundred dollars or so? If you don't know what we're getting on about, then you probably don't work in the energy industry, and you probably don't know that the OTC (Offshore Technology Conference) is going on this week. The convention is currently taking up the entire......

Good morning, Houston. The Internet has become such a part of our lives that it's hard sometimes to step back and see just how pervasive it really is — but the folks at Domain Name Wire came up with an interesting way to do that: They counted the number of URLs advertised along Highway 71 and I-10 between Austin and Houston. The grand total? More than 68, including the whopper qualityconcreteandswimmingpools.com (which doesn't seem......

Houstonist joined over 70,000 rodeo fans and rock music lovers in Reliant Stadium last night for the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo finale. This wasn't our first Houston Rodeo, but it was the first time Houstonist had attended with a rodeo nut. We were skeptical about arriving at 10:45 AM on a day when the main events did not commence until 3:45 PM. How were we to occupy our time until the stadium opened? Team......

Busy week for live music, thanks to SXSW and it's overflow of artists into Houston. Some of the showcases you can check out include Super Happy Fun Land's nightly extravaganza and Alternative Press brings you "Bands you Need to Know" on Friday at the Meridian. Proletariat and Walter's on Washington are just two other of the many venues hosting SXSW artists. We highly recommend checking out a few of these shows this week --......

Good morning, Houston. Even if you don't have a pizza pan with the Virgin Mary's silhouette on it, don't despair: You could still own a half-liter bottle of holy drinking water. The water is being marketed by a man in Stockton, Calif., who has the liquid blessed by Catholic and Anglican priests with plans to expand the line to other faiths as well. One warning: The water's label carries the note that sinners who......

It's official: The Police are coming to Houston (the Toyota Center, to be specific) on June 29th. Tickets go on sale this Saturday morning at 10 a.m. They'll go fast. Some big acts coming into town this week, starting with The Shins performance tonight at Verizon Wireless. For you pop.rock fans, you'll have to choose between Sheryl Crow's make-up rodeo performance and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers show at Toyota Center. G. Love &......

Armadillo Palace with Carrie Ann Buchanan So you feel obligated to do the rodeo this year, but: a) you don’t feel like dealing with the traffic b) you don’t want to spend $8 on a watered-down beer c) you think their entertainment line-up is lame Here’s a way you can still wear your boots and feel like a true Texan during rodeo season without stepping foot into Reliant Stadium: visit Armadillo Palace. Armadillo Palace is......