The question that has burned in men's minds since 2000, invading their slumber and disturbing their very ability to enjoy music, has finally been answered emphatically. It was Jerome Mathis, wideout and kick returner for the Texans, who let the dogs out. Mathis was given a citation by Brazoria County authorities on Saturday when four of his pit bulls were menacing neighbors near his home in Manvel. Animal control officers were able to intervene without......

Good morning, Houston. There's nothing quite like a building implosion to lift our spirits at the beginning of the week — if, of course, it's a building we won't miss. That happened to be the case with the Crowne Plaza hotel in the Medical Center, which was reduced to rubble Sunday; click the link for video from KHOU. (Be prepared to wait — there's a lot of buildup to the big moment in Channel......

Good morning, Houston. Have you ever been lounging around on the couch, curious about how the state of Texas spends its money but frustrated because you can't hop online and find out? Well, cheer up: Now you can, thanks to a new feature on the state comptroller's website. The database allows users to search the $74.5 billion in expenditures from fiscal 2007 by agency, payee and spending category. For folks with the ability to......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Notsuoh Photography. This is a photo of the historic Nash House in the Westmoreland Historic District in The Montrose. The following information is from a brochure from The Westmoreland Civic Association. 215 Westmoreland (1907). The Nash house is a grand Colonial Revival house that resembles the Connecticut State Building designed for the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. The house, designed by......

Good morning, Houston. It's August, and that means hurricane season is starting to get heavy. The country's got fins to the left and fins to the right, so to speak. As of last night, Tropical Storm Dean was crossing the open Atlantic with winds at 50 mph, while Tropical Depression #5 had put part of the Texas coast under a tropical storm watch. And over in the Pacific, Hawaii's dealing with Hurricane Flossie. Time......

Biggio and Infernal Bridegroom Productions announce they're leaving us on the same day? Say it ain't so, Tamarie. Unfortunately for us, it is: IBP announced in a press release that was also posted on their website yesterday that they have "ceased operations this month due to insurmountable financial difficulties." Is it too late to get the mayor's fundraising people on this? IBP produced 68 plays since their founding in 1993, and we're sure each......

Good morning, Houston. We're regular NPR listeners, and we enjoy it as much as the next guy when legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg gives us another thrilling reading of a Supreme Court transcript. Even so, we were a little surprised to hear an ad the other day for NPR's newest piece of merchandise, the limited-edition Nina Totin' Bag. Yes, it's what you'd think it is: a tote bag with Totenberg's mug on it (in,......

So it rained a lot yesterday, and it looks like we're not going to get much of a break today. Or tomorrow. Or — well, actually, it's looking like the rail will continue for at least the next seven days. The bright spot in all this is that the rain may hold off for the big fireworks show Wednesday night: "We have seen, the last four or five days, rain in the morning and rain......

Good morning, Houston. Thanks to KHOU, we have a couple more details on the coming switch from Time Warner to Comcast cable — sort of. Next week, 20 new channels will come to the Houston cable market, including five HD channels — but Comcast isn't saying what they are (aside from ESPN HD and the NFL Network, which should appeal to you sports fans). Up to this point, the most visible result of the......

Good morning, Houston. Remember when our fair city was trying to land the summer Olympics? Well, maybe we should be happy we didn't get them, given London's problems with its 2012 Olympics logo. The logo — a brightly colored, highly abstracted version of the numerals "2012" that cost $796,000 to design — drew fire at first for its look, and now there's word that the animated version of the logo is apparently causing epileptic......

KTRK has the story of a bizarre, thwarted murder-for-hire plot in Alvin that started when a woman felt like the justice system had let her down — so, naturally, she decided to make her own justice. It all started two years ago when Walter Fregia and his brother, Kirk, got into a fight that apparently left Walter paralyzed from the chest down. Kirk Fregia went to jail, but he was recently released and sentenced to......

Good morning, Houston. We were going to begin the day talking about how American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar finally got voted off the show last night, but then we ran across this item: Wednesday was the 30th birthday of KTRK's Live at Five afternoon newscast. Big deal, you say? Why yes, it is — because, thanks to Channel 13, you can watch the very first episode of the show, from April 18, 1977. Dave......

We're pretty sure all of you (or at least those of you who are in or around Houston) heard the storms that came through town Monday morning. We remember thinking it sounded like bricks were falling out of the air — and at one apartment complex in southwest Houston, it seems they actually were. According to KTRK, the storm caused a wall at the Pipers Crossing complex near Sandpiper and West Airport to collapse, damaging......

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......

Looks like we won't be able to catch a rocket ship to outer space in Houston's back yard anytime soon: Earlier this week, the Brazoria County Commissioners Court voted to dissolve a nonprofit corporation that was formed to build a commercial spaceport. The group, called the Gulf Coast Regional Spaceport Development Corp., was formed in 2000 to build a port for spacecraft to deliver commercial satellite into orbit; an initial proposal was to develop the......

Some news for those of you who commute to and from Brazoria County regularly: TxDOT is considering building 26 miles of toll lanes along Highway 288. The proposal is for two toll lanes in each direction from Highway 59 to the South Loop, three lanes each way from the Loop to the Beltway, and two lanes in each direction from there to County Road 60 near Iowa Colony. There's room: When the South Freeway......

Remember Brazoria Mayor Ken Corley's proposal to outlaw use of the word "nigger" in his town? Turns out residents weren't too happy about it — some 200 of them met on the town's Main Street last night and blasted the idea, causing Corley to withdraw it. In case you've forgotten, Corley, after hearing some black ministers talk on television about how offensive the word is to them, decided he would make Brazoria a model of......

Sad news from Pearland: On Friday, a 73-year-old grandmother was beaten and stabbed to death by her grandson, who had just been released from jail a few hours earlier. According to a neighbor, 19-year-old James Sawyer suddenly flew into a violent rage and began beating and stabbing his grandmother, Evangelina Sawyer, to death Friday evening in her home on Garden Road. Sawyer's brother said he tried to stop the attack, but Sawyer began beating him......

Wow, it sure rained a lot overnight. We mean a lot — more than seven inches fell downtown, more than six in southern Brazoria County, just as much in east Harris County and part of Liberty County. The good news is that most of the heavy rain has moved north of the Beltway, but the bad news is that it's now sitting over Katy, northwest Harris County, Montgomery County, Bryan-College Station, Huntsville ... yeah, you......

The rancher who says he stole 289 cows in an eight-county cattle rustling ring took more than cattle, today's Chronicle reports — he also made off with people's peace of mind. Who'd have thought this story would have become an epic tale of the human situation? Well, Houstonist would have, of course. Perhaps the guy with the worst luck in this situation is E.R. Milstead, a 62-year-old Brazoria County rancher who had some of his......

Well, it looks like we're not necessarily in for a repeat of yesterday's flooding after all: Though storms are moving through the area today, meteorologists say they're not expected to stall and dump several inches of rain. That means things can get back to normal — all but one of HISD's campuses are open, Metro service is back on schedule and flooded roads are passable again. Forecasters had worried the storms that caused nearly 11......

Brazoria officials had been after ex-mail carrier Russell Meuth for months about the trash in his back yard — not only was the yard junky, but there were reports of smoke there a couple weeks ago, a violation of a city ordinance and county burn ban. But when officials got a search warrant and went into the yard over the weekend, they were surprised at what they found: several containers of chemicals and 34......

Police pulled an unidentified body from the Ship Channel today, not far from where a worker fell off a barge several weeks ago The naked man who beat up a police officer yesterday had been harassing drivers, according to reports Police say a string of home invasions in Fort Bend County, including one in which a woman was robbed while bathing a baby, may be related Greezed Lightnin', one of the AstroWorld roller coasters set......

The next time you're cruising around the county throwing lighted cigarette butts out your car window — well, don't. Recent dry conditions and high winds led to 110 brush fires in Harris County between Saturday and Tuesday — up from the usual average of five a day. Though it's nowhere near as bad locally as it has been in North Texas and Oklahoma, officials say New Year's fireworks aren't necessarily the best idea here. "The......

Gov. Rick Perry announced plans to go after private funding for Texas' portion of the proposed Interstate 69 rather than waiting on federal money The city will investigate a contract with a garbage collection firm that billed Houston for the disposal of tons of garbage it collected in neighboring cities Management system failures led to the deadly BP plant explosion in Texas City in March, BP's final report on the accident said The Brazosport Facts......

Rice University received a $20 million anonymous donation, the largest single private donation in the school's history A Spring couple has been indicted for selling fake university transcripts and diplomas online Look! Up in the sky! Stars and planets! A Brazoria County deputy hired to direct traffic was killed when a truck hit him Companies planning to pollute waterways or build landfills are now required to post signs in multiple languages if the nearest elementary......