Houstonist is happy that we secured our Wilco tickets a couple of months ago, now that tonight's show at Verizon Wireless Theater is sold out. Jeff Tweedy and company consistently make great albums, even if the style is inconsistent with each album. The Chicago-based band's latest, Sky Blue Sky, is a little more mellow compared to their last few releases, but this song, "Impossible Germany," (the video was recorded live) is one of the......

Internationally acclaimed artists, architect, and weirdo Vito Acconci will be lecturing at the MFA tonight. Over the course of his almost fifty year career in the art world Vito has stuffed marbles in his face, bitten himself, and whispered lewd remarks to strangers while inappropriately touching himself in public for the sake of his art. In the 1990's Vito turned his artistic talents to the fields of architecture and landscape design. And has developed......

The Houston Astros have announced they have come to terms on a one-year, $1 million contract with incentives with Darin Erstard. Erstad, who can play outfield and first base, is a two-time All-Star (1998, 2000). Last year with the Chicago White Sox, Erstad batted .248 with four home runs runs and 32 RBI in 87 games. His career year came in 2000 with the Anaheim Angels when he sported a .355 average with 25......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. City Duped By New Court Technology City officials are threatening a lawsuit against Maximus Inc, the company that was hired to supposedly make things easier for the municipal court system. Officials are giving the company until Thursday to come up with a plan to work out the bugs. The city has already dropped a cool $10 million into this flawed system. Continental Allows Cellphone Check In......

Animal Collective’s new record, Strawberry Jam, was one of the most talked about indie releases of 2007. The experimental rock group's [pictured] national television debut on the Conan O’Brien show re-airs tonight. Monday -NBC, 11:35pm: Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Animal Collective Tuesday -FOX, 9am: Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, Wyclef Jean -NBC, 12pm: Ellen DeGeneres, Snoop Dogg Wednesday -FOX, 9am: Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, Gloria Gaynor -NBC, 12pm: Ellen DeGeneres, Ryan......

Some pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty cool stuff opening this weekend, kids. Check it out: Jeanne Cassanova / Reginald Rachuba The Joanna Gallery "Those in attendance can be assured a multi sensory onslaught of 'image spillage'." Oh, really. We have to admit, the term "spillage" sort of scares us, but the image at right is so cool, we're willing to risk it. Both Cassanova and Rachuba pull from contemporary images and create narratives woven between each other......

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. I just saw a commercial for a cereal, I think it was Total, that used a Canned Heat song as the background ditty. It really bothered me for some reason, and I'm not sure why. -- Abbie H., Chicago Though you didn't really ask a question, Abbie, I get your drift. The growing number of 60s rock songs in TV commercials right now......

This week saw the usual ho-hum type of Missed Connections with a few Halloween misses thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, some posts were more depressing than others. Hopefully the following MCs will make you smile. I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME! - w4m - 42 YOU DONT CALL U DONT EMAIL N THEN WHEN YOU DO YOU HAVE NOTHING OF WHT I ASK FOR - ALL I WANT IS THE......

Today’s Photo of the Day comes from flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Chicago Love. What a lovely perspective of this stoic monument. Thanks for sharing with us Chicago Love. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 430 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for Photo Of The Day, submit it here. For more great photography check out the Houston......

With so many fun and interesting gallery openings this evening, we thought we would briefly give you a few options and let you, dear readers, decide which one to attend...or maybe gallery hopping is your thing! Eating, drinking, being merry, viewing art and what-not. Either way, there is much interesting work on view this beautiful fall evening in Houston. First up is the opening of Jack Zajac A Survey: 1967-2007 at Gremillion & Co. Gallery.......

::OpMom Web 2.0 Launch Party at Benjy's:: Three things we love: Moms, Web 2.0, and Benjy's. Can't go wrong here. And Houstonist has your ticket to this private launch party. Unless you've been living under a Web 1.0 rock, you are probably aware that Houston has recently been a hot bed for Social Media Startups, as Brad Hem reported this weekend. One of these ventures, the locally-based OpMom, tonight celebrates their own jaunt into Web......

Houstonist loves good pop music. We’re not talking about Britney, or anything else you’d hear on local pop radio for that matter. We’re talking about good indie-pop. Catchy melodies, clever lyrics, and overall sophisticated (yet, fun). Well, that basically describes Chicago-based Office. Office (not to be confused with the popular TV shows) originated in 2001, but Office leader Scott Masson didn’t get serious about it until 2004 – that’s when he left his job waiting......

Today’s Photo of the Day is brought to you by Big Industrial Companies, as well as flickr user and Houstonist photo contributor Chicago Love. If you have a passion for Houston and photography, consider joining over 420 of Houston's best photographers in the Houstonist Flickr Photo Group. If Houstonist uses your photo for Photo Of The Day, submit it here. For more great photography check out the Houston Photobloggers.......

::The Orange Show for Visionary Arts Concert Series:: We told you about this event in this week's Thriftster, but decided it was waaaaaay to cool not to be reminded of again. I mean, would you seriously know what to do if we didn't tell you these things? Don't answer that. Unless the answer is "No." This new concert series, co-sponsored by SugarHill Studios, is dedicated to showcasing musicians as original as the Orange Show......

Many bands had to change their names to avoid legal problems with existing bands with the same name. Most find new names or add a modifier, like “U.K.” to distinguish themselves from the other similar named band from another country. Chicago’s The Academy Is… (formerly, The Academy) decided to add a verb and ellipsis. After all, they consider themselves an indie/punk/rock band, they must keep you guessing. The Academy Is…, who first received recognition when......

Baseball's most self-pitying franchise is at it again. The Chicago Cubs are pissed at the Astros for the players that the Astros sent out to play against the Brewers this week. The Cubs and Brewers are locked in a struggle for the NL Central title, with the Brewers currently on top; baseball courtesy dictates that the Astros field their best team against the Brewers, so as not to hand them "cheap" wins. It's a supposed......

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market......

Rice Design Alliance Fall Lecture Series Tonight at MFA Rice Design Alliance's Fall Lecture Series, Design Activism: Agents of Change will present conscientious designers from across the country who focus on socially responsible design. These professionals believe social accountability shapes the physical environment. Their work integrates civic-mindedness within design practice and education. Each practitioner seeks to establish livable cities and towns, thereby creating a sense of community. Lectures are held Mondays beginning today, Sept......

There was very little else for Londonist to be concerned with when the threat of a Tube strike became a very unpleasant reality. The inconvenience was extreme: there aren't many alternatives to the Tube in London despite the best efforts of the Londonist team to get everyone from A to B. Brighter news came in the form of the first ever female Yeoman Warder, or Beefeater as the position is more commonly known, and......

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, and a happy Labor Day. We're abandoning our usual posting schedule today in favor of all-American grilled foods and the Jerry Lewis Telethon. We'll be back with our regular schedule tomorrow, but first, how about some Labor Day trivia? Labor Day began in the 1880s as annual street parades to show "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations." In the early days, there was a movement......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

Chicagoist is gearing up for this weekend's annual Air & Water Show along the lakefront. In what's becoming an annual tradition around there, staff member Todd McClamroch even got to fly with one of the participants. Chicagoist's decidedly opinionated readership was also appalled that one of their staffers found a popular local brewpub to be a great place to bring a kid. They also think that an unlikely activist for immigration rights should just take......

If you were inside on Saturday, avoiding the heat and humidity, you had the opportunity to watch the Texans take on the reigning NFC Champion Chicago Bears. Preseason or not, the Texans were no match for the Bears, losing 20-19 at Reliant. Franchise savior du jour Matt Schaub was 3-5 on pass attempts, but he did actually show poise in the pocket in situations that would've made David Carr curl into a fetal position. RB......

The Chicago Cubs (and their inexplicable legion of local fans) arrived Monday at Minute Maid Park on top of the NL Central division, ready to put some distance between themselves and the Brewers in the standings. The Astros had other plans. Led by strong pitching performances by Wandy Rodriguez, Woody Williams, and Roy Oswalt, the Astros swept the series and bumped the Cubs below Milwaukee in the NL Central race. The offense was on for......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness – we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

Remember back in May, when news broke about the possibility of building a new stadium for the Houston Dynamo downtown? Back then, everyone said negotiations between the city and the Dynamo would wrap in in -mid-July — but now that we're actually in the middle of July, that's changed. The new target for an announcement, the Chronicle reports, is September — but that doesn't mean talks are breaking down, apparently. "We believe we've made some......

Lawndale Art Center: The Big Show! Houstonist hearts Lawndale. And we have a really big heart for their really big show, appropriately-titled The Big Show. The Big Show is Lawndale Art Center’s annual open-call, juried exhibition. It has been an important venue through which emerging and under-represented Houston area artists gain exposure since the show’s conception in 1984. The Big Show was formerly the East End Show, sponsored by the East End Progress Association, at......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......