Good morning, Houston. As we were sitting around Monday morning contemplating using a witch's extremity to keep warm, we started to wonder exactly how cold it's gotten in the city before — and, thanks to the Internet, we know! According to the National Weather Service, the record low temperature for Houston was 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which we hit on Jan. 23, 1940. Maybe more interesting, though, is the Houston snowfall record: Turns out we......

The incredibly talented and modest Mlee Marie Suprean has to be one of the hardest working musicians in Houston. Juggling five musical projects (including the fantastic Hearts of Animals) at the same time can’t be easy for anybody, but even while recovering from a nasty cough, Suprean still made time to talk to the Houstonist about what’s on both her mind and plate. Mlee is an interesting name. Where did that come from? My......

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,......

Texas A & M has scheduled an 11 a.m. press conference today to announce that Houston Texans offensive coordinator Mike Sherman will be the next head coach. Sherman is returning to A & M where he was the offensive line coach from 1989-1993 and 1995-96. Sherman replaces Dennis Franchione who resigned after a 38-30 A & M upset win over rival Texas Longhorns. This is Mike Sherman's first college head coaching job, but he......

Spent all your cash on girlie drinks and shattered dreams again this weekend, didn't you? No worries - Thriftster gives you the lowdown on cheap stuff to do until Paycheck Friday. Thanksgiving Thriftsters are sexy. Happy Turkey Week! Monday: You're going to have a long week of family time, ambrosia salad and tryptophan sluggishness, so pace yourself with a free Monday night movie at Domy Bookstore (1709 Westheimer). While not completely seasonally appropriate (or is......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A World War II era ship that Texas A&M-Galveston used as a classroom at sea has been sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create an artificial reef. • HPD is cracking down on ID Theft. Here's a story that focuses on one recent bust. • Hey, what do you know...people like public transportation. • The U of H Cougars beat Marshall,......

Good morning, Houston. We heard a few weeks ago about a bat infestation at TSU, but now there's something else happening in the halls of academia: a bee infestation at UH. It seems 100,000 of the industrious little critters have taken up residence in the walls of the Cullen College of Engineering, but rather than exterminate, the university is planning to move the bees to a wooded section of campus. Beekeeper Mike Knuckley will......

Remember when you were a little bitty Houstonist and someone would read to you at night and you could just lose yourself in the story, abandoning all other thoughts of the day? Well you can still do it now, you know. In fact, you might be all the more eager to shed your quotidian annoyances now that you're grown. Here are a few places to hear some stellar writers read from their work: Friday......

In October of 2005, there were many voices to be heard in Houston calling Brad Lidge to be shipped out of town or worse; two years later, those voices were heard. Tonight, the Astros finalized a trade to send Lidge and utility infielder Eric Bruntlett to the Phillies for center fielder and University of Houston grad Michael Bourn, relief pitcher Geoff Geary, and third base prospect Mike Costanzo. This marks the Astros' first serious move......

Houston vs. Dallas. Does anything else need to be said? Robertson Stadium, which is located on the campus of the University of Houston, will be hosting two different versions of this great Texas rivalry. Tonight, the 2006 MLS Champion Houston Dynamo will take on FC Dallas in the second game of this home-and-home Western Conference semi-final playoff game. In the first game, which FC Dallas hosted, the Hoops took game 1 of this aggregate-scoring......

Good morning, Houston. You might not remember it, but many local beaches used to be much wider than they are now — and soon, they'll be that wide again, thanks to a multimillion-dollar restoration project that's going to be announced today. The project will widen three miles of eroded beaches west of the Seawall in Galveston, Sylvan Beach in La Porte and other beaches in Surfside; the goal is to combat the erosion that's......

Today Houstonist brings you an imagined interview with Derek J. Mortimer, the owner, founder, and visionary behind Hotel Derek. We recently sat down with Mr. Mortimer in the lobby of his flagship hotel to speak with him about his career. Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Mr. Mortimer. Or do you prefer-- --You may address Derek as Derek. Okay, Derek. Could you talk a bit about what inspired you to go into the hotel business?......

There's absolutely no question in our minds that Houstonist readers have amazing skills when it comes to ye olde shutter box. And although we'd love to hoard your talent under our beds and keep it for ourselves for a rainy day (which will be, um, tomorrow), we know your talent deserves more exposure than that. But you can't blame us for trying. That's why we want to be sure that you know to enter the......

So, Ashby Highrise. Here in one of Houstonist's favorite neighborhoods, we're seeing lots of signs that say "Tower of Traffic" and "Stop Ashby Highrise", and we got caught in that protest the other day on our way to and from Rice campus. But one detail we'd missed until now came to our attention in a Rice Thresher article. The Thresher, Rice's award-winning weekly newspaper, has its ups and downs, but it's extremely under-appreciated by Owls......

::Maurice Manning and Emily Fox Gordon Poetry Reading at Diverseworks:: Giving Houstonians a chance to hear tomorrow’s great writers today. The Inprint Studio Series, presented by Inprint in association with the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and Diverseworks, features some of the best young writers in the country, as well as alumni from the University of Houston Creative Writing Program and leading local authors. Now in its second season, the 2007-2008 Inprint Studio Series,......

Signal to Noise is a globally distributed quarterly magazine focusing on improvisational and experimental music. You'd be hard pressed to find a larger, more eclectic mix of album reviews and artist spotlights in any other publication. It's celebrating its 10th birthday this year. Editor Pete Gershon now calls Houston home and sat down with us to talk about his magazine and his favorite topic – music. How did Signal to Noise begin? Ten years ago,......

When Houstonist was a rookie Texan, we once debated a colleague about films that were "quintessentially Texas." Any film set in Texas, filmed in Texas, starring Texans, etc. was eligible. The point was to build a list of movies to watch so that we could figure out the reason for the nauseating levels of Texanism and the fascination of the outside world with the state of Texas. Surely armadillos, oil rigs and interstate were......

If you can't find a live show you like this week, then you're not trying hard enough. Tonight, NYC's (once) indie-rockers Interpol hits the Verizon Wireless Theater. For something more local, check out John Evans roots rock set at the Mucky Duck. Tomorrow night, German DJ Paul Van Dyke will have everyone dancing at Warehouse Live. The Meridian turns down the amp (just a bit) on Thursday night to host Americana flavored Junior Brown......

Every week, usually on Mondays (sue us), Houstonist braves the wilds of the internets to bring you a summary of what people on sports blogs are saying about your hometown teams: -Shasta, the UH Cougar mascot has responded to the assault at the wings/hands of the Oregon Duck from the first week of the college football season. Sounds like he's got a pretty good attitude about it. - The Colts-Texans game took place on "Deep......

HMNA presents a Special Lecture: Excavations at Aksum Tonight, the Houston Museum of Natural Science Distinguished Lecture Series presents Excavations at Aksum, Insights to the Early Christian Kingdom in Ethiopia, presented by Kathryn Bard, Ph.D., Boston University, and Rodolfo Fattovich, Ph.D., University of Naples. One of the oldest African kingdoms, Aksum arose in a high altitude region of Northern Ethiopia in the 4th century BC. This was a literate state that left writing in Greek,......

It's an annual rite of fall, the one time each year that people in Houston care about Rice football. Yes,tonight in Austin, the number 8 ranked Texas Longhorns will play the Rice Owls in what promises to be a blowout football game. Longhorn fans and alumni from across the city will descend on the sports bars in droves, ready to feast on the blood of the Owls, who are just happy for the national tv......

This past Sunday, Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett was very nearly paralyzed in a brutal on-field collision during the Bills' game against the Denver Broncos. Doctors originally thought that chances of a full recovery were 80-90% against, with a strong possibility that he would be a quadrapeligic; today, the Port Arthur-raised Everett is moving his limbs and breathing on his own, and his family and doctors are optimistic for a full recovery. Everett played......

Houstonist had a thought yesterday as we were boarding our 7 AM flight to Dallas for yet another business trip, "This sucks," which got us pining for the way-too-few days sandwiched between our college graduation and our 8-to-8 gig inhabiting cubes around the country. Then a scene from Ben Stiller's 1994 release, Reality Bites, flashed through our head: Winona Ryder's character, LeLaina a.k.a. Lainey, is "show[ing] some ingenuity" by using her dad's gas card to......

Good morning, Houston. At Houstonist world headquarters, our e-mail boxes are graced almost daily with offers from people who want to move millions of dollars to U.S. bank accounts and allow us to take a huge share of the money just for helping — eh, all in a day. But there's a new e-mail in the same vein floating around now: It comes from someone claiming to be Michelle Kristine Kraiser, the "the Confidential......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Comcast Raises Your Rates In October Get ready to dig deeper to pay your cable bill because the amount you pay will be going up. Yes, that's right, Comcast will be raising your cable rates starting with your October bill. How much is this rate increase? Comcast says bills are going up 6.1% for all its subscribers. What are you getting for this 6.1% increase? Increased......

Everyone knows that the Dynamo plays their games at a college football stadium, but did you know that they actually encourage college students to attend the games? It's amazing, but true! In particular, tomorrow night's match against Real Salt Lake (not to be confused with Imitation Salt Lake, which tastes about the same but has less sodium) is College Night for the Dynamo. The game starts at 7:30PM, and admission is just ten bucks with......

Local tech news in a compact, digital format. Houston, A Top 10 High Tech City According to Popular Science, Houston is ranked #10 in high tech cities. Popular Science ranked cities based on 36 technology indicators as well as expert and staff opinions. The best part of this survey is that Houston outranked Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. Richard Yoo and Hush Labs Richard Yoo and Hush Labs were recently featured in The Houston......

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......

After much anticipation, Sugarbaby’s finally opened its doors this past summer. As a rule of thumb, Houstonist always likes to give these big openings a bit of time to iron out wrinkles before we come in. In the meantime, we had images of a Houston version of Magnolia Bakery in NYC and Sprinkles in LA. And when we finally walked in, it took us a bit to take in the interior - all black, white......

Jacoby Jones is still running. The Texans 3rd round draft pick out of of Division 2 Lane College continues to be the highlight maker for the team this preseason. On Saturday against the Arizona Cardinals in Phoenix, Jones ran back a punt return 80 yards and showed off some ankle-shattering moves in the process. Could Jones be this year's Devin Hester? Too soon to tell, but he could be a Sportscenter staple at this rate.......