Good morning, Houston. 'Tis the season for strange missing persons reports: In Tyler, the latest individual to go missing is a 42-foot-tall snowman. The inflatable snowman was last seen at a Tyler tree farm Friday night; the tree lot's owner, Royce Wisenbaker, told the AP that he believes it was hoisted over a fence and carted away. The snowman is worth about $10,000, and a $1,000 reward has been posted for information leading to......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • 28 miles per hour seems to be the magic speed when cruising downtown. • Insurance regulators approved a 10% hike in coastal wind insurance rates, that's an increase of about $84. • Rice University has transplanted over a dozen oak trees, including some over 100 years old, in order to make way for new dorms. • The Dynamo take on DC United......

It's been called "maybe the best movie ever made in Pittsburgh," but George Romero's classic, Night of the Living Dead, is considered by many to be the movie that set the standard for the horror film genre and influenced countless productions. Per Rex Reed:If you want to see what turns a B movie into a classic...don't miss Night of the Living Dead. It is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in horror movies not to see......

Happy Monday from the Sports Doldrums! With the World Series over, the Texans being the Texans, and the Rockets not quite started, this has got to be the worst time of the sports year. But sports being what they are, people are still talking about them. Here's what the blog world has been saying about your hometown teams: - Sad, but unsurprising, end to the story of the life and death of Eddie Griffin.......

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......

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.......

Good morning, Houston. We've always wondered about our lady friends' uncanny ability to find food — particularly food they claim they shouldn't be eating — and now there's scientific evidence that women may actually have a built-in talent for locating grub. The news comes from The Daily Telegraph in the UK, which reports that women at a farmers' market were much better at finding a stall where they had bought a certain food than......

Good morning, Houston. If you'd like a little more Kinky in your life, you may be in luck. Erstwhile gubernatorial candidate and the bane of Chris Bell's existence Kinky Friedman said he might make another run for the office in 2010. This time, though, he's thinking about losing the independent label and running as a Democrat. Consultant Kelly Fero said, "They're going to be looking for real serious, legitimate candidates. Kinky should throw his......

What might be the world's shortest police chase ended tragically early Wednesday when a couple of suspects crashed an allegedly stolen van, killing one of them and critically injuring the other. It started around 3 a.m. Wednesday when someone in an apartment complex in the 5800 block of Fondren reported that a Dodge Caravan was being stolen; a police patrolman spotted the van leaving the complex and tried to pull the driver over — but......

Good morning, Houston. You might want to grab a drink before you get started on this morning's news: According to KHOU, a shift toward growing corn in Mexico could lead to a spike in the price of tequila. It seems a lot of Mexican farmers are getting rid of their blue agave fields to make way for corn, which is in demand thanks to the growing popularity of ethanol — and as the amount......

Twenty-five railroad crossings in the Houston area have been targeted by federal authorities for "active" signage - flashing lights and crossing arms - including the one where four teens died in an accident that involved a train and a stolen SUV last month. That site, where four other accidents have occurred since 1979, has only pavement markings and crossbucks. Family members of the teens who were killed vowed to go on a crusade to improve......

The road to 3,000 continued Tuesday night in Los Angeles as Craig Biggio recorded two hits to move closer to baseball history. While facing Bartolo Colon in the top of the fourth inning, Biggio punched a single over the glove of Angels second baseman Howie Kendrick for career hit 2,991. In the top of the sixth inning while facing an 0-2 count from Colon, Biggio smacked an infield single to shortstop Orlando Cabrera for hit......

Police are still investigating some of the details behind a tragic story that unfolded this morning: at about four AM, a stolen SUV carrying several teenagers hit a stalled train near Baytown, leaving four of the young passengers dead. Police reported that the driver of the Jeep Cherokee did not see the train and ran right into a tanker car. The four backseat passengers were killed instantly. The driver was taken by helicopter to Memorial......

We're not sure whether it was something in the air or what, but something seems to have made Houstonians decide to crash into each other (and, in a couple of cases, walls) on area roads last night. First there was the guy who backed through a wall of the Houston House parking garage — we already talked about that — and then, around 8 p.m., a driver crashed into an Indian restaurant at Dairy Ashford......

Bizarre news from downtown: A man driving through the parking garage at the high-rise Houston House apartments somehow ended up crashing through a wall of the garage yesterday evening, sending his car plummeting about five floors onto the roof of an adjacent building. The man — who was driving a Mustang convertible — died. The crash was reported around 6:30 p.m., and it's not clear yet exactly how it happened, though KTRK reports that the......

We'll admit that we're not exactly business-savvy, and we'd rather read the comics, or even Ken Hoffman, than the business section. But today, Mary Flood's column about car crash lawyers and advertising caught our eye. We were surprised to learn that Jim Adler, also known as "The Texas Hammer," has even established a presence on Myspace. And what an elaborate Myspace it is! Mary Flood's column said that his page played the theme from Rocky,......

Fourteen people were injured in a bizarre chain-reaction accident in the Third Ward yesterday involving a Trans Am, a Metro bus, an RV and a brake shop. It happened just after 5 p.m. as the bus was headed south on Dowling Street; while it was crossing the intersection at Pierce, a Trans Am headed east on Pierce ran a red light and slammed into the bus. The crash sent the bus careening off into the......

Good morning, Houston. So here's something cool to look forward to for the next two years: In mid-2009, 20 of the famed terra cotta warriors of Xi'an will be on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The exhibition will run from May 18 to Sept. 25; until then, you can visit the local knockoff, which is quite impressive in its own right. >> Early voting begins today: Harris County voters will be......

Good morning, Houston. We're sure you've heard about the tornadoes that devastated the border city of Eagle Pass on Tuesday night, destroying buildings and killing at least 10 people. And now there's information on ways to help the people of Eagle Pass: State Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine) has set up a page on his website with a list of places you can send donations, including banks and the San Antonio chapter of the Red......

Frenchman Sébastian Bourdais took home first place at the Houston Grand Prix this weekend for the second year in a row. Oui, oui. But it sounds like a few Houstonians were a little too inspired by Bourdais' high speeds. Street racing at Spencer Highway and Beltway 8 is the probable cause of a 5-car crash yesterday afternoon. The crash included two Ford Mustangs, which are the cars suspected of racing. One of them fled the......

Good morning, Houston. We forgot to mention a bit of news last week: According to ForbesTraveler.com, Houston is the sixth-best restaurant city in the country. "San Antonio may have a far more manifest Mexican food culture, but Houston, which spirals forever outward, has far more breadth and depth," the site said; it specifically cited upper-end Tony's, Café Annie and Américas, but also mentioned the Breakfast Klub, with its "irresistible" chicken and waffles. Mmm. >>......

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

A crosstown police chase turned into a bizarre standoff early this morning, leaving the suspect dead — but not until he had tried to charge at the authorities with a street sweeper. According to KTRK, it all began around 12:30 a.m. at Briar Forest and the Beltway, where police saw the driver of a white Cadillac speeding. They ran the car's plates and found out that it might have been connected with several robberies, so......

We know it's irrational, but Houstonist has always been just a little concerned about driving behind car carriers on the freeway — and this morning, we remember why: Overnight, the driver of a car carrier on Highway 59 lost control, flipping his rig over and sending cars sliding across the freeway. (For the record, our concern always had to do with cars breaking loose and falling off the car carrier while it was moving, but......

Some developments in the murder of Tynesha Stewart, the 19-year-old Texas A&M student whose ex-boyfriend says he strangled her, dismembered her body and then incinerated the body parts on two barbecue grills outside his apartment: Harris County sheriff's investigators returned to confessed killer Timothy Wayne Shepherd's apartment to look for forensic evidence yesterday. According to KHOU, police removed some items from the apartment, including what seemed to be a roll of carpet, and they used......

Need to know just a little bit about something? Ask a dilettante. I am at a coffee shop right now, and I just saw a man go into the bathroom carrying his newspaper. And there aren't stalls. It's just a one-room, one-person-at-a-time bathroom. I was both repelled by such blatant behavior and confused. What is proper public bathroom etiquette? It’s quite simple, really. If one must use the facilities in public, one must not enjoy......

Good morning, Houston. Do you feel more metropolitan? Or bigger, maybe? According to estimates released by the Census Bureau yesterday, the influx of hurricane evacuees has made the Houston metro area the country's sixth largest. The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area now has an estimated 5,483,857 residents, which puts it ahead of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach but still behind the New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Philadelphia metro areas. Another population fact: Harris County......

A bizarre scene that involved a car accident, an SUV atop a Cadillac and gunfire reportedly brought traffic to a standstill along the Southwest Freeway in front of Memorial Hermann Southwest hospital yesterday morning — but thanks to TV news, it's hard to know exactly what happened. According to KPRC, it started around 11 a.m. yesterday when two vehicles — a Ford Expedition and a Ford F-150 pickup — were chasing each other along the......

More on the deaths of Leon and Maurine Roberson, the couple who were killed Oct. 18 when a speeding wrecker driver broadsided their car: Assistant Harris County DA Warren Diepraam says the wrecker driver, Sergio Gonzalez, had cocaine in his system at the time of the crash. Gonzalez hit the Robersons' car as they left church in the 11800 block of Wallisville Road; according to reports, Gonzalez was going 20 or 25 mph above the......

Good morning, Houston. If you spend your days worried that an asteroid will slam into Earth, killing us all, this probably won't do much to ease your mind: NASA says it can identify all the asteroids that could hit the Earth, but it's not sure it has the money to do so. The agency estimates it would cost $1 billion to find at least 90 percent of the 20,000 potentially hazardous asteroids and comets......