Good morning, Houston. If the dearth of new TV in the wake of the writer's strike has left you willing to watch anything, we've got some news for you: HTV, the municipal station, is launching a new program! Woohoo! Entertainment Houston, a 30-minute show, will focus on — wait for it — Houston's facilities, included the Wortham Center, Jones Hall, the George R. Brown Convention Center and the not-quite-finished Discovery Green. A new episode......

>> Poll shows split over Clemens, McNamee: The court of public opinion currently stands divided in Harris County regarding the Roger Clemens steroid scandal according to a poll by The Chronicle. According to the results published yesterday by David Barron, 35.5 percent said believed McNamee; 32.8 percent sided with The Rocket; and, 31.7 percent did not respond. The margin of error is listed at 4.1 percent. These numbers may prove initially encouraging for Clemens......

Good morning, Houston. We freely admit that we don't like bugs, so we've tried quite a few home extermination methods — but we've never blown the roof off our house while doing it like Patricia Espiricueta of Galveston did. It seems Espiricueta was fed up with her home's roach problem, so she set off five bug bombs and left the house. While she was gone, the fumes hit a pilot light and exploded, lifting......

Good morning, Houston. One thing about the holiday season: You hear Christmas music everywhere you go (and if you haven't been hearing it, just tune in to Sunny 99.1 — you'll catch up quickly). With that in mind, we were interested to check out ASCAP's list of the most-played holiday songs this year. It was released on Dec. 4, but by that time, the group reported that 1,562 different holiday songs had already been......

More on Hines' proposed 47-story downtown skyscraper: The Chronicle has some details about the building and its design, and it looks like it really could be something different for the CBD. Plans call for the 630-foot building to be clad in glass, with the west facade featuring projecting vertical glass fins to shade offices from afternoon sunlight. Near the top of the building, on its east side, will be a notched opening that'll shelter......

Earlier this year, we talked about the downtown real estate boom: One Park Place, the apartment tower under construction at the edge of Discovery Green; Houston Pavilions, the retail and office complex being built on Main Street; and a few skyscrapers in the planning stages. Well, the Houston Business Journal reported on one of those proposed new buildings Friday: a 47-story skyscraper being planned by Hines in the 800 block of Main Street. There......

The Orange Show Center for Visionary Art will soon be conducting a nationwide search for a new Executive Director, as Susanne Theis will be leaving August 31st to become the new Programming Director of Discovery Green, which opens in early 2008. Susanne has been with The Orange Show for more than 20 years. Under her guidance, The Orange Show has garnered international recognition for the world's largest and oldest Art Car Parade and each of......

Discovery Green, the unfortunately named park under construction in downtown Houston, has gained its first high-profile piece of artwork: Jean Dubuffet's Monument au Fantôme, which has stood in front of 1100 Louisiana for 25 years. Dan Duncan, the pipeline tycoon who owns the skyscraper, has donated the sculpture to the park, where it will sit along Avenida de las Americas across from the George R. Brown Convention Center. "It's a fantastic piece of art," park......

If you're looking for an event that is just dripping with cuteness, here you go. On Thursday, May 31, Buffalo Bayou ArtPark hosts an opening reception for sculptor David Chien's new exhibit titled, Superheroes Alter Egos. According to the Buffalo Bayou ArtPark press release, the concept behind this exhibit is to put superheroes into everyday situations. The exhibit features three large scale temporary sculptures depicting superheroes doing ordinary activities, like walking the dog. Chien is......

Good morning, Houston. Score one for Sugar Land's fake downtown: This summer, it will become the location of the Children's Museum of Houston's first satellite location. The Children's Museum of Houston Discovery Center at Sugar Land Town Square — that's CMHDCSLTS for short — will occupy 9,000 square feet of space in the Town Square development for six weeks beginning June 1. Though it's just a temporary deal, museum brass say the Discovery Center......

Good morning, Houston. Seems like it's getting harder and harder to smuggle a ton of pot around these days — just ask the 37-year-old Houston man who was arrested at a Falfurrias border checkpoint Monday after agents found 2,537 pounds of marijuana in the tractor-trailer he was driving. A border patrol dog sniffed the stash out as agents were determining the man's citizenship: He turned out to be an American citizen, and the pot......

Good morning, Houston. We can't remember a time when Ed Brandon wasn't on KTRK — so it'll be odd when he's not on TV anymore. As we learned from Mike McGuff yesterday, Brandon plans to retire in mid-April after 35 years in front of the weather map. McGuff has a long (and fascinating) interview with Brandon; once you've checked that out, you can leave a comment for Ed on Channel 13's website. >> Lampson......

Remember the 37-story apartment tower announced last May for a block overlooking Discovery Green? KHOU reports that foundation work began this weekend, when about 800 cement trucks dumped their contents into the big hole at the corner of Austin at Lamar. And downtown observers are all atwitter: "I think that Houston will see a lot more residential development downtown. I think this is a lead project for many to come," said architect Jeffrey Ryan......

Spend the Night on Blue Bayou Join the Buffalo Bayou Partnership tonight as they kick-off a year long series of stargazing, boat rides, storytelling and more along the Sabine-to-Bagby Promenade. The newest addition (and possibly our favorite) to the Buffalo Bayou hike and bike and trails, gives Houstonians multiple access points to bayou canoeing. The awarding-winning, and might we add, spectacular-looking, unique blue lighting creates a much needed outdoor friendly environment for nearby downtown,......

More on Lisa Nowak, everyone's favorite lovelorn astronaut: According to the AP, a series of steamy e-mails another woman sent to her boyfriend might have triggered her bizarre cross-country trip in early February. It seems Nowak had intercepted more that a dozen messages Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman had sent to astronaut Bill Oefelein, including one sent to him while he was aboard the space shuttle Discovery in December: "First urge will be to rip......

Architecture Center Houston Grand Opening For its inaugural exhibit, the Architecture Center Houston, affectionately referred to as the ArCH, offers a show of current plans for the future of Houston. The exhibit, titled Houston: Future Form, is divided into four areas: Architecture, Bayous, Parks, and Transportation. It includes plans for Discovery Green, the new downtown park, the realignment of I-10 and I-45, as well as the Asia House in the Museum District and continued landscaping......

Selling memorabilia related to people in the news, especially if they've done something completely off the wall, has always been a way for some people to cash in on news — but these days, thanks to eBay, it's almost become part of the American way. Take, for example, Joachim Horvitz, a Jersey City, N.J., man whose autographed picture of lovelorn astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is fetching more than $1,800 on eBay with four days left......

Little by little, a picture is beginning to emerge of Lisa Marie Nowak, the astronaut arrested in Florida on Monday for — well, you know the story. The results of NASA's psychiatric evaluation of Nowak haven't been released, but people who knew here are talking to reporters and telling them how Nowak was likely under an unbelievable amount of pressure between her personal and professional lives. According to Nowak's NASA biography, she has an......

Before you try to tackle President Bush and the state of the whole country tonight, you can read Mayor White's state of the city address, delivered yesterday afternoon at a Greater Houston Partnership luncheon. White, a popular and effective mayor, discussed the achievements of the city in the past year as well as goals and programs he sees for Houston's future. Among other things, Bill White mentioned the success of his Safe Clear program in......

At times, we've looked at all the apartments going in downtown and wondered how many people actually lived there. The answer, according to the Chronicle, is quite a few: The occupancy rate for downtown apartments is 89 percent and seems to be growing. That's up 6 percent over last year; by contrast, demand for apartments citywide decreased by 1.7 percent in the last 12 months. The main reason: convenience. "Our kids are grown and gone,"......

More today on the selection of "Discovery Green" as the name of the new downtown park: The name was the brainchild of Kim Borja, an accountant for Pappas Restaurants, and park officials liked it so much that it was the only name they forwarded to Mayor Bill White. Wow. "I definitely wanted something other than 'park' in the name, so I decided on 'green,'" said Borja, who hasn't yet claimed his prizes — a signed......

Well, the soon-to-be downtown park has been christened — and the best name they could come up with the name chosen from about 6,200 entries was Discovery Green. That's apparently the name that best reflected "the spirit and uniqueness of the new downtown park and, among other qualities, Houston's diverse history, and communities and distinctiveness from a regional standpoint." Is it just us, or does "Discovery Green" accomplish none of those goals? Instead, it sounds......

Ashton Glover, the 16-year-old Sugar Land girl whose body was found in a Fort Bend County field earlier this week, was shot in the head, police say Jordy Tollett, the city's tourism bureau head, is taking an extended leave to seek professional help for some condition; Tollett has been under fire since a KPRC video showed him taking two-hour lunches at local bars In southeast Houston, an HPD officer killed a man in front of......

Andrea Yates' trial was postponed for at least a day this morning because one of the jurors is ill A 23-month-old toddler who had been left in an SUV that was stolen Tuesday night was found safe in the abandoned vehicle in northeast Houston A man was shot to death, and a bystander was wounded, outside a Richmond Avenue nightclub earlier this morning; the shooting was apparently the continuation of a fight that began inside......