She's back Houstonist! Taucha Hogue has advanced to the championship round for College Cheerleader of the Year and she needs your vote! Taucha squares of against Arkansas' Laura Cole and she currently trails 54% to 46% as of Monday night. Ok, Taucha, here we are in championship round. Are you starting to feel the pressure of being in the BIG game? There is pressure out there for the fact there are so many people......

Today the Rice Design Alliance kicks off this years spring lecture series 30N 60S: Latin American Architecture Revisited with guest speaker Francisco Liernur. Proffessor Liernur is Chair of the School of Architecture at Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Princeton, Sci-Arc, and Columbia University. His books include Writings on Twentieth Century Architecture in Latin America and Architecture in Latin America 1965-1985. Following lectures will focus......

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......

It was a good weekend for football in Houston, whether that means the one with the pads or the one with the round ball. But there were things happening in the Houston sports scene outside of RFK and Reliant Stadiums. As we do every week, here's a recap of what the blogs are saying about your hometown teams: - The Dynamo are the big news today, so here's a fantastic live blog of the game......

When a bye week is one of the highlights of your team's football season simply because no one got hurt, you know that the rest of the season won't be much to write home about. Given that this is exactly the position that Texans fans find themselves in, it's at least comforting that they're coming out of the bye week to face a team almost as disappointing as the Texans. After an inspiring 2006......

The Red Sox has permeated nearly every facet of Bostonist's lives. When they're not live-blogging the games, waxing poetic about the games, thanking Curt Schilling for his splendid work, or telling Dane Cook to watch his hair, they're watching certain presidential candidates hop on the Red Sox bandwagon (sorry, Gothamist). The Sox are so branded on the local brain that people are using the Series to spice up their sex lives. Speaking of spice, Bostonist......

The big question heading into the Texans matchup against the San Diego Chargers has nothing to do with Matt Schaub's hip, Andre Johnson's knee, or Gary Kubiak's recent coaching decisions, but when and where the game will be played. As you're no doubt aware, George Bush started a series of fires in Southern California to distract attention away from the Iraq war, and a lot of people around the San Diego area were forced......

The Astros traded albatross-esque outfielder Jason Lane to the San Diego Padres yesterday for a player to be named later or cash. This was the first transaction by Ed Wade since he took over as the Astros general manager last week. Given the struggles that Lane has had over the past couple of seasons, and the fact that his trade value was estimated at somewhere similar to that of Cubs World Series tickets, that......

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......

A new radio station is born this morning. Houston will get its own “Jack” format, a format that has succeeded in other major markets for years. What is “Jack” you say? The idea behind the format is (as radio programmers say) your iPod on shuffle mode. That is, if you iPod only included popular mainstream songs from the 1960’s to present time. The switch will be happening on 103.7 FM at 10:37 a.m. this morning......

"Creative Crowdsourcing Through Mobile Technolgy" We couldn't have said it better ourselves, and you'll have to see this to believe the awesomeness of it. This has been on our radar for quite some time and we are so excited it's finally here. The Houston Center for Photography and Aurora Picture Show band together this summer to present the 3rd annual summer SPIN Party and Exhibition Txt Me L8r on August 24 from 8-11pm. On July......

Every week or so, Houstonist provides a rundown of what the Blogs are saying about our city's sports teams. Here's what we found this week: -Jeff Bagwell's life isn't all San Diego sun and jersey retirements. He's still working as a special assistant to Tim Purpura. He was recently in Lexington, KY to check out the Astros A-ball affiliate. Obviously, this was big news in Lexington. -The Texans have shown some interest in A&M and......

Finally, Google Street View has come to Houston. Now we can see all those far-flung parts of town we've always wanted to check out — without having to leave Houstonist World Headquarters! Kind of, anyway: Most of the street view streets are on the southwest side, and almost all of 'em are inside the Beltway. No virtual tours of Alief for us, we guess. If you haven't used Google Street View, here's an introductory......

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......

Houston native Woody Williams (5-11) dominated the Pittsburgh Pirates today pitching eight shutout innings while only allowing five hits for the 1-0 Astros win. Williams showed great control with all his pitches and didn't allow a walk in today's outing. With Hunter Pence injured on a head first slide, Luke Scott stepped in the sixth inning and delivered what would be the game winning RBI single. Brad Lidge pitched the ninth inning for his......

We've long known that Houston was a popular place for singles to relocate (and rightly so), but here's some new news: according to this map, we've got more than our fair share of single men. A LOT more than our fair share - that big blue dot = 20,000 - 40,000 more single men than women. Men in Austin and the DFW metropolis suffer similarly. So why the disparity? Creative Class commenters had a few......

Tomorrow night at The World Famous Orange Show, for the low, low price of $10 - you can hear four brands of new folk music. QuadroFolkia will be headlined by Jana Hunter - backed by a full band! Now, we know we told you there was a burgling incident - however, we have been assured that the show will go on! If there is a merchandise table, you really should pick up her new CD......

The road to 3,000 hits the Bayou City starting today with a four-game set against the Colorado Rockies. And Craig Biggio is salivating at the opportunity to make history at home. Against the Rockies, Biggio owns a .347 average, the best of any opponent. On Tuesday against the Milwaukee Brewers, Biggio recorded career hit 2,997 against Claudio Vargas in the third inning; a single to left field. Biggio Fact of the Day: In 1987,......

Good morning, Houston. Hot weather? Rain? Another week in our cube farm? Looks like Houstonist has a case of the Mondays. We'd better just move on to the news ... >> Mayor: I'll find money to keep day-labor site open: A spokesman for Mayor Bill White said Friday that the mayor will help find $100,000 to fund a day-labor site after city officials voted to cut its public funding. Critics of the site, which......

Google recently announced two exciting new features. One is street view, a new feature of Google Maps, which allows you to see street-side views of locations in many major cities. Right now, the feature is available only in San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Denver, and there are plenty of interesting things to be seen, aside from the feature being helpful if you're traveling to a new location. Google has also started incorporating......

In less than one week after Jeff Van Gundy was fired, the Houston Rockets have tabbed Rick Adelman as the next head coach. Sources close to the situation have stated that the Rockets will fly in Adelman on Tuesday and the official press conference will be held Wednesday at the Toyota Center. Adelman was recently the head coach for the Sacramento Kings from 1998-2006 leading them to the playoffs every year including three trips......

In a much expected move, the Houston Rockets have announced the firing of head coach Jeff Van Gundy. The firing comes after the Rockets lost during the first round playoffs to the Utah Jazz. Van Gundy started with the Rockets in the 2003 and had an overall record of 182-146 with the team. Although some consider Van Gundy to be a great fit with the Rockets, he never managed to get the team past the......

Tonight, the group of galleries on Colquitt near Lake St. (known as Gallery Row) will hold openings for several exciting new art exhibits. That means art, drinks, and hor d'oeuvres - and lots of them. Here's a preview of just a few of the exhibits that open tonight (receptions from 6-8). >> Hooks-Epstein Galleries - Teresa Dunn's debut exhibition of paintings and drawings titled In Dreams opens today. Dunn uses oils and graphite to create......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

San Diego-based band Augustana released their debut album All the Stars and Boulevards in the summer of 2005. Finally, almost two years later, the album has taken off and has reached the upper half of the Billboard album charts, thanks to radio embracing the single “Boston.” We recently spoke to Jared Palomar (bass, vocals) of Augustana, as they get ready for their headlining show this Saturday night at the Meridian. We first caught you last......

Good morning, Houston. We initially kicked off the day with a story about warnings of tainted fish in Clear Lake, but it turns out it's not the Clear Lake around here — it's one in Panola County, East Texas. Two Clear Lakes? Who knew? (We would have, had we checked online. Oops.) So you'll be happy to know that there aren't any seafood warnings out for our area, but that doesn't mean we're not......

Good morning, Houston. If you're wondering where your transit dollars are going, check the stolen laptop market: Police are looking for a man who they say stole two computers from Metro's downtown headquarters building in mid-February. Seems the guy walked into the building Feb. 16, followed an employee to an eighth-floor conference room and picked up two laptops — unfortunately, we don't know whether he got away using public transportation, but we can dream.......

“Punxsutawney Phil” saw his shadow. The sun is out. The temperature is rising. It must be Spring! As soon as the time changes, we suppose it will be official. Since we only have a couple weeks of the mild season in Texas, you had better take advantage. The San Diego-like climate demands outdoor seating and a cold, tasty beverage for hanging with your Houstonist peeps at your favorite watering hole(s). Y’all are coming tonight,......

Longtime San Diego Padres second baseman Mark Loretta, who spent last year hitting up a storm with the Boston Red Sox, will sign a deal with the Astros today, his agent told ESPN.com. The deal is a one year, 2.5 million dollar contract that could be worth an extra million in incentives if Loretta continues the kind of break-out hitting and defense he showed off last year as part of the league-leading defense of the......

So, some good news: According to a scorecard released today by the Department of Homeland Security, Houston is the best-prepared city in Texas to deal with a major disaster, scoring higher than San Antonio and Dallas — but the bad news is that that's not really anything to write home about, Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said. The DHS surveyed 75 U.S. cities, metro areas and territories for their emergency preparedness, including advanced, integrated communication......