Missed Connections was pretty interesting this week. Brittany is missing again. And, forget Jenny. Some dude has Amanda's number. Oh, Mark Marco needs a date. JEREMIAS from Brazil - French Bulldogs breader - m4m Hi there! I would like to ask you if any of you guys have a contact information for Jeremias. He is originaly from Brazil and living in Houston he was selling high quality French Bulldogs bread in Brazil. My cell......

Hola, Houston. It's rodeo time. Everyone get happy. Throw ya hands in the air if you love Hannah Montana! Musical acts like Montana, rather the lack of Tejano acts on the rodeo bill, are just what have folks around Houston up in arms. Former State Senator Gonzalo Barrientos is calling for "friends across the whole great state of Texas not to attend the Houston livestock show, period." According to the ABC13.com story, the issue......

• A cold front that will be preceded by a storm system is expected to drop temperatures this afternoon. Don't forget your coats and umbrellas. • Two suspected Conroe drug dealers were shot during a sting involving the Montgomery County sheriff's office. The sting occurred in a busy shopping center parking lot and an officer was nearly hit by the suspects vehicle. • Police in the Rice Village area are on the lookout for......

From local Houston headlines, we bring you these weekend news bits... • A small plane made an emergency landing on a street near Lake Conroe. The plane landed safely, no one was injured and now it's up to the FAA to decide how to move the plane. • Several people were robbed while standing in line to by sneakers (did we just type that?) at Greenspoint Mall. The thief fled in a black Chevy......

Good morning, Houston. So you say you're a Dynamo fan, eh? Well, here's your chance to prove it: The back-to-back MLS champs are auctioning off a chance to get close to the team's two MLS cups — literally. If you win the auction, the cups will be dropped off at your house on Christmas Eve and picked up Dec. 26; in between, you can do whatever you want with 'em (within reason, of course).......

Good morning, Houston. We enjoy a good, quick breakfast as much as anyone, but seriously, there are limits — just ask the four people who were hurt Monday when a driver who was eating oatmeal at the wheel crashed into a Metro bus near downtown. Witnesses told KPRC that the driver ran a red light at Pierce and St. Charles and hit the front of the bus, which caused the driver's vehicle to spin......

After an extraordinarily embarrassing event wherein Houstonist unwittingly drove the wrong way down a portion of South Braeswood Boulevard, we decided to thoroughly investigate the nature, goals, and idiosyncrasies of the Braeswood Boulevards. Our results have been quite astonishing and maddening, as these braided hydra-like streets weave, change course, change names, and sometimes suddenly disappear for a portion of their overall path as though it were not no thang at all. Our ultimate aim......

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......

Eddie Griffin 25, died Friday in southeast Houston when his SUV smashed into an oncoming train. Officials stated that Griffin's SUV exploded on impact after he ignored all railroad warning lights and sirens as he drove around the railroad barrier as the train was crossing. His body was burned so beyond recognition that he wasn't identified until yesterday when dental records confirmed his identity. The Rockets thought so much of Griffin's talents that they......

Victor Montano, a sixteen-year-old Houstonian, was hit and killed by a police vehicle in New Orleans. He had been visiting the city for about two weeks. Police caught Montano spray painting along the floodwall last Thursday afternoon. When he saw the police, he took off running and the officer followed in his SUV. The officer said it appeared as though Victor was going to jump over a fence, but when tripped and fell in front......

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......

Westheimer Road is a long, thriving, paved snake of potholed infrastructure. It guides you into town from the Grand Parkway through Beltway 8 and Loop 610 until it brings you all the way into a cozy, little enclave of town we lovingly refer to as The Montrose. Not really the heart of Houston, because that would probably be the Medical Center, but more like the liver or one of the kidneys of Houston as......

Good morning, Houston. Seems like everyone's listening to iPods these days, eh? And even if you don't have one of the near-ubiquitous mp3 players, all might not be peace and quiet: As the AP notes, iPod-related noise pollution is a growing problem. It can happen in several ways, including people who turn their iPods up to top volume and others who sing along with the music in their heads. Bbut there are ways to......

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......

Good morning, Houston. Noticed a sharp increase in the number of mosquitoes this summer? You will, observers say — and now, Harris County's first confirmed 2007 human case of West Nile virus has been reported. Break out the insect repellent, check up on the West Nile symptoms and do your best not to get stung — although, these days, we guess that's about like saying "stay out of the humidity." >>A break in Gearen......

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......

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......

Finally! After sixteen straight weeks of increases, gasoline prices have finally dropped across Texas. That's not to stay it still won't cost you $60 or $70 to fill up your gas-guzzling SUV though, because they've only dropped to an average of $3.05 in 11 Texas cities. On the bright side, that's three cents down from last week and still 14 cents below the national average. Gas prices are still about a dollar higher than they......

Good morning, Houston. Can Texas gas prices get any higher? Well, sure — they increased for the 15th straight week last week, and now they're edging toward the previous record high. The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded in Texas last week was $2.952, just 1.2 cents short of the previous record, $2.964, which we hit after Hurricane Rita in September 2005. Houston's average price is $2.92, still lower than most major......

What's with all the Missed Connections going on at grocery stores this week? Among others, we had a probable stalker at Kroger, a guy who might be jumping the gun a little bit at a Galveston grocery store, and yuppie love at Whole Foods - originally sung by Donny Osmond. You guys need to get your hands on a how-to guide - picking up chicks at the supermarket is supposed to be easy. You:......

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......

One person was killed and four others were injured — one critically — during a Southwest Freeway shootout Tuesday that police say might have been triggered by a rivalry between immigrant smuggling gangs. It happened around noon as people in two trucks headed north on the Southwest Freeway began exchanging fire; the two vehicles then exited the freeway, ran a red light and crashed into a car before the occupants jumped out and continued the......

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......

Bizarre news from Sharpstown Center: Yesterday afternoon, a security guard at the mall shot another security guard, then went to his car and shot himself in the head. Investigators are still trying to figure out exactly how it all started; fortunately, neither man died, and both are recovering at Ben Taub. According to police, the men had been arguing just outside the mall at about 3:45 p.m. when the shooter — an unidentified man thought......

Two people died early this morning when an SUV going the wrong way on the North Freeway hit a box truck head-on. The accident happened around 3:15 a.m. near I-45 and Little York; according to police, a Ford Explorer was heading south in the northbound lanes of the freeway when it struck a small Isuzu truck at high speed. "The speedometer of the Ford Explorer was stuck at 75 when we got there," HPD accident......

It was kind of a hair-raising night on the North Freeway: First, a pedestrian trying to cross the freeway was hit and killed, and then several hours later a driver ran into an HPD patrol car blocking the roadway after a truck lost its load of nails. The pedestrian accident happened at around 8:45 p.m. near the northbound North Freeway and Parker, where police say a man in dark clothes was trying to cross both......

Instant karma can be rough sometimes: Take, for example, the man who was killed last night while trying to run away from a hit-and-run accident he reportedly caused. It happened at about 11:30 p.m. on Telephone Road in southeast Houston, where a pickup truck rear-ended an SUV stopped at a red light. The pickup drove off and a witness in another vehicle followed it to the South Loop, where the pickup driver and a passenger......

Having a speeding car crash into the side of a house is bad in any case — but when the car takes out the only staircase leading from your apartment to the ground, well, that's even worse. That's what happened to Rick Jansen this weekend when an SUV hit a pedestrian, then careened into the side of Jansen's building. Police said they first got a call about the SUV mowing down the pedestrian, who was......

An HPD officer barely avoided injury last night by jumping out of the way when a speeding SUV rammed into the back of his patrol car, wedging it under the back of an 18-wheeler. It happened at about 12:30 a.m. on the Katy Freeway at Heights Boulevard, where the officer had pulled the 18-wheeler over; the officer was outside his car when the SUV drove right into the back of his squad car. It's not......

Looks like we're in for pretty nice weather today — but if you're wearing a hat, you might want to hang onto it: Wind is expected to be between 25 and 30 mph today, with gusts up to 45 mph. The wind comes thanks to a cold front that passed through the area earlier this morning, which will cause temperatures to drop into the high 60s by this afternoon and below 60 by the evening......