Two years ago marked the debut of Baltimore's dreamy pop duo Beach House with their self-titled release. It was good stuff. We find ourselves in March of 2008 (already?) and Beach House has served up another album for our reviewing pleasure. Devotion, released last week, features some of the same that Beach House's self-titled album had: the flawless and foolproof voice of Victoria Legrand, the melodies on strings and keys played by Alex Scally and......

Good morning, Houston. If you've ever been driving around in the 'burbs and wondered who names the streets, well, it just might be someone like Susan Vreeland-Wendt, who the Chronicle's Nancy Sarnoff interviewed yesterday. Vreeland-Wendt, marketing director for The Woodlands Operating Co., has come up with more than 1,600 names for roads, parks and neighborhoods in The Woodlands in the last 20 years. Turns out she gets inspiration from all kinds of places: paint......

Wine + Art at the Tasting Room Tonight, the Tasting Room River Oaks joins two of our favortie things: art and wine. Not a novel concept, but a welcomed one on a rainy week in H-town. The Tasting Room - River Oaks is proud to welcome winemaker Matt Steel from Green Point winery in Victoria, Australia and artist Robert Glick. The Tasting Room is very happy to be displaying a number of Robert’s works......

So it rained a lot yesterday, and it looks like we're not going to get much of a break today. Or tomorrow. Or — well, actually, it's looking like the rail will continue for at least the next seven days. The bright spot in all this is that the rain may hold off for the big fireworks show Wednesday night: "We have seen, the last four or five days, rain in the morning and rain......

Good morning, Houston. Are you sick of hearing about the iPhone? So are we. Some people are wondering if the iPhone will be able to live up to all the hype its been getting, and we can't imagine that any phone could unless it also serves as, say, a teleporting device. Let's just get to the news: >> Missing Polka King: Friends and fans grew concerned when Bobby Jones, billed as Wharton County's "Polka......

A SWAT standoff between police and a sex offender at a southwest Houston apartment complex yesterday ended when police forced their way into an apartment and found the suspect dead, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. It all started around 1 p.m. when police followed Michael Lightning, 43, through the gates of the Victoria Condos near Gessner and Beltway 8 intending to arrest him in connection with a June 1994 sexual assault......

So you know how Lakewood Church pastors Joel and Victoria Osteen have taken a vow of poverty, right? Yeah, yeah, we're kidding — but if you're anything like Houstonist, you've wondered at one time or another exactly how much the Osteens are worth. (Go ahead, admit it.) Turns out we're not the only ones: Reginald McKamie, the attorney for Continental flight attendant Sharon Brown, asked a judge yesterday to make the Osteens' net worth public......

Things are apparently progressing — slowly — in the lawsuit against Victoria Osteen filed in September: The Chronicle is reporting that the attorney for a flight attendant accusing Osteen, the wife of Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, of assault wants to have the interior of the airplane where the incident occurred photographed. This all goes back to Dec. 19, 2005, when Osteen reportedly went ballistic about some liquid that had been spilled on her first-class......

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......

We know Houstonist is your window into the lives of famous Houstonians. We also know that you've been wondering what the upper crust of Houston is doing to celebrate Valentine's Day, and we firmly believe that if you don't know the answer to a question, you should make one up. So here's what we imagine some of our favorite Houston celebrities are doing to celebrate February 14th, love triangles and all. In an effort to......

Houstonist's grandmother once told us that certain unscrupulous people would stage automobile accidents to defraud insurance agencies out of money. So that's always been in the back of our mind — Grandma doesn't lie, after all – but we never heard of any real cases until we read the story of the 10 people who have been arrested in an elaborate staged-accident scheme. The group of suspects includes a doctor and two attorneys who helped......

Can it really have been a year since Victoria Osteen's airplane tantrum? How time flies! Fortunately, we won't have to go through the 2006 holiday season without more wacky on-board antics. Unfortunately, Mrs. Osteen isn't involved this time — instead, it's a guy names Nboru Akao, who is expected to appear in federal court today after making a jackass of himself on a flight yesterday. According to KTRK, Akao became unruly during the last two......

ABC will air Barbara Walters's annual "Ten Most Fascinating People" this Tuesday at 9 pm. Among this year's honorees is Houstonist favorite Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church, the country's largest megachurch and newest tenant at the stadium formerly known as the Summit. He is an icon of the revitalized non-denominational evangelical movement, and charismatic to the nth degree. Joel Osteen is conspicuous on this list, almost entirely made up of......

Hope we're not killing your buzz, Cheech, but your going to have to continue waiting for Mr. Weed to arrive. The Houston Chronicle reported early yesterday evening that an 18-wheeler load of marijuana was seized near Victoria on Monday. The vehicle was pulled over after highway patrol spotted empty Cheetos bags on the dash a burnt out light on the license plate. A subsequent search of the vehicle revealed a payload of over two tons......

From the "stories you thought you'd heard the last of" file, we bring you news that Victoria Osteen, the wife of Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, has been fined $3,000 by the FAA for interfering with a Continental Airlines flight attendant last year — and she's facing a lawsuit by a flight attendant who claims Osteen assaulted her during the now-infamous on-board snit. Surely you remember the story of Victoria Osteen's run-in with Continental personnel......

The “lifestyle center” concept of retail shopping centers has been growing in popularity over the past few years. In the suburbs, it has given the residents a taste of the old days, with a downtown square missed with retail, restaurants and living quarters. The best example of this in our area is Market Street in the Woodlands, which reminds us of the 1950’s town in Back to the Future. Pearland is the latest to......

We're not sure how we missed yesterday's news of the Harris County arson investigator's car that got torched in his driveway over the weekend — that's the kind of twist of fate that usually catches our eye immediately. It happened at the inspector's house in the 3200 block of Barkers Forest early Sunday morning. The arsonists reportedly broke into the 2005 Ford Crown Victoria and stole several things, including the investigator's badge, a county-owned handheld......

Seriously, what would yesterday's flooding story have been without a woman going into labor while stuck in her car? That honor went to 33-year-old Matilda Ruewacaba, who delivered a healthy baby girl in the back seat of a Crown Victoria off the Gulf Freeway. Ruewacaba, her husband and their four kids were on their way to the hospital Monday morning when they hit high water, so they pulled over into a parking lot near Monroe......

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has suspended its crackdown on drunks in bars while it investigates complaints from legislators and the public about how the program is run. The TABC stepped up arrests of intoxicated people in bars in September after the Legislature approved funding for 120 new TABC staff members, including 59 new agents, to help the agency decrease drunk driving. The idea was to keep people from being drunk in bars, which in......

If you didn't understand why police were so worried about the guy who was pretending to be a cop earlier this year, consider the story of a pair of fake policemen who tried to kidnap a Best Buy assistant manager in Pasadena on Sunday. It happened yesterday afternoon in the parking lot of the store. Two men wearing shirts that said "SWAT" and hats that said "State Police" pistol-whipped the assistant manager, then handcuffed him......

Police are still investigating the stabbing death of a man in southeast Houston early this morning Mayor Bill White said he plans to testify in federal court Wednesday about how the city has changed the Safe Clear towing plan to comply with a judge's orders Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to give a life sentence to an accused Victoria smuggler who they say was responsible for the deaths of 19 illegal immigrants in 2003......

Attention all you smug receptionists, sitting behind your desks listening to Sunny and playing solitaire: You may not be as safe as you thought. Just ask the woman working the reception desk at an H&R Block at Ella and 18th, who was pinned behind her desk when a car crashed through the front of the office this morning. Police told KPRC Local 2 that a customer driving a Crown Victoria hit the gas instead of......

Another school fight between Katrina evacuees and locals broke out at Westfield High School this morning; one student called it a "riot" HFD workers rescued a city employee who fell into a hole at a southeast Houston sewer lift station this afternoon Lewis P. "Bud" McFadin, a former player and coach for the Texas Longhorns and Houston Oilers, died in a Victoria hospital Monday at age 77 Looking for cheap gas? Head to Yale and......

At the Port of Houston, a woman was run over and killed by a fork lift while she was taking notes Word on what eccentric millionaire Robert Durst was doing when he violated parole by visiting Galveston: seeing a doctor, a lawyer and stopping by his former home The sponsors of Houston's rival MLK Day parades may join forces to hold a single parade in 2006 An appeals court denied Tom DeLay's lawyers' request to......

More details emerge as the news of Victoria Osteen's hissy on a Colorado-bound airplane spreads like wildfire across the globe. From the Houston Chronicle: At least some people aboard the Continental Airlines flight were less than pleased after waiting about two hours at Bush Intercontinental Airport while the Osteens left the plane and their luggage was removed, said a woman who witnessed the incident. "She was just abusive," said Sheila Steele, who said she was......

Joel Osteen's life must be pretty tough. Not only does he have to run the nation's largest church, keep up with the demands of a rigorous television and personal appearance schedule, maintain his preternaturally well-groomed image and rake in tons of money, but he also has to find time here and there to try to bring us all closer to God. So Houstonist is sure Pastor Joel wasn't too happy when his wife acted like......

Chalk up another victory for decent, moral Houstonians: KHOU decided to move tonight's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show to a late-night time slot in favor of an interview program with the perky Debra Duncan. Channel 11 is pre-empting girls in their nighties for a home-grown special of its own. KHOU morning anchor Debra Duncan is hosting In the Spotlight, which includes interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Ricardo Chavira (Carlos on Desperate Housewives) and model/actress Brooke Burns (Baywatch).......