Shell Oil was the latest target of a Big Oil/gas prices protest. Members of the Harris County AFL-CIO led the protest on Friday, on a sidewalk in front of Shell's downtown office.

Richard Shaw, secretary-treasurer for the labor union, said the protest was prompted, in part, by John McCain's recent visit to Houston, and the protest was directed at McCain as much as Shell and other oil companies. Some of the protesters held signs that read, "Bush & McCain Heart BIG OIL."

The AFL-CIO has also launched this Web site, citing McCain's ties to oil companies, and his proposed plan that would give major oil companies $3.8 billion in tax cuts.

The protesters mainly yelled for change, but Shaw said his group hopes for investment in new sources of energy, with a focus on job creation for American workers.

Terry Abbott, for years the spokesman for the alleged “Houston Miracle” of HISD, the man who spun Rod Paige into a conservative saint serving well above his abilities as U.S. Department of Education, is leaving the school district.

Abbott announced in a press release the official confirmation of what he called “maybe the worst-kept secret in town” – that he’s leaving to form a PR group with a former assistant.

This isn't even the half of it.

This year, at least for my group of Pride-goers, the parade was all about the swag. It started coming even before we left the house. A friend lives on Kipling near Woodhead, in the neighborhood where all the floats are set up, and we sat on his porch watching all the action. OutSmart magazine’s float was parked out front, and whenever participants had to go to the bathroom, they knocked on the door bearing T-shirts that say “Pink Sheep of the Family.”

Memo to Joel Osteen – we know Rolling Stone is a must-read for you, but it’s probably better if you give it a skip this month.

RS’s Matt Taibbi, who’s a very, let’s say, enthusiastic writer, has a profile of John McCain. At one point he goes after McCain’s blithe willingness to betray everything he stood up for a couple of years ago.

Taibbi writes:

Remember low-rise jeans?!? Or when that Ken Jennings guy would not stop winning at “Jeopardy”?!? Or that crazy time Mel Gibson got arrested and he was totally wasted and spit out all that anti-Semitic hatred?!? OMG. I was, like, 28 when that happened. I remember it so well…

Because it all happened three or four years ago.

Now look, I’m about as big a pop culture junkie as you can get, obviously, and I’m the first to admit that 90 percent of the crap I write about on this blog is most likely irrelevant in terms of global impact and political importance. Fine. That’s why it’s pop culture.

But you know, I think pop culture does serve a certain kind of purpose, especially when it comes to reminiscing with a person of a similar age over some generational touchstone or marker that united kids in the suburbs for five minutes (e.g. Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, Day-Glo jelly shoes, and knowing all the lyrics to the “Facts of Life” theme song, for example). These events, these benchmarks, these symbols all serve to build a sort of web of understanding between people who came of age at a similar time. A set of signs that remind us…hey, we’re all human. Sort of like a Grapes of Wrathian oversoul concept via Members Only jackets, you know what I’m sayin’, English majors?

We hope everyone had a loud and proud weekend. We sure did, and we'll have a wrap-up of Saturday's Houston Pride Parade festivities in a little bit. Promise.

1:17 a.m. at La Carafe

Photog Bill Olive hit up Market Square for a glass of wine...

2:04 a.m. at Frank's Pizza

...and a slice of 'za.

Pulitzer-Prize winner Tony Horwitz hit the best-seller lists a while back with the critically praised Confederates in the Attic, but since I’m not much of a Civil War buff I took a pass on it.

Now that I’ve read his new book, A Voyage Long and Strange, I definitely understand the charm.

The subject of this book may turn off some people, too – the history of the pre-Mayflower exploration of the North American continent.

Tedious descriptions of starving conquistadors and vain searches for golden cities, right? Not in Horwitz’ hands.

Anyone who has experienced identity theft knows that there is no simple way to clear it up; there is no one-call-solves-all approach and that, in fact, it may take weeks, months or even years to get your life straightened out.

Bestselling murder mystery writer Jeffery Deaver taps into this for his latest fast-paced Lincoln Rhyme story and gives it a twist: what if someone is stealing other people’s identities not necessarily to make money, but to enjoy a) killing people and b) making other people miserable by unending their lives?

What with all this “extreme weather” we’re having lately (read that as global climate change wreaking havoc on our oil gluttonous-lifestyles of which I am personally totally guilty…but I digress)…anyway, what with all this “extreme weather” we’re having lately, I can’t help but wander on over to The Weather Channel once in a while. Feel free to make fun of me, but you know when the thunder starts rolling, you, too are counting the clock until it’s time to check out the thrill-a-minute “Local on the 8s.”

First of all, the music. That soft jazz shit they play makes Sunny 99.1 seem like it’s busting out skate punk. Would it kill them to play, oh, The Beatles or even early James Taylor while they flick that radar past us? Hey, they could even play songs about the weather. There are only twenty bajillion songs about raindrops, including “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” by B.J. Thomas and “Rainy Days and Mondays” by Richard and Karen “I’m So Skinny!” Carpenter.

Of late, even a cursory perusal of the B-section of the Houston Chronicle reveals a disturbing trend. Gang crime, of the most odious sort.

In today’s paper alone, there are accounts of three MS-13 members accused of stabbing Ernesto Garcia to death on Wednesday. Three other gangbangers shot up a house on the southeast side, killing one teenaged girl and wounding another. Yesterday’s paper carried an account of the sentencing of yet another gangster, this one in the docket for shooting an unarmed Hindu gentleman in the head.

And so on, and on, and on…The thing is, whenever you see these gangster types on TV, there’s one word they use over and over: “It’s all about respect,” they claim.

And respect’s opposite: the diss. Like it as not, at least two out of the three incidents above were the result of some sort of diss. These run the gamut from severe to trivial, with senseless killing the result often as not for one as much as the other. Hell, a few months ago some guy in town killed his friend for “dissing his dog.”

Texas photographer Marilyn Davenport smooth-talked her way in to the Neon Museum’s boneyard in Las Vegas a while back and took pictures of the retired signs that live there. The resulting exhibit, “Modern Jackpot: Vintage Vegas Signs by Marilyn Davenport,” will soon be on display at the Museum of Printing History. For those who can't wait, we've loaded up a sneak peek of "Vintage Vegas Signs."

The exhibit opens July 1, with an official reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 10. Regular viewing hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Through September 13. 1324 West Clay. For information, call 713-522-4652 or visit www.printingmuseum.org. Free. – Olivia Flores Alvarez

I admit I’ve done my fair share of whining with regard to Denise Richards. But when it comes to Denise’s ex, Charlie Sheen, all I can say is…wow. He’s an asshole.

It’s recently come to light that in 2005, Mr. Men at Work left a series of totally horrible voice mail messages on Denise’s machine, including one where he calls Denise a fucking liar and then calls her the N word. (And I don’t mean nerd.)

My first memory of Charlie Sheen is drooling over him during his famous cameo in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” He played the bad boy criminal Jennifer Grey’s character kisses while waiting in the police station, and as soon as I saw that scene, I knew I was destined to make a series of terrible romantic decisions involving bad boys throughout my late teens and early twenties! (By the way, I tried everywhere to find a clip of Sheen’s scene in “Ferris Bueller” and could only come up with photos.)

It’s weird. For a time, it’s like we all expected Charlie to be an important actor like his dad, and for a time, he seemed to be going down that path. We had “Wall Street” and “Platoon,” for instance. But something must have happened along the way, because then came “Hot Shots” (which I saw in the theater, by the way…ouch), “The Chase,” the Scary Movie franchise, and now this cheeseball television series where he and Ducky from “Sixteen Candles” are apparently lovers and are raising a fat kid together. (Not sure if that’s the actual premise for the show since I’ve never seen it, but that’s how it comes across in commercials.)

U.S. Congressman John Culberson, 7th District of Texas, sent out a note this afternoon reporting that the “Democrat led Congress has finally passed a responsible Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, (FISA), that President Bush can sign.”

His note also included this snappy statement: “I am not worried about the rights of foreigners in foreign countries who talk about killing Americans through acts of terror.”

Oh my. Can you spell Abu Ghraib?

He also stated: “I believe in Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that someone who would trade a little liberty for a little safety will wind up with neither, so I am always ready to respond if our agencies abuse the rights of Americans, but I have not seen any definitive case of that yet.” — Olivia Flores Alvarez

We just loaded up a batch of photos from Saturday's Lebowski Bash at Caroline Collective, featuring bowling balls, mustaches, art cars, nihilists, the Tontons and SexyATTACK. -- KP

So this past week everyone was all in a tizzy about a bunch of high school girls in Massachusetts who apparently made a pact to get preggers together.

Of course, this news disturbs me for a whole mess of reasons, not the least of which is that when I was in high school, the only pact my gal pals and I made was the first one to get to the cafeteria had to save seats for the rest of us.

Anyway…what really, truly disturbs me, however, is the totally insane and irresponsible suggestion that the recent movie “Juno” – about a teenage girl who places her kid for adoption – is somehow to blame for all those bellies popping out everywhere in Gloucester, Mass.