Blogs

We've just loaded up a batch of photos from Bill Olive's travels around town. Have a look. -- Keith Plocek

The Institute for Business & Home Safety says Houston is dragging behind its Gulf Coast neighbors with regards to improving building codes following Hurricane Katrina.

While some coastal communities have stepped up their building standards, the changes haven’t been adopted by nearby inland communities which also run a high risk for wind damage during storms.

IBHS Chief Engineer and Senior Vice President of Research Tim Reinhold says, “Houston pops up as a prime example of this risky proposition. While the Texas Department of Insurance high-wind standards have been implemented with varying degrees of success in coastal communities, Houston area homes and businesses have been built with little regard for hurricane winds.”

A recent survey of the Houston area by IBHS engineers found dramatic variations in the quality of coastal construction, and “very poor construction in the Houston metropolitan area.”

Well, damn.

— Olivia Flores Alvarez

The University of Houston has joined four other colleges in the nation that are getting paid to keep students from drinking too much. For its alcohol-prevention program, the university gets $124,000 of federal money from the always-fun Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

The money is a reward for two years of research by a group from the university's Wellness Department and its prevention program directed at high risk students: greeks, athletes and freshmen. The goal is convincing students that their friends aren't drinking as much as they think.

According to the program's director, Gail Gillan, researchers found that 80 percent of students think that other students consume eight drinks a week, but drink less than two themselves. From those figures, I conclude that the University of Houston is boring, but researchers conclude that it is peer pressure that makes you drink.

It's officially a disaster!

The TV weathercasters always get rapped for over-hyping approaching hurricanes, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry is not shy about jumping the gun.

From Austin, he's already declared the counties of Harris, Bexar, Brazoria, Brazos, Calhoun, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Grimes, Jackson, Jefferson, Liberty, Matagorda, Montgomery, Orange, Walker and Wharton to be in states of "disaster" because of Hurricane Gustav, which hasn't even hit Cuba yet.

We're still wondering how Bexar County figures into this, since San Antonio is a good ways from any salt water.

Still, we have no quarrel with this because the motto we live by goes like this: "In case of disaster, be prepared."

If you get tanked and drive over Labor Day weekend, you have an increased chance of finding yourself locked up for DWI and missing a bit of blood. (Or more than a bit, if you’re also into one of our favorite pastimes, jail fights. Cops in Houston-area counties will conduct special anti-drunk driving operations this weekend with a powerful weapon at their disposal: Judges just itching to write warrants to get blood samples from those who refuse to submit to a breath test. (We guess for the time being you can ignore the advice of defense attorney Tyler Flood’s “DO NOT BLOW” ads located in the men’s bathrooms at Minute Maid Park, of all places.)

Maybe you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of DWI. You’re in luck – like that badass 7th grader who cut class to smoke cigarettes behind the gym, we’ve got answers to your burning questions. (Ours may not be as useful, and – thanks, lawyers! – we can’t offer to sell you weed that we pinched from our stepdad, but whatever.) Our Labor Day gift to you: three DWI myths debunked.

Deborah Colton Gallery has new digs, y’all. The main gallery is now located at 2445 North Boulevard in the Upper Kirby District, leased from artist Molly Gochman. It’s a cool building with an AstroTurf courtyard in the back. The concave and convex spheres you see on the outside of the building were inspired by the word “welcome” in braille.

Although this will serve as Colton’s main gallery, she still has her space on Summer Street, also home to all those presidential heads by David Adickes, who owns the building, and artist studios.

For a time it looked like the Summer Street building, which used to be a paint factory, had been sold to make way for more condos, which is why Colton leased the space on North Boulevard. But Adickes had the opportunity to get out of the contract, and an offer from an arts group is on now on the table, according to Colton.

A local judge has pled guilty to sexual assault. No, not the local federal judge, the other local judge accused of feeling up underlings' breasts. We sure have a a fun bunch of jurists around here.

Brazoria County Court at Law Judge James Blackstock resigned and entered his guilty plea today.

The price for a feel? $350 each for four sexual assaults.

Hope it was worth it, asshole.

-- Richard Connelly

Another clip from Oliver Stone's W. has surfaced, and while this one doesn't feature a scene from Houston, it does include a priceless take on W hitting on Laura Bush.

Swigging a beer, Bush says "Oh, no" when Laura for some reason makes the assertion that she reads books. (She also oddly throws in, almost immediately, "I smoke.")

Bush then becomes perhaps the first person in history who attempts to get him some by citing Barry Goldwater.

We can't wait for this movie.

-- Richard Connelly

KPRC news has a fresh set of promos out, featuring the usual TV-news trope of reporters and cameramen dashing about to cover the city they know so deep in their bones.

(How come they never show the reporters dashing to Google Maps to look up where the intersection of Chimney Rock and Bissonet is?)

It looks like standard fare, but there is one thing unusual in the ads. Those camera operators? They're not really camera operators.

More than 250 "financial literacy leaders from Texas" will be in Houston in mid-September for something called Money Week.

It's an event featuring experts who will give advice on how to deal with current tough economic conditions.

Among the participants: the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Small Business Association, Comerica Bank...and Underground Kingz.

UGK? What's the schedule look like: "10 am, Room 314A -- Ridin' Dirty Through A Foreclosure, with UGK."

We asked event spokesperson Hope Montgomery just what financial advice UGK would be offering.