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​Joe Lopez says he used to have an inferiority complex. That's hard to believe when you consider that the now outspoken San Antonio-based artist took on the Gallo wine company -- and won! Gallo in English is a family surname. Gallo is Spanish means rooster. Lopez found the rooster image a strong cultural symbol. His painting Puro Gallo, a slang term meaning pure blood Mexican, led to a legal fight with the Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery.

Lopez, who will be appearing at Casa Ramirez on Saturday for White Linen Night, says, "I was always shy and timid. When we were sued, it made me do things that I had never done before. I had to talk to people, talk to groups and lawyers. It used to be that they couldn't get me to talk. Since the lawsuit, they can't shut me up."

Lopez's early career was affected by his barrio background. "When I was young, I was a vato loco. I was crazy growing up, hanging out with a lot crazy guys, we all got in trouble. At first, I was painting in oils, but then my friends would come over and we'd go out. I'd come back two or three days later and my oils were all dried out. So I switched to watercolors. That way when I came back, I could just re-wet my brush and start over."

Photo by bf_photos

​When BARC volunteer Nela Brown accused a kennel attendant with a long criminal history of punching a puppy June 9, she assumed the matter would be investigated and the man would be dealt with accordingly.  After all, when another volunteer, Shelby Kibodeaux, simply said he heard what sounded like animal abuse at the facility in January, BARC promptly punted the complaint to the Houston Police Department's Office of Inspector General. And in that case, the OIG pulled video tapes and interviewed witnesses -- before finally deciding to arrest Kibodeaux for filing a false police report.

But in Brown's case, there was an actual eye-witness.

And she e-mailed supervisor Dorian Strickland, saying she saw employee Murray Bailey hit a puppy "on the head so hard that the puppy cried out in pain. [Murray] had opened the puppy's cage to feed it, and the puppy, with usual puppy enthusiasm, was dancing around in the cage and trying to play with a cardboard food tray that [Murray] was picking up....[Murray] yelled at the puppy to stop and then hit it on the head between the ears several times, which is when it cried out in pain and cowered in the back of the cage." In a second e-mail that day, Brown stated "If [Murray] denies this, I will be more than happy to repeat what I saw to whomever it takes to have disciplinary action taken."

But that's just what happened: Health and Human Services Spokeswoman Kathy Barton explained to Hair Balls in an e-mail today that Murray "states that the puppy bit him as he was trying to change out the food/water bowl. He hit the animal in order to free his hand. The employee was counseled and retrained on animal handling techniques, kennel operations and customer service. The puppy yelped, but there was no indication that it was injured." She also told Hair Balls that Bailey was transferred to a different kennel, where he could be closely monitored.

The thing is, we're not sure how much "counseling" some people need. In April 2005, Murray was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to four years in prison, according to court records. This occurred shortly after he was released from prison for yet another aggravated assault conviction, for which he received an 8-year sentence. Before that, he served time on theft charges he received in 1982, 1990 and 1991. In 1977, he was charged with resisting arrest after he was pulled over for driving while intoxicated. Other charges include prostitution, burglary, possession of marijuana, and, in the early 1970s, a parole violation. (Hair Balls has had trouble reaching Bailey today, but we definitely want to include his side of the story, if and when we hear from him).

So it's easy to see why BARC immediately believed Murray's story. Right?...Right? Is this thing on?  

​Two of the season's best stage productions close this weekend, The Phantom of the Opera by Broadway Across America and The Producers at Masquerade Theatre. Make sure you see at least one of them.

First is Phantom. This is the Broadway touring company, of course. (The show arrived in Houston with twenty 40-foot semis in tow, hauling the production's considerable set pieces.) Christine Daaé, wonderfully sung by Trista Moldovan, is a young opera singer who is pushed into becoming a star by a shadowy figure called the Phantom, sung by Tim Martin Gleason. Daaé does what seems to be musically counterintuitive - the higher the note, the stronger she sings it. She is, in a word, glorious.

Harold Prince directs the cast, which is uniformly brilliant. And the set, complete with a chandelier that swings out over the audience and hundreds of candles that light up the Phantom's creepy home built in the basement of the opera house. Through August 2. The Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby, 713-629-3700.

Next is The Producers.

Photo courtesy GHCVB

​Someone asked us the other day what happened to all that grant money that was supposed to renovate apartment complexes along Broadway Boulevard and give the area a much-needed face lift. He was driving down the street and said it looked like not a single property had been fixed up. He was right. 

Turns out, one developer came in with a grant proposal for a Broadway complex -- the Woodlen Glen Apartments -- but the Glenbrook Valley Civic Club, led by retired school teacher Ann Collum, fought it to the end. 

"It's not something that benefitted the neighborhood, it was going to benefit the developer," Collum tells Hair Balls. "The ultimate goal is to redevelop Broadway. If you're tied up in an eyesore for 20 years, positive development isn't going to happen."

​Bush Intercontinental is one of three airports to get the latest in imaging equipment that leaves damn few questions unanswered about what passengers look like under all those clothes.

A new-generation "backscatter" machine, along with an improved "millimeter wave" machine, are coming to Terminal E in the near future, the Transportation Security Administration announced today.

Andrea McCauley of the TSA tells Hair Balls that the agency goes to extreme lengths to encourage passenger privacy, given that TSA employees will essentially be looking at nude pictures.

"We assure passengers that everything that can be done to assure their privacy will be done," she says.

​The Texas Education Agency has released the 2009 school rankings -- let the talk of how schools are gaming the system begin!!

Results are searchable by district, by category, by all kinds of things.

The 12 HISD schools that have been ranked "unacceptable":

High Schools -- Jones, Kashmere, Lee, Sterling, Westbury, Worthing and Sharpstown. Not many surprises there.

Middle Schools -- Attucks, Dowling, Fondren, Ryan, and the Walipp/TSU school.

No HISD elementaries were ranked unacceptable, according to the TEA list.

​Two-a-day football practices are scheduled to start next week at high schools in the Houston area, and, as always, the oppressive heat is cause for concern.

Twenty-nine high school players nationally have died from heat stroke in the last 15 years, according to the Annual Survey of Football Injury Research, and the issue has become so serious that last year a coach in Kentucky was charged with reckless homicide after a 15-year-old player died after collapsing during practice. The coach is scheduled for trial in August.

"It's the traditional separate the men from the boys type of thing," Dave Csillan, an athletic trainer who worked on a task force the last couple years to come up with guidelines for practicing in the extreme heat, tells Hair Balls. "But these are adolescents under the direction of an adult, and in any other situation the adult would be held accountable."

​Earlier this year, Halliburton agreed to pay nearly $560 million in fines to the federal government to end an investigation into its former subsidiary, KBR, and its involvement in bribing Nigerian officials to get construction contracts. It was reportedly the largest fine ever paid by a U.S. company in a foreign bribery investigation.

But hey, this is Halliburton, which means the story never just ends there. The hits keep on coming.

A group of Halliburton shareholders are now suing the company, its officers and directors in Harris County District Court for allowing the illegal behavior which led to the mammoth fines, which led to a drop in share price and a loss to its stockholders.

According to the lawsuit, "the defendants caused Halliburton to maintain internal controls that were so deficient that Halliburton insiders were able to divert millions of dollars of company funds to pay illegal bribes to various foreign officials in direct violation of the [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act]. Defendant's failure in this regard has caused substantial damage to Halliburton."

​HISD announced yesterday they had set a record for the percentage of its schools ranked "exemplary" or "recognized" by the state, and the official release of the information today backed up the claim.

Last year 57 percent of the district's schools were included in those two categories; this year it's 73 percent.

The results:

Exemplary      84 schools    31 percent
Recognized   116 schools    42 percent
Acceptable      49 schools    18 percent
Unacceptable  12 schools     4 percent

Here, badly formatted by the district, is the list of exemplary schools.

There's always a lot of criticism about how these rankings are achieved, and how districts and the Texas Education Agency do with statistics what bureaucrats always do with statistics -- massage them to look good.

But let's let HISD bask in their moment, for the moment. The TEA releases statewide stats at 1 p.m. today on their website.

With the MLB non-waiver trade deadline fast approaching, the Houston Astros are a listing ship quickly going under. The Astros just lost three of four games to the Chicago Cubs and have gone from surging toward first place to trying to hold off the Milwaukee Brewers for third place.

The latest disaster in Chicago saw the Astros starters pitch just 15 of 38 innings in four games -- Wandy Rodriguez pitched seven of those innings on Monday night. Roy Oswalt had to leave his Tuesday start after 1.2 innings because of a back problem. Mike Hampton made it through four innings against the Cubs on Wednesday, but he gave up eight hits and nine runs during that time. And Russ Ortiz pitched himself off of the club yesterday, lasting just 2.1 innings while giving up nine hits and nine runs.

Oswalt was sent to Houston to have his back examined, and he is rejoining the team in St. Louis today where he will be evaluated as to his availability for his scheduled start on Sunday afternoon. If Oswalt can't pitch, then minor league phenom Bud Norris will be making his first-ever major league start. Norris pitched three innings of relief on Wednesday and did a respectable job. But I have the feeling the Astros would prefer that Oswalt be available to make the start against the division-leading Cardinals. And with Oswalt starting, that would leave Norris available to take the rotation spot of Ortiz, who was waived after yesterday's disaster.

But moving Norris into the rotation won't solve the Astros problems.