Among the first casualties of the Kinkaid School's Skip McGee-induced culture war were events surrounding a production of The Laramie Project. Now the play is finally up, albeit with fortified security and a new, perhaps more relevant context.

Chris Brown has words for Oprah, Susan Boyle's songs are beating Whitney and Russell Crowe wants to beat a gossip columnist. Oh, yes, it's your Friday morning Gossip Roundup.

Houston Judge Donald W. Jackson's such a mensch! He allegedly offered a DWI defendant a free pass if she gave him a littly nooky. If only the entire criminal justice system were so loose! [Houston Chronicle]

An obese Houston man snuck a gun into jail underneath his massive flabs of flesh.

Last November, Mary Anderson attended a Method Man concert at Houston's House of Blues. Later, she approached Method Man, whom Ms. Anderson was a fan of, for an autograph. He then pulled out a gun and opened fire on her.

So say statistics, anyway! Gayblog TheSword recently compiled some Craigslist data, and figured out that when men are looking online to do sex with other men, certain cities trend heavily toward the receiving end. Chief among them is Houston—where 70% of folks are looking to fill the void.

A famous megachurch pastor in a (racist?) airplane rage! An extortionate flight attendant! A sham psychologist-for-hire who will say anything for the right price! All the ingredients for a cheap, trite courtoom novel are present in the case of Victoria Osteen, the co-pastor (with her husband Joel) of the 40,000-strong Lakewood megachurch in Texas, which is often used as a convenient public symbol of the creepy huge-church trend. Is Victoria a benign blond brainwashed by Jesus, or a sinister undercover bigot set to explode at any moment? Here are the holy facts:

Manhattan residents often find themselves dreaming of the paradise that is Houston, Texas. The cars; the affordable barbecue; the murders. It's a working man's promised land. But why must some people have the bad fortune to get stuck in NYC, while others live the dream by breaking free and making their way to the sweltering heart of Texas? Luckily there's a Harvard economist to explain exactly how Houston came to be so much better than New York!

Houston: what's the point? The Texas city is most famous for the Bush family, big hair, and sippin on the sizzurp. At least that's the stereotype, and as a non-Houstonite, I don't care enough about the city to put in the effort to dispel that stereotype. But the city has anticipated this; they're rolling out an ad campaign designed to boost the city's reputation [NYT]. It's called "My Houston," and it features celebrities talking about what they like about the city. Unoriginal idea, Houston! Really now, are tourists going to flock to a hot, sprawling, asphalt-covered outpost in Texas just because racer A.J. Foyt fondly reminisces about speeding around its traffic-choked outer loop roads? In any major city, no matter how forlorn it is, you can find a handful of prominent citizens who will talk it up. They're called the rich. They'd get along pretty well anywhere—even Houston. Besides, why did the city go and spend a bunch of money on a new ad campaign when they could have just gone to YouTube and pulled off this perfectly adequate "Great Day Houston" rapping promo for free?

AL-QAEDA STRIKES???? "About 30 people were on the moving stairs at the George R. Brown Convention Center [in Houston] when it unexpectedly sped up, then abruptly stopped. A fire captain says everybody on it 'just rolled down to the bottom.'" [AP via Strib]

The latest issue of the most prestigious British rag this side of Hello! features a special report about cities, and guess what? They are more popular than ever. Turns out that starting around now (maybe a little while go, also maybe not yet) more than half the people on the planet live in cities for the first time in human history.

The world is not enough: All of Google's heavy petting with NASA will pay off when the two hop into bed.