Democrats debate in Iowa, everybody yawns. Al Gore blames you. "If you wanna get down, down on the ground..." It is so freaking cold in the midwest! Call your grandma and check on her. New Jersey is set to abolish the death penalty. Paris Hilton likes to show skin. Wastewater spills into Bull Creek tributary.......

We saw an episode of "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" this season, but we didn't realize that The Defuser was one of Austin's finest. He won in last night's season finale. Congress bridge officially became the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge in ceremony today. Man carrying at least 72 pounds of pot gets pulled over on the way up from Brownsville. The Live from the Plaza music series starts next Friday. That......

MONDAY [15] books • The Xenogia Spoken Word Collective, Uprise Productions, and the Vortex present Genevieve Van Cleve and Sharon Bridgeforth with host Zell Miller III at The Vortex (6:45pm, $3) film • 24 Season Premiere party, night two at Alamo Downtown (7pm) film • James Brown, Boston Garden 1968 at Alamo Downtown (9:45pm) Photo of Bull Creek by mr3wan on flickr......

Ardent Residential plans to demolish the 140-unit Bull Creek Apartments built in 1968 and construct a new complex. Texan Properties is similarly demolishing the Shoal Creek Apartments and rebuilding new apartments. Grandview Street Partners has a similar plan for condos on 32nd and Grandview. This is not really a surprise. Few apartment complexes are built to last, and the fact that these survived as long as they have is impressive. Most complexes being built......

Throw in some margarita-fueled, sunburned missed connections and you've got the start of some real summertime madness -- just the ones on Lake Travis, at Bull Creek, and at apartment pools alone outnumber all other genres of posts this week. Enjoy this week's delayed Memorial Day MCs, and let us know if we missed any of your favorites. hippie hollow swimmer* me: guy in cowboy hat with radio playing, drinking some beer on a......

The storms that slammed Austin last night cut a sizeable swath of destruction, uprooting trees, flooding major streets (we might as well have been swimming down South Lamar last night) and knocking out power across the city. The Statesman reports that roughly 17,000 customers remain without electricity as of 10am on Friday, with KXAN quoting Austin Energy saying that repairs may take up into nighttime. The Austin-Travis County Emergency Conditions Information Page lists several schools......

Scientists assigned a new genus to this creature they recently discovered in the ocean. We're thinking it would taste good with some garlic butter. ***Don't be fooled, a tabloid posting says that some NASA Scientists are calling it an alien life form. Tragically, 5 UT students were killed in a car accident this weekend on their way to a medical school convention in St. Louis. None of them were wearing their seat belts. A......

Unless you've been hiding out in the 78704 these past few months, you've probably noticed that the stretch of West 45th Street from Mopac to, well, I-35 has turned into a chaotic disaster zone of upended tar and haphazardly-strewn orange cones. It's all part of a nifty little $15.3 million construction project started last May, that hopes to "provide a greatly improved ride for motorists" and replace some awfully dirty plumbing. And while we're......

Northwest Austin's Bull Creek Park is a, idyllic, quiet refuge replete with ancient trees, a bubbling brook and a nearby hiking trail that winds lazily through the hillside. On Saturday mornings we like to take our dog there for a dip in the water. It's a nice spot to reflect quietly on the week's insanities. And, evidently, it's also a great place for wild group orgies. Yesterday Austin police arrested 16 people after an......

Austinist shudders to imagine what life would be like in our green city without our amazing (and bountiful!) parks. After all, we've grown awfully fond of whiling away early evenings at Zilker Park, teaching our puppy how to swim in the early weekend mornings at Bull Creek, and running around the shores of Town Lake. But lately we've noticed that several of these nature havens have fallen into disrepair - whether by trail erosion,......

If you wandered past Town Lake this morning you probably noticed the unusually large crowd of runners out. Apart from an excuse to gorge even more on Easter night, most of the men and women (and dogs) out there are most likely training for next Sunday's annual rite of spring known as the Statesman Capitol 10K. The Cap 10k is by far the largest annual race in Austin, with over 15,000 runners estimated for this......