Judge Jeanne Meurer may be running for Travis County District Attorney. Pimp C was found dead yesterday afternoon. He was 33. How To Green Your Christmas Tree: Tips for having a more eco-friendly holiday. Colors! Gmail adds colored labels. Guerrilla artist Banksy in Bethlehem, proving if "it's safe for sissy artists, I think it's safe for everyone." Here’s What We Need: Some Way to Associate Our Low Fares with Worn Out Vaginas Using a......

Welcome to the latest edition of Band Slam!, wherein I navigate the murky waters of Austin's club listings for the best and worst band names playing this week. The only rule: I can't know anything about the actual band, thus limiting my critique strictly to the band's chosen moniker. Let's git 'er done! Death Is Not A Joyride - Beerland, Thurs 09/06 Isn’t it though? A long, hot, smoky, barreling-through-the-inferno-in-a-stolen-car-with-a-gun-in-each-hand kinda thing? I guess......

Dean and Gene Ween are playing this evening at Stubb's, which is sure to be the high-water mark of the year as far as glue-sniffing tongue-in-cheek former Garage-Proggers go. Even though you most likely already have heard of Ween, for those of you who haven't they're basically Garbage Pail Kids + They Might Be Giants. A gross, unfair distillation of their wide-ranging catalog, to be sure, but the show is sold out anyway. Oh......

1990s Cookies (Rough Trade/World's Fair) The 1990s "play music like a blond gets out of a car." This, we assume based on listening, means something like, "Our sound is snotty, a little fucked up on we-don't-remember-what, and always f-u-n." While John McKeown (Yummy Fur) won't make any news showing his knickers to paparazzi during a limo exit, he will succeed in promoting the display of everyone else's underthings on the dance floor, as Cookies......

Russians plan to stop global warming with vodka--er, sulfur-containing aerosol. However, it sounds like this could also promote global dimming. We may be screwed either way, so drink up. Bush plans to stop global warming by having a series of meetings to set "a long-term global goal" by "the end of next year." The sense of urgency is palpable. Neapolitans' ice cream is melting due to trash fires necessitated by the closure of all......

WEDNESDAY [24] books • Dr. Steven Moore presents Alternative Routes to the Sustainable City at BookPeople (7:00pm) books • Neal Shusterman presents Everlost at BookPeople (7:00pm) comedy • Bil Dwyer at Cap City Comedy Club DJ • Cut Club at The Mohawk DJ • Tighten Up at Beauty Bar film • Stroszek at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown film • Ladies of the 80s Singalong at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown film • Weird Wednesday: Get Mean at......

THURSDAY [16] wine • Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! at Various music • Peter and the Wolf, The Interest Kills at The Mohawk music • The Elected (Members of Rilo Kiley), Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos, Whispertown 2000 at Emo's Lounge music • Jack Ingram & Reckless Kelly at Stubb's music • The Pretenders, Operation:Awesome at Austin Music Hall music • White Ghost Shivers, Dewayn Bros at Beerland music • St. Lawrence......

Mixel Pixel Music For Plants (Kanine Records) Don't judge Mixel Pixel based on their hilariously bad website. Trudge through the mangled HTML and take a listen to "You're the Kind of Girl". A tit for tat dialogue between two disaffected hipsters, it could have easily been glib garbage, but instead, shambles about in hypnotic honesty, the negative image of Yo La Tengo's "Our Way To Fall". Sample back-and-forth: "I heard it all before/thought you......

The Mexican government last week sent a diplomatic note to Washington criticizing the plan for 700 miles of new fencing along the border and threatened to bring the dispute in front of the United Nations. Garbage, Recycling, and Yard Trimmings to slide one day so that Solid Waste Services (SWS) staff can attend the funeral services of a SWS employee who died in a traffic accident. Democratic gubernatorial Chris Bell has announced his support......

Lester Bangs once said of the Dead Kennedys that their fans didn't really understand them - that even if the Kennedys were earnest in their political views, it didn't matter because people only came to their shows for the “goon brutality.” And he was right. Just look what happened to punk; it was misunderstood, watered down and rendered near-useless by its own following. It rotted from the inside out. (For hard evidence, go see Propagandhi......

FRIDAY [15] music • Ghostland Observatory and Thee Emergency at The Mohawk (912 Red River) ® party • Earthdance at NiaSpace (7:30pm-10pm, $15) party • Eastside City Limits party with Pink Nasty, Tnlons Fort, I Kill Cars, Missing Tapes, Brothesr and Sisters, Til We're Blue or Destroy, The Black at Red Scoot Inn and Old Austin Daze Compound (9pm-4am, FREE) ® party • Teleport Door presents the Pop Yo Colla' party with DJs Daniel......

The 21st Annual Lake Travis Parks Cleanup is this Saturday, June 17 from 9 a.m. to noon. Last year, the event drew more than 400 volunteers who were able to clean up over 4,500 pounds of garbage. All linterested volunteers are welcome, and will be invited to a thank-you party following the event, which will have free t-shirts, food, and entertainment. This year's event is part of the Texas Department of Transportation's Don't Mess with......

Hallelujah! The day the Catholic Church and all of its minions have dreaded for the past few months (or maybe years, who knows what kind of secret prophecies they’ve got locked up in the Vatican – riiiiight??) has finally arrived. No, silly, there hasn’t been a discovery of ancient scrolls written by Jesus himself proclaiming the benefits of condom usage. Birth control and personal responsibility are still just as sinful as ever. We’re talking......

This Saturday night, Peel will be sharing some stage with The Happy Bullets (Oak Cliff, TX), Caspian (by way of Boston), and This Will Destroy You (San Marcos – holla!) at Beerland. All we have to say is: Peel better play Oxford, because that song is the total shit. It also appears that hometown playas, Peel, are working with Peek a Boo Records (see their profile here). Rumor has it that they already self-produced......

W E D N E S D A Y [ 2 5 ] [music] St. James Inc, Hurts to Purr and Mike Blackhurst at Stubb's (8pm) [music] Akron/Family, Mi and L'au, Shearwater at Emo's [music] "Old Man Night," with skate videos, DJ Vomitnoise, free pizza from Slices and Ices, and special raffles and giveaways at Beerland [film] Screening of Fearless Freaks director Bradley Beesley's "Hill Stomp Holler," plus a set by John Schooley at......

Growing up within the confines of our suburban cul-de-sac - perched imperially at the top of a hill, no less - we can say with little hesitation that in the master-planned communities dotting the outskirts of every major city, it's terribly difficult to have any meaningful collective social development. Now, planning committes in Austin are determined to do away with what in the last few decades has become the de-facto community-buildling scheme, and "create......

Austin's Public Information Office yesterday released details of the city's holiday schedules, reiterated below: City administrative offices will be closed Friday, Dec. 23, 2005, and Monday, Dec. 26 for the Christmas holiday and Monday, Jan. 2, 2006, for New Year’s. Pay-As-You-Throw customers will receive services as normal for garbage, recycling and yard trimming collection. The Household Hazardous Waste Facility will be closed the week of Dec. 26. Normal schedule will resume on Tuesday, Jan.......

Hey, Starseeds! How’s it going man? Wow, been a long time since we hung out, huh? Years, actually. Like, three. Yea, I was thinking about that the other day. What happened was: I was wrestling this big-ass garbage bag of warm and rancid, week-old chicken from the grips of this homeless guy behind the Church’s on Oltorf, and the odor of the situation reeked *exactly* like your old bathrooms did. They say that the......

Hey gentlemen, are you, like, totally ripped? Do you have an entire walk-in closet full of shiny striped shirts? Do you take yourself way too seriously and have the IQ of a bag of flaming hot Cheetos? Do you have time-share rights to a Gulfstream? Are you the brother of a B-List movie star? Would you like to meet a bunch of attention-starved silicone-laden dingbats who do not have the social skills to meet......

It’s one of those necessary evils, hours upon hours of stuffing garbage bags full of things you don’t even remember you owned. But before you chuck everything, consider donating or giving away your old stuff. Maybe doing something good will make you feel good. Unless you’re heartless. Read on for alternatives to the garbage can.......