Ben Reed & Bill Cope Read Christmas Fiction, Live!Friday, November 30thCafe Mundi (1704 East 5th St.)Free, 8pm - onwardAustinist’s own Benjamin Reed’s doing a Christmas Story reading with Bill Cope! Using real words! This Friday evening! Remember back when words actually meant something? Back when they meant “on paper, in printed form, to be read aloud to people who like hearing stories told by the authors who write them”? Back when books were things......

Back in the 30s – you know when everyone was broke – some group of bleeding hearts decided that all those starving artists needed something to do, and came up with the Federal Theatre Project. (Smells a lot like socialism – but don’t worry, they’d all pay for it later) Then, just to add insult to injury, this group of lazy, welfare-induced pricks started writing about current affairs (all the naughty stuff) – almost......

The Austin Humane Society is currently raffling off a brand spankin’ new Mazda RX8 to help raise funds for their community (animal) outreach programs. Apparently, this sporty little roadster goes from 0-60 in six seconds (unlike our current vehicle, which has a hard time getting up to 60, like, ever). Even better, they’re only selling 5000 tickets and there’s no limit to the number of tickets you can buy (until they run out), so......

[The following is an editorial column by contributor Alison Coffey and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Austinist staff. --The Editors] OHMIGOD! Did you all see James Frey on Oprah? Did you all see Oprah totally pissed and wanting some answers? Right now, James Frey, right now. It was totally riveting television. There was James Frey like a deer caught in the headlights, his terrified expression unchanging throughout the hour. The man......

*Update: The show will air "live" today at 4pm C.S.T. Game on! Did we mention there is a taped piece featuring a stern reprimand from Maureen Dowd. God what we wouldn't give for a stern reprimand from that woman. But we digress.* We all discussed James Frey's Million Little Lies last week in this space. Some were hurt, some were saddened, some could care less. Some were pissed. But apparently none were as pissed......

[The following is an editorial column by contributor Julie Neumann and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Austinist staff. --The Editors] My heart has broken into a million pieces. Approximately, give or take a few thousand. Actually, it may not be my heart at all, but some other vital organ in the chest area. You get the point, do these details really matter? I read James Frey’s account of addiction and recovery......

The Austin Center for FEMA Disaster Relief closed yesterday The New Pantheon shortlist nominees have been announced, and they are: Animal Collective, Antony and the Johnsons, Fiona Apple, Arcade Fire, Bloc Party, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Kings of Leon, M.I.A., and Sufjan Stevens So there's evidently a species of rare African clawed frogs that, when injected with urine from a pregnant woman, will ovulate. There's also a story about how they're dying......

Last week, we posted a review of a brilliant locally-published novel entitled "Egypt Egypt" by a certain Sam Ramos. An enthusiastic bout of Google-stalking yielded, to our surprise, nothing. It seemed that, so much as 8,058,044,651 web pages were concerned, neither the author nor the publisher existed. This, naturally, left us intrigued and somewhat confused – had we yet again replaced our vitamins with crazy pills? But mere days later, through a series of......