No passport required for U.S. citizens. Including Hillary. Finally - someone from the Bush White House makes a little sense. South Carolina G.O.P. snubs the shrub. Florida shares some of its really great election karma with Michigan. Vatican: vagina = total deal breaker. In the world of fashion, either you're in or you're out. Cosmos, manolos and sex. Oh my....

Half Japanese formed in the mid-seventies, and the band, which initially consisted of just brothers Jad and David Fair, would go on to have an musical impact on par with fellow primitive rock and roll ideologues Beat Happening and forebears The Shaggs. Kurt Cobain and Penn Jillette both championed their qualities to a larger audience, and their early history is even chronicled in a film entitled Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King by The Devil and Daniel Johnston director Jeff Feurezeig. Even after David left Half Japanese to pursue other things, Jad kept the love lights glowing by recording both under the band’s name and his own, collaborating with many other musicians along the way. ...

The Utter Reading Series is back tomorrow, with more pathos than Hillary, more transcendance than Barack, more grit than McCain, and more exposure (for local writers) than a bead-strewn balcony on Bourbon Street. As always, the reading is free and open to the public, and the audience is invited to join the readers afterwards for drinks and conversation at Opal Divine's on 6th....

Rogue Wave released their third full-length Asleep At Heaven’s Gate last year, leaving behind the safe haven of Sub Pop to find a new home at Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records. The album itself found the band conjuring up a textured mosaic of pop harmonies and poignant lyrics with the aid of sufficient guitars and keys. “Own Your Own Home” and “Like I Needed” were two of our favorite sleeper tracks of the past year, while single “Lake Michigan” was a lush pop hit never to be heard on everyday FM radio. (Watch the video on YouTube.)...

Released on Polyvinyl records this past summer, Saturday Looks Good to Me’s Cold Colors E.P. is a collection of song snippets, elongated studio experimentation, and little in between. While fans of this Michigan collective could easily appreciate their band’s experimental side knowing a more palatable full-length lay in the future (the fall’s Fill Up the Room), the EP itself has little to recommend it other than a promising lead here or there, jettisoned just as it’s discovered....

#7 Texas (1-0) vs. #19 Texas Christian (1-0) Time: 6 pm, Saturday, Sept. 8 Location: Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium TV: Fox Sports Southwest Radio: KVET (98.1 FM, 1300 AM) For the past week, all signs have been pointing to "upset" in this game. Texas looked unsteady at times in its 21-13 win over Arkansas State, while TCU shut out Baylor, 27-0. While the Longhorns' performance in the opener was shaky, at least it was......

Austin ticket broker TicketCity.com has published a list of the top 25 hottest college football games of 2007, based on the average price per ticket, and two University of Texas games are on the list. The Longhorns' game with Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on October 6 is currently #8 (average ticket price $555), while the November 23 game with Texas A&M in College Station is #18 ($402). The face value of......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Michigan's Quack!Media is your entity’s one-stop shop for music, video, print, and web needs. Meanwhile, Quack! affiliate Found Magazine is an intriguing collection of interesting stuff found in random places. As their website states, “We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes”. Oh, and there’s also a pervy version, Dirty Found Magazine. Together, they......

Tonight you might think that Dan Rather's jelly, because chances are he’s gonna be on a roll. Or something. The venerable newsman, and Wharton, Texas native, will be live on set tonight to analyze election results. But he won’t be working with Bob Schieffer or any other straight news reporters from around the nation, as he has done for the last 44 years. Tonight he saddles up alongside Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy......

A beautiful and excited crowd politely stormed the gates of The Paramount theater Friday night to catch one of indie-rock's most unlikely superheroes, Sufjan Stevens. Arguably the most anticipated and talked-about show of the year this side of The Stones, Sufjan and his prodigious backing band provided a salivating audience of Austinites a glimpse into their corn pone mystique, and we weren't disappointed. If anything, as many questions were raised as were answered about one of recent music's most curious and potent success stories....

To us, it’s always seemed that the Constitution for which American soldiers have bled and died on the field of battle for a few hundred years now – from the American Revolution up to the present day – was really more of a tool for making our lives more convenient, rather than a safeguard that prevents Orwell’s predictions from coming true......

If you're a UT fan, you probably haven't gotten much done today. For the uninitiated, February 1 marks the first day that college football squads can accept signed letters of commitment from their top recruits. The events of today usually resonate two to three years down the line as the players mature and become starters for their chosen team. So with that said, it looks good so far for the Longhorns. Mack Brown may......

It’s rare to find a musician that has performed for thousands at the Austin City Limits Festival, is a classically trained cellist, and still gets on stage at open mic night with his best friends for a touching rendition of “Man Beers,” the holiday classic they composed moments early during a MGD shortage. Austin Hartley-Leonard, front man for local rockers St. James, is one such artist. It should be obvious that their upcoming Momo’s......

The Texas Longhorns defeated the Michigan Wolverines in thrilling fashion this January, winning their first-ever Rose Bowl and finishing the season ranked 4th in the nation. Dusty Mangum's field-goal as time expired capped off a gutsy performance by the Horns who were led by the brilliant play of double-threat Vince Young. The Horns won the Rose Bowl trophy, but now they are relying on fans' support to win yet another award, the ESPY Award......

In The News Today: Feds Investigate Rocha Shooting: The FBI and the DOJ’s civil rights division are getting involved in the case of Daniel Rocha. Looks like the relations between Austin authorities and Austin minorities just got worse, if that's possible. Downing Street Memo: On May 1st, the UK Times published a memo that made President Bush just look, well, bad. There will be a forum today on Capital Hill regarding the memo and......