Have a happy and safe Halloween! If you're headed to Sixth Street, leave your light saber/fake gun/billy club at home. Williamson County won't kick privately-run immigration detention center out of Taylor now that they aren't liable for it. Some Texas prosecutors will wait for the Supreme Court's decision next year before asking judges to set execution dates. After a soldier died in a Ft. Hood training exercise, his supervising officer is facing court martial.......

OMG, Barkitecture! Done laughing? Okay, if you love your dog bring your furry friend to 2nd Street District area tomorrow for Barkitecture Austin 2007 – a silent auction for dog-houses built by 20 of Austin’s architects, builders and designers. All proceeds go directly to Animal Trustees of Austin, Lucky Mutts, Austin Dog Rescue and Blue Dog Rescue, which find homes for stray dogs. Bidding starts at noon at Lofty Dog, there’s a live photo......

From the tallest skyscraper in the City of Brotherly Love to Canadian tourism copywriting brilliance, here's what you should know from our -ist cities: This week, Phillyist took a gleeful listen to the White Stripes' exciting new release, watched in awe as their new tallest skyscraper was finally completed, found a cheaper way to get to Gothamist, invented a tasty new dessert, and brought back their Craigslist Round-Up feature with a bang. Bostonist watches......

Overheard at Austin High: Like, holy crap, guys. OMG! LYLAS! Listen up! Jenny told Tommy that Marcy told Lucy that Genie let Sally read Susie Tanner’s notebook, in which it is totally written that some kids in the cafeteria are performing High School Musical and that Will Andastaphonopolus is big time G-A-Y. G…A…whoa. Wait. What? Did you say High School Musical? Fer sure, biz-natch. Totally fer sure. I’ve already friend-requested the show on Myspace.......

GoogTube! GoogTube! GoogTube! Here's what's new at the record store: Annuals Be He Me (Ace Fu) Because of (or in despite of) their popularity with the blogging set, Annuals' highly anticipated album, Be He Me, is sure to be a hit this week. For fans of Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and yes, even Animal Collective, Annuals add a bit of punch to the whole "we're pretending to be lo-fi but really we spent......

So, like, you guys, guess WHAT? Tara Reid is totally in Austin right now! OMG! She’s like, BFF with Paris Hilton! No shit! Like, she got into town yesterday, and she’s just chillin’ with some of her girlfriends for a while. Yeah, like, she was hanging out at Six last night. Seriously! Our friend Aimee’s ex-boyfriend Brad like, TOTALLY tried to hit on her. He is such a tool. OMG y’all, maybe she’ll like,......

Rags-to-riches success stories are few and far between these days, particularly the sort punctuated with "dot com" and "latest buzz" - two phrases that cropped up seemingly everywhere you turned only a few years ago. Which is why we're thrilled to announce that our former editor, one-time publishing mogul, general tech impresario and self-proclaimed Internet Rock Star has accomplished what none of us dared to imagine. Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Brown sold out to......

Alex Brown, the drummer of local band Fractious and the little brother of this site's former editor is turning 21 tonight, OMG, and wants everyone to come out and see his band play. Doors for the party at Redrum are at 8, and the cover is $4, but if you track down this lowly Austinist contributor, he will buy you a beer and maybe even 2 if you are nice. Performing tonight will be......

-The director of Austin's Clean Water Program has been asked to resign amidst claims of "inappropriate" business dealings with his girlfriend -Austin Chronicle's Amy Smith tries to explain just what Prop 2 proponents were thinking -A murder suspect from San Marcos may be lurking somewhere in Austin -Cops raided a meth lab somewhere south of William Cannon -The country might be getting more prudish, but at least we can count on more sex on......

: : FRIDAY : : [music] The Zippo Hot Tour Semi-Finals featuring Fractious, 9pm @ The Backroom - FREE! [film] A Bunch of New Movies Open! @ your local theater [film] QT6, 7pm & 9:30pm @ Drafthouse Downtown: Grindhouse Triple Feature also Saturday [music] Mike Graff, 8pm @ End of an Ear [dance] Refraction Arts presents "Shish-ka-bob! An Inventory of Works by Amy Cone," 8pm @ The Blue Theatre [music] Palaxy Tracks, The Glass......

OMG, we are so late writing our weekly recap of The Real World that for a while we were considering not even doing one. I mean, how relevant is a recap once the episode has been aired three hundred and fifty times? But then we realized that this episode has another few thousand runs in it's lifetime, which means that our grandchildren will probably be watching it on their Lazer Vision 8000-X Holographic Brain......

We know it's a bit late in the game to be reviewing The Island, but we literally woke up this morning pissed off that we'd seen this movie a week and a half ago, and thought we'd give an ol' internet rant this morning. Now, we're reasonably certain that this movie is better than, say, Stealth, and definitely sure that it will be better than The Devil's Rejects. However, this is yet another notch......

Like any properly narcissistic rock star, Coldplay's Chris Martin is easily identifiable by any of these following trademark characteristics: a) his haute wife b) his freshly-post-pubescent falsetto speaking voice c) his unabashed endorsement of Make Trade Fair If you've ever seen Coldplay - and it's almost impossible not to have, since they're quite literally everywhere nowadays (OMG, they just walked past our cubicle!) - you've probably noticed the MTF signs, whether etched on Martin's......

Boy howdy, is it hot outside. Hot enough to melt the face off a snake! Hot! And, do you know what snake-face-melting heat goes well with? Alcohol! That's right! Drinking! We'd like to invite you to our third official happy hour, this Thursday at The Longbranch Inn on East 11th Street. We'll start showing up around 5, and we'll hang out until we can no longer see straight. Come on down and meet our......

As a follow-up to our recent post about eggs: Our parents own a small box-shaped house in suburban Maryland, just past the last stop on the Red Line. The house has a smallish yard, and is surrounded by other houses, also box-shaped. It is in no way located in a rural area, though there are no coffee shops within walking distance, which might as well mean it is on the moon. However, though the......