Warhol painting of Liz Taylor fetches $23 million. Proof that we started this whole campaign thing a little too early. O.J. "relies on the jury system." WWII plane appears on shore sixty-five years after it went down. Spanish is the most popular foreign language to study while in college; Arabic is quickly gaining popularity. Here's a list of the Top 10 Worst Toys for this holiday season. Careful going out this weekend, one million......

Photo from olganza.comIf all goes as planned, Austinites may soon be able to get out of the country for less than the cost of a cab ride to the airport. Mexico's no-frills airline, vivaAerobus, was recently granted access out of Austin Bergstrom International Airport by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The carrier, which seems to be the Mexican equivalent of UK's wildly popular Ryan Air, claims that it'll begin offering one-way tickets for as low......

An earthquake in Indonesia brings fears of possible tsunami in Indian Ocean. One year into serving as Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe is resigning. Another government shakeup: Putin is dissolving Russia's current government in preparation for upcoming elections. Aviator Fossett still lost, but six other lost planes have been found in the search for his plane. US Senate will hold hearing on toy safety today. Doesn't Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson deserve better than playing Carrie......

Formed from the ashes of Split Enz, Crowded House may well have been the best pure pop-rock group of their era. Twenty-two years after their beginnings in Melbourne, Australia, Neil Finn and Nick Seymour have brought back Crowded House's classic songwriting and effortless melodies via a new album and tour. The group disbanded in 1996 and has weathered the shocking suicide of founding member Paul Hester, the disconnect of distance (Finn lives in Auckland,......

Silver City Pink is an award-winning, all-female improv troupe from Los Angeles performing tonight at the Hideout (10pm) as part of this year’s Out of Bounds improv festival. The eight women of SCP met while taking classes at The Second City L.A. and have performed at the LA Improv Festival and the Del Close Marathon in New York City. I spoke with SCPer Amanda Tate about the festival experience and their Los-Angeles-colored impression of......

Lady Bird joins LBJ, but her legacy lives on. Take a lap around Town Lake for her, and be sure to stop and smell the flowers. Pray for rain--in Alabama. Lord knows we've had enough of it here, and we may even get more. While you're at it, pray for grocery stores--Detroit doesn't have any. Maybe Whole Foods could move in if Mackey weren't so busy online. Feeling broke? Head to Japan, where they......

Fridge The Sun (Temporary Residence) Kieran Hebden, Adem and Sam Jeffers have been working hard since 2001's Happiness, though perhaps not with each other. Hebden's Four Tet is almost as prolific as Prefuse spin-offs, and Adem has released one of the greatest folk-pop albums of the decade with Love & Other Planets (2006). Jeffers is no slouch, working hard in the graphic design and web industry, as well as continuing his musical aspirations. As......

After a month of guesswork, the ACL Fest lineup is here. And it's quite a good one. While the wild speculation of headliners like Neil Young and Stevie Wonder once again proved false, the key items one sees this year are depth and balance. Having spent yesterday looking over the roster, we have the following observations on the 2007 edition of ACL. The Good: A Great Top 10. Had you told us that we'd......

Jeffrey Willard Smith, a 49-year-old man from Midland, Texas, now faces a felony burglary charge after airport security allegedly caught him stealing a banana from one of the restaurants in the terminal. From the Statesman: According to an arrest affidavit, an airport security guard caught Jeffrey Willard Smith reaching through a locked gate at the Waterloo restaurant inside the terminal. Smith, 49, took the banana, sat down at Gate 10 and ate it, the affidavit......

Note: Several weekend events will be added in the afternoon. THURSDAY [5] fashion/music/party • Car Stereo (Wars), Visuals by Super!Alright!, and 30-40% Everything at Strut (6-10pm) film • "Military Intelligence and You" at Alamo Drafthouse Lakecreek (7:30pm) art •Opening Reception for Aki Nagasaka's "Yellow Labyrinth" at Women and Their Work (6-8pm) books •Pam Oslie presents Love Colors at BookPeople (7:00pm) books •Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht presents "In 1926: Why and How?" at The Harry Ransom......

That's right: it's time to heat up your winter nights again, with the 14th season of FronteraFest. The Short Fringe, the Long Fringe, or Mi Casa es su Teatro -- FronteraFest is five weeks of alternative, offbeat, new, and just plain off-the-wall fringe theatre presented by Hyde Park Theatre and Austin Script Works. For complete FronteraFest 2007 information, including times and locations for the Short Fringe, the Long Fringe and Mi Casa es su Teatro,......

That's right: it's time to heat up your winter nights again, with the 14th season of FronteraFest. The Short Fringe, the Long Fringe, or Mi Casa es su Teatro -- FronteraFest is five weeks of alternative, offbeat, new, and just plain off-the-wall fringe theatre presented by Hyde Park Theatre and Austin Script Works. For complete FronteraFest 2007 information, including times and locations for the Short Fringe, the Long Fringe and Mi Casa es su......

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing. Austinist said goodbye to their co-editor (sell-out) and played rumor monger on the SXSW lineup. And when dozens of dead birds littered downtown Austin, it's......

Libya sentences 6 medics to death for "knowingly" infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV. Detectives arrest another suspect in the Suffolk Strangler case. A small plane crashes near Connally High School in North Austin, killing one. A rapist is preying on young men in the Houston area. Rescuers in Oregon fear that two missing climbers may have fallen. Iran's president suffers election embarrassment.......

"What people don't realize is that the so-called Seattle grunge scene grew out of several close-knit gourmet supper clubs - we would only pick up guitars to pass the time while our dishes were simmering, baking, boiling, etc." - Kurt Cobain For those Austinites looking to escape a (warm) hip town full of rock and roll, coffee shops, tech geeks and weed for another (rainy) hip town full of rock and roll, coffee shops,......

FRIDAY [17] music • Frida Hyvonen, Tacks the Boy Disaster, Jonathan Meiburg (Shearwater) at Emo's Lounge music • She Wants Revenge & Pretty Girls Make Graves at Stubb's music • Deftones, Deadsy at Austin Music Hall music • Steve Carter at Waterloo Records music • Grupo Fantasma at Antone's music • Golden Bear, The Lemurs, Glass Family at Continental Club (9:30pm) music • Joe Ely at Cactus Café music • Chin Up Chin Up,......

Some people are just that desperate for inexpensive furniture. We hope you love your new Kaarten Caaffee Taable. From deep in the heart of West Texas, Amazon.com founder, Jeff Bezos launches his rocket. MySpace is worth an estimated $6 Billion. We wanted to be part of a prestigious organization but it looks like we'll have to rule this one out. Al Jazeera begins broadcasting in English today and is expected to draw at least......

FRIDAY [10] music • Tilly and the Wall, The Tyde, Pony Up at Emo's music • The Places, 4 Hungry Tummies, Ralph White, Ryan Anderson at Emo's Lounge music • Jolie Holland w. Sonny Smith at The Parish Room music • The Alice Rose at Waterloo Records music • CREEPOUT Fest: Chumps, Bulemics, The Ends,The Wolves at Beerland music • Regina Spektor with Only Son at Antone's (Sold Out) music • The Black, Horse......

FRIDAY [27] party/music/awesome • Car Stereo (Wars) and Austinist host a Halloween Bash with Clap!Clap!, carnie games, face painting, fortune tellers, free fangs, "killer" drink specials, a costume contest judged by the fashionistas of Team Fabrication, and more at Beauty Bar (10pm-2am, $3 with, 4 w/o costume) zombies • Zombie Flash Mob at City Hall fashion • Beauty Bar Blowout with complimentary 'dos by Birds Barbershop, makeup applications by MAC artists, DJ Robbie Hardkiss......

Let's look back at a week in which no site in the -ist network adopted anyone from Africa... -Austinist reveled in the dumb antics of some U.T. law students and posted some great audio from former New Orleans natives who've decided to stay in Austin. But the best news for Austinist? They were voted Best Local Entertainment Web Site by the local Austin alt-weekly. Congrats, Austinist. -DCist gloried in being told their musical tastes made......

FRIDAY [13] music/art • Austin Museum of Digital Art (AMODA) presents their latest Digital Showcase with Drop The Lime, MVSCLZ, HAPPYSUCKY, Wonder Jam Twins, Yatsuzaki, DJ Who's Jealous and DJ Radicon, plus visual artists including Ben Aqua, Ben Hibon, Bleep Labs, Cari Palazzolo, David Salinas, DEFASTEN, Eli Welbourne, Friedrich Kirschner, Johnny Cisneros, Lanneau White aka Karl Sapien, Lonja, Mike Ruiz, and Yuki Kawamura at The Mohawk (9pm-2am, $7/$4 general/members, 18+) ® music • Faceless......

Someone other than the government might have your census information. Speaking of the government, the feds allowed the Red Cross to visit the "high value detainees" at Guantanamo. The Yankees pitcher who loved flying was killed yesterday in a fiery plane crash in Manhattan. Gothamist kept us updated throughout the afternoon. No more cursive in schools? What about graphologists? Won't somebody think of them? Students at Gallaudet University are so upset with their proposed......

FRIDAY [6] agliff/party • here! presents the aGLIFF member mingle at Rain (9pm) theatre • "Psycho Beach Party" at Arts on Real (8pm, $30) theatre • "At Home With Dick 2" at Dick's Apartment (3309 Grooms) (8pm, $10-$25) ® theatre • "Stillborn" at Hyde Park Theatre (8pm, $15) theatre • Zell Miller III: "Mix Tape, Theatre Style" at Off Center (8pm, $10) theatre • "Bitten: A Zombie Rock Odyssey" at Dougherty Arts Center (8pm,......

Ah, the sweet smell of college freshmen. School's back in session, summer is almost over (in theory), and it's a few weeks before the holiday movie rush begins (Exhibit A: this week's slim pickin's). *Trust the Man We’ve got one word for the entire cast of this movie: yum. The Wicker Man God bless Nic Cage. He tries, ya know? What a trooper. The Quiet This film is receiving fairly poor reviews, which is......

SNAKES ON A MUTHAF*CKIN’ PLAAAAAAANE! Because it just hasn’t been said enough. *Snakes on a Plane We debated about whether or not we should recommend this one, and we only do so out of sheer, morbid curiosity (plus, we really like jumping on bandwagons. A lot!). There aren’t words to express how ridiculous/awesome this movie must be. It’s like a whole new genre of film. We’re witnessing history here, folks. History determined by an......

Yes, it’s all very overwhelming. The planes in the air. The snakes on the interweb. The Samuel L on the profanity tip. And if it seems to you that only one writer is writing about it here, well then, you’re pretty much right. And the funny thing is, that writer doesn’t even care about the movie. But he does like paper planes, bitmappy clipart-type graphics, and the symbol of man’s inability to handle shame.......

It’s already a sold-out show for the endurance portion (regular tix should be still be available though). It’s the most eccentric cause we’ve ever come across. It’s the absolute strangest attempt at providing for that eccentric cause that we’ve ever heard of. And it’s wrapped around what will likely be the shittiest intentional, scripted movie ever made. And that includes that bullshit Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip-off you and your half-retarded friend made back in......

New albums by Guillemots, Hot Snakes, and the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack...

God, we're so sick of Snakes on a Plane that we want to kill anyone and everyone that makes a "something on a something" joke. But then we realized that there was no way we could ever win this fight, and, hell, if you can't beat them, we might as well join them. And with that, you have the theme of this weeks' Gothamist network post. Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on......

The whole Snakes On A Plane phenomena is getting wildly out of hand. It’s become its own animal. Its own machine, transcending its existence as a movie and entering that weird internerd world of cultish worship alongside Goetse, Tubgirl (look those up at your own peril) All Your Base Are Belong To Us, YTMND, Evil Bert and a shitload of other fleeting online fascinations spurred by bored cubicle workers and fueled by bored teenagers.......