Abel Morin, Jr. was convicted of raping a woman and her daughter (his neighbors) in 2006. A week ago today, he was in the midst of being transferred from Duval County to Jim Hogg County Jail when he came upon the unlocked door. He went on to hot-wire a U-Haul truck and used it to flee to San Diego (Texas) where his family lives; investigators found the truck near a creek in the town this weekend....

San Diego’s Grand Ole Party joins a quality bill of local acts this Saturday at Emo’s Lounge. The band is fresh off a jaunt with Vampire Weekend, having toured with Rilo Kiley prior to that. Produced by Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett, the trio’s debut record Humanimals (no connection to Manimal) showcases singer/drummer Kristin Gundrer’s powerful vocal chops that pace Grand Ole Party’s raw garage rock. The album has been available through iTunes this year and a more traditional release on DH Records is expected in early 2008....

Image from Ringo Deathstarr’s MySpace It’s no secret that Austin is home to one of the most prolific artistic scenes in the country, Live Music Capital of the World or not. Any weekend in the city promises a number of day time occurences and a plethora of evening events. A quick browse through this weekend’s notifications leads one to fun activities for the kids at The Flying Theater Machine’s Wang Dang Doodle Hour or a......

Most Americans think waterboarding is torture...but some still think we should go ahead and do it. Whaaaa? No more booze on the beach in San Diego for one year. Buzzkill. Big mudslide hits Chiapas. Portland solidifies position as Bike City, USA. Please, take us with you! Newest trendy food ingredients: chemicals. Vermont is now the nation's healthiest (yuppiest) state. Hollywood writers go on strike - will other Tinseltown workers support them? Barack Obama will.......

A band name that evokes the high-schooler or naïve college kid in many of us, Helmet were a staple of the '90s “alternative” scene, a blanket term that covered everything from major-label juggernauts Nirvana to independent scene bands like Guided By Voices – basically anything that was rock but wasn’t explicitly metal or punk. Helmet, signed to Interscope, were something of a New York hybrid of hardcore, grunge and something else entirely, with reviewers often......

The Red Sox has permeated nearly every facet of Bostonist's lives. When they're not live-blogging the games, waxing poetic about the games, thanking Curt Schilling for his splendid work, or telling Dane Cook to watch his hair, they're watching certain presidential candidates hop on the Red Sox bandwagon (sorry, Gothamist). The Sox are so branded on the local brain that people are using the Series to spice up their sex lives. Speaking of spice, Bostonist......

In case you’ve been holed up in your apartment/home/condo with no electricity for the past few days, we’re sad to tell you that Southern California is currently being devoured by raging wildfires, and there are no signs of the fires stopping. CNN is updating like, every 2.3 minutes, and it’s one of the most devastating things we’ve ever seen. Times like these, it feels like there’s not much you can do but sit and refresh......

While the West Coast leads the pack, it's no surprise that Austin has ranked 7th in a national survey ranking organic food consumption. In fact, the study looked at local organic juggernaut Whole Foods Market, finding "Organics consumers are 272% more likely than the average consumer to have shopped Whole Foods during the past week." According to the survey, the top local markets for organics consumers are: 1. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose, CA 2. Seattle/Tacoma, WA......

Augustana. Even if you don’t know the name, chances are you’ve heard their single “Boston” over the past year. You know the one. They played it in on Laguna Beach, Scrubs and The Today Show. It hovered around the thirties on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a while. You know, it’s a melodic, piano-driven pop rock song with super sweet, almost cherubic vocals played by some baby-faced hipsters with shaggy hair and tight jeans.......

We at the Gothamist network would like to express our heartfelt wishes to the people of Minnesota in the days after their tragic bridge collapse. We're not trying to discount the severity of the accident by making note of it in opposition to our usual -Ist lightheartedness - we just wanted to take a moment and recognize those affected last week. After the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bostonist did a little research and found that Massachusetts......

Oh No! Oh My! are preparing to release their EP, Between the Devil & the Sea on Hollywood's Dim Mak (home to Datarock, the Rakes and more), oh August 7, and have a tour scheduled to support it. The exclamatory darlings will play shows with Au Revoir Simone, Let's Go Sailing! and the Deadly Syndrome. Follow the jump below for a complete tour date listing, and enjoy this song from their upcoming release: Oh......

Madeinusa (Peru, Spain)7 PM, Regal Metropolitan Theater #14Madeinusa is a girl who lives in an isolated village in the Cordillera Blanca Mountain range of Peru. This strange place is characterized by its religious fervor from Good Friday at three o’clock in the afternoon (the time of day when Christ died on the cross) until Easter Sunday, in which the whole village can do whatever it feels like. During the two holy days, sin does not......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyways, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In......

Peter & The Wolf is/are preparing for a spring tour which will feature not only the soothing sounds of the Austin-based singer/songwriter Red Hunter, but a tour-only CD. Though this 6 week jaunt around the country will feature the same reliable Toyota as previous trips, one notable difference is the permanence of Hunter's accompanying band, which will remain solid throughout the tour. Some lucky locals around hosting towns will be featured as choir members......

Unfortunately, there is a second piece of bad news today: the University of Texas community is mourning the loss of long-time philosophy professor Robert Solomon. Solomon died Jan. 2 in an airport in Switzerland. The Statesman reports that he died suddenly, in the middle of changing planes, from pulmonary hypertension, likely the result of a lifelong congenital heart defect. Solomon taught the only two philosophy classes I ever took at UT, as part of a......

Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young was named the AP Offensive Rookie of the Year today. After sitting on the bench and watching for the first month of the season, the Longhorn Legend finally got his chance. Once VY was given the opportunity to prove himself, he did what we all expected him to do – he danced, pranced, cajoled and lead his team to amazing victory after amazing victory, carrying the 0-5 Titans to......

The first-ever Fun Fun Fun Fest is this Friday, December 1st, at Waterloo Park. Over two dozen great acts are on the bill, including Spoon, Peaches, The Black Angels, Prefuse 73, and DJ Mel. Tickets are now $25, and can be purchased at the gate. Learning Secrets perform in the Dance Party Tent at 4:30pm. -- The Editors Bonus: Download Ian's new winter mix, featuring Sebastian, The Rapture, Jurgen Paape, James Figurine and more. [mp3]......

Named for the proclivities of a Parisian couple who planned to take out the titular monument because its lights kept them up at night, San Diego's The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower play a fairly lovable brand of jazz-inflected sass-core. Or perhaps we should say they used to; since the show is billed as part of their last tour before they disband, presumably to further their careers in hedge fund management. The......

Considered the “great film” of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, an early indicator of its Oscar potential, Babel is a film which shares notable characteristics with recent successful indies capable of garnering the full attention of Hollywood. Looking like Syriana in its scope, feeling like an international version of Crash, Babel is the interweaving of stories about people in crisis – their crises arising from misunderstandings and failed communication – culminating in a......

Austin remains the nation's fifth safest large city, according to the latest annual rankings published by Morgan Quitno Press. The Lawrence, Kansas-based research firm placed Dallas and Houston on the other side of the spectrum -- both are among the country's most dangerous, at sixth and tenth, respectively. Meanwhile, our northern neighbors in Round Rock should be happy to know that they're still living in of the overall safest cities, despite dropping to thirteenth......

It took an official study paid for by the Downtown Austin Alliance and City of Austin to conclude the obvious: East Sixth Street has an overabundance of bars. Washington, D.C.-based consultants at ERA/Downtown Works, already working with the city on other downtown retail strategies, recently conducted a survey of the college-friendly span of Sixth Street from Congress Ave to Red River. According to their findings, the five-block-long area has a whopping 57 bars -- most......

First they made it family-friendly. Then they tried to chesse-glitz it up for the shiny-shirt crowd. Tourists, total tourists. And we don't mean people on vacation who don't actually live in Vegas, we mean tourists. In the pejorative sense. Now they're trying to make America's favorite city for bluehairs, frat boys and porn skanks into a rock n' rollers' dream. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas usually sucks, so we hope that Emo's......

Like the wandering ghosts of some long-lost pirate ship, San Diego’s Black Heart Procession will invade The Parish tonight with their moaning, clanking brand of spooky country. Though the BHP lineup is constantly shifting (and has included members of RFTC, Hot Snakes and Blonde Redhead) the current band includes Pall Jenkins and Tobias Nathaniel (both of Three Mile Pilot), Joe Plummer (Modest Mouse, Magic Magicians), Jimmy LaValle (The Album Leaf), Scot Mercado (Manuok/Via Satellite)......

Standing before thousands of screaming geeks at this weekend's 2006 San Diego Comic Con International, Quentin Tarantino announced the cast "Death Proof," one-half of a double-feature collaborative project entitled "Grindhouse" that he'll be working on with Austin director Robert Rodriquez. From wiki: A "grindhouse" is an American term for a theater that showed exploitation films; it is also used as an adjective to describe the genre of films that played in such theatres. While just......

In Money Magazine's annual Top Ten Best Big Cities list, published online yesterday, Austin came out in second place. Oddly enough, we weren't anywhere near the top for their separate rankings of metrics like Job Growth, Skinniest, Youngest, Safest, and Most Singles. According to the magazine's survey, our population of nearly 700,000 (over half of whom are college educated) has a healthy median age of just under 31 and spends almost $7000 a year......

When we first got geared up to move to Austin, someone told us Austin was "bordering on lazy," which pleased us. Now, we have something to back up such blanket statements: Austin/San Marcos has been named one of the top "Chill Together" cities in the country. Austin ranked 9th on the list put out by Sperling's BestPlaces and Bailey's Irish Cream (who, of course, would like to remind you to drink responsibly). Among Austin's......

Old Spice today released its Fifth Annual Top-100 Sweatiest Cities List, with Austin coming in seventh place. Overall, Texas has the dubious distinction as being the sweatiest state in the country, with six cities -- Dallas, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Waco -- all among the Top 10. The rankings are based on the amount of sweat a person of "average height and weight" would produce from walking around for an hour in......

Salvage Vanguard Theater is about to get big -- real big. Long established as one of Austin's fringe theatre giants, SVT is going national with a full-scale tour of their Intergalactic Nemesis series (not to mention a possible commercial run in NYC). They'll return home just in time to move into their brand spankin' new performance space and mount Nemesis again at the 1,200 seat Hogg Auditorium here in town. But according to Jason......

Several teachers in Dallas got to experience the joys of marijuana this week. Muffins left in the teacher's lounge helped to expand the consiousness of the administrators. We'll call that a special delivery. The Pink Taco Restaurant is opeing a second location in Scottsdale, Arizona. Apparently the city fails to find it humourous. We wonder if we need to enlighten them with some muffins. In the Vatican, Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado is being punished......

There's a whole wide world out there, and here's the proof: DCist revels in The University of Maryland's basketball triumphs, marvels at Metro's security strategy, and applauds DC local Katie Couric's new gig. Bostonist has the best local papers! While The Globe reports on a baby shower gone bad, the 'Herald coins a gruesome new term. They put down the paper long enough to comment on an election that has gone to the dogs, and,......