When Norman Mailer and Hunter Thompson wrote about political showdowns, they were incapable of resisting the fight metaphor. They knew that there is no such thing as a contest of ideas, a balanced measure of experience and aptitude. That a political debate is most akin to boxing, that it’s both a brawl and a dance. But if a political debate is tantamount to a heavyweight title, then it is one cast in negative: Even if he wins, Americans don’t want to see their man take too many shots on the chin....

I wonder: why wouldn’t the APD drug cop and the data miner want the world to know what they’re up to? They’re heroes, after all! Cleansing our streets of the dreaded indoor weed farmer. They should be proud. They're like The Punisher and Microchip....

...Obama delineates his popularity, and receives the longest applause yet. Hillary shifts, the glow in her eyes flickers. Something has changed, and she can taste it. Maybe the phrase that crosses her mind is 'tipping point'....

As Austin grows, our unofficial motto should probably be modified from ‘Keep Austin Weird’ to simply, ‘Keep Austin.’ Maybe it's a small defeat. Or maybe it's simply falling back to more secure positions....

It shouldn’t take more than 350 words to explain why I intended to vote Ron Paul for President, and roughly two words to explain why there’s now no chance in hell....

Like the disaffected grunge movement. Nobody could really find a way to bank off it, at least not until Ethan Hawke and Eddy Vedder came along. Then the music and film execs got a hard-on so big, it bumped into Kurt Cobain’s elbow while he was cleaning his shotgun....

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Barack Obama win South Carolina. Like most Americans, I like Barack Obama. And, like most Americans, I'm not sure why....

Stand-up Comedian: The new homes at Mueller are so close together… Audience: (in unison) How close are they?...

Do you ever think as the hearse goes by, that you will be the next to die?...

Just before 3am, Ronald Hood sprints down Red River, the street lamps wobbling into stratified halos with each spongy footfall. The pills make it so he has no idea how fast he’s going, or how far the cops—well, he can hear them shouting still, but they could be right behind him or fifty yards back. Almost lost, or just about to bring him down by his sweat-soaked collar....

The Law of Helmets is more like the Law of Gravity, especially in that you won’t get a citation for violating it, but you might get splattered all over the pavement for trying....

I vaguely recall, when I was eight years old, writing a letter to the North Pole. I remember this letter in particular, because it was the year I didn’t write to Santa. Instead, I wrote to the Head Elf....

Tales of the Really White Vigilante first splashed across the Austinist back in October, just before it hit the presses. Yours Truly sullied himself in a petty back-and-forth in the comments section......

The run-up to the 2058 mayoral election will see Austin’s first competition between two ‘green’ candidates. No, I mean literally. Competition for the mantle of ‘most green’ will compel contenders to start taking a chlorophyll-based diet supplement that gives their skin a greenish pigmentation. On the downside, both candidates will be notoriously unproductive after sunset....

The allegorical narrative of Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments represents a massive backwards step for humankind, culturally and intellectually...Modern monotheism’s overlooked Pandora’s Box....

The APD could adopt a more compatible attitude, one that sees violent crime on the East Side as another inevitable casualty of gentrification, one that will eventually succumb to the gradual transition. Essential to all parties accepting responsibility for these mixed-race, mixed-income neighborhoods is that transition from negative stigma includes a reduction of all forms of violence....

(Okay, what I’m about to tell you may not be true. So don’t hold me to it. And anyway, the point of its telling isn’t veracity, but rather the very real fact that it was [justly or un] canonized by bar employees, show goers, and the rest of the whiskey-breath'd throngs of Sixth Street and Red River, circa three or four years ago.)...

But what if attitudes and religious memeplexes aren’t changing because adapting to social pressure is necessary? What if the new millenarianism, instead of crashing computers, will be a fight to the death with a Frankenstein version of Mother Nature? What if environmentalism is becoming the new faith? What if responsible consumerism is the new moral ethic? What if recycling, dear Green God, is the new ritual of absolution?...

I thought I might give you a little taste of the strange and peculiar experience of moving to a new place. Not just moving to a foreign land, but also enjoying its idiosyncrasies while also attempting to replicate some of your favorite experiences in the place you loved but fatuously left....

The notion that ‘It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true,’ is about as spot-on and useful as ‘Golly, she ain’t a witch if she done drown.’...

Even the airplanes on approach to Bergstrom looked fake, forced by the low ceiling to approach at a tight angle, like models from a Japanese monster movie, their blinking forms visible in great detail as they fell inches above wet rooftops, the heavy air muffling all but the lowest drone of the engines....

In terms of the new businesses in the wake of a Navy base closure, ‘revitalization’ is a hard nut to sell. More like 'damage control'. In Alameda, the closure meant the exodus of literally tens of thousands of civilian jobs, not to mention the millions of dollars enlisted Navy personnel poured into the city's economy trying to impress local high school girls....

...each East Austin Gentrifist is, in his or her own way, a kind of Columbus: Making assumptions passed on projections of the real estate market, alternately worshiping or shaking their fist at the spate of new condominiums, depending on their particular deities—‘discovering’ new parks and stores, trying to understand the strange speech and habits of the natives, semi-aware that their very presence contains a pathogen of tax hikes that threaten to exterminate the indigenous population....

“No,” he said, laughing. “I’m a pilot.”...

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” ...(but) F. Scott never met our president....

The word ‘naïve’, stripped of its pejorative connotation, is a good description of Snakepit for other reasons. While the comic has gotten a smidge flashier over the past few years, it’s hasn’t developed in any manner that would suggest Ben is trying to improve. On the contrary, the sheer discipline of his daily drawing is only excelled by his ethic to not let his art evolve—to keep it crude/shitty/primitive, whatever....

...there’s some kind of breakdown in logic going on here. As in, I made an effort to move here, whereas the people who claim to be native—well, they just fell out of their moms’ vaginas....

ACL Previews Interview: Patterson Hood Del McCoury Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band Jon Dee Graham, Kevin Devine, and Ike Reilly Assassination Beau Soleil & Will Hoges Rail Road Earth It's Official: Bob Dylan & His Band Set to Play Stubb's Aftershow So You Wanna See An ACL Taping Trent Summar, Steve Earle, & DeVotchKa Interview: Crowded House It's Official: Bob Dylan & His Band Set to Play Stubb's Aftershow Weekly Features The Accidental Gentrifist:......

We always bitch about the small things. Probably because real and heavy oppression either leaves you dead or makes you flee, or imprisons you, or makes you reach for the martini shaker right after breakfast as you shrug and sheepishly tell your children, “Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”...

Let’s ignore, for a moment, the disconcerting image of middle-income men armed with quasi-lethal antipersonnel devices, sleeplessly cruising urban desert wastelands in over-powered and under-braked Japanese SUVs. Let us consider, for a moment, the intent....