It's almost – but not quite – too late to herald the fourth anniversary of Gothtober.com, an online Halloween advent calendar with an animated treat behind each day's "door." Here's what someone (okay, I) said about it in 2003:

"Commandeered by one Juliana (JP) Parr and co-animated by a tag team of cheeky CalArts grads and other talented assemblage, the site isn't Goth in any black-lipstick sense, but it is full of irreverent grotesquerie in the spirit of the season."

It's still true. This year's theme is nautical, so do find time to sail away on a sea of monsters, mysteries, and messing with your head.

CEOs will tell you that when your corporation is running roughshod over a city’s delicate ecosystem, the best way to endear it to skeptical residents is to attach its name to as many local charities and cultural events as possible. Win their hearts and minds (the theory goes) and you can pretty much have your way with their drinking water and native-animal population.

After all, money is money, and most groups don’t care where money comes from so long as it comes. Take Advanced Micro Devices, the microprocessor-manufacturing giant that’s currently building a controversial 870,000-square-foot office park over Austin’s environmentally sensitive Barton Creek Watershed. To ensure their good name during the building process, AMD years ago enacted a clever policy of underwriting everything in Austin: concerts, environmental charities, libraries, hospitals, pie-eating contests, lemonade stands, junior-high-school debate teams, even the occasional newborn baby. This past month alone they sponsored two of Austin’s most beloved arts & entertainment events: Fantastic Fest, a film festival that tortures audiences with a week of ghoulish violence, gore, and emotional sadism; and the Austin City Limits festival, which tortures them with three days of live rock music.

I was fascinated by this whole corporate-art-sponsorship scheme, so last week I went and took in a few Fantastic Fest screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse South.