Cray-cray lay-day and "first supermodel" Janice Dickinson will be co-hosting the Gay VN Awards (gay porn's Oscars) along with GP perennial crush Margaret Cho and comedian Alec Mapa. In past years the awards have been hosted by Lady Bunny and Chi Chi LaRue, but this year the boys decided to ditch the drag for some real queens. Find out who will win in such categories as "Best Bottom," "Best Threesome," and "Best Sex-Comedy" (my picks: Blu Kennedy, Return to Fire Island, and the Twink Whisperer, respectively. I mean, I don't watch gay porn, so how would I know… ?) The awards will be held tonight, Saturday, 8:30pm, and you can watch a livestream of the proceedings here. (WARNING: This will be soooo NSFW and NSFChilluns.)

When you see your state legislator perusing the laptop on their desk during a Senate or House floor session, do you wonder what important documents they're perusing, perhaps arming themselves with crucial information before they take to the microphone? Well, now you know. Sorry, I never got a chance to figure out whose desk that is.

I was out chasing an unrelated story all day, and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?) had to miss the inanity of the State Board of Education's final vote on science curriculum standards for Texas' public schoolchildren. However, the anti-religious-right and pro-science group Texas Freedom Network was there liveblogging it. They report that: • The attempt to re-insert a requirement that instructors teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution failed. A panel of scientists and educators had recommended removing that language, in part because fundamentalist religious groups have seized on it in recent years to push creationism into classrooms.
• A compromise amendment would require examination of "all sides" of scientific explanations.
• Board Chair Don McLeroy's previously approved amendment to analyze the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of the fossil record to prove common descent was deleted in the final reading, which TFN called a "very important victory" for science.
• Fundamentalist Cynthia Dunbar offered an amendment to "analyze and evaluate the sufficiency of scientific explanations concerning any data on sudden appearance and stasis and the sequential groups in the fossil record." After "the sufficiency of" was deleted, it passed.

This is the way to publish sketchbooks. More, please. You publish the sketchbooks. Actually reproduce, as closely as possible, the same scale, paper, binding, and well, heft of these precious archives. Many artists carry a sketchbook wherever they go, each page, clean and bright with the promise of a new idea, a chance to capture a unique face, a juvenile cartoon, and, maybe most importantly, private failures of experimentation. With his new sketchbook Be a Nose! (McSweeney's, $29), pioneering comics artist Art Spiegelman utilizes the same ace-in-the-hole design sense that made RAW Magazine the most important comic work of the 1980s.

There has always been something about SXSW for me that has been hard to stomach. I had thought it was the onset of rush hour all day with the influx of yet more people who have places to go but have no idea where they are. I had thought it was the shuffling hordes of drunken and hungover zombies – the wristband is the sign that they’ve turned – moaning for water and a bathroom. I had thought it was we “townies” working our asses off like chain gangs and being priced out and crowded out of the fun. I didn’t quite know what it was until this year. The annual invasion of Austin and the siege of SXSW pushes us to the limits of our friendliness and hospitality. I want to vomit for typing this ham-fisted statement, but Austin is populated by some of the nicest people you could find anywhere. They are genuinely friendly people who genuinely want you to have a good time. And it makes the city easy to enjoy. I’ve never been completely comfortable with telling people I live in “the live music capital of the world.” I involuntarily roll me eyes every time I say it. I think I’d rather tell them, “I’m from Austin, where you always find a friend.” (Even if it is just for an afternoon.) I don’t think I would have stumbled upon this if I hadn’t enjoyed SXSW myself with a little help from my friends in the Alternative Softball League (and PJ Harvey).

The number of people entering drug treatment for marijuana "abuse" is on the rise, reports the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. But, interestingly, of those who entered treatment for pot in 2007, nearly 38% reported that they hadn't even used pot in the past month. This, drug-law reformers say, raises questions about whether this group of people are entering treatment because they really need it, or whether they're entering treatment merely as a way to avoid jail time. Hmmm.... The Drug War Chronicle addresses the issue in a great story, published online today.

Noting, in part, that the number of drug offenders in prisons and jails has increased 1200% since 1980, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., on March 26 introduced legislation that would create a blue ribbon commission to study and make recommendations to improve the U.S. criminal justice system. Gang activity is on the rise, the prison population has skyrocketed, and prisons have become holding tanks for the mentally ill, Webb notes in his new bill, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009. Given the litany of problems with the system, Webb proposes empaneling a commission to review and make recommendations on how to reduce the prison population and improve public safety, cost-effectiveness, overall prison administration, and "fairness in the implementation of the Nation's criminal justice system." Notably, Webb's bill would require the Commission to examine current drug policy and "its impact on incarceration, crime and violence, sentencing, and reentry programs," and would include analysis of drug availability and availability of treatment programs. "America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace," Webb said. "It's irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness."