Travis County Clerk Dana DeBeauvoir and Tax Assessor-Collector (and Voter Registrar) Nelda Wells Spears issued a plea today for Hurricane Ike evacuees to make sure they are registered to vote by the Oct. 6 deadline, if they want to vote in the Nov. 4 election. The duo emphasized three things:
• Anyone who thinks they are registered should double-check
• Anyone who is not registered should do so by Oct. 6
• Displaced Texans can register for their permanent address regardless of where they are at the moment, or they can register as a Travis County resident and vote here. They also emphasized that it's best to check on this now, rather than frantically dealing with it on Oct. 6 or on Election Day. Press release from Travis County follows:

"In 2008, get a new president is like, 'Here's the new manager of a bowling alley.' It's still a bowling alley." I stood and listened as Erykah Badu spoke truth to power Saturday afternoon, sun burning my back, and watched the resulting mass exodus away from the AT&T stage as she talked about changing the whole game, the election, reclaiming our voice, Obama. Yeah, I know it's a festival and I shouldn't be so surprised at that reaction, but this being one of the most important election years in my lifetime, I'm glad Badu seized the moment and said something real. She wasn't preaching. She wasn't pointing fingers. Still, so many people just immediately closed off their minds. "She's not playing music anymore ... uh ... uh ... let's get a beer." If, say, John Fogerty had said the same thing onstage, no doubt there would have been a different reaction. Also: Props to Bavu Blakes jumping onstage in an Obama mask, Manu Chao's big middle finger to Dubya, and the voter registration tables set up by the entrances. Register to vote if you haven't already, the deadline is Oct. 6.

A is for Antibalas: The political season has the Afrobeat ensemble super-charged. B is for bandannas: The "in" fashion for the weekend. C is for Chali 2na: Galactic was forgettable but the J5 MC always delivers. D is for Dap-Kings: With Sharon Jones out front they earned thousands of new fans this weekend thanks to an always-solid soul revue. E is for Erykah: Visibly pregnant and quirky as ever. This writer is under the spell of the Badu voodoo. F is for funk: There was plenty of it with the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, David Byrne, and Erykah Badu leading the charge. G is for Gogol Bordello: I could see the crazy in their eyes from a quarter mile away and there’s no band I’d rather party with. H is for hip-hop: The final frontier, beats and rhymes are still terribly underrepresented.

As you no doubt have heard by now, the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan went down in flames in the House Monday morning. Here’s how Austin representatives voted, with statements from some:

Tonight the men (and women) of Little Britain invade America! David Williams and Matt Lucas have been leaving the brits in stitches for years now with their sketch and live shows Little Britain.

Play time is almost over for the Longhorns, and they just maybe are ready. That's a big maybe. Make no mistake, the real season always begins with Bob Stoops swaggering on the Cotton Bowl sidelines, spitting in the turf and grinning. He's had Mack Brown's number, and he knows it. So here we are. Texas stomps former arch-rival Arkansas 52-10 and in the process discovers a potent defense and a world-class QB. On the sidelines Darrel Royal and Frank Broyles remember when this game counted. Texas played better against Arkansas than it did against Arkansas State in 2007 (the same Arkansas State that beat Texas A&M this year). Let that sink in. But OU is No. 1. Let that sink in. The fakers keep falling. USC? Beach bums and yesterday's heroes. Georgia Bulldogs? A bunch of pampered puppies. Florida? Drunk on Gatorade and its own hype. (Thanks, former Longhorn Jevan Snead and crazy, crazy ex-Razorback coach Houston Nutt!) OU is No. 1 and Texas is No. 5 with two weeks to go until the showdown. Tick tick.

A request by several citizen groups to extend the voter registration deadline in counties hit by Hurricane Ike appears to be going nowhere. Last week, Houston Votes, the League of Women Voters of Texas, and other groups asked Gov. Rick Perry to use his emergency powers to extend the Oct. 6 deadline (to register for the Nov. 4 election) by another week in the 29 counties declared disaster areas in the wake of Ike.

The grass was still standing at Zilker Park Friday morning at 11am. Snaking lines already formed about the entry points, waiting to be the first to the stages. On the AT&T Blue Room stage, the p.a. blared the Beatles’ opening line, “It’s been a hard day’s night,” and from across the field a voice sang in response, “and I’ve been working like a dog!” I haven’t been to an Austin City Limits Music Fest since the second year. Media privileges were mysteriously spare that year, and spending two hours waiting on a shuttle bus at the end of the night after spending a day on the job being rained on soured me. I confess I’m a festival weenie. I hate outdoor concerts because I hate to be hot and sweaty and tromp across fields just to be squeezed behind a hygienically challenged fellow member of the human race. And that’s who I’ll end up next to, guaranteed. After 32 years of writing about music, I’ve earned the right to pass. Most of the time I do. This year the lure of music was too good and I didn’t.

Dan Savage does! And you can, too! Read Dan's blog and contribute your own generous offer to the up-'do'd guv.