Sure, we could tell you to attend tonight's fundraiser for prop-pushers Yes on 2 and 3 for the beer and food, plus the chance to get your elbows greasy with the likes of Perry Lorenz and Bill Bunch. But for us old hands, the real draw is the music. The Bouldin Creek Bobkats feature none other than the Save Our Springs Alliance's own Colin Clark. With the recent Stones sojourn into Zilker Park, it's tempting to ascribe a Jagger/Richards dynamic to Bunch and Clark, but the age differential torpedoes that. No, if any meaningless pop-culture signifier can be draped around the duo, it's probably that new Kevin Costner/Ashton Kutcher vehicle, in all its cross-generational hotness. And the reviews are in!
Seriously, the soirée starts at 5:30, at the Zilker Clubhouse. A $20 donation gets you the rock.

If you're as fascinated by polling and maps as I am, these are my two favorite sites for trying to predict how the battle for Congress is shaping up: For the Senate, I like Electoral-Vote.com, which posts the results of the most recent poll in each race and plugs in the new numbers daily into an easy-to-read U.S. map, and differentiates between states that are "strong," "weak," or "barely" for the leading candidate. On the House side, another great way to waste time at work is to study Majority Watch, a project of the Constituent Dynamics polling firm. They are polling 54 congressional districts that appear to be in play, and like Electoral-Vote.com, they keep a running tally of which party appears to be headed toward that 218-seat majority. Majority Watch has very nice pop-up graphics that give instant info on the seats they are tracking. Have fun surfing; try not to let your boss catch you.

Candidates for Congressional District 21 will answer questions from a panel of news reporters (including yours truly) on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 7-8:30pm, at the LCRA Board Room in the Hancock Building, 3700 Lake Austin Blvd. Because it is a special election open to anyone, necessitated by a Supreme court decision, Dist. 21 is a crowded field of seven candidates, five of whom will be at the forum: independents Tommy Calvert, James Lyle Peterson, and Mark J. Rossano, Democrat John Courage, and Libertarian James Arthur Strom. You'll notice a very important name missing from that list: the Dist. 21 incumbent, Republican Lamar Smith.

Day one of early voting in Travis County was quite impressive. A total of 5,009 people went to the polls Monday, a very solid turnout. Combined with the 2,471 mail-in ballots received, that makes 7,480 total, or 1.37% of Travis' registered voters. Multiply that number over the 12 total days of early voting, and then use the conventional wisdom that Election Day turnout is usually about double that of early voting, and Travis could hit 50% turnout, an excellent showing for a nonpresidential election year. Of course, these first-day totals are probably inflated a bit by those mail-ins, which constituted more than a quarter of the total mail-in ballots sent out by the county. Highest turnout was at the University of Texas (in the lobby of the Undergraduate Library), with 484 voters. Lowest was at the Northeast Health Center, with 56. If you want to cast your ballot now, head to the nearest early voting location.

It’d be so easy to sit here and type angrily about what the Cowboys did wrong Monday in their 36-22 loss to the Giants, but I’ve been doing that all season.

Today, I’d like to talk about a positive aspect of being a Cowboys fan, the underappreciated asset we’ve been staring at on the sidelines all season. I’m talking of course about Bill Parcells' sweet, sweet rack.

If you need a refresher on Tuna’s massive man mammaries click here. For some reason, the Dallas Cowboys won’t let me use one of their photographs.

Since I can’t resist a pair of jiggly jugs, I’ll go easy on the Cowboys this week. There are so many things I could gripe about, but I’ll save them for another time.

In this section of our new Election Blog, we'll be watching to see whether the pundits' and pollsters' predictions of the GOP being swept from congressional power come true.

For important Texas Congressional and statehouse races outside of the Austin area, keep checking here. We'll keep an eye on everything from Tom DeLay's old Congressional District 22 to the four-way (oops, sorry, five-way) mud bath in the goobernatorial race.

Keep hitting your "refresh" button between now and on through November 7. We'll be updating frequently with our latest dispatches from the campaign trail. On Election Night we'll be posting live coverage with the latest returns. Rather than bouncing all over the Net looking for various race results, just stay here and let us do the surfing for you. We'll be your one-stop shop for races that affect Austinites. The blog will be divided into three sections; in this area we'll keep tabs on the city of Austin bonds, county races, and local statehouse and congressional seats.

Pig Skinny knows Pig Skinny hates the Texas Longhorns, but sometimes Pig Skinny forgets for about a half a second, and is reminded of just how much. One such a moo-ment occurred on Saturday afternoon at around 2, when the Nebraska Cornhuskers took a 20-19 lead on a halfback pass and Piggy’s wiggly corkscrew tail went to wagging. Longhorns lose in Lincoln, maybe another in Lubbock, and hopes were rising that the good guys could get back into the race for the Big 12 South. Lo and behold – you know the rest – the Corn blew it, sending my aforementioned corkscrew tail in search of a bottle to open.