Wednesday nights at Club de Ville have gotten a lot cooler now that the Psychotropic DJs have taken over from Seattle. Tonight, however, the added treat is a screening of Scott Conn's documentary, A Dirt Road to Psychedelia: Austin, Texas During the 1960s, featuring interviews and archival footage with folks who were there, man. 9pm, followed by the DJs.

It has begun.

Next spring's City Council elections may be months away, but seemingly in lockstep, candidates are declaring, divulging, announcing, initiating, kicking-off, trumpeting and otherwise pimping/whoring their campaigns in advance of the forthcoming football-and-tryptophan-fueled short Thanksgiving week. Turkey table talk and all that, we suppose.

Randi Shade had her kickoff yesterday, at, imaginatively enough, Nuevo Leon. The Place 3 contender gunning for Jennifer Kim has come out blazing, already dogging the incumbent over her airport fracas from earlier this year. Yes, it's going to be an indeterminably long campaign season, isn't it? Kim issued a press release announcing her re-election intentions, with former Council Member Brigid Shea singing her praises.

With Betty Dunkerley retiring, the field for her Place 4 seat is growing crowded. Barton Springs roustabout Robin Cravey is hosting a petition-drive kickoff at Threadgill's World HQ, 5:30pm tonight. We'll say Cravey's winning for most Web 2.0 campaign site so far (i.e., big block Helvetica letters. Modern!). Not to be outdone, former African National Congress President Laura Morrison is hosting her own Place 4 campaign kickoff … at Threadgill's World HQ, 5:30pm tomorrow. (We know the "one-of-us … one-of-us" Freaks chant of bourgeoisie Austin liberalism is an alluring song, but seriously: What is with these people? You'd think there are only two restaurants in all of Austin.)

While one Halloween-masked local has been taking goodies (see this morning's post about the Prosperity Bank robbery), others have been using their scary aspects for more noble purposes.

Charity haunted house attraction Scare for a Cure has raised more than $10,000 for good causes. Organized by Austin Police Department Detective Jarrett Crippen, aka the Defuser from the Sci Fi channel’s hit show Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, the money will go to local and national cancer-related charities.

Testimony in Responsible Growth for Northcross' suit against a proposed Wal-Mart at Northcross Mall (see previous posts below to get up to speed) continued this morning, with a continued focus on flood control, especially in relation to a decades-old plat note on the property. Again, the complexities of flood control are too much to go into in this blog space (and I'd probably explain it incorrectly anyway), but the basic gist of RG4N's argument this morning is that the city's approval of Lincoln Property's site plan violated the note, which mandates that "Rainfall runoff shall be held to the amount existing at undeveloped status by use of ponding or other approved methods." The city – with testimony from city engineers Benny Ho and Jose Guerrero – countered that "undeveloped status" means status at the time the application is filed, not a reversion to the status of when the property was a green pasture. Attorney Casey Dobson, representing the city, said "To use a legal term, that [would be] silly." Guerrero further testified that the law only requires that a project not make flooding worse, and that Lincoln's site plan will actually reduce impervious cover and presumable send less floodwater off-site.

Testimony resumes at 1:30pm.

After-Halloween sales are really the best: cheap candy, costumes for next year, and any manner of ghoulish accessories to woo that goth girl you've been eyeing.

Plus masks. One go-getter donned what the the Austin Police Department describes as a "Halloween mask, green with fangs" and marched in to the Prosperity Bank on Research Boulevard, brandished a gat, and made off with some money – leaving behind these freaky surveillance photos.

The APD's press release below the fold.

Saturday night at Ceremony Hall, the New Music Co-op presents Electrons & Phonons: New Music for Instruments and Electronic Sound, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Eight local musicians, including Kirk Laktas of My Education, Doug Ferguson, and Travis Weller, among others, demo found objects and hand-built contraptions as instruments.

Local experimental vet Rick Reed is "the proud owner of a vintage synthesizer called a Synthi AKS. It was made by an English company called EMS sometime around 1971 or so. They only made about 800 of them. It's such an unusual instrument that I thought I might talk a little about both the instrument and the company that made it."

Reed recommends going here to see why this is remarkable. Grab your turtleneck and blazer and be there. 8pm, $10.

Afternoon action in the Responsible Growth for Northcross trial Tuesday afternoon consisted mostly of testimony on floodwater drainage engineering, which this reporter (and likely anyone in the courtroom who was not a water engineer) admittedly found a bit arcane and difficult to follow, but it could be boiled down (pardon the pun) to this: Dr. Lauren Ross, a drainage engineer for the city of Sunset Valley and frequent player in Barton Springs and other Austin water issues, said that Lincoln Property Co.’s site plan to build a Wal-Mart on the former Northcross Mall property did not meet city floodwater code; Jim Schissler, project manager for the redevelopment, said he had done what city code prescribed; and city of Austin engineer Benny Ho said that different engineers using different data sets can come to different conclusions.

Did the Texas Longhorns play their best, most-complete game against Texas Tech? Without question. It’s been a strange season for the Horns. Lots and lots of close matchups that were expected to be Texas blowouts. A wretched running game that Jamaal Charles has somehow dusted off and made shiny new. A string of season-ending injuries that will have a whole lot of seniors on the sidelines when the regular season ends the day after Thanksgiving in College Station. So the Horns are 9-2 with one contest to go that likely will peg them as a 10-win team for seven years running. The offense is one of the most productive in Horn history. Why do they still trouble me?

First off, I predicted weeks ago that the Red Raiders were Texas’ biggest risk of a loss in the home stretch. Face it: The Horns have not been covering the pass well. Who wouldn’t be itchy as they go against Mike Leach, the coach who does not believe in the run? But for once this season a win can be fully attributed to good coaching. The Texas gameplan was simple. Long drives that eat up the clock and keep Tech QB Graham Harrell off the field. Lots of delayed handoffs to Jamaal Charles — note that Colt McCoy would hold the ball for just a beat before giving it up — to allow time for a hole to develop. And the gamble.

Sheesh.

It's almost not even worth reporting these days. We're all so desensitized to it by now. Another week, another right-winger's winger in the news. Republican Florida Rep. Bob Allen was found guilty by jury of soliciting sex in a public restroom.

Old news.

We blogged about it when the Florida gay for pay scandal first broke. He offered the cop 20 bucks for a bee-j. Not to receive one but to give. Doesn't sound queer at all to me. Naaaaah.

But, we know this drill. In a few days, he'll resign, or they'll make him resign, and he'll be just another name, another Mark Foley, Larry Craig, another Richard Curtis, out of the headlines as quickly as the Repubs can write the check.

But I wonder, will any of this press be enough to reverse some hypocritical Legislature enforced by representatives later found to be self-hating bathroom homos? Just a thought.

Check it. Mens' public restrooms: the new closet.