Maverick preacherman Jay Bakker is the pastor of Revolution Church NYC. He is also Tammy Faye's son. (God Bless her soul.) He's also pretty much a total badass, and he and lesbian mom Kim Beggs are walking right into Joel Osteen's Six Flags Over Jesus (aka Lakewood megachurch in Houston – trailed by a few reporters, perhaps?) in hopes of arranging a peaceful chat and breaking of bread with some real-life Christian queer families, some lesbian mothers on Mother's Day, for example. It's part of Soulforce's American Family Outing, a nationwide effort to put names, and stories, and that mother-child love right in the faces of some of the nation's most influential evangelicals. Local families are looking for sponsors to help with this mission. So, Joel. What's it gonna be?

Jennifer Kim’s campaign consultant, Elliott McFadden, appears to be in deep prevaricator’s doo-doo. According to the Public Utility Commission, he could be liable for fines of up to $1,000 a day – perhaps stretching back for years. According to Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission, Ignite Consulting (owned by McFadden) filed only this Monday for a required permit to operated its automated calling (ADAD) service. Yet the campaign consulting firm, founded in 2003, has long provided robocalls for candidates and other clients and lists “automated calling services” as one of its primary services. McFadden directly told this reporter, and represented to media at a press conference at city hall Wednesday, that the PUC had assured Ignite there was “no problem” with the controversial “Hi, this is your neighbor, Lisa” robo call that Ignite sent out last weekend on Kim’s behalf, attacking Kim’s opponent Randi Shade. But in fact, said Hadley, Ignite Consulting had come into the PUC on Monday to apply – extremely belatedly – for a basic permit, not to get its script approved. “The PUC does not approve scripts,” said Hadley. “We never saw any kind of script, or knew what might have been said on the message,” he clarified. “The permit should have been obtained in advance, and that was not done.” The application Monday was for a new permit, not a renewal.

Loretta Fischer is totally famous. Her landscaping and her garden "shed" – really a fine mod bauble of a greenhouse/entertainment pagoda – have been featured on HGTV, Central Texas Gardener, in a certain Austin daily newspaper, and all over magazines and websites too numerous to mention (though who can resist mentioning the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times?). But no amount of media exposure can blunt the feeling of walking into the oasis Fischer and her brother, Harrison Bates, have created around the (relatively) modest Tarrytown home Loretta shares with husband/real estate broker/comedian Terrill Fischer. (Click on the photo gallery (right) to see what I'm talking about.) Another excuse to navigate the McMansion debris and bewildering streets of West Austin (the better to appreciate the Fischers' classic gem) came last weekend in the form of a book release party for Debra Prinzing's Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideways, an addictive tome that features William Wright's pretty much perfect photographs of fetching outbuildings, including Fischer's greenhouse and two other sheds from Central Texas (though hailing from Cali, the nutty Norwegian-wood pavilion with grass roof might be my second favorite).

From the opening whistle, the Wranglers took the game to the South Georgia Wildcats in every aspect. The Wranglers scored touchdowns with ease, only allowing the Wildcats to score once, as they took a 21-7 lead. Then, as the second quarter got under way, the Wildcats took the momentum and powered back to tie the game at 35, scoring four successive touchdowns before the break. It was an offensive first half, as receivers from both teams found the end zone. Andy Hall threw seven touchdown passes, to three different receivers, on the night as he continues to hit his stride in three games as the Wranglers starting quarterback. Hall threw four scores to Mel Long and another two to John Roberson. Roberson now has an impressive 15 receiving touchdowns this year as he is on pace for an All-Star season. Roberson also made a highlight-reel catch that could be considered the catch of the year. As he started his route, he cut outside the defensive back toward the wall. Hall threw the ball in Roberson's direction, and with the defensive back all over him, he dove before slamming into the wall. The ball hit his fingertips, bounced off of the wall, and headed for the ground. That’s when Roberson, from his knees, dove again to catch the ball as the defensive back could do nothing. Roberson popped up and ran into the end zone for a score, leaving the defender in his wake. Impressive, to say the least.

I've been chiding myself for not writing anything up on the Jennifer Kim campaign's public safety conference/Randi Shade robocall counter-conference yesterday, despite my attendance. But it's the least I can do to muster any enthusiasm to riff on an increasingly ugly, petty race, characterized by ugly, petty issues. The escalation of tension in Place 3 has been a thing to behold. I suppose it began with the dubious "Your Neighbor Lisa" robocall not exactly copped to, then admitted to, by the Kim campaign, accompanied by the mailer claiming Shade made promises to police and fire on executive pay and staffing increases, promising to "break the bank" or whatever. This in turn prompted a Monday press conference from the endorsing public safety unions, where Austin Police Association head George Vanederhule called the accusation "nothing short of an outright lie" – despite the APA's issuing a press release earlier citing Shade's support for "expanding the number of Austin patrol officers and EMS personnel" – which engendered yesterday's press conference by Kim campaign manager Elliott McFadden , who worked up the outrage, calling the remarks "intemperate, unprecedented, and uncalled for" – followed by another press conference, at which Shade campaign manager Mark Nathan trotted out the union heads to take umbrage with this yet again, and announce their own counter-complaint regarding the robocalls. Personally, I've had enough of the outrage-o-rama for now, thank you very much.

Local sound artist/pianist Tom Grzinich plans on taking out some aggression tomorrow night at Ballet Austin. Oko Jumu, the name of the night's event, features performances from guitar/drum duo Bulbs and video from experimental film artist Scott Stark, and comes from the 1949 Joseph Campbell work The Hero With a Thousand Faces. As if that weren't amorphous enough, the night's closer Grzinich explains: "I plan to to split my set into three intervals without a space in between. I am going to start with some minimal sound processed through a mixer and effects pedal." Then, there's some vague business of smashing a car. "I will come back inside to turn off the remaining sound and play the piano for about 12-15 minutes in a style that works to sustain angelic overtones," he concludes. Truly an only-in-Austin event. J.G. Ballard fans take note. Starts at 9pm.

We recently ran a book review of political blogger and Austinite Amanda Marcotte's new book, It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments, but what we neglected to do was mention that you have two opportunities next week to meet the woman behind the blog. Marcotte will be at BookWoman (5501 N. Lamar Blvd. #A-105) on Wednesday, May 14, at 7pm for a reading and booksigning. The next day, she'll turn around and do it all over again, appearing at MonkeyWrench Books (110 E. North Loop) at 7pm. (And by the way, a happy belated birthday to Austin's favorite anarchist bookstore, which celebrated its sixth anniversary on April 27.) Here's some of what the Chron's Wells Dunbar had to say about Marcotte's book: "Ribald, bullshit-free, and empowering, it's perfect for feminists in training – and a great example of transitioning a blog's discrete observations, irritants, and outbursts into a satisfying whole." Read the whole review here.

Hot off the wires: city manager Marc Ott today named Anthony Snipes to fill the chief of staff recently vacated by Kristen Vassallo. Ott worked with Snipes back in Cow Town; he says "His experience in the city government will be a vital asset for the departments he will oversee.” A write-up on the National Forum for Black Public Administrators website says "Mr. Snipes was an Assistant to the City Manager for the City of Fort Worth for five years and is now the Assistant Director for the Fort Worth Water Department." The city's full press release is below the fold. Also, Ott's named Sue Edwards, director of economic growth and redevelopment services, as acting assistant city manager to fill Laura Huffman's seat until a national search is completed – or Fort Worth's suitably rummaged.

When the Retribution Gospel Choir set up before the altar of the Central Presbyterian Church at this year’s South by Southwest, the Duluth, MN., trio unleashed a surge of melodic distortion that rattled the sacred rafters. It was a sound far more cohesive and powerful than their first tour through Austin in the summer of 2005, which essentially featured slow-core pioneers Alan Sparhawk of Low and Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters trading amped-up versions of their familiarly mellow tunes. “It was pretty ramshackle,” laughs Sparhawk of the 2005 tour. “In hindsight, now that the band’s grown a little bit and we’ve done a record, I wish we would have buckled down and made that tour even better. But it was fun.” Though Kozelek’s tenure in the band was brief, he produced their eponymous debut and released it through his own Caldo Verde label. Sparhawk, meanwhile, has transformed the Choir from a re-imagined side project to a legitimately bruising force, embracing an explosive sound that lay dormant beneath the sublime subtleties of Low.