It's about half-past 4, which means you should probably start lining up right now if you want to get in the door for lit superstar Michael Chabon's reading and booksigning at BookPeople tonight at 7pm. Fresh off his Nebula Award win (hosted right here in the ATX), Chabon will be reading from The Yiddish Policmen's Union, new in paperback – and an absolutely gorgeous paperback design at that. Our own Jay Trachtenberg named the book one of his favorites of 2007. Here's what he said: "At times brilliantly insightful but also painfully frustrating. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union vividly creates the frozen enclave of Sitka, Alaska, where post-Holocaust Jews have settled since Israel lost its War of Independence in 1948. Part hard-boiled detective mystery, meditation on living in exile, love story, and chess puzzle, Chabon's noirish narrative and memorable characters make this a real delight." Chabon goes on at 7pm. For more info, check out what BookPeople has to say here.

So, as it turns out, our own Austin Public Library not only has a book cart drill team, but it officially has the “best book cart drill team in the state of Texas.” And what the hell is a book cart drill team, you ask? Well, it’s only the best vehicle discovered so far for dancing in formation with book carts, those rolling bookshelves you always see sitting around at the library. APL’s team, the Bibliofiles – made up of a handful of ladies with an apparent affinity for neon ties and hats shaped like books – won first place last month at the state championship book cart drill team competition, and they’ll now go on to represent Texas in the third annual Library Book Cart Drill Team World Championship. It bears repeating: world championship! But never mind all that. The point here is that video exists of the four minutes of glory that sent the Bibliofiles to the heights of book cart drill team achievement. I can’t decide what I admire more – that they thought to devise their hats-shaped-like-books so that they additionally have the capability to spin around, or that they so brazenly risk life and limb to dance on mobile carts in the name of literacy.

Texas baseball has come back to life as they won this past weekend’s series over Baylor, making it two series wins in a row. There were several key pitching performances that propelled the Horns into the win column. Chance Ruffin pitched a complete game in game one, giving up one run on seven hits to lead the Horns to a 12-1 win at Baylor. Texas had 16 hits, playing small ball all game to manufacture runs with ease. The Longhorns had 14 singles and two doubles to go along with Ruffin’s masterful performance. Jordan Danks, David Hernandez, Preston Clark, and Brandon Belt each had three hits on the evening as the Bears were no match for Texas’ big bats. In game two, the Horns left a dozen runners on base in losing 6-1. They had several scoring opportunities, but couldn’t capitalize with the timely hit. Another good pitching performance, this time by Austin Wood, wasn’t enough as he got no help from the Longhorn hitters.

Democrat? In high school or college? Think Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, is kinda dreamy? Then why not join his Campaign Academy! It's like summer camp, but with more phone banking. Strama calls it "a unique summer opportunity […] to work inside a high-profile campaign." Apart from helping him fight off Republican challenger Jerry Mikus, there'll be a bunch of guest speakers. In previous years, Strama has wrangled in several local state reps and council members, some former heavy hitters like Ben Barnes, and some serious policy wonks. The camp runs June 23 to July 25, 10am to 6pm at wherever they finally site the Travis County Democratic Coordinated Campaign HQ. This being a campaign, lunch will be provided, and there will be the fun and games of the launch party: Stramarama. For more details, visit the Campaign Academy website at www.markstrama.com/campaignacademy.

AGLCC's Mr. & Ms. Austin Pride 2008 Pageant, a fundraiser this Sat., May 10 for the upcoming Austin Pride Parade, threatens to be a sea of heels and falsies if some local drag kings don't step up to compete. One king and one queen will be chosen (if there are king competitors) to represent A-town and ride in the parade as the titled monarchs. Last week's deadline has been extended to any interested kings wishing to pack it and smack it. I just know there are some mustachioed cads out there willing to whip out the spirit gum for a good cause. Click here for a link to the PDF application.

1982: I'm driving back home from Omaha, Nebraska, after a day of hanging out with friends at the mall and going to the record store. You still called it that back then. We're listening to the new Judas Priest cassette, Screaming For Vengeance. Two of us chipped in and split the cost as neither had the money to buy it solo. Of the five of us in the car, I alone had seen the Mighty Priest in concert: once at the Austin Opry House in ’77 or so, and once in San Antonio at the Hemisfair Arena. Then I moved to the musical wasteland that was Nebraska. In two years, I went to maybe eight total concerts, and these were 160 mile round trips to Omaha or Lincoln. Months later, Priest toured and I had tickets go unused due to a blinding snowstorm that closed the roads for several days.

In 1992, Freedy Johnston released one of my all-time favorite albums. Can You Fly (Bar/None) remains a watermark of his career with its blend of guitar jangle, exhilarating melodies, and vivid, if slightly obscure, lyrics. He never quite repeated that brilliance, although his major label debut, 1994’s This Perfect World (Elektra), comes close. Except for a live recording, Johnston’s been absent since 2001. But the Nashville resident's just released My Favorite Waste Of Time (Singing Magnet), a collection of cover songs that allows him to have some fun while displaying admirable interpretive skills and that marvelous, reedy voice. Of the disc's ten tunes, the power pop stances work best, with the Marshall Crenshaw-penned title track and sugary take on Matthew Sweet’s “I’ve Been Waiting." A smoke-filled bossa nova version of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day” shows the other side of Johnston.

Stoke City, Austin's partner team in England, got their biggest result in a quarter-century on Sunday, as a 0-0 home draw against Leicester City guaranteed the Potters a second-place finish in the English League Championship, and their first-ever promotion to the English Premier League next season.

Overall, Stoke have a storied past, dating back to 1863 and the earliest beginnings of association football. And they were in the top division for 20 of 22 years between 1963-1985. But they hadn't been back in the 23 seasons since then, so they've never been in the Premier League, which was formed in 1992.

As it turned out, the draw was a killer for Leicester City, who dropped into the bottom three in the final standings, and are demoted to the third division for the first time in their club's history.

The promotion is a huge and somewhat unexpected boon for the nascent Austin Aztex, who just saw their partnership with Stoke go up in value tenfold. The Aztex, ironically, had played the first game in their history just about 12 hours earlier in El Paso, also a 0-0 draw.

The Los Angeles Film Festival has been awfully good to Austinites in recent years – Steve Collins' Gretchen won Best Dramatic Feature in 2006, Chris Eska's August Evening in 2007 – and now in 2008, we've got two shots at taking home the top prize. The just-released lineup features two homegrown films (happily, not in competition with each other): PJ Raval's Trinidad (codirected with Jay Hodges and exec-produced by Matt Dentler), examines Trinidad, Colorado, "the sex change capital of America," and will premiere in the Documentary Competition, while "fractured romance" I'll Come Running (from Chron contributing writer and friend Spencer Parsons) will premiere in the Narrative Competition.