Chuck D once called hip-hop the black CNN because the music gave a voice to the voiceless. Now that hip-hop is a global phenomenon, it's the CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera of marginalized people everywhere. The Eastside is the place to be this weekend starting with an early show Thursday at the Scoot Inn. Palestinian trio DAM uses beats and rhymes to protest what they describe as terroristic acts by the Israeli military and government, a massive wall separating the West Bank from Israel, and the repression of a stateless people. The video for “Who’s the Terrorist?” opens with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark calling Palestinians the most terrorized people on Earth before the group raps in Arabic, “Your countless raping of the Arabs’ soul finally impregnated it, gave birth to your child, his name: Suicide Bomber. And then you call him a terrorist?”

It's Milk! It's Van Sant! It's Penn! So hell yes, it gets its own blog post. After all, it's not W, Stone, and Brolin. Sheesh.

The FBI finally put the mad thump on U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch's office today, with a DC grand jury issuing subpoenas for Bloch and a number of OSC employees. His name sound familiar? Well, it should. Since Bloch was appointed by Bush in 2004, the watchdog office charged with protecting federal whistle-blowers has been soaking in controversial allegations of partisan favoritism, homophobic agendas, and political bullying.

So, Villa Muse (which is so busy looking for an alternate site for its development-without-a-home that CEO Jay Podolnick couldn't attend his own press conference yesterday) left a voicemail this morning saying that the Musers would like a clarification about yesterday's blog headline: "Breaking: Villa Muse Officially Kaput. For Reals." They complain the headline implies that the project is completely dead, when in fact (and as we reported), the Austin site is dead, but they may do it somewhere else (as we also reported). So, yes, Villa Muse staggers on, zombie-like, in search of a new home somewhere in Texas. Somewhere that will allow the project, with no land purchased and no site plans, to break ground before year's end (or, more realistically, before the end of the construction season). Oh, and by the way, you can call us, but you can't find Will Wynn's number?

Four solid hours out of Superdome City, doin' it to it and cookin' good down the superslab, dodging alligators and dead pedals, this wooly bear was startin' to nod off and decided to take a 10-100. So I pulled a short for some motion lotion and a mud ball. Well, my goodness gracious, look what I found. It's a matchmaker. For truckers. Now, these aren't your typical quasars. Nor are they concrete blondes or dress for sales. Not even San Quentin jailbait. No sir, these are some darlin' eager beavers and foxes with a hankerin' to get promoted to First Sargent. Even to old hands like yrself. Send away for the book and the tape, sign up with their system, and in a short-short, you'll be eyeball-to-eyeball with your future O.L., fer sure fer sure. Good to know somebody's looking out for the workin' man: Eighty-eights around the house, good buddy. We gone, we down and we like it.

In a move that comes as little surprise to hardcore Austin Ice Bats fans, team owner and president Randy Sanders announced today that the Bats will no longer call the Chaparral Ice Arena their home rink. The venue was too small to be profitable and lacked the atmosphere conducive to draw in and sustain new fans. And with the Dallas Stars moving their American Hockey League franchise, the Texas Stars, to Cedar Park in a brand new $55 million, 6,800-seat multipurpose event center, it was looking even tougher for the Bats to break even locally in the near future. Not to say that the Bats have played their last game in the greater Austin area, but they did say that they “will investigate relocating the team outside of this area if needed.” The Bats have been a part of the Austin sports scene for 12 years and I have personally attended and enjoyed dozens of games, primarily at the Travis County Expo Center. Although this move seemed inevitable, it is still a sad day for Austin hockey fans, however few there may be.

So now it's officially just two contenders trying to be the presidential nominee. No, not Clinton and Obama, or John McCain and Ron Paul. Perennial electoral also ran Alan Keyes has dropped out of the Republican nomination process. Actually, it happened on April 13, but no one noticed at the time. But does that mean the former Reagan man is out of the running for the Oval Office? Oh, not at all. First he flirted with the Constitution Party (losing their nod to talk show conservative Chuck Baldwin. But now he's hitched his wagon to the America's Independent Party of Texas (motto: "Goliath is Going Down!"), which is trying to get him on the November ballot as an independent. Slight problem. They need to get 100,000 signatures by May 10. Eh, never know unless you try. And he's got that all-important Comedy Central endorsement.

Austin-based animator Brad Neely has had Warner Bros. on his back (for screening Harry Potter with his own fast-and-loose-with-the-facts narration) and the viral masses at his feet (for his giddily nonsensical Founding Father rap, "Cox & Combes' Washington": "he had a pocketful of horses/ fucked the shit out of bears"). So what's he gonna do next? Own the entire month of May, that's what. Every Monday in May, Superdeluxe.com will premiere a new installment of Neely's new opus China, IL, and all four episodes put together will premiere TV-side on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block on Sunday, May 25 at 10:45pm. The first episode, titled "Romeo + Romeo," started streaming yesterday. It's three minutes of high-speed, ejaculate-obsessed nutterness that turns weirdly tender when man/child Baby Cakes makes up a song about a dead women he's besotted with: "Boom boom yeah / got so much in common / except that I'm a person still." He says boom boom yeah, I say boom boom yeah.

Austin Community College Board of Trustees candidate Harrison Keller says he's no right-wing ideologue, but looking at his latest campaign finance report, there's no doubt who his friends are: On April 3, he received a whopping $5,000 campaign contribution from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Keller's opponent, Tim Mahoney, faxed us a copy of the report.