Texas has cowboy boots. New Orleans has galoshes. Lots and lots of galoshes. The heavens opened up on Saturday and Sunday at Jazz Fest and out came the galoshes. The New Orleans Times Picayune's website, NOLA.com beat us to our planned galoshes post with their own Galoshes of Jazz Fest link. Their's features pre-deluge overboots. Ours catches the action out in the soggy field. Click the gallery link to see so many more.

Travis County Elections Division has just released unofficial results for the first two days of early voting for the May 10 elections. Here's the edited highlights: Two-day results
Total early voting: 3,451
Percentage of registered voters: 0.6%
Early voting in person votes: 3,287
Mail ballots received: 164 Monday voting: 1,765
Tuesday voting: 1,686 Highest turn-out voting location: Randalls at Research and Braker (315 voters)
Lowest turn-out voting location: Round Rock ISD Performing Arts Center (6 voters)

If it's the first Sunday of the month, it must be time for the Texas Rollergirls. This weekend's league bout of the doubleheader sees the Honky Tonk Heartbreakers take on the Hell Marys. The Heartbreakers are 2-0 this season, while last season's hellacious champs are 1-1 after a close-run season loss to the Hotrod Honeys and an away victory over Houston's Psych Ward Sirens. A victory for either team could be a key momentum changer for this season's championship picture. Talking about momentum, in the week's intraleague bout, the Hustlers play host to the unranked Green Country Rollergirls from Tulsa, Okla. This could be the chance for Austin's silver and purple crew to break this season's 0-2 losing streak. The visiting travel team is running 2-3 this season, with their biggest opponent being the Women's Flat Track Derby Association's No. 33 ranked Arkansas Killbillies, and they're just coming off an 81-139 loss to New Orleans' Big Easy Rollergirls (who will be visiting Austin on June 1). Tickets for the bout on Sunday, May 4 at Playland Skate Center are now available. Doors open at 6.30pm.

"You the man, Joe!" Joe Jackson winced as someone shouted that from the balcony of the Paramount Theatre Monday night. I winced too, wondering how often he gets that. But for 90 minutes, he was the man. As Jackson sat alone at the piano during the first song, dressed in a dapper jacket and slacks, he almost looked like a character from Cabaret, his falsetto high and clear. Latest effort Rain, recorded in his adopted home of Berlin, certainly owes much to the city's historical mood swings, but it's also reflective in its sense of isolation. Longtime bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, who have been playing with Jackson since the late 1970s and appear on Rain, then joined him for a crystalline "Steppin' Out" and proceeded to reel in the years: “On Your Radio” and “Different for Girls” from 1979's I’m the Man; “Cancer” and "Chinatown" from 1982’s Night and Day; "Take It Like a Man" from 2003's Volume 4; “King Pleasure Time,” "Solo," and “Invisible Man” from Rain; and an amazing cover of David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)." Jackson replicated the missing guitar of Gary Sanford with his piano to impressive effect, veering between jazz, pop, and new wave effortlessly. Encore closer "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" riled up the already besotted, mostly khaki KGSR crowd, inciting a singalong chorus. Joe just smiled, like you do when you've hit the mark.

(Before starting this blog entry, we at the Newsdesk would like to say that we understand that the ultra-conservative Houston Area Pastor Council does not speak for everyone in Houston, most Christians, or even all Houston pastors.) In their latest newsletter, the council rankles at the fact that Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has rejected a request from Dallas-based creationists the Institute in Creation Research to be able to offer a master's degree in science education. Well, isn't that just typical, say the Houston Area Pastors. After all, "cross-species micro-evolution is the nerve center of the faith of liberalism." And there was those crazy liberals thinking it was something to do with human rights. And their priority? "It's time to take this issue seriously or admit that we don't care whether our children, our society and our nation are trained and dominated by Baal." Yes, Baal. Presumably they don't mean the Bertolt Brecht play. This is in between some desperate schilling for Ben Stein's Expelled, which they call "an incredible documentary", but the New York Times called "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time", and our own Mark Savlov called "propaganda that'd do Leni Riefenstahl proud." But isn't that what those pesky liberals would say?

Hoo boy! – there's a pair of explosive press releases from the Randi Shade and Lee Leffingwell camps this morning, on the Rick Culleton-financed – and apparently, Jason Stanford-penned – attack ads against Leffingwell and Jennifer Kim. The long and short of it: the releases claim Stanford left as Meeker's campaign director to immediately work for Culleton – Meeker's former treasurer – in preparing the attacks against the incumbents. As the release says,

… The fact that Stanford and Culleton both apparently resigned their positions with Jason Meeker's campaign in late March or early April and almost immediately began orchestrating a well-funded "independent" print and television advertising campaign "doesn't pass the smell test." "The fact that Jason Meeker's former campaign manager has been working with Jason Meeker's former campaign treasurer to run a $20,000 negative campaign benefiting Jason Meeker makes a mockery of Austin's campaign finance laws," said Leffingwell. "I don't think anyone would believe that Jason Stanford and Rick Culleton quit Jason Meeker's campaign on one day only to decide to run an expensive negative campaign benefiting Jason Meeker on the next day."

Additionally, Shade, who is explicitly supported in the Culleton TV ad, says her campaign manager briefly retained Stanford earlier this year; she says

"I am uncomfortable that he has a past association with my campaign while now apparently directing Mr. Culleton's independent effort. As such, while I appreciate Mr. Culleton's support, I am making a public appeal to request that he and Mr. Stanford please discontinue their campaign on my behalf."

She's also returning an unsolicited campaign contribution from Culleton. (It should be noted Leffingwell and Shade both employ Mark Nathan as their campaign director.) Sheesh! Both releases after the jump; for more deconstruction of the Place 1 race, check this Thursday's edition of the Chronicle.

The ballroom at the Omni Downtown is a small room to contain a lot of genre-defining authors, but this weekend the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America held their annual Nebula Awards there. From a cinematic view, the big win was Guillermo del Toro for his script for Pan's Labyrinth. Even though he couldn't be there, he thanked those he called “Not my peers but my mentors (…) from the bottom of my cholesterol-clogged heart." For the geek-out crowd, the big guest was new SFWA grand master Michael Moorcock (even novel of the year winner Michael Chabon seemed pretty overwhelmed when he found himself between Moorcock and SXSW regular Bruce Sterling). Moorcock's speech concentrated on how often science fiction and fantasy novels, even though they are regularly pillaged for the screen, are regarded as second-tier literature by the critical establishment. As if to prove the point Chabon, whose novel Wonderboys has been adapted for the screen and has another (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay) on the way, thanked his editors for not realizing that his last novel was "at its dreaming, counterfactual core a work of science fiction." The absence of del Toro possibly meant that one possible argument was avoided: it would have been interesting to see what the ever-feisty Moorcock, possibly the most vociferous critic of J.R.R. Tolkien, would have had to say to the newly-announced director of The Hobbit. Full 2008 Nebula winners' list below the fold

Never let it be said that Tim League is one to fear signing off on reams of liability insurance forms. He's already overtaken the late, great William Castle in the Ballyhoo Department by orders of magnitude (you'll remember his Amityville Horror stunt, the "House of One Million Flies," or, as we like to recall it, the "Ohmygodgetitoffmegetitoffmegetitoffme Shack"), but for yesterday's sold-out local premiere of Jon Favreau's Iron Man, the Alamo Kingpin topped not only himself but also the roof of his theater, literally, when he hired Eric Scott of Denver-based GoFast! Sports and Jet Pack International to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a) mad genius Robert Downey, Jr. isn't the only (formerly) high guy associated with the newly forged Marvel Studios comic book franchise, and b) Motorhead is relatively quiet when compared to a guy in a jet pack hovering 20 feet over your head.

We'll end with Mr. Statesman endorsement himself, Robin Cravey. This chestnut is already a month old, but we hadn't noticed it until this weekend: If that wasn't enough, here's a trailer for Robin Cravey: The Movie.