Sure, I heard reports that a photographer was camped outside of Tom Craddick's soirée last night, documenting everyone that showed up. But did I know it was on YouTube? Oh hell no! Check out this video of the "Democrats for Craddick."



No word on who filmed the video, its stars sure to reappear in a Democratic primary attack ad near you soon. A second video of everyone arriving, available here.

Just getting off the phone with a council member, I'm contemplative of long term planning for North Austin. With JC Penney gone, surrounding buildings boarded and disused, but commuter rail rounding the corner, how long can it be before Wal-Mart makes an offer on its next underutilized shopping center – in this case, Highland Mall?

"It's surrounded by Texas." At least that's the word from Wired magazine's 10 Top Tech Towns roundup. We're also, let it be known, the "inspiration for Slacker, epicenter of the first EFF [Electronic Freedom Foundation] battle, home to Dell, Whole Foods, and South by Southwest." All right, nerdbots, now many nanoseconds until the mayor starts prattling off about our latest accolade? (Via)

News 8 Austin is reporting that Congress Avenue is closed from Cesar Chavez to 11th street, due to finding several dead birds -- several dozen -- by the Capitol building. It's expected that the street will be closed until noon while authorities look for the cause, including a possible gas leak. Watch for more details as they're available.

UPDATE: Adolfo Valadez from the Health & Human Services Department is addressing the press downtown; according to preliminary results they do not feel there is a threat to the public's threat. In examining the birds' death they are "maybe suspecting a poisoning."

APD says one block one both sides immediately east and west of Congress are also closed.

UPDATE 2: Our story hits the big time.

UPDATE 3: Final count of 63 grackles, sparrows and pigeons identified and collected, scattered along Congress. Valadez says "no threat to public health at this time." Congress to reopen "very shortly," as soon as authorities remove all their gear, says APD.

On a lighter note, one reporter asked if the Lege's return was reason for shutting the street down. Bodes well for the 80th, doesn't it? No word if Tom Craddick's ghoulish bash at the Austin Club last night inspired the group suicide.

Looks like Stephen Colbert will be toking on drug policy reform tonight (Monday, Jan. 8) on his Colbert Report with guest Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Check it: 10:30 p.m. (CST) on Comedy Central (cable channel 59).

From the Chronicle newshovel to you, a look at what's up this week…

Re: City Council Agenda, Thursday, January 11, 2007

9:55 Invocation from the Church of Scientology. Xenu applauds.

4. $30,000,000 in grants for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport from the FAA and others. (*Cues Chris Tucker voice* "Daaammmn!")

13. $67,680 in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Justice's Bulletproof Vest Program. Timed with the Future Weapons premiere on Discovery Channel?

22. Letting TxDOT construct part of the Lance Armstrong Bikeway; city chips in $70,300.

29. Establishes a maximum speed limit of 25 mph on residential streets in Hyde Park. Also known as the "Tandem Recumbent Bicyclists" ordinance.

53. Approve an ordinance creating a homestead preservation district in east Austin, largely parallel to the central business district, and bound by I-35, Airport, Town Lake and 38th Street. Working in tandem with legislation from Eddie Rodriguez.

55. Directing the City Manager to provide that the City may buy down the cost of owner-occupied units in vertical mixed use buildings that meet affordability requirements. Brewster's Yin to Mike Martinez's aforementioned Yang. Eewww, that sounds wrong.

56. Directing Futrell to gear up the Congress Avenue Retail Retention and Enhancement Fund, known around city hall as the "Migas to Go" item.

Taken from Burleson Co. to Galveston Dec. 5, where he was freed on a federal court-set $50K bond, former death row inmate Anthony Graves was then immediately re-arrested and transported back to Burleson Co. because he didn’t have the $100K necessary for freedom on a $1 million state bond, set late last month by state District Judge Reva Towslee Corbett.

It was another stunning twist to the ongoing legal drama as the state tries to keep Graves behind bars pending a promised retrial for the 1992 multiple murder of six people – four of them children – inside a home that officials say was set ablaze in order to cover the grisly deaths. Graves has maintained his innocence and in March the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, ruling that prosecutors had withheld crucial evidence from Graves’ defense that could’ve changed the outcome of the trial.

Here's some reading on a subject closed to our clogged hearts: chicken fried steak. We were initially drawn to DallasFood.org via author Scott's obsessively detailed 10-part takedown of obscenely overpriced Texas confectioners Noka Chocolates. ("Who would guess that the world's most expensive chocolates, several times over, are made in a tiny kitchen shoehorned between a pair of hair salons in a half-abandoned strip mall in Plano, Texas?") But poking further around the site, we discovered his 50-meal, five-month odyssey in search of the best chicken fried steak in Dallas. If, like me, you've spent some time in the Metroplex, it's a mouth-watering trip down memory lane. (Just why repeated trips to Bubba's didn't give me juvenile diabetes is a mystery for the ages.) But luckily for us, Scott recalibrates his sensors in Austin, visiting Freddie's Place, Threadgill's, Hoover's, Tony's Southern Comfort, Hill's Café, and, uhh, Vespaio. Don't ask.

But the most interesting segment deals only tangentially with the gravy bathed staple. It's an interview with rapper Tow Down, member of the Screwed Up Click, that cadre of MCs assembled by DJ Screw. Now deceased, Screw crafted the codeine-drenched sound of Houston hip hop by slowing (or "screwing") the records he mixed. After enjoying some success with his first album, Tow Down titles his second platter (you guessed it) Chicken Fried Steak. "Tow Down chose and embraced the dish as a symbol of the South (particularly Texas)," Scott writes. "There's defiance in that decision. After all, he deemed it necessary to include a recipe for chicken-fried steak in the liner notes." All in all, an excellent and surprisingly bittersweet primer for those uninitiated in the ways of Houston rap (or real chicken fried steak, for that matter).

Look who's giving the Trans-Texas Corrdor a five star review: Gene Shalit's mustache-fluffer turned third-tier Republican apologist Michael Medved. While rightfully calling out his talk radio colleagues over their Ruby Ridge fever dreams that the Texas "monster highway" will usher in some Illuminati-approved marriage of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada into a "North American Union," he strictly reaches for the low hanging fruit. Instead of a reasonable look at all the things wrong with the TTC, including that Republican cause célèbre, overzealous use of eminent domain, Medved spends all his meager load creaming the jackbooted Y2K crowd – shooting survivalist straw-men in a barrel.

He does dispense with this chestnut: "Actually, I am afraid of wasting government money on useless mass transit or light rail projects, but I’m hardly terrified by road-building. Any time they want to build super-highways and lay down old-fashioned asphalt to facilitate cars and reduce traffic, every red-blooded American ought to stand up and cheer." Looking at that face however, I don't think Medved could be roused to cheer a John Stossel presidency. With that perpetually hangdog puss, it's like his home's being foreclosed on every minute of his life. (Via)