OK, look, I’m on vacation, and every moment I spend thinking about blog posts is time that could be spent on the beach getting sand in inappropriate places. So I’ll make this quick.

In honor of air travel and the pleasures that come with the inscrutable security checks we have a game called Airport Security. Set the level of security alert from “fickle” to “knee-jerk” and prepare to search, confiscate, intimidate, confuse, and generally violate innocent sky-goers. Security alerts come fast and furious as everything from Preparation-H to pants are said to be a safety hazard and must be removed. The game is impossibly hard and won’t last more than a few minutes but the joke gets old right around that time, so that’s for the best.

Click here to play.

Enjoy.

Disappointed that you were shut out of the lottery for free tix to MJ's funeral? Sad that you don't live in L.A. and have no huddled masses to join with in your outpouring of sorrow? Frustrated that you're deep in the heart of Texas when all the public display of grief is centered in L.A.? Well then, get thee right now to the cinema – specifically the Galaxy Highland or the Alamo Drafthouse South where the memorial service will be simulcast live. Both locations have a limited number of free tickets to the simulcast, which begins at 12 noon (CST). Doors at the Highland open at 11:30am and at 11am at the Alamo. Tickets will be deciminated on a first come, first serve basis, but you may reserve a seat in advance at the Alamo by purchasing a $5 food/beverage voucher online.

Ghostbusters is a delightful little one-off. It's the sort of game that's desperately welcome during the dog-days of gaming summer, particularly if your platform of choice hasn't had copious amounts of Fallout 3 DLC to pass the time. Unfortunately, it's also the sort of game you get about a third of the way through before understanding how it wants to be played.

The Austin Film Festival announced today that the recipient of this year's Outstanding TV Award will be Mitchell Hurwitz. If you're a fan of smart, funny, groundbreaking, dead-before-its-time TV, then you know the name: Hurwitz created Arrested Development. Remember Arrested Development? Here's a refresher course: Doesn't Monday feel not so bad now? Full press release after the jump.

Now that you're thoroughly relaxed from last week's game, it's time to up the ante just slightly. But don't worry, depending on what you do for a living, your boss might not notice that you're slacking.

Why? Because this week's free game starts with an Excel spreadsheet as a launching pad for puzzle-gaming antics. You might be able to get away with this for about 5 minutes before that nosy cubicle mate of yours goes squealing to the higher-ups. Jerk. Not that there aren't bigger wastes of time that are Excel related.

Till then, Excit challenges you to get the cursor from its starting point to the exit using only the arrow keys. Your cursor moves in any given direction until it hits something or is redirected by an obstacle. Things escalate quickly and before you know it one tap of the keyboard has the cursor flying around and transporting in ways you hadn't predicted. You can think you're way through them, but I used the trial and error method and have gotten to the last level (I'm stuck though).

If you think you can do better, click here and prove me wrong.

Is me baiting you making you any more interested in my blog post? (Fingers crossed.)

Enjoy.

Public television viewers have probably noticed some changes at KLRU, including a brand-new channel called KLRU Q that debuted today. You can read all about the switchover in tomorrow’s issue, but for now, here’s a breakdown of where to find the new channel, along with the pre-existing main KLRU and KLRU Create channels. Digital broadcast TV:
KLRU 18-1
KLRU Create 18-2
KLRU Q 18-3 Grande Cable:
KLRU 9/309
KLRU Create 283 (Only available to digital cable subscribers)
KLRU Q 284 (Only available to digital cable subscribers) Time Warner Cable:
KLRU 9/1541
KLRU Create 1542 (Only available to digital cable subscribers)
KLRU Q 20/255 (Only available to digital cable subscribers) Wondering what the Q stands for? KLRU’s blog cites the kind of Q words one has come to expect from PBS – quality, quest, quirk, quintessential – but the Q word that gives away KLRU Q bleeds Austin: queso.

It's desolate, arid country out here. Nothing much to see. Nothing much to do. Scrubby little knots of bone-brown brush and tufts of spiny desert thistle dot the landscape, which rises in slow-building slopes before descending down to flat patches of silty playa. All around are the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and above that, like whitecaps on a dead blue sea, are sprawling puffballs of cumulonimbus clouds, still and magnificent. One of them takes on the form of a rampant Chinese dragon, belching fire from a toothy maw as the scorching, 90-degree sun punches through it like the atom-splitting white flash illuminating Frenchman Flats, circa 1951. According to my GPS, I'm standing dead-bang in the midst of Misfits Flats, Nevada, just outside of Silver Springs, six miles off IH-50 down a haphazard hardpan nightmare of a trail that barely earns the name Break-A-Heart Rd. ('Break-An-Axle Rd." is more apropos.) I'm roughly 30 outside of Reno, Nevada, proper, but it resembles nothing so much as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, minus the dread. In fact, it's almost peaceful. This is where director John Huston, during the summer and fall of 1960, shot several key sequences of his dead-or-dying-in-the-west masterpiece The Misfits. There's nothing whatsoever to mark the historic cinematic event; no plaque, no signs, not even a calcified hoof-print in the dirt thin, shifting sands. But a sudden whip of nowhere wind bears silent testament to the ghosts that haunt this particularly uninviting stretch of Nevada range: Clark, Monty, Marilyn, Thelma Ritter, Kevin McCarthy, and Huston himself.

The World Horror Society sure gets around: This year's convention was held in Winnipeg, next year's will be hosted by Brighton, England, and in 2011, the World Horror Convention touches down in our fair city. ("Does it help that Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the world?" wonders our friends at Slackerwood.) You've got some time to plan – like we said, 2011 – but convention co-chair Nate Southard has already announced Sarah Langan (bestselling author of The Missing and The Keeper) as the guest of honor. Of the selection of Austin as host city, Southard had this to say: “Texas has a long history of strange fiction, serving as home to such luminaries as Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, and Joe R. Lansdale ... Bringing the World Horror Convention to Austin is a natural. It’s a vibrant city with a taste for the eccentric and a love of the arts. Further, its central, southern location makes it convenient for travelers throughout the US, and visitors from abroad will have no trouble reaching us either.” Speaking of Lansdale, he's profiled in this week's Chronicle; Lansdale's new Hap & Leonard novel Vanilla Ride hits shelves this Tuesday.

Fans of Joss Whedon’s feature film Serenity (2008) and Firefly, the 2002 TV series that inspired it, first came together as the Austin Browncoats to share their fanaticism, but decided there was more to give than adoration. They turned themselves into an official non-profit organization, raising funds for good causes.

On June 28, the Austin Browncoats celebrate Joss Whedon’s birthday with a double-feature of Whedon’s Serenity and the web-sensation, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog at the Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek. Proceeds from the one-day-only event will benefit one of Whedon’s favorite charities, Equality Now, an organization which works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world. Kids Need To Read is the second recipient of the fundraiser, a children’s literacy program which supports Austin’s under-funded schools, libraries, and shelters.

Tickets to the event are $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Showtimes are 12pm, 5pm, and 10pm, and event organizers say they are quickly selling out.

For more information and to purchase tickets online, go to www.cantstoptheserenity.com/austin or visit www.alamodrafthouse.com.