Wow, this weekend is only the middle of October, and there are still myriad events left to tell you about! "Food-o-File" and "Event Menu" return this coming week, but for now, I've got more info on things you won't want to miss this weekend… South Austin salsa aficionados are very familiar with the expert salsa artistry of chef/restaurateur Ruben Rodriguez, chef/owner of Evita's Botanitas (6400 S. First., 441-2424), a frequent contestant and winner in our annual Hot Sauce Festival. The bad news is that Ruben is dealing with some serious health issues and medical bills. His family and friends invite you to a benefit to help defray those costs at Evita's on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 11am to 5pm. Tickets are $10, and the menu will include carne guisada or chicken mole with rice, beans, and a drink. A DJ will be spinning Latin tunes outside in the parking lot. This talented man deserves plenty of support… And speaking of benefits and folks who deserve our support, the musicians and longtime friends who loved South Austin restaurateur Danny Roy Young are staging a big benefit show in his honor at the Austin Music Hall this Sunday evening, Oct. 19. Danny's untimely death this summer left his family with some debts associated with the closure of the Texicalli Grille after Danny sold the restaurant and retired. The big party will feature a stellar musical lineup, as well as a silent auction stocked with Texicalli memorabilia, plus the sale of Texicalli T-shirts, bumper stickers, and menu items. The doors will open at 5pm to give guests time to visit with Lu and the family and preview the auction items. The music starts at 6pm. Tickets are only $10 and are available at all local GetTix outlets, at 866/443-8849, online, and at the door. Sponsorship tables for 10 are available for $1,000, and tables for four are $400. To purchase a table, contact Robin Shivers at [email protected] or 472-8463. This party is one you won't want to miss.

Drafted seventh overall in the 2004 draft, Roy Williams has spent most of his career playing for a lousy team that seemed to always be trailing by 20 points. I’m not saying that the Detroit Lions didn’t have their moments, but thanks to a last-minute deal on the day of the NFL trade deadline, Williams will now have the chance to once again hear the screams of the Texas faithful as the Roy Williams era begins in Dallas. By giving up a first-, third-, and sixth-round pick in next year's draft, the Cowboys acquired a 6-foot 3-inch, 210-pound football machine that runs a blistering 4.37 40-yard dash. It’s not a bad deal when you consider the Cowboys probably would have used next year’s first round pick on a wide receiver anyway, and when you factor in that they still have nine draft picks left in that same draft, the deal gets even sweeter. After the trauma that Cowboys fans suffered this week with the loss to Arizona, Pac Man’s suspension, and Tony Romo’s pinky, the signing of Williams comes as a welcome diversion. Visions of Tony Romo lobbing alley-oop touchdown passes to Roy Williams must be dancing in the heads of the Cowboy fans that live in Austin. For several years now, when it's come to NFL players, this town belonged to one man – Vince Young. You could walk down the street and see fans wearing Vince Young’s Titans jerseys without a Roy Williams’ jersey in sight. And why not? After all Vince Young did lead the Horns to the 2005 National Championship, but in Williams’ defense he had Chris Simms throwing to him … and the other team. Now, not only will Williams have an All-Pro quarterback throwing to him, he will once again be surrounded by a talented team with championship aspirations. It’s no given that the Cowboys will win the Super Bowl — far from it — but with Williams on the field it certainly is looking more and more possible. No longer will teams be able to double-team Jason Witten and Terrell Owens without leaving Roy Williams in single coverage. And as the first five years of his career have proven, that’s about as good of an idea as leaving Pac Man unsupervised at a strip club.

Somewhere near 4am, I turned into an awful blowhard, didn't I? Congratulations, Josh:  You bring out the self-righteous, sanctimonious prig in me. (I bet you get that from all the girls.) It has, as ever, been an honor and a pleasure sparring with you. Win or lose – and let's not call this a landslide just yet; I'm about to mobilize the phone banks, maybe buy some airtime...plus there's that whole airport bathroom stall scandal I've been keeping in my back pocket – I look forward to shaking hands with you across the aisle at next week's Happy Hour. And then of course there's next weekend, when I'll be locking you in a room with me to watch 11 Hitchcock films in a row for our upcoming Halloween feature. Just you wait: Hitchcock will heal all our wounds.

Jeff Pearlman wastes no time establishing the tone and situation of the Nineties Dallas Cowboys in his new book Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty (Harper Collins, $25.95). There is no introduction and no preface, because Pearlman has no use for such things. On the first paragraph of the first page, the author paints a picture of star wide receiver Michael Irvin stabbing teammate Everett McIver in the throat with a pair of silver scissors. Irvin had exhibited poor judgment before this, often acts involving cocaine, strippers, as well as attacking a referee during a charity basketball game, but on this occasion Pearlman shows us that McIver was getting a haircut and refused to give up his barber seat to Irvin. Remember, this is only the first page. Boys Will Be Boys is a straightforward, no-nonsense examination of the reclamation and fall of “America’s Team," nor does it need to be anything else. A franchise that was the beacon of the NFL in the Seventies had crumbled, and was being rebuilt with the kind of characters usually sequestered for Oliver Stone films. The antics of Irvin are just the tip of the iceberg. The ‘Boys replaced the only coach they had ever known, the legendary and Bible-fearing Tom Landry, with the egomaniacal Jimmy Johnson, whose interests included listening to Barbra Streisand, violent movies, white shag carpet, and the consumption of cold Heineken. Owner Jerry Jones eventually dumps Johnson for Johnson’s former college teammate and coaching rival Barry Switzer, who famously brought a handgun to the airport. These are just the coaches.

That’s it. I can’t take it anymore. When somebody accuses me of being motivated by middle-class guilt first thing in the morning, that’s when I take my computer and go home. So I’m going to take my computer and go home. Metaphorically. I actually haven’t left my home in days. So, thanks to everyone who’s been reading. For those who've been voting, please continue to do. And for those who haven’t yet, please do. The polls will stay open until next Thursday, Oct. 23, at which time we invite you all to join us at SpiderHouse for the Austin Chronicle Film Fight happy hour, which begins at 7:30. We’ll have cheap drinks and cheaper conversation and the screening of a short film selected by whichever one of us has been declared the victor. And provided no one bothers to look into who exactly all those “voters” are, or why exactly the Austin Chronicle web server has been hacked into no fewer than four times over the past week, it looks like that victor may just be me. If elected, I promise to run a benevolent administration. And now, a little night music to wash away all the rancor:

Daily Kos is reporting a poll they commissioned from Research 2000 showing Democratic Houston state Rep. Rick Noriega inching ever closer in his challenge to incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn: Cornyn 50%
Noriega 44%
Schick (L) 2%
Undecided 4%

If you saw the premiere of W as the Austin Film Festival got under way on Thursday--or even if you've just seen the film's trailer on television--you probably remember Jonna Juul-Hansen, who portrays Jan O'Neil, a real-life friend of Laura Bush who introduced Laura to George W. Bush back in the day. Juul-Hansen is--tell me if I'm wrong on this!--the only Austin actress with a speaking part in the film, which, naturally in this time of filming incentives, shot primarily in Louisiana. Her husband Lars offers the story of how she got the part: "Jonna drove from Austin to Shreveport in April for the audition and drove back two days later for the call back (with Oliver Stone). The casting director later told her that as soon as she had left the audition/interview Oliver Stone turned to the casting director and said 'I don't want to see anyone else for Jan O'Neil.' Of course it took almost 30 days after that call back to find out that she has booked the part. During that time she was on pins and needles. "Jonna started acting 20 years ago in San Francisco and moved to LA later. About 7 years ago we moved to Austin to raise our kids and she just got back into acting 2 years ago in Ben Taylor's Workshop. Her agent is Collier Talent and she's also going to be seen in Geoff Marsden's Mars playing the first lady opposite Kinky Friedman."

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning threw out a decision by a lower court that could have called into question thousands of ballots cast by newly registered voters in Ohio. The Ohio GOP filed suit against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (a Dem), claiming that her office had not done enough to weed out possibly fraudulent voter registrations. At issue are nearly 200,000 new voters who supplied personal information – driver license info or social security numbers – that doesn't match up with information contained in other government databases, Brunner said this morning on XM radio. The GOP argued that under the 2002 Help America Vote Act Brunner had a duty to share the so-called "mismatches" with county election boards so that they could investigate potential fraud before tallying the votes, and asked the court for a temporary restraining order against Brunner.

“Are you ready to rock?” asked Stephin Merritt in a monotone deadpan, opening Tuesday night’s Magnetic Fields show at the Paramount Theatre perched portly atop a stool far stage right. The quintet was, of course, anything other than rocking, despite the fuzzed out barrage that laces their latest album, Distortion. Instead, the night was a mixture of the poignant and frivolous, the group seeming to enjoy themselves immensely in having yet another expectation to overturn and Merritt delighting in derailing the banter of pianist Claudia Gonson, who played primary host. Over an impressively full two-and-a-half hours, Merritt and Co. toured through various touchstones of his catalogue, including healthy turns into the 6ths, the Gothic Archies, and even “What a Fucking Lovely Day!” from his Chinese opera The Orphan of Zhao.