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Joe Montana – Nice Guy, Pretty Good Football Player
Most of my bad decisions have included booze, bottle rockets, the improper use of a Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, or a dirty blonde at the end of a bar offering to buy me a drink or something more exotic. But possibly the greatest mistake I have committed was storming off to my bedroom on Jan. 22, 1989, with a grump and huff. Down 16-13 to the Cincinnati Bengals, the San Francisco 49ers acquired the football on their own 8-yard line with 3:10 on the clock for Super Bowl XXIII. The Bengals were playing fine football, and the distance was far too great for the 49ers to pull a rabbit out of a pigskin hat. The team I had rooted for, the team I had spent all night cheering on, the team that I had boasted to the other dudes in Boy Scout Troop 103 would hammer Cincinnati was about to lose the biggest game of the year. I knew the kids at school would roast me alive on Monday morning. I was the only kid in my class that said Joe Montana (and his 49er gang) couldn’t be beaten. I gave up, walked away from the television and my family, slipped into bed, turned out the lights, and started to cry.

12:46PM Mon. Jul. 2, 2007, Timothy Braun Read More | Comment »

Cleanliness Is Close to Confession
In the trial of Laura Hall for her role in the death of Jennifer Cave, don't look for prosecutors to be holding a smoking gun. They're looking for a squirting fabric freshener instead.

The case is built in part on the theory that Miss "That's just how I roll" Hall gave self-confessed killer Colton Pitonyak a shopping list of what was needed to clean up the grisly crime scene before they fled to Mexico.

Pitonyak's lawyers have always tried to put the blame for the brutal dismemberment on Hall, saying she was responsible for planning the mutilation of Cave's body, while their client did the murder. Part of their argument for putting Hall in the frame depends on the idea that men are just too plain slobby and slothful to really clean up a crime scene. The shopping list included a saw, garbage bags, cleaning agents, and, most damning of all, some Febreze odor eliminator.

Yes, reports the Statesman, Pitonyak's defense thinks they've found an answer: "What guy is going to think of Febreze?" said Pitonyak's lawyer Sam Bassett.

12:08PM Mon. Jul. 2, 2007, Richard Whittaker Read More | Comment »

Backbeat to the Music
“Upload this to YouTube so we can watch it!”

One of Pete Best’s men in black called to the cadre of camcorders in the audience in the Threadgill’s garden on a sticky June night. The greybeards and scraggly ponytailed ones nodded back agreeably at the guitarist as the band slid into “Till There Was You.”

“Why aren’t there more people here? He was a Beatle!” KGSR program director Jody Denberg and I muttered to each other as the band ably shifted into “Rock & Roll Music.” The old hippies in the crowd were game enough and when the Pete Best Band struck up “Twist and Shout,” the audience did just that.

If you’re not a fan of the early Beatles, it helps to know that like most of the early Sixties bands, they were a largely a jukebox band. Then-booking agent Allan Williams hired Pete Best as the Silver Beatles’ first full-time drummer in 1960. The “Silver” part was soon dropped but Best sat in a crucial position for the band as the drummer on the Decca demos and those brutal gigs and live recordings in Hamburg, the period that forever shaped the Beatles’ sound.

Best also played numerous Cavern gigs with the Beatles and was onboard when they backed up Tony Sheridan on “My Bonnie.” Best’s displacement by new manager Brian Epstein in late 1962 has been attributed to personality conflicts, questionable musicianship, and band jealousy. Whether it was any one or a combination of those is lost to history. Best continued to perform and record but with little success and seemed to drop from sight by the Seventies.

11:05AM Mon. Jul. 2, 2007, Margaret Moser Read More | Comment »

Bombings and Business
While the rest of the world tries to work out whether the latest terror attacks in the UK were the work of an organized cell or just some goobers with bad intent and no clue, the elves at Fox News have been looking for the upside.

Amazingly, they think they've found it. On Saturday's financial lovefest Forbes on Fox, host David Asman ran a discussion segment entitled "London Bombings: Good for GOP and Stocks?"

The bastions (we said bastions) of classy analysis then talked up the rarely discussed pros of investing in dictatorships. It seems business ethics are about as much their strong point as comedy. Remember, this is the channel whose parent company, News Corp., is trying to buy out the Wall Street Journal.

9:51AM Mon. Jul. 2, 2007, Richard Whittaker Read More | Comment »

'MLB 07: The Show' for the PlayStation2
OK, I may have been a little too harsh on MLB 2K7 for the Xbox 360 – that game has certainly grown on me, and the jump from 360 to PS2 for this game was slightly painful – but The Show has my heart when it comes to video-game baseball. Aside from console differences, The Show is still the baseball game to beat. No crazy hitting mechanism, all the managerial options that Phil Garner and his ilk have to weigh, and still the most realistic hard-ball sim on the shelves. The biggest weakness here is its lack of availability on the Xbox 360 – it can only be purchased for the PlayStation2, PlayStation3, and PSP.

3:15PM Sun. Jul. 1, 2007, Mark Fagan Read More | Comment »

Pink Glocks???
UPDATE
(See "continue reading …" link, below)

Wake up, America! Bill O'RLY warns that lesbian gangs are taking over the nation. And his fancy, dandy Fox crime analyst (nice lavender touch, Rod!) confirms that, "These are lesbians that actually carry pink pistols. That's 9 millimeter Glocks."

I'm thinking the good detective misheard this. Glocks? Packing glocks? I could see how he could be mistaken. Perhaps what he heard only sounded like "glocks." And that measure sounds dubious, as well: 9 mm? Nine inches, maybe.

Now, you can rest assured that if there were an underground lesbian movement going on, your friendly neighborhood Gay Place would have it's fingers all up on that femoral, and you'd be the first to know, cuz we'd be the first to arm ya … I mean tell ya.

Don't know about no GTOs or DTOs, but I gotta group called BOBFs I'd like to bring to Bill's attention. Me and my 9-inch "GL"ock.

Sara Warn at After Ellen is already all over this, with a great link to the original transcript. (Hint: Fodder for next Camp Camp?)

Thanks to reader Justin Ward for the head's up.

12:04AM Sun. Jul. 1, 2007, Kate X Messer Read More | Comment »

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True Colors Last Week at the Woodlands
We'll just link you to this review from the Houston Chronicle's blog and this new one from SF Gate, about one of the last shows of the tour in Berkeley, and then add that Erasure gave me a big gay woody.

Click the link above the pic to view a full gallery of shots.

11:45PM Sat. Jun. 30, 2007, Kate X Messer Read More | Comment »

Serious Freak On: Pics From Pride Houston and Bartini
Pretty, caramel muscle boys in crop tops and rainbow banana thongs. Snoop Dawg look-alike dykes tailin' Tri-Delts on the back of pickup trucks for Jell-O shots. Welcome to Gay Spring Break or, as it is better known, Pride Houston.

You know that part of freaking, when the person in the back steadies themselves by either outstretching their arms to rest against the freak's clavicle or grabs ass so as not to fall over? Yeah, well, that basically summed up the whole trip to H-Town last weekend. Theme song? UNK's "Walk It Out." Oh yeah. And we did. Your intrepid friendly neighborhood Gay Place hosted a few pals and prize winners at the Hyatt Downtown, our room two doors down from frisky winners, Dacia Saenz and Julie Pennington. As the vibe (and other lubricants and libations) began to flow, we all decided to hang together and combine strengths for the duration of the ridiculously epic jaunt.

(To read more, click below; to see more pix, click above the image.)

12:01AM Sat. Jun. 30, 2007, Kate X Messer Read More | Comment »

Clinton vs. Clinton
Hill vs. Bill. Or rather, Hill vs. Bill's bill. During the former Arkansas governor's reign as commander in chief, lots of things went down. (Gap stock and overseas beret sales, perhaps?) Among them, Hillary's hubby's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which at that time and context, seemed better than a gay-bash in every barrack. Leave well enough alone; live, let live, just do yer push-ups, get up at sun-up, but never, ever, tell anyone you have a crush on yer sergeant. Sir, yes sir.

These days, DADT. is about as combat-worthy as an armorless tank. And Hillary is calling it out, stealing Goldwater's golden line: “I think the question should be not whether you are straight, but whether you shoot straight.”

6:37PM Fri. Jun. 29, 2007, Kate Getty Read More | Comment »

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