I don't have too much to add to it; I just wanted to point out AustinContrarian's fine dissection of Brewster McCracken's talking points in the Las Manitas fracas – specifically, the assertion that the Perez sisters had the ability to bring the entire Marriott project to a halt by denying an alley right-of-way the hotel needed. I think this passage lays it out pretty well:

"I am skeptical that the Perez sisters have the right to force the alley to stay open. No, not skeptical: I think Brewster is flat wrong. Cities need to close streets and alleys from time to time. Abutting landowners will not always agree. It would be unreasonable to allow a single property owner to hold the city hostage. (According to Austin's loan program director, the Las Manitas loan is not even conditioned on the alley being closed – a bizarre omission if this was the real reason for the loan.)

The Perez sisters do have a legal interest in the alley. But that does not mean they can force the city to keep it open. The government, through eminent domain, can condemn virtually any property interest, including an abutting landowner's interest in a right of way."

This is also astute:

"Here's my take: Council does not want to obstruct the Marriott project. Marriott's made it clear that it needs part of the alley closed. But this would require Council to close the alley over the Perez sisters' objection. Council can legally do that, but then it would be in the awkward position of battling the Perez sisters publicly over the amount of compensation they are due (with the city's legal staff probably telling Council that the city owes them nothing). Council didn't have the stomach for that fight, so it gave Las Manitas the forgivable loan, which some may have wanted to do anyway for reasons of "icon preservation." The forgivable loan is really just the Council's attempt to buy itself out of a politically awkward spot."

AC also raises a question that has completely managed to sail under the radar: If the loan secured the Perez sisters' compliance with the development, isn't it more of a gift to Marriott than Las Manitas?

Academics and film buffs seem to agree – Texas legislators shouldn't act as arbiters of good cinematic taste.

Saturday night at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, as part of the farewell to the original site at Fourth and Colorado, Joe Bob Briggs (the man that loved drive-in schlock before Quentin Tarantino made it cool) and UT lecturer/Texas film historian Don Graham talked about the history of Texas films and Texas in film.

The conversation turned to Senate Bill 782, the Texas Film Incentive Program's tax-breaks-for-movie-makers bill. Legislators are talking seriously about not funding scripts that make Texas look bad, and when Joe Bob heard about this, he had some words about trying to define good and bad for Texas.

"The first movie under the Texas Film Commission was Lovin' Molly, which made Texas look bad by being bad. The second movie under the commission was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which made Texas look bad by being so good."

Graham had noted earlier that, historically, a lot of Texas movies were about the victory of good, white, protestant folks over, well, everyone. So will the tax breaks mean more Walker, Texas Ranger and less The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada?

So the Transportation Security Administration has found itself embroiled in what we at Chronic would like to dub Sippy Cup Gate, after an argument about whether passenger Monica Emmerson was trying to smuggle a cup of water through security for her infant. The TSA claims that its staff was following regulations and that Emmerson deliberately poured the water on the floor. Emmerson says that the staff was harassing a woman struggling with a small child and luggage and failed to show basic human decency – in turn creating an Internet cause celebré.

So how does the TSA respond to claims that its staff acted in a high-handed, out-of-control, power-hungry, and unaccountable manner? By issuing a reasoned press release? By launching a full internal investigation? By issuing an apology? By standardizing all its regulations, so they don't vary seemingly arbitrarily (seriously, do the shoes have to come off or not?) between airports?

No – by launching a subsection of its website called (and only press officers and comedians can make this kind of stuff up) Mythbusters, where the TSA puts its security-camera footage and its incident report of Sippy Cup Gate. Yes, Mythbusters.

And the winner of Most Superfluous Press Release is …

What kind of person would use candles made from people? Witches? Cannibals? Oil executives?

Seemingly, oil execs. Last Thursday, attendees at an oil-industry convention were fooled into thinking that the solution to peak oil is processing people into premium unleaded.

For those of you that have never come across the work of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, aka the Yes Men, these arch-pranksters have made a reputation exposing the psyche of the corporate world. They call their technique "identity correction": They pose as representatives of business and government, get invited to big conferences, and then propose schemes that are so obviously insane, oppressive, or just flat-out immoral that no one would take them seriously. They then watch as the business community nods sagely and thinks how they can turn a profit on this – not, as most sane people would do, throw up in their own mouths a little bit.

In this case, the Yes Men pretended to be from ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council and got themselves invited to Gas & Oil Exposition, Canada's biggest oil-industry conference. They were there to promote a "new product" that would revolutionize energy production – Vivoleum, an oil substitute made out of dead people. The photos of the event reveal oil-industry execs blithely burning candles they think are made from the rendered remains of a dead Exxon janitor.

(Please note, no janitors were harmed in the making of this situationist art prank.)

As we celebrate gay Pride in June here in Texas, New Orleans mourns one of her own. Once Southern Decadence Grand Marshall (1998), beloved community activist, and French Quarter hair-salon owner Robin Malta was found beaten to death in his Faubourg Marigny home earlier this week.

According to a report by NOLA TV station WWLTV, friends are shocked at the news:

"'He loved everyone,' said Malta’s sister, Monica Thurmond. 'He didn’t have an enemy anywhere.'

"Friends said the fact that Malta was so well-liked makes it hard to understand who could commit such a crime."

According to NOLA Against Crime, "Robin will be laid to rest on Saturday [June] 16th at Tharp-Sonheimer, 1600 N. Causeway. Mass will be at 2:30 PM, afterwards there will be a celebration of his life – location to be announced at the services."

On the heels of recent gay pride celebrations, Austin’s GLBT community is banding together with Austin Habitat for Humanity to build a home this fall. The home, in the Montopolis neighborhood, is being constructed for Marta Maldonado, a 64-year-old East Austin resident, who, like all HFH home recipients, will contribute her own sweat equity – 400 hours – to the build. When it’s finished, she’ll live there with an interest-free mortgage. “Austin Habitat is proud to be working with the GLBT community in this partnership to address one of the biggest needs facing all Austinites today – affordable housing. Austin is so diverse in its people and cultures, but we all share the need for shelter,” said Michael Willard, AHFH executive director. To donate or volunteer – they need $60,000 in materials and 1,800 in volunteer hours – call 472-8788 or send an e-mail to [email protected]. More information is available at AHFH's website here.

The Lance Armstrong Bikeway, proposed in 1999 by local bike crusader Eric Anderson to create a dedicated east-to-west bicycle route across Downtown, is finally under way. After years of delays, even after the project was fully funded, many people were beginning to believe it may have to be dedicated to Armstrong posthumously by the time it was completed. The 6-mile bikeway extends from Veterans Drive at Lake Austin Boulevard on the west side of town to the Montopolis Bridge at Highway 183 on the Eastside. The path consists of a combination of off-street concrete trails, on-street striped bike lanes, and on-street signed bike routes. It will intersect with the planned extension of the Pfluger bike/pedestrian bridge just north of Cesar Chavez, providing a safe passage over Town Lake to the south, as well as hook up with the Roy G. Guerrero Colorado River Park near 183 at its eastern terminus. The bikeway is also expected to cruise through the planned Seaholm redevelopment Downtown. “Studies show that areas with new bicycle facilities experience an increase in bicycle commuting,” said Annick Beaudet, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian project manager in a statement. “The bikeway will likely increase bicycle use to, from, and within the downtown area, helping to achieve City-wide goals such as sustainability, congestion management, and downtown vitality.”

Marvin Gaye’s tears, like Levi Stubbs’, endure as a natural phenomenon, no less than a magnolia tree or Tammi Terrell. Every drop was precious and each succeeding one only brought the end nearer. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” we all did.

Hip-OSelect.com, home of the awe-inspiring and ongoing The Complete Motown Singles series, a new Love fest, and plenty more mouth-watering Internet-only boutiquery, expands yet again. In Our Lifetime?, Gaye’s final album for Motown, finds new life in a deluxe, 2-CD makeover. 1981 wasn’t a good year for the tortured singer, but then the point of In Our Lifetime? isn’t how good or overlooked it might be. Rather it’s how astonishing it is despite the blessed mess.

By 1984, when Gaye was shot and killed by his father during an argument, the singer had been drowning in bad marriages and drugs for the better part of a decade. His final run of albums were all open addresses to his partners, beginning with last master class Let’s Get It On, 1973, and dwindling in classicism through ’76’s I Want You, ’78's Here, My Dear, and finally the “Sexual Healing” of last supplication Midnight Love (1982). Penultimate LP In Our Lifetime? boogies toward oblivion with Gaye writhing between conjugal withdrawl and religious salvation. While the eye-popping cover art pits God vs. Satan, the music itself, the grooves and sexual come-ons, matches God against Pan.