Daily - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

"Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a sport," Brian Melcher (events coordinator at the Dragon's Lair) told me Saturday, July 14, when I approached him about doing a write-up on the Magic tournament going on in the Lair's lair. Saturday was a historic day in the realm of Magic: The Gathering, for it was on this day that Wizards of the Coast organized the inaugural Magic Game Day, a daylong event hosted in comic-book stores, gaming stores, and hobby shops around the city, state, country, continent, world, universe, galaxy, to infinity. Other Austin stores that participated in the event were Battleforge Games, Pat's Games, and Thor's Hammer.

Though advertisem*nts for the event emphasized game demos, contests, prizes, promo cards, and a chance to win plane tickets to New York City to attend the upcoming Magic World Championships(!), in reality Magic Game Day was simply a day to play the new Magic: The Gathering Tenth Edition Core Set and Magic: The Gathering Tenth Edition Starter Deck. The beauty, of course, lied in the unity of the event - wizards gathering together the world over, joined only by their love for fantasy trading cards, spells, drawings of busty sorceresses, and T-shirts that read: "What color do you want me to beat you with today?"

In trucks, in cars, in buses and even coaches, they came to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum to say farewell to Claudia Alta Taylor Johnson. Most of them probably wouldn't recognize the name. But that was because, to everyone, she was Lady Bird.

From Friday afternoon, she had laid in repose in her husband's presidential library. In the great hall, beneath the carved presidential seal, a wall of her husband's papers and the watchful eye of news cameras. Even by Saturday morning, the queue of those wishing to pay their final respects was still quickly replenishing itself. Bikers in Harley shirts, the politerati in suits, families with young children and those old enough to remember when Lady Bird was a congressman's wife. They signed the condolence sheets in brown felt tip. By home address, they had come from Austin and around the state and far beyond. They all passed through quietly, up the 23 stone steps to where she lay. Some bowed their heads, some crossed themselves, but most stood in silence for a few moments and moved on.

For those of you thinking, Hey, I know the City of Austin has been saying "Don't go in Town Lake," and the Lower Colorado River Authority is saying "That water's fast and nasty," but how bad can it really be? – here's how bad it is.

This is what the waters on Town Lake by Shoal Beach looked like at midday Sunday. Yes, Town Lake has rapids. Now whitewater rafting on Waller Creek doesn't seem that far-fetched, does it?

There is some good news for boaters: the city has opened Lake Austin from Walsh Landing to Loop 360. There's some big restrictions: no boat over 30 foot, and a 10 mph speed limit. The fire department still recommends no jetskis and no swimming, because of debris and high bacteria levels.

The rest of the lake is still closed, as well as Town Lake and the Colorado below Longhorn Dam. And, you'll face a Class C misdemeanor with a $500 fine for breaking the ban. The ban will be reconsidered midday Monday.

TODAY'S EVENTS

Blues on the Green at Zilker Park

Fugitive Dreams at AFS Cinema

MUSIC | MOVIES | ARTS | COMMUNITY

Coinciding with the highly anticipated release of the latest addition to the Harry Potter series, Saturday, July 14 (as in tomorrow) is officially Magic Game Day.

Yup. In an effort to unite Magic: The Gathering players around the world, Wizards of the Coast have organized the first worldwide Magic Game Day. Gaming stores and hobby shops worldwide will welcome Magic fans (and the curious) to participate in a daylong affair of game demos, league play, tournaments, contests, prizes, promo cards, and, exclusively for U.S. participants, the opportunity to win two round-trip plane tickets to attend the upcoming Magic World Championships, which will be held in New York City Dec. 6-9.

Yesterday, the Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA)-chaired Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing to consider Bush-nominee Dr. James Holsinger Jr. for surgeon general.

On the same day, Kennedy filed Senate Bill 1777, the Surgeon General Integrity Restoration Act. Good luck with that.

For the skinny and updates, check out Equality Texas' action page.

More inadvertent hilarity from the clash of cultures.

What's that noise?

A Muslim woman was arrested and faces charges after she hid electronics under her headscarf and smuggled them into a British court.

Terrorism? Not so much, but maybe there was some illegal downloading involved. The Manchester Guardian reports the judge kept hearing strange noises coming from the jury box during a murder trial at London's Blackfriars crown court. A lawyer saw a wire peaking out of the hijab or traditional Islamic clothing of one of the jurors. On inspection, it turned out she'd been listening to her mp3 player during the dull bits of the evidence, and had been hiding the headphones under her headscarf. She now faces contempt of court charges.

One thought: how awesome would it be if she was listening to The Black Album?

There was scratching of heads here at Chronic Towers yesterday when we got that rarest of beasts: a press release from our ever-loving local Republican US Rep. Lamar Smith. He wrote to say he'd managed to put away $150,000 in the Commerce, Justice and Science Bill, for the Austin Police Department to buy themselves a driving simulator. Well, kinda. Actually, it's only got through committee, and still has to pass a House vote.

Why this sudden largesse? And why put out a press release about pork that could still get cut? Could it be he's trying to curry some local favor after his performance Wednesday in the House Judiciary Committee? While they were supposed to be discussing Harriet Miers and executive privilege, Smith railed on that this was biting into presidential power, a waste of time, and wholly partisan. He was then on the losing end of the seven-to-five vote that said Miers had been bad for not showing up.

This came after Tuesday's meeting about pardons, when Smith hammered on about presidential power and calling Bill Clinton the Prince of Pardons. (Somebody should make sure he's working off the right talking points. After all, the president told us yesterday Scooter Libby is officially old news.)

Smith threw up all the old canards – terrorism, immigrants, Internet predators – and said the committee should get back to "the people's business." However, if he's hoping to get on the people's good side, someone should tell him big piles of cash for APD may not be the way to do it.

We received this email last night from city council member Brewster McCracken:

I have prepared a short statement below confirming that I and my wife Mindy Montford have agreed to a divorce. We were married in 1995 and have been separated for the last seven months.

Mindy is an assistant district attorney with the Travis County District Attorney's Office and an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law. We have one son, Ford, who was born on March 2, 2004. As for the child custody part of our divorce agreement, we will be joint managing conservators.

STATEMENT OF BREWSTER McCRACKEN:

"With great sadness, I am confirming that Mindy and I have agreed to end our marriage. We are incredibly blessed to have a wonderful son together. We both love our son very much, and we will work together to be great parents for him."

With the weekend looming, time for some light-hearted news from the 'war on terror', courtesy of the UK media.

Metal musician arrested for terrorist facial hair

A story ripped through the media that British security staff at Luton Airport near London questioned a suspicious-looking individual. They were on the edge of getting out the rubber gloves because of his "Taliban" beard. The man in question actually turned out to be Metallica frontman and noted beardy James Hetfied, who was flying in to play the UK end of Live Earth.

Actually, what happened was that Hugo Rifkind made a one-paragraph passing comment about it in his Times of London column (sort of a rich man's Page Six). This got picked up and accelerated through the world's news pages. Rifkind, who many suspect only got the gig with the snooty Times because his daddy was a Conservative MP, is highly unlikely to have ever hung around with the "friends" who he claims were the source of the story – unless they were his own friends, who probably couldn't tell Harvester of Sorrows from a hole in the ground. And there's another slight problem. Hetfield's press people said it's never happened.