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Spoon’s Latest Achieves Messy Perfection

Until recently, when discussing Austin's favorite sons, Spoon, you typically came across fans who either loved them dearly or were indifferent. What you didn't often encounter was impassioned hatred, perhaps because the band makes the kind of slinky but meticulous pop that can just as easily breeze inoffensively past the...
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Sidney Lumet’s Long Journey

"There's a reason I've had some good pictures and other guys will never have good pictures," Sidney Lumet says matter-of-factly on a recent afternoon in his New York office — four cramped white walls, unadorned by awards or other memorabilia, on the top floor of the Ansonia Building, where Enrico...
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Sherman Allen Resigns from the Church of God in Christ

Is Sherman Allen back on the job? So we hear ... Pastor Sherman Allen has left the Church of God in Christ and is back in the pulpit preaching, according to several sources. Allen, founder and pastor of Shiloh Institutional Church of God in Christ -- the name of the...
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Backtrackin’

In his brilliant analysis of Emerson, Lake and Palmer, legendary critic Dave Marsh wrote that quality music could never come simply by force-feeding the complexities of classical music through rock and roll amplifiers. Although many have tried (with practicably bloated results) to fuse Beethoven and Chuck Berry, it wasn't until...
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Should One Deduction Lead to Another?

Tori Van Fleet, a forensics and firearms expert with the Fort Worth Police Department, has been following an unusual case making its way through U.S. Tax Court -- one that will determine whether it’s acceptable for people to claim transgender surgery as a tax deduction. Van Fleet hopes the answer...
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Review: Jonathan Coulton at Club Dada

Club Dada was filled with cubicle drones who looked like they came straight from Chotchkies. I would venture to guess a lot of code went unwritten last night. The geeks gathered to see their king: Jonathan Coulton. You’ve heard the story by now: He used to write software, quit to...
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Review: Interpol at Palladium

Interpol engages the Palladium crowd Thursday night. (Matt Mueller) Interpol is one of those bands I managed to only see at festivals up to this point. Let’s face it, festivals suck for technical bands. Luckily, I was able to catch the New York band Thursday night at the Palladium Ballroom...
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Like Zombies, SMU football Plays on Without a Pulse

For his role, Dale Hansen got death threats, extortion ploys and a dead bird. "It was a black crow delivered right to our office," recalls Hansen, WFAA-Channel 8's sports anchor. "It had a note pinned through its body: 'You're next.'" For its part, SMU football received even worse. A two-year...
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Review: Timbaland at Palladium Ballroom

Scion hosted Timbaland in a free concert last night at the Palladium Ballroom, and the people came out in force. The floor was increasingly crowded throughout the night (although the place is so big, the back area was still an easy walk through). A surprising spectrum of people showed up...
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Gone Too Soon|Checkmate|City Hall Corruption|Devil in the Details

Gone Too Soon No relevance: I'm not sure I understand the relevance of this issue and how it really relates to Carter Albrecht or Darin Archer ("Better to Rust," by Jonanna Widner, October 4). By saying that Carter was not an addict or an "asshole" (again, relevance?) and yet lump...
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Two Years Later, Texas Monthly Gets an Answer to a DNA Question

Almost two years after this Texas Monthly story ran, Steven Phillips has been cleared of at least one sex crime for which was convicted in the early 1980s. This morning, you probably picked up your daily paper and saw the story about Steven Phillips, who was convicted of sexually assaulting...
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‘Darjeeling’ Brings Depth, Whimsy

The estranged brothers Whitman have reunited for a journey onboard The Darjeeling Limited, a colorful old locomotive traversing the Rajasthan region of India. Along the way, they will stop to visit temples ("Probably one of the most spiritual places on earth!") and shop for souvenirs (slippers, cobras, pepper spray), with...
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Belo Earnings: Could Be Better, Could Be Worse

The most memorable sentence from Belo's second-quarter earnings results, released this morning, is this one: Newspaper Group segment costs and expenses decreased 9.2 percent versus the second quarter of 2006, due in part to the 2006 headcount reductions at The Dallas Morning News and The Press-Enterprise, and lower newsprint and...
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Dogging on Michael Vick|The Huddled Masses

Dogging on Michael Vick Arf, arf: You know, just the other night I was watching an episode of Law and Order where the defendant, who was a bookie, was accused of killing another bookie because he owed him money. The evidence was pretty much cut-and-dried...corpse, fingerprints, motive, opportunity, etc....the whole...
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‘Lust, Caution’ Lacks Appeal

"Beautiful" and "cruel": That's how director Ang Lee describes Eileen Chang's 1979 short story about obsessive love and effortless betrayal in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, a tale upon which Lee has based his epic-length Lust, Caution. Writing in the afterword to a recently republished version of the 54-page story, which took Chang...
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Dinos Amuck

Let's see, you take various assorted techno-geek cannon fodder, give them lots of cool gadgets (possibly a couple of annoying kids too), isolate the entire group in some improbable locale and then have the latest technological marvel go horribly awry as a result of human hubris. Of course, we're talking...
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A “House of Death” Lawsuit is No Mas

The House of Death -- has to be one hell of a neighborhood, no? OK, so we’re a little late on this, but late last month a U.S. district judge in El Paso issued a ruling on what is known as the House of Death case, which we wrote about...
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Say, “Cheeeeeeeese”!

It’s 4:37 p.m. Thursday. Fans that already successfully navigated the traffic jam outside Texas Stadium have begun tailgating. Inside, Brett Favre is jogging around Texas Stadium in his shorts. Let the post-game play-by-play commence...
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Minus the Bear

In all the hoopla over the influence of '60s and '70s art rock on some of today's most interesting bands, one salient fact is frequently overlooked: A lot of that stuff blew. For every Roxy Music and King Crimson, there was a Yes or an Emerson, Lake & Palmer (plus...
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Phony Car Accidents Will Land You Real Prison Time

In May, Tuan "Andy" Nguyen was among 22 folks arrested and indicted on charges of staging car accidents with salvaged vehicles in order to collect the insurance money -- to the tune of some $1 million in fraudulent claims. Well, today Nguyen -- singled out by the U.S. Attorney's Office...
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Dick Armey’s Local Think Tank Says Music Piracy is Killing America

There's a new death-of-the-music-biz report circulating today, courtesy the Lewisville-based Institute for Policy Innovation. Titled "The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the U.S. Economy," the 28-page study says that the music industry's losing, oh, $12 billion in revenue each year -- and thousands and thousands of jobs as...