Patty Melts for Two

If you’re short on change for Valentine’s Day, Whataburger has a deal for you and yours. Dine in between 5 and 10pm on Sunday, Feb. 14 and they’ll give you a free Patty Melt Whatameal when you buy one.

This may not sound like the most romantic dinner on first reading, but if you bring your own tablecloth, silverware, candelabra, vase, flowers and smooth saxophone solo, you can easily create a pitch-perfect homage to John Cusack in Better Off Dead. Remember, it’s the thought that counts.

Sadly, this offer does not apply to lonely hearts with an appetite – two people must be present when ordering. However, there’s no law stopping you from soliciting an expedient “Patty Melt Partner” in the parking lot.

Who knows? Maybe he or she will be the one you’ve been looking for all along.

Denny's Gives It Away

Denny's is giving away a bunch of food these days. Next Tuesday between 6am and 2pm, you can get a free Original Grand Slam Breakfast just for showing up. Expect a crowd since Denny's is running ads to promote this during the Super Bowl on Sunday. Last year's free Grand Slam promotion drew 2 million people.

If you don't have all day, you can still get a coupon for a free burger and fries if you're one of the first 500,000 people who sign up for the new Denny's Rewards program before Feb. 14. Other than possibly getting a bunch of e-mail you'll have to delete, this one looks pretty painless.

Starting Feb. 10, Denny's puts the smackdown on IHOP by providing free refills on any order of pancakes or fries. I always thought IHOP's $4.99 endless pancake promotion was a rip-off because I can't eat that many pancakes, but I can put away plenty of fries. And I will. Just please don't tell my wife.

Best of all, you can get a free Grand Slam breakfast on your birthday. That's not quite as good as the old free birthday meal deal, but I'm not one to argue with the fickle mistress that is Free.

Fave Five Food Deals - 2/4/10

Welcome to the pre-Super Bowl edition of Fave Five Food Deals. Not surprisingly, this week's boffo Austin grocery deals include lots of party foods. Parties are okay, but is there really a better friend out there than having a family-sized tub of homemade guacamole all to yourself?

1. All natural* pork sausage, $1.97/lb. at Newflower through 2/10/10

2. River Ranches all natural** ground beef, $3.99/lb at Natural Grocers through 2/27/10

3. Haas avocados and/or Roma tomatoes, .39/lb. at Newflower through 2/10/10

4. 1 lb. bag of peeled baby carrots, .99 at Sun Harvest through 2/10/10

5. All beer at Central Market, 20% off through 2/9/10

*In Deal #1, "all natural" means no artificial ingredients or preservatives.

**In Deal #2, "all natural" means grass-fed, pasture-raised, no antibiotics, no chemical pesticides or artificial hormones and no animal by-products (other than the beef, I guess).

Kate at 38 Weeks

Kate and I are now less than two weeks away from the due date of our baby boy and the dawn of our new lives as parental units. I took this belly shot of Kate on Monday night. I think he's gotten bigger just since then.

Twenty Tinnitus' Trivial Triumph

Despite heated competition from the Austin City Limits team, the Chron's Twenty Tinnitus team eked out a one-point victory in last night's Mind Over Music trivia smackdown.

Every person on our team was able to nail down answers that eluded the rest of us. I wasn't entirely sure whether to be proud or embarrassed about having the lyrics to Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me" etched in the mindspace that should've been reserved for long division, but a win is a win, baby!

Mind Over Music

Finally, I have a chance to put decades of wasting brain cells on music-related mental minutiae toward something worthwhile.

Mind Over Music: The Austin Underground Music Trivia Smackdown happens at 7pm tomorrow at the Palm Door, located at 401 E. Sabine. I'll be rubbing wits with the Austin Chronicle's "Twenty Tinnitus" team, one of about 25 teams looking to achieve local music trivia supremacy.

Although there's no room for more teams, you can pay $10 to sit in the peanut gallery and heckle. All proceeds benefit Grounded in Music, a local non-profit providing music programs to kids who otherwise couldn't afford them.

UT Cuts the Cactus Cafe

In a classic weekend news dump reminiscent of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre," UT's Texas Union Board of Directors announced that it is shutting down both the Cactus Cafe and Informal Classes program in August due to budget cuts.

The Cactus is a nationally renowned listening room that helped launch and sustain the careers of everyone from Lyle Lovett to Townes Van Zandt to Peter Case. The venue's reputation is due in large part to manager Griff Luneburg, who has run the place for almost 30 years. Clubs open and close, but you can't replace a room like the Cactus.

Although the Cactus is primarily known for presenting singer/songwriters, my pal Jonathan Toubin once somehow convinced Griff to book our old band Cheezus there on a Saturday night in 1991. We wore turtlenecks, drew black Sharpie goatees on our faces and made as much contrarian racket as we could. I thought it was pretty cool that Griff made room for an obnoxious, unpracticed punk band on his stage. I don't even think he complained about all the thrown cheese products.

Losing the Informal Classes program will also be a major blow. If it wasn't for their cost-effective adult education offerings, I wouldn't know how to half-ass my way through Adobe InDesign or a Texas Two-Step.

UT says the Cactus and Informal Classes had not been self-sufficient in recent years. Moreover, neither entity drew large numbers of UT students. According to Texas Union executive director Andy Smith, cutting the Cactus Cafe and Informal Classes will save about $122,000 annually.

Virtually every UT student forks over a fee to the Texas Union every semester, so I can understand why the board would want to make sure that budget cuts - which are a reality at all state agencies right now - don't impact the union's core functions for enrolled students.

Even so, shuttering these two venerable institutions will likely prove to be one of UT's historic blunders. It's a short-term budgetary bandage that will have a long tail in the form of more alums not giving and more Austinites not having any connection whatsoever with the burnt orange monolith in their midst.

The S from Hell!

Seeing and hearing the 1964 Screen Gems logo with its proto-synth score by Eric Siday takes me right back to the earliest days of my lifelong affair with television. Somehow, the logo evokes way more nostalgia than the TV shows that preceded it. Perhaps the logo's incidental, effervescent nature makes it feel like a more authentic totem to my lost childhood.

Sadly, not all of my generational contemporaries remember the Screen Gems logo with such fondness. In fact, some are downright terrified by it. Brave filmmaker Rodney Ascher chronicles the horror in his short documentary, The S From Hell.

Fave Five Food Deals - 1/28/09

Read all about the best grocery deals in Austin and discover why the coming week is likely to have our town awash in waves of funny-smelling urine.

1. Asparagus, .97/lb. at Sun Harvest and .99/lb. at Sprouts (through 2/3/10)

2. Texas small red grapefruit, 10 for $1 at H-E-B (through 2/2/10)

3. Harris Ranch all natural top round roast, $2.99/lb. at Newflower (through 2/3/10)

4. Roasted chicken, $3.99/ea. at Sprouts (through 2/3/10)

5. Brooklyn beers (6-pack), including Brooklyn Lager, Brown Ale, Pennant Ale and East India Pale Ale, $6.99/ea. at Central Market

Pazz and Jop '09

The 2009 Pazz and Jop critics poll came out in last week’s Village Voice. I was one of about five bajillion music writers from around the country who submitted ballots. I’m always interested to see how my picks stack up against the critical consensus.

Here are the top 10 albums in the 2009 Pazz and Jop poll:

1. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion
2. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
3. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
4. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It’s Blitz!
5. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
6. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
7. The xx, xx
8. Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Part II
9. The Flaming Lips, Embryonic
10.Girls, Album

And here are the top 10 albums I submitted, along with their placement in the overall poll:

1. Girls, Album (10)
2. Heavy Trash, Midnight Soul Serenade (1,431)
3. Rainy Day Saints, Reflected (1,145)
4. Yo La Tengo, Popular Songs (40)
5. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca (5)
6. Tinariwen, Imidiwan: Companions (59)
7. Neon Indian, Psychic Chasms (110)
8. Pissed Jeans, King of Jeans (54)
9. Love Me Nots, Upsidedown Insideout (1,011)
10. Strange Boys, The Strange Boys and Girls Club (566)

Here are the top 10 singles in the 2009 Pazz and Jop poll:

1. Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys, “Empire State of Mind”
2. Phoenix, “1901”
3. Animal Collective, “My Girls”
4. Grizzly Bear, “Two Weeks”
5. Dirty Projectors, “Stillness is the Move”
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero”
7. Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”
8. Girls, “Lust for Life”
9. Phoenix, “Lisztomania”
10. Taylor Swift, “You Belong with Me”

And here are mine:

1. Girls, “Lust for Life” (8)
2. Wilco, “You Never Know” (181)
3. Neon Indian, “Deadbeat Summer” (119)
4. Chalie Boy, “I Look Good” (751)
5. Phoenix, “1901” (2)
6. Dirty Projectors, “Stillness is the Move” (6)
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero” (7)
8. Dorrough, “Ice Cream Paint Job” (1,649)
9. Snoop Dogg, “I Wanna Rock” (252)
10. The Drums, “Let’s Go Surfing” (113)

For albums, I was the only person who mentioned the Love Me Nots, Rainy Day Saints and Heavy Trash. I’m somewhat baffled that the latter didn’t get more traction, what with Jon Spencer and all. It’s also interesting that despite my ranking and an equal assignation of 10 points for all of my albums, Heavy Trash finished lower in the overall rankings than my other solitary picks. Given my own inability to balance a checkbook or calculate a tip, I think I will refrain from snarking off about that.

As for singles, I’ve always had an embarrassingly major soft spot for really obnoxious regional rap radio hits, as previous-year picks like the GS Boys’ “Stanky Legg” (2008) and D4L’s “Laffy Taffy” (2006) can attest. In fact, if any rap artist cuts a hit song called “Peenie Weenie” over the next 11 months, I can pretty much guarantee it’ll wind up on my 2010 ballot.