Austin today is honoring country music legend Willie Nelson with an 8-foot statue near the new Moody Theater downtown. Nelson is expected to be on hand for afternoon unveiling.

Designed by Philadelphia sculptor Clete Shields, the privately funded monument shows Nelson in a relaxed, standing pose and holding his guitar to the side, as if in conversation. Shields said the leaning pose and heroic scale are intended to show Nelson’s openness and whimsical side while honoring his tremendous influence on music and the city.

“We wanted to get a timeless Willie, an ageless Willie,” Shields told the Associated Press.

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A long poem from the new collection, Dont Tell Me Brother: Years of September Fallout Are Still Ahead, addresses the personal aftermath of 9/11, starting with an icy eyewitness description, before slipping into a breakdown, and out again:
  
where I, head down pounding
the conference table, bellowed and sobbed, I know what this is!
where I  finally had the revelation
where I picked up my head and looked into the doctors
ignorant  face and snarled: This is grief;
 this is grief
   
The speaker, the poem makes it clear, might easily have lost her mind after the attack.

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BELFAST, Northern Ireland One minute you’re being whisked through the busy Belfast shipyard where the Titanic is being built. The next you’re contemplating, amid a chilly piped-in breeze and lights mimicking darkened waters, the horror of freezing to death in the North Atlantic.

Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will host the Primetime Emmy Awards, airing Sept. 23 on ABC, the network announced.

It will mark Kimmel’s first time hosting the Emmys, but he has hosted other awards shows  including the American Music Awards and ESPN’s ESPY Awards.

Kimmel also will be hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner in April.

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A look at his first five years in New York City, up through July 8.

Where: Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway; 718-638-5000.

How much: General admission, $12; students & seniors, $8.

When: Wednesday-Friday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday & Sunday, 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; first Saturday every month, 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

If you like dark, macabre and sometimes offbeat art, this is the book for you. It’s a 112-page hardcover filled with them.

There are illustrations of phantom mermaid nurses, a couple of portraits of people with skeleton arms or some strange arms, white cats eating root-like red meat, and other eerie subjects. There are some dark cartoon character designs near the end which look pretty simple and nice.

You can check out more work of Roman Dirge at his website, Spookyland.

This book was borrowed from Basheer Graphic Books for review purposes.

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