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The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is busy determining what to do with all the kids from the FLDS, but meanwhile, another group of children under TDFPS care is alleging abuse.

Eight immigrant youths from the Hector Garza Treatment Center, a facility for unaccompanied minors, have filed a lawsuit against a number of agencies, including the Houston-based Cornell Companies, a private company that runs the treatment center.

The allegations involve beatings from guards at the Garza center, which is located in San Antonio. On several occasions, the children were hospitalized, according to the lawsuit. Four San Antonio police officers were also named in the complaint for handcuffing and assaulting several teenagers after responding to a fight at Garza.

It’s not exactly the Crime of the Century, but it’s the Crime of the Week, maybe: A griffin has been stolen from Galveston’s famous Bishop’s Palace.

Investigators first had to determine a key question: What’s a griffin? It turns out it’s a winged-lion thing, maybe three feet tall and made out of cast zinc, two of which sit on stands at the base of the Palace’s outside stairs.

Next they had to determine when the crime occurred. Which was harder than you might think, because it turns out the griffin had been missing for at least five days before anyone noticed.

The Galveston Historical Foundation reported the missing griffin this morning; GHF staff photographer David Canright then went back through recent photos he had taken.

XXY

I managed to catch four of the eight films screened during the Museum of Fine Art, Houston’s Latin Wave festival this weekend. I loved one, liked two others and one I, well, we’ll get to that last one in a bit.

First, what I loved: XXY by Argentine director Lucia Puenzo. The story of a 15-year-old hermaphrodite, XXY follows Alex and her family as they stumble through the maze of sexual identity and societal pressures. When Alex’s mom invites a surgeon and his family for the weekend, it’s not just a social call. The doctor has come to discuss corrective surgery for Alex; trouble is Alex isn’t sure she wants to be ‘corrected.’ Neither is her father, who wasn’t aware of the doctor’s real purpose. To complicate matters, Alex and the surgeon’s son, Alvaro, fall in love.

Every year, a Texas artist receives the Hunting Prize, a cash award in “the boner-inducing amount of $50,000” (as the inimitable Buffalo Sean puts it on his blog). The results are in – this year’s recipient is Wendy Wagner, who recently was included in DiverseWorks’s “Flicker Fusion” exhibition. (Our own Troy Schulze dug the “ethereal narrative” of her video work; to read his review, click here.) The piece that won Wagner such a tidy sum is I Hope I’m Dreaming, pictured right.

There’s been some chatter on Buffalo Sean’s blog about the prize, which is awarded by the oil-services company Hunting PC. Submitted works are supposed to be two-dimensional (no photos). According to the blog, artist Joan Fabian had her piece named as a finalist but was later disqualified. Jurors said the work wasn’t a painting; Fabian maintains it is. (Judge for yourself here.) There’s also speculation that the work was thrown out because it contains the word “war,” and oil companies are sensitive about that word. In any event, the artist has come to the conclusion that “The taste of oil barons really lacks.”

So, all you artistes, when applying for the 2009 prize that’s better than Viagra, stay on the safe side: Keep it 2D. Maybe stick to square and rectangular canvases. And…duh…cut the war stuff. – Cathy Matusow

Click here for a slideshow...

Ranging in age from their mid-20s to mid-60s, the students in my class at the Glasscock School brought a wide variety of expertise and equipment. Over the course of eight weeks and through a variety of assignments, they expanded their grasp of the language of photography and hopefully made a few photos worthy of the mantel. As Confucious said, "One seeing is worth a thousand lookings." -- Daniel Kramer

This weekend we were driving down FM 529 outside of Copperfield when we saw a sign from a bygone era.

Regretfully, the country store's pumps haven't been in operation for at least five years. -- Keith Plocek

Women: Have you ever dreamed about being a prostitute, but not the yucky street-walking kind? Maybe you were afraid of being called “whore” or “criminal defendant.” Well, a retired, Texas-born hooker has now written a pair of how-to books for you to get off your foot and on your back for your dream job!

Amanda Brooks’s Internet Escort’s Handbook series gives tips for how to advertise online, and how to handle the "basic mental, emotional and physical considerations in escort work.” Plus, you can keep up with her on her blog, After Hours. (You can get her musings on topics like pimps, who she apparently dislikes: “My belief is that the business follows the pussy, not the pimp.”)

Brooks got her start around Dallas and eventually moved to Vegas – and if a hooker can make it there, she can make it anywhere! This is one pro who knows what she’s talking about, so dive right in! – Craig Malisow

There's no telling how many stories have been written this week about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but it's probably a fair assumption that the words "polygamist sect" have appeared in most. That's not good publicity, especially as revelations from Eldorado become more disturbing, for the 50,000 followers of the consenting-adult polygamy movement, otherwise known as Christian polygamy.

So, Mark Henkel, who calls himself the National Polygamy Advocate, wants to make two things clear: Polygamy is good; the FLDS is bad. Henkel started the TruthBearer.org organization about ten years ago to promote polygamy through the Internet.

"Just because [the FLDS] happen to be involved in polygamy doesn't mean they're a leader of the polygamy rights movement," Henkel says. "We've always rejected the underage marriage and the arranged marriage and the incest. We've always rejected [the FLDS] too, but that doesn't get told."

And if the FLDS has to be aligned with some group, Henkel wants it to be the Mormons.

Donald Patrick, executive director of the Texas Medical Board, will retire on August 28, according to a Board press release issued this morning. Patrick has held the position since 2001. The retirement date marks his 70th birthday.

The Board has formed a search committee to find a replacement, according to the release, which states: “If the committee has not found a replacement by the time Dr. Patrick retires, TMB’s Director of Enforcement Mari Robinson will serve as Interim Executive Director until a new Executive Director is hired.”

Patrick stepped in on the heels of intense media scrutiny that criticized the Board’s inefficient disciplinary process. While some believe the Board has improved its practices, the Arizona-based Association of American Physicians and Surgeons sued the Board last December for an allegedly cozy relationship with insurance companies and a biased complaint system that targets doctors the Board doesn’t like.

Embarrassed by an aborted ad campaign that offended medium-shelf potato-derived alcohol drinkers in the U.S., Absolut has apologized via a recorded statement on its “consumer inquiry phone line.”

The ads, which only ran in Mexico, showed a map of the U.S. prior to the Mexican-American war, when Mexico was freaking ginormous. Somehow missed amid all the hubub over the ads’ supposed anti-American sentiment was the fact that an alcohol producer has a consumer hotline. Seriously, why on earth would anybody need to call Absolut?

This week’s Hair Balls column takes a look at the wacky world of book-banning in the Texas prison system. It’s a world where accounts of caning women or dripping wax on them do not count as S&M, where former Senator Bob Dole is a child pornographer and “Letters to Penthouse” can be fine unless they involve even a single episode of lesbian loving.

Go click and read it, and then come back here for some further highlights we didn’t have space for, all taken from the paperwork banning or approving books in 2007:

Click here for a slideshow.

Photographer Jonathan Hollingsworth traveled from San Francisco to Orange County, in California, with a stack of poster-board in hand. Along the way he stopped and asked people to write their opinions on the current war in Iraq. Then he took photos of the people holding up the signs. It's a simple enough idea, but the result is anything but simple.

"What We Think Now: Young People's Response to the U.S. Involvement in Iraq," both an exhibition (that recently closed at Stages Repertory Theatre) and a book, is surprisingly frank. One woman writes, “While trying to articulate my thoughts on the war I feel selfish uneducated and ignorant It doesn't affect me so I haven't paid attention. Isn't that sad..." In another shot a man writes, "Not my president, not my war!" Still another writes, "No matter what, support the troops."

I don't remember when or where this happened exactly, but once upon a time I got in a conversation with a gay gentlemen who kept going on and on about his ex-boyfriend's penis. He kept calling his ex "the guy with the two Red Bull can cock."

I consider my mind as dirty as anyone's, but I couldn't figure out what the hell this guy was talking about, so I asked for clarification. Turns out the fellow's penis was a big as two cans of Red Bull stacked on top of each other.

That had to have been one helluva penis.

What does this have to do with anything? Good question. But that anecdote is the first thing that popped into my mind when I learned Red Bull was bringing the "Art of Can" to the Galleria in a few months.

The detention of immigrants is the fastest-growing form of incarceration in the United States, according to an excellent story in The New Yorker by Margaret Talbot that focuses on abuses against immigrant families with no criminal records at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center – a former medium-security prison in rural Taylor, Texas, set some 40 miles northeast of Austin.

Hutto is one of only two immigrant-detention facilities in the U.S. that house families, and the only one owned and run by a private prison company: Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest. Most of the residents are from Central and South America, though many are seeking political asylum from countries such as Iraq, Somalia, Iran and Romania.

Heading south for Spring Break? Read this list and you just might think twice. -- Keith Plocek