Month: February 2019

12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Christmas

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FRI., DEC. 26, 2003

Friday is Boxing Day, the Feast of St. Stephen. You remember St. Steve, right? The first Christian to be martyred (stoned to death, to be specific) for his faith? The patron saint of headaches? No, really. Look it up. Then again, you might be more familiar with him as the patron saint of stonemasons or maybe coffin makers. OK, so it’s apparent that the early Christians lacked a certain amount of sensitivity training, but St. Stephen is also the patron saint of horses and of the Catholic diocese of Owensboro, Ky., the third largest city in the commonwealth of Kentucky. Not too shabby. All of the street cred notwithstanding, St. Stephen’s Day and its conjoined twin Boxing Day don’t get a lot of play here in the states. Pity. Boxing Day in England derives from the tradition of the churches opening their alms boxes for the poor on the day after Christmas … or from the tradition of wealthy folks giving their servants presents on the day after Christmas, presumably after having made them work on Christmas. Either way it sounds like a nice holiday, a holiday for poor and working-class types – the kind of people Jesus liked to hang out with. In America, Boxing Day is traditionally celebrated in the exchange lines at the mall, waiting for the harried customer-service clerk to swap out the box of crap you don’t need for the box of crap you think you do. Boxes, boxes everywhere, but what about St. Stephen? One thing is for certain: All over America people will be getting stoned on Boxing Day – not in that painful, biblical way, but in a relaxing, arguably medicinal way that rarely involves a headache. Maybe that’s not the kind of homage the One True Church intended, but Christianity has a long tradition of appropriating existing traditions and giving them a Christian context (Saturnalia for instance), so why not add another? Here in Austin, when people get stoned around Boxing Day they invariably end up down at Zilker Park spinning circles beneath the Christmas tree. Even if you’re not baked it’s a wonderfully wholesome, dizzying end to the Trail of Lights – although you have to be careful not to trample the toddlers. Later that night if you’re still in a celebratory mood, head over to the Vortex and check out the 10-year anniversary revival of comedian Rob Nash’s 12 Steps to a More Dysfunctional Christmas, a hilarious look at dashed expectations and familial dysfunction during the holidays. After all of the nauseating earnestness of Christmas, a little well-placed satire should make a nice aperitif.

Mr. Sinus Holiday Spectacular

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FRI., DEC. 19, 2003

Alrighty folks, it’s go time. No matter how hard you’ve been trying to shove the schmaltz to the back of your brain and concentrate on important matters, at some point you’re going to have to accept the fact that the holidaze are here. You have roughly five shopping days until Dec. 25 – that very special day when your dining-out options are limited to cuisines of the Pacific Rim. That’s actually a good thing. By C-Day you’ll be needing a few days at the bottom of the food pyramid. If you’re like the bulk of America, your diet until then will consist of mall pretzels, Chick-fil-A, Orange Julius, Lammes Candies and handfuls of Karmelkorn dredged out of huge, garishly decorated tins the size of oil drums. Don’t worry, the transition from Karmelkorn to baby corn is easier than you might think. If nothing else, the fiber will act as a nice purgative. If you’re looking for a purgative of a more spiritual nature, you might want to head over to the Alamo Drafthouse on Friday or Saturday and check out the 3rd Annual Mr. Sinus Holiday Spectacular. For several years now, Jerm, Owen, and John have made this a must-see staple of the Drafthouse’s holiday fare. The show includes more than 40 clips from classics like “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “The Fat Albert Christmas Special,” and “A Christmas Carol,” as well as lesser-known gems like the “Star Wars Holiday Special” and “Christmas Evil.” All are woven into the centerpiece of Frank Capra’s beloved 1946 classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but don’t expect to get misty-eyed with anything but laughter. Also included in the evening’s festivities are sing-alongs, drinking games, and free milk and cookies. This weekend features 7 and 9:45pm shows both Friday and Saturday, but you’ll still want to get your tickets online to nail down a seat.

Holiday Hullabaloo

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SAT., DEC. 13, 2003

If you haven’t had one already, your office holiday party is probably just around the corner. Try to reign in your excitement. Whether you’re down with the holidays or not, this annual outpouring of corporate cheer is worth every penny. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the big kind with lots of heavy food, hard liquor, and sentimental holiday schmaltz – the kind of party where your boss molts his scaly skin, dons a furry Santa hat, and does a reasonably competent interpretive dance routine to “Baby Got Back.” Go early and nail down a prime position next to the bar. Eventually someone will come along who’ll impress you with their lack of inhibition and decorum. Never mind that they’re teetering on the precipice of unemployment, a messy divorce, or outright insanity. That’s probably only the booze talking anyway. Just make sure you stay comfortably within their aurora of impropriety – at least long enough to work in a little of your own. For instance, even though you just finished a full eight-hour workday without even saying boo to the office hottie, make sure to give him or her a big, boozy, holiday hug at the party. You may not get another chance. You might even get hugged back. In the worst-case scenario, your brazenly emotional outpouring will most likely be ascribed to innocent holiday cheer rather than diabolical lechery. If by some unhappy coincidence or evil design you are bereft of a holiday party this season, you can work it over at Moxie & the Compound’s Holiday Hullabaloo this Saturday. From roughly noon to 10pm, you can eat pizza, drink vodka, shop for unique Austin-gifts and whatnot and listen to a dizzying variety of bands including but not limited to: Sarah Hickman, the Jellydots, Laura Freeman, Matt the Electrician, Floyd Domino & the Moxietones, Water, and Southpaw Jones. There is also a silent auction benefiting AIDS Services of Austin if you’re looking to blow your money on an even better cause. If shopping’s not your bag, baby, you can still get a massage, have your astrology read, or sit on Santa’s lap and have your picture taken – maybe even all at the same time. Go for it. Learning to gift yourself is the greatest gift of all.

Austin Ice Bats vs. Laredo Bucks

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FRI., DEC. 5, 2003

It’s upsetting for some that Austin bypasses fall and plunges directly into winter – no brilliant autumnal hues; no huge, playful piles of deciduous droppings; no crisp strolls through the pumpkin patch; no sweater weather. Well, actually, we do have sweater weather. It’s called winter. In Austin, winter happens when the daytime highs start clocking in at a pleasant 60 degrees. Regardless of what the thermometer says, those who put on wool in the morning will very likely be pulling it off in the afternoon. Sure, the mercury might plunge beneath freezing on occasion; the grass some mornings might be glazed with a silvery frost; you might wake up to find a delicate veneer of ice in the birdbath every once in a while, but by and large the “cold” is rarely intense enough to ruin a good game of Frisbee golf. If anything, winter weather in Austin drives people outdoors rather than in. Finally it’s comfortable to have a smoke on the patio or a jog through the greenbelt. You can even put the top down on your convertible without soaking your shirt, but drive carefully because everybody else in town is out running around blowing all of the money they’re saving on their utility bills. Even with all of the windfalls, however, there are still plenty of transplanted northerners who pine for the winter wonderlands of their youth. Somehow, occasionally seeing their breath in the morning isn’t enough. They long for pristine drifts of snow, icicles on the eaves, skating on the frozen pond – nothing wrong with that, but the only frozen ponds around these parts are indoors and glazed by a perpetually aloof looking guy on a Zamboni. Whether you’re a fan or not, hockey is an excellent way to experience winter without actually suffering through it. Happily, Austin has its own professional hockey team, the Ice Bats. Almost every week, the Ice Bats defend their slab out at the Travis County Expo Center, aka “The Bat Cave.” If you think the Ice Bats’ name is an odd combination, consider the fact that the Bat Cave normally serves as a rodeo arena (talk about your Texas-sized guano). Even still, the Bats play hard, fight hard, and provide a rollicking good evening of cool entertainment. This Friday at 7:30pm, the Ice Bats take on the Laredo Bucks, a fearsome group of transplanted northerners from an equally preposterous locale, climatologically. As an added bonus, local author Jason Cohen will be on hand to sign copies of his latest book, Zamboni Rodeo, a fascinating and hilarious look into the gritty world of minor league hockey. Literature? Hockey? Rodeo? How eclectic is that? Of course, no one in their right mind would try to tell you that a hockey game is a great place to meet the love of your life, but if hockey in Austin teaches us anything, it’s that weirder stuff can happen, right?

All Good Stuff

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SUN., NOV. 30, 2003

Thanksgiving again: Time to head back to dysfunction junction for a gut-busting glut of food, folks, and football; time to literally lean over the plate and take one for the team; time to reacquaint yourself with the marginal, milquetoast fare of thankful, yet ultimately starving puritan pilgrims. Start with the yam, aka “sweet potato” – but evidently not sweet enough to find its way to your plate without a generous crown of brown sugar, butter, and marshmallow – nothing more than window dressing for a profoundly ugly tuber. Is it dessert, or merely a side dish with an identity crisis? Then you have cranberries: Sliced, diced, minced, molded, pressed, or pureed, these are bitter, bitter berries – the only fruit that can take the fun out of Jell-O. How about turkey? Apparently all of the fish got used up fertilizing the corn, and these ugly, dim-witted fowl were the only fauna too slow to outrun a pilgrim with a stick. Yes, turkey is a serviceable protein substitute and a powerful sleeping aid, but these qualities alone hardly qualify it for holiday centerpiece status. When was the last time you enjoyed a bucket of Kentucky Fried Turkey? That’s no fluke, it’s epicurean Darwinism. Ahhh yes, and then you have the pumpkin. There are so many ways to enjoy pumpkins, and yet only a few of them involve actual ingestion – and then only if they’re generously lathered with a thick layer of whipped cream. Funny. Such a unique and delectable flavor deserves to be preserved and tasted year-round – sort of like that thing Dolly Madison does with the cherries and the apples. So why isn’t the San Joaquin Valley an endless sea of pumpkin patches? Same reason the Gap isn’t pushing pilgrim hats and shoes with big-assed buckles this season: Evolution. Now there’s something to be thankful for – that and the comforting thought that come Sunday, you can scream back to Austin and purge all of that boxed wine and leftover green bean casserole with a healthy dose of All Good Stuff, the high quality live variety show from the sharp minds at Two Note Solo. All Good Stuff is a hearty stone soup of readings, films, music, and favorite clips from its popular Open Screen Night that is sure to flush your spiritual plumbing. After a wholesome weekend of starch and stasis, a raucous night down at the Drafthouse is just what the doctor ordered … or at least recommended.

Drag the River at Beerland

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FRI., NOV. 21, 2003

If you really put some brain to it, this is probably your last weekend of normalcy before the shitstorm of holiday schmaltz blights the aesthetic landscape. By next Wednesday, you’ll have already begun the screaming descent into holiday hell, creeping along the slow road back to some faceless suburb in a doomed attempt to fulfill an outrageously outdated Rockwellian ideal. Even though the gun jumpers are already at work hanging lights, baking pies, knitting sweaters, and queuing up carols on the Muzak machine, there is still time for some happy commerce with the real world – one last chance to experience life that hasn’t been airbrushed to a cheesy, greeting-card gloss. If you’re looking for something real, try Beerland. There is a long list of adjectives that would describe Beerland, but gloss isn’t one of them. Situated somewhat anonymously between Elysium and Red Eyed Fly, Beerland offers cheap drinks, pool, video games, and, in their own words, “loud music” amplified to a certain extent by its cinderblock construction. What Beerland lacks in ambience, it makes up for in its bookings. Six nights a week Beerland books live music: lots of up-and-comers, first-rate punk bands, and an occasional roadshow score. This Friday is one such occasion as Beerland hosts Drag the River, a beer-soaked bar band from Fort Collins, Colo., featuring Armchair Martian songwriter Jon Snodgrass and All/Descendents frontman Chad Price. Although their roots are firmly in punk, Drag the River covers some of the same stylistic ground as current alt.country rock outfits like Wilco, Son Volt, and the Jayhawks, but with edgier lyrics and a crunchier sound. Filling out the bill are Austin punk band the Dirty Sweets, Minnesota’s the Switch, Chad Rex (who played guitar on a Drag the River CD), and local punk icon Spot. If you’re a little hesitant about a full evening of beer and punk/country, just remember that next weekend you’ll be glued to the sofa in a tryptophan coma watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The Resentments

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SUN., NOV. 16, 2003

If there were ever a geographical locus of the “Keep Austin Weird” battle, it would unquestionably be South Austin. While other parts of the city have already been blighted by chain stores and cultural homogenization, South Austin still retains much of the funk and freakiness for which Austin is known. Even still, corporate Generica is creeping its way up South Congress and pockmarking sections of South Lamar. It’s an unfortunate circumstance to be sure, but a lot of misplaced animosity gets laid on the greed mongers when in reality, they’re just a symptom of the real disease. Inevitably when creative, artistic types whip up a scene, moneyed folks are sure to follow – usually not with the intent of creating something unique and interesting themselves, but rather with the intent of buying into it. There’s the rub. South Austin used to be a funky, artsy, and ultimately cheap place to live. In recent years however, the hand-to-mouthers who created the scene are being pushed out by people with day jobs and Supercuts hairdos. Decent people, no doubt, but not the type of folks who are likely to roll down SoCo in an old Toyota Camry with thousands of Jesus statuettes glued to it. Truth is, weirdness doesn’t come from a marketing campaign, no matter how weird that marketing campaign is, and encouraging people to buy local is still encouraging them to buy. The cool thing about Austin and South Austin in particular is that it has always been a place where people are judged less by what they consume and more by what they create. Fortunately, South Austin still has more than its share of creative people. This Sunday night several of them will be gracing the stage at the Saxon Pub when the Resentments perform their weekly gig. Collectively they may not be overburdened with purchasing power, but Stephen Bruton, Jon Dee Graham, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, and Bruce Hughes all have enough chops to earn them cult status in South Austin. Bruton and Graham already have several impressive solo CDs under their belts and loyal followings outside of the Resentments. Scrappy Judd has a growing list of producing credits, and Bruce Hughes is an accomplished songwriter in his own right. It could easily be argued that the Resentments are South Austin’s supergroup. Stephen Bruton has performed with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan; Jon Dee Graham has played with the Skunks, True Believers, John Doe, and Michelle Shocked; Scrappy is a former member of Loose Diamonds, and Bruce has played with Poi Dog Pondering and Bob Schneider. Few other cities in America could claim as much talent in one city, much less a zip code, and you get the feeling that they’re still hanging around for love, not money. These days, that’s pretty weird.