Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival

October 18, 2011

First of all, if you’re offended by the term “gypsy,” back off. It ain’t like that. Here in Austin we think of gypsies as freedom-loving people who can’t be tied down – sort of like the homeless people in the Kris Kristofferson song “Me and Bobby McGee.” You know, the kind of folks who aren’t ashamed to hitchhike or carry a dirty red bandana, desperate types with “nothing left to lose.” This, of course, could describe a lot of people of unsavory mien: escaped convicts … psychopaths … terrorists … axe-murderers. But for the generally bourgeois demographic of Central Austin, the gypsy aesthetic is a much more benign and romantic notion. Like communism or gerbiling, having nothing left to lose is much more attractive as a theoretical construct than in actual practice. Being encumbered with nothing is the naive fantasy of those encumbered with too much. We all like to think of ourselves as Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild … all alone out there in the wild … surviving by our wit and instinct … never even asking the cameraman or sound engineer for a protein bar or a foot massage … really roughing it. Really, Bear Grylls is just like us … only he comes from a much better family and went to Eton College. Regardless, just because we’ve never been “busted flat in Baton Rouge” doesn’t mean we couldn’t handle it, even enjoy it. Really, who hasn’t fantasized about being flat broke and having to hitch a ride in the land of alligators, drunk Cajuns, and David Duke? What’s the worst that could happen? Sure, you might have to send an embarrassing text to your parents from your iPhone to get them to add some money to your checking account so you can get your morning Venti at Starbucks, but hey, that’s just the cost of your gypsy life of freedom, isn’t it? Even Bear Grylls gets tired of eating grubworms, showering in the snow, and shitting in the woods, Bear though he may be. The notion of freedom and self-reliance however, no matter how bankrupt and fallacious, still sounds sexy. Gypsies don’t have to worry about mortgages, car payments, utility bills, retirement accounts, taxes, or even holding down a job. The costumes are pretty fly as well. Think Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow or maybe Stevie Nicks in her goth phase: lots of dangly bling, tats, and billowy clothing, not to mention the obligatory bandana do-rag. Yes, the nomadic life has its romance and allure – well, at least the European version. Back in the day, Texas and most of the plains states were populated almost exclusively with exotically dressed nomads, until we killed most of them and herded the remainder into reservations. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose until you actually lose your freedom. Then it might as well just be another word for wings, antlers, or a 14-inch penis: something you don’t have. So rather than being a pejorative and ethnically erroneous label for the people of Romany, the term “gypsy” really denotes a longing for a romanticized ideal of what we don’t have: Freedom. In the case of the Gypsy Picnic, it’s the ability to roll up your awning, hitch up your trailer, and move it to some more desirable location … perhaps one that isn’t so visible to public health inspectors … or maybe someplace visible to nearly everyone. This weekend that place is Auditorium Shores, where nearly 40 food trailers from all across Austin will set up shop for the Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival. This is a great chance to sample a lot of different, interesting foods without the annoyance of silverware. Along with the food there will also be a craft beer bar with selections from independent breweries, live music (Boy, Alabama Shakes, Dale Watson, Hacienda, and Delta Spirit), and a trailer food cook-off judged by local celebrities including Bryan Beck, Todd Boatwright, and the Chronicle‘s Mick Vann. Admission is free, but bring some folding money because the food isn’t. Each trailer will, however, offer one signature food item for $3. To some that might seem a little steep for something bought off the back of a roach wagon, but this is Austin, so even our trailer food is bourgeois. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Maybe real freedom is blowing all your money on beer and trailer food.

Second Annual Freak Show Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 12, 2011

Well now that we’ve had some rain, there’s not much to bitch about anymore except the economy. Have at it. Chances are your social circle is far too small and your voice much too weak to reach someone who can do something about it. Like rain, the economy is either going to fall or it isn’t. Sure you can scrawl out a pithy message on a cardboard sign, march shirtless through the financial district, and spew vague, long-winded, accusatory diatribes, but in the end, your words and actions will have about the same effect as a small puff of silver iodide in a nascent rain cloud. Yes, there are some real rainmakers out there, but unfortunately right now they’re comfortable enough to ride out this rough patch and see what happens. You can’t expect America’s billionaires to blow their great-great-grandchildren’s nest eggs on risky investments just because a whole generation of middle-class liberal arts grads can’t pay off their student loans. OK, that wasn’t fair. Fine arts grads are similarly screwed – it’s just that they were expecting a good rogering. At least they have the sense to settle for menial service-industry jobs that make them wish they had majored in Spanish. Of course, some would say that these legions of the overly educated unemployed are an indictment of the utility of higher education. We have Google, goddamnit – isn’t that enough? Besides, educating people doesn’t necessarily increase their happiness or satisfaction. If anything, it only makes them more keenly aware of things like gross financial malfeasance or shocking social inequity. What good does that do for the economy? Protesters aren’t big spenders. Instead of spending their time spending money they spend it rummaging through dumpsters looking for cardboard that doesn’t smell like rotting lettuce. Ultimately, this type of nonconsumerist activity plunges America even further down its wormhole of economic uncertainty. It sort of goes without saying that public protests erode consumer confidence, which, in turn, creates a hostile investment climate. Think Greece. Of course, really diabolical investors – the type of people who made bank on Dow Chemical during Vietnam or on Halliburton during Desert Storm – are probably snatching up shares of Newell Rubbermaid, which owns Sanford Manufacturing Co., the makers of Sharpie-brand permanent markers. You can’t find those in a Dumpster … and even if you could, chances are the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. In fact, Dumpster juice isn’t worth much at all other than being the signature cologne of the pariah. Most people would rather cough up a pint of plasma than go hogging for that kind of needle in a haystack. Plus, once you’ve cashed in on your blood donation, you get an even better buzz from the Sharpie fumes. That could explain the erratic and sometimes incomprehensible nature of some of the protest signs. The same could be said of a lot of the protest rhetoric as well. Being mad at the bankers and businessmen plays well on the evening news, but the bottom line is that they’re not the policymakers. They are simply playing by the rules that they bought. They are accountable to no one but their shareholders. Members of Congress, however, are accountable to their constituents. Sure, you can make a lot of noise barking up the wrong tree, but that won’t put dinner on the table, and eventually you’ll get tired of barking. For an example of how to really occupy a street, check out the Freak Show Festival, “a one-day, outdoor festival combining the Performance Art of the ‘Circus Freak’ with Rockabilly & Psychobilly Music.” The festival will take place this Saturday at Fourth and Waller. Yes, it’s crazy and confusing, but at least they’re selling tickets to it, which can only stimulate economic growth. Isn’t that what we really need? Well, that and a fresh pack of Sharpies. Here’s the music lineup: Mad Sin, Devil Doll, Koffin Kats, Calabrese, Pickled Punks, and the Danger*Cakes. Plus the freaks: 999 Eyes, Brass Ovaries, Dolls From the Crypt, Minor Mishap Marching Band, and Aztlan Arts. Have at it.

Central Texas Paranormal Conference

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 5, 2011

New bumper sticker: Keep Austin Paranormal. That’s pretty close to weird, isn’t it? OK, so maybe not in a dreads-and-tie-dye kind of way or a bike-with-a-really-high-seat kind of way or a whole-body-tattoo-with-whisker-implants kind of way, but you have to admit, ghosts are pretty freaking weird – nearly as weird as people who believe in them. No, not just Christians … all sorts of folks believe in haints: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists … even Wiccans. Interestingly, leaders in all the preceding religions like to rock flowing robes – sort of like ghosts themselves. Perhaps that gives them some extra spiritual clout. Catholic Christians like to accessorize their ghost costumes with lots of bling. Yo! All y’all indigenous peoples! Catholic heaven is awesome! Check out these gemstones … get a whiff of some of this “incense” … and take a long swig from some of this sacrificial wine! Woot! Buddhists, on the other hand, go for more of a low profile – well at least as far as personal style points. Like ghosts, Buddhist monks aren’t real chatty. Makes sense. Ghosts – at least in a classic, ethereal sense – don’t have vocal chords. Maybe that’s why they’re always moaning or wailing or appearing exasperated with their inability to communicate – sort of like Rick Perry at a Republican presidential debate. Buddhists do have some impressive temples. Of course, the same could be said of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. There is probably some correlation between the ostentatious architecture of temples, cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues and dazzling, gaudy Vegas casinos, but why throw stones at glass houses? Either way it’s a roll of the dice. At least in a casino you get free drinks as long as you’re gambling. The Catholics have a similar program, but you have to share cooties with the rest of the congregation (don’t trip, there’s only a small chance you might get mouth herpes, syphilis, and a teeming stew of other frightening pathogens by taking a swig from the sacramental chalice). Diseases are nearly invisible and spooky in their own right, but they became not quite as spooky (OK, Ebola excepted) once we could see them under a microscope. Back in the olden days (olden is such an olden word, isn’t it?), people burned incense, bathed in urine, drank pus, and covered themselves with leeches to ward off plague and pestilence. Fortunately, through the miracles of advanced optics and the scientific method, people eventually learned to take a fucking bath, stop sleeping with their farm animals, and stop piling corpses in the streets. Thank God (OK, God, we might have to chalk this one up to science. We’re still cool, right?) people no longer have to anoint themselves with oil, wear talismans, or burn incense anymore, eh? It’s called evolution (although admittedly burning incense is not a bad idea if you’ve been smoking pot in your dorm room). The important thing to remember is that unless your incense is actually a Raid flea bomb, it’s not helping you one iota against the plague. Here’s the bottom line: Stuff you can’t see is often scary, but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. For instance: Axe body spray = scary, unseen. Yes, we have five senses, and Axe body spray eats up at least two or three of them, but sometimes those senses can’t tell the whole story. If they did, you could do your own MRI. Science and technology may be advancing at a mind-boggling pace, but what we don’t know is still nearly limitless. So when it comes to the paranormal, we should maybe get off our high horses a little. Good news! You’ll have an opportunity to do that this weekend at the Central Texas Paranormal Conference, a two-day event taking place at the Norris Conference Center at Northcross Mall. Speakers include the SyFy Channel’s Dustin Pari (Ghost Hunters International); the Klinge Brothers, from the Discovery Channel’s Ghost Lab; Dash Beardsley, “The Ghost Man of Galveston”; and Aron Houdini, great-nephew of Harry Houdini, among others. There will also be a vendor area with an aura photographer, palmists, a Reiki practitioner, crystal readers, entity clearers, and plain ol’ psychics. If you get your aura photographed, you will definitely have to get off your high horse. You’ll also be keeping Austin paranormal.

Gagarazzi: A Lady Gaga Burlesque and Variety Show

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 28, 2011

Time to head down to the butcher shop so you can start putting your costume together. Meat is fairly expensive, and you’re no pop star, so you might want to go with one of the less expensive cuts – perhaps a flank steak or a skirt steak (a skirt steak miniskirt?) or maybe even something made out of a hanger steak, although with the hanger steak you’re opening yourself up to a heaping helping of extended labia jokes. Chin up, outrageousness doesn’t come without a certain amount of unwanted attention. Besides, every woman has wizard sleeves, it’s just that some are short like the ones on Roger Daltrey’s T-shirt in *Tommy*, and some are long and dangly like Merlin’s. The important thing to remember is that they’re all magical! In fashion, however, the way your meat hangs is crucial. You can’t just stitch together a bunch of chunks of shoulder steak and call it haute couture. Tim Gunn would pitch a fit. Heidi Klum would fold her arms and wither you with her harsh, Teutonic glare. No, your meat has to drape elegantly and in a way that accentuates your figure, is pleasing to the eye, and makes a confident, innovative fashion statement. Really, it’s a roll of the dice, and you don’t want to play it too conservatively. In fact, you may not want to wear meat at all – especially if you’re a ginger. That’s red-on-red crime. Besides, red meat is becoming increasingly passé because of PETA, mad cow disease, and those adorable Chick-fil-a billboards. Those cowz may be right. Maybe you should switch to chicken … not for the feathers … feathers are so … done, but it’s probably a safe bet that no one has ever fashioned a glamorous outfit out of gizzards – cooked or uncooked. There has to be some use for chicken skin as well … other than, of course, being the best, most flavorful part of a piece of Popeyes’ extra-crispy. Imagine a string bikini fashioned out of chicken skin and tendons … maybe with some wishbone earrings and a neck bone pendant. Breathtakingly accessorized with a chicken claw key chain and wattle coin purse. Being a flightless fowl though, chickens are pretty pedestrian. You might be one of those trendsetters who likes to test limits. If so, you may be better off abandoning the phylum Chordata altogether. If Google is to be trusted, no one to date has ever made an evening gown out of live earthworms. Maybe it’s because the demise of home economics as a high school elective course has cheated so many youngsters out of an ability to sew, or maybe it’s because an evening gown made out of earthworms would be fucking disgusting. Doesn’t matter. If you have the chutzpah to rock a revolutionary look like that, go for it. Just remember you’re going to want to carry around a spritzer bottle. Earthworms tend to dry out in the air conditioning. Sure, an earthworm evening gown would be a showstopper, but it would also be a lot of work … and much of it with a shovel. You might be the belle of the ball for a while, but the shine on your penny will quickly fade once everyone finds out you have the calloused handshake of a lumberjack. As much as the heavenly softness of chinchilla fur argues otherwise, maybe humans have reached an evolutionary stage where we don’t need to use animals for clothing. Or maybe that’s painfully obvious, and wearing animals to protest the wearing of animals is sort of like killing people to show people that killing people is wrong. Seems a little stupid, doesn’t it? Well, we wouldn’t have our pop stars any other way. We don’t ask that they be the brightest bulb on the tree – just the pretty one that flashes the most. Right Lindsay Lohan? You betcha! This Friday night at the HighBall is your chance to do some flashing of your own at Gagarazzi: A Lady Gaga Burlesque and Variety Show. Enjoy drink specials, a raffle, comedy, music, and a dance party that lasts into the wee hours. Most importantly, there will be a costume contest and paparazzi judges who will take your picture and maybe even make you a star! Proceeds benefit Equality Texas, a group that lobbies against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Queensrÿche

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 21,2011

You may be one of those whippersnappers whose image of the Eighties looks a lot like Arnold’s Drive-In: Richie, Potsie, and Ralph Malph sitting around sipping cherry cokes concocting crazy schemes on how to get to second base with girls who sadly lacked the benefit of reliable birth control. The most dangerous person they know … a diminutive “grease monkey” named Fonzie who rides a motorcycle … occasionally drops by, smiles, gives them the thumbs up and says, “Ayyyyy.” Why is he so happy? Because even though he’s a high-school dropout, he’s at least smart enough to date slutty girls who know how to French kiss. Anyway … yeah … that was the Eighties. Pretty much. There were some notable exceptions, of course. In the Eighties, the drugs were much better and more plentiful – not just the aforementioned birth control (knucks to Planned Parenthood on that deal) but even funner drugs like Ecstasy (I love you, maaannn!), expensive drugs like cocaine (I can take your fucking bullets!), dangerously addictive drugs like crack (I’ll suck your dick for a dollar!), and, of course, what may end up being Time‘s “Idiot Drug of the Century,” meth (Dude, what happened to your teeth?!). Despite the Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s inspired frying egg PSA (“This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs.”), sales were up in the Eighties. If anything the PSA should have said: “This is your egg. This is your egg on progesterone.” Yes, people were doing staggering amounts of drugs in the Eighties, but they were also getting it on like chinchillas, and the pill certainly had its part in greasing that orgy of mindless, irresponsible sex, metaphorically speaking. In the early Eighties, the worst consequence of having unprotected sex was herpes. Sure, there were other diseases that would rot your crotch with greater rapaciousness, but ultimately they were all curable … well, after you made the obligatory series of embarrassing phone calls demanded by the clinic. Herpes however, while lacking the flesh ravaging spectacle of say, syphilis, was incurable and permanent – like an obnoxious personality. Herpes was (and still is) a one-way ticket to the Island of Permanently Damaged Toys. However, most people find that once they get there, island living isn’t so bad, and given that one in six Americans has genital herpes, it’s a bumpin’ party – both figuratively and literally. However terrifying the prospect of herpes might have been, it was no deterrent whatsoever to the roiling, drug-greased clusterfuck of the early Eighties. Fortunately, there were other deterrents that had some success in that area. For instance: Preppy fashion made a valiant attempt at covering America’s Me Generation hedonism with a respectable Victorian veneer. Call it a reactionary backlash against the buckskin-halter-top, free-love hippie days of the Seventies, but Eighties preppy style drove sex off the runway and back into the bedroom where it could really get freaky. The only thing remotely sexy about walking shorts, wool sweaters, or Weejuns was how desperately you wanted to take them off. It’s understandable that preppy fashion couldn’t keep America’s libido caged for long. Soon enough America began a torrid affair with ripped clothing and spandex. The emergence of spandex as a fashion statement will very likely someday be considered a prime indicator of the decline of Western civilization. Initially a revolutionary synthetic praised for its utility and elasticity in a variety of applications, this once-worthy fabric quickly became an easy way to show off your junk without having to walk around in trench coat. Not surprisingly, this aspect of spandex was fondly embraced by rock musicians who wanted a way to showcase their biggest and perhaps only muscle. Soon enough, spandex became the go-to look for rock bands of the Eighties, some of whom, it could be argued, had little else to offer. Not so of the band Queensrÿche, who managed to fuse spandex, musicianship, and skillfully crafted heavy metal arrangements into a career that spans three decades and includes 20 million in worldwide album sales. You can’t go back and live the glory days, but fortunately Queensrÿche will bring them to you this Sunday in a fist-pumping, devil-finger-throwing rock concert at Emo’s East. Expect an arena show that’s in your face … and maybe a mooseknuckle or two.

Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 14, 2011

One thing’s for certain: Dyslexia is a hibtc. Words are hard enough to understand without having to play a game of mental jumble every time you’re confronted with a line of text. Plus, it’s extra difficult getting the subtext when you’re struggling to get the text – forest for the trees and whatnot. Sometimes the subtext is the most important part … the icing on the cake or maybe the razor inside the apple. Without subtext you wouldn’t have nuance or tone. Those three preceding nouns are fairly vital components to emotional communication, and missing them is missing the full message – maybe the entire message. For instance, take the following sentence: You’re a fucking dick. Taken literally, it’s a fairly straightforward message: You are a penis engaged in the act of intercourse. Simple enough, right? But to most people outside a mental hospital, the real message of that statement is that the object thereof is an insensitive/obnoxious/aggressive person – likely a male in this case. By the way, there is a female version too, but it’s even more incendiary, and unless you’re from Ireland or doing a one-man show on the life and writings of Chaucer, you’d be better served by utilizing the Italian word contessa and simply overemphasizing the first syllable. Unfortunately, that’s one of the many advantages of oration that isn’t available in the two-dimensional worlds of ink on paper or pixels on screen. It’s been said that somewhere between 60% and 90% of communication is nonverbal. That seems accurate. When you start parsing sentences, you find that verbs are pretty rare, all in all. They’re mostly just a jumble of nouns, pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives – the starchy ingredients of a tasteless grammatical stew, so to speak. To get real communication, you have to have the emotional roux provided by subtext. Grammar is so BORing, isn’t it? GAWD. Sadly, the written word will forever be hamstrung by its inability communicate emotion nonverbally. If only there were a grammatical equivalent of John Belushi’s eyebrows, Marilyn Monroe’s upthrust cleavage, or Martin Luther King’s oratory quaver. Yes, you can add an emoticon, but for most people, tacking on an emoticon is like sending a cute kitten picture: It either makes you so weak-kneed with fawning adoration that you forget all communication that preceded it, or it makes you want to choke the living shit out of the sender for mucking up the message with extraneous cutesy bullshit. No. There is no middle ground. Emoticons are best suited for fleeing from ghosts in Pac-Man mazes. Putting a smiley face at the end of a sentence means you haven’t done your fucking job as a writer. J. Considering all of this should at least, in some small way, give you insight into the challenges of dyslexia, even if you continue to be insensitive to its suffers. Sometimes being cute or funny with language only obscures the message and infuriates those who struggle to comprehend it. Fortunately, the guys who put together the Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta recognize this and added a clarifying “F” to the end of their acronym to avoid confusion with the other big music festival happening this weekend. ACLF: Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and it’s happening Thursday through Sunday at Lovejoys, the Hole in the Wall, Trophy’s, and the Scoot Inn. The lineup is an A-List of bands antithetical to the shoegazer set. It also leans hard toward rockabilly/country with a punk aesthetic, but if you like your music with a heavy dose of hardcore, hell-raising humor, you won’t want to miss this party. Try Friday’s show at the Hole in the Wall. Here’s who’s on the bill: Monkeyshines, Glambilly, Hickoids, Billy Joe Winghead, Poor Dumb Bastards, and the Beaumonts. Pay attention to the name: You really are going to need to love corn and love to party.

Alamo Drafhouse & Parkside Present: Rolling Roadshow – ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 7, 2011

If you saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off during its opening run, your tattoos are probably green. Wait a minute … you probably don’t have tattoos – at least not ones old enough to be green. Back in the ’80s, tattoos were mainly sported by sailors, bikers, and gangbangers … not exactly the demo John Hughes was targeting when he cast Matthew Broderick as Bueller. This is not to say gangbangers wouldn’t have enjoyed Matthew Broderick, but most likely it would have been in a prison setting rather than in a theatre. In fact, even today it’s probably a good idea for Matthew Broderick to avoid prisons altogether – unless he would like to get his own tattoo: BITCH. No dis to Matthew, but if he ever gets the slightest inkling he might get sent to the big house, he should start hitting the weights. A movie star of his caliber should easily be able to afford a top-notch personal trainer and high-quality steroids. If not, what’s it all worth, really? It’s frightening to think that the payoff for being an ’80s teen idol is a receding hairline, pasty skin, and Sarah Jessica Parker. And yet … it could be worse. He could be one of the Coreys. All in all, Broderick has done all right for an ’80s teen star. His impressive run includes hits like WarGames, Election, and Glory, and then some other movies … like Godzilla and The Road to Wellville – the kind of cinematic train wrecks that make you wonder if Broderick even bothers reading his scripts … or maybe he’s just high as a bat’s ass when he does, which is the only reasonable explanation for Inspector Gadget. Whether he read the script or just got lucky, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was a monster wave that Broderick still rides to this day. Not only did it make Broderick bulletproof, it also launched/enabled the careers of several other actors as well. For instance: Jennifer Grey. Her prize for playing Bueller’s bitter little sister was a quick snog with a pre-hookers-and-coke Charlie Sheen. She also scored a co-starring role in Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze, which apparently made her so self-conscious she went out and bought a brand-new schnoz. That youthful indiscretion and her limited acting ability eventually spelled doom for her showbiz career. Oh well, at least she got to play tonsil hockey with Charlie Sheen when he still had humility and a septum. Sheen cannonballed his cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with a starring role in Platoon and a rather spectacular string of forgettable films until he found his groove playing the asshole brother of another ’80s star, Jon Cryer. Perhaps the most improbable career launch from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is that of Ben Stein, who played Bueller’s monotone, nasal-voiced economics teacher. In an odd twist of Hollywood’s star-making machinery, Ben Stein was actually a man of distinction and achievement before becoming a famous actor. A Yale Law School valedictorian, Stein was also a trial lawyer, a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and a columnist for a variety of impressive publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and New York magazine. After Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he ruined his reputation by hosting Win Ben Stein’s Money and Turn Ben Stein On, the shameless Hollywood equivalent of humping fame’s leg like a randy Chihuahua. Regardless of the indulgences and indiscretions of its cast, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is still an entertaining critique of materialist and status-conscious ’80s culture. Sure, it’s an easy knockoff of nonconformist fictional heroes like Don Quixote, Robin Hood, and Huck Finn, but it’s still fun nonetheless. If you somehow missed it the first few thousand times it’s been shown, you should definitely head down to the 500 block of San Jacinto (between Fifth and Sixth streets) for a Rolling Roadshow presentation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off presented by Parkside restaurant and the Alamo Drafthouse. Bring a lawn chair, buy some suds and grub at the food and beer tents, and (re)acquaint yourself with this American classic. Proceeds benefit the 6ixth Street Austin Association, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the historic Sixth Street Entertainment District.

Out of Bounds Comedy Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

August 31, 2011

How much comedy can anyone truly take? That’s a very serious question, isn’t it? The mere prospect of six or so hours of gut-splitting hilarity should give anyone pause – well, at least anyone not swaddled in extra-absorbent Depends and clutching an empty paper sack. Just because you’ve never laughed until you peed doesn’t necessarily mean you have exceptional bladder control. It might just mean you have no sense of humor – or at the very least that your mother/father/brother/sister/cousin/girlfriend/boyfriend/priest never successfully located and exploited your tickle gland. If so, let your incontinence be a badge of honor. Better to be scarred by the embarrassing memory of soaking your birthday dress doubled over in paroxysms of mirth while being entertained by the comedy stylings of Chuckles the Party Clown than to be a dry-pantied old sourpuss with a superiority complex. Better to lose your dignity than your sense of humor. Besides, dignity is the consolation prize you earn after years and years of maddening incredulity, humiliation, and abuse – when your ego has been polished smooth like a river stone. A sense of humor, on the other hand, is a precious gift – a survival instinct that keeps you from being crushed by the gravity, cruelty, and absurdity of life. Yes, it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself … even and especially if you’re not all that funny … but it’s also important to be able to laugh at others. Laughter is one of the most important ways we share commonality. It’s also one of the ways we enforce uniformity … generally through ridicule. Were ridicule not effective, you would probably still be wearing shirts with tattoo designs printed on them … or bright-orange Crocs … or pleated jeans … or that spectacularly luxurious Kentucky Waterfall mullet you sported back in the early Nineties (yeah, you couldn’t let go, could you?). If your friends had been blessed with the miracle of Facebook back in those days, they would have just posted a few pages of witheringly mean comments under your profile photo instead of mercilessly teasing you to your face until you finally shaved your head smooth like Chad Taylor from Live … or Telly Savalas … or Howie Mandel … or Michael Chiklis. Whatever, the important thing is that their merciless ridicule and laughter motivated you to switch from a silly, white-trash hairstyle to no hairstyle at all. Put that one in the win column for the hyenas. Hilarity, like misery, loves company. Humor not only motivates personal change, it can effect societal change as well. Who can forget the wicked satire of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” or George Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003? There probably wasn’t a dry pant leg on that entire flight deck. Of course, let’s not be too generous in extolling the virtues of humor. Laughter may sometimes be the best medicine, but sometimes it can make you sick (Carrot Top), crazy (Gallagher), or give you a headache (Roseanne Barr). The sad truth is that not all comedy is gold. If you sit through enough of it, you’ll find more slag than precious metal, but sometimes the treasure is worth the effort. This weekend the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival (or OOB … rhymes with “boob” … what are the chances?) is celebrating its 10th year of bringing sketch, improv, and stand-up comedy from across America to the “live music capital of the world.” Great idea! Austin could stand a different kind of wanking – at least for a weekend, right? Through Monday you can check out some of the best up-and-coming comics in America at the Hideout Theatre, the State Theatre, ColdTowne Theater, and the Velveeta Room. If you’re not terribly adventurous, Labor Day night at the State you can catch Saturday Night Live star Tim Meadows’ comedy trio Uncle’s Brother. That should be worth a pair of Depends at least.

2011 ‘Austin Chronicle’ Hot Sauce Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

Augusat 24, 2011

The 2011 Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is this Sunday at Waterloo Park. That’s all you really need to know. Even still, you might have some questions. You might, for instance, wonder why the Hot Sauce Festival logo features a dude on a dirt bike. Touché. Nailed us on that one. Dirt bikes are wicked cool and whatnot, but they don’t really have much to do with hot sauce. Correct. So, why is there a dirt bike in the logo? Here’s why: Because it isn’t a Doberman in a Quaker bonnet or a clown with a vacuum cleaner. It’s not difficult to imagine that after 21 years of Hot Sauce Festival logos, we’ve completely exhausted meaningful hot sauce iconography. We’ve had the chips and hot sauce bowls; the cowboy/-girl riding the jalapeño; the hot-sauce-eating bat/armadillo; the sweating, hot-sauce-eating Satan; the happy tomato; and even a logo that included a cherub with flames shooting out of its mouth and ass. Like Keith Richards, we’ve pretty much done it all. Next year expect a logo that features Slim Pickens riding a jalapeño into an apocalyptic bowl of hot sauce. Just sayin’. Nonetheless, if you’re counting on this year’s logo for information about what to expect at the festival, that’s probably a mistake. Yes there will be flames and peppers, but dirt bikes are strictly verboten on festival grounds, even if they are wicked cool. There are, however, some things you can expect, so you should be prepared. Expect it to be hot. Not only will the temperature be in the 100-plus range, there be will thousands of hot, sweaty people who will be radiating a considerable amount of heat themselves – an amazing amount of biomass considering the temperature. Plus, they will all be eating hot sauce and swearing – with watery eyes and flushed faces – that they love it. They really do too … so much that they bring along their children, even babies in strollers (who truly wouldn’t want to miss it), as well as dogs (ideally festooned with a jaunty bandana fastened about the neck to ward off the chill) and all manner of other attention-grabbing fauna: sugar gliders, hamsters, snakes, parrots, falcons, really anything that might entice a curious member of the opposite sex to strike up a conversation. Really, if you haven’t bought a spider monkey in an attempt to reel in some strange at an outdoor festival, you probably don’t even care about getting laid at all. Something else you should expect at the Hot Sauce Festival: dirty feet. If that’s something that bothers you, keep your chin up. Shoes are hot. Dirty feet in flip-flops are not. It’s that simple. You may have the priciest pedicure in town, but after you’ve shuffled around Waterloo Park in late August for a few hours, your feet are going to look like you spent the day hippie-spin-dancing at a Leftover Salmon concert. That’s bad, yes, but it could be worse: You could be wearing Vibram FiveFingers. That kind of ugly you can’t wash off. There’s plenty of pretty stuff, too. Some people actually look better when they’re hot and sweaty. Just think of the Hot Sauce Festival as one big, hot oil-wrestling match with snacks included – only the hot oil is perspiration. Well, either it’s that or the tiny sample drop of habanero oil on the end of a toothpick that ruins your taste buds for the rest of the day. Really, the only way to fight the heat is with ass-coal bear. No, that’s not a typo. It’s a phonetic representation of the way Texans pronounce the phrase “ice-cold beer.” You could also drink ass-coal warter, but that wouldn’t make it a festival, would it? Water isn’t very festive, but bands are, and the Hot Sauce Festival has a lineup that will surely dirty up your dancing feet: Schmillion, Moonlight Social, Foot Patrol, La Guerrilla, and the Bright Light Social Hour. Best of all, the Hot Sauce Festival doesn’t put a dent in your wallet; it frees up space in your pantry. All it takes to get in is a donation of three nonperishable food items to the Capital Area Food Bank. That’s all you really need to know.

Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins

The Luv Doc Recommends

August 17. 2011

Yes, it was Molly Ivins who invented the nickname “Gov. Goodhair” for Rick Perry. That single instance of wickedly brilliant wordplay is much more of a literary legacy than most political commentators can claim in a lifetime. In fact, it could be argued that the nickname alone is enough to warrant a one-woman theatrical homage, but Ivins’ trove of bons mots and “isms” is exceedingly full. It’s true Ivins possessed a rapier wit, but it also has to be acknowledged that Texas and Texas politicians never failed to provide bushel after bushel of low-hanging fruit: Dolph “Bread Puddin'” Briscoe, Bill “Burr Butt” Clements, Clayton “Dick Stompin'” Williams, George W. “Shrub” Bush, and of course Gov. Goodhair himself – not to mention the constantly changing clown car of the Texas Legislature, whose madcap hijinks kept Ivins’ typewriter humming. National politics weren’t off her radar either. Ronald Reagan was described as, “so dumb that if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards.” She once said that “calling George Bush [Sr.] shallow is like calling a dwarf short.” Oh, snap! Then there was Shrub, the infamous post turtle (Google it) who arguably cemented Ivins’ status as a sound bite pundit. Why not? Ivins had a knack for summing up politicians and policy with incisive, accessible, humorous one-liners. On gun control: “I’m not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife.” On Texas: “It’s a low-tax, low-service state – so shoot us.” On moral leadership: “You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It’s their job.” On Bill Clinton: “I still believe in hope – mostly because there’s no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.” Even though she took plenty of shots at her own party, Ivins was universally adored by liberals and had the grudging respect of many conservatives. Regardless of party affiliation, it’s hard not to appreciate someone who calls ’em like she sees ’em. Unless, of course, you’re Michael Dukakis, of whom Ivins once said: “This man has got no Elvis. He needs a charisma transplant.” Whether you were down with the Duk or not, it’s hard to argue with that assessment. Say what you will about George Senior, at least he had the wisdom to not let himself be filmed while power-walking with a pair of Heavyhands aerobic weights. What were you thinking, Duk? Not even a spin around the General Dynamics parking lot in an M1 tank could butch up that image. Imagine if President Obama was filmed during his presidential campaign doing his morning workout with a Shake Weights? Perhaps the most important thing to remember about Ivins is that she was a liberal progressive with balls – metaphorically, at least – though it could be argued that she had enough swagger and chutzpah to warrant an actual package check. It’s too bad Ivins is no longer with us. Her antagonistic defense of progressive, populist politics is sorely missed these days, and it’s a good bet she would have secretly relished the thought of skewering “The Coiffure,” aka “The Ken Doll,” all the way to Election Day. Don’t let the gloom overtake you. If you find yourself missing Molly Ivins more and more these days, the best thing to do is to head down to Zach Theatre for Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, a one-woman show starring Barbara Chisholm, a local fixture of stages and screens who has been voted Austin’s favorite actress in The Austin Chronicle‘s “Best of Austin” Readers Poll. If you don’t see this show … Gov. Goodhair wins. Then again, he probably will even if you don’t.