BCS National Championship at Alamo Ritz

January 6, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz

Austin is a pretty cool town. Thankfully, it’s not too cool for football. Austinites will dork out for a Longhorn game every bit as much as they will for a Buttnumbathon, a Makers Faire, or an Eeyore’s. Admittedly, Longhorn fans are by far a scarier brand of dork than you will find at most other Austin events. Not only are they usually amped up on adrenaline and testosterone, they’re often holding back some serious pent-up rage, mainly the residual effect of watching four hours of Greg Davis’ offensive coordinating. Dear, sweet, merciful Jesus, for once could you please tell Mr. Davis to just let the big dogs eat? This three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust shit may be taking its toll on the opposing defense, but it’s even more exhausting for the fans. Who knows how many aneurysms, broken TV screens, and cases of domestic violence were the result of the 2009 Big 12 Championship game? Sure, the final one second was exciting, but the rest of it was like spending an afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles. At least Nebraska fans got the vicarious thrill of watching Ndamukong Suh toss the Texas offensive line around like a bunch of rag dolls. The only thing missing was the eponymous Johnny Cash song as background music. Don’t worry, ABC will surely queue that up at some point in the BCS pregame show. Still, regardless of all the bitching (or perhaps in spite of it) big Greg’s offense put up just enough points to get the Longhorns to the dance once again. Years from now in the historically embellished retelling of the glorious 2009 season, it will be the golden toe of Hunter Lawrence that gets all the glory. And tiny Hunter slew the Goliath Ndamukong with the graceful sweep of his European-soccer-style kick, and the fans burst onto the field and did hoist him upon their shoulders and laud his name. The real story however, took place up in the lonely press box high above the field, where ol’ Greg Davis took off his headset, leaned back in his chair, and as is his custom, said a little prayer of thanks to the Lord for letting him feed off the entrails of Will Muschamp’s defense once again. So, what does all this have to do with you tapping some strange? Next to nothing. Regardless of how it’s portrayed on gay porn sites, football is mostly a sexless endeavor. Those well oiled, accidental, post-steam-bath, locker-room three-ways involving the tight end, punter, and fullback never really happen … unless they actually take place on a porn film set. This is not to say that you can’t get as lucky as Hunter Lawrence and the Longhorns at a football game. Au contraire. In Texas, football is as legitimate a foreplay technique as beaver slapping and tonsil hockey and, ultimately, equally successful. Plus, like sex, you don’t need to know much about football to enjoy it. You just need to be enthusiastic and get your game face on. If you’re one of those few remaining hermits or foreigners who hasn’t decided whether football is for you, a good way to test it out is at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz, where Thursday night it will be shoring the BCS National Championship on the big screen … for free! The theatre should be full of Longhorn fans, but you can reserve a seat by purchasing a $5 food and drink voucher online. With so many people wearing such an ugly shade of orange, you should be able to talk someone out of their clothes. Hey, the Longhorns got lucky. Maybe you can too.

Jean-Claude Van Damme Thanksgiving Dinner

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November 24, 2008

Thanksgiving. What an awesome opportunity to sabotage the Rockwellian preconceptions of family and friends. If you’re full of loathing at the thought of this year’s Turkey Day being another endless, boring, bloated, recliner-bound football watching fart fest, don’t despair. You just need an attitude adjustment. You need to get on the right side of Thanksgiving. First, start by meditating on how wonderfully lucky you are to be in America instead of some dust pit like Somalia, whose version of tailgating involves an ultimate fighting death match with a few hundred other motivated contestants for a sack of rice tossed off the back of an Oxfam aid truck. Check. You’re in the plus column there. That alone should be enough to make you want to put on a pilgrim outfit and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but this is America. You don’t have to attend the pep rally if you don’t want to. All you have to do to get in the spirit of Thanksgiving is to be thankful. That other attendant bullshit is all negotiable. Traditions are swell, but like laws, rules, hearts, and piñatas, they were made to be broken. Just because your Thanksgiving doesn’t look like it leapt out of the pages of Martha Stewart Living doesn’t mean you aren’t doing the holiday justice. You can be equally thankful with malt liquor and chili dogs. Sure, Bo Pilgrim would like you to stuff your gob with gobbler, but that doesn’t mean you can’t whip up a big batch of Bhindi masala or sag paneer. If the pilgrims had run into the same American Indians Columbus was looking for, they would have feasted on that stuff anyway. There’s no reason your culinary expression of gratitude should be the byproduct of the navigational ineptitude of an Italian glory whore. Show your thanks with something you’re truly thankful for. If you can honestly look into your heart and say your favorite dish is oven-roasted turkey with giblet gravy, then rock that shit, yo, but if you’re into sushi or baby-back ribs or baba ghanoush, don’t let tradition con you into buying canned cranberry sauce. Seriously, cranberries are only barely tolerated by people with urinary tract infections. Maybe the pilgrims had a lot of trouble peeing. Who knows? It doesn’t mean they had to lay that trip on you, though. Similarly, if you prefer margaritas or banana daiquiris over white wine or beer. Treat yourself. It might be a little awkward when you show up at your mother-in-law’s house with a quart of hooch and a blender, but she can’t say you aren’t festive. Plus, the tequila should help counteract the Demerol effect of the turkey. After all, nothing says party like a roomful of fat nappers, eh? Then again, you can just blow the whole thing off and be thankful that you’re not one of them. In that case, you’ll want to thank the Alamo Drafthouse for offering up a Turkey Day screening of JCVD, the new Jean-Claude Van Damme flick in which Van Damme plays himself playing himself. Sounds complicated, but it’s really just French. The good news is that even though it’s Turkey Day, you can still order from Alamo’s regular menu, but if you want to pay homage to Bo Pilgrim, you can still preorder and get a full Thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings. Just tell your waiter to wake you up when the movie’s over.

Fantastic Fest Rolling Roadshow Screening of ‘The Road Warrior’

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September 16, 2008

There are a variety of ways the apocalypse could go down: We could be smashed … by a giant asteroid. We could particle accelerate ourselves into a black hole. We could catch a nasty virus, fry in a solar flare, or get a wobble in our axis. There is also the possibility that aliens could land and save us from the preceding calamities … or instead, they might just conquer and enslave us. You think your boss is a bitch now, wait until you get one who can chew your ass out with seven scaly heads full of razor-sharp teeth and slimy, acrid smelling saliva. You’ll be praying for the days when you got dressed down by a menopausal state worker with a bead-blinged ID lanyard and wicked coffee breath. If the apocalypse does occur, it’s not going to arrive with a whimper. By definition it’s going to involve shock and awe; people running through the streets screaming, fire and brimstone. Otherwise it’s not really an apocalypse; it’s just a shitty turn of events. If a couple of investment firms file bankruptcy and the stock market plunges, that really sucks, but it’s not the apocalypse. Unemployment? Inflation? High gas prices? All are certainly turds in the punchbowl, but to truly be apocalyptic, the situation has to deteriorate beyond measurable statistics. You can’t just nickel and dime your way to an apocalypse. President Bush has been trying to bring on the end of days for some time now but, like his father, hasn’t quite gotten the ball across the goal line. Why? Well, contrary to popular opinion, he’s not the Antichrist. Sadly, no matter what Alex Jones tries to tell you, Bush just didn’t have an Antichrist grade point average. Plus, here’s a really important point: The Antichrist would never try out for cheerleader. Pom-pom maybe, but never cheerleader. So, how will you know when the world is coming to an end? Well, that’s the kicker. You probably won’t, and that’s probably a good thing. If an asteroid the size of Hawaii slams into the Earth, you’ll probably have just enough time to say, “What was tha…?” In the Sudan, they call that mercy. Similarly, with a black hole you won’t have to worry about whether you left your iron on. You won’t have time to to be thankful that it was a black hole that did you in rather than, say, a death star. The ugly truth of the matter – the higher probability – is that somehow mankind is going to fuck things up and drag out the suffering unnecessarily. We’ll deplete the ozone or poison the oceans and air or procreate ourselves into one big, teeming, filthy, rugby scrum clusterfuck of a planet. That’s not the traditional view of the apocalypse, but it’s probably the most spot on. There probably won’t be a postgame. We won’t be tooling around the empty outback in a supercharged Ford Falcon saving little fur-vested, mulleted kids from gas hording thugs in shoulder pads. That’s a best-case scenario – a fantasy – the kind of stuff Hollywood does really well, but nature can’t seem to put together … even with an unlimited budget. This Friday you can live the fantasy right in the middle of Republic Square Park when Alamo Drafthouse’s Fantastic Fest hosts a special Rolling Roadshow screening of The Road Warrior, starring a younger Mel Gibson and the even younger aforementioned kid with the even more spectacular mullet. You could be in a much worse place if the world actually does come to an end.

aGLIFF’s fifth annual Mommie Dearest Roast

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THU., MAY 11, 2006

Mothers. Everybody’s got one. Prerequisite to most peoples’ appearance on planet Earth is a gory luge ride down the vaginal slip-n-slide. To be sure there are those who, like Caesar, emerged from an ad hoc tummy twat in a scene reminiscent of the prison break in Raising Arizona, but the rest of us begin life owing a huge debt to our mother: The kind of fee you might charge someone for passing a bowling ball through your large intestine and out your anus; the kind of fee you would demand up front and then realize too late that you grossly underestimated the cost. So if your mother squirts you out, kicks you to the curb, and runs off to Vegas with the anesthesiologist, you’re still into her for at least a plaster preschool hand print and … oh … maybe a tricked-out Hummer with spinning rims. If she sticks around, you’re really in the red. Before you can even latch onto her teat, you’ll owe her dearly for things like stretch marks, saggy boobs, body fat, belly-button damage, and torn taint. Torn taint? That’s pretty much a beach house in Malibu right there. If she shepherds you through infancy, you’re looking at some pretty steep emotional charges for sleep loss, sore nipples, backaches, ass wiping, projectile vomit cleanup, and decimation of social life. By the time you can coo the word “mama,” you’re already beyond hope of repayment, but, just as a sadistic exercise in existential overkill, mama gets a minimum of 16 more years of indentured servitude followed by a lifetime of nerve-wracking worry. You’ll never pay her back, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pop for a card or some flowers or maybe even dinner. One of the best places to have dinner with your mom is the Alamo Drafthouse. It takes the focus off of you. This Sunday take mom to the Alamo Downtown for aGLIFF’s fifth annual Mommie Dearest Roast. Free wire hangers, a costume contest, and rant-along subtitles. Maybe mommy finally will get some payback.

Cinematexas International Short Film Festival

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SEPT. 20, 2002

As if there weren’t enough strangely dressed people milling around UT on a Fall football weekend, this Saturday the 2002 Cinematexas International Film Festival brings German filmmaker/opera lover/shoe eater Werner Herzog to the Texas Union Theater for a lecture and screening of two of his non-fiction works: Lessons of Darkness, which centers around images of the Kuwaiti oil fires and the aftermath of the Gulf War, and Bells from the Deep, a film about faith and superstition in Russia. Herzog will also be holding forth Sunday at 1:30pm at Alamo Drafthouse with screenings of How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, a film about livestock auctioneers, and The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, about the Swiss wood carver and ski jumper Walter Steiner. To get into the screenings, you’ll need to purchase a Cinematexas Film Pass at Vulcan Video, 33 Degrees, or Waterloo Records ($25 for students, $35 for non) and then hie to The Hideout at 11:00am on Saturday and Sunday respectively to wait in line for passes to the actual screenings. While you’re in line, you can take the opportunity to hobnob with cinephiles from all over and maybe even get a few tips on where to go and what to see on the last two nights. If you can’t get tickets to Saturday or Sunday’s Herzog screenings, you can still catch a mind-numbing variety of shorts through the weekend from Texas and the rest of the planet. Films range from a couple of minutes to just under an hour and cover everything from William Wegman’s Dogs to Brazialian drag singers. If you pick up your film pass early, you can go to screenings throughout the day and night on Thursday and Friday as well. The Festival wraps up Sunday night with the 2002 Cinematexas Awards Ceremony at Club de Ville, a great place to meet some new filmic friends.

The Pleasurecraft

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Alamo Drafthouse