Playland Skate Center – The Pleasurecraft

WED., DEC. 27, 2006

This year, New Year’s Eve falls on the Lord’s Day, which is surely happy news for recidivist 12-stepping alcoholics, but for the rest of us, it requires an extra step of irksome planning. Part of the fun of New Year’s is that last-minute run to the liquor store to grab a frantic armload of hooch for the evening – liquors you purchase by color rather than label or name; those last remaining off-brand bottles distilled in tin-sheds by toothless hillbillies in remote hollers in Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia; the kind of stuff you don’t take out of the paper bag until your friend screams incredulously between convulsive fits of projectile vomiting, “What was that shit?!” Of course, that’s only part of the fun, but if that’s the fun you’re into – that being a profound state of drunkenness nearly worth the wicked hangover – you’ll need to cross the threshold of a liquor store no later than 8:59pm Saturday night. Texas is God’s country, and God, according to Texas statutes, don’t roll on the Yom Rishon. He don’t get his drink on neither – except in certain counties like Travis, home of Austin, the “Sodom of the Southwest.” Bottom line is that if you procrastinate like most respectable alcoholics, you’re going to end up underserved come Sunday night. That ain’t right. You don’t want to be wearing the elastic banded cone paper party hat sober. You don’t want to blow the duck whistle without wetting your own. You can’t do justice to a garbled Gaelic clusterfuck of lyrics like “Auld Lang Syne” with a blood alcohol content less than .10, and you certainly won’t want to engage in a spirited tonsil hockey match with a total stranger at the stroke of midnight unless the booze has got your back. Roger? Of course, you could do all the preceding sober, but then the fun onus is on you. You’d have to dream up something pretty spectacular to wipe out the memory of being a designated driver. Chin up DD, the Drafthouse has something for you. New Year’s Eve they’re hosting a skate party at Playland featuring the K-Tel Hit Machine and Tosca Strings covering tunes from the Electric Light Orchestra. Skating goes from 9-11pm and a dance follows. Seventies disco attire is recommended, skating drunk is not, but oh, the memories.

SUN., JULY 20, 2003

Where classlessness and camp abound

If this Sunday is like last Sunday, it’s pretty evident that God wants you to spend it indoors – possibly in a nicely air-conditioned church. His house. Hizzouse if you want to say it like Snoop. The other alternative is to stay outside and watch your skin blister, pop, and sizzle like bacon in a skillet, which might be fascinating if, like Snoop, you’re smoking really good weed, but if you’re anything less than half-baked, you’re going to want to park it where the sun doesn’t shine. Churches are good for that, but ultimately they don’t hold a candle (votive or otherwise) to a good roller derby match for sheer entertainment value. This Sunday at Playland Skate Center the Texas Rollergirls will rock the hizzouse with an exciting, action-packed doubleheader. In the first bout, the Hotrod Honeys, sporting black shorts and sassy pink tops, will throw down against the Hell Marys, a naughty Catholic schoolgirl-themed squad. The second bout features the Honky Tonk Heartbreakers who do their business in daisy dukes, fringed western shirts, and cowgirl hats, squaring off against the Hustlers, a streetwalker-styled set of strumpets pimped out in purple with names like Cheap Trixie, Sedonya Face, and Pussy Velour. If all this sounds a little trashy, it is. It’s roller derby. Classlessness and camp abound but with a uniquely Austin spin. Nowhere else in this state and certainly not this decade can you find a Sunday sporting match so wacky and happily depraved. Yes, there’s sport involved. There is competition. There is also booze, burlesque, and bands. (What? You didn’t think rollergirls have roommates?) This Sunday’s music will be provided by the Pink Swords, a fun-loving bunch of punkers with a phallic motif, and the Applicators, a girl group with a more gynecological groove. The $10 admission is a pittance to pay to see hot chicks scrap in skimpy costumes. The bands alone are worth that price, but if you’re feeling guilty because it’s the Lord’s Day, you can relax and enjoy the spectacle knowing that a portion of the proceeds go to the Children’s Advocacy Center of Texas.