Austin Symphony July 4th Concert & Fireworks

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June 30 2010

Auditorium Shores

In America, we celebrate freedom by making a lot of noise … as opposed to say, meditating quietly on the blessings of liberty. No slam against meditating, mind you, but sitting calmly with your thoughts lacks the ostentatiousness (no, dudebro, it isn’t spelled “Austintatiousness”) of colorful, ear-shattering explosions that make dogs spontaneously urinate on expensive carpets and whine nervously into the wee hours – no pun intended. Here in God’s country (that being the USA and not the 180-plus other God’s countries) we get fired up about freedom. Our freedom is an awesome freedom, much better than the sucky freedom in countries like Somalia, Haiti, or Afghanistan. In America, a group of drunken teenagers can throw a string of lit Black Cats out the window of their parents’ Ford Explorer at 3am in a quiet subdivision and the most that will happen is a few bedroom lights will turn on. If they were to try the same thing in Somalia (and perhaps certain parts of Idaho), they could expect their Explorer to be riddled with small arms fire or blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade. As any Somalian will tell you, sometimes it’s a fine line between freedom and anarchy. Freedom seems to work best when guided by a system of laws that ideally keeps the dickheads from spoiling the fun. Of course, different places have different definitions for being a dickhead, so a certain amount of tweaking is involved. For instance, here in Texas there aren’t many places you can’t spit legally. You can pretty much cut loose with a huge roping arc of Copenhagen juice anywhere you please, as long as you don’t hit a cop in the face. In Singapore, if the tiniest bit of drool drips out of your mouth and hits a sidewalk, you get burned at the stake, waterboarded, and thrown in a tank of piranha – or at least heavily fined. You can’t chew gum either. No, seriously. You can’t chew gum. It’s illegal. Compare that to California where you can do just about anything except drive a car that burns gasoline. In California you can do naked bong hits while no-handing a unicycle along the beach in broad daylight. In fact, you can probably legally kill someone in California as long as you dispose of the corpse in an environmentally responsible way. The same is true of Louisiana, except that in Louisiana you can burn the corpse in a trash can in your backyard. What law there is in Louisiana derives from the Napoleonic Code, which is statutory, meaning that if some transgression isn’t actually prohibited in writing, it’s fair game – which just about everything is in Louisiana. If it moves, you can kill it, sauté it in butter, and eat it. That includes manatees, government bears, Bigfoot, and the lost Dauphin. Menacing oil slick notwithstanding, Louisiana isn’t as bad as it sounds. In fact, Bigfoot and the lost Dauphin are probably alive and well and living in Alaska, where the only written laws have to do with milking Exxon for every last red cent. Other than that, Alaska = freedom. It’s a magical place where a 46-year-old ex-cheerleader can hunt Bull Moose with an AK-47 in her red, white, and blue bikini; where polar bears can drive snowmobiles; and where the drinking age is 9 – whiskey included. Alaska makes California look like a gulag. The only place freer than Alaska is death itself … or maybe West Texas … it’s hard to tell the difference. Regardless, they’re both in America, the Land of the Free. Make no mistake, American freedom is something worth celebrating loudly, even if it means dogs pissing on expensive carpets. Why? Because American freedom was dreamed up by wicked-smart rich dudes and paid for by the blood of patriots. It’s precious and delicate and frickin’ awesome all at the same time – easily in the Top 10 freedoms worldwide, and that’s reason enough to get out there and make some noise … or you could just relax, lay back on a picnic blanket, and have someone else do it for you. This Sunday at Auditorium Shores, the Austin Symphony and the city of Austin will be putting on their annual Fourth of July concert and fireworks display. Mission accomplished. The hardest thing you’ll have to do to celebrate freedom is to load up your cooler and find a way down there. Easy enough, right?

Who Is Your Daddy? Little Lounge Lizards’ June Dance Party

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June 2, 2009

Every once in a while you come across an event that is so fucking crazy that you just have to go check it out, if only to make sure you didn’t dream it. Austin has more than its share of them: Chiggerfest, Spamarama, Eeyore’s Birthday, Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-a-Thon, O. Henry Pun-Off. Austinites aren’t particularly scared of weirdness, but sometimes “keepin’ it weird” can turn a little creepy – especially when honest, decent, earnest people with good intentions are involved. In fact, some of the most heinous atrocities in human history were committed by people who were utterly convinced they were doing the right thing. The folks loading up the boxcars for Nazi death camps or the ones poisoning the punchbowl in Jonestown weren’t doing it just to be assholes – well, at least not all of them – no, they drank the punch metaphorically long before they did so literally. Unfortunately, they lacked the types of sociological/psychological checks and balances most people take for granted. One of these is humor, chiefly propagated by the wiseass. When everyone seems to be marching in lockstep (reason enough to start feeling skittish), there is always one heroic individual (or sleazy and self-aggrandizing dickhead) who will pop off with a bitingly sarcastic bon mot like, “Wow, can’t the Swiss steal their own gold teeth?” or, “Sorry, punch makes me gassy.” In most heavy situations, the wiseass gets stomped into a grease stain by the brownshirts or their equivalent, and the machinery of evil grinds on, but in certain instances, a subversive idea takes hold and festers long enough to spoil the party, be it Nazi, Commie, or Tupperware. After all, crazy ideas, like food, stay freshest when sealed in a vacuum. Pop the seal, and they just might rot…or flourish. Regardless, it’s always best to air them out and see what happens. For instance, having a dance party at Qua for “for cool kids ages 10 and under and their groovy grownups” sounds like a Bad Idea jeans commercial, especially considering the music is being provided by DJ Sicko, but hold your judgment. You may not know the whole story. Maybe somewhere in Austin there is an 8-year-old who will roll out of bed Saturday morning and say: “Hey, Pops, what do you say we blow off the swimming pool today and throw some Axe body spray, Ed Hardy togs, and nugget jewelry, and head over to Qua and dance our asses off! Who knows? You might even meet a hot single mom!” Maybe there is even more than one. More likely there are plenty of parents who aren’t averse to using their kids as an excuse to troll for strange on a Saturday afternoon. No shame in that game, as long as you and your kid are on the same page. If that’s the case, Saturday’s Who’s Your Daddy? dance party at Qua may be just your thing: live shark tank dance floor, disco lights, aquarium, and complimentary Clif Bar snacks. Here’s the catch: All adults must be accompanied by a child, so if you’re a nonbreeder looking to score, you’re going to have to borrow a nephew or something.

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!

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July 22, 2008

Say what you will about our shoeless neighbors to the north, you have to give them one thing: Their state song kicks our state song’s ass. Go ahead and piss and moan and beat your chest all you want, but deep, deep in your heart of Texas, you know it’s true. By comparison, Texas’ state song is a plodding funeral march. Plus, if you want to get down to the ugly truth of the matter, it’s a little braggy: Texas, our Texas, all hail the mighty state!/Texas, our Texas, so wonderful, so great! Sounds like a state with a chip on its shoulder. Sounds like a state trying to hide its inadequacies. Oklahoma, on the other hand, is a study in stately humility: You’re doing fine, Oklahoma. Oklahoma, OK! Notice the omission of superlatives like “boldest” and “grandest.” Really, there’s no need to make Kansas and Rhode Island feel shitty. You’re doing best, Oklahoma? Not even Okies are that gullible. They will, however, concede that the “wind comes sweepin’ down the plain” (that ain’t bragging; it’s the brutal truth) or that “the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet.” Can sure smell sweet – meaning, it’s conditional. There are plenty of situations where it doesn’t smell sweet – like when your wheat field is downwind from a seaboard hog processing plant. If you live next to one of those babies, the wind coming right behind the rain is about the worst possible thing that can happen to you – well, short of actually working in the bastard. But still, it’s not really fair to compare Texas, our Texas, with Oklahoma! The former was an amateur work composed by British-born TCU choir director William J. Marsh, with lyrics by Gladys Yoakum Wright, described by various publications as a “resident of Fort Worth.” Curious, considering she was employed in the office of the auditor of revenues for the Frisco Railway in St. Louis, Mo., when she accepted her half of the $1,000 prize for writing Texas’ state song. Who knows how that collaboration went down, especially since it ended with Gladys taking the train to St. Louis, but most disturbing is the fact that she apparently didn’t have access to a rhyming dictionary – seriously: state with great? Are you fucking kidding? Sounds like something an auditor would come up with. Oklahoma, on the other hand, is a skillfully crafted American masterwork penned by a talented team of Broadway composers who probably never set foot in Oklahoma. All you can say is, point Oklahoma for fielding a pro team. Similar things have been said about Oklahoma’s football program, but either way they’re winning. And lest you think that Oklahoma wasn’t saddled with dog of a state song, keep in mind that until 1953, their state song was Oklahoma, a Toast, which included lyrics like “fairest daughter of the West” and “fruit trees greet with a burden sweet” and ended with the word “quaff.” Theirs was written by Harriet Parker Camden (what’s with the lyricist serial-murderer names?) originally of Kingfisher, Okla., who relocated to Fair Oaks, Calif. Hmm … Clearly Oklahoma was in a similar pickle, but they stepped up and did what needed to be done. Will we be able to say the same of Texas? Maybe Willie will whip one up then move to Hawaii. Regardless, we need to bump this one up to the top of our “to-do” list. If you need a reminder of how the pros work, you can check out Summer Stock Austin’s production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! this weekend at St. Edward’s University. Ballsy move to do Oklahoma! in the heart of Texas, but that’s what Texas is all about, isn’t it? Says it right there in our state song: “boldest and grandest.” Surely we can put on the boldest and grandest production of Oklahoma! too. It might even inspire us to be bold enough to change our state song. Wouldn’t that be grand?

Texas Burlesque Festival

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OCT. 8, 2007

If you really want to look at naked people, they’re all over the place. No more so than on the Internet. If you don’t believe it, try typing the word “bazookas” into Google’s image search. The result is a cross between a carnival freak show and a chiropractor’s wet dream. Nobody in your office probably remembers it, but there was a time when looking at naked people at work involved drilling a peephole into a restroom wall. You can still make that kind of thing happen, but unless you’re willing to wait quietly in the janitor’s closet for an inadvertent money shot, you’ll probably want to take advantage of digital technology – if only to install a web cam in the peephole. But really, why go to all the trouble? You don’t have to work nearly that hard. There are literally millions of pictures of spectacularly endowed, relentlessly turgid, beautifully air-brushed naked people on the Internet and you barely need to lift a finger to get at them. It’s every schoolkid’s fantasy come true – like finding a whole Dumpster full of nudie mags. Of course the down side of the whole deal is the inevitable real-world letdown of finding out that most real people don’t have rock hard, toned physiques, glistening, hairless nether regions, double D breasts, or 10-inch peckers. In fact, most naked bodies fall well short of the Internet standard, even on the Internet. You don’t have to drive out to Hippie Hollow to see cellulite, saddlebags, leathery skin, faded tattoos, or wild, unkempt tangles of pubes. There are plenty of sites devoted solely to amateur exhibitionists who apparently don’t have access to a soft-focus lens or acne medicine. Gone are the days of crouching in the bushes beneath the neighborhood MILF’s bedroom window every night hoping she’ll lotion the razor burns on her privates. Thanks to the internet you can tell her how to shave and where to apply the lotion, as long as you have a working credit card and a box of tissues within reach. Not surprisingly, with the increase in readily available porn on the Internet has come a corresponding interest in and acceptance of porn in real life. More people than ever are taking control of their sexuality and trying to actually live out the crazy donkey/goat/monkey/gerbil/midget/Vaseline/rope swing/jackhammer/gimp mask/gorilla suit fantasies they see online. It could be society is paving a landing strip for the four horsemen of the apocalypse or it could be that it’s merely pulling a big bug of Victorian repression out of its ass. Either way the end result is more skin for everyone – at least until it’s burned off in the lake of fire. Until then, expect things to get a whole lot freakier – sort of like this weekend when local burlesque troupes Kitty Kitty Bang Bang and Burlesque for Peace present the Texas Burlesque Festival. Over 50 performers and nine troupes from Texas and beyond will be baring their wares on Friday and Saturday night at the Parish and Antone’s respectively. If you like to unwind with a little bump and grind, this is definitely your festival. In between performances will be seminars on how to burlesque for success: makeup, hair, choreography, costuming, and chutzpah. Who knew showing off your bazookas involves so much smoke … and mirrors? Don’t worry, somewhere underneath it all is some live, naked flesh worth your money.

Texas Pride Festival

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WED., JUNE 7, 2006

This week George W. Bush outed himself…as being against gay marriage. It’s not like he had a big gay fan base anyway. Even Log Cabin Republicans are wishing their log cabins had closets these days. With Bush’s approval rating hovering somewhere around thirty percent, Republican strategists took aim below the Bible belt, sucking up to the remaining wild-eyed Christian fundamentalists who are actually euphoric that Dubya’s foreign and domestic policies have put us on the fast track to Armageddon. Smart move too, because it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the God speaking to Bush is the fire and brimstone model from the Old Testament, and we all know how that ends. Like the OTG, Bush isn’t opposed to using flashy theatrics like fire and brimstone every now and then (aka “shock and awe”) to get his point across, but with budgetary concerns and an increasingly intractable Congress, he decided to go with a grand but empty gesture: An Amendment Banning Gay Marriage. Like his failed campaign to rid Iraq of WMD’s that didn’t exist, Bush took a last ditch shot at persecuting gays in the name of protecting families from a threat that doesn’t exist. If Bush really wanted to protect American families, he would get the sons and daughters and mothers and fathers of those families out of Iraq. Here at home, the “threat to American families” is having a big festival down at Waterloo Park on Saturday. Gays from all over Austin and Texas will be celebrating, among other things, their unique contribution to society. The park will be filled with booths from clubs, organizations, businesses, and artists who support the gay community. You can also expect the obligatory music, booze, and food. Bands include: Lisa Richards, Lisa Rogers, Kit Holmes, Flamin’ Desire, Omar Lopez, The Gadget White Band, and Daniel Link. Feel free to bring the family because no marriages are scheduled during the festival.

Rock and Roll at Ruta Maya

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SAT., FEB. 7, 2004

Usually when a beloved Austin institution moves and sets up shop in new and shinier digs, there issues a chorus of complaints about how it’s not as cool as the old place, or that the supposed institution has sold out. It’s the truth as often as not. Old Austin is characterized by its freakiness and funk. Newer places tend toward a more generic, less cluttered, culturally homogenized appearance that appeals to the largest possible demographic. Old Austin, to the uninitiated, is a little intimidating. Take Ruta Maya Coffee House for instance. The original Fourth Street location was a barely converted, un-air-conditioned warehouse filled with aging, mismatched furniture and an even more mismatched clientele. The porch was nearly always filled with dreadlocked, pierced, tattooed, alternative types smoking cigarettes and giving the skunk eye to starched-collar yuppies who dropped by for a pick-me-up after visiting ritzier places like Sullivan’s and Cedar Street. Inside was an equally intimidating gauntlet of noise, steam, smoke, and eclectic music whose terminus was a well-graffitied, two-stalled unisex bathroom with no lock on the outer door. Good times. Ruta Maya’s new location at Penn Field (actually, not so new anymore, having been there now for nearly two years) has same-sex bathrooms, air conditioning, a huge stage, and a great sound system. In short, other than the same-sex bathrooms, it’s a vast improvement over the old Ruta Maya. Why? Because it still possesses all of the elements of the old location, but in a larger, more accommodating space. Drawbacks? It’s more isolated for one thing. The only foot traffic these days is the occasional Exposé titty dancer who strolls up the hill for a cup of joe. Otherwise, it’s a drive-to destination, albeit one with ample parking and a pretty wicked view of St. Ed’s and downtown Austin from the back patio. Most importantly, Ruta Maya still buys its coffee from an organic farming cooperative in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, which helps improve the living condition of the cooperative’s participants and the region in general by promoting sustainable agriculture. If you’re going to feed your addiction, why not help feed people with it as well? This Saturday, Ruta Maya is host to Rock and Roll at Ruta Maya, a benefit for the Mayan Communities Fund which provides health care and social services to people in southern Mexico and Guatemala. For $3 you can enjoy six hours of glorious rock & roll from six Austin acts: Primordial Undermind, Beecher, the Band With No Name, Dum Dum & the Smarties, Madamimadam, and the Amazing CJ. That’s an attractively priced 50 cents per band, so you should have plenty of jack left over for some Mayan homegrown. If you’re not a coffee achiever, relax. Ruta Maya has plenty of other libations, both alcoholic and non, to get you through the night.

Alliance Française d’Austin Bastille Day Festival

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SAT. JULY 13, 2002

Since its very beginnings, Texas has had a peculiar love/hate relationship with France. Early Texans sought recognition and support for their new republic, and one of the first legitimate countries to come calling was France, who threw Texas a bone in the form a second class envoy named Jean Pierre Isidore Alphonse Dubois de Saligny. Jean Pierre’s mission was to push through the passage of the Franco-Texian bill, which would allow French colonization of parts of Texas under the protection of the French army. Instead of exercising diplomacy, Jean Pierre built an ostentatious hilltop manse (larger than the capitol) and ran afoul of a local innkeeper by ordering his servants to shoot the innkeeper’s pigs if they strayed onto his property. Not surprisingly, the deal went South and Jean Pierre went East. Today Jean Pierre’s hilltop manse, the French Legation, is the oldest documented structure still on its original site and a stalwart reminder of Texans’ conflicted feelings towards the French. French culture has always been viewed as something of an affront to Texans’ egalitarian sentiments while at the same time anything having remotely to do with the French seems to have almost mythic cultural cache’ (isn’t that a French word?) Even today in shopping malls across Texas the phrase “it’s Franch!” is the cultural equivalent of “‘nuff said.” Therefore, it is perhaps fitting that the 7th Annual Bastille Day Festival takes place Saturday night at the French Legation. This year’s festival looks to be bigger and better than ever and features the unbeatable triumvirate of wine, food and song, the latter courtesy of Ponty Bone and the Squeeze Tones and Rumbullion. If you’ve any doubts that this is the thing to do Saturday night, just remember, “It’s Franch!”

Texas Pride Parade

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SAT. JUNE 1, 2002

If you’re not gay yet, this might be a good weekend to give it a try. Saturday and Sunday men and women from all across the Lone Star State will be converging on Austin celebrate Texas Pride weekend. If you want to kick things off a little earlier, you can start with the Dyke March, which will make its way from the Capitol steps to the Empanada Parlour Thursday night. For $5 you can hang out and enjoy the afterparty. Don’t take off your shoes just yet however, Saturday is the Texas pride Parade where possibly thousands of light loafers, comfortable shoes, and army boots will be padding down Congress Avenue in support of pink power. After a rousing rally on the capitol steps, you can kick up your heels at the Womens’ Dance at Fiesta Garden which runs from 7-12pm. A $10 donation gets you in the door. Maybe you’ll get lucky and meet someone to take to the Texas Pride Brunch the next morning. The brunch starts at 11am and for $25 you can nosh and hobnob with local and state political candidates. Or, you may just want to skip the brunch and go straight to the Texas Pride Festival where for $5 you can enjoy an all day smorgasbord of Austin talent emceed by former Big Boy Randy “Biscuit” Turner and Heather Gold. Some of the scheduled acts include the Sexy Finger Champs, Adult Rodeo, Susan Gibson, Austin Babtist Women, Sarah Hickman, and Patrice Pike. Augmenting the live music will be DJs Dig’m, Sue Johnson, and maybe even Filthy Rich as well as a drag show featuring James Perry (Miss Gay San Antonio), Paris Chanel, and Kelly Kline. With a lineup like that, you’re bound to be entertained regardless of your orientation, wouldn’t you say?

Paregentan

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SAT. FEB. 9 2002

So maybe you’re not an Armenian, but that doesn’t mean you can’t party like one. This Saturday night over at the Red Lion Hotel on the corner of I-35, Armenians from Austin and elsewhere will be celebrating Paregentan, the Armenian Mardi Gras. Why Paregentan? Because Armenians don’t speak French. OK, there’s more to it than that, so get out your notebook. Armenia is a landlocked little country (about the size of Maryland) sandwiched between Turkey and Azerbaijan – or Georgia and Iran, depending on where you’re standing. Historically, Armenia has been overrun by all of your big conquerors: the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Mongols, Tatars, Ottomans and the Russian Empire. What does this mean to you? It means that while Armenia may be relatively poor country economically speaking, Armenians and the Armenian Diaspora are culturally rich. You can share in some of that wealth this Saturday starting at 8pm. Not only will you get to feast on mezze (a much easier way to say and spell “hors d’oeuvres”) like Hummus, Tabouli, and falafel, you’ll be able to dance to Armenian, Greek, Persian and Arabic dance music spun by Los Angeles Armenian D.J. team Neptune Productions. Did I say belly dancing? Did I need to? Later, at midnight, they bust out the Armenian sweets and coffee so you can sober up after a hard night of drinking and dancing. If you’re a diehard, don’t worry. The party goes on until 2. Dress is casual, but it wouldn’t kill you to throw on a tie, would it?

Janeane Garafalo

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FEB. 1, 2002

The Paramount Theatre is one of those ancient, ornate, neo-classical structures we like to keep around for occasions of pomp and circumstance. While others of its kind have suffered the mild indignity of being renovated into proletarian structures like discos, pool halls, and record stores, the Paramount has been restored to a decent semblance of its original design. The result is a certain weathered elegance. Like a grandmother’s plastic-covered sitting room, the Paramount is swank digs to the mud covered kid of Austin’s collective cultural consciousness. So every once in a while when someone important is in town we pull off the slip covers and pretend it’s the living room, but of course, we’re not fooling anyone – certainly not acerbic, quick witted comediennes like Janeane Garafalo, who pays a visit to the Paramount this Saturday night. It would be an understatement to say that Janeane is one of the paragons of nineties slacker cynicism. Since her earliest days on Ben Stiller and Larry Sanders shows, Garafalo has made a name for herself by railing against the hypocrisy, inanity, and unforgivable mediocrity of mainstream middle class society – ironically the same stratum that provides the bulk of her fan base. Fortunately, Austin is chock-full of cynical middle class intellectuals, which should make for a large, enthusiastic crowd smart enough to know that the joke is partially on them. Maybe you should take a dip in this Olympic-sized dating pool.