Month: February 2019

Keepin’ It Weird

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MON., SEPT. 11, 2006

This weekend thousands of middle-class white people will descend on Austin to eat our food, drink our liquor, and dance with our dates. Hopefully we will be as accommodating as we were last weekend with the Buckeyes, both on and off the field. The field this weekend, however, is down at Zilker Park. Normally it’s populated with adult soccer players (mostly hyper-competitive, soft-boned, office-worker creampuffs who make orthopedic surgeons piss their pants with delight) and the occasional miniature choo-choo full of exhausted parents and toddlers with soft-serve mustaches/purple popsicle tongues. The field at Zilker Park is exactly the type of uninspired landscape that demands you make your own fun, whether with a pinch-hitter and a hacky-sac or eight stages and 90 bands. Sure, Austin has its hills and lakes and cricks and rivers and all manner of furry and feathered fauna, but its true charm is its people. No matter how hard Starbucks or Applebees or Wal-Mart or Old Navy or any other tentacle of corporate generica has tried to suck us into its grasp, Austinites have managed to maintain and nourish their individuality, their “weirdness.” Out-of-towners, especially middle-class suburbanites from treeless, sprawling subdivisions find Austin’s civic quirkiness fascinating. They come here ostensibly for the music, or the sports, or the bats, or a first-class education, but they really dig us as much for the freakshow as anything else. On any given week you can run into a swarthy, crossdressing homeless guy in a thong and red heels, a dude who looks like Jesus selling flowers, dogs on a motorcycle, hippies, punks, emos, retros – and the freakiest of all: taco-hatted frat boys on a drinking binge. If you need help locating any of the above, we have ghost tours, duck tours, dork tours (aka those silly Segway tours), and all manner of drinking tours, just follow the frat boys. Whether you’re from here or there, if you want to get a taste of Austin weirdness without inhaling the stench of sweat, stale beer, and urine, you’re in luck: Dave Steakley at Zach Scott has put together Keepin’ It Weird, a play about Austin weirdness culled from more than 200 hours of interviews with real Austin weirdos. Yes, life’s rich pageant all dolled up and done up onstage. What could be more Austin than that?

The Austin Chronicle’s 25th Anniversary Photo Exhibit Receptions

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TUE., SEPT. 5, 2006

This week the Chronicle will be celebrating its 25th anniversary with the opening of a retrospective photographic exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art. This may come as a surprise to some. The Chronicle isn’t exactly Life magazine. In comparison to other alt weeklies around the country, our editorial space is decidedly text heavy. A picture may say a thousand words, but the Chronicle has always been of the opinion that you can fit 2000 words in the same space – maybe more if you use a small enough font. On the plus side, Chronicle readers have been spared, for the most part, from seeing the print journalistic equivalent of the squirrel-on-water-skis video. On the minus side, reading three or four solid pages of even the most riveting copy in six-point type can give anyone a migraine, present text included. Sometimes the Chroniclelooks as if it’s been formatted to fit on the head of a pin. White space? White space is what happens when the printer runs out of ink. Even still, occasionally amongst this dense, baroque tangle of text appear some exceptional photographs, and over 25 years those photographs can add up to an impressive collection. If you’re one of those pictures-more-than-words types, it’s unlikely you’re reading this screed anyway, but if per chance you’re stuck in a waiting room, on a desert island, or on a toilet seat and finally made your way to the meat of this essay, here’s some happy news: This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 5-7:30pm, the Chronicle is hosting happy hour receptions at the Austin Museum of Art to kick off our 25th anniversary photographic exhibit. For the price of parking (or free, if you’re hoofing it) you can drink and nosh on the Chronicle‘s dime and check out hundreds of photographs from last 25 years of the Chronicle – the people places and things that helped make Austin the unique community it is. Each night offers something different: Friday you can enjoy Curra’s Mexican and Cazadores margaritas, Saturday is Shiner and food from 519 West, and Sunday is Central Market and Fisheye Wine. Even if you don’t get there for the grub, the exhibit runs through the 24th, and you’re unlikely to see this many Chronicle photos in one place for a long time.

Batfest

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MON., AUG. 28, 2006

Batfest 2006

If you’re one of those people who wake up in the morning and piss burnt orange, this is your weekend. If you’re a Texas football fan, you already know that Saturday the Texas Longhorn football team starts another run for the national championship. If you’re not a Texas football fan and you’re still pissing burnt orange when you wake up, you may want to see a urologist or at the very least back off the multivitamins before bedtime. There is such a thing as too much beta-carotene. If you’re an Aggie fan and you want to piss maroon, you’re going to want to load up on beets – a lot of beets. It may seem ignorant to gorge yourself on beets just to turn your pee maroon, but when in Rome, right? Other than beets, pretty much any other scenario for turning your pee maroon is bad news. Seriously. You could ask your corps buddies to kick you in the kidneys until your urine turns a luscious crimson, but that seems a little bit dimwitted even for Aggieland. Besides, there are plenty of non-urological ways to show your school spirit. Say you’re in the restroom next to a North Texas fan and you’re squirting a high, tight, burnt orange arc onto the deodorizer biscuit (even more impressive if you’re a chick) … wouldn’t it be cool if right at that moment your cell phone popped off with a Texas Fight ringtone? In your face Eagles! Hey, it beats trying to kidnap their mascot. You don’t want any part of an eagle. Kidnap Reveille, but leave the Eagle alone. If the folks at Bat Conservation International have their way, Texas’ mascot may change from the bucolic Longhorn to the Mexican Freetail bat. Wouldn’t that be a cool logo on the side of the helmet? Being the Texas Mexican Freetails wouldn’t hurt the school’s party image either. Mexican Freetails are all about partying. For instance, this Saturday after the big game, BCI is hosting its second annual Batfest on the Congress Avenue Bridge, a celebration of arts and bats. Nearly 20 bands, 125 arts-and-crafts vendors, and around 2 million bats will be on hand to raise money for BCI. There will also be carnival rides, pony rides, a “Batini” contest, and a bat wing eating contest. You might want to pop an umbrella for the emergence. Bats gotta pee too.

Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival

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MON., AUG. 21, 2006

If for some inexplicable reason you moved to Austin and you don’t like Mexican food, leave. Seriously. Go back to whatever culturally impoverished, Applebee’s patronizing, Wonder Bread loving suburb you rolled down from and stop fucking up the office lunch run with your whining about acid reflux. Everyone is tired of you dipping the corner tip of your tortilla chip in the hot sauce, biting down, waving your hand in front of your mouth and declaring, “oooh that’s sooo spicy!” Not even a well-tipped waitress will fake sympathy for that weak shit. Oh yeah, and just because the restaurant is named “Chili’s” doesn’t mean the food is hot … not any more than a fish symbol on a business sign means they won’t fuck you in ways the devil himself never imagined. So, if you don’t like Mexican food, there are at least two northbound lanes on I-35. Ta Ta. Austin didn’t work out for you. Go back whence you came to the place where they spice their chili with cinnamon and nutmeg. Go back to the place where they eat flapjacks and Krispy Kremes for hangovers and pronounce jalapeño with a hard “J.” Don’t hate, emigrate. Leave us crazy Austicans to indulge in our sick, masochistic fetish for capsaicinoids. Leave us to sit sweating over our serranos, anchos, chipotles, piquins, and habaneros – both on the way in and the way out. Mexican food is why we live here. It’s why we came here. It’s why we can never leave. You think you can get a decent plate of migas in Maine? Unlikely. And we won’t be producing any world-class maple surple either, but we do make some mighty fine hot sauce. If you’re not convinced, you should check out this weekend’s Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, one of the world’s hottest events featuring a sampling of more than 300 hot sauce recipes and four Austin bands: NewBoy, White Ghost Shivers, Guy Forsyth, and the Texas Sapphires, all for a paltry donation of two nonperishable food items. If you don’t like Mexican food, this isn’t the event for you, but that’s OK, you should be busy packing anyway.

White Ghost Shivers

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MON., AUG. 14, 2006

It’s finally weed-out season: that succession of 100-plus degree, rainless days, mid-August through late September where the mythical, travel brochure Austin gets exposed as the merciless, scorching sweatbox it really is. If you’re a doe-eyed Midwesterner or a West Coast high tech transplant who moved down in May, you’re probably wondering what the hell happened to all the verdure. You’re probably wondering why tar is dripping from the roof and the tap water never gets any cooler than tepid. You’re wondering why your flip-flops are sticking to the asphalt or why your Chow keeps dropping laser hair removal mailers in your lap when you come home from work. You might find yourself walking more slowly past the thong section at Target or the giant kiddie pools at Wal-Mart. You might be reconsidering your scotch and sirloin diet or the fondue party you have planned for Labor Day. You might be seriously thinking about trying guacamole, ceviche, or mojitos – not because they sound exotic, but because they look cool. And maybe it’s time to see what the big deal is about Barton Springs, Campbell’s Hole, Deep Eddy, Hamilton Pool, or Hippie Hollow. While you’re at it, maybe you need to revisit the whole clothing question altogether. In August do you really need anything more that a straw hat and a plum smuggler? Check with the folks in HR. Maybe you could get by with nothing more than a light glaze of deodorant and sunscreen. Whatever you do, don’t hide indoors. That’s just admitting defeat. You might as well move back to Sheboygan or Sioux City. If you want to survive, you have to adapt, evolve. Besides, with global warming, August in Austin might be up to a buck thirty in a few years. You don’t want to have wasted your chance to enjoy the cool weather, do you? Of course not. That’s why this Saturday on the deck at Central Market, you should chill with the White Ghost Shivers. That’s right, by the time the Shivers hit the stage, temperatures should be somewhere in the frosty mid-90s, which is a perfect temp to enjoy hot music from the Twenties and Thirties by a freaky, fully clothed band fronted by a 7 foot dude named “Shorty.”

Sticky Fingers Stones Album Hoot

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MON., AUG. 7, 2006

Baby boomers break down into two basic categories: Ones who like the Beatles and ones who like the Stones. No doubt you could come up with a more sophisticated classification system, one that accounts for a Byzantine array of physiological, psychological, and sociological variations (type of PT Cruiser, for instance), but if you want to get a quick read of a boomer’s headspace, the Beatles/Stones thing is a good place to start. Try it sometime. Jump up on the bar at the Donn’s Depot or Eddie V’s and scream, “Mick Jagger kicks John Lennon’s ass!” Never mind the obvious stupidity of the statement, just watch the rhetorical melee that ensues. Stones fans will claim that the Mick is a true blue-collar rock & roller, and Lennon was a pretentious whiner. Lennonites will defend John as the second coming of Jesus (or something even bigger) and say Mick is a fat-lipped, exploitative poser. The truth is, both were skinny Brit kids from middle-class backgrounds. Methodologically however, they couldn’t be further apart. While Lennon aimed for the head, Jagger worked the body. Lennon smoked pot, protested, and sought spiritual enlightenment; Jagger swilled booze and drugs, dirty danced, and rode giant inflatable penises. Neither was particularly genuine in anything other than his love of American roots music. Nonetheless, how you come down on the Stones/Beatles issue says a lot about who you are as a middle-aged white person. Do you go for Lennon’s love-in imaginings or Jagger’s strut and swagger? Do you like tie-dye and sitar or leather and guitar? Or maybe you’re too young to know or even care. That would make you a good candidate for the “Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out With Sticky Fingers” Stones Album Hoot this Saturday at Ruta Maya HQ. If you weren’t even a zygote when the Stones released Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, or Sticky Fingers, that doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the Stones in your own way, especially when you have a diverse and talented group of young bands to reintroduce you to the material. Just a few of the bands playing Saturday include: Coopers Uncle, the Spiders, King Tears, Household Names, Jane Bond, the Arm, and Zykos. Don’t worry, if you’ve never heard of any of the preceding bands, you’ll still know the music … and vice-versa. It’s a win-win for young and old alike, plus it’s a benefit for Jeff Tonn, who is suffering from an undiagnosed illness.

Bruce Robison

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MON., JULY 31, 2006

South Austin, Texas, is about the only place in the world where people have the chutzpah to go country dancing in sandals. Part of the reason is that it’s hot down South … crazy hot, hot like flu breath, hot like a Harley muffler, hot like a hooker’s crotch. But it’s hot a lot of places and they still manage to throw together a respectably western ensemble. Just because the sun in Ft. Stockton could cook the skin off a napping lizard doesn’t mean the locals are running down to the Wal-Mart to trade in their Tony Lamas and Wrangler cowboy cuts for Crocs and cargoes. There’s an aesthetic to consider, traditions to uphold. You can’t have a bunch of leftover-salmon stank hippies twirling around the dance floor in tie-dye and dreads butchering the sublime choreography of the sacred Texas two-step. That’s just asking to rip a huge hole the fabric of the space-time continuum. South Austin, it would seem, is just such a wormhole, the kind of place, as David Allan Coe used to sing, “Where bikers stare at cowboys who’re laughing at the hippies.” Of course, unlike the Coe verse, in South Austin they all got high at the afterparty on some gay dude’s ecstasy and made babies. In some places they would call that a clusterfuck, but Austin is a university town and so we call it evolution. The result of this crazy cultural miscegenation is that on any given evening you might see a cat who looks a lot like Jesus in Tevas (either the Christ or the one who sells flowers down on Sixth Street) kicking up dust (maybe toe-fungus spores?) at a honky-tonk with some Patsy Cline wannabe Circle C soccer mom on girls night out … and once the fog of cultural incongruity clears, you might find the answer to the question, “What would Jesus do-si-do to?” If it’s this weekend, there’s a good chance he’ll be dancing to a member of the musical family Robison. Friday night Charlie and Li’l sis Robyn Ludwick will be teaming up at Threadgill’s on Riverside, and Saturday night brother Bruce will be cutting loose at the Spoke. Whether by nurture or nature, all are great entertainers who will surely get your sandals scooting.

Smokin’ Singles Night With the K-Tel Hit Machine

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MON., JULY 24, 2006

All singles events are suspect. Any person/business/organization with a hard-on for playing Yentl probably has an ulterior motive. Know it. Own it. That way, if you should find yourself holding up the wallpaper at the Red Lion Inn cocktail lounge on a Saturday night with 20 or 30 other anxious looking people sporting business casual attire and name tags done up in red sharpie, you can’t claim ignorance. Take a look around you. Is this what it’s come to? Sometimes in your desperation to get laid you only end up fucking yourself. You know better than that. You don’t have to squint to read the signs that say you’re on the road to Squaresville. They’re usually written in bold print: “Singles Night!” And if you find yourself at Cool River, sharing an awkward lunch hour across the table from a cologne-soaked salesman in a Hawaiian print shirt, pleated khaki shorts and sockless loafers, just know that the chirpy ex-stewardess who you paid to set you up with Mr. Cell-phone-on-a-belt-clip maybe doesn’t have your long-term happiness on the top of her to-do list. Maybe the whole premise is jacked. The interesting thing about you isn’t the fact that you’re single and looking to hook up. Your availability is not your defining feature as a human being. If it is, maybe you shouldn’t breed at all. The interesting thing about you is that thing you’re really interested in. It doesn’t need to be much … you don’t have to be curing cancer or saving displaced war orphans. Maybe you do needlepoint, salsa dance, or fix up old cars, or maybe you’re just really fucking nuts about live music. If it’s the latter, then you are in a healthy mental state to attend this Friday’s Smokin’ Singles Night at La Zona Rosa. Yes, Smokin’ Singles Night. Kiss of death? Maybe not. This singles night has a really kickass cover band, the K-Tel Hit Machine that features A-List performers: Trish and Darin Murphy, Johnnie Goudy, Paul English, Mike Belile, Kyle Crusham, and Benjamin Hotchkiss as well as a sensational opening act, Billy Harvey. If you’re the kind of person who can free your inner dork and totally rock out to pop and rock classics from the Seventies and Eighties, this is your show, regardless of your singularity. Plus, it’s sponsored by Lovers Lane. We may be suspect, but we’d never intentionally steer you wrong.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

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WED., JULY 19, 2006

Doing a live production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in July in Austin is like doing Beach Blanket Bingo in Siberia in December: You gotta have some world-class thespians to sell that kind of incongruity. Flannel is hot enough in the winter, but flannel on the Zilker Hillside Stage in the dead of summer is suicidal masochism, the kind of inexplicable turd in the punch bowl that completely tears down the fourth wall. Fortunately, the hillside is far enough away from the stage (which, to add another stifling hot layer of irony, is painted black, sort of like a huge, Dutch oven) that you probably won’t get drenched during the barn dance scene when the brides and bros start twirling around like human schvitz sprinklers. You’re more likely to see drier wardrobe at a wet T-shirt contest, but certainly not a more spectacular one. Word has it that the costumes in this production are so resplendent that they alone are worth a couple of hours of swelter. As for the performers, who could question the commitment of any actor or actress willing to give so much (measurable empirically, one would imagine, in quarts) to practice their craft? Imagine trying to keep a happy, horny lumberjack smile on your face while your crotch is boiling up some ball soup? Acting like that deserves a Tony … or at the very least a beer bong full of iced Gatorade. Speaking of Gatorade, you should probably bring some yourself. When it comes to outdoor theatre in Austin, hydration is key. The human body is an air- and liquid-cooled engine, and the nice thing about the Zilker Hillside Theatre is that you can bring your own drinks … including hooch as long as you’re not all hillbilly about it. The other nice thing is that the dress code is … well … ”lax” would be an understatement, but suffice it to say that unlike the mountain folk onstage, you could rock anything down to a thong or a plum smuggler and still be mostly legal. And, as ever, it’s always legal to go topless in Austin, but sometimes it isn’t cool to be so cool.

11th Annual Bastille Day Festival

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TUE., JULY 11, 2006

Just because you watched the World Cup finals last Sunday doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a terrorist or a commie or even a foreigner, it only makes you a suspect. That’s OK though, because these days pretty much everyone outside the Oval Office is a suspect, so you’re in good company. Amazing as it may seem, there are some people here in the U.S. who understand and appreciate the game of soccer. Even weirder: a growing number of them are red staters – red not as in “communist” or “menace,” but people from America’s heartland (necks, maybe?) who for some reason want their kids to play a sport that doesn’t demand high doses of steroids, a helmet, or a 42 inch vertical. There is no doubt that soccer’s rise in popularity is a sure sign of the decline of American civilization. Who could defend a sport where America’s best and brightest can get their asses handed to them by a no-name banana republic like Ghana in front of an audience of nearly a billion people? Stuff like that damages America’s rep. Pretty soon all the skinnies will start to thinking that just because we can’t use our feet we can’t point a grenade launcher at a mud hut. What next? The Canadian Army storms across North Dakota? Where does it end? Should we just stencil a big black “WELCOME” across the doormat of America? Fortunately, America has a hero: France. For better than 300 years now, the French have been showing us the way, whether it be the Cartesian dualism of Descartes (Cogito ergo sum) or the irrational symbolism of Zidane, who last Sunday partly revived France’s waning world cup machismo by knocking Italian defender Marco Materazzi flat on his ass with a wicked head butt to the chest. France lost, but what a brilliant display of freedom and independence…albeit the darker side. This weekend at the French Legation The Alliance Française d’Austin will be celebrating French independence with their 11th Annual Bastille Day Festival. The fest features French delicacies, desserts, a silent auction, petanque, and music by Paris 49, an American jazz band with a French twist.