Month: November 2020

Hayes Carll and the Band of Heathens

The Luv Doc Recommends

December 22, 2008

In the immortal, drug-addled words of the Grateful Dead, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” Tough year. Ugly ending. Now, poised on the precipice of what will surely be the most rigorous, white-knuckled anal rogering of the American populace in decades, it’s difficult to look back on the Bush administration with anything but bitterness and contempt. After half a decade of dropping roughly $300 million a day fucking up somebody else’s country, America finally looked inward and found that it was fucking itself in the process. In the past few months, American citizens finally let out a well-deserved, collective “Doh!” Of course, easy as it is to engage in hindsight finger-pointing, assigning blame is unproductive. Ultimately, the finger of blame points squarely at the American electorate. We were all busy having the time of our lives, racking up credit-card debt on crappy consumer goods so worthless they probably even disgusted the child laborers who manufactured them. Now that the orgy of misplaced materialism is sputtering out, Americans need to pull together. Maybe we should print up some brand-new Uncle Sam posters featuring an old, gray-haired, slightly Asian-looking dude standing with his pockets pulled inside out, the zipper of his striped pants undone, with a caption that reads “I WANT YOU … to kiss the bunny.” Yes, we’re all going to have to put in some quality knee time servicing the enormous Asian debt we’ve pumped up. So begins the long, slow slog back to fiscal responsibility. Work local; pay global. It’s pretty much the model we’ve unwittingly been living under for the past five years anyway. The good news for Austin is that our economy will probably fare better than most. We have the government, the university, and very shortly lots and lots (buildings and buildings, too) of brand-new condos. In fact, just a few long years from now, Austin might set the record for the city with the most available affordable housing and the highest number of homeless people. We’ll probably still be the live music capital of the world, though. There’s no reason to think that musicians won’t keep moving to Austin in droves. If you’re going to be broke anyway, you might as well be broke in a city where you can do something you love for no money. Musicians will probably be attacking cars on street corners like squeegee men and streetwalkers. On the bright side, it might be kind of cool to drive around with a shoe-gazer indie band as your living hood ornament for 50 cents an hour. Until then you’ll have to pay at the door, just like everyone else. Might as well support live music in Austin while you still can. This Saturday, you can do just that by taking your folding money to Antone’s, where local faves the Band of Heathens and Houston songwriter Hayes Carll share the bill. It’s been a long, ugly year, but both acts’ fortunes seem to be on the upswing. Who knows? Maybe Obama will toss a fourth quarter Hail Mary and put America on an upswing, as well.

33rd Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

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December 16, 2008

Let’s assume for a moment that you’re growing psychotic from holiday shopping and want to take the edge off your misanthropic rage with a couple of longnecks at the Carousel Lounge. You exit the top ramp of I-35, cross Airport, and head north on the access road where you will cross 51st onto Cameron and hook a hard right on 52nd. You’re so close, but wait a minute … you forgot … in order to get to the Carousel from the I-35 access road, now you have to make a completely unnecessary, asinine detour through the Mueller development. You’ll be driving past Best Buy and Home Depot and Rack Room … all the big, big boxers … plus their hordes of greed-crazed shoppers who drove into town from places like Marble Falls, Elgin, Lockhart, and Smithville – ostensibly so they can go 5 mph in front of you in the left lane, periodically hitting their brakes and turn signal and weaving perilously close to either the curb or the traffic speeding around them. Fortunately, you are sustained through your journey by the knowledge that there is a pawnshop just around the corner on Cameron where you can buy an assault rifle to hunt down the evil dirtbag city planner who signed off on this depraved boondoggle. Surely he will be the one walking around with a huge lump on his ass from a wallet stuffed fat with developer payoffs. He will be the only city worker who drives a Hummer with gold rims and a license plate that reads, “BBOXBUKS.” You don’t actually have to shoot him, but maybe keep a muzzle trained on the security guards while your buddies put the beat down on him with a couple of orange road cones. Scarier still is the possibility that there is some sober rationale behind the design – that perhaps some committee got together over cold bagels and Starbucks and hatched this idea out of thin air. It had to be thin air. Clearly their brains were oxygen starved at the time. Maybe they were exhausted after a full day of replacing four-way stops with traffic roundabouts, the beloved panacea of urban planning – unless you happen to be a bicyclist pasted to the brush guard of a ¾ ton 4-by-4. Maybe that’s what they were going for with Mueller: a huge traffic circle – albeit with stoplights and product placement. You never know when someone is going to get a hankering for a bigass chain-store burrito or some discount child labor sneakers on their long journey back to traveling in a straight line. The concept isn’t new. Highways all over Texas are routed through dying little towns with empty main street storefronts and Wal-Marts the size of football fields. You can’t blame a chamber of commerce for a couple of speed traps and some schmaltzy holiday decorations designed to lure casual travelers into buying fake antiques, chainsaw sculptures, and tooth-breaking peanut brittle, but the Mueller development isn’t some Rockwellian hometown fallen on hard times. It’s a pricy piece of downtown dirt – pricey enough, apparently, to prohibit participation by local businesses. Then again, local businesses would probably have been too ashamed to sign on to such a gallingly deceitful site plan. They’re more likely to dangle the carrot of live music, which is exactly the tack the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar has been taking for several decades. This week’s performers include local favorites like Paula Nelson, Jimmy Lafave, Shelley King, Butch Hancock, and the Eggmen, plus 130 booths of arts, crafts, clothing, furniture, and jewelry by local artisans. Admission is $6, and you have to drive to it, rather than through it, but it sure beats big boxing.

Cherrywood Art Fair

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December 9, 2008

There’s a decent chance your office holiday party is this weekend. Excellent. After 11 months of petty politics, gossip, bickering, and backstabbing, you and your annoying co-workers are going to put the cherry on top with a booze-fueled yuletide blowout. Merry indeed. Still, corny though they may be, office holiday parties are exactly the kind of team-building exercise that upper-management types spend thousands of dollars trying to recreate with overpaid consultancy firms. It really sucks being put in uncomfortable situations where you have to relate to and rely on your co-workers, but at least with the holiday party you get the reach-around of being inebriated. Of course, that is, as long as you do it right. Surely somewhere in a magazine, on a website, through a Sunday sermon, or perhaps even in your employee handbook, you have been warned about the dangers of overindulgence at the office holiday party. And now every time December rolls around, there’s a little white angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear: “Don’t get drunk and say something stupid or embarrassing in front of your co-workers or, gasp! Your boss!” Right? Bullshit. Swat that self-righteous little bitch off your shoulder, and order up an afterparty cab ride home right now, while you’re still sober enough to remember the address. Here’s the dirty little secret the man doesn’t want you to know: The problem isn’t getting wasted at the holiday party. The problem is not planning on getting wasted at the holiday party. Spontaneous alcoholism is cute and all. In fact, it has made for some really interesting Girls Gone Wild video footage, but real drinkers know that like any other potentially dangerous activity, it’s best to observe some basic precautions. Remember: This is the office holiday party. You’re not trying to pledge a frat. First things first, you’re going to need a ride home. Cabs are great, but don’t rule out that unctuous Baptist co-worker who listens to Joel Osteen tapes. On a team, everyone has a role. Hardcore stoners will work too, but be prepared for a long ride home – possibly with a three-taco pit stop at Jack in the Box. Whatever, just work it out in advance. You don’t want to let your crotch arrange for your ride home. Sure, you’re in control now, but a good holiday-party buzz can turn a chaste mistletoe peck into a slobbery game of tonsil hockey. Avoid PDA. You can’t just assume that people will know you’re only bi when you’ve been drinking – especially your boss. Especially when your tongue is down his throat. Really, when you think about it, team building is about learning to trust your co-workers, and nothing builds trust like sharing a really embarrassing secret that probably wouldn’t have happened if you were sober – something the Human Resources Department would have to write you up for. You don’t have to accidentally kill a prostitute or anything, but what happens in a hotel hot tub will probably stay in a hotel hot tub, which is why sober people avoid hotel hot tubs unless they’re sure the hot tub has recently been sterilized. You don’t have to go there. Leading a bunny-hop line with a lampshade on your head will do just fine. Some people might see that as attention whoring douche baggery, but others, mostly the ones in line behind you, will see it as leadership. Ideally, one of them will be someone who can give you a raise. Remember though: Team building isn’t about personal recognition. It’s about doing what it takes to get the job done. That’s a good description of what’s happening at Maplewood Elementary this weekend at the Cherrywood Art Fair, the annual fundraiser for the school’s art and gardening programs, as well as public art projects in East Austin. Buy arts, crafts, and clothing from original Austin artists, plus hear live music from bands such as the Coffee Sergeants, Colin Gilmore, Joe McDermott, and Troy Campbell. Admission is free, but you’ll want to bring a fat wallet to buy some nice gifts for the folks in Human Resources.

A Night of Music From Around the World

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December 2, 2008

Living atop the monolith of American superiority, sometimes it’s hard to remember that there are nearly 200 other sovereign states living in our prodigious shadow. Some are tiny places like Monaco, Lichtenstein, and San Marino, countries you could literally pee across on a full bladder, but there are also sprawling giants like China, Russia, India, and Canada. Yes, that’s right. Canada. It’s sobering to think that there are countries out there with fully developed governments, economies, and cultures that are fundamentally different than ours. Better? Hard to say. You can’t really put a chili dog and tater tots head to head with moo goo gai pan on any rational qualitative scale. Nor can you definitively say that China’s brand of communism is any worse than American capitalism, especially considering China, like McDonald’s, has more than a billion people served. Granted, cheeseburgers are somewhat complicated – especially when you’re using reconstituted onions and frozen meat patties, but providing basic social services for more than a billion people has to involve some impressive, Byzantine, Rain Man-style calculus. As far as religion goes, that’s a wash as well. Sadly, not even Don King himself could get Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and the ghost of Nietzsche (a serious rhetorical stretch anyway) to throw down against each other in some sort of chain-link death match for moral superiority. As sexy as it sounds, a cage full of blissed out pacifist deities and the ghost of a deranged, syphilitic, coke-abusing German philosopher would probably only muddy the issue even further. Besides, if Nietzsche were to win (assuming he could score some ghost coke before the bout), the fact that he is a spiritual being blows his whole moral construct completely out of the water. In fact, the whole idea is pointless – sort of like following the path of a Möbius strip. Does it lead to infinity or futility? Is there a difference? Fortunately, Americans generally leave the mental thumb-twiddling of philosophy to foreigners anyway. If we can’t kill it, cook it, snort it, smoke it, drive it, buy it, or fuck it, we’re not really all that interested. This mindset has surely slowed our cultural development over the past few hundred years, but it has kept us mean and greedy and on top of the heap – geopolitically speaking at least. Badass as we are however, occasionally Americans pop our heads out of the sand and concede that other countries have something useful to bring to the table. For the Saudis, it’s oil. For the Argentineans, it’s breast augmentation techniques. For Canadians, it’s maddeningly inexplicable perkiness. Whatever the case, the dark, ugly truth of American culture is that ours would be pretty shitty if we didn’t steal so much of it from other places. American culture is a stone soup, and we contributed the stone. If you want to get a taste of some of the ingredients before they hit the pot, head down to Momo’s this Friday at 8pm for A Night of Music From Around the World, a live performance of music from diverse cultures by the University of Texas world music ensembles. Hear music from the Middle East, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and other Caribbean countries. Proceeds from the performance help the ensembles acquire new instruments, as well as guest artists and teachers. Might as well pony-up for this deal because that chain-link death match just isn’t going to happen.

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.

Night of the Moustache

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November 18, 2008

Hold it off one more week. Do it for us. We know you’re all ready to take that peppermint-flavored candy cane stick pony ride into the holiday season, but it’s not here yet. It’s not time. You just think it is because the Madison Avenue greed whores are already burning up prime time with yuletide schmaltz, no doubt shitting trou at the thought of millions of Americans staying home for the holidays this year making eggnog and wassailing instead of wearing out the magnetic strips on their MasterCards at the shopping mall. Pretty much everyone except Bill O’Reilly knows that the “X” in “X-mas” stands for mark next to the line on the credit card receipt where you sign your name, and the credit card season starts whenever the ads start airing and the chumps start charging. For now, it’s the day after Halloween, but in a few years the Neil Diamond Christmas Special will be bumping out a tedious, awkwardly uncomfortable hour of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. Who loses? The kids. Well, not Jerry’s kids. They’ll at least get to see the Jewish Elvis belt out a soul-stirring rendition of “O Holy Night” instead of watching Gary Lewis phone in his millionth cruise-boat version of “Everybody Loves a Clown” while papa Lewis squeezes out a well-rehearsed teardrop of pride. No, kids all over America will lose because after they’ve whined for four months about Wiis and Game Boys and pee-squirting dolls, their parents will either a) attempt infanticide or b) actually turn to Jesus. Either scenario is a huge money saver for the parents but an even bigger bummer for the kids. Being dead is no walk in the park (unless you’re still haunting one), but being the spawn of a Jesus freak is a one-way ticket to Dullsville. It’s the difference between a white-knuckled car chase in Grand Theft Auto IV and freezing your ass off handing out sack lunches to the homeless. Both are skills that should be useful to children in the hard times ahead, but real homeless people are rarely as entertaining as video-game gangsters. Plus, all that do-gooding will send the wrong message to America’s youth. Capitalism works best when the money trickles upstream to the most wealthy. Turn it around, and the whole model goes to shit. It’s probably just as well for the time being. Philanthropy isn’t going to service all that Chinese debt any more than irresponsible consumerism, but if the economy is going to hell in a handbasket anyway, we might as well help out the home team, right? That’s not a very X-massy sentiment, but Creditmas may not come at all this year. If you want to give this altruism thing a try, you might want to start small, and what better place to do that than at the Tiniest Bar in Texas? This Friday at TBIT a group called Team Spiridon is hosting the “Night of the Moustache,” a benefit for Emancipet, an organization dedicated to preventing animal homelessness, and the Dick Beardsley Foundation, a nonprofit providing grants for people seeking treatment for chemical dependency. The event features a silent auction plus music by Eat a Peach, an Allman Brothers tribute band, and Girl Guitar, a group of up-and-coming female artists.

Billy Joe Shaver and Adam Carroll

The Luv Doc Recommends

November 11, 2008

If you’re new to Austin, consider this: You can’t really call yourself an Austinite until you’ve spent some quality time in a South Austin back yard – ideally one decorated with Christmas lights, old beer signs, and a liberal scattering of dogs, mosquitoes, and dirt-smeared children. There should also be an makeshift stage – perhaps a piece of plywood laid on the grass or maybe the corner of a back porch or a rusty old flatbed U-Haul trailer that somehow never made its way back to Grand Blanc, Mich. On the stage should be a man of indeterminate middle age – somewhere between 40 and 70 – whose skin appears to have been slow-cured for decades by a combination of relentless sun and unfiltered cigarettes. He should be wearing an old snap shirt – not vintage, but some faded, half-polyester turquoise and brown job that was purchased at a Montgomery Ward back in 1979. It will have wear holes and a few buttons missing. He may or may not be wearing a sweat-stained, straw cowboy hat too, but if he is, he’ll be wearing sandals instead of boots, or maybe some old Payless running shoes. If he is actually wearing boots, they are older than you – maybe even older than your parents and your parents’ parents. Still, in spite of the fact that he looks like he has raided the Crypt Keeper’s wardrobe, he will be playing a really expensive guitar – probably a Taylor or a Guild or maybe an ancient Martin that was signed by Willie or Waylon or Townes – well, maybe Townes. It’s hard to say, because the signature trails off at the end. In the midst of all the conversational murmur, children’s squeals, dog barks, and airplane/traffic noises, he will unobtrusively be playing a song. If you actually pay attention to it, you might find that it is the most beautiful and true song you’ve ever heard. You might be absolutely shocked you’ve never heard it before. Incredulous, you might turn to the person next to you and ask who wrote it, and they will respond, “He did.” You won’t recognize his name. He’s nobody special, but when you finally hear that song, you’ll be able to call yourself an Austinite. More importantly, you can carry that beautiful memory with you when some pretentious fuckstick doorman jacks you up about not wearing proper attire. This is Austin motherfucker. We are playing a much bigger game here. Like Billy Jeff Clinton used to say, “We are expanding the definition of us and shrinking the definition of them.” That’s what makes this town special. So maybe you haven’t gotten the South Austin Backyard Dirt-Patch Party e-vite. Don’t sweat it. Your time will come. You just have to start mixing it up with the right people. Try Ruta Maya HQ this Friday. Somehow a wormhole opened up somewhere in the space-time continuum and is dropping country songwriting legend Billy Joe Shaver smack dab in the middle of one of Austin’s biggest hippie havens. That’s OK. He could use a little more peace and a little less war these days. If you haven’t seen Billy Joe, you need to put him on your bucket list before he finishes up his. Shaver is one of the finest living American songwriters. See him now at Ruta Maya, so you won’t have to watch the PBS documentary about his life and wish you had.

Fun Fun Fun Fest

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October 4, 2008

Oh sweet, sweet, glorious victory! Finally we’ll have somebody in the White House who doesn’t pronounce “nuclear” like a kindergartner. Seriously. How fucking hard is it? Not nearly as hard as bringing lasting peace to the Middle East or hunting down Osama bin Laden, but you have to start somewhere – ideally in kindergarten. Kindergarten would have been the perfect time for George Sr. to give Junior a crisp rap to the head with his 1948 Yale class ring and say, “It’s nooo-cleee-eerrrr!!!” Didn’t happen. Then Andover dropped the ball and subsequently Yale, and here we are several decades later with a president whose best attempt at intellectualism is a furrowed brow. Thanks, Ivy League, shall we grease up another hole? Sure, in retrospect it seems nitpicky, especially with all of the relatively apocalyptic shit that’s been going down in the last few terms, but you can’t slack off on the wealthy. You never know if some silver-spooned, coke-swilling frat boy is going to wake up some morning and decide he wants his grubby palms on America’s joystick. It’s been painfully illustrated in the last eight years that being among America’s financial elite isn’t a sufficient prerequisite for running the show – no matter what Donald Trump thinks. There is a certain amount of intellectual rigor involved in governing a country of 300 million people – even more to govern them well. Eagle One should at least be in the Top 10%. Who could argue with that? Who could make the case that our president shouldn’t be one of the 30 million smartest people in America? That still leaves a staggering amount of leeway. We’re not necessarily asking for Stephen Hawking, just someone who doesn’t rely on fingers and toes to do arithmetic. You could make the cut, and there could still be 29,999,999 people smarter than you are. That doesn’t seem stuck up at all, does it? Also, emotional intelligence is charming but not a sufficient substitute for real intelligence. It has been said that Bush has a high emotional IQ, but apparently it didn’t help him understand why the ice caps are melting or why mindless consumerism isn’t always the best response to national crises. Maybe a presidential aptitude test is in order, or maybe not. Regardless, we’re off the hook for another four years. All we have to do now is weather the upcoming depression and figure out a diabolically genius way to drag ourselves out of this Bushhole we dug in the last two elections. Education would be a good start. If W was able to slip through the cracks of the crème de la crème of American scholastics, imagine what must be coming out the other end. Frightening, isn’t it? For now, however, we can celebrate the fact that America pulled its head at least partially out of its ass for the first time in eight years. Boo yah! Strike up the band, Tito, and let’s get the party started. Where? How about down at Waterloo Park this weekend at Fun Fun Fun Fest? Sure, the promoters spent about as much time on the name as Bush spent on planning the Iraq war, but at least this event has a decent payoff. Some of the many acts scheduled to perform include Dead Milkmen, the National, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, All, Atmosphere, Bouncing Souls, Dan Deacon, and Clipse. If you blow your money on this, you won’t have to watch it whither away in the next great depression.

Austin Humane Society’s Rags2Wags Benefit

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October 27, 2008

If you’re spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not you should wear a Halloween costume to work on Friday, quit it. This is Austin. Of course you should. Yes, there are a few exceptions. You probably shouldn’t wear a Barney costume to your job as a fry cook at McDonald’s. Bad idea. If you’re a fireman, you’ll probably want to avoid any costume you can get at Wal-Mart or Walgreens or any other Wal retailer, even and especially if it promises “Wal-o-ween savings.” Wearing one of those cheap bastards is like walking around with a diesel fuel-soaked dead Christmas tree strapped to your back. The tag might say “flame retardant” in English, but the Chinese symbols really read “flaming flower.” Surgeons, on the other hand, should probably avoid three-fingered cartoon characters like Porky Pig and Mickey Mouse … for obvious reasons, and cops should avoid feathers, fringe, glitter and high heels – unless they’re paying for it after hours. Most people however – the kind who have time to pick up this paper (and not just to wash the windows at McDonald’s) – don’t work in a job where they already wear a costume. They fall outside the standard Village People caricature set. For them, Halloween is a slam dunk. In the words of vampire pop icon Gerard Way: “Shit is easy peasy pumpkin peasy pumpkin pie, motherfucker.” In most offices, a festively themed sweater is enough to score you some holiday street cred, but why halfass it in the name of job security? Victory goes to the bold … or more often the bold and slutty. If you can’t rock it like Liberace, at least show enough skin to make a whore blush. This is a once a year deal, a free pass to get your freak on full tilt. Wear the tube top even if it exposes your chest hair. Go for the mini-miniskirt – just make sure your boys aren’t hanging like church bells. That’s probably a line item somewhere in the employee handbook. If you really go over the top, you’ll show your co-workers and upper management that you’re willing to do what it takes … even if it takes sweat lodging it all day in a stinky, sweltering, rented rubber and fur Chewbacca costume communicating only in Wookiee growls. If you roll that strong, you put everyone in the office on notice that you’re willing to boil the bunny. Respek. Regardless of how you decide to go, the important thing is to lose your sense of dignity. Nothing queers a good Halloween costume more than trying to “tone it down a little.” For a costume to really work, you have to feel utterly ridiculous. If you don’t, then maybe you chose something too close to home. Pets understand this concept. Dachshunds are absolutely humiliated to be dressed in tutus, but deep down they know they look hilarious. Otherwise, why would they wear them so often? If after a full day of Halloween indignity, you feel like laughing at something other than yourself, head over to the Austin Music Hall for Austin Humane Society’s Rags2Wags dog and cat celebrity fashion show. Enjoy cocktails and food from Pascal’s Catering Company; a silent auction for trips, spa packages, jewelry and more; plus live music and dancing with Bruce Robison, all benefiting Austin’s only no-kill animal shelter. Boo! Yeah!

Scare for a Cure’s World of Horrorcraft

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October 21, 2008

West Coasters who visit Austin for the first time – those who spend a few days getting to know the place – often remark about how people here are “unpretentious” or “genuine.” It’s basically the same thing people from Austin say about people in Giddings or Lampasas – the same thing that could be said about a huge swath of America, the Western hemisphere, or even the world. But really, what’s the point of saying the people of Tikrit are down to earth? Does it mean that they have nothing left to eat but dirt? Does it mean somebody just screamed, “Incoming!”? Or, could it simply mean that they’re too busy scraping out a subsistence to worry about what anyone else thinks? Here in Austin, we’re hardly scraping out subsistence. In fact, we get along well enough that we have plenty of free time and energy to engage in all sorts of dorky pursuits, and we do so shamelessly. We’re so immersed in our dorkitude, in fact, that we sometimes forget that anyone is paying attention to us at all. We’re basically a town full of nutty professors, wandering around in a daze with our heads crammed full of arcane facts about things like Frisbee golf, hallucinogenic mushrooms, zombie movies, minor league soccer, interpretive dance, and Townes Van Zandt. Not only that, we’re willing to share this information with anyone unfortunate enough to meet our gaze for more than an instant. Sure, it may seem like earnest sincerity to the uninitiated, but really it’s just psychotic self-absorption. Is that an admirable quality? Who knows? What people really mean when they say Austin is “authentic” is that we embrace our dorkiness instead of hiding it. We’re unabashed. We go to the grocery store in spandex biking shorts and hiking sandals; we freely admit to attending renaissance fairs, sci-fi film festivals, and drum circles; we ride Segways, dance salsa, and participate in live action role-playing, then talk about it over beers at Opal Divine’s. It’s precious, really, until your landlord hands you a flyer for his experimental performance art piece at the Off Center. The upshot of all of this unrepentant dorkiness is that it’s really hard in Austin to be a bigger dork than everyone else. You have to really work at it, and that’s just not the Austin way. So, you can pretty much revel in all the dorky shit your heart desires. This weekend you can do just that when Scare for a Cure opens its World of Horrorcraft (no, that’s not a misprint) haunted house at the Elks Lodge on Dawson Road. For $20 you can scream your lungs out and dirt your trousers in support of local cancer-related charities. After all, a pretend haunted house is scary but not nearly as frightening as cancer, which is about as unpretentious as you can get.