Month: June 2022

South Austin Pitch and Pooch Celebrity Golf Tournament and Canine Extravaganza

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 31, 2011

Anyone who is really paying attention knows that the world is full of miracles and wonders: Labrador puppies, the Interwebs, night vision, pot vaporizers, those Coke Freestyle machines at Jack in the Box (c’mon, 100 flavors is just fucking sick! All that’s missing is a “vodka” selection). We have a few right here in Austin – not just the Coke Freestyles, but miracles and wonders too. We have Barton Springs, the nightly exodus of 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, Leslie Cochran, Hippie Hollow, food trailers, moon towers … but there is one huge miracle/wonder that goes largely unnoticed, and that is the Butler Park Pitch & Putt Golf Course behind the Jack in the Box on Barton Springs Road. Why is it a miracle? Because it hasn’t been sold and converted to expensive high-rise condos. That’s nearly impossible to comprehend, isn’t it? How could such a large parcel of expensive Austin real estate remain untainted by the hot crotch of greed? How could it maintain its innocence? Well, it never has, really. As bucolic as the name sounds, Butler Park Pitch & Putt has a fascinating and sordid history. It may not look like it today, but the course was built on the remains of the old Butler Brick clay mine. When the clay played out in the late 1940s, the property sat undeveloped for several years until a golf pro named John Douglas Kinser petitioned the city to build a nine-hole, par 3 golf course on the site. His plan became a reality, and on June 1, 1950, the Butler Park Pitch & Putt opened to the public. Less than two years later, Kinser was murdered in broad daylight by a fellow named Malcolm Wallace who, along with Kinser, was rumored to be having an affair with then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson’s sister, Josepha. Intrigued, right? Maybe somebody should have kept his putter in the bag …. On Oct. 22, 1951, Wallace drove to the Pitch & Putt and shot Kinser five times in broad daylight with a .25 caliber pistol, then drove away in his station wagon. Both the car and Wallace were identified by witnesses, and the police arrested Wallace shortly thereafter. Interestingly, Wallace had worked for LBJ before being appointed as an economist to the Department of Agriculture, and when he went to trial in February of the following year, he was represented by LBJ’s attorney, John Cofer. Because of the overwhelming evidence (murder weapon, shell casings, blood stains, eye witnesses), Wallace was convicted of first-degree murder. Eleven of the 12 jurors voted for the death penalty, with one holding out for life in prison, but the judge overruled the jury and announced a five-year prison sentence, which he then suspended. Wallace was immediately freed. If you believe the conspiracy theorists (or historians as they like to be called), Wallace went on to murder several more people, including John F. Kennedy, on LBJ’s behalf. If that’s actually true, then the perpetrator (or one of the perpetrators) of the most famous assassinations of the 20th century got his start right here in Austin … at the little ol’ Pitch & Putt behind the Jack in the Box on Barton Springs Road. In America, anything is possible. For instance, this Friday at the Butler Park Pitch & Putt the Dream Come True Foundation is hosting the South Austin Pitch and Pooch Celebrity Golf Tournament and Canine Extravaganza – the “World’s Smallest Golf Tournament” that includes its own Jimmy Buffett-costumed dog parade. Participants can compete for prizes, get pictures with their dogs in Buffett attire, and bask in the glow of celebrities like Cedric Benson. Yes, in America, anything is possible, and that’s what the Dream Come True Foundation is all about: helping young people transition out of poverty. Anytime that happens it’s a miracle.

The White Party

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 25, 2011

The White Party sounds like the political wing of the Aryan Brotherhood – sort of the same way Sinn Féin is to the IRA – but it’s not. Don’t get all creeped out. The White Party is simply a party where people dress in white clothing. It’s a party, not a rally. Here’s the difference: If you’re someplace where everyone is wearing white and there are cocktails, trays of hors d’oeuvres, and a DJ mixing house music, you can probably relax. On the other hand, if you’re gathered a bonfire in some remote field in the middle of the night with a bunch of people who are not only wearing white but actually are white, you might want to consider going back and finishing high school. It’s the patriotic thing to do. Historically, in America, when white people start putting on white clothing, some evil shit is about to go down. Crosses get burned, people get lynched, chickens get fried … with 11 delicious herbs and spices … it’s all fucked up. Throughout the centuries (maybe because the menstrual stain really pops?), white has always represented virtue, goodness, and purity. The purity part is especially ironic considering certain white folks, in their quest for purity (racial in this case), completely undermine their goodness and virtue. Purity may be a desirable quality when looking for diamonds, buying cocaine, or cooking up corn squeezins, but when it comes to genetics, it only causes trouble. Spend a day walking around in Ireland, and you get the sense that much of its populace is in dire need of some miscegenation – at the very least a few more holidays in Majorca … or better yet, a Moorish invasion (smart money is on the Somalis). Whatever the case, something needs to give, or in another couple of hundred years, everyone in Ireland will have a comically huge flaming noggin like Conan O’Brien … or his sister … or maybe Conan doesn’t have a sister and that chick in The Fighter was really just Conan in drag. As intriguing as that theory sounds, it doesn’t hold water because Conan is clearly Irish, which means he probably has bunches of siblings of both genders and they are all bleeders. Regardless, it’s safe to say that all of Ireland needs to tap some strange … and not just a second cousin. The same could be said of certain pockets of Appalachia (although it could be argued that without inbreeding, the rest of the world would have never experienced that fine banjo pickin’ scene in Deliverance), Mennonite and Amish communities, and, of course, the British royal family – which, in contrast, makes a holler in the backwoods of West Virginia seem like a Benetton commercial. The best thing Prince Willie could have done for the health and longevity of the royal family was to come down with a case of jungle fever. It may be that he actually did. Kate Middleton is the swarthiest royal in a long, long while. That’s why she really looked good in white. In general, dark-skinned people look good in white. Who can ever forget how sharp Don Cheadle looked in that doughnut shop in Boogie Nights? OK, maybe not a good selling point for white attire, but before the brains hit his suit, he was the epitome of sartorial panache. Sean “Puffy” Combs, generally considered to be one of the premier arbiters of male fashion, has a bit of a penchant for white himself, and it could be argued that it was P-Diddy who popularized the white party, at least the contemporary version thereof. In fact, Puffy’s annual whiteout in the Hamptons is listed by Forbes as one of the world’s hottest parties. The Austin version may not reach such heights, but Friday night’s White Party at the Long Center benefits LifeWorks, a local charity that provides services for homeless, at-risk, and troubled youth in Austin, so there’s plenty of goodness and virtue in that. If you’re into purity, just make sure you only drink top shelf and try to keep the wine stains off your clothes – they really pop.

Deutschen Pfest

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 18, 2011

OK, so maybe Pflugerville isn’t technically Austin, but it is just up the road a piece. It’s nearly in Austin. In fact, if you scroll out far enough on a Google map, Austin and Pflugerville are indistinguishable. Of course, the same could be said of Texas, the Continental U.S., and, in a larger cosmic sense, the solar system, galaxy, and universe – all of which, of course, could easily fit into the head of a pin in some larger universe/dimension, which, in turn, is just an infinitesimal grain of sand in a huge cosmic desert that stretches to the edge of eternity … yeah, like eternity even as an edge … unless it’s the one on a Möbius strip … whoa! What was that? Did your head just explode? Hold it together, damn it. Things like Möbius strips, Escher paintings, abstract algebra, and the nature of the divine are not meant to be contemplated by people who aren’t baked on skunkweed. Pflugerville is similar in its own way – especially if you’re sitting in the backseat of a really enthusiastic real estate agent’s Lexus pimp-trolling through streets with theme names like “Petunia,” “Honeysuckle,” and “Poppy Pass.” Yes, there are fields and fields of “little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” but it ain’t called “Desirable Plugerville” for nothing. Well, actually it’s called “Desirable Pflugerville” because CenTex needed to move some real estate. Rest assured that if CenTex throws up a subdivision in Luling, it will get it’s own snazzy adjective – maybe “Loveable Luling.” If that happens, you can bet that “Marvelous Manchaca” and “Nifty Niederwald” will be kicking themselves. Regardless of CenTex’s questionable marketing campaign, Pflugerville isn’t exactly undesirable. First of all, you get a lot of house for your money. Yes, the house will be in a subdivision carved out of a treeless wheat field, and it will look vaguely similar to every other house on your street, but you will have plenty of room to move about the cabin: big kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and walk-in closets large enough to sleep a vanload of undocumented aliens. There are also good schools (good enough for Friday Night Lights is good enough, right?), playgrounds, and parks, and if you want to go buck wild in Austin, it’s only 15 minutes away if the traffic is flowing. Those chumps out in Round Rock have to drive at least 20. Perhaps the most important thing about Pflugerville is its rich German history. Henry Pfluger, the town’s namesake, was a rich German – a farmer who lost all his property in the Prussian War. He moved to Texas and eventually bought a big spread out east of Pflugerville where he raised wheat, rye, beans, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and eight sons and three daughters – 11 kids in all, not counting the one that died shortly after childbirth. Jesus. Henry Pfluger’s “P” may have been silent, but it certainly wasn’t shooting blanks. Eleven kids is plenty of progeny to warrant a festival, and Pflugerville has one. It’s called Deutschen Pfest, and it’s happening this weekend at Pfluger Park. Carnival? Yep. Parade? Yep. Bands? Of course. This year’s headliners include the Gourds, Brave Combo, Micky & the Motorcars, and German accordion/clarinet duo Lorelei und Schatzi, “The German, female version of the Smothers Brothers.” There is also a Pfun Run (don’t hate), paintball target practice, and a coloring contest, the winner of which gets to sit atop a float in the parade as Pflugerville’s “Mayor for a Day.” All of this of course, adds up to pfucking pfantastically pfun times. Here’s the best part: If you buy a festival T-shirt, you get in free for all three days. Yes, the T-shirt might get a little stanky by day three, but if you live in P-ville, you surely have a really nice washer and dryer. If you don’t, maybe you should.

A Behanding in Spokane

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 11, 2011

People are strongly attached to their appendages, both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, it’s not easy to sever most appendages. You can’t just go off half-cocked (unless you’re Lorena Bobbitt) and in a fit of passion hack off an appendage – especially when there’s (literally) bone involved. To get through bone you need some serious want-to or weaponry. Of course, the first thing you’ll want to ask yourself when attempting to dismember someone is, “Am I a psychopath?” Unless you’re a Civil War field doctor or Aron Ralston (the idiot James Franco played in 127 Hours), the answer is almost always, unequivocally, “Yes.” Keep in mind, Ralston only gets a pass because he was delirious from hubris, stupidity, and drinking his own urine. Point is, if you’re considering dismemberment for any reason other than to save someone’s life, put down the fucking hacksaw and check in to a mental hospital. Don’t wait on the jury to decide that you’re a dangerous nutjob. You have your answer. The first step in curing a psychosis is recognizing you have one. No matter how much your friends and family love you, it’s too late for an intervention when police start hauling decomposing body parts out of your crawl space. You would think it would be easy enough – statistically at least – to avoid dismembering someone. However, rather disturbingly, it’s not as uncommon as you might like to think. For instance: Drunks, while they may seem lovable, entertaining, and mostly harmless, are veritable merchants of death and dismemberment when operating motor vehicles. Letting a drunk drive is like handing him a machete to walk around with at a party. You will get all kinds of assurances that nothing bad is going to happen, but something in your gut tells you it’s a really bad idea. Probably the only craft an inebriate is even remotely qualified to pilot is an inner tube down the Guadalupe, and even that is questionable. Fortunately with tubing, the only real skills involved are staying in your tube and keeping your spliff and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from getting soggy. Usually it’s an epic fail on all three counts but rarely does anyone kill or dismember someone while tubing – and, at least with tubing, everyone gets an airbag. Of course, along with drunks there are several other groups at high risk for causing and experiencing appendage loss. Sawmill workers … natch. You also have your roughnecks. Anyone who has ever been barhopping in Beaumont knows you don’t need 10 fingers to run a pool table. Then there are soldiers. It sort of goes without saying that persons engaged in combat are prone to appendage loss, but civilians in combat areas don’t fare too much better. Cancer patients lose a disturbing amount of limbs, too, but perhaps most surprisingly the greatest cause of amputations isn’t some wild-eyed serial killer with a chain saw. Rather, it’s something much more insidious: sugar. That’s right, go ahead and let out a blood-curdling scream, because the limb reaper is in your house right now! Sugar, or more specifically its minion, Type 2 diabetes, is the leading cause of amputations in America. Put down the doughnut and step away from the box before you can’t step away at all! That’s some scary shit, ain’t it? Even wonder why the H-E-Bs keep acquiring more and more shopping scooters? It’s not so high school kids on Ecstasy have something to do at 2 in the morning on a Saturday night. Yes, it’s difficult to imagine a Big Gulp cackling maniacally and chasing you around with an epidural syringe and a bone saw, but perhaps you should because that’s the most likely scenario in which you lose an appendage. Not like you imagined it, eh? Not nearly as fascinating a story as the one you made up in your mind. If you want that story … or at least an inventive and entertaining version thereof, head over to Hyde Park Theatre this Saturday for A Behanding in Spokane, an amputation-themed black comedy by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh about a man’s 40 year search for his missing left hand. You might not think you’re into black comedy, but it might be just the thing to help you get over your deadly addiction to sweetness.

Undie Run

The Luv Doc Recommends, Uncategorized

May 4, 2011

By now you’ve probably had quite a few Osama Bin Laden death video links posted on your Facebook wall. You know the one: It was censored by the Obama administration due to its level of violence? Well, curiosity might not have killed the cat but it certainly fueled a fairly successful Facebook scam, didn’t it? Now all your friends are going to think you’re some sort of sick freak who masturbates to snuff films. Ouch. That’s a bit unfair. You’re not a monster. You’re not even Michael Vick. Word on the street is that Michael Vick isn’t even Michael Vick. Who knows? People can change. It’s possible that last Saturday morning Osama had a huge epiphany. He might have rolled out of bed refreshed from a great night’s sleep and decided that those American infidels that he once thought of as evil oppressors were, in fact, a decent, peace-loving people worthy of respect and admiration. If he did, we’ll never know because later that evening he had his head and chest ventilated by a team of Navy SEALs. Sometimes when you think the black helicopters are after you, they really are. In this case it was for a very good reason. Osama may not have been evil incarnate, but he did plan and carry out terrorist attacks that caused the deaths of thousands of Americans. Barbaric as it seems, that kind of behavior earns you a free ventilation courtesy of the U.S. government. Sure, there are those who will say that killing doesn’t justify killing or that violence only begets more violence, and they are mostly right. It’s entirely possible that Hitler might have eventually been defeated by compassion, prayer, and peaceful meditation. After a while, he might have eventually been smitten by the love bug, but isn’t it wonderful that, thanks to the serious ass-kicking laid on him by the Allies, Hitler chose to check out early with a cyanide capsule and a Luger to his temple? Martin Luther King Jr. once said that you can kill the thinker but not the thought, and there are plenty of neo-Nazi Aryan supremacists still around to prove that point, but history has also shown that if you kill enough bad thinkers, bad thoughts tend to die out as well. The big, overriding question, then, is: Who determines what makes a thought bad? Tricky isn’t it? Was it morally justifiable to cause the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis (that being roughly 33 times the number of casualties from 9/11) on the basis of specious intelligence about weapons of mass destruction? Was it OK because President Bush and Congress thought they were doing the right thing? Perhaps if Osama bin Laden had merely exclaimed, “Whoopsy! My bad! I thought I was doing the right thing!” after 9/11, we might have given him a pass. Probably not. And chances are black helicopters won’t swoop down out of the sky in the middle of the night and ventilate George Junior for being a monumental fuck-up, but rest assured there are thousands of people in Iraq and throughout the Middle East who probably wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it. In the end, the ugly truth is that they couldn’t do it even if they wanted to, which only proves that moral superiority isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit unless you have the power to back it up. America certainly has plenty of power, but we’re still a little shaky on moral superiority. The death of Osama bin Laden inspired a lot of fist-pumping and flag-waving, and rightfully so. It’s one of those rare occurrences in the past 10 years where America’s power and righteousness seem unquestionably in sync. Make no mistake: Killing Osama bin Laden was the right thing to do. He was a confessed mass murderer and a sworn enemy of the United States. Like Hitler, he surely knew he had it coming, but what Americans should be celebrating is not vengeance – America is surely due some of that itself – but the fact that because Osama bin Laden is dead, Americans can feel just a little bit safer, a little bit freer, a little bit closer to that invincibility we felt before we ever heard his name. We should probably get out and enjoy it before our chickens come home to roost. You can do just that in a very American way this Friday by joining in the 2011 Undie Run, a nearly naked fun run that collects clothes for local charities. The Undie Run starts at 7pm on Friday in the parking lot behind the University Co-op and includes a photo booth, prizes by Bettysport and Forbidden Fruit, as well as free body paint and glow sticks for the first 500 runners. Best of all, it’s free, just like America.

Lysts on the Lake Lone Star Open Joust

Uncategorized

April 27, 2011

It seems kind of crazy, but the climate in Austin is perfect for jousting … well, culturally at least. Meteorologically it’s ass. Yes, you can probably tolerate straddling a horse in a metal exoskeleton November through March, but the rest of the year, the heat is more likely to take you off your high horse than a wicked lance to your breastplate. Friday and Saturday the temperature will be in the low 90s, which should test the mettle/metal of any would-be Lancelots as well of the potency of their respective deodorants. There is a reason the Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca wandered around Texas buck nekkid – well, at least by 16th century standards. Back then, a varmint pelt over your kibbles and bits wasn’t considered actual clothing – even though these days if you wear a slingshot on the beach in Majorca you might as well be swaddled in a full-length fur coat. Yes, it is commonly thought that ol’ Cow Head sacrificed his clothing to shore up holes in his boat when it wrecked on Galveston Island, but the more likely explanation is that it was insanely hot and he would have sacrificed them for nearly anything: dried fish, dream catcher, peace pipe, or a bad hand of poker. Lesson: It’s too goddamned hot in Texas to be horsing around in a suit of armor – or a suit of any kind for that matter. Of course, that would never deter a hardcore creative anachronist. For those cats, just strolling around the Ren-Faire munching on a turkeye leg and rapping to the laydies in a meticulously rehearsed patois of Aulde Englishe/Old Testament is not enough. They want to get medieval on your ass. No, not like Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction but really, truly medieval … or at least the most historically accurate re-enactment their budgets will allow. For people in economically depressed states like Michigan and Pennsylvania that means building their own smelters, blacksmith shops, or tanneries, and spending long hours meticulously re-creating the clothing and implements of a bygone era. Nerds in Austin just buy their shit online and have it FedEx’d to their cubicles so they don’t have to overtly brag to their office mates about their tough-guy weekend LARPing activities. It takes a monumental amount of game to engage the hot young receptionist at your office in a conversation about the length of your lance or the width of your broadsword – especially when you’re not talking about your Johnson. Of course, if you’re an insanely wealthy game developer like Richard Garriott, you hardly need any game at all. Garriott has enough money to prattle on endlessly to hot chicks about subjects that would earn most people a toilet-bowl swirly or at least a merciless noogie. That doesn’t necessarily mean space flight and pre-17th century European history aren’t fascinating; it just means that they’re more fascinating and when a mutlimillionaire has the floor. Imagine having a lunch meeting with Warren Buffett at which he enthusiastically discloses a penchant for gerbiling. Would you recoil in horror or try to keep an open mind? After all, Warren Buffett probably has the money to really do gerbiling “right.” The bottom line is that Garriott is in the happy position to engage wholeheartedly in all his nerdly passions, which is why he is hosting the first-ever Lysts on the Lake, a three-day exhibition of competitive jousting at the “Village of Castleton,” a fantasy village on the shores of Lake Austin composed of a cluster of quaintly accessorized affordable portables along with a fort, a miniature lighthouse, and (spoiler alert) a pirate ship. Yes, the location alone sells itself, but consider the prospect of nerds going after one another with big wooden sticks wearing sweaty suits of armor. Really, how can you not go?

Michael Ventura ‘If I Was a Highway’ Booksigning

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 20, 2011

Right now is a really bad time to go hunting jackrabbits with that vintage World War II flamethrower you’ve been storing in your attic. Surely no one would argue that idea is positively rank with the stench of depraved genius (after all, who doesn’t want to woast those wascawy wabbits?), but it will have to wait for a wetter month. May maybe? April has been a dry hole so far, and Mother Nature spent the last nine months cooking Texas up a big batch of extra crispy. You may have to postpone your bottle rocket war as well. After all, desperate times call for desperate measures, and there are plenty of ways to put your eye out that don’t involve incendiary devices. For that matter, there are plenty of ways to kill yourself without smoking cigarettes – prettier and less painful too. Perhaps none of them are as satisfying as taking that last long toke that burns nearly down to the filter, then tossing the smoldering butt into your pickup bed where it will … Jesus! That was quite a crosswind, wasn’t it? Who saw that coming? Is it your fault the side of the road is a golden tinderbox? You’re not one to play the blame game, but if you were going to start pointing fingers, you’d surely aim one toward the heavens – or perhaps toward KVUE Storm Team meteorologist Mark Murray. Treacherous bastard. You just know he’s back there behind the curtain working those weather levers like the Wizard of Oz … a good man yes, but a very bad wizard. He (God or Mark Murray) might as well be driving around Texas straddling a tanker truck hosing down dry brush with gasoline, whooping and cackling like Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove. In the movie, Slim was riding a huge boner/nuclear warhead rather than a gas truck, but the results of either are pretty much the same: a blackened, smoldering hellscape. That describes more than a million acres of real estate in Texas this week and several hundred homes as well. Is this the beginning of the apocalypse? Is it time to stop using your rosary as anal beads and start knocking out some Hail Marys? Well, truly that’s a pretty decent idea regardless of whether you’re going to burn in hell – for safety reasons alone – but it’s doubtful the current conflagration is a sign of end times. Rather, it’s an ecological phenomenon that’s been going on for ages. Good lord, didn’t you read Little House on the Prairie? With the roaring prairie fire in the screaming wind? Whether you live in a wooden house, a sod house, or the Lord’s house, every now and then, things burn. Yes, Texas is experiencing a bleak springtime, but it’s springtime nonetheless, and this weekend we have Easter to remind us (whether gory Christian bloodbath or pastel pagan fertility rite) that life and hope spring eternal, even in the blackest of times. Eventually the charred landscape will get recarpeted in green, homes will be rebuilt, fences will be mended, and lessons will be learned. The first and foremost of which is: Everything changes, just maybe not on our timetable. On a geologic scale, these events and even the whole of human experience are infinitesimal snapshots. It’s a good thing we have people like Michael Ventura to develop these snapshots and give them the importance they deserve. If you’re not intimately familiar with his work, Michael Ventura is the author of the Chronicle‘s “Letters at 3am,” a brilliant column of essays about life, mostly set in the American Southwest. This Friday he appears at BookPeople to promote his latest book, If I Was a Highway, a collection of some of the best “Letters at 3am” essays combined with black-and-white photographs by singer-songwriter/artist/photographer and West Texas desert rat Butch Hancock, whose song of the same name lends the book its title. When it comes to good writing, Ventura is almost always on fire … much like Texas itself.

Texas Burlesque Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 13, 2011

The thing that makes Burlesque neo-feminist is that chicks run the show. How do you know? If dudes were in charge, they would just slather naked girls with baby oil and make them ride a mechanical bull or wrestle in a baby pool filled with Astroglide. Yes, there might be music, but it would probably be something from the oeuvre of Rob Zombie, Hank Williams Jr., or Dr. Dre, and there would surely be alcohol involved, but nothing you couldn’t drink out of a funnel. No, really. That’s it. The nice thing about the male mind is that you never really have to overwork the problem. That’s why men eat Campbell’s soup out of a half-opened can, furnish their homes with cinder blocks and camping chairs, and clean toilets only when being punished by their drill sergeant. As far as sex, crafting doesn’t enter into it – unless maybe it’s some sort of hand-tooled leather spinning fuck harness or a bizarrely shaped prostate massager – both of which are fortunately the kinds of things that most men keep deep on the down low. Lingerie? Nope. Bodices, bustiers, baby dolls, camisoles, corsets, push-up bras, panties, and thongs may seem to enhance sexiness, but compared to full nudity, men see them as annoying obstructions. Yes, wearing sexy clothing might make a woman sexier (as opposed to say, a woman in a full burqa), but being naked makes a woman sexiest. Every time. OK, nearly every time. There are undoubtedly those who look sexier in a burqa. Generally speaking, men don’t need the buildup. They don’t care about foreplay either, nor do they get particularly excited about the slap and tickle. At best, they tolerate it – just like they tolerate ballroom dancing, Whoopi Goldberg movies, and talking about their feelings. Men endure such things because (whether rightly or wrongly) they expect them to pay off – like popping for steak and lobster and a nice bottle of wine at an expensive restaurant. If this concept seems particularly crass, then perhaps you should dine in the manner of the Dutch (who, by the way, boast one of the more progressive European cultures when it comes to gender equality) rather than tarting yourself up like a whore (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and ordering filet mignon and a bottle of Dom. Yes, an attractive woman dressed in stiletto pumps, fishnets, and a bustier is really sexy, but an attractive naked woman with a desire to please (regardless of how insincere) is always sexier. Always. Question is: Are you willing to do what it takes to knock your Victoria’s Secret bill down to next to nothing, or do you prefer to go the smoke-and-mirrors route? Clearly a majority of women choose the latter. In fact, it fuels an entire industry. The good news is that men are willing to tolerate the myth that clothing and accessories make women sexy. Hey, if it gets them laid, who are they to piss on it? Besides, if they didn’t spend all that money on lingerie and accessories, they would probably just spend it on fishing lures, monster trucks, the work of Jesus, or maybe a lifetime subscription to Blueboy magazine. The truth is that even though America handed England a serious ass-whipping a couple of hundred years ago, Queen Victoria still has a firm grip on our nutsack. We still get excited when we see a little skin and even more excited when we see a little more. That’s part of the reason why burlesque continues to be popular. The other part, of course, is all the fun costuming and choreography. Burlesque allows women to turn what society once saw as a crass display of overt sexuality into crafty performance art. It transfers the willingness to rut into the willingness to strut. Is that such a bad thing? Of course not … as long as it pays off. Ideally, the long-term payoff is a less Victorian attitude toward female sexuality. This weekend you can see if it pays off for you in the short term at the 2011 Texas Burlesque Festival, a three-day gathering of burlesque performers from all over America being held at the ND at 501 Studios. Thursday through Saturday you can check out the goods of more than 50 of the best performers from across the country. Ladies with fun names like Shannon Doah, Baby Le’Strange, Pearl E. White, Maye Applebottom, Mary Anne Moan, and Honey Touché. Plus, the event is hosted by none other than Ph.D.-packing porn star, performance artist, and sex educator Annie Sprinkle. Apparently the Burlesque Fest scored even if you don’t.

Sixth Annual Urban Music Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 6, 2011

Holy shit! Close down Highland Mall! It’s Texas Relays weekend! Wait a minute … that was two years ago. Austin has totally changed since then. This year we’re welcoming Texas Relays fans with open arms – no, not the Journey song (that would be so Austin), but more of a figurative embrace of the black community in general. Yes, there are plenty of white Texas Relays fans. After all, somebody’s kids have to be nutty enough to run two-mile relays, toss the hammer, and put the shot. However, Highland Mall didn’t close down early during the 2009 relays because they were afraid that OshKosh and J.Crew would be overrun by wilding white kids. No sir, that was the olden days – back when Highland Mall actually had a J.Crew. These days there is plenty of open space at Highland Mall – both in the parking lot and the mall itself, so Texas Relays fans should find the businesses therein more welcoming than in years past. Can the same be said of Sixth Street and Downtown Austin? Hard to say. It’s a safe bet that most of Downtown Austin is still feeling dirty, cheap, and used from South by Southwest. Yes, business owners are still bathing in the bathtubs of cash they made from what was arguably the largest SXSW ever, but their overworked employees are bound to be feeling a little burned out at this point. Five solid days of handing free Miller Lite tall boys over the bar for no tips is bound to take its toll on the psyche … if not the rotator cuff. At least this weekend’s patrons are more likely to be ordering $8 shots of Patrón than they are $3 cans of Lone Star. Like SXSW, a good bit of the action will be out on the street – not because people’s wristbands won’t even get them in to see a Latvian klezmer band at the Stage, but because a healthy percentage of Texas Relays attendees are underage. Not being able to drink doesn’t mean Sixth Street isn’t exciting – far from it. Like any night club, health club, supermarket, or steam room, Sixth Street is all about seeing and being seen – especially if you’re some kid who drove all the way from Palestine, Texas, in a janky-ass hoopty to be a part of one of Texas’ biggest black social gatherings. Don’t believe it? This year there are more than 60 events and parties hosted by a diverse array of black sports stars, celebrities, and entertainers during the four days of the Texas Relays. All over Austin, from the Expo Center to Lake Travis to even, yes, Emo’s, black culture will hold sway … if only temporarily … and maybe black people from places other than Austin will discover that Austin isn’t so bad after all. In fact, this Saturday things are looking pretty good down at Auditorium Shores for the sixth annual Urban Music Festival. Not only is the weather going to be spectacular, the lineup is going to be pretty fabulous as well. Topping the bill is Charlie Wilson – no, not the guy Tom Hanks played in the movie but “Uncle Charlie” Wilson, R&B artist, Snoop Dogg buddy, and founding member of Tulsa, Okla., funk supergroup the Gap Band, creators of the classic early ’80s dance hit “You Dropped a Bomb on Me.” Joining Uncle Charlie on the bill will be a trio of chart-topping R&B artists: Tank, Ledisi, and N’dambi. If you’re unfamiliar with any of the preceding, it would certainly be worth your while to spend a sunny day at the shores getting educated. After all, if Austin is going to change, it has to come from within.

Dane Sterling, Miss Leslie & the Juke Jointers

The Luv Doc Recommends

Mach 30, 2011

The old adage “It’s not what you got but how you use it” has always been the go-to phrase of the modestly endowed, but after several thousand years of selling the sizzle instead of the steak, it just may be that the little guys have a point, no matter how tiny. According to a recent national sex study, penis size is irrelevant when it comes to giving females pleasure. Yes, that’s both length and girth. This information will surely come as a blow to the penis enlargement industry, whose stock and trade has always been the bottomless well of male insecurity. Turns out size doesn’t really matter after all. So, regardless of whether your sausage is from Vienna or Italy, you still have the same chance of giving a woman the big O. How about that? No need to spend sleepless nights wondering if the size of your wang had anything to do with the fact that your lover was checking her cell phone or reading a People magazine over your shoulder while having sex. Don’t hate the player … hate the game. What may be lacking in your game is vigor, enthusiasm, and a true desire to please – the three factors cited in the study as crucial to female sexual fulfillment. Sure, those kidney-cracking porn penises look impressive even in harshly lit adult videos, but the consensus among average women is that it’s not the size of the dinghy, it’s the motion of the ocean. Yes, you may sometimes feel like a BB rattling around in a bucket, but maybe that’s just because the bucket isn’t wet enough. Maybe you need to work faster, not harder. It doesn’t hurt to be hard, but being hard isn’t enough. You still have to do the work. If nothing else, the study underscores the uselessness of playing the blame game. No longer can your lover point and laugh at your tiny bits and pieces and say, “That’s not working for me.” Wrong! Science is now on your side, and science says it can! Of course, by the same token you can no longer complain that her vajayjay is the size of a first baseman’s mitt. In fact, equipment is immaterial, and science says that yours can handle everything from the Grand Canyon all the way down to a plastic squeeze coin purse, as long as you know how to work it. What a relief! Now the only thing you have to worry about regarding your sex organ is how to grind it properly. No problem! The Innerwebs have thousands and thousands of instructional videos and illustrations to help you do just that. All you have to do is bone up! Remember: It’s not the instrument, but how well you play it. If you’ve been in Austin for more than a couple of weeks, you’ve probably seen that in action. Some scruffy-looking dude pulls an old guitar out of a closet at a party and just blows your mind. Yes, that takes talent, but more importantly, it takes hours and hours of practice and dedication to the craft. If it were all about talent, there would only be one or two ass-kicking guitarists in Austin, but it isn’t. That’s why there are hundreds. The same is true of singer-songwriters. It’s not enough to just have talent; you have to work it. This Friday, one of Austin’s most talented singer-songwriters, Dane Sterling, will be playing at Ginny’s Little Longhorn, one of Austin’s most iconic dive bars/honky-tonks. Sterling has great pipes and songs to match. More importantly, he’s put in the work. Friday he’s sharing the bill with Miss Leslie & the Juke Jointers, classic honky-tonkers from Houston. Ginny’s may be tiny, but it’s been proven that size doesn’t matter, even on April Fools’ Day.

Devo and the Octopus Project

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 23, 2011

If you’re over the age of 30, you’re probably still bitching about all the people, noise, and congestion of South by Southwest. If you’re under 30, you’re probably still telling your friends, “Dude, that was fucking awesome!” Like anything else in life, SXSW is mainly about what you bring to the party. You can dive headfirst into the insanity, or you can stand in the back of the room with your arms folded acting cool. If you chose the latter, you probably found that SXSW went on just fine without you, even if you were wearing a breathtaking array of hair feathers. If you were actually one of the locals flailing around in the grungy tide of humanity that flooded Downtown Austin last week, good for you. You fought the good fight and learned a valuable lesson: You’re not God. You can’t be everywhere at once – even though the people you follow on Twitter seem to be. Truth be told, they were probably lounging in the bar at the Four Seasons eating jalapeño chips and drinking Batinis, tapping out tweets about chilling at Güero’s with Kanye or about how Billy Gibbons sat in with Danny DeVito and Cee Lo at the Invincible Czars showcase at Skinny’s Ballroom. Anything can happen at SXSW … but amazingly it always seems to happen to other, less-deserving people. If you were especially lucky, you ended up in some dingy hole you didn’t even know existed sandwiched between a sweaty, writhing mosh pit and a huge bass cabinet that squashed your innards 120 times a minute. There is a special sort of euphoria that results from literally letting the music sweep you away … or pound you into humble submission like a night of hard fucking. Ideally, you brought an extra change of underwear, a toothbrush, and some heavy-duty earplugs. Yes, the music has to be loud – really loud. Why? Because no matter what show you’re at, there will invariably be someone who wants to yammer on about their sore feet, their wicked hangover, or how they just want to go home, take a bath, and crawl in bed. What better way to encourage them to take care of themselves than by mowing them over with an aural tsunami? Nothing clears a room of unbelievers like a Marshall stack cranked up to 11. Fortunately during SXSW, there are thousands of people wandering the streets willing to fill that space … and now they’re gone. Enjoy. Breath a big, relaxing, peaceful sigh of relief. Things should be quiet for at least a month or so … until the Texas Relays … then the Republic of Texas Biker Rally and Pride weekend … then Fourth of July and the Austin City Limits Music Festival and so on. Face it, Austin is a playground for the rest of the state and arguably the world, so we better get right with it and learn to play nicely with others or we’re just going to get sand kicked in our faces. Down on Willie Nelson Boulevard in the latest addition to our playground, the W Hotel and Austin City Limits‘ new Moody Theater. Rest assured, both will lure even more out-of-towners to the City of the Weird to feast on our artistic cornucopia. Where else can you see Eighties New Wavers Devo paired with Austin’s cutest and coolest electronica band, the Octopus Project? Well, maybe a bunch of other cities because they’re currently on tour, but this is the last show with the Octopus Project before the group teams up with Explosions in the Sky for another round of globe-trotting.

Austin Music Awards

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 15, 2011

Chances are that by Saturday you’ll want to strangle the shit out of anyone carrying an instrument case, sporting an outrageous hairstyle, or handing out any kind of printed material. “So your steampunk barbershop quartet has a 3am unofficial showcase at the Brixton? Well do-re-mi-fa-so what motherfucker?” By Saturday you’ll be sick of free beer but too broke to buy liquor. You’ll also be craving a salad but still eating free barbecue and Wonder Bread. In fact, by Saturday the only thing keeping your digestive tract flowing will be dangerous overdoses of ibuprofen and promotional vitamin C packages. Cannonball those in the morning with a couple of quarts of water, and you’ll experience a vigorous cleanse – something similar to what you’d get after a couple of weeks ingesting nothing but lemon water and cayenne, or drinking Tijuana sewer water. It’s best to travel light anyway, and by Saturday you will have reduced your club crawling essentials to flip-flops, a banana hammock (or daisy dukes), and a lanyard attached to a plastic pocket that contains your South by Southwest badge, ID, credit card, and a pair of dirt- and wax-covered swag earplugs pungent enough to be used as trolling bait for catfish. If those earplugs are that gamey, imagine what must be going on down in those daisy dukes … the only thing that’s keeping you from being trailed by a herd of feral cats is the fact that there are several hundred thousand other roving tuna canneries throwing them off the scent. Maybe you should take a short walk across the bridge to South Congress and pick up one of those overpriced Mexican sundresses. Yes, they’re the same dresses you can buy at the mercado in front of the Fiesta Mart for $15 a pop, but these have cute shit like hummingbirds and geckos silk-screened on them. Regardless of what you pay, Mexican sundresses offer superior ventilation, and if nature is overly insistent, you can cop a squat in the middle of Sixth Street and not cause a big scene. Easy enough, right? As thousands of doe-eyed musicians prove every year, it’s not easy to cause a big scene during SXSW. You have to be truly remarkable. It’s not enough to be a really awesome band that plays really awesome music. You have to be a really awesome band that plays really awesome music, dances like OK Go, dresses like Lady Gaga, and gives away free cocker spaniel puppies at every show. Why? Because the Perez Hilton party has Madonna performing with Justin Bieber on a leash in a gimp suit, free D.O.M and Beluga, a bouncy castle lubed with Astroglide, and gift baskets that include cocaine-filled Fabergé eggs and mittens made of baby seal fur. Oh yeah … and a tribe of pygmies is going to slaughter a bull elephant with machetes. “What was the name of your band again? Oh … that’s right … who gives a fuck?” By Saturday you’ll probably have that phrase tattooed on your forehead. Like every other SXSW attendee, you started out an innocent lover of music and ended up a bitter, jaded, and exhausted hater. Perfect! You are now ready to experience the Austin Music Awards. This Saturday the Chronicle will honor the bands that made it through the meat grinder of the live music capital of the world and came out on top – no small feat. Austin audiences feel like SXSW attendees do year-round, so when they recognize talent, it’s usually legit. Come see for yourself this Saturday at the Austin Music Hall. Yes, there will be awards, but also sizzling sets by the Wagoneers, Joe Ely, Sahara Smith, Will Sexton, Bubble Puppy, Bright Light Social Hour, the Meat Puppets, Roky Erickson, and the God-stomping, 18-piece orchestra Mother Falcon. If you see Mother Falcon and still want to choke the shit out of musicians, you’ll have your work cut out for you.

Mutton Bustin’ at Rodeo Austin

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 9, 2011

You didn’t spend all that money flying to Texas just to experience the same bullshit blue-state bourgeois brownnosing you were trying to get away from. Even though you knowingly signed up for the largest cultural conclave in the Western Hemisphere – a veritable clusterfuck of desperation, sycophancy, and unbridled egomania – somewhere in some naive corner of your heart you were hoping to walk out of the terminal at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and immediately mount a mechanical bull … ideally one with Scott Glenn at the controls, maybe wearing a black-mesh shirt. After all, your travel itinerary said Texas, not Greenwich Village. You came here to drink longnecks, gnaw barbecue off a mastodon-sized bone, and speak with a hostile disregard for the conventions of grammar – maybe even buy a faux-distressed straw cowboy hat for about 15 times what it costs to have some 7-year-old Chinese orphan weave it. Don’t worry about the orphan; think about how fly it will look with your Salvatore Ferragamo side-zipper boots! Besides, Texas is no place to get on your human-rights high horse – especially where kids are concerned. Texans will subject children to just about anything except a good education: kiddie beauty pageants, craft fairs, vacation Bible school, Chuck E. Cheese’s, greased-pig chasing, and perhaps the pinnacle of tough love, mutton bustin’. No, that’s not some obscure porn term like “flying camel” or “reverse cowgirl”; it’s an actual rodeo event in which children between the ages of 5 and 7 (weighing less than 55 pounds) ride bareback on sheep. Yes, you read that right. Hilarious, you say? Youbetcha! Like their older bull-riding counterparts, it’s rare when a brave/horrified little tyke doesn’t get flung haphazardly to the dirt. Rodeo ain’t for sissies. Plus, spectacularly awkward dismounts (rag doll windmills, somersaults with limbs akimbo, wicked face plants) are rewarded with gasps from the crowd, light beer shooting through nostrils, and, in certain instances, a ride in a real ambulance! Rest assured, nothing mans up a little cowboy (or -girl) like a white-knuckled thrill ride on the back of a terrified sheep. In L.A. or New York they might call that type of aggressive parenting abusive, but here in Texas, we call it Country Strong! Go ahead and wipe that condescending smirk off your face. We’re not complete barbarians. Thanks to the worrywarts nowadays, every kid who “chooses” to participate has to wear a helmet and a protective vest. Yes, it’s embarrassing, but it’s not as embarrassing as a rattail, face paint, or a pint-sized Cleveland Cavaliers jersey. Still, regardless of what your mind tells you about mutton bustin’, your gut is probably telling you it’s something not to be missed – like a donkey show in Tijuana, a hash house in Amsterdam, or the grotto at the Playboy Mansion. Yes, you’re going to feel a little dirty and somewhat morally compromised, but in the end you’ll have a memory that will last a lifetime. OK, ready? Time to go make some memories. Take a trip out to the Travis County Expo Center this Saturday for Rodeo Austin. Get your fill of carnival rides, funnel cake, Texas music, and the heady aroma of hay, manure, dust, and cotton candy! Mutton bustin’ starts at 7pm, so beer up early.

5X5Y: 25 Years of SXSW Music

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 2, 2011

If this year’s Academy Awards taught us anything, it’s that no matter how many successful flights you’ve had, you can’t just put the plane on autopilot and go take a nap in the back. Sure, it might work out … but there’s also a really good chance you’ll leave a charred crater in some wheat field in South Dakota. Last Sunday’s Oscars ceremony was a spectacularly ugly crash – at least metaphorically speaking. A few minutes after the now obligatory introductory montage, you could hear the air hissing out of the tires. It’s not that the hosts weren’t fascinating and charming. James Franco brought his trademark Cheshire-cat-holding-in-a-bong-hit smile, and Anne Hathaway brought her Disney princess looks, eight spectacular dresses, and more bubbly enthusiasm than any host in recent memory, but it still wasn’t enough to drag the dead horse of the Oscars across the finish line. No, that was left to a bunch of public school kids in T-shirts. T-shirts? WTFingF? It’s the Academy Awards, not Tosh.0. Surely the Academy has enough petty cash lying around to pimp each and every one of those kids out like Liberace … or at the very least Jay-Z. Instead, they were dressed like they were hired to pick up trash on the side of the interstate. Stay classy Oscar. Worse yet, the T-shirts had each kid’s respective chorus section printed on the front. Wow. Apparently the Academy thinks that kids who go to public schools in Staten Island must be too retarded to know where to stand without looking at the front of their T-shirts. Saving money by hiring a couple of noobs to host the awards is almost understandable (hey, with the type of sharp, pithy writing the Oscars are known for, a trained monkey could host, right?). In these tough economic times you have to think outside the box, but going cheap on the big closing number is just unforgivable. Those poor kids sang their hearts out, and all they got was a lousy T-shirt? Somewhere over the rainbow the dreams that you dare to dream really don’t come true … well, unless maybe you’re Charlie Sheen, who somehow managed to overcome the hardship of being born the son of a Hollywood celebrity by transforming himself into a tiger-blooded, bitchin’ rock star from Mars with the ability to turn tin cans into pure gold. Talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps … even if it is just to snort a line of coke off a porn star’s bare ass. If the Academy truly wanted an entertaining Oscars ceremony, it would have hired Charlie “Chuckles” Sheen. It would have cost the Academy a few million dollars and a briefcase full of blow, but it would have been a psychotic laugh riot of Alex Jones Show magnitude. Instead, the Academy got cocky (not unlike Sheen himself) and slaughtered its cash cow. The same could never be said of South by Southwest, the little local music festival that blossomed into the world’s largest – seemingly overnight. Well, not exactly. This year marks a full quarter-century of SXSW’s existence, and through all that time, the oversight of SXSW’s directors has been vigilant, perhaps even psychotically obsessive. It could easily be argued that this obsession fueled not only SXSW’s prolific growth, but Austin’s emergence as the cultural mecca of the Southwest. This Saturday at the Austin History Center you can hear two of SXSW’s directors, Roland Swenson and Louis Black talk about the last 25 years of the Festival in a panel discussion moderated by Texas writer Joe Nick Patoski. There will also be musical performances by locals Why Not Satellite, whose members actually played in the first SXSW, and Austin Music Award winners Schmillion, whose members weren’t even born yet. Later in the evening in Wooldridge Square Park will be a preview of the upcoming SXSW documentary Outside Industry: The Story of SXSW, as well as a screening of 1943 documentary Austin: The Friendly City.

That Takes the Cake! Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition: Caked Crusaders

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 23, 2011

Sure, you’re probably looking to hook up with someone who has an insatiable appetite for crazy monkey sex, but that kind of thing only lasts for a couple of decades or so … at most a half-century. After retirement age, the monkey won’t be able to hang upside down with a banana in its hand without throwing out its back. Worse yet, it probably won’t want to even if it can. Been there, done that, and really, even the biggest and best bananas get mushy after a while. Here’s something else to consider. Humans aren’t monkeys. Yes, they may share the same branch of the evolutionary tree, but humans are much weaker, fatter, and clumsier than monkeys. On the plus side, they have a lot less back hair. Intelligence? Questionable. Monkeys can’t tap out a text message while doing 40 mph in the passing lane on I-35. Then again, maybe they’re just fucking smart enough not to. Monkeys at the zoo sometimes fling their shit at people – which sounds dumb, but if you had to endure an endless parade of slack-jawed suburban manatees and their snot-nosed, cotton-candy-sticky-fingered rug rats every day, you’d start flinging poo too. Monkeys probably feel the same way about humans as basketball players feel about a 7-footer who can’t dunk: disgusted. All that wasted potential. Still, as lithe and athletic as monkeys are, you shouldn’t consider them the go-to source for monkey sex, even though – in Texas at least – what you and your monkey, donkey, or manatee do behind closed doors is your own damn business. We’re progressive like that. You might want to consider casting the net a bit wider than that when looking for a significant other however. You don’t have to set the bar too high, but perhaps consider a mate that doesn’t require a leash and a pooper-scooper. Don’t paint yourself into a corner just because you can’t think outside the crotch. How about someone with a more diverse skill set? A sense of humor is nice – especially for those awkward post-coital moments when your face is smashed into a drool-soaked pillow or you’re still dangling precariously in your fuck harness. Patience is a virtue. So is honesty … as in: “I honestly don’t know how to get this thing unbuckled. We may have to call the Fire Department.” How about cleaning skills? There is only so much you can cover with plastic and latex. Intelligence is always handy. It can sometimes get you out of sticky situations when physical dexterity can’t. It also greatly enhances conversational skills, which become more important as time goes on. Lastly, don’t underestimate the value of a good cook. Having someone who can fix you a decent sammich or a scintillating coq au vin may not seem that important now, but remember that many, many years from now, when your sensory bouquet mainly involves aches, pains, blurred vision, and muffled, indistinct sounds, the mouthwatering flavor of an exquisitely baked cherry pie may be the only thing that drags you out of bed in the morning. Monkey sex is a great way to fire out of the blocks, but cooking skills will get you across the finish line. If you can find someone who likes to bake, sweet! Just remember to not overindulge, or your monkey sex will start to look like hippopotamus wallowing. If you’d like to find someone who can bake but don’t know where to start, drive up to the North Austin Event Center this weekend for the Capital Confectioners’ Sugar Art Show & Cake Competition. From 10:30am to 6pm, cake-makers and sugar artists from the capital area will showcase their best work. Cakes from a variety of categories and divisions will be on display as well as superhero-themed cakes made by contestants from TLC’s Next Great Baker series. There will also be classes, demonstrations, raffle prizes, and a people’s choice award, as well as a special dinner-theatre screening of Kings of Pastry, a documentary about chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, who will also be in attendance. If you’re looking for someone who really knows what to do with a banana, check it out.

R.A.W. Fridays: DJ Kelly’s Vinylogical Warfare

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 16, 2011

Yes, there are bears in Austin. You might see one wading through the waters of Bull Creek or maybe hiking through the greenbelt, but if you really want to see bears in their natural habitat, your best bet is the Chain Drive on Willow Street. So maybe they’re not the type of bears you were hoping to see, but they’re much less dangerous. Plus, the bears at Chain Drive can dance, drink, and hold intelligible conversations. They also sport plenty of fur, if that’s what you’re into. Of course, Chain Drive isn’t just about bears … or cubs or grizzlies or otters or ewoks or wolves or gorillas; it’s about being comfortable with who you are, even if you’re a jock, a twink, or a queen. There’s some leather too. In fact, Chain Drive might be the closest thing Austin has to a leather bar, but on any given night you can probably find more leather at the Broken Spoke. (Hint to PETA activists: Google that shit, but make sure you roll strong.) That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t rock those assless chaps if you’re so inclined, just know that you’ll probably be rocking them solo if you do. You could probably do the same at the Spoke, but it’s doubtful you’ll make it past the door unless your butt fur has the density and color variation of a palomino pony – and really, if you’re paying your stylist that kind of money, you’re probably not hanging out at the Chain Drive. Why? There’s nothing high-dollar about it. It’s dingy, poorly lit, and has a Goodwill design aesthetic. There’s no dress code, valet parking, or stalls in the bathroom. And it’s perpetually rumored to be closing. In short, it’s exactly what every Austin bar used to be back before the trust-funders and condopolitans started taking over. Yes, they would love the Chain Drive … just enough to suggest maybe cleaning it up a bit, giving it a new paint job, and having a really good interior designer come in and adjust the feng shui. Pretty soon you have a valet stand, a douche in a headset with a list, and a roomful of people trying desperately to impress one another. More importantly, you’re paying $4 for a beer and $8 for a cocktail. Ew. It’s enough to make you want to start growing chest hair and wearing leather. Fortunately, at Chain Drive you don’t necessarily have to … and well drinks and beer are no more than $2 … some nights even less. That’s crazy affordable. Just remember: They don’t take credit cards, and parking is a bit of a bitch. Then again, if you want to party Downtown, parking is always going to be a bitch. Don’t be a hater; be a celebrater. Celebrate the fact that Austin still has a few remaining unpretentious establishments that, instead of hiring a designer to create a weathered look, actually have a weathered look. Woot! This Friday night you can enjoy some unpretentious fun at the Chain Drive with D.J. Kelly’s Vinylogical Warfare, a dance party that features classic rock, Eighties pop, and trash disco spun from original vinyl by a real, live bear! Cheapo drinks and old-skool dance music? Grrrrr!

Cleavage Chronicles: Everybody Loves Boobs

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 9, 2011

Boob is without a doubt America’s favorite palindrome – followed closely by tit. They are often used interchangeably, but unfortunately tit is a much harsher, drier sounding word – the pronunciation of which forces upon the speaker the beginnings of a sneer. Boob, on the other hand, has a full, soft, voluptuous sound. Its elocution resembles the shape a baby’s mouth makes when it is about to nurse. Cute huh? Here’s something even cuter: You can put a nipple on every letter in the word boob (sometimes two, depending on capitalization) and it doesn’t look out of place. In fact, there are very few words in the English language that serve as a better visual reference to the object they represent. Yes, boobs are objects – objects that for centuries have inspired objectification. It’s no wonder. Sometimes when you bump into a pair of 36DDs, it’s hard to remember that they’re attached to a living, breathing human being. Sometimes the only thing that can shake you out of your catatonic fixation is the phrase, “Hey buddy, my eyes are up here!” Even still, you’re probably thinking, “Well, touché, but how did you get yours unglued?” A lot of people don’t know it, but Dolly Parton plays nine instruments. Nine. Chances are you can’t even name one, but you probably know she calls her boobs “Shock and Awe.” Dolly is 5 feet 1 inch tall. Imagine Dolly saying, “My eyes are up here.” It’s hard to believe she would, especially considering that Dolly’s boobs aren’t entirely real – just like Dolly herself. Nine instruments. That’s unreal. The problem with objectification is that you might be missing out on a really interesting person behind the objects. Dolly’s boobs might be spectacular (even though they have objects sewn into them), but they still don’t play nine instruments or hit the high note on “I Will Always Love You.” Just because boobs are sometimes attached to a Pamela Anderson (she calls hers “Pancho and Lefty”) or an Anna Nicole Smith doesn’t mean that boobs are running the show. Sometimes they’re attached to a chubby, sweaty dude named Meat Loaf who is both a talented musician and actor. Technically though, Meat Loaf is rocking moobs, which are neither palindromic nor particularly attractive. Nonetheless, Meat Loaf probably still finds himself saying, “Hey buddy, my eyes are up here.” For whatever reason, be it some primal urge to get back on Mom’s nipple or an overexposure to Internet porn, Americans are fascinated with boobs. Maybe it’s because we get to see them so rarely, unlike, say, Ethiopian tribesman who get to see them all the time. “Did you see her boobs?” Yawn. “Nice enough I guess, but how about that plate in her bottom lip? Yowza!” It’s safe to say there probably aren’t a lot of breast augmentation clinics in Addis Ababa. In fact, plastic surgeons in those parts are probably too busy fixing cleft palates and other facial deformities to worry about installing impressive sets of funbags on the locals. Here in God’s country, however, the size of your rack is only limited by the size of your bank account … and perhaps the size of your self-esteem. Yes, America is breast obsessed, but we’re also obsessed with Jersey Shore, Justin Bieber, and Shape-ups, none of which are sufficient inspiration for elective surgery, unless it’s perhaps a lobotomy. Boobs come in all sizes and shapes, and though they’re fun to look at and play with, they’re just not that big a deal … unless they’re harboring something that could kill you – like breast cancer. That’s a big deal. It’s also a good part of the reason for Cleavage Chronicles: Everybody Loves Boobs, a cabaret-style multimedia musical comedy celebrating women and their breasts that takes place at the Vortex this Saturday. Everybody Loves Boobs boasts an exciting lineup of entertainers: Ruby Joule of the Jigglewatts, Class Act & the Dazzlin’ Dames Tap Dancers, and Miss Continental Plus. Proceeds benefit the making of Cleavage Chronicles: If These Girls Could Talk, a documentary to raise awareness and aid in the fight against breast cancer. It’s not like you need an excuse to look at boobs, but this is a pretty good one.

Drone: A Border Affair That Crosses a Line

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 2, 2011

Austin is just teeming with people engaged in weird, quirky, and interesting creative endeavors. Wherever do they find the time and energy? How do they put in a full day’s work then go home and work even harder on their art? Here’s a little secret: Some of them don’t even have jobs. How awesome is that? Hey, if you’re truly intent on being an artist, it doesn’t hurt to have a lot of time on your hands, and you can’t spend much time in Austin without some serious money, right? In fact, if you don’t have a lot of money, why are you even here? Nothing sucks worse than being poor in a playground for the rich, so tap into that trust fund and start participating in the ongoing juvenile fantasy of Austin! Stay out late, make the scene, party all night, sleep in, get breakfast tacos at 11am. Austin was made for you. Smoke a lot of dope, play Frisbee golf, ride your fixie, make some home brew, and every once in a while maybe take a crack at that artistic thing you’ve been working on. If you get bored with too much leisure time, you can always start your own business – perhaps a food trailer that specializes in kombucha and raw food? Or how about opening a vinyl record store? Sure only about .0003% of the population actually listens to vinyl records anymore, but market research and business plans are for people who have no true passion for what they do. The most important thing about opening a business is that it’s something that you love, and if what you love is badminton, then rock out with your shuttlecock out. Business might be slow at first, but it’s bound to catch on. Plus, there is probably a space for lease between Geode World and Unicornz “R” Us now that Just Ferrets went out of business. Man … who could have seen that coming? Maybe retail isn’t your bag. Fair enough. Maybe you’re more cut out for the life of a traditional artist. Fucking score, right? Who knew you had talent? No one probably – especially if you’ve never done art before. Don’t let that stop you. Just start painting shit. No, not dogs playing poker or the guy staring into a metallic globe at the reflection of a guy staring into a metallic globe (ad infinitum), but something interesting … like watercolors of kittens wearing clown hats or maybe baby torsos with wolf heads. That should definitely shake up the art world. If it doesn’t, maybe your talents are in the area of sculpting. The only way to know for sure is to buy a welding rig and a couple of tons of pig iron. What could go wrong with that? If all else fails, you could always try performance art. No, not karaoke. Your artistic message is much deeper than that. You’ll probably want to start with an interpretive dance that explores the oppressive totalitarianism of Stalin-era Russia … maybe with some feces smearing worked in, just to add to the sensory bouquet. With theatre, the possibilities are endless. If you can conceive it, you can probably achieve it … at least theatrically. Just open up and let it flow. In theatre as in art, nothing is wrong … just different. ¡Viva la diferencia! If you want to check out some different theatre this weekend, try Friday night’s performance of Drone: A Border Affair That Crosses a Line, a comedic satire about boy and girl drone pilots who patrol the Texas border … remotely as it were. The plot alone sounds awesome, but guess what? It’s a musical! With a live fourpiece band! And it’s brought to you by the Crank Collective, which may or may not have something to do with meth. Either way, it sounds like a teeth-grinding good time!