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NYE 1977

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December 26, 2011

Saturday night begins the year of the Mayan apocalypse. Time to get your ducks in a row … just in case. It’s true the Mayans did’t invent the wheel or gunpowder or the Internet, but they did come up with the concept of zero and they estimated the solar year to be just slightly longer than 365 days. Chronologically, they deserve at least as much respect as Pope Gregory XIII. Human sacrifice? OK, yeah … mistakes were made. So the Mayans tossed a few slaves into the city water supply every now and then to bring in a good maize crop. Don’t judge. Can you say with absolute certainty that your Whopper doesn’t contain the tip of some Mexican immigrant’s index finger? For all you know, your Whopper isn’t just made by immigrants; it’s made of them. How’s that for transubstantiation? Body of Jesus indeed. Really, how were the ancient Mayans supposed to know that the corn gods wouldn’t be appeased by the blood of innocents? Judging by stone carvings and a few surviving maize scrolls (you call it corn), it would appear that Mayan gods had a serious blood fetish, and they were particularly fond of piercing – tongues … ears … genitalia. That makes sense. There’s a lot of blood down there … at least on warm days and during full moons. And, if you’re cursed with immortality, you’re bound to resort to a little kinkiness after a while. Imagine if Louis XIV had lived a few extra centuries. Rest assured that in that amount of time he would have dreamed up a kink that would have rivaled the Turducken in hedonistic depravity. All the Mayan gods were asking for was an occasional drowned slave and blood drippings from ritualistic piercings. Is that so wrong? Fortunately, like drunken sailors on shore leave, the Mayans were allowed to be seriously F’d up before they got their Prince Alberts (which the Mayans just called “Ouch!”). They smoked wild tobacco and ate mushrooms and peyote (which they also soaked up through enemas because it’s quicker, and after all, what’s an enema when you’re about to spear your foreskin with a stingray spine?). They also licked toads, but before you get on your high horse, make a short list of things you wouldn’t lick if you knew they would deaden the pain of an impending dick piercing. If you’re like most people, you probably wrote down “baboon’s ass” and then scratched it out. Yeah, it’s that short. As long as you’re making lists, now might be a good time to put together a Mayan Apocalypse Bucket List. For instance, if you always wanted a Prince Albert but have been procrastinating, 2012 could be your year. However, you might want to put that on the list right after “morphine enema.” Just sayin’. Whether 2012 is the end of days or just 365 more in an endless succession of days that stretches through the eons, the new year is a good time to reflect, take stock, and plan for the future. Right now though, it’s still the old year, and it’s time to party like the world is about to end. A good place to do that on New Year’s Eve is at the 29th Street Ballroom, where an interesting assortment of local bands will be re-creating the musical magic of the year 1977 by performing songs from bands of the era. Here’s a brief rundown: Party Lines with Johnny Walker will be the Talking Heads, Jason McNeely and members of Flesh Lights will be Cheap Trick, members of Gospel Truth will be Suicide, members of Lola Cola will be the Runaways, Bobby Jealousy will be Blondie, Roky Moon & Bolt will be David Bowie, the Bad Lovers will be the Dead Boys, and the Shivery Shakes will be Television. Wow. That lineup just might be the hallucinogenic cultural enema that precedes the Prince Albert of the Mayan Apocalypse.

Africa Night With Zoumountchi

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December 21, 2011

This year the Lord’s Day is on the Lord’s Day – that being Lord Jr. and Lord Sr., respectively, who just happen to be one and the same. Mazel tov! Regardless of the rationalistic quagmire the birth of the Son of God (or for that matter the Holy Trinity) presents, a day of rest isn’t such a bad idea. Truly, everybody can probably use some down time after the insane mosh pit of materialism leading up to Christmas. Somehow, in less than a century we’ve gone from peppermint to pepper spray, from wassailing to retailing, from Christmas cheer to Christmas fear. Celebrating the birth of Jesus is an expensive affair. It can bankrupt you if you’re not careful … which is what Jesus would have wanted anyway, so whip out that credit card and go berserk. At this time of year everyone spends money like they just won the lottery. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re crazy; it just means they have Christmas spirit – which may be the result of a spiritually enlightened beneficence toward family, friends, and neighbors, or it may be the result of an ingeniously incessant barrage of Pavlovian conditioning concocted by Machiavellian Madison Avenue marketers. Admit it: Every time you hear sleigh bells jingling, you instinctively reach for your credit card. Why not reach for your ankles instead and eliminate the middlemen? Don’t worry, you won’t have to hold that position long. During the Christmas season there is no shortage of bankers walking around with raging hard-ons. It’s the most wonderful time of the year – an invigorating shot of Viagra for the sagging pillars of capitalism. Thank Jesus! Yes, he’s been the reason for the season for nearly the last three millennia – at least since the Romans got on the post-Saturnalia J train. Of course, the three wise men deserve a little credit too, and not just for throwing down with a trifecta of sweet swag for the newborn Jesus – gold (babies love bling!), frankincense (babies like to burn one!), and myrrh (babies love ointment!) – but also for taking the long way home to throw Herod off baby Jesus’ scent (which, one can assume, was fairly pungent after the wise men’s visit). Herod, it turns out, had a hard-on for Jesus (fed by power and greed – sort of like a banker) because folks (wise men included) were claiming that the baby Jesus was the King of the Jews, which would cut in on Herod’s turf. Herod was going to have the wise men rat out baby Jesus, but, as they will in these situations, an angel of the Lord appeared and gave the wise men the 411. Hooray wise men! Hooray angel of the Lord! Except that as a result Herod had every male child in Bethlehem under the age of 2 massacred. “Stormin'” Norman Schwarzkopf would have called that “collateral damage.” Oops. So really, the origins of Christian gift-giving are soaked in the blood of infants and toddlers. At least that explains the red color scheme. The green is just too obvious, and chances are you’ve been coughing it up liberally for a few months now, filling up the empty space beneath your Christmas tree, which may or may not be a metaphor for your soul. The good news is that you’re in the home stretch. There’s daylight on the other side of that Star of Bethlehem, and it’s called January … aka the month of atonement, that meditative time when you figure out it’s who you are not what you have. That’s why the gyms are so crowded. There are other ways to stay in shape that are a bit less narcissistic – dancing for instance, plus with dancing you stand a chance of meeting interesting people. You can do both this Saturday at Africa Night at the Sahara Lounge. That’s when the Sahara’s owner/proprietor Ibrahim Aminou and his band Zoumountchi play a night of high-energy West African dance music. Dance yourself dizzy, meet some fun people, and remind yourself of the roughly 4.6 billion people on Earth who don’t have any Christmas spirit.

Jeff Hughes & Chaparral

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December 14, 2011

If you’re too cool to dance country, you’re living in the wrong burg. Pull that stick out and relax, Slick. If you’re that uptight, nobody thinks you’re cool anyway, so you might as well access your inner dork. Yes, Austin may have bottle service, guest lists, and douchey dudes with gelled faux-hawks and tattoos on their shirts, but thank fucking God we’re still in Texas. It’s truly our ace in the hole. Being smack dab in the middle of Texas has its disadvantages, sure, but it keeps our pretentiousness in check. There are still small pockets of authenticity in Austin, even if the authenticity is sometimes so overhyped it makes them seem artificial. The Broken Spoke is one of those pockets. Yes, it’s been called “The Best Honky-Tonk in Texas,” “The Best Country Dance Hall in the Nation,” and a “must-see place when visiting Texas,” which might lead you to believe that Roy Spence is personally handling the Spoke’s publicity, but he’s not. Actually the wizard behind the curtain is none other than owner James White, who, along with his wife, Annetta, has been running the show at the Spoke since the couple built it back in 1964. That’s not a typo; it’s a miracle. Anyone who has dipped a toe in the club business for more than a few weeks knows that it takes a superhuman amount of compassion, love, and patience – the type of God-like qualities that club owners often seek in the bottom of a whiskey bottle or a vial of cocaine. Selling booze certainly invites a hornet’s nest of associated troubles, but it’s a rare breed that has the fortitude and management skills to deal with musicians on a daily basis, much less for 47 years. Imagine if instead of pushing a boulder up a hill, Sisyphus had to herd cats – alcoholic, meth-snorting, pill-popping cats with women problems and car problems and drummer problems and ego problems. In comparison, pushing a rock for eternity is like Zen meditation. To their credit, James and Annetta are Zen enough to keep it simple. They book country dance bands – good ones too. Over the years they’ve had some true legends grace the stage: Bob Wills, Ernest Tubbs, Roy Acuff, Hank Thompson, Tex Ritter, Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Kris Kristofferson, George Strait, and, of course, Willie Nelson. But the Spoke isn’t beloved because it’s a great place for star-watching; it’s beloved because it’s a great place for dancing. Five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday, the dance floor at the Spoke is generally hopping with all types of dancers: wide-eyed European tourists, adventurous hipsters, starched Wrangler-wearing urban cowboys, blue-collar rednecks, even blue-haired septuagenarians who still like to cut a rug. The skill levels are diverse too, so if you’re not a John Travolta (Bud not Tony), you won’t feel out of place. If you’re polite about it, you can generally find someone to take at least a few spins around the floor. And if you don’t know how to country dance or you’re convinced you just suck at it, show up at 8pm and James and Annetta’s daughter Terri will show you how it’s done … at least enough to give you some training wheels. If you’re still feeling skeptical, carve this Wednesday night out of your schedule and spend it at the Spoke. Get there early, and eat a chicken-fried steak dinner while listening to happy hour regular TJ Bonta. Afterward, head into the big room for dance lessons at 8pm with Terri, so you’ll be ready to roll when Jeff Hughes & Chaparral hit the stage at 9:30pm. Jeff Hughes and his band Chaparral have been country dance favorites in Austin for more than 20 years – and with good reason. They know how to keep the dance floor hopping with a set list that’s as diverse as the city itself: great originals mixed in with cover songs that range from George Jones to Guns & Roses and Conway Twitty to the Cure … yes, that Cure. You’d be surprised at how some songs sound even better with just a little country twang. The same is true of people. Maybe you’re one.

Cherrywood Art Fair 10th Anniversary

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December 7, 2011

No matter what Jesus said, Christmas is no time to jump off the materialism bandwagon. You may think you’re doing good by feeding the hungry or clothing the homeless, but you’re really just perpetuating the recession by spending money on people who can’t reciprocate. That’s just bad math. Jesus might have been a pretty decent carpenter, but he wasn’t much of an economist. “Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor.” WTF JC? If poor people knew how to manage money they wouldn’t be poor, would they? They would all be fund managers, loan officers, and stock brokers – the kind of criminals it takes hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out – not the toothless meth heads or crack-smoking welfare mommas you can bail out with obtuse promises of sexual favors or a well-laundered pimp roll of fives and ones with a Benjamin wrapped around the outside. Yes, meth and crack generate income, but drug dealers spend almost as little on taxes as 1 Percenters. At least drug dealers have to keep up appearances. So if you’re planning on dropping some coin during the holiday season, do it on the up and up – ideally on a big-bank credit card with an unconscionably usurious interest rate that has an irresistible cash-back incentive. Cash back? Why would you not want to spend money? You would have to be a complete idiot. Speaking of, make sure you’re blowing your credit-card money on someone who will hit you back with an equally exorbitant gift purchased on an equally usurious credit card. This is how we grow the economy – not by volunteering in soup kitchens or clothing drives or by building houses with Habitat for Humanity but by fully embracing the spirit of giving – even if we have to borrow money to do it. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?” The good news is that even if you have a Hummer with gold spinny rims, a Rolex Presidential, and a luxury high-rise condo Downtown, as long as you’re over your head in debt, you’re technically poor. You might think you have too much personal integrity to get into heaven on a technicality, but really … if it came down to it … of course you would. Think of those times you got into the VIP section just because you were with a friend. Did you enjoy the top shelf and hors d’oeuvres any less? Did you wish you were slumming it down in the proletarian scrum of the Unimportant People Section? Hardly. A rose by any other pretext still smells as sweet, doesn’t it? Do you think God will know or care if you only buy gifts for people you know will feel obligated to give you something back? Doesn’t it seem a bit arrogant to assume God is checking in on you personally? Doesn’t He have bigger fish to fry? For instance: You gotta figure Kim Kardashian is getting more heavenly attention than you, if only because of media saturation. In fact, she might be sucking up all the creator’s time – just like she does CNN’s. There is a very good chance – in a spiritual sense at least – that you’re flying way under the radar. That’s a liberating thought, isn’t it? Maybe all you have to do to punch your ticket to paradise is make sure your moral compass doesn’t point to hard toward Jersey Shore. Or maybe there’s no paradise at all. Maybe the terrestrial plane is the only plane you get to board and it’s up to you and the rest of the passengers to tidy up the aisles. That last scenario makes a pretty strong argument against buying more shit, but damn it all, it’s the season of giving, and the easiest way to show you’re giving is to actually give something tangible – something you can wrap in paper or at least drop into one of those gift bags that show you’ve had it with gift wrapping. As much as you would like to stimulate the national economy, you might want to reign in your ambition and start local. Selfish as it seems, local stimulation feels pretty good. Try it and see for yourself this weekend at the 10th anniversary of the Cherrywood Art Fair, an annual event that showcases original art from lots of local artists as well as food from local food trucks and live music. This year’s lineup includes Troy Campbell, the Boxcar Preachers, Colin Gilmore, Jeremy Steding, the Coffee Sergeants, and Eric Blakely, among others. That ought to stimulate you well enough.

Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night

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November 30, 2011

Like Joe Paterno jokes, Christmas is just … too soon. Yeah, yeah, broken record. Every year the schmaltz piles thicker and thicker. Maybe if it was somehow discovered that Santa was a child molester … wait a minute, that story is a broken record too. Santa has probably been busted for child molestation countless times. Good God … the elves alone point to some sort of sick, stunted development fetish, but you can bet that no matter how many times Santa ends up in a police lineup it’s never the real Santa. Of course, the same could be said of countless guys named Jesus who would love to be forgiven their transgressions too, but apparently, God doesn’t speak Spanish or post bail. There’s no telling how many legions of pedophiles over the course of history have donned Santa costumes. The thought is staggering … like googol (the number) … or the grains of sand in an hourglass … or the extras cast of Spartacus – the last scene of which, incidentally, was an excellent example of what used to happen when a large group of people claimed to be someone famous. These days the punishment is much less severe. Yes, identity theft is a crime, but it’s not like the mayor of Las Vegas is lining the Strip with crucified Elvises (yes, that’s the plural form, otherwise it would be Elvii, which could just as easily refer to Santa’s little white-knuckled “helpers”). Regardless of the suspiciously nocturnal ramblings of the red-suited, rosy-cheeked, right jolly old elf, no one seems to want to call him on the elves issue. He could probably leash his reindeer to a windowless van with clowns and ice cream painted on the side. It wouldn’t matter. Americans, and arguably the rest of the world, are still “all-in” when it comes to Christmas. There’s no turning back now. Overzealous Christians and profit-grubbing corporations have the largest part of the Western Hemisphere suckling intently on the tit of greed. Sound pessimistic? All right. Fair enough. Christmas is the season of giving, but guess what? By Christian standards, so is the rest of the year. It’s just that the rest of the year all you get out of the spirit of giving is a profound sense of compassion and humanity which inevitably leads to smug self-righteousness, superiority, and a car that doesn’t even have a gas tank. What it never leads to, however, is a Nintendo Wii under a garishly decorated conifer in your living room and stockings stuffed with sweets and swag. Christmas in July is called Meals on Wheels, and even though fat people may still deliver the goods, it’s a totally different vibe. When you give gifts expecting something back, it’s called Christmas. When you give gifts and expect nothing back, it’s called charity. Nobody wants charity, but everybody wants Christmas. Yes, even the Grinch. Remember when his heart grew to three times its size and busted out of its frame? You were there. Wahoo floray motherfucker. There are no charity carols (OK, maybe the theme song on that Sarah McLachlan Debbie Downer dog commercial), charity lights, or charity trees, but there are, thankfully, charity parties. Why? Well, with charity parties you get something back. Is that so wrong? This Friday a seriously fun charity party is happening over at Club de Ville. This party benefits the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians with a Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night. A whole slew of talented entertainers will be on the Mac like a moth on a flame. Plus, there’s a Fleetwood Mac costume contest with an Uchi gift certificate for a grand prize. Here’s the beauty of this deal: If for some reason you don’t feel cool enough to hang out at Club de Ville, relax. This is a Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night. Dork it up all you want. You’ll fit in nicely.

A ‘Hole’ Bunch of Thanks With Chris Brecht & Dead Flowers

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November 22, 2011

Well, well, well … what have we to be thankful for? Yes, the world economy’s in the toilet, drought and fires have ravaged most of the local landscape, the Longhorns might be looking at a break-even season, and it’s an inescapable reality that each and every person reading this column is going to die someday, but it’s not like you’re ready to fellate the business end of a shotgun. You’re not Kurt Cobain. Besides, there are some bright spots. How about the Interwebs? Thank you Al Gore for personally paving the information superhighway! Now nearly everyone in the world with access to an electrical socket wakes up knowing that the collective knowledge of thousands of years of human evolution is literally at his or her fingertips. Well done, sir! And yet, instead of taking advantage of the enormous enlightenment, personal growth, and understanding such information might offer, they mostly just surf for porn and post cute kitten videos on their Facebook feeds. Ah well, if you teach a man to fish, you’ll feed him for a lifetime, but if you teach a man to surf the Web, he’ll be surrounded by sticky Kleenex in no time. Regardless, something good is bound to come of this Internet thing besides “Thriller” flash mobs, Rick Rolling, and WikiLeaks postings of U.S. Army snuff films. Here’s something else you should feel thankful about: Obama. Sure, he’s no Billy Dee Williams. Hell, he’s not even Dave Chappelle, but he sure is doing a spectacular job of chapping the asses of cracker conservatives all over America, which is truly worth another four-year stint, even if Democrats have to walk 10 miles barefoot through the snow to the voting booth. Plus, if he gets a second term, Obama can go buck wild and actually make conservatives’ worst nightmares come true: free foreclosed suburban homes for welfare mothers, illegalization of all guns, mandatory free education and college scholarships for all illegal immigrants, government funded abortions for everyone, socialized medicine (that’s insane), and of course, the pièce de résistance, outlawing Christmas – or at the very least replacing it with a Gay Pride parade for aging bears. You know you just got a semi – not necessarily because you’re into burly, hirsute old gay men, but because how awesome would that be? Old, hairy, shirtless dudes in assless chaps disco dancing to Erasure down a street lined with bawling toddlers? Well, keep your fingers crossed. There’s always a chance for a Christmas miracle. Speaking of assless chaps, the weather’s pretty nice isn’t it? That’s something to be thankful for. The icecaps may be melting because we’ve reduced the ozone to just a few molecules of oxygen that bump into one another every now and then, but it’s the end of November and you’re still rocking a rich, St. Tropez tan that makes George Hamilton look like Edward Scissorhands. You’re crushing it. And lastly, you’d be remiss not to be thankful for your smartphone. Really, you have to admit it’s awesome. Remember back in the day when people were worried about Big Brother (aka the government) knowing everything they did in public or in private? Turns out Big Brother could give a shit. Private individuals, on the other hand, are up in one another’s chili like never before, which has created the Facebook standard of public propriety. People no longer ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” Instead they ask themselves, “What would this look like if it were tagged in a Facebook post?” Thus, we are no longer entertained (as often and pricelessly) by a drunk wearing a lampshade and a pair of beer-stained tighty-whities doing a Riverdance on the coffee table or a potentially crippling backflip off the back of the sofa. Moonings are increasingly rare, and you know, damn … it’s like a fat cop can’t mace a few protesters anymore without having it posted all over the Internet (and Photoshopped into just about every iconic image in the last 2,000 years). You can be thankful for that. Relatively, life is pretty sweet, even if you’re a 99 Percenter – especially if you’re a 99 Percenter in America. You should celebrate. They’re doing exactly that at the Hole in the Wall this Thursday by cooking up a free Thanksgiving meal. All you have to do is show up, buy some drinks, enjoy some great music by Chris Brecht & Dead Flowers, and the Hole will feed you a delicious Thanksgiving feast.

East Austin Studio Tour

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November 18, 2011

Any artist who can afford a studio in East Austin must be doing pretty well, right? Those digs ain’t cheap. If you’re doing the EASTside shuffle this weekend, don’t expect kegs of PBR and Cheez Whiz on saltines – well, unless it’s being served ironically, which is difficult to prove without seeming like a huge dick. More than likely you’ll be treated to a variety of tasty independent craft brews too thick to suck through a beer bong, gluten-free hors d’oeuvres (Seriously: No one gives a shit about glutens or even knows what they are, and if they do they’re probably so neurotic about their health that they’re going to die of an aneurysm anyway), and, of course, the staple of art openings: cheap but serviceable wines. Sometimes they’re wines from places and vintners you’ve never heard of (What? You’ve never had Pirate Pete’s Pinot Grigio? It’s one of the finest wines in all of Somalia!), and sometimes they’re quasi-ghetto wines cleverly redecanted. Then there are the boxed wines. Boxed wines are fair game as long as you get jiggy with it. Just plopping a Bota Box down on a rented folding table is too low rent even for East Austin … even if you’re doing it ironically. True artists know it’s not what’s in the box that matters; it’s how the box looks on the outside. Imagine the Gallo brothers on the label, but with Rollie Fingers-style Movember mustaches and Tyrolean alpine hats Sharpied onto their heads. The cool thing about making art is that you can never be too over the top. Wait a minute … OK, if you’re going to start making masks out of human skin like Leatherface … well … granted … envelope pushed … broken … shat on. On the other hand, if you want wrap a cluster of islands in 600,000 square meters of pink polypropylene or photograph yourself with a bullwhip shoved up your ass, have at it. There is really no bad art, only art stupid people don’t understand. If you’ve ever found yourself staring intently at a Pollock painting thinking, “What the fucking fuck? I could duct-tape a paintbrush to a Chihuahua’s head and do better than this,” don’t get your panties in a wad. It just means you don’t have an art history degree from Bryn Mawr. Some art is done for art’s sake. That means that it’s completely useless for anything other than being a piece of art. Ironically enough, a lot of art for art’s sake ends up being pressed into uses completely unintended and unimagined by the artist. More often than not that use is as a drink coaster or paperweight, but it can involve other things like boat anchors, oil-drip pans, dartboards … really the list is nearly as endless as artistic possibility. Then, of course, there are those pieces of art with similar characteristics that sell for millions of dollars. If this keeps you awake at night, it shouldn’t. Yes, there are generally agreed upon rules and standards in art. For instance: Who doesn’t love a fleece blanket with the airbrushed image of Elvis on it? Crazy people, that’s who. Mostly, however, the value of art is highly subjective and determined by rank emotion and caprice – just like an episode of American Idol. Trying to determine the value of a piece of art is risky business – like betting money on a quarterback named Manning or barebacking a South African prostitute. Buying art should always be done with the same sense of resignation you use to justify an expensive trip to Vegas: You’re probably going to lose money on the deal, but at least the drinks are free. Who knows, you may hit the jackpot and take home the next Picasso or Warhol or Schneider, or Fontenot, or you might just take home an interesting little dalliance that reminds you of the time you got blotto on complimentary boxed wine and wandered around formerly sketchy neighborhoods looking at art on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. How much is that worth? Priceless. If you’re looking to look at some art, you can’t pick a better time than this weekend, which is the last weekend of the East Austin Studio Tour, a chance to get to know more than 100 local artists and studios as well as familiarize yourself with the streets and neighborhoods of East Austin. All you have to do to get started is pick up an EAST catalog at one of the Austin Public Libraries, or go online to the EAST website and download a PDF map of the tour. Go ahead, get your art on.

Sims Benefit Bash

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November 31, 2022

If you’re a 99 Percenter (and there’s about a 99% chance that you are), here’s a little secret: You didn’t come out too well in the health care debate either. Long before the banks were tappin’ your ass with usurious fees, penalties, and interest rates, the insurance companies were sucking you dry like big, fat leeches with exorbitant deductibles, greed-driven coverage denials, and obstructive customer service tactics. More importantly, insurance company lobbyists completely framed the debate about how the American health care system (aka “The Finest Health Care System in the World” – well, except for its 37th-place finish in the World Health Organization’s rankings in 2000) should operate. It just may turn out to be one of the greatest PR victories of the 20th century. The notion of a baseline government-run system of health care was dismissively portrayed as recklessly extreme socialism and shelved almost immediately – as was the idea of allowing the government to offer its own competing, low-cost insurance. Instead, insurance companies leaned over the plate and took the huge hit of not being able to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions (What? We can’t just let people die?) and were made to suffer the further indignity of having to sell everybody insurance. Everybody. Well, “everybody” being everybody who can afford to buy health insurance – which they will be required to do by law. Those unable to pay would of course receive federal assistance to purchase private health insurance. This requirement – aka the “individual mandate” – was an incredibly genius reach-around compromise that made desperate liberal Democrats feel at least like distant relatives of Mother Teresa, but in reality will have at best a minimal effect on overall health care costs as a percentage of gross domestic product, which is the one health care category in which America really does kick everyone’s ass. U…S…A! U…S…A! While Obama was busy grabbing his ankles (or maybe he was tying his shoelaces?) in the name of political expediency, insurance companies were wetting themselves at the prospect of millions of new customers getting lost in their infuriating voicemail labyrinths and trying to make sense of Byzantine billing statements. Really, why should poor people be spared the experience of being driven to the edge of insanity by “the finest health care system in the world”? But wait … there is some silver lining: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (insurance executives get a semi every time they hear that read out loud) includes important mental health coverage provisions, the most notable being that pre-existing mental-health/substance-use disorders can’t be used as a basis to deny coverage. That should be something of a relief for the folks at the SIMS Foundation, who will be hosting their annual SIMS Benefit Bash fundraiser this Saturday at the Austin Music Hall. For more than 15 years, SIMS has provided access to and financial support for mental-health services for Austin-area musicians and their families. Given the staggering number of aspiring rock stars here in the River City (many of whom are at least a little kray-kray), that is a monumental task. If you think the PPACA means that SIMS can just throw in the towel, you are a bit mental yourself. Most of the benefits conferred by the legislation don’t go into effect until 2014, and the law itself doesn’t go into full effect until 2018. That’s a major gap to fill, which is why you should buy a ticket, sponsor a table, or maybe drop some coin on some cool auction items at the SIMS Benefit Bash. Make a night of it. Blow it up. Paying for mental health care will never be any funner than this.

Austin Tequila Fest

The Luv Doc Recommends

November 2, 2011

If you’ve ever woken up shirtless with your pants around your ankles, upside down in a stranger’s bathtub with a knot on your head, a missing tooth, a bloody nose, inexplicable bruises, dried snot(?), dirt, and blood splattered across your body, you’ve probability overindulged in tequila. If there were a goat/circus clown/homeless person/transvestite passed out in the tub with you, chances are you’ve sworn off tequila for eternity – or at least until you can save up enough money to get that “Bozo’s bitch” tramp stamp removed. It would be reckless and irresponsible to deny that there’s some indefinable, insidious component of tequila that drives otherwise reasonably sane, well-mannered people to commit acts of stupidity and depravity that would make Charlie Sheen blush. If there is though, it hasn’t been detected. Still, do you think the makers of Girls Gone Wild plied coeds with pot brownies and Smirnoff Ice? Wrong. If you can somehow get a 95-pound Tri Delta to knock back a few consecutive shots of Cuervo, all you need to do is put on your dog attack suit and let the camera roll. Rest assured that some heavy shit is about to go down. If someone were brave enough to do the statistical research, it would probably be discovered that tequila is responsible for a staggering number of unplanned pregnancies, barroom brawls, and embarrassing, vulgar tattoos – not just within the Tri Deltas, but within the population as a whole. One sure sign that your night on the town is about to take a freaky turn through the looking glass is when your beer-drinking buddies decide to kick it into overdrive by ordering shots of tequila. OK, truth be told, it could be reasonably argued that’s the same result as when people start doing shots of anything: whiskey, vodka, rum, absinthe, Jägermeister … although with Jäger you should assume that the night will end with you exploring your sexuality with your frat brothers. There are certain tequila drinkers who maintain that tequila is a stimulant or that it contains trace amounts of mescaline. These people – perhaps from the degenerative effects of binge alcoholism on the cerebral cortex – are stupid. Yes, imbibed in staggeringly prodigious quantities, tequila provides a full load of calories, but those calories are fairly useless as an immediate source of energy. They will, however, provide you with a nice layer of suet that might help you (or maybe your fellow passengers) survive a few extra days if your plane goes down in the Andes. Here’s the bottom line: Just because tequila is made from a menacing looking plant in a dangerous country doesn’t give it special powers; it just gives it a special flavor. The active ingredient is still alcohol – a depressant. Scientifically speaking, there’s nothing stimulating about tequila other than the extreme stupidity that results from overimbibing. Drunks are stimulated by the belief that they can perform ordinary feats of skill and dexterity (and yes, sadly, extraordinary feats of skill and dexterity) while highly intoxicated. The results often produce memories that last a lifetime … or at least a really popular YouTube video. There are plenty of people with just such memories who literally can’t even smell tequila without feeling their digestive system slam into reverse. It’s unfortunate really. Why condemn a whole world of epicurean exploration just because you spent a wild night with a Sig Ep named “Upchuck” in South Padre when you were 19? Sophisticated drinkers know that tequila is the Scotch of the Desert Southwest. There are hundreds of different brands, each with its own unique flavor and aroma. Yes, many of them make a mean margarita, but others were made to be enjoyed neat, like fine single malt. If you want a quick introduction to the wonderful world of tequila, head down to Casa Chapala this Friday, where the Austin Tequila Society is hosting the Austin Tequila Fest, “An Evening of Tequila Tasting, Fun, Food and Music Benefiting the Homeless Coach.” More than 45 tequila selections will be available for sampling, and there will be Mexican food, raffle prizes, and live music with the Jonas Alvarez band. Sound like a fun time? It probably will be, but you may want to take the bus. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to say when.

Zombie Ball: The Party To Die For

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 26, 2011

Put your costume on now. It’s go time. It already was last weekend but maybe you didn’t get the memo. As of today, however, there’s no excuse. Everything is Halloween themed. Don’t think so? Even Petco is having a Fur and Fangs Halloween Catstravaganza. You may want to take this rare opportunity to round up all the neighborhood strays, dress them in adorable crocheted pumpkin costumes, and do a drive-by drop and dash. Let the terror begin! Perhaps some local urologist (maybe Dr. Dick Chop?) might want to consider doing a Vasect-o-ween(er) Party. Nothing is scarier that a man in a mask standing over your maximally contracted scrotum with an inch-long anesthetic needle. Boo! The point is that from here on until sometime around 5am the morning after Halloween, you can get away with murder … well, at least fashionwise. Probably the only place you can’t safely rock an awesome costume is a mortuary, and really, if that’s your gig, it’s pretty much Halloween all year round anyway, isn’t it? In fact, you can probably show up at a Halloween party in a suit, and when people ask you what you are, you can say, “I’m a mortician,” and they will say, “Cool … you totally nailed it.” Plus, you can actually be a mortician for the rest of the night and not experience the normal social ostracization to which you’re accustomed. Even if you don’t spend your days working with the recently departed, Halloween is still a great time to really open up and be the real you. Cross-dresser? No need to go costume shopping, eh? Well, unless there’s a really good sale or something. Mime? Hilarious and scary! Doctor, cop, soldier, priest, firefighter, circus clown, Indian chief, biker … Halloween is a slam dunk for anyone whose daily attire would work nicely on a Village People album cover. For the rest of the world, costuming can be a bit stressful. Why? Expectations mostly … your own or someone else’s. Making costumes is hard. That’s why they give out Oscars for people who are really good at it. It’s not just a matter of spending a quiet night at home with a hot glue gun and a box of ostrich feathers. A couple of hours on a throbbing disco dance floor (and if there isn’t one, you’re probably at a shitty Halloween party) and you’ll come undone just like Icarus. Yes, your plunge to Earth may only be metaphorical, but that doesn’t mean it will be less painful. Even the classic no-brainer ghost costume requires a certain amount of premeditation. You can’t just hack out a couple of eye sockets and a blowhole and call it good. You have to find some way to make sure that once you start moving around, your hand-crafted orifices aren’t servicing a different part of your anatomy. Speaking of, one of the primary considerations of the ghost costume is also a difficult existential one as well: commando or no? Sure, it may be tempting to free-ball it all night long – especially in Austin’s balmy climes – but some consideration should be paid to the inevitable curiosity of your fellow revelers. It’s safe to say that some will want to know what’s behind the white curtain enough to actually lift it. Store-bought costumes offer their own challenges – primarily those having to do with ventilation. Remember that wicked awesome ape suit you picked up for a song on Ebay? The one that made you sweat so much that by the end of the night your rubber ape feet were making sloshing noises? Not to mention that for weeks afterward you were coughing up hairballs of synthetic black fur, which, chances are, was made in China by child laborers wearing suits covered in lead dust and weapons-grade plutonium. Party tip: No one wants to fuck the sweat-drenched, synthetic-hairball-hacking occupant of a cheap Chinese ape suit. No one. You could show up at a party in a pair of water-logged Depends and have a better chance at getting laid. Don’t try that costume by the way … it takes a monumental amount of game. If you really want to let yourself off the costume hook, dress comfortably – maybe a light-colored velour tracksuit – and then soak yourself in fake blood (or real blood if you have a pig you’ve been meaning to slaughter). Ta-da! Instant zombie. The cool thing about being a zombie is that you can be a zombie anything: bride, astronaut, bureaucrat, unicyclist, lactation consultant … just let your imagination run wild. If you want to compare notes, head down to ACL Live at the Moody Theater on Saturday for the Zombie Ball, a zombified extravaganza featuring live music (the Bright Light Social Hour), aerialists, burlesque, and a Haunt’d Couture Red Carpet Review (red with blood?!). Plus, you can get your zombie party pic taken by fun folks from the Chronicle. Beats being castrated, doesn’t it?

Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 18, 2011

First of all, if you’re offended by the term “gypsy,” back off. It ain’t like that. Here in Austin we think of gypsies as freedom-loving people who can’t be tied down – sort of like the homeless people in the Kris Kristofferson song “Me and Bobby McGee.” You know, the kind of folks who aren’t ashamed to hitchhike or carry a dirty red bandana, desperate types with “nothing left to lose.” This, of course, could describe a lot of people of unsavory mien: escaped convicts … psychopaths … terrorists … axe-murderers. But for the generally bourgeois demographic of Central Austin, the gypsy aesthetic is a much more benign and romantic notion. Like communism or gerbiling, having nothing left to lose is much more attractive as a theoretical construct than in actual practice. Being encumbered with nothing is the naive fantasy of those encumbered with too much. We all like to think of ourselves as Bear Grylls from Man vs. Wild … all alone out there in the wild … surviving by our wit and instinct … never even asking the cameraman or sound engineer for a protein bar or a foot massage … really roughing it. Really, Bear Grylls is just like us … only he comes from a much better family and went to Eton College. Regardless, just because we’ve never been “busted flat in Baton Rouge” doesn’t mean we couldn’t handle it, even enjoy it. Really, who hasn’t fantasized about being flat broke and having to hitch a ride in the land of alligators, drunk Cajuns, and David Duke? What’s the worst that could happen? Sure, you might have to send an embarrassing text to your parents from your iPhone to get them to add some money to your checking account so you can get your morning Venti at Starbucks, but hey, that’s just the cost of your gypsy life of freedom, isn’t it? Even Bear Grylls gets tired of eating grubworms, showering in the snow, and shitting in the woods, Bear though he may be. The notion of freedom and self-reliance however, no matter how bankrupt and fallacious, still sounds sexy. Gypsies don’t have to worry about mortgages, car payments, utility bills, retirement accounts, taxes, or even holding down a job. The costumes are pretty fly as well. Think Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow or maybe Stevie Nicks in her goth phase: lots of dangly bling, tats, and billowy clothing, not to mention the obligatory bandana do-rag. Yes, the nomadic life has its romance and allure – well, at least the European version. Back in the day, Texas and most of the plains states were populated almost exclusively with exotically dressed nomads, until we killed most of them and herded the remainder into reservations. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose until you actually lose your freedom. Then it might as well just be another word for wings, antlers, or a 14-inch penis: something you don’t have. So rather than being a pejorative and ethnically erroneous label for the people of Romany, the term “gypsy” really denotes a longing for a romanticized ideal of what we don’t have: Freedom. In the case of the Gypsy Picnic, it’s the ability to roll up your awning, hitch up your trailer, and move it to some more desirable location … perhaps one that isn’t so visible to public health inspectors … or maybe someplace visible to nearly everyone. This weekend that place is Auditorium Shores, where nearly 40 food trailers from all across Austin will set up shop for the Gypsy Picnic Trailer Food Festival. This is a great chance to sample a lot of different, interesting foods without the annoyance of silverware. Along with the food there will also be a craft beer bar with selections from independent breweries, live music (Boy, Alabama Shakes, Dale Watson, Hacienda, and Delta Spirit), and a trailer food cook-off judged by local celebrities including Bryan Beck, Todd Boatwright, and the Chronicle‘s Mick Vann. Admission is free, but bring some folding money because the food isn’t. Each trailer will, however, offer one signature food item for $3. To some that might seem a little steep for something bought off the back of a roach wagon, but this is Austin, so even our trailer food is bourgeois. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Maybe real freedom is blowing all your money on beer and trailer food.

Second Annual Freak Show Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 12, 2011

Well now that we’ve had some rain, there’s not much to bitch about anymore except the economy. Have at it. Chances are your social circle is far too small and your voice much too weak to reach someone who can do something about it. Like rain, the economy is either going to fall or it isn’t. Sure you can scrawl out a pithy message on a cardboard sign, march shirtless through the financial district, and spew vague, long-winded, accusatory diatribes, but in the end, your words and actions will have about the same effect as a small puff of silver iodide in a nascent rain cloud. Yes, there are some real rainmakers out there, but unfortunately right now they’re comfortable enough to ride out this rough patch and see what happens. You can’t expect America’s billionaires to blow their great-great-grandchildren’s nest eggs on risky investments just because a whole generation of middle-class liberal arts grads can’t pay off their student loans. OK, that wasn’t fair. Fine arts grads are similarly screwed – it’s just that they were expecting a good rogering. At least they have the sense to settle for menial service-industry jobs that make them wish they had majored in Spanish. Of course, some would say that these legions of the overly educated unemployed are an indictment of the utility of higher education. We have Google, goddamnit – isn’t that enough? Besides, educating people doesn’t necessarily increase their happiness or satisfaction. If anything, it only makes them more keenly aware of things like gross financial malfeasance or shocking social inequity. What good does that do for the economy? Protesters aren’t big spenders. Instead of spending their time spending money they spend it rummaging through dumpsters looking for cardboard that doesn’t smell like rotting lettuce. Ultimately, this type of nonconsumerist activity plunges America even further down its wormhole of economic uncertainty. It sort of goes without saying that public protests erode consumer confidence, which, in turn, creates a hostile investment climate. Think Greece. Of course, really diabolical investors – the type of people who made bank on Dow Chemical during Vietnam or on Halliburton during Desert Storm – are probably snatching up shares of Newell Rubbermaid, which owns Sanford Manufacturing Co., the makers of Sharpie-brand permanent markers. You can’t find those in a Dumpster … and even if you could, chances are the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze. In fact, Dumpster juice isn’t worth much at all other than being the signature cologne of the pariah. Most people would rather cough up a pint of plasma than go hogging for that kind of needle in a haystack. Plus, once you’ve cashed in on your blood donation, you get an even better buzz from the Sharpie fumes. That could explain the erratic and sometimes incomprehensible nature of some of the protest signs. The same could be said of a lot of the protest rhetoric as well. Being mad at the bankers and businessmen plays well on the evening news, but the bottom line is that they’re not the policymakers. They are simply playing by the rules that they bought. They are accountable to no one but their shareholders. Members of Congress, however, are accountable to their constituents. Sure, you can make a lot of noise barking up the wrong tree, but that won’t put dinner on the table, and eventually you’ll get tired of barking. For an example of how to really occupy a street, check out the Freak Show Festival, “a one-day, outdoor festival combining the Performance Art of the ‘Circus Freak’ with Rockabilly & Psychobilly Music.” The festival will take place this Saturday at Fourth and Waller. Yes, it’s crazy and confusing, but at least they’re selling tickets to it, which can only stimulate economic growth. Isn’t that what we really need? Well, that and a fresh pack of Sharpies. Here’s the music lineup: Mad Sin, Devil Doll, Koffin Kats, Calabrese, Pickled Punks, and the Danger*Cakes. Plus the freaks: 999 Eyes, Brass Ovaries, Dolls From the Crypt, Minor Mishap Marching Band, and Aztlan Arts. Have at it.

Central Texas Paranormal Conference

The Luv Doc Recommends

October 5, 2011

New bumper sticker: Keep Austin Paranormal. That’s pretty close to weird, isn’t it? OK, so maybe not in a dreads-and-tie-dye kind of way or a bike-with-a-really-high-seat kind of way or a whole-body-tattoo-with-whisker-implants kind of way, but you have to admit, ghosts are pretty freaking weird – nearly as weird as people who believe in them. No, not just Christians … all sorts of folks believe in haints: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists … even Wiccans. Interestingly, leaders in all the preceding religions like to rock flowing robes – sort of like ghosts themselves. Perhaps that gives them some extra spiritual clout. Catholic Christians like to accessorize their ghost costumes with lots of bling. Yo! All y’all indigenous peoples! Catholic heaven is awesome! Check out these gemstones … get a whiff of some of this “incense” … and take a long swig from some of this sacrificial wine! Woot! Buddhists, on the other hand, go for more of a low profile – well at least as far as personal style points. Like ghosts, Buddhist monks aren’t real chatty. Makes sense. Ghosts – at least in a classic, ethereal sense – don’t have vocal chords. Maybe that’s why they’re always moaning or wailing or appearing exasperated with their inability to communicate – sort of like Rick Perry at a Republican presidential debate. Buddhists do have some impressive temples. Of course, the same could be said of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. There is probably some correlation between the ostentatious architecture of temples, cathedrals, mosques, and synagogues and dazzling, gaudy Vegas casinos, but why throw stones at glass houses? Either way it’s a roll of the dice. At least in a casino you get free drinks as long as you’re gambling. The Catholics have a similar program, but you have to share cooties with the rest of the congregation (don’t trip, there’s only a small chance you might get mouth herpes, syphilis, and a teeming stew of other frightening pathogens by taking a swig from the sacramental chalice). Diseases are nearly invisible and spooky in their own right, but they became not quite as spooky (OK, Ebola excepted) once we could see them under a microscope. Back in the olden days (olden is such an olden word, isn’t it?), people burned incense, bathed in urine, drank pus, and covered themselves with leeches to ward off plague and pestilence. Fortunately, through the miracles of advanced optics and the scientific method, people eventually learned to take a fucking bath, stop sleeping with their farm animals, and stop piling corpses in the streets. Thank God (OK, God, we might have to chalk this one up to science. We’re still cool, right?) people no longer have to anoint themselves with oil, wear talismans, or burn incense anymore, eh? It’s called evolution (although admittedly burning incense is not a bad idea if you’ve been smoking pot in your dorm room). The important thing to remember is that unless your incense is actually a Raid flea bomb, it’s not helping you one iota against the plague. Here’s the bottom line: Stuff you can’t see is often scary, but just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. For instance: Axe body spray = scary, unseen. Yes, we have five senses, and Axe body spray eats up at least two or three of them, but sometimes those senses can’t tell the whole story. If they did, you could do your own MRI. Science and technology may be advancing at a mind-boggling pace, but what we don’t know is still nearly limitless. So when it comes to the paranormal, we should maybe get off our high horses a little. Good news! You’ll have an opportunity to do that this weekend at the Central Texas Paranormal Conference, a two-day event taking place at the Norris Conference Center at Northcross Mall. Speakers include the SyFy Channel’s Dustin Pari (Ghost Hunters International); the Klinge Brothers, from the Discovery Channel’s Ghost Lab; Dash Beardsley, “The Ghost Man of Galveston”; and Aron Houdini, great-nephew of Harry Houdini, among others. There will also be a vendor area with an aura photographer, palmists, a Reiki practitioner, crystal readers, entity clearers, and plain ol’ psychics. If you get your aura photographed, you will definitely have to get off your high horse. You’ll also be keeping Austin paranormal.

Gagarazzi: A Lady Gaga Burlesque and Variety Show

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 28, 2011

Time to head down to the butcher shop so you can start putting your costume together. Meat is fairly expensive, and you’re no pop star, so you might want to go with one of the less expensive cuts – perhaps a flank steak or a skirt steak (a skirt steak miniskirt?) or maybe even something made out of a hanger steak, although with the hanger steak you’re opening yourself up to a heaping helping of extended labia jokes. Chin up, outrageousness doesn’t come without a certain amount of unwanted attention. Besides, every woman has wizard sleeves, it’s just that some are short like the ones on Roger Daltrey’s T-shirt in Tommy, and some are long and dangly like Merlin’s. The important thing to remember is that they’re all magical! In fashion, however, the way your meat hangs is crucial. You can’t just stitch together a bunch of chunks of shoulder steak and call it haute couture. Tim Gunn would pitch a fit. Heidi Klum would fold her arms and wither you with her harsh, Teutonic glare. No, your meat has to drape elegantly and in a way that accentuates your figure, is pleasing to the eye, and makes a confident, innovative fashion statement. Really, it’s a roll of the dice, and you don’t want to play it too conservatively. In fact, you may not want to wear meat at all – especially if you’re a ginger. That’s red-on-red crime. Besides, red meat is becoming increasingly passé because of PETA, mad cow disease, and those adorable Chick-fil-a billboards. Those cowz may be right. Maybe you should switch to chicken … not for the feathers … feathers are so … done, but it’s probably a safe bet that no one has ever fashioned a glamorous outfit out of gizzards – cooked or uncooked. There has to be some use for chicken skin as well … other than, of course, being the best, most flavorful part of a piece of Popeyes’ extra-crispy. Imagine a string bikini fashioned out of chicken skin and tendons … maybe with some wishbone earrings and a neck bone pendant. Breathtakingly accessorized with a chicken claw key chain and wattle coin purse. Being a flightless fowl though, chickens are pretty pedestrian. You might be one of those trendsetters who likes to test limits. If so, you may be better off abandoning the phylum Chordata altogether. If Google is to be trusted, no one to date has ever made an evening gown out of live earthworms. Maybe it’s because the demise of home economics as a high school elective course has cheated so many youngsters out of an ability to sew, or maybe it’s because an evening gown made out of earthworms would be fucking disgusting. Doesn’t matter. If you have the chutzpah to rock a revolutionary look like that, go for it. Just remember you’re going to want to carry around a spritzer bottle. Earthworms tend to dry out in the air conditioning. Sure, an earthworm evening gown would be a showstopper, but it would also be a lot of work … and much of it with a shovel. You might be the belle of the ball for a while, but the shine on your penny will quickly fade once everyone finds out you have the calloused handshake of a lumberjack. As much as the heavenly softness of chinchilla fur argues otherwise, maybe humans have reached an evolutionary stage where we don’t need to use animals for clothing. Or maybe that’s painfully obvious, and wearing animals to protest the wearing of animals is sort of like killing people to show people that killing people is wrong. Seems a little stupid, doesn’t it? Well, we wouldn’t have our pop stars any other way. We don’t ask that they be the brightest bulb on the tree – just the pretty one that flashes the most. Right Lindsay Lohan? You betcha! This Friday night at the HighBall is your chance to do some flashing of your own at Gagarazzi: A Lady Gaga Burlesque and Variety Show. Enjoy drink specials, a raffle, comedy, music, and a dance party that lasts into the wee hours. Most importantly, there will be a costume contest and paparazzi judges who will take your picture and maybe even make you a star! Proceeds benefit Equality Texas, a group that lobbies against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Queensrÿche

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 21,2011

You may be one of those whippersnappers whose image of the Eighties looks a lot like Arnold’s Drive-In: Richie, Potsie, and Ralph Malph sitting around sipping cherry cokes concocting crazy schemes on how to get to second base with girls who sadly lacked the benefit of reliable birth control. The most dangerous person they know … a diminutive “grease monkey” named Fonzie who rides a motorcycle … occasionally drops by, smiles, gives them the thumbs up and says, “Ayyyyy.” Why is he so happy? Because even though he’s a high-school dropout, he’s at least smart enough to date slutty girls who know how to French kiss. Anyway … yeah … that was the Eighties. Pretty much. There were some notable exceptions, of course. In the Eighties, the drugs were much better and more plentiful – not just the aforementioned birth control (knucks to Planned Parenthood on that deal) but even funner drugs like Ecstasy (I love you, maaannn!), expensive drugs like cocaine (I can take your fucking bullets!), dangerously addictive drugs like crack (I’ll suck your dick for a dollar!), and, of course, what may end up being Time‘s “Idiot Drug of the Century,” meth (Dude, what happened to your teeth?!). Despite the Partnership for a Drug-Free America’s inspired frying egg PSA (“This is drugs. This is your brain on drugs.”), sales were up in the Eighties. If anything the PSA should have said: “This is your egg. This is your egg on progesterone.” Yes, people were doing staggering amounts of drugs in the Eighties, but they were also getting it on like chinchillas, and the pill certainly had its part in greasing that orgy of mindless, irresponsible sex, metaphorically speaking. In the early Eighties, the worst consequence of having unprotected sex was herpes. Sure, there were other diseases that would rot your crotch with greater rapaciousness, but ultimately they were all curable … well, after you made the obligatory series of embarrassing phone calls demanded by the clinic. Herpes however, while lacking the flesh ravaging spectacle of say, syphilis, was incurable and permanent – like an obnoxious personality. Herpes was (and still is) a one-way ticket to the Island of Permanently Damaged Toys. However, most people find that once they get there, island living isn’t so bad, and given that one in six Americans has genital herpes, it’s a bumpin’ party – both figuratively and literally. However terrifying the prospect of herpes might have been, it was no deterrent whatsoever to the roiling, drug-greased clusterfuck of the early Eighties. Fortunately, there were other deterrents that had some success in that area. For instance: Preppy fashion made a valiant attempt at covering America’s Me Generation hedonism with a respectable Victorian veneer. Call it a reactionary backlash against the buckskin-halter-top, free-love hippie days of the Seventies, but Eighties preppy style drove sex off the runway and back into the bedroom where it could really get freaky. The only thing remotely sexy about walking shorts, wool sweaters, or Weejuns was how desperately you wanted to take them off. It’s understandable that preppy fashion couldn’t keep America’s libido caged for long. Soon enough America began a torrid affair with ripped clothing and spandex. The emergence of spandex as a fashion statement will very likely someday be considered a prime indicator of the decline of Western civilization. Initially a revolutionary synthetic praised for its utility and elasticity in a variety of applications, this once-worthy fabric quickly became an easy way to show off your junk without having to walk around in trench coat. Not surprisingly, this aspect of spandex was fondly embraced by rock musicians who wanted a way to showcase their biggest and perhaps only muscle. Soon enough, spandex became the go-to look for rock bands of the Eighties, some of whom, it could be argued, had little else to offer. Not so of the band Queensrÿche, who managed to fuse spandex, musicianship, and skillfully crafted heavy metal arrangements into a career that spans three decades and includes 20 million in worldwide album sales. You can’t go back and live the glory days, but fortunately Queensrÿche will bring them to you this Sunday in a fist-pumping, devil-finger-throwing rock concert at Emo’s East. Expect an arena show that’s in your face … and maybe a mooseknuckle or two.

Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta

The Luv Doc Recommends

September 14, 2011

One thing’s for certain: Dyslexia is a hibtc. Words are hard enough to understand without having to play a game of mental jumble every time you’re confronted with a line of text. Plus, it’s extra difficult getting the subtext when you’re struggling to get the text – forest for the trees and whatnot. Sometimes the subtext is the most important part … the icing on the cake or maybe the razor inside the apple. Without subtext you wouldn’t have nuance or tone. Those three preceding nouns are fairly vital components to emotional communication, and missing them is missing the full message – maybe the entire message. For instance, take the following sentence: You’re a fucking dick. Taken literally, it’s a fairly straightforward message: You are a penis engaged in the act of intercourse. Simple enough, right? But to most people outside a mental hospital, the real message of that statement is that the object thereof is an insensitive/obnoxious/aggressive person – likely a male in this case. By the way, there is a female version too, but it’s even more incendiary, and unless you’re from Ireland or doing a one-man show on the life and writings of Chaucer, you’d be better served by utilizing the Italian word contessa and simply overemphasizing the first syllable. Unfortunately, that’s one of the many advantages of oration that isn’t available in the two-dimensional worlds of ink on paper or pixels on screen. It’s been said that somewhere between 60% and 90% of communication is nonverbal. That seems accurate. When you start parsing sentences, you find that verbs are pretty rare, all in all. They’re mostly just a jumble of nouns, pronouns, adverbs, and adjectives – the starchy ingredients of a tasteless grammatical stew, so to speak. To get real communication, you have to have the emotional roux provided by subtext. Grammar is so BORing, isn’t it? GAWD. Sadly, the written word will forever be hamstrung by its inability communicate emotion nonverbally. If only there were a grammatical equivalent of John Belushi’s eyebrows, Marilyn Monroe’s upthrust cleavage, or Martin Luther King’s oratory quaver. Yes, you can add an emoticon, but for most people, tacking on an emoticon is like sending a cute kitten picture: It either makes you so weak-kneed with fawning adoration that you forget all communication that preceded it, or it makes you want to choke the living shit out of the sender for mucking up the message with extraneous cutesy bullshit. No. There is no middle ground. Emoticons are best suited for fleeing from ghosts in Pac-Man mazes. Putting a smiley face at the end of a sentence means you haven’t done your fucking job as a writer. J. Considering all of this should at least, in some small way, give you insight into the challenges of dyslexia, even if you continue to be insensitive to its suffers. Sometimes being cute or funny with language only obscures the message and infuriates those who struggle to comprehend it. Fortunately, the guys who put together the Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta recognize this and added a clarifying “F” to the end of their acronym to avoid confusion with the other big music festival happening this weekend. ACLF: Austin Corn Lovers Fiesta. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, and it’s happening Thursday through Sunday at Lovejoys, the Hole in the Wall, Trophy’s, and the Scoot Inn. The lineup is an A-List of bands antithetical to the shoegazer set. It also leans hard toward rockabilly/country with a punk aesthetic, but if you like your music with a heavy dose of hardcore, hell-raising humor, you won’t want to miss this party. Try Friday’s show at the Hole in the Wall. Here’s who’s on the bill: Monkeyshines, Glambilly, Hickoids, Billy Joe Winghead, Poor Dumb Bastards, and the Beaumonts. Pay attention to the name: You really are going to need to love corn and love to party.

Alamo Drafhouse & Parkside Present: Rolling Roadshow – ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’

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September 7, 2011

If you saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off during its opening run, your tattoos are probably green. Wait a minute … you probably don’t have tattoos – at least not ones old enough to be green. Back in the ’80s, tattoos were mainly sported by sailors, bikers, and gangbangers … not exactly the demo John Hughes was targeting when he cast Matthew Broderick as Bueller. This is not to say gangbangers wouldn’t have enjoyed Matthew Broderick, but most likely it would have been in a prison setting rather than in a theatre. In fact, even today it’s probably a good idea for Matthew Broderick to avoid prisons altogether – unless he would like to get his own tattoo: BITCH. No dis to Matthew, but if he ever gets the slightest inkling he might get sent to the big house, he should start hitting the weights. A movie star of his caliber should easily be able to afford a top-notch personal trainer and high-quality steroids. If not, what’s it all worth, really? It’s frightening to think that the payoff for being an ’80s teen idol is a receding hairline, pasty skin, and Sarah Jessica Parker. And yet … it could be worse. He could be one of the Coreys. All in all, Broderick has done all right for an ’80s teen star. His impressive run includes hits like WarGames, Election, and Glory, and then some other movies … like Godzilla and The Road to Wellville – the kind of cinematic train wrecks that make you wonder if Broderick even bothers reading his scripts … or maybe he’s just high as a bat’s ass when he does, which is the only reasonable explanation for Inspector Gadget. Whether he read the script or just got lucky, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was a monster wave that Broderick still rides to this day. Not only did it make Broderick bulletproof, it also launched/enabled the careers of several other actors as well. For instance: Jennifer Grey. Her prize for playing Bueller’s bitter little sister was a quick snog with a pre-hookers-and-coke Charlie Sheen. She also scored a co-starring role in Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze, which apparently made her so self-conscious she went out and bought a brand-new schnoz. That youthful indiscretion and her limited acting ability eventually spelled doom for her showbiz career. Oh well, at least she got to play tonsil hockey with Charlie Sheen when he still had humility and a septum. Sheen cannonballed his cameo in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with a starring role in Platoon and a rather spectacular string of forgettable films until he found his groove playing the asshole brother of another ’80s star, Jon Cryer. Perhaps the most improbable career launch from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is that of Ben Stein, who played Bueller’s monotone, nasal-voiced economics teacher. In an odd twist of Hollywood’s star-making machinery, Ben Stein was actually a man of distinction and achievement before becoming a famous actor. A Yale Law School valedictorian, Stein was also a trial lawyer, a speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and a columnist for a variety of impressive publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and New York magazine. After Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he ruined his reputation by hosting Win Ben Stein’s Money and Turn Ben Stein On, the shameless Hollywood equivalent of humping fame’s leg like a randy Chihuahua. Regardless of the indulgences and indiscretions of its cast, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is still an entertaining critique of materialist and status-conscious ’80s culture. Sure, it’s an easy knockoff of nonconformist fictional heroes like Don Quixote, Robin Hood, and Huck Finn, but it’s still fun nonetheless. If you somehow missed it the first few thousand times it’s been shown, you should definitely head down to the 500 block of San Jacinto (between Fifth and Sixth streets) for a Rolling Roadshow presentation of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off presented by Parkside restaurant and the Alamo Drafthouse. Bring a lawn chair, buy some suds and grub at the food and beer tents, and (re)acquaint yourself with this American classic. Proceeds benefit the 6ixth Street Austin Association, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the historic Sixth Street Entertainment District.

Out of Bounds Comedy Festival

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August 31, 2011

How much comedy can anyone truly take? That’s a very serious question, isn’t it? The mere prospect of six or so hours of gut-splitting hilarity should give anyone pause – well, at least anyone not swaddled in extra-absorbent Depends and clutching an empty paper sack. Just because you’ve never laughed until you peed doesn’t necessarily mean you have exceptional bladder control. It might just mean you have no sense of humor – or at the very least that your mother/father/brother/sister/cousin/girlfriend/boyfriend/priest never successfully located and exploited your tickle gland. If so, let your incontinence be a badge of honor. Better to be scarred by the embarrassing memory of soaking your birthday dress doubled over in paroxysms of mirth while being entertained by the comedy stylings of Chuckles the Party Clown than to be a dry-pantied old sourpuss with a superiority complex. Better to lose your dignity than your sense of humor. Besides, dignity is the consolation prize you earn after years and years of maddening incredulity, humiliation, and abuse – when your ego has been polished smooth like a river stone. A sense of humor, on the other hand, is a precious gift – a survival instinct that keeps you from being crushed by the gravity, cruelty, and absurdity of life. Yes, it’s important to be able to laugh at yourself … even and especially if you’re not all that funny … but it’s also important to be able to laugh at others. Laughter is one of the most important ways we share commonality. It’s also one of the ways we enforce uniformity … generally through ridicule. Were ridicule not effective, you would probably still be wearing shirts with tattoo designs printed on them … or bright-orange Crocs … or pleated jeans … or that spectacularly luxurious Kentucky Waterfall mullet you sported back in the early Nineties (yeah, you couldn’t let go, could you?). If your friends had been blessed with the miracle of Facebook back in those days, they would have just posted a few pages of witheringly mean comments under your profile photo instead of mercilessly teasing you to your face until you finally shaved your head smooth like Chad Taylor from Live … or Telly Savalas … or Howie Mandel … or Michael Chiklis. Whatever, the important thing is that their merciless ridicule and laughter motivated you to switch from a silly, white-trash hairstyle to no hairstyle at all. Put that one in the win column for the hyenas. Hilarity, like misery, loves company. Humor not only motivates personal change, it can effect societal change as well. Who can forget the wicked satire of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” or George Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003? There probably wasn’t a dry pant leg on that entire flight deck. Of course, let’s not be too generous in extolling the virtues of humor. Laughter may sometimes be the best medicine, but sometimes it can make you sick (Carrot Top), crazy (Gallagher), or give you a headache (Roseanne Barr). The sad truth is that not all comedy is gold. If you sit through enough of it, you’ll find more slag than precious metal, but sometimes the treasure is worth the effort. This weekend the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival (or OOB … rhymes with “boob” … what are the chances?) is celebrating its 10th year of bringing sketch, improv, and stand-up comedy from across America to the “live music capital of the world.” Great idea! Austin could stand a different kind of wanking – at least for a weekend, right? Through Monday you can check out some of the best up-and-coming comics in America at the Hideout Theatre, the State Theatre, ColdTowne Theater, and the Velveeta Room. If you’re not terribly adventurous, Labor Day night at the State you can catch Saturday Night Live star Tim Meadows’ comedy trio Uncle’s Brother. That should be worth a pair of Depends at least.

2011 ‘Austin Chronicle’ Hot Sauce Festival

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Augusat 24, 2011

The 2011 Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival is this Sunday at Waterloo Park. That’s all you really need to know. Even still, you might have some questions. You might, for instance, wonder why the Hot Sauce Festival logo features a dude on a dirt bike. Touché. Nailed us on that one. Dirt bikes are wicked cool and whatnot, but they don’t really have much to do with hot sauce. Correct. So, why is there a dirt bike in the logo? Here’s why: Because it isn’t a Doberman in a Quaker bonnet or a clown with a vacuum cleaner. It’s not difficult to imagine that after 21 years of Hot Sauce Festival logos, we’ve completely exhausted meaningful hot sauce iconography. We’ve had the chips and hot sauce bowls; the cowboy/-girl riding the jalapeño; the hot-sauce-eating bat/armadillo; the sweating, hot-sauce-eating Satan; the happy tomato; and even a logo that included a cherub with flames shooting out of its mouth and ass. Like Keith Richards, we’ve pretty much done it all. Next year expect a logo that features Slim Pickens riding a jalapeño into an apocalyptic bowl of hot sauce. Just sayin’. Nonetheless, if you’re counting on this year’s logo for information about what to expect at the festival, that’s probably a mistake. Yes there will be flames and peppers, but dirt bikes are strictly verboten on festival grounds, even if they are wicked cool. There are, however, some things you can expect, so you should be prepared. Expect it to be hot. Not only will the temperature be in the 100-plus range, there be will thousands of hot, sweaty people who will be radiating a considerable amount of heat themselves – an amazing amount of biomass considering the temperature. Plus, they will all be eating hot sauce and swearing – with watery eyes and flushed faces – that they love it. They really do too … so much that they bring along their children, even babies in strollers (who truly wouldn’t want to miss it), as well as dogs (ideally festooned with a jaunty bandana fastened about the neck to ward off the chill) and all manner of other attention-grabbing fauna: sugar gliders, hamsters, snakes, parrots, falcons, really anything that might entice a curious member of the opposite sex to strike up a conversation. Really, if you haven’t bought a spider monkey in an attempt to reel in some strange at an outdoor festival, you probably don’t even care about getting laid at all. Something else you should expect at the Hot Sauce Festival: dirty feet. If that’s something that bothers you, keep your chin up. Shoes are hot. Dirty feet in flip-flops are not. It’s that simple. You may have the priciest pedicure in town, but after you’ve shuffled around Waterloo Park in late August for a few hours, your feet are going to look like you spent the day hippie-spin-dancing at a Leftover Salmon concert. That’s bad, yes, but it could be worse: You could be wearing Vibram FiveFingers. That kind of ugly you can’t wash off. There’s plenty of pretty stuff, too. Some people actually look better when they’re hot and sweaty. Just think of the Hot Sauce Festival as one big, hot oil-wrestling match with snacks included – only the hot oil is perspiration. Well, either it’s that or the tiny sample drop of habanero oil on the end of a toothpick that ruins your taste buds for the rest of the day. Really, the only way to fight the heat is with ass-coal bear. No, that’s not a typo. It’s a phonetic representation of the way Texans pronounce the phrase “ice-cold beer.” You could also drink ass-coal warter, but that wouldn’t make it a festival, would it? Water isn’t very festive, but bands are, and the Hot Sauce Festival has a lineup that will surely dirty up your dancing feet: Schmillion, Moonlight Social, Foot Patrol, La Guerrilla, and the Bright Light Social Hour. Best of all, the Hot Sauce Festival doesn’t put a dent in your wallet; it frees up space in your pantry. All it takes to get in is a donation of three nonperishable food items to the Capital Area Food Bank. That’s all you really need to know.

Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins

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August 17. 2011

Yes, it was Molly Ivins who invented the nickname “Gov. Goodhair” for Rick Perry. That single instance of wickedly brilliant wordplay is much more of a literary legacy than most political commentators can claim in a lifetime. In fact, it could be argued that the nickname alone is enough to warrant a one-woman theatrical homage, but Ivins’ trove of bons mots and “isms” is exceedingly full. It’s true Ivins possessed a rapier wit, but it also has to be acknowledged that Texas and Texas politicians never failed to provide bushel after bushel of low-hanging fruit: Dolph “Bread Puddin'” Briscoe, Bill “Burr Butt” Clements, Clayton “Dick Stompin'” Williams, George W. “Shrub” Bush, and of course Gov. Goodhair himself – not to mention the constantly changing clown car of the Texas Legislature, whose madcap hijinks kept Ivins’ typewriter humming. National politics weren’t off her radar either. Ronald Reagan was described as, “so dumb that if you put his brains in a bee, it would fly backwards.” She once said that “calling George Bush [Sr.] shallow is like calling a dwarf short.” Oh, snap! Then there was Shrub, the infamous post turtle (Google it) who arguably cemented Ivins’ status as a sound bite pundit. Why not? Ivins had a knack for summing up politicians and policy with incisive, accessible, humorous one-liners. On gun control: “I’m not anti-gun. I’m pro-knife.” On Texas: “It’s a low-tax, low-service state – so shoot us.” On moral leadership: “You want moral leadership? Try the clergy. It’s their job.” On Bill Clinton: “I still believe in hope – mostly because there’s no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas.” Even though she took plenty of shots at her own party, Ivins was universally adored by liberals and had the grudging respect of many conservatives. Regardless of party affiliation, it’s hard not to appreciate someone who calls ’em like she sees ’em. Unless, of course, you’re Michael Dukakis, of whom Ivins once said: “This man has got no Elvis. He needs a charisma transplant.” Whether you were down with the Duk or not, it’s hard to argue with that assessment. Say what you will about George Senior, at least he had the wisdom to not let himself be filmed while power-walking with a pair of Heavyhands aerobic weights. What were you thinking, Duk? Not even a spin around the General Dynamics parking lot in an M1 tank could butch up that image. Imagine if President Obama was filmed during his presidential campaign doing his morning workout with a Shake Weights? Perhaps the most important thing to remember about Ivins is that she was a liberal progressive with balls – metaphorically, at least – though it could be argued that she had enough swagger and chutzpah to warrant an actual package check. It’s too bad Ivins is no longer with us. Her antagonistic defense of progressive, populist politics is sorely missed these days, and it’s a good bet she would have secretly relished the thought of skewering “The Coiffure,” aka “The Ken Doll,” all the way to Election Day. Don’t let the gloom overtake you. If you find yourself missing Molly Ivins more and more these days, the best thing to do is to head down to Zach Theatre for Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins, a one-woman show starring Barbara Chisholm, a local fixture of stages and screens who has been voted Austin’s favorite actress in The Austin Chronicle‘s “Best of Austin” Readers Poll. If you don’t see this show … Gov. Goodhair wins. Then again, he probably will even if you don’t.

20th Annual Buck Owens Birthday Bash

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August 10, 2011

Why Buck Owens? Why the fuck not, motherfucker? First of all, his name is Buck. That name is badass molasses on a stick. You can’t shake it off. No, it wasn’t his given name. That was Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. – the sort of name that inspires in most people a primal urge to hand out a vicious noogie. Not even Mike Tyson could have survived a name like that. Fortunately, at the age of 3, little Alvis Edgar saw the writing on the wall and adopted the name of his family’s favorite mule, “Buck.” It’s possible that at that young age, Alvis Edgar had no idea that he would be endowed like a mule – not just with a spectacular overbite that rivaled Mr. Ed’s but also, rumor has it, with an equestrian-sized beef whistle. It’s probably just as well. Irony, like wealth, beauty, and good liquor, is wasted on children. Suffice it to say that later in life, Owens could both eat corn on the cob through a picket fence and party like a porn star. Being a bona fide country star meant that Owens was able to exercise the latter talent more than most, but his true gift was of a more aural nature. As much as anyone else, Owens helped define the Bakersfield sound, a genre of country music defined by twangy Telecaster guitars, honky-tonk drum beats, fiddles, and steel guitars. Originally, the Bakersfield sound had its beginnings in the music favored by dust bowl Okies, Arkies, and Texans who moved to the San Joaquin valley in search of jobs in oil and agriculture. Owens’ family was among those fleeing the dust bowl. However, they never made it as far as California. Their car broke down in Mesa, Ariz., and that’s where they stayed. In his early years, Owens picked cotton and potatoes in the fields until he figured out that playing music was a much easier way to make a living. At age 13, he dropped out of high school and started working as a Western Union messenger, a truck driver, and a car washer until he teamed up with guitar player Ray Britten and began doing radio shows – first in Mesa, then in Phoenix, where he met his first wife, Bonnie, who would later divorce Owens and marry Merle Haggard (imagine how big the Hag’s hardware must be …). A few years later, Buck and Bonnie moved to Bakersfield, Calif., and the rest, as they say, is history … or at least a really salacious biography. Sure, his personal life was a bit of a train wreck. He married and divorced four times, sired four sons, and through it all still managed to amass a healthy fortune. With it he bought radio stations, houses, a bunch of really outlandish stage costumes, and, perhaps most famously, a Nudie Cohn-custom-decorated Pontiac Grand Ville, tricked out with pistol door handles and a huge “longhorn” hood ornament – actually, Owens didn’t buy the car, he won it from Nudie in a poker game. It now sits behind the bar at Owens’ Crystal Palace nightclub in Bakersfield. Much of Owens’ wealth was due to his 17-year run on Hee Haw, the corn-pone comedy show that pretty much defines homespun hillbilly humor – even though it was mostly written by Canadians. Owens’ true legacy, however, will be his contribution to defining a unique version of the country sound. It’s mostly that the folks down at the Continental Club will be celebrating at the 20th annual Buck Owens Birthday Bash this Friday. Expect great performances from a huge list of Austin musicians including Libbi Bosworth, Ricky Broussard, The Texas Sapphires, Ted Roddy, the Wagoneers, Lucas Hudgins, Roy Heinrich and many others. Proceeds benefit the Center for Child Protection – which may not be as fun as a tricked out Grand Ville, but it’s still money well-spent.

‘Texas High School Football: More Than the Game’

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August 3, 2011

If you’re reading the Chronicle, there’s a pretty good chance that you were never too big on football – at least not the American kind. Let’s just be honest with ourselves, shall we? Yes, you might enjoy football for its camp and spectacle. You might even own a slightly stained, vintage, 1970s-era Dallas Cowboys cheerleader poster or perhaps an autographed photo of Walt Garrison (who was both a Cowboy and a cowboy, and America’s number one spokesperson for Skoal smokeless tobacco), but you probably didn’t actually play football – at least not much past Pop Warner. That’s understandable. After all, American football is a violent, brutal sport where size, strength, and aggression dominate. Walt Garrison himself sustained five concussions over the course of his football career before he was finally forced into retirement – not because of a nasty case of mouth cancer, but because of a knee injury sustained while pursuing his favorite leisure activity: steer wrestling. Yes, Walt was a bit of a badass, which is something that could be said of just about anyone who makes it to the NFL … with the exception of maybe the place kicker and the equipment manager, and even they are fairly butch in relation to the average male. Troy Aikman would certainly vouch for that. He had 10 concussions during his career. In fact, he claims he doesn’t remember anything about Super Bowl XXVIII … not even playing in the game … because of a concussion suffered in the NFC playoffs two weeks before. Now that is getting knocked the fuck out. The crazy thing is that Troy Aikman is a big, strong dude by just about anyone’s standards. He was certainly the big man on campus at Henryetta High School, where he was a center on the basketball team (that’s the tall guy in the middle). High school football is a bit more accessible to the average male (and in rare cases, female), but its players are still a relatively small percentage of the overall population – some would say a dumber, brutish, and belligerent percentage. Again, let’s be honest here … they’re mostly right. Nonetheless, we live in a state and a nation that either cherishes these traits or at least finds it enormously entertaining watching them play out. Perhaps it’s a little bit of both. Football is about the closest you can get to human demolition derby, and really, nothing is more satisfying than watching the asshole alpha male who gave you a swirly in the restroom during lunch break get the snot knocked out of him by someone even bigger and meaner than he is. Whatever the reason, in Texas, football is an unrivaled Friday night ritual. Yes, we could have chosen karaoke … or cock fighting … or naked baby-oil twister … but we chose instead to watch the tough guys beat up on themselves for a couple of hours … right after we spend a few hours in the parking lot getting our swerve on. Just about everyone who grows up in Texas has memories of Friday night lights, for better or worse. You might have been in the marching band, the drill team, the cheerleading squad, the pep club, a mascot uniform, or underneath the bleachers getting stoned, but football will most likely always be at least a small part of your identity as a Texan. This Saturday the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum is hosting a free opening day pep rally for “Texas High School Football: More Than the Game,” a special exhibit that examines high school football’s cultural influence in the state of Texas, curated by writer Joe Nick Patoski. The pep rally will feature marching bands, dancers, and a crash course in football rules. You might not be big on football, but you might be surprised to find you know more about it than you thought.

Lights. Camera. Help. Film Festival

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July 27. 2011

Do-gooders are an especially irritating lot, if only for the fact that their actions are a humiliating indictment of the self-absorbed, hedonistic, slothful, and apathetic majority of humanity – those of us happily occupying the meat of the bell curve, so to speak. While it seems only natural that folks who enjoy a happy, healthy, prosperous existence ought to feel at least the tiniest tinge of moral conscience – some sort of faint desire to give back to a world that has given them so much – it’s not always the case. Doing good … really doing good … takes a lot of time, energy, resources, and creativity – things that are often collectively referred to as a big pain in the ass. Just the overwhelming prospect of really doing good tends to completely bury that tiny voice of conscience, and if you arrange your life just so, you can pretty much ensure that voice never gets through at all. There’s a reason people move to the suburbs. A venti latte from Starbucks is so much more enjoyable when you don’t have a scrofulous homeless dude leaning across your windshield with a dirty squeegee and a wad of newspaper. There’s no shame in avoiding such ugliness, only honesty. People don’t acquire wealth so they can continue to wallow in poverty and squalor. In fact, the mere idea that people have the chance to improve their conditions is what powers the American way of life. Regardless of the relative success of our collective endeavors (the Panama Canal, the Hoover Dam, World War II, Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk … as opposed to Michael Jackson’s), Americans still hold firmly to the ideal of rugged individualism, and it is exactly this contradiction that is proving to be a sticky wicket in current political discourse. Can we rely on self-interest and the profit motive to do what’s best for the public good, or as individuals are we better served by a sense of altruism and the notion that by improving the lives of everyone, we also help ourselves? The former seems to be holding sway in most of America these days. The puzzlingly (or, given the very powerful insurance lobby, maybe not so puzzlingly) vitriolic assault on “ObamaCare,” the president’s highly watered-down attempt at bringing down crippling (poor choice of metaphor?) health care costs, leads the charge, followed by a nearly unilateral assault on “entitlement” programs, otherwise known as social welfare. Sadly it seems, the issue of the efficiency and efficacy of social welfare programs has become secondary, tangential even, to the issue of their actual necessity. The question that is not being asked stridently enough is: What is the cost of their absence? Will weaning people off the government tit prove adequate incentive to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? What if poor people get so poor they can’t even afford boots? Tough questions like the preceding are pondered most safely and comfortably in gated suburban communities – or rather, mostly not at all. However, if you’re the type of masochist who would like to expose yourself to the pressing social issues of our times, but would maybe like to do so without smelling vomit and dried urine, this Friday you should head down to the Spirit of Texas Theater at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum for the 2011 Lights. Camera. Help. film festival, which celebrates nonprofit and cause-driven films. Friday features eight screenings covering topics such as homelessness, urban farming, and sexual violence against Native American women, among others. Who knows? These films might eat at your conscience, but they might also change your life. Oh yeah, one more thing: All proceeds go to the nonprofits associated with the films.

‘Never Heard of ‘Em’ Book Release Concert

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July 20, 2011

If you think it’s tough being a has-been, try being a never-was. The sad byproducts of Austin’s status as a live music mecca are the legions of musicians who endure in spite of heartbreaking obscurity, who never seem to be able to score anything better than a midnight Tuesday slot batting cleanup on a five-band bill at Headhunters. (Note: If you actually happen to be a member of Half Baked 69, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re condemned to obscurity, but it’s a pretty good hint that some introspection is in order regarding your music career.) Sounds a bit cruel, yes, but the ugly truth is that not everyone can be a winner. The music business in Austin is a heartless bitch – not necessarily because of the people who run the show, but because of the people who don’t. There are literally thousands of them, and none of them moved here because they thought they were shitty musicians. In fact, quite the contrary. It takes a certain amount of hubris to think you can waltz into Austin (or two-step or polka or watusi) and experience the same heady success and adoration you enjoyed back in Possum Snatch, Ark., or Bug Tussle, Ala. In fact, just scoring a free happy hour gig in Austin often involves disturbing amounts of fellatio – mostly metaphorical, yes, but that can sometimes be even more humiliating and nauseating than the actual physical act, especially if the booker or club owner has a huge metaphorical cock … and they usually do. Most don’t admit it, but it takes a staggering amount of time, energy, and enthusiasm just to be a working musician in Austin. It also takes at least a modicum of talent (which is what nonmusicians call skill) to even get your foot in the door – where it will get slammed many times before you actually gain entry. In Austin, it is obnoxious to assume that a musician you’ve never heard of lacks talent. It’s quite the contrary, in fact. One of the basic rites of passage in Austin is seeing a musician who literally knocks your socks off – someone who impresses you so much that you are actually incredulous that person isn’t touring with Springsteen or at the very least headlining the Austin City Limits Music Fest. After it happens five or six times, your incredulity will inevitably start to wane. After a few years of having it happen again and again, you begin to question whether or not the music business is even remotely merit-based at all. Well, it is and it isn’t. Music fans are a fickle lot, prone to fads, fashion, and spectacle. If it were all about “talent,” Lady Gaga wouldn’t have to wear a dress made out of meat. As it turns out, she’s not only in the music business, she’s in the entertainment business, so it’s kind of her JOB. If she thought she could wear a dress made out of baby seals, dalmatian puppies, or the foreskins of little Jewish boys, rest assured she would … just as soon as she could find some Chinese orphan toddlers to sew it. The point is, the music business is a complicated concoction of a lot of repulsive shit that doesn’t have a lot to do with music. Is it any wonder that musicians loathe doing the business part of the music business nearly as much as they do holding down a day job? Not at all. Really about the only thing you can assume about musicians in Austin is that they really enjoy playing music … and that’s a good thing, because for a majority of them, that’s the only reward they’re going to get out of it. This Sunday at Threadgill’s World Headquarters, a great lineup of musicians – some more anonymous than others – will be playing a show celebrating the release of Never Heard of ‘Em, a book written by Sue Donahue, former owner (along with her husband Mike) of the now defunct Local Flavor record shop. Given the relative obscurity of its intended subjects, it’s hard to say that the book will be especially profitable or highly publicized. You should not, however, assume it isn’t good.

Wammo vs. Forsyth

The Luv Doc Recommends

July 13, 2011

Yes, but at least it’s a dry heat …. Welcome to Austin! Don’t go thinking the weather is going to be this pleasant for the rest of the summer. This mercifully low humidity can’t last forever. Normally in July the humidity in your car is enough to make you look like Alice Cooper applied your mascara while tripping on peyote buttons. Ever get in your car, close the door, and have the rearview mirror fall off because the glue on the stem melted? Get ready. If you’re not an epileptic or prone to bouts of vertigo, you can have a friend try and hold it in place as you drive, but in terms of driver safety, you might as well just have someone attempt to burn a hole in your retina with a laser pointer. Your best bet is to just not worry about what’s happening behind you and focus on the road ahead – which will probably resemble a Salvador Dalí painting because of the heat waves coming off the asphalt. Don’t trip; that’s the way Texas looks in the summer. If you’re a big pot smoker, you may want to rein in your usage for the next three months. Heat is its own hallucinogenic. Plus, the only thing more disturbing than seeing the highway melting in front of you is getting a wicked case of cotton mouth in mid-July. Hint: If flies land on your tongue and get stuck there, you’re either: A) completely baked, B) in the death throes of dehydration, or C) you’ve actually turned into a frog. If you’re either A or C, you should write your dope dealer a nice thank you note. If, however, you look out your windshield and see Satan himself doing a reverse cowgirl on your hood ornament, you’re not hallucinating. He’s just here enjoying the weather. Think about it: If you had to spend eternity swimming in a lake of fire, you’d probably want to pop out and dry off occasionally yourself. What better place to do that than right here in River City? After all, we have plenty of sunshine and warm breezes and, barring some act of God … like a hurricane, for instance … the forecast isn’t going to change until late September at the earliest. Don’t let your hopes get crushed, but it is unlikely that God is going to get involved even if Satan is riding around sodomizing himself on your hood ornament. God doesn’t get into dick-swinging matches with the devil. Besides, how big of a beaker would you need to do a reliable water displacement test on God’s cock? Is the scientific method even a valid way to quantify the divine? While most Austin musicians lack the confidence to tackle big, tough questions like the preceding ones, former Asylum Street Spankers Wammo and Guy Forsyth are certainly brave enough to try. Both are mightily prolific, talented, and worldly emissaries of the Keep-Austin-Weird aesthetic. If you haven’t seen them perform together, this Friday at the Continental Club may be your last, best chance for a while. Wammo is headed off to Philadelphia, and though he will surely be back to visit, it probably won’t be for a while. The show is titled “Wammo vs. Forsyth” and features songs the two have written together as well as favorites from when they were in the Spankers. There probably won’t be a winner declared, unless maybe it’s the audience. You should make plans to be a part of it.

Artly Fest

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July 1, 2011

Here’s something the Austin Chamber of Commerce fliers fail to mention: Usually when some hoary old beer-bellied coot starts blathering on about the good old days when Austin was cheaper, cooler, friendlier, more relaxed, and less pretentious, he’s not fucking around. It’s true. Back in the days of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Lone Star was a nickel a pitcher, pot was a dollar an ounce, and condoms were as rare as the Hope Diamond. In fact, you needed to be at least that hard to put one on. No one ever wore them mind you, because the CIA hadn’t even invented AIDS yet. That’s why pretty much every house party or beer bust devolved into a roiling clusterfuck reminiscent of the tangle of earthworms at the bottom of a bait can. When people weren’t sunbathing nude down at Barton Springs, they walked around shoeless and commando. The only fashion (other than freeballing) was daisy duke cutoffs and worn out “Keep on Truckin'” tank tops, and you really only needed a car if you had to drive some place way out on the edge of town like Oltorf or North Loop. Sadly, there weren’t any smart cars back then … only art cars. There was nothing smart about art cars, but they were wicked clever. For instance, art cars didn’t come with amenities like windshield wipers, door handles, or brake lights, but then again Detroit never offered a car that was completely covered in plastic army men, Lone Star bottle caps, or snow globes. In Austin, art was a pretty big deal back in the day. Everybody did art all the time, even if they were smoking pot, dropping acid, or making huge submarine sandwiches. The best way to make really good art is to not have a job, and back then you didn’t need one. Everybody shared everything: clothes, food, transportation, housing …. Instead of dropping major coin on an expensive Downtown condo, you could just crash on the sofa of Willie’s tour bus, park your Good Times van down by the river, or pass out in a bathroom stall at some dive bar down on Sixth Street. Yes, dive bar. It’s nearly impossible to imagine now, but Sixth Street used to be skeevy for very different reasons than it is now. Instead of teeming with crowds of binge-drinking tourists and douche bags with gelled hair and Ed Hardy shirts, Sixth Street used to be a dark, lonely place with just a smattering of bars, restaurants, and porno joints. In 1974, local artist Jim Franklin and his friend Bill Livingood got the Sixth Street ball rolling when they opened up the Ritz Theatre as a live music venue. Two months later, the Uranium Savages played their first show there. Thus began a colorful 36-year-and-counting career. Yes, these days the Savages all qualify for AARP discounts and abdominal trusses, but they’re still cranking out music that defines the Austin aesthetic: daring, derivative, irreverent, sloppy, fun, funny, and thought-provoking. Plus, they do it in freaky costumes with zany props. Artistically and stylistically the Uranium Savages are all over the map, which is just the way Austin likes it. This Saturday, they will be at the corner of Barton Springs Road and Riverside Drive at Threadgill’s World Headquarters (owned by a beer-bellied old coot from the Armadillo days named Eddie Wilson) for Artly Fest, a benefit for one of the Savages’ own, Artly Snuff, who was injured in a car accident back in December 2010. Bands on the bill include Extreme Heat, Cornell Hurd, Rick Broussard, Larry Lange & His Lonely Knights, and of course, the Uranium Savages themselves. Not surprisingly, Artly Fest also coincides with International Eddy Day, the Savages’ annual celebration of the Patron Saint of 709. If all this sounds strange and confusing, welcome to Austin. Just remember, it’s not as fun as it used to be.

Red, White ‘n Buda

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June 28, 2011

Fourth of July without fireworks? What kind of America is it when people can’t blow shit up and recklessly endanger themselves and their neighbors? How can we have special memories of the birth of our nation if we can’t marry them with the memory of a cousin running into the house with a charred eyeball hanging out of its socket? Such graphic and disturbing mental images remind us of the sacrifices Americans made in the defense of freedom. Freedom always comes at a cost, so it only makes sense that celebrating freedom would involve some collateral damage as well. Remember how old Uncle Jumpy used to freak out and duck for cover whenever you lit a string of Black Cats at a family Fourth of July celebration? Hilarious! Well, at least until you got older and found out he spent most of the spring of ’68 at Khe Sanh dodging mortar rounds. Until then you just thought he was a crazy, pissed-off old alcoholic who chain-smoked Marlboros and wore a huge folding knife in a camo pouch on his belt. To him, the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air were more than just pretty poetic imagery in the National Anthem. Of course, that still didn’t keep you from having bottle-rocket fights with the neighbors across the street or Roman candle duels with your cousins in the backyard. In retrospect, that shit seems pretty stupid, but maybe on a larger scale stupidity is every bit as important as intelligence. Any dinosaur could tell you (were its brain not the size of a walnut) that Darwinism is a painfully slow process. Design changes take millions of years. Things that seem brutish and imbecilic in their current context (like bottle-rocket fights) may be essential to the evolution of mankind. Sure, you would have to be one dumbass giant ground sloth to just wade into the La Brea Tar Pits, but at least if you did you could be comforted by the thought that thousands of other dumbasses got mired in the same muck. In fact, you can safely bet that if the tar pits weren’t fenced off, the city of Los Angeles would still be fishing tarred (‘tarded?) dumbasses out of them every day. No doubt the fencing is good for public safety, but it’s also undermining the process of natural selection and putting a serious gap in the fossil record of dumbasses. Perhaps the irony of L.A. being home to one of the largest, smelliest, oozing monuments to stupidity in the world was not lost on city leaders. Fencing it off might have seemed like the smartest thing to do, but in the end, they’re only further slowing the glacial progress of evolution. Fireworks bans work much the same way, but don’t get impatient. Wars have been going on for thousands of years, and humans haven’t evolved much toward peace. Rather, we’ve evolved toward more efficient ways to kill one another. Case in point: gunpowder. You won’t smell much of it on Monday – at least in Austin – but you’ll be safer for it. Sadly, not only is the fireworks display canceled; you won’t even get a chance to heckle the Austin Symphony. Apparently the 1812 Overture just doesn’t work without live ordnance. So, it seems we won’t be celebrating freedom at all here in Austin. Thank God then for Red, White ‘n Buda, which takes place July 4 in the “Outdoor Capital of Texas,” just a few minutes down the interstate. All day at Buda City Park, they’re soldiering on with festivities that don’t involve incendiaries. Drive down early for the children’s parade at 10am, or wait until it cools off at 6pm and enjoy a musical lineup that includes Keith Kelso, Kevin Smith, and the Trishas. Is this as good as it gets? Don’t be stupid. It is, however, as good as we’ve got.

Shipe Pool Opening Party and Rally

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 22, 2011

Shipe Park isn’t Austin’s nicest use of green space – nor is it particularly spacious, well-designed, or attractively landscaped. It is, however, regularly used – not just by homeless people, dirty-faced toddlers, and anxious dogs looking to make a deposit, but by the sick freaks who insist on undermining evolution by experiencing life through something other than an LCD display. Weird, right? Instead of letting themselves mutate into wholly inert, amorphous blobs of gelatin like God clearly intended, some people choose to engage in subversive, antiquated activities like walking, running, playing sports, swimming, and other useless kinetic endeavors. While Shipe Park isn’t particularly ideal for these sorts of activities, it is convenient and serviceable. It has a small playscape, some swing sets, a tiny basketball court, tennis courts, and a small pool. All of these amenities make Shipe Park a literal playground for these pig-headed subversives. Who pays for this nonsense? You do! That’s right – your hard-earned tax dollars are being wasted on people who refuse to spend money on PlayStations Xboxes, or even Wiis. It’s a travesty, no doubt, but one that’s soon to be corrected. The city of Austin, long a shrewd custodian of municipal funds, has proposed closing the Shipe Park pool in order to save money – presumably money that can be used to fund vital shit like unnecessary traffic lights. Duval Street and 51st? Really? Perhaps there is a secret Office of Public Irony at City Hall that handles such things. If so, it is operating at peak efficiency. How about that? Government that works! Don’t go getting your Glenn Beck panties is a wad. Government, like any large organization, has its share of fuckups, but that doesn’t mean we should ditch it entirely. Big government like big business needs vigilant oversight, and vigilant oversight costs money. These days it seems, especially in conservative camps, spending money on social services and infrastructure (some call it government) is the equivalent of throwing it down a hole. The reigning wisdom these days, it seems, is to starve government of the money it needs to actually do its job. This perpetuates the image of government as being ineffectual, which acts as a disincentive to give government the money it needs. Genius. This way the working man can spend that extra 40% (that being the average amount an American citizen pays for income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, Social Security, and Medicare) of his income making his own smart choices about accessing quality health care, educating his children, saving for retirement, defending his country, policing his community, and building roads, reservoirs, public utilities, and other useless shit like playgrounds, parks, and … yes … even pools. Pools? Really? Why doesn’t the government just buy everybody a pony too? The crazy idea that Americans should elect people smarter than themselves to make wise decisions about improving society for everyone is a ridiculously outdated notion. We’re much better off letting Joe the Plumber figure that shit out on his own. Who knows? We might be amazed by what someone with a GED and a cosmetology license can do on her own with space exploration, brain surgery, or electrical engineering. Regardless of how helplessly the American people spiral into poverty and stupidity, the answer will never be more government. We tried that, and it didn’t work. We now know that private corporations can run things like prisons, tolls roads, and schools, and we all know that private corporations have our backs, 100%. So, will closing down Shipe Park’s swimming pool save us money? Hell yes it will! And if those subversives in Hyde Park still want a pool, surely the city can find some private pool-maintenance company willing to step in and keep it open – for a price. If you’re one of those subversives and want to have a say in the future of Shipe Park’s pool, show up at the park this Saturday at 4pm for the Shipe Pool Opening Party and Rally. Not only can you rally and voice your concerns about the pool’s future; you can also join the potluck party afterward for live music, burgers, and swimming! That’s a lot of activity, but that’s what parks are all about, right?

A Gil Scott-Heron Tribute & Juneteenth Celebration!

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 15, 2011

Gil Scott-Heron, the self-titled “bluesologist” who is considered by many to be the progenitor of rap, was most famous for his spoken word poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a blistering diatribe about war, racism, commercialism, and the media backed up by a conga percussion section. Most of the references in the poem are somewhat dated now, but the sentiments are no less true. The title itself seems a bit ironic, especially in these days when the ubiquity of digital video recording devices and the convenience of YouTube ensure than damn near everything is televised. The interwebs offer everything from sick, revolting snuff videos like “3 Guys 1 Hammer” to disturbing videos of U.S. soldiers killing Iraqi journalists to nasty, nauseating videos like “2 Girls 1 Cup,” or that fascinating night-vision video of a hyena eating an elephant’s ass. Some things are best done in the dark, right? There is also a mind-numbing array of highly popular, horribly insipid home videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger” (Really world? 330 million views? Really?), “Sittin on tha Toilet” (25 million), and “Leave Britney Alone!” (39 Million) – real cerebral shit that you would never get to see in real life unless maybe you work at a day care, clean restrooms at a bus station, or chaperone a drama club field trip. There are also plenty of big budget videos that get a lot of attention. For instance, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” video featuring Ludacris to date has raked in more than half a billion views. Yes … that was half a billion. Are there even that many preteen girls and pedophiles in the English-speaking world? If you’re tired of your obnoxious co-worker/friend tagging you in embarrassing, inebriated videos on Facebook, imagine how Justin (Justine?) feels about the paparazzi? Imagine not even being able to cop a roadside squat without hearing the whir of a few dozen autofocus telephoto lenses. Still, despite the exhaustive supply of useless dreck, there is plenty of intriguing, inspiring, and informative video being shown on the Internet – and not just on Infowars.com. Real, actual revolutions are being televised. The uprisings of the Arab Spring have been documented exhaustively – live-streamed in many cases – and to dramatic effect. Nothing like a heart-wrenching video of schoolkids with shrapnel wounds or protesters being massacred to drum up sympathy and support from the Western world. Given the events of the last few months, it could be argued that not only is the revolution televised, television is the revolution itself, but that erroneous title wasn’t really the gist of Gil Scott-Heron’s message. His assertion was that real revolutions aren’t something that can be filmed because real revolutions are revolutions of thought … in how we perceive the world. When Gen. Gordon Granger read the contents of the Emancipation Proclamation from the balcony of the Ashton Villa in Galveston on June 19, 1865 – more than a month after the end of the Civil War and more than two years after the proclamation was to have gone into effect – many slaves in Texas still considered themselves just that: slaves. That revolution of thought was the impetus for Juneteenth celebrations in Texas and around the nation – one of which is happening this Saturday at the Gypsy Lounge when StrangeTribe Productions and Soul of the Boot Entertainment present A Gil Scott-Heron Tribute & Juneteenth Celebration, featuring DJ sets by DJ Sun, el John Selector (Thievery Corporation), and Felix Pacheco. Gil Scott-Heron (who died on May 27 of this year) deserves a tribute, and this certainly won’t be the first or last, but it might be worth checking out. Bring your camera. You never know when the revolution is going to happen.

ROT Rally Parade

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 8 2011

Time to break out the halter top. By Thursday there should be 40,000-plus motorcycle enthusiasts rumbling into Austin. If you go a little extra slutty, maybe you can unseat one of their bitches. Kat Von D bounced sweet Sandy Bullock out of the saddle with some low-cut leather, cleavage, and roughly 14 square feet of body art. Her epidermal illustrations might be breathtaking, but don’t discount the possibility that Jesse James is turned on by a girl who is into pain – if for no other reason than that she has to share nightly dinner conversations with him. Kat’s prize for enduring that agony is that she gets to regularly press her taint against some of the biggest, loudest, gas-powered vibrators in the world. Sounds like a rollicking good time, but is the juice really worth the squeeze? Only Sandy Bullock knows for sure, and if we can trust TMZ‘s vigilance, she’s not out cruising biker bars. Besides, there aren’t really any biker bars in Austin. Pretty much any place divey enough to serve as a biker bar in Austin is overrun with hipsters. Sure, there may be a few Vespas parked out front. You might even see some ironic “Mustache Rides” T-shirts, shitty tattoos, and a chinchilla farm of facial hair, but everyone will be under the age of 35 and surprisingly well-versed in post-feminist thought. Real biker bars have actual bikers … old, sweaty, hairy dudes with huge distended beer guts, plumbers cracks, and moobs … which may explain bikers’ adolescent obsession with female breasts. Rest assured that by high noon this Thursday, all the choice stage side seats at Sugar’s will be commandeered by retired accountants from Fort Worth dressed in leather fetish wear that would embarrass the biker from the Village People. The same scene will be repeated in similar establishments all over town: Exposé, the Pink Monkey, the Landing Strip, the Roses (both Yellow and Red), Twin Peaks, Bikinis and, of course, Hooters. These will be the de facto biker bars in Austin this weekend – along with the roiling trailer trash clusterfuck out at the Travis County Expo Center. So, if you’re jonesing for Hooters’ chicken strips, you may want to order takeout … or perhaps throw caution to the wind and explore more exotic culinary offerings not found on the Hooters menu: strange foods like pizza, tacos, and egg rolls. Regardless, you can be sure that just about any restaurant in Austin serving anything that could even be loosely construed as American food will be full of bikers. If you’re looking for a peaceful dining experience, go for the freakiest cuisine you can imagine. Ethiopian is a pretty safe bet … maybe Vietnamese … or Indian food … dot not feathers. In fact, if you don’t like bikers – or if you find the Kid Rock aesthetic particularly obnoxious – you may want to avoid Austin altogether. However, if you don’t mind seeing dirty denim; leather (and prematurely aged skin that looks like leather); T-shirts with racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive messages; the smell of gas and exhaust; and the sound of tens of thousands of motorcycles farting and rattling through the glass canyon of Congress Avenue, then you should strap on your halter and make your way Downtown Friday evening for the annual Republic of Texas Biker Rally parade. It’s quite a spectacle, and if nothing else, you will find out whether the juice is indeed worth the squeeze.

South Austin Pitch and Pooch Celebrity Golf Tournament and Canine Extravaganza

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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

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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.

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!

Beard Prom

The Luv Doc Recommends

January 26, 2011

American Legion Hall

Your beard may look ridiculous, but here’s some good news: You can shave it off. You can’t say that about your My Chemical Romance armband tattoo. Sure, you might have been a cutter, but you probably don’t have the sack (or unexpressed emotional pain) for a bloodbath like that. Maybe it’s best that you stick with grungy long-sleeve shirts, ratty jorts, and the type of beard Moses brought back with the Ten Commandments. After all, God has a beard, and He made us in His image, right? Of course by that reasoning, God must have an uncircumcised penis, an appendix, and possibly a disturbing amount of back hair. Jesus, on the other hand, was circumcised, but only because circumcision is prescribed in the Bible, which, it turns out, is the word of God. How perfect is that? Jesus also rocked a beard, but unlike God, his was more of a high school guidance counselor beard – the kind you wear to show you have feelings. As for back hair – apparently that went out with the Old Testament. If current trends are any indication, however, back hair is poised to make a comeback. No one could have imagined that so many seemingly intelligent young men would willingly abandon thousands of years of personal grooming evolution just so they could hide their ironic smirks. That would be crazy … especially now that the Gillette Fusion ProGlide is available. Five blades, motherfucker, five blades! Not even Axe’s ball scrubber can outshine that type of brilliance. One blade lifts. One blade cuts. The other three define the term “redundancy.” Oh those scruffy-faced, dirty-sacked old-timers with their twin blades and shower puffs! Such crude and ineffective implements are enough to make men abandon grooming altogether. Maybe that explains why so many young men these days look like Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Then again, maybe it doesn’t. There is a certain hipster cachet in sporting a look that says, “I’m just too lazy to give a fuck,” even when you aren’t. And really, the harder you work that angle, the more it seems like you’re trying. You think Billy Gibbons just woke up one morning and said, “What is all this shit?” Well actually, considering the copious amounts of drugs ZZ Top probably has access to, that’s a real possibility, but if you’re walking around sporting Ambrose Burnside-style mutton chops or a Rollie Fingers handlebar mustache, you’ve fully crossed the Rubicon of mindless sloth and into the territory of consciously cultivated narcissism. No shame in that game, just own up to it. Better yet, flaunt it. This Confederate generals facial-hair craze isn’t going to last forever. Soon enough Gillette will invent a pre-lubed razor with seven blades, and we’ll all be as smooth and hairless as a baby’s ass. If you’re running short on places to flaunt your chin varmint, you’re in luck this Friday, because that’s when the Austin Facial Hair Club is throwing its first-ever Beard Prom, a full evening dedicated to the celebration of that which makes you look more heterosexual than you really are. You know … facial hair. Check it: Appetizers, raffle tickets, prom photo booth, DJs from Second Sunday Sock Hop, and, most importantly, an open bar. That alone is worth growing a quick George Michael.

Austin Gorilla Run

The Luv Doc Recommends

January 19, 2011

City Hall

Jogging is uncomfortable, time consuming, hot, sweaty, boring, and, most of all, exhausting, but jogging in a gorilla suit is just fucking silly. Really. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Not even a gorilla would jog in a gorilla suit … and not just because it would be creepy, but because gorillas, being primates, are smarter than that. Unlike those of us higher up the primate order, gorillas know what it’s like to actually wear a gorilla suit, and there are just certain things you don’t do in a gorilla suit. One of those is jog. Beat your chest? Check. Jump up and down with your arms curled at your sides? Yep. Swing through the trees on vines? Of course. Delouse your buddies? Definitely. Jog? Nuh-uh. Why go to all that effort when you could be lollygagging around in the grass munching on foliage? Gorillas can run, yes … on their hind legs even. They max out at about 20 feet – which is plenty enough distance for even the most ambitious primate. Why should humans in gorilla suits be any different? Besides, you don’t need to run in a gorilla suit to realize it’s a bad idea. Just put one on and wait a few minutes. There’s nothing like polyester fur and black rubber for working up a prolific schvitz. As long as you’re at it, you might as well pop some peyote and make it a real sweat lodge experience. You may not cross the finish line, but once the mescaline kicks in, you won’t even remember you were racing to begin with. Look at it this way: Anytime you wear a gorilla suit, it’s a vision quest, so you might as well make it official. Those eyeholes don’t offer a lot of peripheral – just enough of a window to let in a little fresh air, a margarita straw, or the wet tongue of a mischievous friend. After all, if you’re wearing a gorilla suit, you pretty much have to expect to get pranked. It’s part of the territory. You can’t go sashaying around town in a gorilla suit without consequences. What self-respecting gang of disaffected adolescents would allow you to pass within a stone’s throw and not chuck a few at you? You should expect a fair ration of slaps on the ass, “kick me” signs, and occasional mountings by Great Danes … or even just plain Danes. Danes are fetishy like that. Oh well, if you’re going to draw attention to yourself, you have to expect some of it to be negative, right? One thing is for certain, a big (or even small) group of gorillas, whether fake or real, is going to attract attention, and that’s the point, really. The plight of the mountain gorillas in Central Africa doesn’t get a lot of play here in Central Texas. We’ve got our own species to endanger and enough genuinely good causes to keep us impoverished until kingdom come. A city can only do so much, right? Austin may be nearly tapped out philanthropically, but when it comes to a sense of irony and a love of dorkiness, our wealth is limitless. This is exactly what makes Saturday’s first-ever Austin Gorilla Run so ingenious. It might be difficult to get a few hundred people to fork over money for endangered mountain gorillas that are half a world away, but getting people in Austin to run around in gorilla suits? Slam dunk! That’s exactly the type of ridonkulous nerdfest that whips the locals into a lather. This Saturday you can join those locals as they run, walk, skate, and bike their way through the streets of Austin in support of the mountain gorillas. Plus, after it’s all over, you get to keep the gorilla suit … and maybe even all the new silly friends you made.

FronteraFest Short Fringe

The Luv Doc Recommends

January 12, 2011

Hyde Park Theatre

Not all silence is awkward. Some silence is golden. Some silence is blissful. Some silence is deadly – especially the silence that happens in the Car2Go after a gluttonous, hog-trough-feeding binge at Mr. Natural. Raise the little white flag and roll down the window. Some people are silent – sometimes, we are told, a majority of them. Others are singularly silent, often for reasons unknown to anyone else. Some people just like to keep people guessing. Confucius once said, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” It’s a good bet that some wiseass at the back of the room followed that platitude with: “Hey Confucius! Shut the fuck up!” Ironically, the Confucian silence quote is also attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who could have used a little less silence at Ford’s Theatre. If only someone would have shouted: “Duck Abe! He’s got a gun!” It probably seemed like a foolish thing to shout at the time, what with the play going on and all. Some silent people are thoughtful and intelligent; others are just plain stupid. It’s sometimes hard to tell them apart. Some silent people are scary, which is an excellent argument for not encouraging silence. With silent types, you really never know what’s bouncing around up there. It might be the cure for cancer or an elegantly proven grand unified field theory, but it might be a screenplay for The Human Centipede. The scary truth is that there are some things in life you may not want to know but probably should before it’s too late. Terrorists aren’t particularly chatty – neither are Mafia hit men. Why would they be? Dead people don’t talk. If they did, the first thing they would probably say is, “I wish someone would have said something.” After all, isn’t the hallmark of evolutionary advancement the ability to communicate? Isn’t that what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Who knows? Oysters might be some wicked-smart motherfuckers, but until they learn to use their words or, to set the bar slightly lower, develop a brain stem, their lot in life is to be served on the halfshell. Being able to build your own home and make your own jewelry isn’t proof of intelligence – no matter what Martha Stewart would have you believe. Where does that leave the starfish? Let it speak for itself. The important thing is that everyone should speak up so we know who the stupid, crazy, and scary people are. That, in essence, is the genius of the First Amendment: Calling out the crazies so we can keep an eye on those bastards. Censorship only drives the nut jobs underground – where they’re more dangerous. So the next time you hear something spoken that is completely, abominably outrageous, make sure to send up a hearty hurrah! Help keep all the crazies in the open so they don’t sneak up and stab us in the back. Support free speech in all its glorious and disturbing forms. Speaking of, you can get a bit of both at FronteraFest, Austin’s own fringe theatre festival. The Short Fringe runs through Feb. 12 at Hyde Park Theatre, and the Long Fringe runs through Jan. 30 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater and the Blue Theatre. This Thursday you can catch a full night of Short Fringe performances at the Hyde Park Theatre. Check out Elevator Action, a comedic journey on an improvised elevator; The Priceless Slave, the true story of an antebellum slave architect; Dirty, Nerdy and Unemployed, poetry by Jacob Dodson; Route 307, an autobiographical sketch about the life of a mailman; and a sketch comedy performance called 4 Hole Punch. Rest assured, if there is silence on this night, it will probably be awkward.