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

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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!

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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

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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

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May 18, 2011

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

A Behanding in Spokane

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 11, 2011

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

Undie Run

The Luv Doc Recommends, Uncategorized

May 4, 2011

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

Lysts on the Lake Lone Star Open Joust

Uncategorized

April 27, 2011

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

Michael Ventura ‘If I Was a Highway’ Booksigning

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 20, 2011

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

Texas Burlesque Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 13, 2011

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

Sixth Annual Urban Music Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

April 6, 2011

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

Dane Sterling, Miss Leslie & the Juke Jointers

The Luv Doc Recommends

Mach 30, 2011

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

Devo and the Octopus Project

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 23, 2011

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

Austin Music Awards

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 15, 2011

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

Mutton Bustin’ at Rodeo Austin

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 9, 2011

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

5X5Y: 25 Years of SXSW Music

The Luv Doc Recommends

March 2, 2011

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

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

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 23, 2011

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

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

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 16, 2011

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

Cleavage Chronicles: Everybody Loves Boobs

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 9, 2011

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

Drone: A Border Affair That Crosses a Line

The Luv Doc Recommends

February 2, 2011

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

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.

First Friday Frolic

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January 5, 2011

Club de Ville CLOSED

It’s scary out there. Birds are dropping from the sky. Fish are washing up dead. Crazy shit is happening. The good news is that it’s mostly in Arkansas, and Arkansas is always scary and crazy. Then again, God may just be pissed about the new Walmart logo, which is surely by now universally acknowledged as a line-art replica of a puckered anus. Hey Waltons, times are bad, but do we need to be reminded of it by the old red-eye (well, technically it’s yellow, which may be a nod – wink? – at Walmart’s largest trading partner)? More likely it’s symbolic of how the average Walmart customer feels when shopping there. It’s like a little, yellow warning sign that says if you want low, low prices, you’re going to have to bend over. As for the birds and fish, it seems unlikely that God would take his Wal-wrath out on them, but God always seems to throw curveballs when it comes to moral logic. For instance: The Haitian earthquake. Dude, WTF? Sure, the Haitians are big pot smokers and dabble in voodoo – hell, some of them probably even occasionally engage in acts of sodomy – but that shit seems a little much, especially when there are so many other more deserving assholes. Maybe God hasn’t yet invented smart-wrath technology. Maybe that earthquake in Haiti was supposed to smite Osama bin Laden and God missed by a few thousand miles. Hey, it’s a big universe, so it’s probably a miracle He was within a few light years, right? By that measure the floods in Pakistan were nearly a bull’s-eye. Who knows? It’s possible God actually did smite Osama with the Pakistani floods. Osama can’t be much of a swimmer with that bum kidney and hipster beard. Glub glub. If he’s still alive, well, he’s going to catch hell when he gets to hell, that’s for sure. Then again, maybe Satan will go easy on him for being such a massive dickhead. If hell has a VIP section, you have to think Osama has earned a spot in it. Walmart, on the other hand, may be evil, but it hasn’t yet busted its homicidal cherry. If there was money in it, maybe, but Walmart would prefer to keep you around to enjoy its shitty, plastic-tasting food and cheaply made, ill-fitting clothing until you die from cadmium poisoning. Hey, if you want to live longer, don’t suck on your Chinese-made plastic jewelry. In fact, you should probably ask yourself why you’re buying Chinese-made plastic jewelry in the first place. Maybe God actually does have smart-wrath technology, but it only works on stupid people. That doesn’t help explain the dead birds in Arkansas however. Yes, birds are stupid, but they’re intelligently designed to be stupid. You can’t fault them for that. They are, by nature, bird-brained. They are also blessed with the undeniable innocence of the simpleminded. So really, the best explanation must be that those birds in Arkansas were the beginning of the Rapture. Yep, it’s the end of times, and apparently those nitwitted critters scored first-class seats on the flight to eternal bliss. Either that or they made first contact with some really hostile aliens. Either scenario doesn’t bode well, so it’s time to seriously ramp up the partying. Good thing it’s Free Week down on Red River. No cover charge means you can spend more money on booze – booze that kills brain cells, ideally the ones that are stressing about the dead birds. Get your party started at Club de Ville, a laid-back bar with reasonably priced drinks and skilled bartenders. This Friday, the free weekend kicks off with First Friday Frolic, a gratis lineup of local acts including BK & Mr. E, Eagle Eye Williamson, Erin Ivey, Monarchs, Stereo Is a Lie, One Hundred Flowers, DJ I Wanna Be Her, and DJ uLOVEi. Rest assured the beats will carry you away before the Rapture does.

ew Year’s Eve With the Diamond Smugglers and Pong

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December 29, 2010

Continental Club

Good to finally put a fork in 2010. The prepubescence of the 21st century has been hell so far, but maybe things will turn around in 2011. After all, it’s a brand-new year, right? Anything can happen, and that’s sort of the problem. We’re currently overwhelmed by ominous signs of an impending apocalypse, and God may not be merciful enough to smite us with a huge asteroid or crush us with a black hole. It might be much uglier than that. The world financial system might collapse. The ice caps might melt. Justin Bieber might get married. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to get the sneaking suspicion that God is just one more dumbass mortal fuckup away from shaking the creationary Etch A Sketch. In fact, at this point the Mayan calendar would seem like a pretty good bet if it weren’t for the fact that the Mayans were into human sacrifice and worshiped a corn god (they call it maize). The end of days may indeed be upon us, but before you start burying gold in your backyard or learning how to tread water indefinitely, consider that there may still be a way out of this mess: Learning from our mistakes. Yes, we can keep fighting the same stupid wars, filling our engines with dinosaur juice, and buying mountains of useless plastic crap, but it doesn’t mean we have to. As the saying goes, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” Thus, in the spirit of evolutionary progression, here is a short laundry list of the mistakes of 2010 that we should avoid repeating: 1) Hipster beards. Just fucking quit it. You look ridiculous. An overabundance of facial hair is perfectly fine for lumberjacks, Hasidic Jews, hermits, and fat old Mexican ladies, but on a 23-year-old bartender wearing a Hot Topic Misfits T-shirt and skinny jeans, it just looks stupid. That shit is over – just like full-sleeve tattoos and cock-ring-sized ear gauges. Hint: If you think you look like David Cross or Iron & Wine (fuck you, we know his name is Sam Beam), you probably actually look like the Lucky Charms leprechaun or Al from Home Improvement – and no, that doesn’t make you ironic; it makes you a douche. Shave that shit off, and let your girlfriend use it as a merkin. 2) Clothing with tattoo designs. Call it Ed Hardy or Christian Audigier or Rue 21 – just call it over. Anytime your shirt looks like the one being worn by the chubby singer from Rascal Flatts, it’s time for a wardrobe rethink. Plus, if you’re too much of a pussy to actually get a crucifix tattooed on your skin, having a BeDazzled one on your clothing doesn’t make up for it. 3) Fedoras. No. If you want to look like your grandfather, start drinking Old Crow and chain-smoking Pall Malls. A fedora just makes you look like a Josh Groban wannabe … or worse yet, Kid Rock. 4) Scarves/kaffiyeh/whatever. If it has tassels and looks like you stole it from a dead Taliban, it doesn’t belong on you, much less your Labrador. Scarves are never appropriate in Austin. Ever. Not even if you have a neck wattle like Andy Griffith. 5) Vibram Five Fingers. This is an evolutionary shoe design in that it attempts to prove you descended from monkeys by making you look like one. Either that, or it’s proof that the Italians hate us. Either way, the only appropriate time for wearing these shoes is if you’re getting shrimped by a South African prostitute. 6) Snarky comments about meaningless fashion trends. There are bigger, more important fish to fry, aren’t there? Yes, of course there are, but no one wants to read about BP oil spills, global warming, or dying whale otters (Seriously? Did you just try to iPhone that?), much less do something about them. It’s a brand-new year. Time to party! If you’re one of those people who like making fun of what other people take seriously, then you are going to love New Year’s Eve at the Continental Club, where cherished Neil Diamond tribute band The Diamond Smugglers will be holding forth along with local space groovers Pong. No one skewers the Diamond like the Smugglers, and Pong is the perfect antidote for the smirking arm folders who will surely attend. At least if 2011 swirls further into the shitter, you’ll be able to say you finished 2010 on a high note.

Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

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December 22, 2010

Palmer Events Center

There are probably a few money shots left to be fired in your annual orgy of excess. Sure, the economy is deep in the shitter and the red Chinese have us by the shorthairs, but that isn’t conclusive evidence that you need to rein in your consumerism. Who knows? America may only be a few hundred million maxed-out credit cards away from economic salvation. One thing is for certain: You’re not going to kick-start an economic recovery by sitting home singing Christmas carols, drinking eggnog, and stringing together popcorn garlands. That’s exactly the kind of tedious sweatshop work we used to pawn off on Third World orphans. Think about it: If stringing popcorn garlands is so fun, why isn’t there a Nintendo Wii game based on it? Even golf has a Wii game, and golf is just slightly more exciting than an afternoon nap … or maybe death itself – which may explain why so many old people play it. All golf requires is that you move slightly faster than the grass growing beneath your feet. If you can’t do that, just rent a golf cart – or buy a Wii. Wiis might be made by the Japanese, but they’re as American as apple pie. After all, this country was founded on the idea that if you work hard enough, eventually you can afford something or someone that will do the work for you. Remember when Tom Sawyer had to paint his Aunt Polly’s fence? He conned the neighborhood kids into doing it for him. Tom Sawyer is an American hero – just like the young men and women in our armed forces who pilot attack drones. Drone piloting surely lacks the glamour of humping it through the Helmand River Valley with 100-plus pounds of assorted gear and weaponry, but it definitely gets the job done, proving yet again that with enough money nearly anything is possible. Stringing popcorn garlands and singing Christmas carols doesn’t pay for attack drones or swarms of poison-injecting assassin nanobots. Buying a Nintendo Wii does, however. It also provides good training for the war of the future. Sharpened sticks are out; joysticks are in. Someday, if Americans can just cough up the cash, the roughly 1.4 million active U.S. military personnel in the world will all be equipped with their own predator drone and pocketful of poison-injecting assassin nanobots. That way they can sit safely in some underground bunker and unleash unmitigated hell on whichever unfortunate meat puppet has the audacity to challenge truth, justice, and the American way. As always, the tricky part to making this happen is coming up with the money. We can’t just ask the red Chinese to fork over trillions of dollars for us to build an unstoppable remote-controlled robot army. The red Chinese are not chumps. We have to backdoor this deal by mindlessly running up our credit-card debt. That will put the economy on hyperdrive and allow for some really lavish defense spending. Yes, at some point the red Chinese will try to collect their money, but all our military might rest assured that the knock on America’s door will be a very polite, timid tap. Of course, if you’re going to spend money to preserve America’s military world dominance, there’s no better place to do it than at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, which runs daily from 11am to 11pm through Christmas Eve at the Palmer Events Center. The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar is an Austin institution and a great place to purchase unique and interesting gifts made by Austin-area artists. You’ll also get to hear live music performed by some of Austin’s most beloved bands. Who knows? Something this fun might eventually end up on a Nintendo Wii … or maybe some things are just too much fun for a joystick.

Randy Willis 15th Annual Pickin’ on Christmas and Birthday Party

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December 13, 2010

Dallas Nightclub

Dec. 25 is just around the corner, and the war on Christmas is really heating up. Not only is Christmas under heavy assault from the politically correct left, who for years have been insidiously leaving the “Christ” out of Christmas or nixing the entire name in favor of the more generic and inclusive “holidays,” it is also taking a huge hammering from corporate greedmongers with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets who quite wisely have appropriated the symbols of Christmas if maybe not the actual name. Big business is all over Christmas like a wet Santa suit, and why wouldn’t it be? After all, appropriating other peoples’ holidays is a tradition that dates all the way back to Adam – yeah, that Adam. Christmas itself has been a big holiday ever since it was Saturnalia. That Roman gift-giving holiday was a stroke of genius, and the early Christians knew it. Of course, they had to gloss over the fact that Jesus wasn’t much of a shopper. Far from it. Jesus was actually a bit of a hippie (or maybe his beard was just ironic, and he rocked a pair of jorts under that tunic). He was also a peace creep and an unrepentant (imagine that) inclusionist. He was down with the lepers, the hos, the paralytics, the blind (which probably translates as “visually impaired” in Nazarean), the mentally ill, the sick, the dead, and, most importantly, the poor. Back in the first century, the poor people smelled nearly as bad as the dead ones, so caring for the poor was really taking one for Team Yahweh, so to speak. Really, the only thing that really got under Jesus’ skin (besides a crown of thorns, some 9-inch nails, and a centurion’s lance) was when he saw that moneychangers had set up shop in the temple of Jerusalem. Jesus went Billy Jack and started turning over tables, setting doves and livestock free … all that shit. It’s fairly safe to say that Jesus wasn’t much of a materialist. If anything, he was hostile to materialism. Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem on a chariot with spinny rims; he rode in on an ass. That’s a statement. That’s like Obama rolling up to the White House on a shitty moped. Jesus didn’t wear bling or nice clothes. He didn’t dine at fancy restaurants or go clubbing with his posse. Instead, he walked around with a growling stomach and dropped mindbombs on his disciples – stuff like, “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor.” Boooom! Given that sentiment, it seems rather obvious that these days Christmas itself is a war on Christianity. Best Buy isn’t having a “Give to the Poor” sale. That Mercedes with a bow tied around it isn’t waiting outside a homeless camp. Those Zales holiday charm bracelets won’t end up on the arms of war orphans. If Jesus were alive today (at least in a materialistic sense), he’d be waging his own war on Christmas. He’d probably be lobbying to have his name taken out of Christmas entirely. What would Christmas be without the Christ? Just “mas,” which means “more” in Spanish and pretty much nails the spirit of the season. At least then no one would have to fret over the war on Christmas and everyone could continue buying mas shit they don’t need without the nagging guilt of Christian morality. Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it? Until then we’ll just have to settle for rampant materialism slowed by occasional attempts at Christian charity. One of those is happening this Saturday at Dallas Nightclub, where local music impresario Randy Willis is hosting his 15th annual Pickin’ on Christmas and Birthday Party, a live music concert benefiting the Travis County Brown Santa Toy Drive. For the price of one toy, you can see a lineup that includes Johnny Rodriguez, Vallejo, LC Rocks, Jeff Gallagher, the Cheyenne Band, Steven Franks, and Lucas Cook. That’s a lot of music for only one toy. Maybe you can bring mas.

SIMS Benefit Bash

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December 8, 2010

Austin Music Hall

Mental health is a bit of a sticky wicket – especially where musicians are concerned. It’s no wonder. The constant vacillation between unbridled egomania and soul-crushing self-doubt is bound to leave a few frayed ends. It’s difficult enough for the average person to cobble together a sense of identity and self-worth. Musicians tend to compound the difficulty by pressuring themselves to be much more interesting than they really are – to be larger than life. The type of wacky, harebrained behavior that would land the average person in the loony bin (if such bins still existed) is actually tolerated and even encouraged in musicians. After all, normal isn’t very entertaining is it? The result is a whole slew of aberrant dress and bizarre behavior. Consider the questionably pedophiliac, body-mutilating, androgynous insanity of Michael Jackson (arguably one of the greatest entertainers of all time), or the karate chopping, UFO-sighting, rhinestone jumpsuit-wearing (also questionably pedophiliac) Elvis, who may or may not have been involved with the FBI, CIA, and extraterrestrials. Throw in a goat, a monkey, and a 50-gallon drum of Vaseline, and you have one seriously bizarre clusterfuck. Unfortunately, in the music world that’s the kind of thing it takes to get noticed. Liberace was probably at one time a fairly unremarkable Polish kid from Wisconsin; Madonna was just a high school cheerleader from Pontiac, Mich.; the members of Kiss were just hardworking metal musicians from the boroughs; and GG Allin was just a boy from Vermont who was born with the name Jesus Christ Allin, cross-dressed for the last three years of high school, did a stint at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, and made a career(?) out of urinating, defecating, flinging feces, bleeding, and vomiting onstage. OK, so maybe Jesus was crazier than a shit-house rat from start to finish, but he still managed to get gigs, and that’s the point really. In the music business, there is always someone willing to encourage and reward insanity. Lady Gaga is a pretty good singer and all, but could she make it without the meat dress? Or the bubble dress? Or the Kermit the Frog dress? At some point her career will slow down and she’ll end up paying Franc Fernandez to design her a dress out of dalmatian puppy hides, human placentas, or maybe circumcised foreskins. At some point you either decide to wear the hamster carcass earrings or end up doing matinee shows in Branson, Mo. In music, you’re either on your way up or on your way down. In one night you can go from windmilling power chords in front of a club full of screaming fans to washing your underwear in a gas station restroom on the interstate. One month your album is at the top of the charts; the next month it’s not even on the charts. One night you’re on Leno, the next night you’re on Leno. It’s no surprise that many musicians try to even out the peaks and valleys with drugs and alcohol, which are always easily available. Often as not, they only amp up the insanity, and bartenders and drug dealers aren’t necessarily predisposed or trained to deal with complex emotional and psychological issues – especially if they’re not getting paid. Thankfully Austin has an organization that offers musicians opportunities to seek help from people who are trained to deal with psychological and substance abuse issues. It’s called the SIMS Foundation, and this Saturday it’s hosting the SIMS Benefit Bash at the Austin Music Hall, a fundraising concert featuring a who’s who of Austin Musicians: Eliza Gilkyson, Ian McLagan, Will Sexton, David Garza, Graham Reynolds, Kat Edmonson, Don Harvey, Brownout, Lauren Larson, Ruby Jane Smith, Amy Cook, Mark Andes, and Scrappy Jud Newcomb, among others. For less than the price of a round of Jäger shots, you can show some musicians how much you appreciate them in a way that actually does them some good.

Holiday Hat Party 2010

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December 1, 2010

Speakeasy

P.J. O’Rourke once wrote: “A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.” When you have a fat Irish head the size of P.J. O’Rourke’s, those are definitely words to live by. There is also a strong case against hats being made by the resurgence of straw fedoras – especially those worn in conjunction with clothing featuring tattoo designs. Wearing a straw hat with a Christian Audigier knockoff shirt doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a douche; it just means you probably shop where they shop. Is that so wrong? Not everyone can rock a chapeau like Justin Timberlake, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. It seems to be working for Jason Mraz and Kid Rock (and really, as long as you’re going to rip off other people’s music …). There’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing an interesting old hat that you found in a thrift store or your grandfather’s attic. However, if you’re wearing a hat you found in the accessories aisle at Walmart, you just might be a douche. Don’t worry though; the mere fact that you found it at Walmart means that there are thousands, if not millions, of other people who did exactly the same thing, so you’re not alone. Plus you probably saved the job of some 8-year-old Chinese orphan. Here’s the thing: Straw fedoras aren’t inherently douchey, they just end up on the heads of a lot of douches. Straw fedoras don’t make douches in the same sense that guns don’t kill people. It’s a symbiotic relationship at best. The crazy thing is that hats are every bit as utilitarian as any other piece of haberdashery. Baseball caps keep the sun out of your eyes, stocking caps keep your head warm, hard hats prevent head injuries, and cowboy hats attract drunk blond chicks. Not surprisingly, hat types are myriad and vary in relation to functionality. There are some hats, however, that seem to serve no purpose other than to just look fucking ridiculous. You might be tempted to lump Kid Rock’s fedora into this group, but that might be a mistake. Think about the big, foam cowboy hats you see at football games (really, any hat made of foam is ridiculous – be it a leprechaun, pimp, cheese, or pirate). Top hats and bowlers are pretty F’d up too (well, except for the one Lena Olin wore in The Unbearable Lightness of Being), so are beer caps, fezzes, yarmulkes, huge sombreros, and pretty much anything worn at Churchill Downs on Derby Day. Keep in mind: There is no shame in wearing a truly ridiculous hat. The mere fact you’re wearing it means you’re comfortable with sacrificing your dignity and ego, and nothing is cooler than a willingness to be a complete dork. If you want to get in on some serious dork action this weekend, you need look no further than Speakeasy. Friday night it’s hosting Holiday Hat Party 2010, a fundraiser for Florence’s Comfort House featuring music by Dysfunkshun Junkshun, Aquadrums, and Tyler Guthrie. There will also be drink specials and a tequila tasting – as if holiday hats aren’t fun enough.

Marmalakes, the Frontier Brothers, Mother Falcon

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November 23, 2010

Parish – Closed

Simmer down, Aggies, simmer down. Yes, the rotting corpse smell of the Longhorn football season has you deranged and howling like a pack of starved coyotes, but remember: Like Jesus, the Longhorns will rise again. Texas may be 5-6, but they’re still sick with talent. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Dixie Chicken, the Bush Library, and the Animal Husbandry Barn aren’t the highlights of the Longhorns’ recruiting trip. Down on the Forty Acres, recruiting is a bit more of a slam dunk. All Texas has to do to land a Top 10 recruit is to take him to 50-cent wings night at Sugar’s. College Station doesn’t even have a Sugar’s … or even a Yellow Rose or a Landing Strip … unless maybe you count the Animal Husbandry Barn, which is sort of like the Chain Drive only much bigger, smellier, and freakier. Needless to say, College Station’s quaint charms don’t appeal to everyone, so when the Ags have a respectable season, you have to give them props. It’s not easy to Shanghai decent athletes to College Station – certainly not intelligent ones, so big ups to Mike Sherman and crew for cobbling together a winning Aggie team this year. Other than former A&M legend Jackie Sherrill – a true innovator with the insane brilliance to use livestock castration as a motivational tool – few heirs to the Aggie coaching throne have shown as much promise as Sherman, whose competence and sacrifice is rewarded with a paltry $1.8 million a year contract (the kind of chump change that Mack Brown keeps next to his toilet). For such a meager sum, it’s amazing Sherman even crawls out of bed in the morning, but somehow this year he and the Aggies have put together an 8-3 record. That’s a complete turnaround from the Aggies 4-8 season in 2008 when he began his sentence. Fortunately Sherman’s stint as head coach at Green Bay was good training for his return to Aggieland. He now knows that the bitchiness and petulance of a highly recruited college athlete are nothing compared to that of an NFL player making 10 times the coaches’ salary. At least you can bully a college kid with curfews, extra laps, and harsh, withering looks. If it gets really ugly, you can even tell the boosters to stop leaving envelopes full of cash in his locker (remember, this is A&M) or, worst-case scenario, cut off his supply of steroids. Whatever Sherman is doing, even if he’s hacking the nuts off a bull before every game, it seems to be having a positive effect. Mack Brown, on the other hand, seems to have spent the last nine months tooling around town in his bling’d out Mercedes, snorting rails of coke off the bare asses of coeds, and breaking mirrors with his maniacal, high-pitched Appalachian cackle. While it’s true that kind of playa lifestyle never hurts recruiting, it can cut into the actual coaching. After a humiliating six-loss season, it’s safe to assume that Brown is now back on task. He may have grown a little soft in the middle – possibly even the prefrontal, but Brown is smart enough to understand that last Saturday’s smackdown of Division I-A powerhouse Florida Atlantic won’t satisfy even the most soft-headed of Longhorn fans. He also knows that if he loses to A&M, DeLoss Dodds will be after his balls with a rusty pair of pruning shears. Even still, there will be joy in Mudville. Why? Because we’re the goddamned live music capital of the known universe. An average Saturday night in Austin rocks the shit out of College Station on New Year’s Eve. This weekend is no different. Saturday you can (and should) catch an awesome bill at the Parish featuring a homegrown trifecta of musical badasses: folk-pop funsters Marmalakes, party punkers the Frontier Brothers, and orchestral tour de force Mother Falcon. A set by any one of these acts will put a smile on your face that not even a gloating Aggie can wipe off.

Extravagasm Fantasy Ball IX: East of Hedon

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November 15, 2010

ND Austin

How about one last chance to party like a porn star before the wet blanket of holiday wholesomeness spoils all the fun? Sure, nothing makes you want to flick your tongue between your devil horns like the thought of a crisp, rosy-cheeked night of wassailing bundled up in cozy, androgynous winter layering, but somewhere in the deep, depraved recesses of your mind you’d rather be nearly naked, slathered in baby oil, and writhing around on a crowded, pulsating dance floor – or at least you would rather be watching something like that, perhaps through the unzipped mouth hole of a leather gimp suit. Remember, you’re only about a week away from the maddening boredom of Thanksgiving Day, your yearly ritual of binge-eating bland pilgrim food then slumping catatonically on the living room sofa and listening to your catnapping grandpa’s stale beer farts ricochet off his vinyl recliner. There’s a reason they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Ibiza – and it’s not because they can’t get the A&M game on satellite. Hot on the heels of Puritanfest is Christmas, which tops off the Turkey Day wholesomeness with a huge layer of cheese: shamelessly crass commercialism, frog-in-a-blender color scheme, Lawrence Welk soundtrack, garish, Vegas-style lighting displays. Of course, the cherry on top of Christmas is the children: snot-nosed, greedy little chumps who believe a fat man from the North Pole with an unironic hipster beard is going to drop down their chimneys and deposit Call of Duty: Black Ops in their stockings. Why? Because they’ve spent the last few months scrawling deranged, incomprehensible shopping lists for Santa, fucking up the lyrics to “Jingle Bells,” and leaving half-finished candy canes in either the crack in the sofa or their little sister’s hair. Yes, children have their place during the holidays, and that place is called “Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” That way, instead of spoiling your holiday party mojo with their incessant whining about being hungry, wanting to go to sleep, and needing to have their soiled pull-ups changed, they can instead while away prime time with the blue-hairs drinking eggnog, making popcorn garlands, and watching Jimmy Stewart stammer his way through It’s a Wonderful Life. After all, Christmas is for kids, isn’t it? For adults, it’s more about finding excuses to binge-drink in order to forget about all the credit card debt they’re piling up. So, before the boring pall of the holiday season descends, blow it out one last time this Friday, Nov. 19, at Extravagasm Fantasy Ball IX: East of Hedon. Friday’s ball is an exotic, erotic dance party featuring the Brass Ovaries Pole Dancers, Miss Sophie, the Jigglewatts, Sky Candy aerialist Miss Winnie, the Golden Go-Go Squad, Starlite with Shi Feticcio, and music by DJ Cauzeone and DJ Orion. Along with the erotic dancing there will be fantasy photos by Flash, chocolate body-painting, and spanking stations. If that’s not freaky enough for you, keep this in mind: If they’re willing to let a name like “East of Hedon” slide, it’s a pretty sure bet anything goes, so bring an open mind and maybe some wet naps.

Game On Austin

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November 10, 2010

Mohawk

If you’re looking to get laid, there’s probably an app for that, it just won’t be as good as the real thing. Building a program that simulates a pan flute isn’t exactly the same as building one that stimulates your skin flute. This may come as a shock, but there are already several masturbation apps for the iPhone – one allows you to shake an onscreen image of a fish until a milky liquid oozes out of its mouth. Another is a geolocation app that allows users to place penis icons on a map to show the most recent place they had sex or masturbated. Nice. Seems like a great way to avoid getting nailed by an errant money shot while innocently walking your dog through Pease Park. Speaking of, maybe someone will whip(?) up a map app for people who don’t scoop their dog’s poop … or how about one for people who vomit frequently? There is also iVibe, an app that turns your iPhone into a vibrator. You might want to get a waterproof case for that one … or maybe not. It is, after all, just an iPhone. If you’re one of those skeptical types who aren’t totally on Apple’s cock, you might be happier with the Android. The Android has an app store called MiKandi that carries actual porn apps: things like 3D Mobile Porn (you’re probably safer wearing some sort of eye protection anyway), a YouPorn app (because YouPorn is so hard to find on your Web browser), and Sincasso, a nasty photo-sharing app which, like YouPorn, has a shamefully derivative name and boasts a “super clean user interface” as one of its features. Hmmm … sounds hygienic. You might think that MiKandi’s cesspool of smut apps might give Apple the moral high ground over the Android filth mongers, but you’d sort of be wrong. iPhone users can still surf the same freaky porn that pervs, sexual deviants, and mimes leer at all day long in their mothers’ moldy basements. The difference with iPhone is that they don’t allow porn apps – well, except for soft porn apps like the Cosmo Sex Position of the Day app, which features flesh-colored silhouettes going at it in a variety of unrealistic, uncomfortable, and unstable ways. It’s surely a lot of fun to look at – especially if you have a Mattel-ish hostility toward nipples, but put into actual practice by real people, it has all the titillating allure of a farty Bikram yoga class. Successful as its app may be, Cosmo is unlikely to follow it up with a Oral Sex Tips app, and even if it did, it’s unlikely Apple would approve it. They’re not porn merchants … or even pimps for porn merchants. Apple has your back like that. You won’t fall into the pits of perdition on Apple’s watch – well, at least not yet. There may be a game-changing app just around the corner that’s so awesomely filthy/hilarious/shocking that Apple just won’t be able to refuse it – especially if everyone is buying Droids just to get it. Who knows what the future holds? Well, if you want an idea, show up at Mohawk Tuesday, Nov. 16, from 6 to 9pm for the Chronicle and South by Southwest ScreenBurn’s Game On Austin, a free event where local game developers will be on hand to show off their latest wares, some of which may actually be designed for the iPhone … or perhaps those filthy, filthy Droids.

2010 Lone Star Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off

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November 3, 2010

Old Settlers Park

The world is teeming with all kinds of animals you can kill and cook and eat. A good number of them taste like chicken – at least that’s what the man at the fried-rat stand in Taipei is going to tell you. Of course, pretty near anything is going to taste like chicken if it’s battered and fried – even Homo sapiens. It’s doubtful that you would take a bite of deep-fried human flesh in a blind taste test and declare, “Hmmmmm … that tastes suspiciously like Homo.” You might, however, say it tastes like chicken, only gamier. Over the centuries, humans have whittled down the number of edible fauna to just a handful of species – generally the fat, slow, quiescent ones. These days – at least on this side of the pond – we’ve broiled it down to three basic meat groups, any or all of which might end up in a hot dog: chicken, pork, and beef. Someday, through a miracle of genetic engineering, we might even be able to graft them all into one animal: a chiporcow. Ideally the chiporcow would weigh a few thousand pounds; give milk; lay eggs; eat anything, including ground-up parts of other chiporcows; and spend its entire life confined in a cage designed to completely restrict its movement and maximize the tenderness of its flesh. Really, why even eat meat unless you can cut it with a cheap plastic spork? Even still, don’t throw away your steak knife in a fit of ecstatic optimism just yet. It might take another 20 or 30 years of genetic engineering to grow a chiporcow that is completely devoid of bones, tendons, and cartilage. Until then, all that stuff can still be pureed into a steroid infused, protein-rich paste that is sure to find its way to a nugget or patty at a fast food restaurant near you. Yum … well, with the right amount of sodium, sugar, and artificial flavoring. It’s hard to believe that there are still people out there who insist on killing, butchering, and eating their own meat – not just the crazy ones who are responsible for cats disappearing in your neighborhood, but normal people who wake up in the wee hours, strap on some camo and a fluorescent orange vest, and heroically try to control the mushrooming deer population. Hey, somebody has to do the dirty work – especially when joggers are out there Swiss-cheesing natural predators with laser-sight pistols. Hopefully Gov. Goodhair had the decency to mount his kill (pause for a moment to consider the nastiness of that unfinished sentence) on a cedar fencepost as a warning to all the other coyotes to back off the shih tzus, kittens, and Pomeranians and go back to killing sick cows and lost sheep. Deer? Killing those are a lot of work, unless you’re golfing at Lakeway or driving down U.S. 290 in the middle of the night, and coyotes, like just about any other intelligent animal including Homo sapiens, are likely to choose the easy way every time. It’s no wonder so many people are vegetarians these days. Meat is a lot of goddamned work – not just with your pastor or psychotherapist exploring the moral implications of offing other living things just to crap them out a few days later, but in a real physical sense, like cold, chewy street fajitas. Getting off the meat tit is getting more popular because it keeps getting easier. People are making plants into just about everything. Why not food? Some people have even figured out how to make great tasting fake-meat dishes. Don’t believe it? Head over to Old Settlers Park this Sunday for the 22nd Lone Star Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off and see for yourself. Taste veggie chilis made by 20 different teams from all around Texas, and decide if you’re lazy enough to stop eating meat for good. Love it or hate it, one thing’s for sure: It won’t taste like chicken.

Butthole Surfers Halloween Shows

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October 26, 2010

The Scoot Inn

The best thing about Halloween isn’t the candy; it’s about making memories. Sure, it’s plenty of fun to get all jacked up on candy corn and Pixy Stix and run through the neighborhood wilding trick-or-treaters in your flammable Chinese-made Darth Vader costume, but when the sugar rush subsides, a night of whacking unsuspecting kids on the back of the head with an inflatable plastic red lightsaber is just going to seem a little childish no matter how fun it was. Plus … and this is an important thing to remember … if you’re looking to get laid on Halloween or any other night of the year, it’s best to avoid places with children altogether – even and especially if you’re a pedophile. This is not to say you can’t score some strange with children around, but they do make it immensely more dangerous and difficult. No doubt there are brave souls who managed to achieve coitus on a McDonald’s playscape at 3:30 in the afternoon, but they are probably few and far between and incarcerated with muscled-up cellmates who share an equal penchant for risky sexual behavior. Besides, everyone knows going to McDonald’s is a bad idea – especially if you’re wanting to eat a taco. So really, even though you’re certain that your assless altar boy robe will be the hit of the elementary school Halloween carnival, you may want to save it for someplace where subtle irony is better understood and appreciated … like the Chain Drive for instance. You’ll make memories there that will last a lifetime too, and you’re less likely to end up on a sex offender Google map. Of course, you don’t have to engage in outrageous behavior to make memories, but outrageous behavior definitely makes memories that last – especially if they’re outrageous enough to get you tagged in an action photo on Facebook. Don’t hate. Facebook is just extra incentive to come up with a well-designed costume, ideally something with a comfortable mask – a mask that won’t fall off should you decide to do a keg stand in that Cinderella dress that was so long you decided you might as well go commando. As long as your luchador mask is laced up tight, you can claim that lots of other girls probably have a crucifix pull target with an inscription that reads, “Everybody gets nailed sometime.” Normally only your proctologist gets to see that far beneath your panty line, so it’s unlikely your boss is going to have the balls to call you on it. Point is, the only obstacles to making the memory of a lifetime are things like self-consciousness, self-esteem, and a sense of dignity and propriety. With proper costuming, you can abandon all that and get down to the dirty business of making lasting memories – or at the very least, shockingly hilarious YouTube videos with millions of hits. Being outrageous isn’t all that difficult. It just means that you have to be willing to go where other people aren’t. If you want a good example of how to do that, you should study up on the Butthole Surfers, who have been bringing the punk rock equivalent of shock and awe for more than a quarter century: cross-dressing, nudity, flames, destruction, blood (fake and real), all accompanied by screeching, roaring, howling soundscapes and epilepsy-inducing light shows. This weekend at the Scoot Inn, the Butthole Surfers will be playing Friday and Sunday shows that are sure to pack the Scoot to the gills. Friday night’s performance will focus on material from the band’s 1987 Locust Abortion Technician, and Sunday night’s Halloween show pairs the Surfers with fellow punk legends the Meat Puppets, who are calling Austin home these days. You could wear a costume for the Halloween show, but first and foremost, wear some earplugs, the bands will surely take care of making memories.

Goblin Gayla

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October 20, 2010

Tiniest Bar in Texas

No, it’s not Halloween just yet, but it is the beginning of the Halloween season. That means there’s a crispness to the night air, but it’s not crispy enough to keep you from sweating like a Chilean miner (and going blind like one too) inside that homemade ape suit you got for a steal on Craigslist. Really, any costume involving rubber and fur is always a bad idea in Austin. You don’t want to have to sip your gin and juice through a straw jammed into a nose hole. You don’t want to have to pee into an astronaut diaper. Yes, Halloween is the second biggest Holiday after Christmas, but it’s not big enough to actually warrant true suffering. That’s what all those other holidays are about. Halloween, like spring break, is a time for binge drinking in skimpy outfits. You don’t want to wear anything that can’t be quickly yanked down to your ankles while you pop a quick squat behind a dumpster on Sixth Street. No, seriously. If you think you’re going to find a vacant public bathroom stall anywhere Downtown in the next 10 days, you may want to get back on your meds. Available bathrooms during Halloween are as rare as buying a winning lottery ticket or getting in the fast-moving lane at the bank drive-through. That kind of thing only happens to other, wholly undeserving people. Yes, there are those who would argue that skimpy costumes aren’t scary. Au contraire. Not even Borat can rock a Borat slingshot without making normal people throw up a little in their mouths, and he’s a movie star. Imagine how scary average people would be if they were wearing something similar: birthmarks, moles, body hair, muffin tops, saddle bags, beer guts, goiters, cysts, varicose veins – really, there’s nothing more profoundly disturbing than the average human body on display. Even still, if you’re one of those lucky few who is blessed with supermodel looks and an awesome body, you still don’t have to suffer to be scary. Just pick up something sexy – say a European male swimsuit or a string bikini from a thrift store, then hose yourself down with fake blood. That way, if you get really drunk and fall down and crack your head open trying to jump over a vomit patch in your 4-inch stiletto heels, no one will even notice. Don’t worry, guys fall down wearing stiletto heels on Halloween all the time – especially in Austin. It’s no big deal. They just get up, dust off their bikinis, and get back to being the best slutty, blood-and-vomit stained zombie booze weasel they can be. After all, if you’re going to do Halloween, do it all the way. It’s one of the few two-week periods of the year that you can try out being someone more drunk, outrageous, and slutty than you normally are and still get a pass when it’s all over. Awesome, right? Well, you can start this weekend at the Austin Gay and Lesbian Pride Foundation’s Goblin Gayla. No, that isn’t misspelled. Saturday night at the Tiniest Bar in Texas, AGLPF will be hosting a mad bash complete with apple-bobbing, a photo booth, tarot card readings, a wig auction, two DJs, dancing, and, of course, cocktails. Note to the Debbie Downers and Killjoys: Costumes are optional.

Austin Yam Jam

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October 16, 2010

Threadgill’s World HQ

Every time you’re tempted to moan about another benefit for some musician who wrecked his car, had his equipment trailer jacked, or broke his wanking arm in a spectacular dive into an apathetic mosh pit, remember that in Austin, benefit money usually flows the other way – and by a large margin. It’s amazing that a city with such abundant wealth habitually relies on the inhabitants of Hand-to-Mouthville to fill its charity coffers. In other cities, fundraising is done with walkathons, bake sales, golf tournaments, or car washes featuring bikini-clad high school girls with soapy sponges, but here in the River City, fundraising involves calling your musician friend and seeing if he can rustle up a few bands that will play for free … for a good cause, of course. Fortunately in the “live music capital of the known universe,” bands outnumber good causes by a hefty ratio, so there is almost always a stellar lineup willing to step up to the plate. Sure, some of the savvier bands might request an ice chest full of Lone Star tallboys or first dibs on the VIP buffet table, but that in no way undermines their altruism. In fact, most bands playing fundraisers don’t even make gas money. If it weren’t for their girlfriends’ day jobs, they would have to walk to the gig. You’ve probably seen some scruffy-looking guy walking down the street with a guitar and thought, “Wow, someone should have a fundraiser for him,” never realizing that he was just between girlfriends and on his way to play a fundraiser. That’s so Austin, isn’t it? Of course, not all fundraisers in Austin are benefit concerts. It just seems like it. There are plenty of golf tournaments, road races, garage sales, and cook-offs that don’t necessarily feature live music but include it nonetheless. Why? Because live music gives it that Austin twist. What runner wouldn’t want to hear 15 seconds or so of original Austin music played by live bands scattered intermittently along the 26 miles of a marathon course? And what band wouldn’t want that gig? Well, as long they are allowed to sell merch and put out a sign up sheet for their mailing list. You really can’t beat that kind of exposure. As common as they are, benefit concerts can be a bit of an ego boost for musicians. People are much more willing to pay a hefty cover for a benefit than they are for a regular show. Maybe it’s because they feel much better about dropping a 10 spot on cancer victims than having it all go to some terminally broke slacker who gets to do what he loves and still manages to score talent that is way above his pay grade. Regardless, as far as benefits go, musicians have been the golden-egg-laying geese in Austin for decades, so forgive them if they sometimes complain about the pain in the ass. Don’t hate; appreciate. It’s a successful, long-standing symbiosis, and ultimately, no matter what the motivation on either side of the relationship, it does good for Austin. If you want an example, check out Sunday’s Yam Jam at Threadgill’s World Headquarters benefiting Operation Turkey, which provides food and clothing for the Austin-area homeless during the Thanksgiving holiday. From 3pm until close A-string artists like Malford Milligan, Jake Andrews, Guy Forsyth, Lance Keltner, David Holt, and Driver will take the stage to help someone other than themselves. That’s truly something to applaud.

Texas Freedom Network’s 15th Anniversary Celebration

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October 6, 2010

Bullock Texas State History Museum

In the world of politics, activism beats apathy every time. A small, well-organized group of complete nut jobs has a much better chance of forwarding its insane agenda than an unorganized multitude of like-minded, reasonable, uninvolved intellectuals. Don’t believe it? Consider Hitler. People are every bit as likely to vote with their guts as they are with their minds – even smart people. More importantly, intellectuals are much less inclined to do the dirty work of politics: the canvassing, the mailing, the sign posting, the cold calling, and the fundraising (which involves more knee pad work than most intellectuals are willing to endure). To be fair, intellectuals are also disgusted with the political process itself, which inherently undermines the integrity of its participants. Anyone who has campaigned for anything – be it PTA second vice chair or assistant county clerk – knows that politics involves a humbling amount of compromise, and very often the first thing that gets compromised is ethics. Politicians who start out on a march toward truth and light sometimes lose their way in the dark forest of financial necessity, public opinion, and political cronyism. What begins as a “means to an end” becomes all about the means with no end in sight. Politics can be very rewarding – especially for those seeking rewards. Thus the ongoing American fascination with “political outsiders.” The problem with political outsiders is that in politics, there aren’t any. Even if you want to somehow subvert the de facto plutocracy of the American political system, you’re still going to have to get on the cock of a whorish number of needy special interest groups in order to get elected. As the Bob Dylan song goes, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Ideally it’s your constituency. Sometimes your constituency is a corporation that funnels millions of dollars to your campaign through a fictitiously named bank account in the Caymans, and sometimes it’s a group of senile, xenophobic old timers with nothing better to do with their time than show up at the polls on voting day. Feeling jaded? You should be, but that doesn’t mean you should abandon politics entirely. Far from it. As mired in bullshit as American politics may be, things are not going to get any better with you sitting up there on your high horse. You’re not going to get rid of Sarah Palin, tea baggers, or even Rick Perry’s spectacular head of exquisitely styled hair by simply bitching about it or wishing it away. You’re going to have to drop some coin … or if you’re financially strapped like most big thinkers, you might even have to do some shit work. Either way, you have to get involved, otherwise you’re going to wake up someday and find the lunatics are running the asylum – just like they were two years ago. Rest assured those crazy bastards always try to get the keys. Thankfully there are sensible, hardworking people like the folks at Texas Freedom Network who make it their daily mission to keep the crazies out. This Thursday TFN is celebrating 15 years of being Texas’ watchdog against the political far right with its Let’s Shake It Up! fundraiser at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. Enjoy dancing, drinking, and silent and live auctions that include, among other things, VIP passes to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart as well as platinum badges to South by Southwest 2011.

Band Together for Hope

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September 29, 2010

Spider House Ballroom

If you’re like most people in Austin, you probably walk around with some extra pocket change. It might be just a few coins that jingle in your jorts and tip off the Hooters waitress you’ve been stalking, or it could be something bigger – maybe some fives and tens that you keep in your wallet for stoned, late-night food-trailer binges – or perhaps you like to roll like a playa and keep a couple of hundies wrapped around a spool of lesser bills, the kind of pocket chum that gold diggers instinctively swarm. Regardless, any way you fold it, you have more than you need. If you weren’t compelled by your love of humanity to deny the tin-can-rattling con artists at traffic lights, the cardboard-sign-carrying fauxmless dudes who work the interstate intersections, and the Drag-worms with their cute, hungry-looking stray dogs in dirty red bandanas, you might go broke – well, except for your Platinum MasterCard. To be fair, you’re probably not one of those people who thinks charity is just a really unimaginative stripper name. You may not be Bill Gates or Eunice Kennedy Shriver, but you’ve hit your share of theatre-group fundraisers, celebrity silent auctions, and high school cheerleader bikini car washes. Really, what more can you do? You can’t save everybody because … as the saying goes … not everybody wants to be saved. In fact, if you were to lean in close enough to that Somali orphan on the TV who appears to be dying of starvation, he just might whisper, “It’s all good,” in your ear. Then again, he might not – and how can you be sure you heard him correctly over the buzz of the fly swarm? That’s what really freezes you into inaction. How can you know for sure? Where do you draw the line? You pony up for a couple of bags of famine rice, and next thing you know, you’re dodging Uzi fire on an aid flotilla headed for Gaza. Truth is, there is a mind-boggling number of worthwhile charities in the world to which you can devote your leisure time and money. How do you decide? Which is most important? Is it better to feed a starving child, keep a kitten from being euthanized, or teach an adult how to read? Who reads anymore anyway? Other than Twitter? Reading just leads to a guilty conscience. Why spend money on something that makes people feel guilty? Don’t we have churches for that? Besides, where would Jesus or Muhammad or Stevie Ray Vaughan want you to bestow your largesse? Save the Children or Ducks Unlimited? Everybody loves ducks – even the people who shoot them. You can’t say that about children. Probably the best thing to do is lean in a little closer to the starving Somali orphan. Maybe he really is saying, “It’s all good,” but maybe what he means is, “Anything you can do will be appreciated.” You’ll need to brush up on your Somali to know for sure. Even still, any time you can step out of your own little drama and help improve the world for others, you’re doing good. No need to get stuck up about it. There’s plenty of selfishness in altruism, but it’s a selfishness that requires wisdom and patience. Yuck. Of course, if you practice doing good regularly, chances are it won’t seem so strange and churchy. You might even learn to have fun with it. Here’s some good news: You can start practicing Saturday, Oct. 2, at the United States Art Authority when the Mother Truckers and Dertybird perform in the third annual Band Together for Hope, a fundraiser for the DiscoverHope Fund, which provides an opportunity for women in poverty to create their own prosperity through microcredit, entrepreneurship, and training. Sound good? It is.

Fantastic Fest

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September 22, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

How could you go wrong with something named Fantastic Fest? Well, OK, if you really loved The English Patient or Lost in Translation, you might not appreciate the jackhammer nuance of Fantastic Fest fare. If The Remains of the Day is your idea of two hours well-spent, then it’s unlikely your taste is going to dovetail with the festival that brought you The Human Centipede – a movie that, if nothing else, shockingly proves the saying, “If you can conceive it, you can achieve it.” It also makes a fairly strong case for 1) remembering to renew your OnStar subscription and 2) the decline of Western civilization. (It’s probably used as an al Qaeda recruitment film too.) As disturbing as The Human Centipede is (the disturbing part not being so much the movie itself but the fact that it actually got funded, filmed, and distributed), it’s not a particularly inventive film. It is, however, an incredibly ballsy one – and perhaps a sobering look at what’s coming down the pike in the horror genre. Expect to see titles like The Human Toilet, Donkey Show Snuff Gallery, and Babies in a Blender, all filmed in 3-D with spectacular computer-generated graphics. Think Grand Theft Auto quality with lots of chain saws, wood chippers, and other dangerous power implements ripping through human flesh in an impressive cascade of urine, feces, and blood. Who wouldn’t want to see that? If you let your imagination run wild, it may just run wild enough to make it into your local cineplex. If you’re really lucky, your imagination might even end up being a video game … or vice versa. Think that’s crazy? Well crazy has already happened plenty of times: Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, BloodRayne, Street Fighter, Wing Commander, Super Mario Bros. The list goes on and on, and, interestingly, no film based on a video game has ever scored higher than 43% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. Critics can be so critical. In comparison, The English Patient rocks an 83%, and The Remains of the Day nearly pegs it at 97%. Somehow James Ivory managed to pull that off without stitching Emma Thompson’s lips to Anthony Hopkins’ keister … well, maybe in a metaphorical sense. The Remains of the Day is its own kind of genre film – that being tedious British films about repressed Victorian values – but fortunately Fantastic Fest doesn’t dabble in that kind of fare. If there is a staid English butler in a Fantastic Fest film, he probably has a full crawl space and is a secret sorcerer, a robot from the future, or a badass martial artist who can plunge his hand into your chest cavity and pull out your still-beating heart. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? It gets even cooler than that – albeit in a slightly nerdy way. Fantastic Fest has more than 170 official screenings, parties, and events: everything from film debates finished off by actual boxing matches to live karaoke, dance parties, video-game competitions, and even an off-site, cow-on-a-spit barbecue complete with knife-throwing and bullwhip demonstrations. This year, during the first four days, Fantastic Fest has transformed the HighBall ballroom into a makeshift arcade that features 29 different games by cutting-edge game developers. Everyone knows that video games are like flypaper for nerds, so if you’re on the prowl for some nerd loving, you’ll definitely want to work that room.

Austin Pagan Pride Day

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September 15, 2010

Zilker Park

Ancient religious texts are hard to burn, aren’t they? It’s not like they’re something useless like science textbooks or old Mad magazines. People really get touchy when you start torching the word of their Lord. You might as well be pitchforking puppies into a wood chipper. With the right publicity campaign, pitchforking puppies might stir up as much outrage as the Americans who want to build a mosque near Ground Zero … well, in the neighborhood … the same neighborhood that has a strip club, an off-the-track betting establishment, and a Starbucks – which, by the way, is a good place to start sniffing around if you’re looking for an organized assault on American values. Three dollars for a cup of bean squeezins? Sweet Jesus, a couple of months of that shit and you could start your own meth lab and dental clinic. What could be more American than that? Christianity you say? Wouldn’t that be nice? Unfortunately, modern American values have very little to do with the teachings of Christ. Jesus espoused nonviolence, poverty, humility, and charity. America is all about Bumfights, Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire?, and The Apprentice. If anything, Christianity is an assault on American values. Jesus specifically said: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor.” That doesn’t sound like Joel Osteen, Toby Keith, or even Barack Obama. That isn’t America. Here in God’s country, we won’t even cough up enough loose change to make sure everyone has access to health care and housing. Why? Because that would be communism. Most American Christians hate communism as much as the devil himself. They would rather let poor people die in the streets than pay higher taxes to fund a government-run health care system. Nonviolence? Ask the 100,000 or so Iraqis who, it turns out, weren’t hiding weapons of mass destruction. Humility? Well, there is one word that starts with the letter “H” that describes Americans’ attitude toward the rest of the world: Hubris. Who knows? Maybe at some point Jesus will come back to Earth … scratch that … to America preaching a gospel of aggression, greed, arrogance, and stupidity. Until then, Americans might want to explore some other religions. Hinduism is intriguing, but there are a lot of Gods to keep track of – maybe there’s an iPhone app. Judaism is basically Christianity old skool – without the Christ. Buddhism is intriguing, but you have to meditate a lot. Bor-ing. Islam? F that S. Americans like to get their drink on and really aren’t terribly hung up on virginity. Ditto for Mormonism. Scientology sounds good until you actually read up on it or (God forbid) watch Battlefield Earth. Rastafarianism? Dope-smoking is already a religion for a lot of Americans, but we like to cannonball it with booze. Really, there are a lot of religions to choose from, each with its own goofy idiosyncrasies. Before you drink the punch, you probably should sample a wide variety to find the one that’s best for you. This Sunday you can check out paganism at Pagan Pride Day at Zilker Park, a chance to expose yourself to a variety of pagan and pagan-friendly artisans and entertainers from the Austin area. Yes, you probably thought you were pagan already, but there’s so much more to it: Wiccans, witches, druids, Asatru, mages – shit you didn’t even know about, and all presumably better than not knowing at all.

AGLIFF

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September 8, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar

Don’t let this freak you out, but there are gays all over Austin. Whoa, right? What’s even crazier is that a lot of them don’t even act gay. So, you could be at some totally straight place (like a cigar shop, a Harley dealership, or a Hooters) and bend over to tie your shoes and have a whole bunch of them just run up and start humping you … and there you go … you’re headed straight to hell, and you were just innocently practicing pedestrian safety. Is it your fault if you have an ass that is just irresistible to gays? Hell no! Are you supposed to wear baggy jeans from Old Navy your whole life to avoid eternal damnation? Maybe. It’s hard to say, and Leviticus is a bit of a literary slog anyway. Really it’s best to be on guard at all times … everywhere. Yes, that sounds paranoid – phobic even – with an ass like that you can’t be too cautious. There are gays everywhere – not just the easily identifiable grab bag of Village People stereotypes (Native American? Really?) but cleverly straight-looking doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, landscapers, interior design consultants, and even the prep nurse for your vasectomy. As frightening as that sounds, who else would you trust to be so close to your junk with a straight razor and a handful of shaving cream? Even still, just the idea of not necessarily knowing which people are gay is enough to keep you up at nights. How can you sleep knowing your UPS guy is suspiciously buff and his uniform fits almost perfectly? He seems to use the word “package” a lot, too. What’s up with that? Is that some sort of gay come on? The skinny guy at the sandwich shop seems a little questionable, too. He always asks if you want extra mayonnaise and a pickle – even when you’re ordering a meatball sub. And what about your pottery instructor? Does he really need to encircle you in his arms when you’re at the pottery wheel? Isn’t there some other way he could demonstrate proper technique? And why does “Unchained Melody” always seem to be playing on his jam box? That can’t just be coincidence. You probably wonder sometimes if you’re just imagining that the good-looking guy behind you at the ATM is staring at your glutes. Why wouldn’t he be? They’re irresistible. In fact, that’s your big problem. You’re irresistible to gays, and you’re not even trying. You’ll probably never know for sure though, because you’re ceaselessly vigilant about keeping an eye out for them. It’s nerve-racking. Probably the best thing for you to do is just assume that everyone is gay. That way you won’t have to worry about whether someone who looks straight is actually gay. Of course, if you assume everyone is gay, then you have to assume you’re gay too. What a relief! Now you don’t have to act all butch to prove you aren’t gay. Go ahead and cross your legs, TiVo Glee, and rock that Justin Bieber haircut you’ve always wanted. The world’s your oyster. Time to start digging for pearls. A good place to do some pearl-diving this weekend is at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. Through Sunday, Sept. 12, the Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival will be offering a full slate of some of the best LGBTQI (for you straights, that’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersexed) films being made. There are also some bumping parties planned, like Sunday night’s closing BearCity aGLIFF Afterparty at Cheer Up Charlie’s. Should be a fun time, but if you’re at all worried about exposing your irresistible ass, just keep it planted firmly in a seat at the Alamo Drafthouse.

‘Hammy and the Kids’

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September 1, 2010

La Zona Rosa CLOSED

Listen to the Audio Version of this artcle.

Just think: If you were in Canada right now, you would be chill. Give it some thought. Canada is only one border crossing away, and, unlike Americans, Canadians are much more respectful to their southern neighbors. In fact, in a lot of places along the U.S.-Canadian border, there’s not much of a border at all – maybe a ditch, a swath of clear-cut forest, or, like in Derby Line, Vt., a simple line painted across the street. How awesome would it be to do the Hokey-Pokey in two countries at the same time? Really … not much more awesome than actually doing the Hokey-Pokey. Regardless, no need to pay a coyote for a run across that border. In fact, the biggest threats in crossing the Canadian border are gray wolves and grizzlies. They’re particularly fond of people who smell like bacon – Canadian or otherwise – so if you decide to scarf down a few Egg McMuffins before your hike into the promised land, you might want to consider packing a loaded .45 and a couple of spare clips. Back before 9/11, crossing into Canada was even easier. You didn’t have to declare anything except maybe your intent to get pissed on Molson’s and bang anything that didn’t look like a moose or a Mountie. In those days, Canadians were willing to tolerate unconscionable levels of obnoxiousness. Not only that, they let almost anybody into their country: draft dodgers, the Grateful Dead, boat people, the French. The result is one huge frozen cultural clusterfuck that has contributed more to American society than the entire state of Wyoming – and that includes Jackson Pollock and Dick Cheney (who, by the way, are no strangers to clusterfucks themselves). Strangely, as diverse a place as Canada is, Canadians are largely a peace-loving people – unless you happen to be a moose with a huge rack or the opposing hockey team. Canadians also have a likable humility and a great sense of humor – traits conditioned by years of being America’s ruthlessly hazed sidekick. Think of it this way: Canada is the Paul Shaffer to America’s Letterman. Would it surprise you to know that Paul Shaffer is Canadian? Of course not. He’s incredibly talented, has a great sense of humor, is amazingly humble, and is loved by everyone. Letterman, on the other hand, was apparently loving anything that wasn’t a moose or a Mountie. When it comes to tapping the office talent, nice guys always finish last, eh? Or at least a close second. Canadians (other than Tommy Lee trainee Pamela Anderson) really don’t put off the sexual freak vibe anyway. Maybe it’s their layered clothing, their chirpy disposition, or their inability to put on a game face for anything other than a hockey brawl. In truth, Canadians may actually be freaks, but they keep in on the DL … at least until their boyfriends videotape it and post it on the Internet. There are some, however, who couldn’t keep it on the DL even if they tried: Howie Mandel, Jim Carrey, Kiefer Sutherland, and, of course, Kids in the Hall‘s least popular member and most successful freak Kevin McDonald, who will be in town this weekend for the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. Sunday evening at La Zona Rosa, McDonald will be performing Hammy and the Kids, billed as “A one-man exploration of working with the Kids in the Hall and coping with an alcoholic father.” Joining McDonald on musical numbers will be Canadian guitarist/alt-folker Alun Piggins, who would be playing Paul Shaffer to McDonald’s Letterman if McDonald weren’t Canadian.

‘Austin Chronicle’ Hot Sauce Festival

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August 25, 2010

Waterloo Park

You might ask yourself: “Why here? Why now?” Waterloo Park in late August will be hotter than Satan’s taint – sweatier too. Of course, the same could be said of Austin in general, so apparently there are quite a few people here in Weirdsville who don’t mind a hot, sweaty taint. Hot, sweaty taints were all the rage back when Waterloo was the name of a village on the banks of Shoal Creek instead of a municipal park sandwiched between a hospital and a parking garage, but ever since the advent of air conditioning, Fudgsicles, and more recently, South by Southwest, Austin is a much cooler place. People all over the world (who can actually point it out on a map) are always saying it, so how can it not be true? Austin actually is cool – as long as you stay inside for about eight months of the year. Easy enough, right? You may have to quit smoking and work the bleached-out vampire look, but it’s doable. You might also want to check in to getting one of those remote start devices for your car. That way, as long as the soles of your goth shoes don’t melt during your mad dash through the parking lot, you will only have to endure a few seconds of roasting. Remember: Dogs die in hot cars. So could you. If you don’t have a car with air conditioning … or for that matter if you don’t have a car at all, you are, to paraphrase, up Shoal Creek without a paddle. Like the original settlers of Waterloo, you are condemned to chase the shade like cows and, when things get really desperate, shrink your scroat in the frigid water of Barton Springs. Really, Barton Springs is the only sure bet. Shade is nice and all, but it can easily reach 100 even in the shade, and if the humidity’s anywhere in the normal range, your clothes will always feel like a hot swimsuit that hasn’t quite dried out yet. Sure, you can wear light, cool clothing. Couldn’t hurt. A thong is light and cool – at least for the parts of your body that aren’t in contact with it – but rest assured your taint will be a raging red furnace. Regardless of what you wear or don’t, you’re going to sweat like a whore in church, so even if you’re dressed like one, you still need to drink lots of water. Back in the old days, hydration was much more of a sticky wicket. It contained things like cholera, intestinal parasites, Comanche poop from up river, and water moccasins (not Weejun preppy loafers, but real, poisonous snakes). Nowadays, however, there is always some benevolent corporation willing to slap its logo on a plastic bottle, fill it with water, and sell it to you for a few dollars. That way you can avoid the embarrassment of violent bouts of bloody diarrhea, stomach cramps, and projectile vomiting. There is also a small chance you might develop breast buds from synthetic estrogen released from the plastic bottle the water comes in, but hey, everybody likes boobies, right? Oh yeah, and also there are apparently enough plastic water bottles to encircle the globe 190 times. Apparently somebody is staying hydrated. That’s the key to a healthy life isn’t it? It’s certainly the key to a healthy Hot Sauce Festival. Beer will only get you so far when it comes to withering heat – if you don’t down a little water along with it, it eventually will get you to the first aid tent. That’s an important thing to remember if you’re attending this Sunday’s 20th annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival. Your body is definitely going to burn through some water – either from the heat of the sun or the heat of the sauces in the tasting tent. Usually the samples run into the hundreds, and for a couple of cans of food from your pantry, you can taste them all if you have the fortitude. It’s an epicurean extravaganza that is about as uniquely Austin as they come. Certainly it’s worth a little sweat on your taint.

Aye Eye Ball

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August 18, 2010

The Off Center

Piracy is in, so it only follows that pirates should be as well. Problem is, there are a lot of pirates to choose from and not all of them are equally cool. For instance, intellectual pirates, the most common pirates by far these days, are a thoroughly uninspiring lot consisting of a large swath of humanity: shut-ins, eggheads, techno-geeks, cocooners – pretty much anyone with a high-speed Internet connection and flexible morals. As far as fashion sense, pretty much anything goes as long as it’s comfortable enough to allow for long spells in front of a computer monitor. In an office environment this would mean business casual – maybe some Dockers, a polo shirt, and some Vibram-soled shoes. At home, however, where most intellectual pirates do their plundering, the dress code is a bit more lax – anything from a food-stained terrycloth bathrobe down to just a simple pair of tighty-whiteys with worn-out elastic will suffice. Probably a significant number of intellectual pirates pirate porn, which doesn’t really require much in the way of accessories other than a bottle of lotion, a box of tissues, or some sort of silicone prosthesis with a cute nickname like “Wankenstein,” “The Dildozer,” or “King Dong.” Really, if you can’t pirate porn in your birthday suit, why even bother? Somali pirates are getting quite a bit of ink these days too – not skull-and-crossbones tattoos but media attention. They deserve it, if only for their ability to dream big. Sure, they probably swashbuckled their way through plenty of expensive private yachts, but those are just toy boats compared to something like a Saudi supertanker. It’s amazing what a few enterprising young men can do on the high seas with a motorboat, some AK-47s and a couple of RPGs. Costumewise, however, Somali pirates are only a small step up from their pasty-skinned, computer-savvy counterparts – which is truly heartbreaking considering most have runway model physiques. To maintain a similar look, Heidi Klum would have to snort an ounce of meth a day, eat a bucket of tapeworms, and stick her finger down her throat after every meal. Even still, as model-thin as Somali pirates are, they still have a way to go with costume design. Their outfits may be functional, but basketball shorts, bandanas, and bandoliers are simply too avant-garde a look for anyone not perched menacingly on the bow of a longboat. Of course, the biggest fashion faux pas of Somali pirates is that they want it too badly. Desperation isn’t attractive to anyone except maybe sex tourists in Thailand. The key to a really successful pirate look is a devil-may-care attitude – something that is essential when you’re wearing a puffy shirt and buckle shoes. The nice thing about traditional pirate wear is that it’s a fairly easy look to nail: captain’s hat or bandana, eye patch, beard, puffy shirt, sash (remember that devil-may-care thing?), billowy pants, parrot (fake is best unless you want a smack-talking wingman who occasionally flies up to the mainmast and shits on your head), and, if you really want to take one for the team, a peg leg. Easy enough, right? You probably have a hacksaw and a tourniquet laying around somewhere. Of course, the most fun thing about being a pirate is talking like one. No, it never gets annoying, and anyone can do it. Tiger Woods can probably do a serviceable pirate. Martha Stewart can too. It’s almost as easy as doing an English accent, and like an English accent it’s hilarious to nearly everybody, except maybe the English. All you really need to channel your inner pirate is a few anachronistic nautical terms and a complete willingness to abandon your dignity. If you’ve got that, you’re ready for Saturday’s Aye Eye Ball, this year’s iteration of the Rude Mechanicals’ annual Eye Ball fundraiser. The Aye Aye Ball, though maybe not exactly a pirate shindig, is at least nautically themed, featuring a silent and live auctions; music by Eye Ball DJ for life, Graham “Poseidon” Reynolds; and an appearance by high-society hostess Rebecca Havemeyer. You could certainly rock your vintage cruise wear to this fete, but pirates get more booty.

Top Drawer’s 17th Birthday Party

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August 10, 2010

Top Drawer Thrift

Need some new clothes? If you’re going to drop coin on that David Bowie “Let’s Dance” button-down shirt at Target, you might as well strap on a pair of golf cleats and do a river dance on a litter of baby seal pups. Oh yeah, and if you truly are that heartless, at least make sure you buy your golf cleats at a thrift store, otherwise you might as well stomp on yet another litter of baby seal pups. Fashion is a bloody business … even when PETA isn’t involved. On the other hand, every time you buy some type of hot new designer togs, you’re giving some 9-year-old Asian kid a valuable 14-hour-a-day job. Sleep well, clothes pony. You might have saved that child from a life of prostitution and homelessness. Of course, buying new clothes and cleating baby seal pups aren’t the only ways of raping the environment. There are literally tons and tons of brand-new useless things you can buy that will not only clutter and complicate your own life but will also waste environmental resources and litter up the earth. Here’s a good rule when shopping: If you see something made out of plastic that also comes packaged in plastic, buy it. When you pay for it, ask them to put it in a plastic bag. Congratulations! You just gave one or more multinational petrochemical corporations something known as a “happy ending.” Remember, even as you read this, American patriots are giving their lives to keep you flush with plastic. Don’t dishonor their service by easing off the throttle of your mindless consumerism. Keep buying shit. Don’t worry about paying for it – you can use plastic. That way, not only are you giving a multinational petrochemical corporation a happy ending, you’re giving a multinational financial institution one as well. You also might want to buy a pair of plastic safety goggles and a plastic rain poncho, because at this point, the corporate jizz will be flowing pretty thick. Sounds like a Japanese porn site, but what else can you do? It’s not like you’re going to start raising chinchillas or Angora goats or, worse yet, hemp, which unlike the first two is not only batshit crazy but illegal. Cotton farming is also problematic in that it involves farming cotton, which is a bigger pain in the ass than trying to shave a goat in the middle of August in Texas. Nothing feels better than a face full of wool on a hot, sweaty summer day … and no, that’s not a euphemism. Even if you did somehow miraculously raise enough chinchillas to slaughter, you would still have to figure out something attractive to do with their pelts … something that doesn’t look like it was designed by Leatherface from Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Sewing is tedious work anyway – the sort of thankless toil Asian preteens are best suited for, apparently. Instead of spending sleepless nights wracked with guilt over the child labor syndicate you’re running by proxy from a self-service checkout stand at Walmart, maybe you should seriously consider buying your clothes secondhand. At least when you buy used clothing, you know what they’re going to look like after a few washings. Not only that, you get the good feeling of knowing you didn’t throw an extra dead baby seal on humanity’s trash heap … or at least the plastic equivalent. Sometimes too, if you’re really lucky, the place you go thrift shopping will exist for the sole benefit of raising money for a charitable organization, just like Top Drawer Thrift does for Project Transitions. This Saturday, Aug. 14, from 10am to 7pm, Top Drawer is celebrating its 17th anniversary with an all-day party featuring special deals, music, food, drink, and a raffle. You really should drop by and see what Top Drawer have in your size. You might be amazed. Even if you’re not, you can still get fed, watered, and rocked without paying a dime. Should be funner than a baby seal golf cleat river dance.

Micro Championship Wrestling

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August 3, 2010

AFS Cinema

Whatever you do, don’t call it midget wrestling. Why? Good question. Pro wrestling has not traditionally been the model of political correctness. Rather than play down the differences of its competitors, pro wrestling has always built them up to comic extremes. Who can forget (remember?) ring legends like Ivan Putski “The Polish Power,” Norman “Black Magic” Smiley, Sheamus O’Shaunessy “The Irish Curse,” Umaga “The Samoan Bulldozer,” or “The Spaniard” Crusher Verdu? If none of the preceding sound familiar to you, you’re probably not a pro wrestling fan. Congratulations! You also probably didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks in a trailer that smelled like moldy carpet and burnt toast. Feel free then to enjoy a little smug condescension for the unsoaped riffraff who find it entertaining. Regardless of what John Irving and sundry Greek philosophers would have you believe, wrestling has never been a big sport for thinkers. Sure, there’s a certain amount of strategy and cunning involved (well-concealed brass knuckles or maybe a surprise metal folding chair to the back of the head, for instance), but most of the time simple brute force prevails, just like in the real world. Wrestling is an age-old reality series that dates back thousands of years, probably to the dawn of man. The Chinese did it … as did the Egyptians and eventually the ancient Greeks, who passed it on to the Romans, who in turn passed it on like herpes (also Greek) to most of the world. The Greeks, however, get special credit for really refining the sport. They actually made up rules … and perhaps more importantly, had the means to write them down. Genius. Back in Greek times dudes wrestled dudes in the buff … while coated in oil. These days that sort of thing only happens at financially distressed gay bars on off-nights. The spectacle is much the same, except that in ancient Greece, it was against the rules to grab your opponent’s nut sack, even if just for a sensual caress. No, the ancient Greeks were much more into the violent aspects of wrestling. Other than hitting, kicking … or the previously mentioned scrotum grab, pretty much anything was fair game: choking, bending (breaking) fingers, gouging eyes … all of which still exist in modern pro wrestling, it’s just that they are illegal and usually the shameless, desperate behavior of the bad-guy wrestlers, known in the business as “heels.” Heels are the comic book villains of the pro wrestling world whose job it is to inspire hatred from fans through various forms of dastardly behavior directed toward “faces,” the good-guy heroes of wrestling. As with any good soap opera or reality series, the plot is thickened by switching things up every now and then. The bad guys become the good guys, the good guys the bad, and so on … sort of like an average episode of Jersey Shore or America’s Next Top Model. Yes, both are filled with buffoonish characters that everyone loves to hate, but the difference with wrestling is that it lacks even the scarce subtlety of reality TV. Therefore, if you are going to see wrestling, leave your thinking cap at home. You don’t want to ruin the experience by overanalyzing. This is especially true of midget wrestling. It’s best that you start by completely suspending both your disbelief and your moral superiority. This Friday offers a chance to do just that when Micro Championship Wrestling mixes it up at the Marchesa Hall on I-35. To whet your appetite for small-scale destruction, here’s a quote from the MCW website: “MCW Superstars have performed with Rock Stars: Kid Rock, DMX, Iron Maiden, Slipknot and others. They have also been featured on tons of TV Shows: Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, MTV, WWE, TNA, and Major Roles in The Bleeding and 100 Tears to name a couple.” That’s doesn’t sound unbelievable at all, does it? Question is, does it sound exciting?

Knife Party! With the Jungle Rockers, Salesman, Flatcar Rattlers

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July 28, 2010

Hole in the Wall

What a huge comfort it is to know that we live in a country where just about anyone can legally own and carry weapons. The saying, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” works equally well for broadswords and bazookas. Really, who wants to live in a nation where a toddler can’t grab a hair-triggered revolver from his grandparents’ nightstand and accidentally blow his brains out? Unthinkable, isn’t it? Are we going to punish millions of senile paranoiacs just because some 3-year-old’s parents didn’t teach him proper gun safety? That’s just another step toward outright totalitarianism. Should outlaws and their children to be the only ones who have the luxury of committing suicide with a merciful bullet to the temple? Seems unfair to the law-abiding clinically depressed. Other methods of suicide take so much more effort and planning. You can’t just go off half-cocked. Sure, gunshot suicides can be a little messy, but life itself is messy, and in these tough economic times, there are plenty of able-bodied citizens willing to do the cleanup for next to nothing – especially if our freedom is at stake. Perhaps most importantly, the right to “keep and bear arms” is essential to forming “well-regulated militias,” which the Second Amendment says are “necessary to the security of a free state.” As anyone in Northern Idaho will tell you, the only way to truly secure the blessings of liberty is to let the government know that you won’t succumb to totalitarianism without a firefight. When the government’s Apache gunships come swooping down from the heavens with their 625-rounds-per-minute 30 mm cannons, Hydra rockets, and Hellfire missiles, militia members will valiantly defend freedom with small caliber arms fire and improvised explosive devices … for a few seconds … until the Apaches reduce them to a fine, pink mist … freedom mist. Anyone who has seen the WikiLeaks video of the Iraqi journalists getting ventilated by an Apache gunship in 2007 has an idea of how useful small arms will be in securing a modern free state. Trying to fend off one of those nightmarish bastards with anything less than a Stinger missile is outright lunacy. You might as well be packing a camera and a tripod. Anyone seriously wanting to defend liberty should consider pushing the button in a voting booth before they flip the safety on an automatic weapon. Just like cities blow money on fireworks displays on the Fourth of July, America spends billions and billions of dollars on badass weapons so you don’t have to. That said, shooting guns can be a lot of fun, but you probably don’t want emotionally unstable people like the double rainbow guy walking around with an AK-47. It’s just not good public policy. There has to be some middle ground where people can shoot animals, tin cans, and themselves, but maybe not their fellow high school students or postal employees. It’s a balancing act to be sure, but who really needs a machine gun or even a semiautomatic pistol to go hunting? Polar bear hunters, maybe. The rest of us just need to nut up and take better aim. This is not to say that you couldn’t murder a lot of people with a bolt-action rifle; it only makes it harder – just like it’s harder for someone to “accidentally” knife someone to death. Knifing someone to death takes dedication and follow-through, even with a fairly good-sized blade. Knives aren’t handguns, but they’re still pretty dangerous, which is a good reason you should probably leave your knife at home when you go out drinking … except this Saturday, because the Hole in the Wall is hosting Knife Party! Bring your legal pocket knives (everybody has more than one, right?) to the Hole between 6 and 9pm and get it sharpened for free! You can also enjoy old timey music by Flatcar Rattlers; lyrical, acoustic indie rock by Salesman; and the wallet chain surf twang of the Jungle Rockers. Hey, with all those sharp knives around, do you even need to be told to drink responsibly? That’s the genius of the Second Amendment. Let’s see how well it works.