2006

Thundercloud Subs Turkey Trot

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MON., NOV. 20, 2006

Thanksgiving is the most American of all holidays – not because it reminds us of how the Native Americans (sometimes referred to by the Freudian phrase “Naive Americans”) welcomed the white men with open arms and saved them from starvation (a small kindness white men repaid with disease, famine, and genocide), and not because it is a holiday that reminds us to be thankful for what we have (approximately 3.7 million square miles of prime real estate previously inhabited by said Native Americans). If you buy that shit, you truly are a naive American. No, Thanksgiving is the most American of all holidays because it is all about the thing America does best: eating. Whether or not we’re really thankful for it, this Thursday Americans will be gorging themselves with heaping piles of food, stretching their intestines like sausage casings with criminally bland cuisine: turkey, potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, and stuffing (which, ironically, is suitably descriptive of all the preceding). With the exception of a few hypercompetitive, skinny Japanese guys with hot dog fetishes, Americans eat more than just about anybody else in the world. We’re big people with big appetites, and Thanksgiving is America’s superbowl of gluttony. We eat all day and when we’re not eating we engage in an impressive amount of sloth. Combined, these two (in)activities create luxurious folds of body fat. Seriously, take a long, slow waddle around the mall on Friday with the other 200-million-or-so bargain hunters, and you’ll think you’re at a sumo wrestling tournament. It may seem like they’re out to knock off their third deadly sin, avarice, but really they’re just getting too big for their clothes. Most Americans, like their cell phone plans, have rollover. How do we solve the problem? Do away with Turkey Day? Not hardly, but maybe a quick jog Thanksgiving morning wouldn’t hurt. Fortunately for Austinites Thundercloud Subs sponsors their annual Turkey Trot, a 5K fun run benefiting Caritas, a local charity that fights poverty, hunger, and homelessness. You might not get rid of your rollover in a 5K, but you should feel a little better about engaging in some gluttony and sloth.

Batfest

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MON., AUG. 28, 2006

Batfest 2006

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

Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival

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MON., AUG. 21, 2006

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

11th Annual Bastille Day Festival

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TUE., JULY 11, 2006

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

Urban Music Festival

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THU., APRIL 6, 2006

Austin needs another music festival about as much as Dallas needs another chain restaurant; as much as Houston needs another refinery; as much as San Antonio needs another pro sports arena. We sure don’t need another music festival, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t support one. Austinites are huge chumps for anyone with the wherewithal to rent some park space and erect some stage scaffolding. It doesn’t matter that the headlining act is the musical equivalent of Gary Coleman/Danny Bonaduce/Jamie Farr and the openers sideline in Chapman Motor ads; it’s really more about giving the cultural hoi polloi a few hundred square yards of dusty terra to work their stuff – ideally shirtless or halter-topped, glistening with a bronze patina of sweat, sunblock, and pulverized caliche; clutching the warm, backwash remains of a light beer, and ripping off a deafening two-finger whistle whenever the guitarist goes into one of those masturbatory diddly-diddly riffs. Who says the only talent is on the stage? Still, if you’re one of those rare Austinites who hasn’t experienced the sublime catharsis of music fandom, maybe Austin hasn’t been playing your tune. This weekend the tune will get a little funkier – not just because the Texas Relays will be bringing more than 40,000 African-Americans to Austin from all across the state and nation, but because in conjunction with them, Austin will host its first-ever Urban Music Festival, an outdoor concert at Auditorium Shores featuring Chaka Khan, Ray Parker Jr., Michael Henderson, members of Parliament Funkadelic and the Brothers Johnson, rapper/singer/actor/BET host Ray J, and comedian Joe Torry, as well as local artists like Blue Mist, Bavu Blakes, Les and the Funk Mob, Nook, and All U Need. Rest assured that if the Relays don’t keep you busy, the UMF will.

SXSW Free Concert with Spoon & Echo & the Bunnymen

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THU., MARCH 16, 2006

You may not feel it yet, but it’s on. You might be tooling around Pflugerville in your honeydipper truck, hoovering up porta-potty turds and listening to Tom Petty 8-tracks, but down here in the bowels of the city, the SXSW shit has hit the fans. There’s music all over the goddamned place: Sidewalks, trailers, parking lots, back yards, restaurants, coffee shops … it’s only a matter of time before some earnest group of aspiring musicians starts serenading badge-holders in the Hilton crapper … talk about a captive audience … plus the great acoustics. Peers will get to hear condensed radio tracks, and pooers will get the extended club mixes. On the way out the door, lucky listeners will receive breath mints with the band’s logo, a shot of cologne, and a press kit. “Have a nice day Mr. Mottola, and don’t forget the Crotch Rockets’ unofficial showcase 9:30am Sunday morning at the Jiffy Lube on Ben White. They’re totally gonna ROCK, plus you get 15% off your oil change.” Yes, it’s Springtime in Austin, and music is in the air. Well, music and the smell of nervous sweat and desperation. Nowhere else in the world are so many people trying so hard to be loved and trying so hard not to show it. No doubt SXSW is a depraved scene, but anytime art and commerce engage in such a shameless clusterfuck, there’s bound to be a little ugliness. The beauty of it all is that ultimately, music lovers still get the most out of SXSW. Yes, the badge-holders pretty much have the run of the place, but there’s more than enough musical spillover to keep everyone happy. For instance, tonight at Auditorium Shores, SXSW throws a bone to the badgeless with a free concert featuring Mr. Lif, Blackalicious, Music Awards sweepers Spoon, and Eighties post-punkers Echo & the Bunnymen. If these four acts ever share the same stage again, it won’t be on this earth.

Nuts and Bolts Valentine’s Party

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SAT., FEB. 11, 2006

Tuesday is Valentine’s Day. For single people in the workplace – at least those in a mixed-gender environment – it’s also known as “Awkward Moments Day,” that harrowing eight-hour gauntlet when iPods are worn like garlic necklaces, when diabetic bracelets are flashed like gangsta bling, when the hot receptionist gives the phone-call-stiff-arm Heisman pose all day. Be Mine? Talk to the hand. Here’s the bad news, Sparky: If you’re waiting around until Valentine’s to bust a move, your Love Boat is already sunk. Invest in a blowup doll. Macking on V-Day is about as hopeless as flashing that split-fingered, tongue-flicking cunnilingus sign favored by ogling construction workers and shirtless guys in Camaros. You might as well scrawl a big “L” on your forehead with a red Sharpie. You might as well wear your cell phone on a belt clip, eat Limburger and pickled herring for lunch, and remove your earwax with your car keys. Maybe you’re confused about Valentine’s Day. Understandable. You’ve been getting mixed messages: Hearts, cupids, roses, chocolates, beanie babies, pink, red … forget that shit. V-Day is for closing the deal, not initiating the transaction. If you’re single, you should avoid it like bird flu. Hunker down, order one of those Cheesy Bites pizzas, and resolve to be the dog that hits the track early next year. Of course, if you’re one of those impatient types and want your bunny now, there’s at least one last hope: This Saturday Fadó is hosting a “Nuts and Bolts” Valentine’s party. The idea is that all the men at the party get bolts and all the women get nuts. Then everyone walks around trying to get screwed. Sound crass? Maybe, but it’s much too late for subtle metaphor. If you don’t hook up you can still claim you got screwed

Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums’ Burns Supper

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SAT., JAN. 21, 2006

When was the last time you stared into the dark, gaping maw of your own mortality? Maybe it was that time you had a few too many rum drinks at Louie’s Backyard in South Padre and nearly lost your drunken brawl with the undertow? How about that pocket of wicked turbulence over the Rockies on the redeye back from Vegas? Both browned your knickers quite nicely, no doubt, but the face of death you can’t shake belonged to the leathery skinned, blue haired lounge lizard giving you the skunk eye from across the $3 blackjack table at Binion’s Horseshoe: Liver spots, smoker’s cough, wheezing, watery-eyed cackle, vintage 1970s polyester leisure suit offering up a pungent olfactory memoir of every soaked-up scent of the last 30 years. While you were out doing the dew he was already dewing the done. In your mind you see him willfully plunging into the abyss with roughly 40 years of belay rope strung between you. Eventually that slack will play out and you’ll be yanked down with him. Scary ain’t it? Old folks are so scary and they don’t even know it. They dig old timey music like the Stones, the Beatles, and the Eagles, wear black leather jackets and Hawaiian shirts, and drive PT Cruisers and Harleys. They’re also really hard drinkers and relentless raconteurs: fun to hang out with as long as you’re not doing anything aerobic. This Saturday at the Senior Activity Center on Shoal Crest (that’s not a typo), you can chill with the Q-tips at the Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums’ Burns Supper. The STPD is a Scottish bagpipe and drum band with kilts and caps and even those little Braveheart fanny packs – dope plaid pimpin’. Not surprisingly, the Burns Supper honors Robert Burns, the national bard of Scotland and not Montgomery Burns, diabolical geezer from the Simpsons. It involves Scottish food, drink, dancing, singing, poetry, and plenty of bagpiping. If you’re into haggis, Ed Miller, and pipers in kilts, it’s suppertime. Don’t let the blue hair scare you.