ew Year’s Eve With the Diamond Smugglers and Pong

The Luv Doc Recommends

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.

Dale Watson’s Annual Christmas Show & Dance

The Luv Doc Recommends

December 22, 2009

Ideally by now the manic materialist melee of the Christmas shopping season is behind you. There may be a few last-minute convenience-store runs for retaliatory gifting, but hey, you can’t anticipate everything. It’s not realistic to expect gifts from your yoga teacher, your postal carrier, or the person who towels sweat off the equipment at your gym. What the fuck? This isn’t Japan. People should at least be on a bro hug basis before they start buying useless shit for one another. A good rule of gifting is that if a present can be procured at the dollar store, a nice card will probably suffice. Handmade will do, too. You might even get away with a Monk-e-mail. Popping for Uchi gift certificates or weekend stays at the Four Seasons is downright creepy unless you’re a real estate agent or a personal injury lawyer. Even a box of Godiva chocolates is a bit ostentatious for any relationship that doesn’t involve blood relatives, heavy petting, or perhaps some sort of disturbing combination of the two. Otherwise, disproportionate gifting just has one effect: awkwardness. Sadly, as much as you might try to duck and cover during the holiday season, somebody you would never expect will inevitably drop a gift bomb on you. That is why you should say a little prayer of thanks for all the unrepentant heathens who keep their 24-hour convenience stores open year round. You just never know if your reclusive next-door neighbor with foil on his windows is going to drop by with a fruit basket, a cheese ball, or a used pizza box full of pot brownies. Even though you know for an absolute certainty that his heartfelt offering of friendship will soon be clogging up your garbage disposal, you will still feel enough of a tinge of guilt to send you down to the corner store at 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve to buy him an ice scraper and a bottle of 10W-30 motor oil in retaliation. You could get him a sleeve of Donettes and a six-pack of Smirnoff Ice, but you won’t want him thinking you’re trying to get in his pants. Smarter, shrewder types will just leave the giver hanging … not even a thank you note. It’s a ballsy play, but the idea behind that strategy is solid: A giver is like a hungry kitten at your screen door. If you just ignore it, it will eventually go away. In the real world, not everyone has the cold chrome heart it takes to ignore a hungry, mewing kitten – not even a metaphorical one. Money can’t buy everything, but occasionally it can buy some last-minute peace of mind, and sometimes that peace of mind just happens to come through a metal sliding drawer beneath a bulletproof glass window at 3am on Christmas morning – or as the Sikh on the other side of the glass likes to call it, “December 25.” Regardless of what you call it, at least on Christmas Day the pressure is off. You might have done good or completely screwed the pooch with the gifting, but on C-Day there’s no use worrying about it. In the immortal words of Clayton Williams, you might as well relax and enjoy it. “It” ideally would be Dale Watson’s annual Christmas Show & Dance at the Continental Club. If you’re on the fence about country music, Dale will definitely make you a believer. Plus there’s no better way to meet the opposite gender in Austin than knowing how to country dance, so stop being stuck up and give it a whirl.

James McMurtry

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

FRI., NOV. 11, 2005

It says a lot that on a Friday night when you could be out trying to get laid you’re at the Continental Club watching James McMurtry. Sure, you could be dirty dancing at some theme club down on Sixth Street, poppin’ that ass, throwing back Jello shots, getting your mack on…because yeah, you occasionally roll like that, but sometimes you also like to peel back the skin from the onion that is you and reveal a deeper, intellectual layer, that smirking bastard spawn of erudition and irony who appreciates a well turned phrase nearly as much as the lure of tawdry disco sex. In fact, if you could figure out a way to sell the sizzle of that whole “interesting person” steak you’ve been cooking up, you might just find yourself swimming in sex, but be forewarned that most of your thoughtful, bookish types – let’s call them “readers” – generally have to be led by the hand to the dark, dense delta of the promised land. This is not to say that it’s absolutely impossible to find hot sex at a James McMurtry show. Weirder shit has happened, but you may have to massage your definition of “hot” a bit. Probably wouldn’t kill you to do that anyway, would it? Here’s the thing: You may not share bodily fluids with any of the people at the Continental Club Friday, but by the end of the night you will share the common belief that James McMurtry is one of the finest songwriters to ever stumble into this burg. Sure, he’s got pedigree, but he also has the decency to not waste it. If anything, James’ songs pack as much meaning into a few verses as the several hundred page tomes of his father. There is refinement at work here; evolution. Even still, the younger McMurtry won’t be trumping the elder with sales records anytime soon. Dense as they may be, McMurtry’s lyric laden songs still clock in several minutes longer than commercial radio’s attention deficit 3 minute pop song format. They’re packed with carefully observed details of the commonplace ingeniously woven through with larger themes – the kind of stuff that rolls around in your head for years and pays you unexpected visits like acid flashbacks. Can you dance to them? Yeah, maybe. James has a thunderous, ass kicking rhythm section (Ronnie Johnson and Darren Hess, a.k.a. the “Heartless Bastards”) and has some impressive guitar chops his own self, but more than likely you’ll be too frozen in slack-jawed awe to bust a move. That’s all right. You can impress the hotties some other night. Maybe you can live with not getting laid. Maybe sometimes it’s enough just to have your mind blown.

Tribute to the King

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

FRI., JAN. 9, 2004

If you were planning on sitting home this weekend getting lubed and quietly celebrating Linda Lovelace’s birthday with a private screening of Deep Throat, think again. Linda isn’t the only deceased entertainer celebrating a birthday this weekend. People the world over are also commemorating the birth of an even more popular entertainer: Bob Denver. Wait a minute. Bob’s not dead. That’s right, Jan. 9 the skipper’s little buddy will turn 69 – most likely without the aid of Linda Lovelace who would have been a relatively spry 55. One thing is for certain: When Gilligan turns 69, you can bet he will be wearing his first mate’s hat and maybe even his red shirt with the white collar. If he’s lucky, maybe Maryann will send him another ounce of pot in the mail. Keep your fingers crossed, Bob. Sixty-nine is better than the alternative – the one currently being experienced by one Elvis Aaron Presley, who checked out more than a quarter-century ago, ostensibly because of an “erratic heartbeat.” Elvis would have turned 69 on Jan. 8, but chances are the King had a more than passing familiarity with the number, having lived an impressively full life even at the age of 42. Elvis may not have been bigger than Jesus (actually, technically speaking he was; it is unlikely that Jesus clocked in anywhere close to 225), but he ran a close second, and he undoubtedly got more play – air and otherwise. Even in death, the Kang still gets much love. This weekend he gets even more as Ted Roddy & His King Conjure Orchestra host their annual Tribute to the King Friday and Saturday at the Continental Club. Since 1986 Roddy has produced a yearly Elvis birthday tribute with veteran Austin musicians that features a full horn section, backup singers, and all of the flash and panache you would expect from the Kang himself. The show has become so popular that it is now a two-night extravaganza that includes an early, nonsmoking performance at 7pm, then a vice-friendly version at 11pm. Time to dig up that velvet Elvis T-shirt and start TCB. The Kang is only going to turn 69 one more time, but if you’re lucky, who knows?

El Vez Xmas Show

Luv Doc Writings, The Luv Doc Recommends

SAT. NOV 30, 2002

Let’s assume it’s Friday and you’re still fighting the overwhelming urge to shove your finger down your throat and bring up all that nasty Thanksgiving bloat in one giant autumnal heave. No, you’re not a spoilsport. You just recognize that the Pilgrims aren’t holding down a spot in the pantheon of epicurean achievement for a reason. They were starving. If it weren’t for Squanto, they wouldn’t have had two kernels of corn to rub together, much less turkeys – not to mention the Pilgrims didn’t get all that freaky with anything, so fusion was pretty much out of the question. Yes, Don Quixote was right, hunger is the finest sauce in the world, but no matter what you put on it, a turkey is still a turkey. Dark meat, white meat, skin or giblets, turkey is uniquely unable to transcend itself. Thus it is relegated to being the lifeless daily fare of weight watchers and the bland centerpiece of a yearly holiday meal. For the glass-half-full crowd, the turkey and all its starchy accoutrements serve as pleasant reminder of our common heritage and the bounty in which we are lucky enough to share. For the rest of us, it’s the milquetoast emblem of how bad things can be – especially if you let the guy in the black clothes and the belt-buckle hat run the kitchen.

Now that you’ve gotten Thanksgiving out of your system, you may want to brush your teeth and head down to the Continental Club for the spicy sounds of El Vez. Friday and Saturday at midnight, “El” will be performing two back-to-back nights of his special X-mas show, ostensibly in support of his latest CD, “Sno-Way José.” El Vez is all about fusion. Witness classics like “Mamacita Donde Esta Santa Claus?” and “Brown Christmas” and you’ll begin to wonder if maybe the holiday season isn’t such a bad idea after all.